Category: tech

Talk about software, hardware, electronics, and a myriad of other sex-repellent topics.

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champagne and scallops


Sorry for yesterday’s lack of words, it was just an uninspired evening. I had one paragraph and figured it wasn’t worth it. Right now, Sharaun’s out and Keaton’s asleep and the Halloween prop timer just kicked on and I’m sitting here listening to Muddy Watters (sometimes run-ons just feel right, y’know?). Now Skinny Puppy’s Addiction from the 12″ collection came on, what a track. It’s a good night. Oh, and, rain either got into the coffin popper’s wiring today, or the motions sensor is shot – because that thing just started flipping out tonight… turning off and on with such rapidity that the corpse looked like he was having a postmortem seizure. I had to disable the solenoid to the pneumatic cylinder, bummer.

I have a sneaking feeling I’ve espoused on this theme before, but I can’t be bothered to look for it among the previous entries – maybe this one will be better. I think it’s funny that we’re at the time now where the Lollapalooza set is starting to settle into their married lives and have children. My idea of what parents should be was, of course, shaped by my parents. And let me tell you, the parents of my generation are definitely removed from that breed. More and more of the parents I meet today have shaggy hair and ten-gauge hoop earrings and tattoos. These are “kids” in their mid-thirties who’re still holding onto bits and pieces of the fads that defined them as youth: grunge, hip-hop, etc. I think it’s hilarious to see a dual-childseat equipped minivan rolling down the road with the Cure or Front 242 drifting from the speakers.

I realize that my personal realization here is likely not unlike the realizations of the generations before me when they stopped and noticed: “Hey, I’m not young anymore… folks my age seem to be hemorrhaging babies, getting divorces, and not being able to sit on the floor without their ‘joints getting sore.'” I’m sure that there comes a point (right around thirty, I’d suspect) in most people’s lives when they realize that their age bracket has moved to the “next phase.” I’m just at that point, and my “age bracket” makes for an interesting menagerie of a parents and children. In fact, I bet when my parents became parents, it was hard for them to imagine a bunch of thirtysomethings in poodle skirts and saddle shoes chewing Blackjack gum and raising kids. Every generation must go through that shock of “we’re not kids anymore, we’re raising kids now.” (Have I restated the same thought enough times yet?)

Get ready geezers, shape up grandparents – we’re the new generation of families, we’re the new parents.

Booked tickets for our trip home for Florida for Christmas this morning, ended up going with United at a premium of about $150 so I could use my “class of service” upgrades and get the mileage. Sucks to pay a grand just to get home before we can even start spending money while there, but I guess it’s a lesson learned for me. Next year, I’ll be putting away a small amount each month in preparation. Anyway, I was able to use my languishing 100k upgrades to get us 1st class for the entire itinerary – which, I suppose, is some small comfort… and perhaps justifies the $150 adder. At least we’ll be flying in style, maxin’ and relaxin’ with champagne and scallops. Sigh… next up: Thanksgiving tickets. Good thing I’m stinking rich. Oh wait, I’m totally not… sigh x2.

Last night I was on one of the message boards I frequently lurk on (I’m a member of nothing, but a reader of a lot), and a well known boarder posted that he was going to commit suicide. Some boarders told him not to, lots cheered him on. I wonder if that guy was serious?

For some reason, the TiVo’s been missing more shows than usual lately (I suspect some mega-conflict with the sheer number of programs we’ve set to record). Sharaun realized it missed a show she likes, and exactly 12min later I had it downloaded and was playing it in perfect quality on the TV via the laptop. It’s times like that, when I’m “stealing” TV shows, that I really value the coolness of the internet. When I stayed in Taiwan for a month last year, I was able to watch any US TV show I wanted.

Goodnight.

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weekdays are torture


Sunday night and it’s back to work tomorrow (“boooo!” jeers the crowd). This weekend turned out to be an exercise in laziness, both purposeful and unplanned. Wanted to mow the lawn: didn’t happen. Wanted to go to Wal Mart and invest in some of those “energy saving” lightbulbs: didn’t happen. Wanted to say home and do nothing both Friday and Saturday night: did indeed happen. Overall though, I’m happy with it. Found some time Sunday to work on this year’s “late breaking” Halloween prop with Ben, even managed to take some quick footage and assemble it into this year’s first “teaser” video. I’ve added it to the Halloween Teasers gallery, so go check it out. Found even more time after doing the teaser to upload some new images to Keaton’s Gallery, so go check those out too. And then, read this:

Downloaded the new iTunes and let it update my iPod to firmware 1.2. Had some issues with the actual update process, as iTunes just stalled out on “updating iPod” indefinitely. I let it go for half an hour thinking it really might be taking that long, but soon noticed the iPod’s screen was showing the “do no disconnect” message. I unplugged the whole mess and Ctl+Alt+Del’d the iTunes process. Went through this twice before the iPod actually got updated, and iTunes never did stop showing the “updating the iPod” message… I just had to hard-reset the iPod and kill the iTunes task again. Then iTunes took approximately 300hrs to analyze all my MP3s for “gapless playback.” I hope gapless playback is rad enough to warrant that. Stupid Apple software.

Friday night I stayed at home alone while Sharaun went to some pyramid-scheme party. While the party isn’t the point of what I’m writing here, I think I’ll go ahead and mention how it seems to me like these kind of things are really on the rise. Maybe it’s just that Sharaun’s now at the prefect age to be invited to them as a target buying-audience, but it seems like there are pyramid-scheme parties for just about everything these days: makeup, children’s toys, housewares, baskets, food, candles, etc. Oh, and I know the term “pyramid scheme” isn’t PC anymore and that I should call them multi-level marketing… give me a break. (Note to my friends who are gettin’ their multi-level on, I still love you… no pyramid could keep us apart.)

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, I was home alone… and I took the quiet time after I fed Keaton and put her down as a chance to catch up on some of the week’s news I’d missed (work being fairly consuming of late, hence the spotty blogging last week as well). The major outlets were primarily consumed with the sex-toy highschool MySpace killer, but the indie guys were almost completely focused on the Military Commissions Act. Oh sure, I’d heard a lot about the “torture bill” over the course of the week, but the more I read the more inflamed I became. I decided I should probably read the thing for myself before I got too hot and bothered by potentially biased summaries of the legislation. So, I headed over to Thomas and grabbed a PDF of the final passed version of the text.

A lot of folks are up in arms over this legislation, and doubtless we’ll see some legal challenge brought against it in the courts as early as this week – I’m sure there were several groups working over the weekend to get their motions in order. Now, I’ll say right out that I don’t have much in the way of new or insightful information to offer about the bill, but you can go to any number of places to get some brainage on it if you’re inclined – here’s a good start. Anyway, I downloaded the thing and fired up my trusty laserjet printer (which made me realize, I hardly ever print anything these days) and printed off the entire thing. I stapled it together, and plopped the thing in the bathroom for some dumptime reading.

I’ll fill ya in once I’ve got the whole thing sorted, OK? Goodnight.

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just how i like it


Sunday night and, after a weekend spent cooking over a Coleman stove and warming frozen fingers in front of a campfire, I’m not at all looking forward to waking up and going to work. It was a good weekend though: eating the campground delicacies afforded by car-camping, walking with Keaton on the beach, and our little family huddling close in the tent to make the cold night a little more comfortable. Compared to stuff like that, work pales.

Now, since it’s Monday, you know I’ve got a new batch of photos uploaded to Keaton’s gallery. Including candids from camping, bathing, and and college football Saturdays. But, I’ve also got a new little tidbit of Keaton-news. Try and contain your excitement, but she’s finally cut her first tooth. It’s barely through, but it’s there. We tried tonight to take a picture tonight, but getting her to hold her mouth open isn’t an easy task. Anyway, it’s crazy how quickly she’s growing… and I just know she’ll be crawling around any day now. It’s too fast, really, it’s going waay to fast. Without going back and looking through photos from a month ago, it’s hard to even remember how different she was.

I know, Lonelygirl15 is over. I mean, she was interviewed on CNN, she made an appearance on the Tonight Show, she’s was on TRL for pete’s sake. But guys… and I know I swore never to write about this again… but guys… this cassieiswatching alternate reality game spinoff is really heating up. After watching the latest Cassie video, a freakish inverted creepshow featuring overt references to the murderous cult of Charles Manson, and which was also shot at the exact same locale as the last LG15 vlog.

The ARG professionals over at unfiction have arleady solved the first an second cassieiswatching videos (after they recovered items left at the same locations of LG15’s videos). The latest clue revealed a phone number and a cryptic voicemail, and I won’t bother documenting it further than there. So far, the “official” LG15 creators are denying that the cassieiswatching ARG (if that’s what it is) is part of what they’re calling the “Breeniverse,” but to me – it would be a spectacular plot device to start the LG15 videos, stage a fake “outing” of the cast, but have it all be part of the grander screenplay. An intricate ARG, of which the whole “LG15 is fake” thing was just an act.

In the “kinda freaky” department, they are building a Tolkien-inspired community near Bend, Oregon called the Shire. I wonder who will live there? Seriously, check out the video… incredible.

Goodnight folks, I love ya.

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full of stuff today


Thursday, my head hurts. There’s some big fire somewhere out there in the part of the world within wind-reach of me, and it’s blanketed the lands as far as I can see with smoke. The smoke bothers me, even though I was only out in it briefly as I shuffled to work, lunch, and the like. Full of stuff today, and it’s a Friday so I’m super happy for the weekend. Let’s do this.

Sharaun always makes fun of me because when I’m around people with foreign accents, I tend to subconsciously appropriate their accents in my own speech. I always feel somewhat disgusted when she calls me out on it, since it seems to me to be some sort of “pandering.” In reality, I think I may have developed this ridiculous tactic as a part of my larger “making people comfortable” approach to gaining confidence. I’ve long been able to observe and simulate or respond to body language in order to give someone an unspoken message that we’re on the same page. I also consider myself pretty good at pegging a person’s personality and likes/dislikes quickly enough upon initial meeting so I can be sure to subtlety work within the confines of their comfort. I’ve never been a used car salesman, but I bet if I went on a reality TV show where it was my task to study under the tutelage of one of the best some of the first lessons he’d teach would involve honing techniques much like the ones I’ve already described. Small, seemingly insignificant verbal and non-verbal actions which serve to make a person comfortable, to ease their natural defenses and give them the impression that you’re a good guy – all based on reflecting little bits of themselves back to them. Because, after all, who’s everyones most trusted person? Themselves of course. The more you’re like someone, the more they relate to you.

So, now that I’ve admitted I use manipulative techniques to win friends and influence people, let’s get back to the point of this paragraph: my fake accents. I don’t know why I do it, and I usually don’t even realize when I’m doing it. It can range from a subtle Latino-tinge to full-on broken English approximations of my good buddies from Taiwan. So, if you ever hear me do this – call me out. Help me break this embarrassing habit. Thanks.

Even though I sit at a computer and type most of the day for a living, I still come home and type some more for pleasure. Usually though, I don’t like sitting at “the” computer, you know – the one in the back room with a big ol’ desk and CRT monitor and comfy office-type chair. No, no, that’s too much like my work environment. Kicking it with a laptop on the couch though, for some reason that’s different. Dunno why, but it is.

Went through the mail tonight, pretty much a bi-weekly (if that’s the incorrect term for “once every two weeks,” I’m sorry, I have a hard time deciding if it means that or twice per week) thing now. The “snail mail” is of almost zero value to me these days, it’s 90% advertisements and wasted paper and the actual “need” for it has been almost entirely eclipsed by e-mail and the internet. Who the heck needs paper these days anyway, I tell all my bills that will allow it to “stop sending paper statements” and go all-online. I don’t keep a check register, just check in online every few days to make sure things look right. It’s the new generation folks, better hip up.

Well, looks like the lid is juuust about blown off the whole Lonelygirl15 thing, all signs are currently pointing to it being a new form of Blair Witch derivative viral marketing – with most lines of thinking pointing to it being an advert for a Halloween-timed horror movie (perhaps even a mockumentary). With the whole registered trademark and cyber-sluething IPs to Beverly Hills talent agencies (not to mention a potential admission from “the creators”), it seems inevitable we’ll get the entire story here soon. Hey, it was fun while it lasted, and almost carried me through to the new season of Lost where I can once again assume my role as armchair detective. At least now I’ll quite writing about it, and spare you that small thing. (And damn, BoingBoing scooped me and once again made it look like I wrote this in response… I gotta start considering real-time posting if I wanna be hot on the shit.)

On the politics tip, I had a hearty guffaw reading this story over at the America Weakly website. America Weakly is a “satirical newspaper designed to give voters a glimpse into the future if Democrats take control of Congress this fall. Set in September of 2007, the newspaper reflects the condition of the America one year after a Democrat takeover of Congress.” In the story titled partly “Dems Celebrate End of Bush Security Measures,” the GOP Onion wannabe invents a hilarious fictitious statement from a House Democratic leader about the current administration’s NSA “wiretapping” goings-on:

“This program was a clear violation of due process,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said. “I don’t care how many attacks it might have stopped. Even if there really are sleeper cells in this country, we have a careful and deliberate process to stop them. Yes, it might take a bit longer, and we might not get every single bit of information, but that’s a small price to pay.”

Get more funny-’cause-it’s-freaky-not-because-it’s-funny Democratic-House endtimes GOP paranoia over at America Weakly. And, for some we-swear-it’s-not-pandering donkey goodness, head over to FaithfulDemocrats.com and count yourself shocked to see that it’s (purportedly) possible to hate guns and still love Jesus.

Goodnight.

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he that hath an ear


Welcome to Wednesday night. It’s getting harder and harder for me to remember what I’ve written about on this thing. Usually, before I set out to write something, I’ll do a quick search through the archives to see if perhaps I’ve covered it before. I’m sure, though, that if someone printed this rambling mess out and read through it cover-to-cover, they’d encounter a fair amount of repeat and perhaps even contradictory materials. It’s hard, you know, trying to keep track of it… all these words, all the arguably-wasted effort. That’s a good intro, eh? Good enough for me…

Motivated by nothing in particular, I spent some time tonight downloading MP3 versions of both the Bible and Quran. Put them on my iPod as audiobooks, which makes them “bookmarkable” (you can pick up listening where you last left off rather than beginning anew each time) and excludes from playback while shuffling (Matthew chapter 11 as a follow-on to some Kanye could really kill a party). Admittedly, I don’t plan on listening to these very often, but I do think it’s neat to have them at arm’s reach for curiosity’s sake. Used the Firefox DownThemAll extension to speed up the download process, grabbing all the files automagically (i.e. bandwidth-raping) rather than navigating through hundreds of individual links and pages.

As a pleasant second-order effect of my search, I was turned on to several great sites which offer completely free MP3 audiobooks. I think it’s awesome that I can download and listen to all sorts of material on the iPod, from the classics to philosophy. If you’re interested, Librivox and AudioBooksForFree.com both have nice-sized collections of completely free-to-download audiobooks (between the two sites there is nearly 1,000 works of literature available for listening). Most of the works available are older and are now public domain, but there are some original and newer titles as well.

In the process of writing the above paragraph, my mind once again drifted to being stranded on a desert island. How much more enjoyable would being stranded be if you had an iPod chock-full of music and books? Well, providing of course you first have health, food, and shelter. Anyway, the only problem here is the one of power… the iPod battery won’t last forever. But… any person who has irrational fantasies about one day becoming stranded on a desert island who’s worth their salt will have a solar-powered iPod charger with them at all times. All you need is the solar iPod charger, a solar AA battery charger, and a set of AA-powered portable iPod speakers – and you’re the life of the castaway party! Seriously, I’m thinking about getting that solar iPod charger just for the “cool” factor.

Keaton’s hair has almost all fallen out and is slowly being replaced with a new, blonder, quaff. Seeing this happen over the course of weeks tends to downplay how dramatic of a change it really is. In fact, I hadn’t realized just how much her hair had changed until I was browsing some old pictures last night. In an attempt to illustrate this, I GIMP’d Keaton’s hair from a picture taken at fifteen weeks onto the head of a picture taken last week. Roll your mouse over the image below to see the difference (allow a couple seconds load-time on the 1st rollover):

Wow! Goodnight.

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please make a daily call soon


Hey Monday, and a good one at that. I think I liked my weekend so much I didn’t want it to end, but more about that later. Tonight was a big night: Keaton’s 1st “solid” food. They call the stuff “rice cereal,” but it’s just mush. She really doesn’t have the whole open-mouthed eating thing down yet, and insists on sucking the spoon. It works, but it’s slow. We filmed it, of course – I think it’s required.

Woke up today and decided I wanted to work from home. Sometimes this is legit, sometimes not. Today, though, my day was 80% consumed with meetings – and I can call into those from home just as easily. The weather has changed from last week’s 100°+ afternoons and I was able to have the house and work in the fresh breeze. Spent some of my lunch break fashioning a couple homemade wasp traps. The wasps in my backyard are worse than any previous year I can remember, they are thick. In fact, when I went outside to scavenge a used two-liter from the recycle bin in order to make the wasp trap, I ended up running back to the house with my arms flailing in wasp-defense. It’s like they knew I was up to something. I made two traps, one baited with meat and one baited with sweet. Wasps are attracted to either depending on the time of year, and since it’s right on the line between the two I decided to try each and stick with the best performer. The frustrating thing is, there are no visible nests in my eaves – but I have observed numerous wasps flying under the tiles on my roof and into my rain gutters. I think they are constructing a massive hidden wasp-civilization.

This new Midlake album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, is outstanding. I love theme and words of the opening track, and the slow creeping harmonies throughout. With melodies recall slower Radiohead, Steely Dan, and even Paul McCartney. Sometimes the “softest” or “laziest” albums are the ones that sound best played ear-burstingly loud, and that’s the case with this misleadingly-sleepy record. But man, this album is ridicu-good. I wish it was colder outside though, and maybe a little grey… this album sounds cold and grey.

Found this great site today, it indexes torrents of public domain movies and TV broadcasts (items which have fallen out of copyright and are thus legally owned by the public and freely distributable). There are some great flicks, and some real stinkers, on there. Thing is, I like a reeking stinker every now and again for sheer tackiness and comedy – so this site is full of gems to me. I want to start watching these things, maybe one per flight or something. What a great way to legally watch some interesting old movies, especially for B-movie fans like me. I mean, who not like down a site that has every episode of the old Flash Gordon or Radar Men from the Moon serials available for legal, free download? What’s better, they’re prepackaged for iPod, PSP, and DVD… awesome.

Guess what? I didn’t want to rewrite the wasp bit at the beginning of the story, so I figured I’d follow up here as an ending. Finally got serious, broke out the 10ft ladder, and did some recon on the wasps in the rain gutter theory. In just a few brave minutes of investigation, I located four obvious nests – each of considerable size. And thus began the first sortie of Wasp War 2006. I struck with vengeance, soaking the nests in foamy death spray. After each attack, I’d jump off the ladder and run for cover. Allowing time for the angry to settle, I’d then move the ladder and attack the next nest down the line. I think I got most of them, although I’m fairly convinced there are a couple more which are better hidden. Those die tomorrow, as they all do eventually.

Goodnight.

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room to move


With the sickly-sweet scent of yesterday’s decaying epic still fresh in my nostrils, I sit back down to hammer out more words and poorly-punctuated sentences. I’ll keep doing it, you know, until something changes my habits so drastically it falls of my list of valued tasks or until I just don’t care anymore. But with the writing here consuming more and more of my thoughts (although, strangely enough, not my time), I don’t see that happening soon.

Sometime after we got back from Florida, my computer magically turned itself off overnight. Since then, it refused to turn back on… denying even my heartfelt urging. I left it this way for a while, not wanting to do computer work at home, and not really needing it to be operational for anything immediate. I could use my laptop to write blogs, and make Keaton videos, and everything else I do on a daily basis. Today, though, I got tired of not being able to access my RAID array. So, I set about debugging the issue. To make a long story short, I ended up at a bad power supply. Scrapped the power supply, and, while I was all up in the guys anyway, I went ahead and pulled the whole damn mess and migrated it all to a much roomier case. Sure, it sits some 3ft tall and sounds like a Beechcraft, but it’s working again. In fact, I’m typing this on it right now…

That’s it folks, spent most of the night eating burgers with friends – no time to write.

Goodnight.