a broken mold

The Club of Queer Trades + a small dev update

2009-10-17T10:19:00.001-07:00

I just finished the book last night - it's a G.K. Chesterton and somewhat reminiscent of his Father Brown stuff. It's a detective novel, but not a very conventional one. The detective in question is one Basil Grant, a retired judge and unsocial but not antisocial type, who is followed about by his brother Rupert, an ever suspicious amateur detective himself, and the narrator of the book, Swinburne.

As described on the back, there are six chapters, but not a crime in any of them, unless of course, you could consider some of the actions involved in investigation criminal. That is, of course, where the Club of Queer Trades comes in, that mysterious bureau of entirely new occupations. And they really are queer, in that old British sense of the word. I confess that some of them had me until the very end (and they certainly have Rupert and Swinburne to the end every time).

Basil seems insane to his friends, but I found myself rather trusting him even if his ideas seemed absurd. So, to wrap this bit of the post up, it's not too long of a read (my edition is 126 pages) and is worth a read for each chapter, and especially for reading through and discovering the ending (if you don't guess it before, that is).

Dev Update

Now then, the report on the new a broken mold. I'm happy to say that the development, which consists of bending WordPress and CSS to my will, seems to me to be almost over. While I'm here, let me give Firebug a plug; it's a web development add-on for Firefox, and boy is it ever cool. It has JavaScript and DOM tools, which I don't use, but the HTML and CSS tools are handy. The killer feature: you can edit code and see the results in real time (I'm not sure how that works with JavaScript). If you've ever done CSS work, you can probably imagine how handy that is.

I'm also happy to say that I contacted NearlyFreeSpeech.NET last night and was elated to learn that I could pay through the parents' plastic (with me giving them equal cash, of course) since I don't have a checking account yet.

So I'm hoping to get it up within the next half a month, and I suppose a month at the latest.

Time for homework now -- catch you later.

what I want for a broken mold

2009-10-11T17:18:00.001-07:00

I confess, like Aaron Weiss did, that I want to get famous.

However, I don't want to get too famous. Because that either leads to a bunch of good comments, flame wars, or spammy comments.

I think I would prefer to have a smaller, but still present, audience. I do like to do this kind of informal writing, and I would think it nice if I had a small audience with which to discuss it.

In the blog world, however, you usually get famous for one of two reasons: either you did something that made you really famous, or you provide good fresh content regularly. I hope to do the latter. And I figure the best way to do that, since I'm not that astute of a writer, is to assemble a team of writers, which is, incidentally, what we want to do. Funny how that works, huh?

Anyway, enough down that road. More shall come later on the subject.

For what seems to be to have been a couple weeks, I've been working on getting WordPress all customized to my liking. Right now that mostly means struggling with the theme. PHP and CSS. I hope I can get it sorted out within, say, the next week and a half. Anyway, probably sometime before the end of the year, we're going to be online with our very own website (thanks Google, it's been nice knowing you). I'm still leaning towards abrokenmold.net. I think that's going to be www.abrokenmold.net, even though I like the no WWW look, because it can present some issues. Even if I'm not dealing with those issues at the moment, I do want to be prepared for the future. One might also notice that there is a website at brokenmold.net and that having such a similar domain name is a poor idea. Maybe so, but we already have the name and I want to stick with it. Plus we have a jump in that brokenmold.net seems to be abandoned.

So, anyway, a somewhat quick dump of some thoughts.

Final version of Matthew's essay leaked

2009-09-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

Although the final release isn't scheduled until tomorrow at 9am, a sharp-eyed blog contributor sent us a link to what is almost certainly the final version of Matthew's rhetoric essay, probably leaked by inside sources.

Joking aside, this is the rhetoric essay I've been working on, the first of many rhetoric papers to come. I chose to tackle the subject of Christians drinking underage because they don't believe the government should be able to restrict that liberty. Well maybe it shouldn't, but if it *does*, do we have biblical grounds to disobey our civil authorities on that point? I argue not.

Enjoy!

Thoughts on modesty

2009-09-27T17:30:00.001-07:00

This isn't actually all that much of a post, but I did want to refer you to some reading.

So anyway, this thing is mostly about female modesty, but it is mentioned that guys should be modest too. I believe that. It is a somewhat different affair, but worth remembering.

Anyway, here's the thing. Pastor Tollefson preached on Proverbs 7 a couple of weeks ago and I think that reminded me of seeing this mentioned on Covenant Eyes' blog and going to check it out. It's The Rebelution's Modesty Survey.

The Modesty Survey is an anonymous discussion between Christian guys and girls who care about modesty. Hundreds of Christian girls submitted their questions and over 1,600 Christian guys (of all ages) submitted 150,000+ answers—including over 25,000 text responses.

source

I think sometimes it bugs me when people give these general, Sunday school, perfect summary answers to spiritual questions. Yeah, those are good, and sometimes they are helpful. But sometimes specifics are a lot more helpful and maybe more personable. I like the Modesty Survey because it some of both. Some good general answers about Christian modesty and some very specific questions. I have to admit it was somewhat disturbing how specific some of the questions are and what they might make you think about. But, as Christians, keep your mind out of the gutter.

I think it's a good read / browse-through for guys and girls, I think. It might give some insights to the female side and let guys see what a sampling of other guys think about all this stuff, maybe learn that they might be thinking about the issue wrongly, or see other perspectives on it, or get some good clarification on it, or what you will.

Anyway, I found it interesting. As a technical aside, the questions and answers are loaded up with AJAX, so it's not so easy just to hit up a bunch of links in new tabs for later reading (plus there's often a read more responses link).

P.S. Not to be immodest myself, but…

This is our 100th post.

They weren't all big, intellectual, meaty posts; some were actually a bit trivial. But hey… two people, 100 blog posts, 1 year and 17 days. Not that bad, is it?

And…

…hopefully sometime in the soonish future, there will be a post up about us seeking some new bloggers. Also hopefully in the next few months, I can get a sweet WordPress setup all made and get a proper domain for a broken mold… either abrokenmold.com or abrokenmold.net, I would think. I'm just not digging .org for the name. I'm thinking we can get hosted with the awesome NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. It should be rather affordable with the low traffic I'm expecting (at least at first… if it ever picks up, I'll probably be able to afford some decent fixed price hosting by then).

Maxim mixup

2009-09-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

Two common maxims are: "Familiarity breeds contempt," and "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

While there is latent truth to be found in these statements, one might conceive of a scenario where proximity to an object brings one under some some degree of influence of that object, causing one to take a more favorable view of said object. In this case, distance from the object in question and the resulting objectivity could in fact engender contempt. In this way, the proverbial dynamic may be shown to not always hold true.

Just by way of sharing one of my more interesting trains of thought...

Proud to say I created. something

2009-09-04T10:23:00.001-07:00

I got a business doing websites
When my friends need some code, who do they call?
I do HTML for ‘em all
Even made a homepage for my dog

-Weird Al Yankovic, "White and Nerdy"

Wednesday was a kind of milestone, or climax, or finish, for a project of mine. And that project was Matt Barley's website.

It started as a idea in Matt's head at some time or another, and he eventually conveyed to me at the New Year's 2008-2009 party at the RimRock Inn that he had been procrastinating on the project for some time and didn't get it done in 2008 and so wanted to get it done this year. I said I could help him, and so, on January 9, the domain name was registered, and a web page converted from a Word document made on Matt's MacBook was thrown up, slightly hand edited.

The first thing I did after that was to recode the page cleanly, with the help of KompoZer. Matt wanted a menu on the side, so it went table based. Yep. I just said that. It wasn't the best of designs, and later on I changed that to a menu positioned left with CSS. Praise God for CSS. Eventually it went back to plain HTML structure with a text menu below the header. Also, somewhere along the line, Matthew of abm fame gave a couple design suggestions and some code for one of them.

And then there was the photo galleries. First I did them with Web Album Generator and tried to embed them in a page, and then tried a page per album, using in iframe. That was a pain, and eventually I gave up and put them on separate pages and edited the CSS in each album folder to make those pages appear look like the rest of the site. And then Matt didn't like so many pictures on a certain album, or something like that. So, we ended up switching to Picasa Web Albums and linking to Matt's public page from his website. That worked out pretty well, since Matt can now manage the pictures all himself, which is great for both of us.

Eventually, I wanted to set up some sort of solution so Matt could edit the site on his own. I thought of a content management system first, and looked up one I recalled seeing linked from BugMeNot called CushyCMS. So I went and checked it out. It turned out to be, as one reviewer put it, more like a remote content editor. You put the proper class on div elements you wanted editable by Cushy and give it an FTP account to work with, and that's how it works. As another reviewer said, most of the time he'd probably forget to download the version from the site if he wanted to edit with something else (e.g., by hand with a text editor). So, that idea ended up being quashed before I even tested it.

I checked out three systems after that, really: Joomla, WordPress, and CMS Made Simple. XAMPP running on Windows on my laptop was my testbed of choice. Joomla was easy enough to set up, but seemed kind of complicated. WordPress looked like it might work well for blogging, but that's not what I was gunning for (although abm may be gunning for it in the future). CMS Made Simple ended up being it. The template/stylesheet system was easy enough to understand, and the use of the Smarty template system seemed nice. Not that I had heard of it before, but inserting Smarty tags seems to me a good way to insert special content into pages.

The first day of development gladdened the heart, because it seemed like it would work out great, and there was a pretty sweet little Picasa Web Albums module I found. There were some frustrations after that. A lot of aggravation dealing with CSS. In fact, that's been a thing all through the development of the website. Eventually things got ironed out and the site was finally ready for launch. The launch however, was terrible. I tried several times to upload and correctly configure the site for being on the server, and made a clean version of the site a couple times while at it. This process was highly frustrating, the least of reasons not being that I still have dial-up! Anyway, I finally got it nailed down and done correctly.

After after putting it in a test directory and then getting the go ahead from Matt, it went root, and now sits there beautifully. It's not much, but I have to admit I'm rather proud of it and am thinking that I may even redo our church website with CMSms if given stewardship of it. So, go check it out.

my first gasp about 'ObamaCare'

2009-08-04T16:41:00.001-07:00

Let me just say up front, if the version of HR 3200 under consideration in the House is passed, we will take a huge step towards utter destruction. The clauses of this bill would make the federal government twice the monster it is now. This is the ugly, ugly version of socialism.

Here, take a look at this: Liberty Counsel's summary of HR 3200. It's ten pages long, a much easier read than the full text (PDF) of the bill. By the way, if you don't want to bother with a PDF, here is the full text at OpenCongress. Also, keep a general eye on the bill over at its main page on OpenCongress.

I know this isn't a very formal post, but this bill is just insanity. Please, take some time out of your day to read the summary of the bill and then have a good hard think about contacting your Congressmen (representatives info here, senators here).

Book review, more on mewithoutYou

2009-07-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

So I just thought I'd put fingers to keyboard, so to type, since I had a couple thoughts...

(Yes, that was a not-so-subtle parody of Nat's post here.)

-Part 1-

Well, over the course of our vacation/trip, we've been staying at the houses of various friends and relatives (similar to Linux distro-hopping, I daresay) and one of the features that varies between locations is the reading selection. At one of my uncles and aunts' house, they had a number of Frank Peretti books; I've read several of his: The Oath, Hangman's Curse and Nightmare Academy, some from the Cooper series, and also Piercing the Darkness. However, I had not read Monster or House, a book he co-authored with Ted Dekker, nor had I read This Present Darkness, to which Piercing the Darkness is a sequel. They had all three of these books, and I read all three last weekend.

This, I imagine, puts me in a somewhat qualified position to review and comment on Peretti's literary offerings, and that is what I intend to do.

Peretti's books might be generally described as supernatural thrillers; he gives angels, demons, and spiritual warfare a very real place in everyday life. In addition, he provides insight on modernity and culture from a biblical perspective; his plots depict the consequences of fallen human nature in a gripping and lively fashion. His simple and unrefined dialogues and almost over-the-top vivid descriptions combine to create an urgent, driving story.

In Monster, for example, the story begins with a handful of people taking a weekend retreat into the wilderness, but an ongoing thread of perplexing hints and puzzle pieces races through the building tension to form an entire web of intrigue that involves Sasquatches, hair-raising hunts and gruesome deaths, and the ruthless advance of Atheistic science. House deals with a deadly game of manipulation and greed, fueled by fear and Satanism, and ultimately exposes our bondage to Sin in our own hearts, and liberation through Christ and sacrifice.

"Light came into the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it."

This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness vividly depict the struggle of the Remnant against the onslaught of Humanistic (and ultimately Satanistic) agendas, power struggles for the education system, government, and even entire towns. But beyond this superficial picture, the awesome conflict between angels and demons, good against evil, is beautifully portrayed. These books are a powerful testament to the efficacy of prayer, with the prayers of the saints providing "prayer cover" for angels to carry out maneuvers, and strength to meet demons in battle. Finally, the assurance that shouts so gloriously from the pages is that God IS ultimately in control, and "light will always pierce the darkness." Shades of C.S. Lewis's deeper magic. I get goosebumps.

So, as the angels say, "For the saints of God and for the Lamb!"

-Part 2-

Now, a bit on mewithoutYou (mentioned of course in many previous posts), arguably my favorite band. To be perfectly honest, my estimation of mwY may have been somewhat lowered by what I've recently learned. Then again, maybe I've just *altered* my preconceptions, while still holding their work in the same esteem. I think that really is the key word-- preconceptions. Not to flood this post with C.S. Lewis references or anything, but I think there is something to be said for his (if somewhat Universalist) account in The Last Battle of the dialogue between Aslan and Emeth (a Calormene), where Aslan explains that, while Emeth thought he had been worshipping Tash, he had in fact been serving Aslan, "For I and he [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him." Okay, so it isn't just Lewis's idea either... maybe that's what Paul was getting at in the Areopagus, eh?

The point I'm trying to pose for consideration is the possibility that, despite maybe not holding the correct understanding/belief of Scripture, it is still possible to worship and obey the one true God. That does seem to be validated by Paul's speech. Of course, you don't yet know what I'm referring to, do you? Sorry...

*deep breath*

Well, being on vacation and all, I was able to take some time to do a bit more research on mwY, the band philosophy and background, etc. And I came across a few things that I found a bit unsettling. First there's the fact that their lyrics and philosophy are influenced by Sufi Islam teachings (Aaron was raised in a Sufi household before he converted to Christianity; his father converted from Judaism and his mother from Episcopalian). Then again, it isn't as if such beliefs are *necessarily* in contradiction with a Christian aesthetic. However, it does indicate to me that they aren't on the page I thought they were, at least not nominally, and sometimes nominally can be important. More on that later. Next, I found a couple of interviews with lead vocalist Aaron Weiss found here and here. From the first interview, we find this excerpt:

It’s not like I’m offended if someone says we’re a Christian band. I just don’t think it’s true. I don’t think we live up to that calling, so I’d be reluctant to go saying that, and God knows the truth. Our hearts are very far from Jesus.

Now that concerns me somewhat. However, if you take that in perspective with their lyrics, what do you end up with? They certainly don't seem "far from Jesus" in the many references to Jesus in their songs and the story that they tell. Eh. Hmm.

From the second interview:

I'm trying to understand the Bible, and um, but I definitely don't put it on the same pedestal that I used to. You know, where I'd say, "this is the word of God that I'm holding in my hand and this is infallible and perfect, and there's no contradictions and is scientifically accurate," and all the rest...

And then he goes on to point out reasons he now regards it as more of collection of holy Jewish stories and poems. In this list he cites various "inconsistencies," and how he just wasn't convinced by efforts to sustain their validity. I'm glad, however, to see that he goes on to say, "There's just some things that I pray to God to guide me in the right way and to guide me to the truth in the best way." He's evaluating things that the Bible says by what is written on his conscience, and I hope God will grow him that way.

So, to conclude, I want to express a few final thoughts about the worship/worldview issue. Looking at Romans 1, we seem to find another indicator of God's natural revelation and the potential to worship Him with the knowledge given. Is one absolutely required to have received the gospel to be included in God's kingdom? I hope not... what about those far-flung tribes who have lived for centuries "without excuse"? Then again, I do think it's important to claim the name of Christ if you've received the gospel. I don't know how that all works out... I realize this is sort of a whole different topic, but it is one that pertains directly to the subject at hand, so I'm trying just to briefly set up a framework. C.S. Lewis (last reference, I promise), in Pilgrim's Regress, outlines such a model, where he describes the heathens as being given a "picture" of "Sweet Desire" by God, and in striving towards that, they were living by His law. The Christians in Puritania, however, have the law without the picture. At any rate, I think it does make sense.

However it may be, I love the poetry and passion of mewithoutYou and believe their theme is in worship to God, and I certainly pray for them and hope to see them in Heaven. Can't wait to listen to It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright when I get home in a week or so.

Bonus material: check out http://improveverywhere.com. Hilarious stuff, but language disclaimer.

-Matthew

Two things: Free culture music and Rockbox

2009-07-18T15:50:00.001-07:00

So I just thought I'd put pen to paper, so to speak, since I had a couple thoughts.

First thing: the free culture music scene. I don't really have a lot of experience there, but I do know this so far: there is some great talent there. For instance, I've downloaded all of JT Bruce's released albums on the fabulous Jamendo (which I gushed about back here). I have some other music from there, but his are probably my favorites so far. And I've heard about Jack Conte… sounds interesting. In fact, I find the whole culture interesting. In a related channel, some of this vibe seems to be seeping out into mainstream music. Notably, Nine Inch Nails (and by implication, its sole member, Trent Reznor). Reznor seems to have gotten sick of major label trash, and in fact gave some thoughts for new and unknown artists recently on the NIN forums.

So, while I don't think I would completely abandon the mainstream industry, I respect this free culture. It's really a fascinating thing to me and I do want to learn more. I'm still coming to grips with what I think about copyright law (well, okay, maybe I should say I haven't sat down and given it a deep think-through yet). I think it's right to obey copyright law, because it's the law and there doesn't seem to be anything inherently evil about it, but maybe it does need to be revised (I'm talking U.S. here). When Congress finally gets around to it (2014 maybe?), it's going to be a doozy, whatever happens. The explosion of the digital age cannot be ignored. Anyway, it's an interesting thing, and I want to learn more about all of it (did I already say that?). Hopefully, I can eventually make my music collection 100% legal (meaning buy copies of all the stuff I don't own and want to keep; some CD's and some single downloads).

Second thing: Rockbox. If you're the type who might run Linux, you might like Rockbox, the awesome alternative firmware for jukeboxes (mp3 players). OK, maybe you don't need to run Linux, but I just thought maybe there's a similar appeal. Anyway, I've been running Rockbox on my Sansa e200 version 1 since fall or early winter last year. I was running the few week old 3.0 release then. Now, it's up to 3.3. This seems like a growing up release to me; support for JPEG album art finally and native USB support on some players in Rockbox (thought at least on mine it uses the original firmware if plugged in while off). In any case, it has support for bunches of codecs (including, of course, unprotected iTunes). It also has a load of plugins, many of which can be used while playing music, divided into applications, games, and demos. Anyway, enough with the infomercial. All I'm saying is if you have a supported player (more in development!) and want some more out of your MP3 player, check it out.

Edit: July 25, 2009: As an addendum, I really enjoy the playlist management Rockbox brings to my e200. I couldn't do it with the original firmware but using Rockbox I can follow my habit of making custom playlists consisting of songs from different albums. This was sort of possible with the OF, but was fairly painstaking (you had to play songs you wanted in the list and add them to a 'go list').

speed up Facebook photo uploads

2009-07-14T19:28:00.001-07:00

I really think Facebook should give this hint up front on the photo upload page, and maybe even point you to some helpful tools. You see, as far as I know, the pictures you and others post to Facebook are only stored on Facebook servers in the size you see them. Often enough, though, the original pictures uploaded are bigger than this. Thus, uploading time is wasted when you could just upload the right sized pictures in the first place. The Picasa Facebook plugin does this, for instance, allowing pictures to actually be uploaded using dial-up. Woot!

To the point, the maximum width your photos are displayed at on Facebook is 604 pixels, the maximum height being 604 also. If you're uploading anything smaller than that, don't bother resizing. But if they're bigger than that, you can save some time. So, use your favorite program to size your photos down to this width or height. Or if you have no idea what to use, try Fotosizer for Windows and RapidoResizer for Mac. Linux users, figure it out (you're supposed to be smart).

And as a side note, I think Facebook should seriously add a real yearbook view, where you could view a spread of thumbnails of your friends, since that's what it's named after (yearbook/facebook - see the connection? Check this ZDNet definition for full info - it's actually a bit different take than I have, and in fact I guess I'm wrong about what it's named after, but I still think a yearbook view would be cool).

P.S. If you have a free Flickr account, the max size your photos will ever be viewable at is 1024x768 pixels, I think (and as I remember, I think you might even have to turn that size on). So, you might be able to save some time the same way there.
P.P.S. I'm wondering if your photos are somewhere on the Flickr servers at a larger size than 1024x768 even if you have a free account - maybe if you upgrade to pro, you could get access to these bigger versions. Just speculating. Take the Flickr tip at your own risk.

Edit: July 25, 2009: I re-registered for Flickr today and contacted them about the original file free account to Pro thing. Speaking about Flickr free, I was told this by Natalie at Flickr Customer Care:

Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later).

Bingo. Just what I wanted to know. So upload at 1024x768 with that knowledge - if you go Pro, your photos will only be viewable at that resolution max. So, if you think you might go Pro in the future and think this could be an issue, upload accordingly. I personally plan to upload at 1600x1200 or widescreen equivalents, because that's what I've been doing with my photo blog to save upload time (and download time for viewers, now that I think about it).

Edit: July 27, 2009: I just found a way to get at the originals with a free Flickr account. Who knows how long it might last, but here goes (might make a post out of it later). It's the photostream RSS feed (I haven't tested Atom yet). Just stick it into a feed reader that supports attached media (including Firefox's Live Bookmarks) and grab that attached media. It appears to be the original. Test it out right here on my RSS feed. I'm suspecting that maybe Flickr doesn't mind as much about this, but they just make it easy on Pro and call it a Pro feature. In fact, they start you on your way to finding the originals over here by documenting the photo source URLs.

Gnome Do

2009-07-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

I've recently started using Gnome Do in Ubuntu 9.04, and I've not yet explored the extent of its functionality, but I'm continually discovering more uses. It includes plugins for GMail contacts, Firefox bookmarks, a Gnome dictionary and calculator, Pidgin messenger, Imageshack uploader, and more. One useful plugin is the Microblogging (Twitter) plugin; it shows your friends' status updates in the notification tray, and you can post directly from Do. You can even manage your Gnome session and windows, and control your media player. Oh, and all this is just an extension of the main function, which is a search/launcher; however, I have yet to put it to use as effectively as Launchy. Finally, you can use it with a dock skin, wrapping yet another desktop function into one tool.

A few configuration options are available by right-clicking on the Do icon in the dock, but to further customize dock settings, you can use Alt+F2 > gconf-editor > Apps > gnome-do > preferences > Docky > Utilities > DockPreferences. Icons are added or removed by dragging to the dock. Screenshot here.

Now the Twitter plugin would be really handy, except for the fact that it, along with most third-party Twitter apps, was broken to some extent by the Twitpocalypse. Although the crisis was mostly averted, it left in its wake a bunch of mal-tweeting apps. In the case of Do, upon an attempted post to Twitter, you would receive a notification that the post had failed, when it had in fact succeeded. While not exactly an epic fail, it nonetheless was an undesirable state of affairs. Enter open source developers.

The bug was reported and dealt with on Launchpad here. However, finding all the dev language a bit difficult to follow, I headed over to the Ubuntu forums for some clarification, where a user linked to the same fix page, but with a more lucid explanation.

Go to Synaptic, go to Software Sources, pre-released updates, close, look for gnome-do, update gnome-do plugins, go to .local/share/gnome-do and delete (or move) your plugins directory, open gnome-do, enable the microblogging plugin again, and you should be good to go.

So, to further expound ... you open Synaptic package manager, then open Software Sources and enable pre-released updates (instructions). Then go back to Synaptic and search for gnome-do-plugins, and update the package. Next, open a file browser, and show hidden files if they are not already visible (View > Show Hidden Files), then navigate to your home folder, where you should find the above-referenced location; delete or move. Finally, simply open Gnome Do and re-enable your plugins.

Viola! You should now have tweets that flow like clockwork.

VirtuaWin is the best Windows virtual desktop manager

2009-07-03T10:45:00.001-07:00

For me, that is.
I blogged a while back about Vista/XP Virtual Desktops being virtual desktops in Windows done right-er. Well, I have a new love. VirtuaWin.
I believe that probably over a year earlier than this second time, I have used VirtuaWin (the default taskbar icon looked familiar). I probably didn't like it so well back then, but I think it's pretty rad now.

under 10 MB memory usage on my system
low CPU usage on my system
simple
fast
small size of core files
extendable by modules

Awesome, huh? It doesn't do any fancy Exposé style desktop previews like some other ones, but I don't really think Windows is setup for that (hopefully Microsoft will make some changes in this direction in the future. Native virtual desktops in Windows would be great).
And some nice news for the Ubuntu (and others, I think) users among you: you can set up hotkeys to switch and follow windows to the previous and next desktops.
Sweet, huh?
As a postscript, I like using the XP bars icon set for VirtuaWin because it allows me to keep tabs on which desktop I'm on, Ubuntu/GNOME style (pic). Check that set out or take your pick of the others. You install them by putting them in the icons folder in the VirtuaWin folder. Refer to the help file included for more info (help not working on Vista? Try xchm for Win32 [v. 1.16]).

adding a search box to a Blogger blog

2009-06-13T20:47:00.001-07:00

So it turns out there are a couple ways to do this. It depends on what kind of search you want for your blog. Actually, you can even go as far as setting up a Google Custom Search for your blog, like we used to use, but these are a bit simpler and faster to set up.

First, you've probably seen the search box on the Blogger navbar.

By my guess, this is probably in the source code of all or most Blogger templates, but I know for a fact that some of them hide the bar (it's actually an iframe if you want to know), such as our template, Subtlebeauty. You'll have to remove some code from your template if it's hidden on yours and you want it to show. For example, in Subtlebeauty, I'd probably remove the lines:

#navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }

Check out this page for a full tutorial on how to remove the bar (possibly because it looks terrible with your theme or you're using a different search box). If you want to change the color scheme of the bar (there's only 4 available), check out this page.

The second way is maybe a little easier. It's pretty much the same search as the navbar provides, just using your own search box, which means you can put it wherever you want on your blog. Head over here and grab the code or press the Add To My Blogger button. You can change the text displayed when the search box is not being used and the text on the search button as described over there. Just take a look at the code and you'll probably get it. Easy as pie. In fact, I put the code in below so you can test it out right here.

And the third way is a piece of cake. It's the new Blogger Search Box. Quote from Blogger Buzz: "To add the gadget, go to your blog's Layout page, then click “Add a Gadget” and click on “Search Box.” Super easy, and it has some cool options. It's a lot more advanced than the previous two (but just as easy to use). It used to only be in Blogger in Draft, but now it's public, so woot woot!

get Alt drag in Windows

2009-06-06T21:15:00.001-07:00

With a lot of Unix and Linux window managers, you can drag a window around by holding the Alt key and using your mouse anywhere on the window. (The GNOME window manager can use some different keys, probably other WMs, too). This is incredibly useful. It allows you to get the window around quickly, and is so much faster than seeking out the title bar and dragging with that.

Anyway, enough with the persuasion; if you're going to like it, you'll be convinced when you try it. To the point, I found three programs to do the job for Windows: the Easy Window Dragging -- KDE style AutoHotkey script, AltDrag, and Win32WM (direct .zip link).

The first of these, Easy Window Dragging, is the most simple. You'll need AutoHotkey to run it. If you want, you can use the AHK2Exe compiler included with AHK; this will make an .exe you can run without needing AutoHotkey. I think performance may be slightly better when it's run uncompiled, but the difference may be negligible. The functions of the script are (quote from script comments):

Hold down
; the ALT key and LEFT-click anywhere inside a window to drag it to a new
; location; 2) Hold down ALT and RIGHT-click-drag anywhere inside a window
; to easily resize it; 3) Press ALT twice, but before releasing it the second
; time, left-click to minimize the window under the mouse cursor, right-click
; to maximize it, or middle-click to close it.

There is a tray icon that allows you to exit the program.

AltDrag has a few more features. Quote from the info file:

Drag windows with the mouse when pressing the alt key.
You can use the middle or right mouse button to resize windows.
If you press the shift key while you drag or resize, the window will stick to other windows.
You can double-click a window to maximize it.
You can double-click with the middle mouse button to roll-up windows.

There is also an experimental feature to make it stick to other windows (what does that mean?) along with another option in the .ini file to make Alt+right-click minimize windows. Tray icon included.

Win32WM does not have a tray icon, so you'll have to end its process with Task Manger in order to stop it. In addition to alt-dragging, it has some keyboard driven window management functions. Quote from the readme:

Maximize vertically Win+V
Maximize horizontally Win+H
Maximize window Win+X
Minimize window Win+Z
Send window to background Win+B

It also has some other functions, such as snapping windows to desktop edges when alt-dragging, but they appear to need VirtuaWin (what Win32WM was originally made for) to be enabled.

One other thing to note about Win32WM: it appears to send click and drag mouse events to the window it's moving - repeatedly. Take a look at this blank canvas in GIMP that I dragged around with it:

And another note: while the CPU usage of these applications is mostly not that bad, the CPU usage of programs being dragged around on the screen can spike as well as applications behind those you are dragging. I think this has something to do with the way Windows draws windows and I also think it may be different in Vista and beyond. However, this is mostly with violent thrashing of the window about the screen; gentler window dragging should have quite acceptable CPU usage.

In any case, take your pick, and enjoy.

Update: June 12, 2009: Just a quick note: windows don't seem to drag using this method when they are not responding (hung). I think this is probably also something to do with the way Windows draws windows, and it also may be different in Vista. And as far as I remember, hung windows drag fine in Linux.

Update: November 1, 2009: I've switched to using KDE Mover-Sizer, a modified version Easy Window Dragging. It supports window snapping and is distributed ready to go in an .exe. Go read the page if you don't understand that. And let me reiterate one last time - alt dragging is an awesome time-sanity-saver.

stop Firefox from dumping your cache after a crash

2009-06-05T13:24:00.001-07:00

This bugs me to death since I'm on dial-up. Just last night, I pulled a process out from under the nose of my firewall while it was asking about it and it locked up my (Windows) system pretty nasty. I should file a bug report with PC Tools about that…

Anyway, thanks to burning desire and this and this thread on mozillaZine Forums, I found Cache Fixer. Quote: "Cache Fixer extension drops the "dirty" flag on every startup and if Mozilla crashes, you still loose cached data, but only the current (crashed) session. I think it’s better, than loosing all cached data."

That's awesome, but it only works up to Firefox 3.0pre. So I used the maxVersion trick so it will work with up to Firefox 4.0. Here it is on Box.net. Hopefully the developer will put an official updated version up soon. Please note: I have nothing to do with development, I just changed a text string and then zipped the files back up.

Also, as I posted back here, the dumped cache is intentional behavior. We're just choosing to change that behavior (woot!).

Thanks much, Mr. Ivanov.

Access Linux and Windows without a password using Kon-Boot

2009-05-30T19:36:00.001-07:00

Having finally read Claus' post about Kon-Boot from the 25th, I thought it pretty cool and felt like posting about it over here.

He goes into some detail about the tool, so you can check it out if it interests you. But here are the juicy and important points.

What it does is modify the operating system kernel in memory (grabbing control at the BIOS to bootloader handoff), changing the necessary parts to disable the need to use a password to log in. It runs off of a CD (or a floppy… maybe you could get it to work off a USB stick, too). Hot stuff.

From what I read at GSD, such techniques aren't new, but this is a pretty sweet implementation. It doesn't work with computers on a domain setup, but that makes sense; you would have to inject code into the server, too, to make it work, because the computer needs to authenticate with the server, and unless the server is compromised, too, it's not gonna let you login with out proper credentials (password, keycard, whatever). And even if you could get through to a local account on the computer, you might not be able to nab anything important since user data might be stored on the server. I'm not sure about the caching methods used, though (I'm talking about Windows here; I don't even know if Linux has domains). Maybe some user data would still be cached on the hard disk, I don't know.

In any case, it's a pretty cool technique, even if I'm not so geek about it as Claus.

On our blog and the nature of Twitter

2009-05-16T22:29:00.001-07:00

It seems to me there was a point when blogging was 'in'. At least with the younger population. It was, well, a fad, and like all of them, it passed (or should I say will pass? passes?).

But why did the young'ns not stick around? I believe the answer to be simple: writing about what you did today gets boring after a while -- for reader and likely enough the blogger, too. And if you're not celebrity, what stranger in the world is going to read your boring personal weblog?

Now that you've figured it out, consider the hundreds of non-celebrity blogs that get a nice chunk of readership. Why do they get readership? Content, content, content. Plus presentation, of course. Your average personal blog might have a terrible template (or just a popular and familiar one), but I think people appreciate good design, whether consciously or subconsciously. It also seems to me that blogs with high readership have a topic, or a category to their posts -- thus a reason for people to come back: more content in that category. Example: Download Squad. Though it covers tech news, they are always talking about software, new and updated. So people have a reason to come back. Unless you are some hot celebrity, your personal life probably is not enough to draw someone back to your blog.

And one note: it seems to me that a lot of popular blogs (at least that I run into) are run by a team. Keeping quality content coming is important, too. Who would get used to watching TV if programs came on randomly, sporadically, and far between?

Enter microblogging, and by the numbers, Twitter. And Facebook*. Why do daily details of your personal life suddenly become hot fodder for the internet masses (OK, maybe just your friends, but I do have random people follow me on Twitter -- it's been spammers recently, though)? Manageability. Or should we put it, digestibility. And the social ties. One can eat spoonfuls, in fact, one wants to eat multiple spoonfuls in a day, but not six whole pizzas.

Check out this article, In defense of Twitter. After you read this quote from it, that is:

Of course you'd like to think that most of your daily conversation is weighty and witty but instead everyone chats about pedestrian nonsense with their pals. In fact, that ephemeral chit-chat is the stuff that holds human social groups together.

So while we post some more personal stuff to the blog (and it can't help bleeding through), I like to think of it as a sort of formal publishing platform. It's information, subjective and objective, and it's there for your taking. And if you feel like coming back because it interests you, do. If not, don't. If you're my friend, you might find such disconnected and random thoughts as Twitter produces to be noteworthy.

Anyway, some interesting thoughts…

*Facebook status updates

Fixed: Firefox not opening requested (Javascript) popups in new window

2009-05-02T19:51:00.001-07:00

How annoying. A day or two ago, Javascript popups started opening in new tabs. They are popups for a reason. I had Firefox set so that links that would open in a new window would open in a new tab, but popups like this didn't use to be affected.
Anyway, after another Google today, I found the fix. 1st Byte Solutions has the answer. Quote:

if you open about:config in your address bar, you can change the setting manually.
Change: browser.link.open_newwindow
Mine was set to 3, which told the popups to always open in a new tab.

Niceness. It's a pretty easy fix. Set it to 2. I just wonder what changed it to 3. Wasn't me. It appears this is something of a longstanding issue; the Firefox team should probably add a GUI option for this. Check out this thread on Mozillazine, where the same fix is given (in 2004) and this one, where Tab Mix Plus is the solution (it occurs to me TMP might change that value).
Go give some kudos to 1st Byte if this makes you happy.

Update; Feb-15-2010: So it busted again. And this time setting browser.link.open_newwindow to 2 didn't fix it. Garr. Fortunately, setting browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 2 did fix it. Thanks, harrymc.

make more space on your Firefox bookmarks bar

2009-04-30T18:20:00.001-07:00

Today I found two extensions that can give you some more space on your bookmarks bar in Firefox.

First, the Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar, which gives you more rows as you need them. If your bookmarks overflow when you size down the window, it catches it then, as well as just a plain overflowing bookmarks bar.

Second, the Smart Bookmarks Bar. It removes the text on the bookmarks and leaves the icons, but shows you the text when you mouse over the icon, like so:

There are some options: you can choose not to show bookmark names on mouseover, to unhide the names of folders on the bookmarks bar, and to unhide bookmark names that don't have a favicon, and vice versa for all those. Also, you can adjust spacing and autohide the bookmarks bar (which I haven't tried out yet. sounds like it could be handy).

Cheerio!

Windows 7 Wallpapers: Dirty Trick Exposed

2009-04-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today I came across a link to a web page that purported to make available various wallpapers included in the Windows 7 releases to date. That page is located here. More specifically, the downloads referenced are located here.

However, if you were to open that link, you would likely find yourself confronted by an unsightly window requiring you to complete an online survey prerequisite to access of the wallpapers. I hate online surveys. The corrupted, beastly things are laden with bloated spam offers. Never, NEVER sacrifice your personal email address to these bloodsucking devices (if the need should arise, I suggest a disposable email such as offered by mailinator.com). And, after a cursory review of the comments at the bottom of the page, I see an attempted justification of the survey requirement... to avoid server shutdown. LAME!!!

Ha. Allow me to provide anyone interested with the direct download links to the zip packages containing the wallpapers (with the exception of the RC1 wallpaper download, which appears to be MIA). Actually, even if you have no interest in the wallpapers, I would suggest pure spite as a motivation to avail yourself of the downloads. A protest of the sick and juvenile institution of an online survey.

So, to get down to business. There are a few methods available to circumvent the undesirable restrictions. Being the rookie operation this apparently is, you can simply view the source of the page, and pick out at your leisure the download URLs which they carelessly leave lying around. Alternatively, you can copy the source, edit the scripts out, and reload the then uninhibited page. Furthermore, I imagine the use of NoScript or some such apparatus would effectively render the script nugatory.

For your convenience, though, I will post the links here:

http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/windows7wallpaper.zip
http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/rc1wallpaper.zip
http://windows7-wallpaper.com/wallpapers/win7build7000.zip

Note: I include the RC1 link in the event it should be restored to functionality, for which we may certainly hope if we wish to experience such content as referenced here.

Enjoy.

Update: the RC1 link appears to be working now.

Switch to AHCI

2009-04-21T22:42:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to expand on my comment in a previous post on switching to AHCI mode (to enable full SATA functionality) after installation (in IDE emulation mode) of the operating system. See this for further information. This is particularly useful if, for whatever reason, an F6 floppy install of the SATA drivers proves futile.

Here is the thread I found. I basically followed those instructions, except it's an MSI-specific forum, so I believe the IATA621_CD.EXE file specified may be such. I also believe the IATA88CD.exe file I found on my driver disk from Gigabyte is the corresponding file. Nevertheless, to be safe, I downloaded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager executable directly from Intel, to be sure I had the real goods.

I then followed the instructions, but I used the text found here. It was a bit of a long shot, perhaps, but mine is a ICH10R-based board, and that was supposed to work... and it did! I did have a couple devices (IDE primary and secondary controllers, to be precise) show the infamous yellow question marks by them for a few reboots while I installed other drivers, and then they resolved themselves.

So, there you have it: an ex post facto method to enable SATA mode.

NB: Only tested with 32-bit Windows XP Professional and the specified Intel chipset.

some blogging stuff

2009-04-14T19:51:00.001-07:00

So, three things:

I had been wishing for a sort of label management tool for Blogger. Finally, I just did a Google search (doh!) and found that Blogger itself has a sort of label mangement. So, it looks like I can edit labels fairly easily and delete rarely used ones. Sweet. Check out this Blogger help page and this blog post at BloggerStop.net for a guide to a few common actions.

Second thing: Windows Live Writer. I had been using a beta version for a while, and a few weeks ago updated it to a 2009 version. It's not the snappiest in performance, but I think the updated version improved that. I'm happy with it; it works well for what I do. I can save drafts, link up a storm, and pull up cached copies of posts. I know there are other blogging applications out there, I haven't tried any yet, but maybe I will in the future.

And finally: feed widgets. I have been checking out a few recently to use for a feed from the CaringBridge journal for Isaiah. WidgetEasy is quick and, well… easy, except it broke somewhat on that feed. Arg. Also no customization. Feed Informer I found via a Wild Apricot Blog post; it requires registration but is pretty customizable. You make digests: they can contain more than one feed if you want and you can set some options relating to filtering incoming items, sorting, and such. One thing I like is that it seems to (at least with some templates… I shall have to investigate what exactly causes it), you can truncate the post content; for the Isaiah feed on PAN, I used a template that had a read more.. link. Nice. And finally, from a comment on that post, Feed2JS. It's quick, it needs no registration, you can plug in CSS styling.

Edit : April 24, 2009:
Some more info: you can truncate post content with Feed2JS also, if you turn off HTML display from the feed. Also, you can run it from your own server. And finally, the Feed2JS server caches feeds for an hour; seems to be faster than Feed Informer, which is nice; it was getting behind the feed on the Providence blog. 60 minutes is much more acceptable.

Computer build

2009-04-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (4.10.09), Nathaniel, Hugh, Elliot, and I gathered to build the computer I had researched and purchased the parts for. It was my first build, and quite educational and satisfying, even if it did thwart our purposes until the early hours of the morning.

Specs:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz
PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W
ATI HIS Radeon HD 4850 512MB DDR3
Crucial 4GB PC2-8500/DDR2-1066
Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 7200rpm
LG 22X DVD±R Black SATA GH22NS30
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW
LG 19" Flatron W1952TQ-TF

The log of events:

5:13:00pm Watches synchronized.

5:16:26pm Pictures of components.

5:18:28pm Case removed from box.

5:19:35pm Side panel removed.

5:23:19pm Pictures of heart throbbing loot.

5:28:00pm Preinstall SATA drivers downloaded from Asia.

5:31:23pm Front panel removed.

5:33:41pm Motherboard drivers transfered to floppy disc via USB floppy drive.

5:47:27pm Moved to kitchen in order to circumvent electro-static discharge risk.

5:51:52pm Removed motherboard from box and anti-static bag.

6:03:54pm I/O panel busted out after much difficulty.

6:04:09pm Installed I/O panel.

6:14:49pm Standoffs installed.

6:17:47pm Motherboard mounted.

6:33:31pm Began testing screws due to irregularity in tightness.

6:35:54pm Standoff discrepancy diagnosed and motherboard removed.

6:49:39pm Discovered we had no less than FOUR faulty standoffs.

7:05:59pm Dinner break.

8:15:21pm Motherboard installed.

8:21:14pm Power supply installed.

8:38:51pm Front panel connections established.

8:50:45pm Prepared heatsink for installation.

8:53:34pm CPU installed!!!

8:57:03pm Checked motherboard screw tightness.

8:03:52pm Arctic Silver thermal compound applied to CPU.

9:08:12pm Heatsink installed.

9:12:27pm After much deliberation decided to install HDD in the top slot.

9:14:49pm HDD installed.

9:23:41pm Memory modules installed.

9:34:33pm GPU installed

9:42:27pm Optical drive installed.

9:56:08pm Double checked everything.

10:09:07pm POST!!!

10:14:36pm The zip-tie attack begins.

10:59:07pm Windows XP installed.

11:14:01pm BSOD due to incorrectly configured AHCI BIOS options.

11:26:07pm Began reinstalling Windows XP, having floppy problems.

12:20:00pm Tried enabling Mode 3 Floppy support.

3:24:17pm Must.... have..... sleeep.

[Next day]

2:07:14pm Successfully switched to AHCI mode after Windows XP installation.

Subtlebeauty sidebar tweak

2009-04-13T10:02:00.001-07:00

[Also known as (for the Google's sake): How to fix far right links with Subtlebeauty Blogger template or How to fix Subtlebeauty Blogger template sidebar poking into posts]

We noticed a while back that links on the far right of a post using this template were at least partially unclickable - you know, the little link hand cursor disappears. The beam cursor also disappeared when mousing over unlinked text there… made it harder to select such text. I did a little code tweaking and found something that solved the issue: changing the width of the sidebar-wrapper div in the template CSS. It is by default at 35% ("of the parent element's width"); I think I had it at 27% in the last couple days, just did some experimenting, and I think 28% percent is the highest you can go without having the sidebar wrapper bleed into the posts. You might need to do some expermenting, maybe set it lower, if you have lots of buttons on the top navigation bar (the links just above the posts). I haven't noticed any squishing of the sidebar, or any breaking of it otherwise because of the tweak; it seems to work fine.

So, if you haven't done it before, here are the editing instructions: go to your blog Layout settings (accessible from your Dashboard) and click to the Edit HTML sub-tab. Now, use your browsers search function (Ctrl+F, probably, or Edit menu > Find) if you wish, or just find it manually; look for #sidebar-wrapper (it won't be italicized). Find the width property under #sidebar-wrapper and change it from 35% to 28% (or whatever other width you decide; that's just what I am recommending).

I don't know if this is an issue with the WordPress version of the Subtlebeauty template, but I know it certainly is with the Blogger version. But… issue fixed.

--Nat

the changing of times

2009-04-08T15:32:00.001-07:00

Last Tuesday, one of my friends tumbled off a road and down a hill in a crew cab pickup truck. We got news of a rollover on Tuesday night, and not too much later we heard that Isaiah Buck had been life flighted out.

He is in a Lewiston hospital now, and has been in a coma for over a week. The amount of prayers going out really has been explosive. The word went out, and the saints hit their knees. All over the world, really; Sweden, Hong Kong, Africa, US, etc. Really it has been amazing… it has gone out through church networks, prayer chains, word of mouth, many emails.

If you want the story and aftermath of the rollover, this Chieftan story does a fairly good job; I don't feel like fully recounting it here.

We Providence people (and then some) had a prayer meeting in the school chapel this morning at nine. It was good to have another group prayer; there was a more general gathering (less school specific) at the Hurleys' place last Wednesday. I think it would be good to have a prayer meeting every Wednesday somewhere until the end of the matter, which we do not know when that will be.

We shall not stop praying, but we have many things to thank God for already; that there was only one fatality, that the rest of the young men are doing relatively well (broken bones and Jaymz has a fever), that there is the means to care for them, especially Isaiah, that the Lord has been upholding Mr. and Mrs. Buck in an amazing way, that we can come together freely and pray, that we are never alone, that Isaiah is alive (it was iffy that first night… shallow breathing and that stuff), and many more praises. But do not stop praying, in the faces of either good or bad news. The woods are thick yet.

I'm compiling a list of public stuff on the internet concerning Isaiah. It's under the tag isaiahbuck in my Delicious bookmarks. Feel free to comment about stuff that's now on there and I will probably add it. I am adding Mrs. Bakker's blog posts about Isaiah to the list as they come… she is a pretty active blogger, so I wouldn't be surprised to see more to come.

This truly is a new experience to me; never before have I been in danger of losing a friend, never before have I had one in a coma like this. It's something new, and it's something that's stretching us. And that is good. Good things already are coming out of this, praise God for that. And I pray that more may yet come; we are connected here in this little county, and this is rocking the boat a bit, I should think. Well, let's walk on water.

The Changing of Times by UnderOATH, by the way.

more on profanity and obscenity

2009-03-29T16:26:00.001-07:00

Since I wrote my last post about this, I read some stuff and thought somewhat shortly after the post about writing another one, but never did.

However, I don't remember exactly what it was that I read for sure, so I'll talk about what I've been thinking about recently.

Last time, I talked about three types of 'bad language' (and that is such a wide phrase to mean something much narrower): profanity, obscenity, and cursing, the last of which may bleed into the first two. Like I said before, profanity is disrespecting the sacred with language, obscenity is making that seen which should not be seen (vulgar; it comes from Latin meaning "the common people", which is where such things should not be talked about; they are out of context), and cursing is calling, wishing, or commanding something bad or evil upon a person or thing.

I must say that I have already become somewhat numbed to some offensive language; I see and hear it enough that it begins to bother me less. And that seems a bad thing.

The thing with this group of 'bad language' I call offensive is that it is offensive. Nobody likes pooh in their face for real, so why would they like it in their face with words? Sexuality is meant for marriage, and there is a shame in bantering about it in a public and common manner; thus comes the offensiveness of such words. Furthermore, who likes to be cursed? Do we really have the right to proclaim such things upon people anyway?

Now, this is not to say that every time these words appear in print or are spoken that it is evil. I mentioned before the dynamic nature of language and also the intent of the heart. These both come into play. Not always when people say "damn" are they cursing someone. Not always will people consider words to mean the same thing. Different things are offensive in different cultures.

It seems to be one of those Christian liberty things and one we should be very careful with. These words obviously carry some meaning that at least to some, is offensive or evil. Some seem to me to be universally evil; these would be those that profane that which should always be sacred (such as God's name), and those things that should not be seen by those they are communicated to (such as talking about sex in a dirty way). If we are to be different from the world, and these are the worlds vulgarities, some explicitly wrong, some not loving to our neighbor, shouldn't we not use such language?

Don't get me wrong; I am not declaring this group of words absolutely evil, but I think as Christians we need to be careful and discerning in this area; for some of us, perhaps it is better to forego them completely as we can, for others it may not be so. Using any words to intentionally and maliciously hurt others is obviously wrong, so let us keep that in mind.

I personally steer clear of common words considered offensive ('swear words', obscenity, profanity) in my speech, because it seems safer to me, and there are other words in this language to express my feelings. Don't let me dictate how to live your Christian life, though; that is the job of God's word, so pick it up and read.

Mini-Review: The Dreamer's Paradox

2009-03-06T16:25:00.001-08:00

I wouldn't call myself a music connoisseur, but I definitely enjoy music. Thus I share this with you. It's an instrumental album; modern orchestral rock, as one reviewer on Jamendo called it, seems to be a good description. There are no lyrics, but some backup vocals, and just some straight talking on the last track.

The music in and of itself is superb; the technical workmanship is excellent. The artist is JT Bruce, but I know not how many individuals may hide behind such a title. The story is somewhat intriguing. I listened to the album, and then I found out in the last track. After the music comes to an end, a voice begins to speak about The Dreamer's Paradox. Here it is in a nutshell: "One third of your life will be wasted. You’ll lie in an unconscious, catatonic state and sleep your life away. What if you could take those years back?" The music of the album represents a person's journey of escape into dreams, and their subsequent blending of dream and reality… until one is the same as the other.

Pretty scary. I confess it freaked me out the first time. I had to like… conquer it -- by sleeping through a night. Even then it took a little longer, I think.

The whole album runs about 74 minutes, but the last track may not be as enjoyable for listening as the others… it's rather anarchic and part of it is just speech. The preceding tracks total about 64 minutes, though, which is a pretty good amount of listening.

The Dreamer's Paradox on Jamendo

P.S. It doesn't really happen… I'm pretty sure you're awake. Well, I think so…

serious threat from Adobe Reader/Acrobat

2009-03-06T16:15:00.001-08:00

You may have heard about the Adobe Acrobat vulnerability a while back. OK, so maybe you're not using it right now. But… if you even have it installed, you could be at risk. Since it integrates some into Explorer on Windows, if you just select an infected PDF file, the proper malware could take advantage of the hole and do… bad stuff.

The recommended action for now is to uninstall Reader and Acrobat if you have them and use an alternate PDF reader.

I'm still using Adobe 8 (for the Firefox plugin, which I rarely use anyway), but it's leaving for now… I'm just fine with Foxit.

[via DownloadSquad]

remove the wrench (and pencil) icons from a Blogger blog

2009-03-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

[This is a bit of a rewrite of Tuesday's post.]

The quick edit icons, and , can be handy for, well, quick edits, but I personally prefer the clean look of our blog without wrench icons cluttering up the sidebar (by the way, they only appear when you are logged in as an admin of that blog or on a post you made). Fortunately, LawnyDesignz has a simple and elegant solution.

Here it is: you have to add a bit of CSS code to your template. So, get your blog template HTML open in the Blogger editor (Layout settings > Edit HTML). Now the important part: you have to put this in the right section to work. You have to put it in the section between the opening tag <b:skin> and the closing tag </b:skin>. For convenience, just make a new line right after the <b:skin> tag (i.e., insert your cursor right after <b:skin> and hit Enter). Now copy in the following text:

.quickedit{display:none;}

Press Save Template and then take a look at your blog. Wrench icons have disappeared, hopefully.

This still leaves the little pencil icons, but I don't find them so obtrusive and deign to leave them there. However, these can be removed, too, if you so desire. Go into the Settings tab (Basic sub-tab, selected by default), in your blog settings, and select No on the drop down box for 'Show Quick Editing on your Blog?'. Save Settings and pencils-B-gone!

Note: in the previous version of the post, I mentioned you can put the code in the first style section before <b:skin> but I would recommend putting it in the b:skin section. Lawny told me about putting it in the b:skin area, so thanks Lawny!

Also, if you have Firefox, you can grab the Stylish add-on and use this userstyle to quickly toggle the pencil and wrench icons visible/invisible, no reload required. Pretty cool.

get Vista style breadcrumb nav in XP

2009-03-03T15:41:00.001-08:00

I got a bit envious of the nice breadcrumb style location bar while messing with Snowbird recently. So, I went a-Googling.

With some light searching, I turned up two options: QT Address Bar and Minimalist Explorer Breadcrumbs. Both are shell extensions to Explorer, taking the form of toolbars.

I downloaded both, but have not installed QT Address Bar because of reported issues and the stellar performance of Minimalist. Also, QT looks like Vista, but Minimalist blends in nicely enough with your visual style.

Screenshots of Minimalist (traditional Address Bar disabled):

Note: StExBar (StEx in screencap) is a different shell extension I have; it's not related.

And, a nice feature, just like Vista, is that when you click on some empty space in the bar, it switches to an address bar and highlights the current path.

Having been shown by Elliot how the Vista breadcrumbs work, I think this shell extension has done a good job of bringing a (hopefully) helpful Vista feature to XP (and supposedly to 98/ME/2k/2003, too, though they haven't tested on those).

One last note: Explorer Breadcrumbs is completely free and functional, but they ask you to register it ($7.95) if you find it useful. Time will tell for me.

So I kind of won a photo contest

2009-03-01T17:35:00.001-08:00

Actually, I won in the Judges' Choice student category and tied for second in the People's Choice category with Samantha Robbins (who also took second second Judges' Choice with the same picture, it seems, and also tied for third in People's Choice with Ashtin Olsen). In the second annual Chieftain photo contest. To be specific.

Here's the Judges' Choice winner (yes, that's Matthew):

And here's mine from People's Choice second place:

I am told there might be monetary prizes, but I don't remember for sure and nothing has appeared in the mailbox yet.

Some of my reading lately

2009-02-28T12:08:00.001-08:00

I guess it's time time to get this post out, seeing as Matthew has posted twice about his reading list.

I don't really have a reading list, and don't actually read as much as I used too, but I want to share a few good things I have read lately/am reading.

Very Good, Jeeves! - currently in the middle of this. Wodehouse is great.
Eragon - First book in the Inheritance series. Read it in December and maybe through January, I think. If you didn't already know, Paolini was only 15 when he started writing it. A good work for being so young, I would say.
Eldest - Second book in the Inheritance series. Really liked it. Fortunately, Elliot got the book for Christmas while we off vacationing on the west side, so I was able to continue the series without much interruption.
The Book of Jeremiah - I'm deviating from the Bible reading schedule I have to read through Jeremiah. I kind of really discovered Jeremiah last year when I was doing an paper on the exile and redemption of the Israelites. I was intrigued; I had never really read the story before. He's a pretty amazing guy, you know… he prophesied judgment for 20 years. But they ignored him. And just reading it was cool… it was something I didn't really know about before… somewhat like reading through the early history of the United States; it's stuff that really happened, long enough ago, but it really happened.

And here is a meager offering of books I want to read, or am at least thinking about reading:

Brisingr - Third in Inheritance. This is easily enough gotten from the library and I am looking forward to it… just tied up with Very Good, Jeeves! right now.
Inkheart and following - I might read these. Have heard good things about them from Elliot and Claus over at Grand Stream Dreams.
And maybe one other that I have forgotten at the moment.

And finally to bounce off Matthew… what I have read in your lists:

The Princess and The Goblin (I think… if I did, it was a long time ago)
The Princess and Curdie (same as above)
The Silmarillion (parts)
Farenheit 451
Watership Down (read the sequel, too. Kind of weird, being from a rabbit's perspective, as I remember)

Updated reading list

2009-02-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

Here are some additions to my reading list as seen here. I know... it's embarrassing I haven't read some of these.

Farenheit 451
To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Expectations
Catcher in the Rye
Bleak House
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina
The Kite Runner
Count of Monte Cristo
Watership Down
Animal Farm
1984
Brave New World

Computer build with Hugh

2009-02-23T18:48:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, Hugh Donovan and I put together the computer parts that he had researched and ordered. Below is a rough reproduction of the email he sent out about it. We took plenty of pictures, and kept a log as we worked. From the time I got there to the time I left, it was about eleven hours!

Computer build number two, again educational, and entertaining.

Specs:
Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz Kiensfield
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R Motherboard w/ onboard sound
4 GB Crucial Memory
640 GB Western Digital SATA HDD
Sapphire ATI 4850 Graphics
LG 19" Flatron Monitor

The log of events:

4:58:18pm Figured out we were trying to mount PSU upside-down. Thinking of case modifications. LOL!!!

4:59:50pm Mounted PSU.

5:05:53pm Busted out rear I/O panel.

5:10:00pm Synchronized watches.

5:20:36pm Pictures of GPU.

5:22:56pm Removed motherboard from antistatic bag.

5:31:55pm Cut out ethernet port from Gigabyte I/O panel.

5:34:30pm Installed Gigabyte I/O panel.

5:37:30pm Marked paper with motherboard ground holes.

5:58:50pm Decided the discrepancies in standoff type didn't matter.

6:07:09pm Installed motherboard.

6:16:55pm Mounted motherboard screws.

6:21:53pm Figured out how to remove front plate.

6:25:10pm Removed drive bay cover.

6:28:25pm Mounted optical bay and went to eat biscuits.

6:48:23pm Hard drive mounted.

6:49:25pm CPU removed from box.

7:00:00pm CPU clamped into place, despite useless Intel manual.

7:00:15pm Heat sink removed from case; Hugh went to get a plastic bag.

7:07:00pm Applied Arctic Silver thermal compound to heat sink.

7:09:08pm Applied Arctic Silver thermal compound to CPU.

7:18:06pm CPU fan connector installed.

7:19:21pm CPU heat sink mounted.

7:24:09pm First memory module installed.

7:24:29pm Second memory module installed.

7:25:55pm Discovered CPU and heat sink mounting instructions in motherboard manual. (Nice going, Intel.)

7:28:59pm 24-pin motherboard power connector installed.

7:41:14pm Front panel indicators completed.

7:45:20pm Front panel communications completed.

7:57:18pm Video card installed and connected to power supply unit.

8:11:02pm Serial ATA cables installed.

8:14:38pm The zip-tie attack begins.

8:38:00pm Called Gavrik for final check.

8:43:29pm CPU power connector installed... (might be a good idea)

9:02:53pm POST!!!!!!

9:14:27pm Booted Ubuntu, discussed hard drive status.

9:18:03pm Terminated call with Gavrik.

9:34:54pm Hugh attempts to boot hard drive diagnostics.

9:46:55pm Left to get fresh air after starting extended hard drive test.

11:04:09pm Transferring drivers to USB disks for installation.

[Played Wolfenstein for one hour.]

12:05:58am Drivers installed.

12:53:06am Basic applications installed.

12:55:54am Rearranged component wires.

1:30:34am Desk setup initiated.

1:49:43am Desk setup completed.

1:56:24am Network connection established.

1:59:46am Test page printed.

2:03:27am Sound successfully tested.

2:04:35am Computer clock set.

2:16:52am The Witcher installed!!!

this isn't me… is it?

2009-02-20T19:34:00.001-08:00

Battered. Whispered screams from every side. Hissing failure. Preaching darkness, emanating it, killing you alive. Reach for hope and knives at your throat. Fall back, hope fades, the end seems pleasant, a tree of refreshment, yet somehow, somewhere, knows it is false.

About to give in, pushing away what light you saw, for it surely cannot bring rest… surely not. Sink down, beaten down, fallen rose. Where is anything? Where is where I was? None of this can be… why not a story, yes… this isn't me… is it? Curse, rise again, to fall. To fall… what? This too, unbelievable.. is this the way out? You really came to me? Surely not… for look at me… I couldn't be worthy. Yet I'm picked up and lead back… and now know what seemed right was false and what seemed impossible was true. And I never was there… this is somewhere new… Still not standing on my own… but finally I have risen. Turn eyes and thank him who did the impossible. And make the choice.

end

I wrote that last July… it talks about deep despair but then hope through the sacrifice of Christ, He who makes the crippled walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead alive. It's somewhat poetic, but I wouldn't call it a straight poem, perhaps artistic prose. Maybe it means something to somebody out there.

What the FRENCH TOAST!?!?!

2009-02-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

No, seriously, check this out. This is bad.

I had this premonition that Facebook had an ulterior motive...

Computer work, electronics purchases, art, and politics

2009-02-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

I'll start this post with a brief overview of some work I did on my computer, mainly over Christmas break. Vista was beginning to feel a bit sluggish, and since I had some time to mess with it, I decided to plunge into the adventure of tinkering with partitions, boot flags, installations, and so forth. I was also planning to try, once again, to get my Dell Media Direct button to boot Ubuntu. I removed Media Direct a long time ago (it's not all that useful, and takes up more space than a Linux distro), so the button didn't do anything, except maybe bring up the MD flash screen. I had tried this process before, following this guide, and failed then. It didn't work this time either, but don't stop reading; this could still be informative. Here is a thread on the Notebookreview.com forums that details my progress, since I don't feel like recounting it all here.

I now have a running computer, resplendent with the most recent version of Ubuntu, and a fairly customized version of Vista, even if I didn't get it vLited like I wanted too. Maybe next time... I'd need a DVD, a DVD burner, a lot of time and patience, etc. And I've set my MD button to turn off my screen in Windows! See this thread (I use Monitoroff.exe instead of the provided utility). Pretty smooth, and I think it's actually more useful than having it boot Ubuntu. GRUB does a good job.

Our local Radio Shack is been going out of business, so they recently had a liquidation sale, with prices half off. At the sale, I got a Sandisk Sansa 2GB Clip, a Vanguard MP-4 Monopod, a CB radio, and some electrical components that were purported to, if assembled correctly, act as a wireless FM microphone that transmits at (legal) low power with a 45ft range, to frequencies between 91 and 97 MHz, depending on the tuning of the coil and the frequency picked up by the microphone. Wicked awesome, I thought! However, the assembly was another matter. That PCP chip was smaller than I thought, my soldering skills are less than satisfactory, and I think I need a new tip for my soldering gun. However, somehow, when I finally got things put together late at night, it worked. I had to add a SPST toggle switch and 'N' battery and holder to the kit. Pictures below.

Oh yes, and I've also uploaded my first Youtube video. I was trying to get Youtube to automatically include a High-Res option, but it's not really worth it anyways, since the video isn't high-res to begin with, and the Youtube version isn't too bad. Just don't watch it in fullscreen.

A couple more things... more along the politics and art veins. This may make an interesting read, if for no other reason than to expand and circulate thoughts on economy and the principles that apply. It should be noted that the creator of this program is a successful entrepreneur. The other thing is about the band mewithoutYou. I could talk for quite some time on the subject, but the telos of what I have to say is really that their aesthetic is much more subtle, poetical, and powerful than a lot of what passes as art or music. Their lyrics and instrumental style portray a much broader, deeper, more sober and yet more beautiful picture of life than just about any current buzz songs that come to mind. Here are the lyrics to a song by mewithoutYou called "Silencer".

Don't waste your lips on words I've heard before
Kiss my tired head.
And each letter written wastes your hand, young man
Come and lead me to your bed
You gave me hope that I'd not lost her
And then thought it rather strange to see me smile-
as I don't do too much smiling these days.

She put on happiness like a loose dress
Over pain I'll never know
"So the peace you had, " she says,
"I must confess, I'm glad to see it go."
We're two white roses lying frozen just outside his door
I've made you so happy and so sad,
But which should I be more sorry for?

Come kiss my face goodbye,
that space below my eye and above my cheek
Cause I'm faint and fading fast, I see a darkness
And I shall be released.
I'll pass like a fever from this body,
And softly slip into his hands
I tried to love you and I failed,
But I have another plan.

My Lord, how long to sing this song?
And my Lord, how much more of this pretending to be strong?
When she stands before your throne
Dressed in beauty not her own
All soft and small, you'll hear her call
"you brought me here, now take me home."

I think they evidence a profound grasp of theological principles, the struggle of life, pain, beauty, and the true source of strength. At any rate, listening to a song like this gives me a whole lot more contemplate than many songs I could think of.

And finally, for what it's worth, here is a list of what I've read, am reading, and will be reading for a while.

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance
Call it Courage
A River Runs Through It
All the Pretty Horses
Camp 4
Royal Robbins: Spirit of the Age
The Great Gatsby
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Man Who Knew Too Much
My Name is Asher Lev
The Ball and The Cross
The Red Badge of Courage
The Princess and The Goblin
The Princess and Curdie
The Liberated Imagination
A Tale of Two Cities
Hans Brinker/The Silver Skates
The Silmarillion
Les Miserables

I wonder what iTunes Plus means

2009-02-07T19:19:00.001-08:00

Well, actually, I know what it means, but I wonder what the implications are. Here are my thoughts.

The iTunes Store is already very popular among those who buy music by the file. But, it ties into the Apple system: iTunes (the app) and iPods. Nota Bene: the majority of mp3 players/DAPs out there are iPods. Not hard to notice.

Enter a DRM-free movement that puts pressure on Apple. Apple eventually concedes; at first part of the Store, and then they're going DRM free (I don't know if it's happened yet). Seems like a smart move to me. After all, why should we buy from Apple's closed system when we can buy from the myriad of other digital music sellers, torrent it, or rip it off a friend's CD? Two things that spring to my mind are convenience and the very wide range of materials available in the iTunes Store (to my knowledge).

Now what? Two venues: DRM free downloads from the Store and conversions of previously purchased material to DRM free.

It seems to me that new DRM free downloads will have the bigger impact. I don't know how well the news will spread, but I can guess that among average users, they might not hear about it for a while, if ever. Or if they even knew there was DRM, or even what DRM is (perhaps thanks to Apple's successful integration scheme). When an already popular source offers a sweeter deal, maybe it'll go boom even bigger. I can't really see it hurting Store sales. Now, the second part to this venue: the format. No longer will people have to use the notoriously clunky iTunes to play their purchased music. Heeello Foobar, Winamp, Amarok, Banshee, Songbird, and everything else that can handle .m4a. And this also means players; I have it in my head that some players out there do handle that format and I know that Rockbox does (Sansa e200 v1 FTW!). So, because of the last two things I mentioned, some people who didn't like the iTunes system before may now join up/come back.

The second venue is conversion of your old Store goods to the new DRM free format. Actually I suspect they're not so much conversion involved; I think Apple may be doing some file modding that just removes the DRM, as has been done before by, umm, certain tools. So how many people are going to pay Apple's fee to convert their collection? I can't say. But it would be interesting to get some statistics on it, or even some feelings from the public on converting their stuff.

One note here: I've assumed in this post that the conversion involves videos, and I'm assuming they are DRMed. I don't know either for sure; in fact, I've never bought anything from the iTunes Store, only witnessed a purchase once. I don't even have iTunes installed right now (Safari, though… free Lucida Grande font and I should use it a lot more for webdev testing, but then again, Chrome has WebKit, so… sigh).

And, on a somewhat related note, I find the lyrics of this song somewhat funny. It's about pirating music and bucking the system, I think. Lolz. Take a listen for you health.

Ah! May 15! Woot!!!!

2009-02-05T17:59:00.001-08:00

MewthoutYou is releasing a new album in May! Suh-weeeet!!!!!!

It's called It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright.

Pending track listing according to aholidayathesea on Last.FM:

Cattail Down
The Fox, The Crow, & The Cookie
A Stick, A Carrot, & A String
Bullet To Binary (Pt. Two)
Timothy Hay
The Angel of Death Came To David's Room
A Fig With A Belly Ache
Goodbye, I
The Beetle King On The Coconut Estate
Every Blade of Grass
Whatever Goes, Let It Go

This is going to be sickness, 11 new tracks of mewithoutYou! If it's true… as of right now it looks like it just popped up very recently; I'd say it's still rumor status.

I really like Catch for Us the Foxes, so… sweetness. Oh yeah, and I like what I've heard of [A→B] Life. Less sure about liking Brother, Sister from what I've heard so far, but maybe I'll change my opinion once I own the album (whenever that is).

P.S. Release date cite: here.

XP Home security tab free from Microsoft

2009-01-29T20:31:00.001-08:00

I actually had gotten the security tab via a shell extension a while ago, but it seemed to be the source of instability problems, so out it went. There are other ways to do it, but MS lets you have it for free with the Windows NT SP4 Security Configuration Manager. I haven't tried it out yet, but it sounds pretty sweet. Not that I really need it, but hey, it's power for nothing.

Here's the download page, here's the FTP folder it's in, and here is a direct link. If you check out the FTP folder, the file you want is SCESP4I.EXE.

[found via Grand Stream Dreams]

Update, December 19, 2009: Having just had to install this due to a couple of folders on my external hard drive getting locked by my previous XP install, I can now recommend a specific install procedure. Run SCESP4I.EXE, select a folder in which to extract the files. Go to the folder, right-click setup.inf, click Install, and wait for the magic to happen. It will inform you, if I remember correctly, that you will need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect. That, fortunately, is not true. You can test this by right-clicking a file, going to Properties, and going to the Security tab. There it will be in all of its XP Pro glory. Enjoy.

some free mewithoutYou after all

2009-01-24T13:37:00.001-08:00

Thanks to a comment on that DownloadSquad free music post I linked to a while back, I wanted to see if I could grab some free music from brother-sister.net, mewithoutYou's official site for their latest released album, Brother, Sister. Four songs from the album are available for streaming.

So, like the commenter, I installed the Firefox add-on Live HTTP Headers, which is kind of fun… it let's you see the HTTP calls the browser makes. So I pointed Firefox to brother-sister.net, and it let me see the calls the Flash element, in this case, was making when I switched songs. I saw that it was pointing to .swf files, Flash files.

Yesterday I grabbed all the URL's and downloaded two of them with Free Download Manager. Since they were Flash files, my idea was to convert them to mp3 (or maybe something else) or grab the sound out of them via decompilation.

The two programs I grabbed to do that were HooTech's SWF FLV to MP3 Converter trial and Decompile Flash Free Version. Neither would open the .swf files. I admitted defeat.

But, later that night, I thought… I did download something… and they were several megs each. Then it occurred to me that maybe they were actually MP3's, so I tried it out, and boom! They absoballylutely were! So, there you are, four free mewithoutYou songs with a small effort.

The following instructions are for Windows using Firefox, but the process is fairly similar with other operating systems and browsers.

The .swf links:

a Glass Can Only Spill What it Contains (track 5)
Nice and Blue (pt. Two) (track 6)
C-Minor (track 9)
O, Porcupine (track 11)

So, if those don't download and just sit there, just right click the links and select Save Link As… Or, if you have a download manager, add new downloads for the files… right click the links and select Copy Link Location to get the proper address and then paste them into your download manager.

Then, when the .swf's have finished downloading, open the folder you downloaded them to, and change the extensions to .mp3 (for example, change C-Minor.swf to C-Minor.mp3). This can easily be accomplished through right clicking the files and selecting Rename. If you can't see the extension (so C-Minor.swf would just look like C-Minor), you need to turn on known file extensions.

And there you go, you have your MP3's. And at a fairly good 112 Kbps quality. They don't have any tags, though so you could automatically tag them (put in information like artist, title, album, album year, etcetera) with Mp3tag or Auto-Tag in Winamp. Or you can manually tag them with a program such as Windows Media Player or iTunes (album information here).

Enjoy.

Also, I further tried out Decompile Flash Free Version and SWF FLV to MP3 Converter this morning using a real Flash file. SWF FLV to MP3 Converter seems to work OK, but it's only a trial; on exit you are told that it's a trial version and "The version only converts 50% audio and extracts 5 sound elements at most." Decompile Flash Free Version, however, extracted all of the elements of the same Flash file for me… for free. And it's not a trial. I extracted all the sound elements just fine. So, if any of you Windows users need a decent (to me) Flash decompiler and partial editor for free, this looks great.

my current social networking philosophy

2009-01-21T20:58:00.001-08:00

Because of the ever expanding world of social networking some people complain about just another thing to update. I quite concur… if you have say five different services you want to post the same message to, it can be a bit of an annoyance. Or a drag. Or whatever you care to describe it as. However, I think that that problem could be at least partially solved by the use of services such as Ping.FM, an online tool that lets you update many services at once (though I have never used such a service… yet).

But, that's not what I do. I have a few services I have joined over the years, and in my mind I have a purpose for each. And here they are:

Blogs (my current platform is Blogger): for posting longer stuff… sort of textual works of art sometimes: discourses, arguments, current events, reviews, etcetera. Also, questions to the masses, guides, longer write-ups on personal life and experiences, and so on. Or sometimes, just less formal stuff and perhaps shorter stuff.
Twitter: for microblogging, as the service is described. Short things I want to say or just whatever I want to say; sometimes randomness or seemingly such. Also, it's good for plugging in updates and notices from stuff, like twitterfeed (pulls feeds to a Twitter profile). Also, I like that it's microblogging… it's limited to 140 characters, so it can make you be creative. It can be the art of brevity.
Facebook: a great all around social utility for me. Text, images, and video are supported, so any such things may be posted. And what's alluring about this is that it is a sharing just within your circle of friends, not public (though I think you may choose to do so… I doubt many users do). It's very pluggable-in, which I like. You can post and link to your heart's content, and it's really popular with some people, which can make for perhaps the most effective means of communication to some people. Also, it has a community aspect within the privacy; many interactions between can be publicly seen by their circle of friends, who can easily join in. And, back to the pluggable-in aspect, there are many, many Facebook Apps, some of which plugin in to other services, or let other services plug into Facebook. And by the way, if for any reason you got confused, it's Facebook, not FaceBook.
Delicious (previously called Del.icio.us): It's social bookmarking. Personally, I'm not too into the whole see what's up on Digg or Delicious thing, but it works good for putting a linkroll on my blog, so people can see what I've recently bookmarked, thus I share it with them. I use the bookmarklet, which works great for bookmarking pages I want to share. Also, it can create a record of where you've been on the web of sorts… not a strict statistical or analytical record, but a sort of what-I-thought-the-best-then collection. And you can add your comment to stuff you bookmark, which works with the collection idea. Not to mention if something isn't any longer in your browser history and you want to find it, maybe you bookmarked it on Delicious (or Digged it, for that matter). As I said at first, I'm not really too much into the see-what-floats-to-the-top idea, but maybe I would be if I had a better internet connection. I guess we might see in the future.

So that's what I use. How about you? What's your social networking philosophy? Or do you even have one?

History, almost here

2009-01-19T15:24:00.001-08:00

This is it, the last day of eight years of Bush. And I honor him for his service to our nation; even thought he made mistakes, he still has stood up when it was right but not fun.

And today we remember Martin Luther King Jr., a black man who dream that one day his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Well, I think you'd be proud today, Mr. King.

And, it really is amazing, a country that 40, 60 years ago still had a lot of segregation between whites and colored people. And now, a black man becoming arguably the most powerful man in the world.. tomorrow?

It's just… blowaway amazing, really.

And I ask that God will protect President Obama, shield him from those who would harm him, give him great wisdom, and turn his heart. I think it's really great that such an event could actually be happening, with a host of supporters in the nation, but after all, he was either one of the most or the most liberal congressmen in our nation. And we will certainly see his radical views affect our nation in big ways.

But, this is just crazy. It's almost hard to believe it's happening… both for the part of life that I've paid attention to politics (or most of it), Mr. Bush has been our president. I haven't really known anything else. But now, a Democrat, a very radical one at that, a black man, and a fairly young-ish President-elect, about to take power.

Puh-retty amazing.

Not to mention how much the inauguration… like $150 million or something like that. Insane. I can understand security and safety costs, but a bunch for partying, too? (I don't actually know the breakdown). Seriously, Mr. Obama.

So, I just have to say today, wow. Like, really wow. A new year and likely enough we're about to launch into probably one of the craziest times in our history. So hold on tight and pray like crazy.

Goodbye, YouTube way

2009-01-15T20:52:00.001-08:00

Well, it looks as if Google has finally gotten on it. They are stealthily removing copyrighted audio from user made and uploaded videos (like ninjas). Bam. There goes the YouTube way of getting music for free.

I suppose it's really the right thing to do, but it does also take away that quick and easy way of checking out a new song: YouTube it.

Oh wells.

Bomber wallet!

2009-01-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so I'm sorry for not getting in a huge post about all my computer workings recently, but I expect it will be forthcoming. What I'm here to say right now is that I did a quick mod on my wallet/billfold thing. I bought this little deal at a yard sale out near the Hostetter ranch, on my way back to work, actually. Brian Buck and I saw the sign and headed out to the sale. It's slim, durable, attractive, and holds everything I need it to. Come to think of it, I didn't actually buy it, because they gave it to me for free, considering it's low worth. It's just a plastic wallet for holding papers or something, I guess - one of those cheap courtesy trinkets companies give to their customers/potential customers. This particular one says "Courtney Motors" on it, although the lettering is too faded now to read except at an angle. I picked it up because I figured it could hold my timesheets that I wrote my hours for the day on; it being plastic might keep them dry through the weather and irrigation work. It's taken a beating, that's for sure! I've used it to keep myself from electric shocks while shutting down engines by breaking the circuit, and it's resided in my pocket through all sorts of weather and actions. Finally, the seams started to crack because of the wear. I had been repairing it with layers of clear tape, but they didn't last long....and didn't have the classy look of DUCT TAPE!!! Enjoy the pictures. Sorry they're not more thoughtfully captured, but my camera was running low on battery. (By the way, my camera gets points for surviving a car-rollover.)

How about more accessible/understandable feeds?

2009-01-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

OK, yeah, I know, feeds, both Atom and RSS are really popular. But apart from the techies (read: geeks), how many know what the little orange radio wave icons means?

Or do people even care? Would they use it if they knew what it meant? Would they be interested in efficient ways to keep up with an information source?

And another question, I suppose, is how do we deal with feeds? There are a bajillion feed readers out there, and the major browsers support it out of the box, either through Firefox style live bookmarks, or through a built in reader. What I would like to see is a cloud style movement, which I think might already be happening. Like Google Reader (accessing your Google Reader feeds from somewhere else than the web interface).

It seems to me that there is profit to be made in making this more accessible/popular with the masses.

idea for a killer phone contact app

2009-01-08T20:04:00.001-08:00

Lol, that's maybe an awkward post title. Notwithstanding, I do have a cool idea.

Say you've just met someone and you're just about to leave when you pause, remembering, and arrest them before they can take off too. "Just a sec," you say. "Can I get your picture for my contacts?" "Sure," they respond, and you whip out your mobile telephone and snap a pic. "Hey, nice meeting you," you say. "See you later."

After they leave, the pic has been uploaded to your Gmail contacts and you fill in the details, grabbing their email address from the business card they gave you. Easy.

Alternately, you could store it in an internal database on the phone, which would sync with your PC software (Outlook or whatever). Or maybe you could get some kind of cloud storage service for it with your cellular service provider or some other company.

Oh, and of course, the app would provide easy access and viewing of these contacts, preferably anytime (sync with a cloud service?). Maybe it could even be a Gmail feature (or a browser add-on or something) that would do this.

How does it sound? Any idea or improvements? And, this is just an idea right now, no code that I know of =).

small January Linkfest

2009-01-02T15:31:00.001-08:00

Hummm… more like a linkshare.

A-PDF Extractor - I was looking for an app to convert PDF to text over the holidays, and this was one of the two I downloaded. I actually didn't even get through the installation of the other one because I didn't like their terms. Which is fine, because A-PDF Extractor does the job: nice, simple, and quick. Warning: not a portableapp as far as I can tell (no .ini's or such in the Program Files folder).

How To Send Email To Any Cell Phone (for Free) | MakeUseOf.com - I have to say this could come in handy… if I ever need it for some reason. What is nice is there is an address for Unicell, which is what my dad is on. And the Gmail Labs way doesn't work. Although I think Unicell has a place on their site where you can text message phones using the service.

Bug 105843 – Cache lost if Mozilla crashes (Mozilla Bugzilla) - Nice to know that this is actually tracked. But… it's intentional, from what I read, there is a chance that the cache might be corrupted, so it just dumps it. Which is really annoying if you are on dial-up. Seems to happen to me occasionally when browsing offline. There was a patch on the page, I think, but if I recall right it was for Firefox 1.5 or something… not Fx 3.

May you see deep snow. =)

Picasa 3 bits

2009-01-02T14:34:00.001-08:00

I have to say I am very impressed with the new Picasa. It seems to be faster (I think) and has gained a lot of polish. I don't really want to write a review, so I'll just list some improvements and additions.

improved - full screen slideshow: it is a lot faster this time around. Much more viable for doing quick full screen showoffs to people clustered about your laptop or curious family members. Extra transitions have been added (take that, Windows Photo Gallery!); Cut (I think all the old one did was Dissolve), Pan and Zoom, Wipe, Circle, Push, and Rectangle. And a exit transition/animation. Very pleased with this.
addition - tags: nice to see this in there. I don't use tags right now, but I'm sure it could be useful.
improved - search: now does a sort of auto-complete/suggestions drop down thing. Also, you can just start typing, instead of having to hit up the box.
improved - folder/album buttons: added some stuff: a slideshow button (labeled 'Play'), movie button, and gift CD button (that's better… I guess the old place for that at the top was kind of *out* of place).
addition - faces filter: now you can search for photos with faces in them. Great. Also appears in the folder/album buttons. I heard you can tag people, too, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
improved - folder/album bar: now it has transparency, which varies fluidly, depending on where you're scrolled too. Picks up the folder/albums button bar as you scroll by. Kind of cool.
addition - Projects: a section for projects you do in Picasa. Appears if any exist. Useful if needed, I guess.
addition - retouch (under Basic Fixes): it's like a magical cloning tool. Animated and very cool. I like it.
improvement - Picasa Web Albums integration: I can't actually say much about this, as I haven't ever logged into Web Albums from Picasa, but just from looking around the app, it looks tighter… stuff like Sync to Web and Share buttons on the folder/album bar.
addition - Geo-Tag: uses Google Earth. I think this might have actually previously been an experimental feature, so maybe not quite "new." Didn't fully try it out, but looks good so far… I suppose a direct lat-long entry might be nice (on a guess).
improvement - Collage: still at home on the bottom button bar, but vastly improved. Launches in it's own tab, so you get a lot more room. Adds a Frame Mosaic option, which has one bigger picture in the middle. Better format (size and shape) options. Pictures are now draggable, and can be scaled and rotated in the Picture Pile. Multiple Exposure has an animation to tell you it's working and a x out of y progress meter (nice, because the old one could take seemingly forever if you dumped a big load on it). Also, it appears you can save drafts of your collages… do I hear photo gift projects coming on?
addition - tabbed interface: Sometimes… not quite like Firefox tabs. But some actions bring down a tab bar and give you another tab with a working screen (and we find out the main view is called 'Library'). The ones I've found so far are Collage and Movie Maker. And yes, you can have more than two tabs open. And Ctrl+Tab switching works (yay!).
addition - Movie Maker (or could the old Picasa do movies? I don't remember…): quite impressed with this. You get some transitions from the slideshow and some different ones. Lots of other nice stuff, including broad dimension support (320x240 to 1920x1080), slide duration (fit to music included… sweet!), MP3 & WMA soundtrack support, text slides, basic video clip support, and integrated YouTube upload. Playback in edited mode is pretty fast and smooth.
improved - movie playback: lots better. No longer are we stuck with a play button. Now we have a seekable progress bar and what looks like editing via start and end points. Also, there's an edit button for videos with saved projects. Woot.

Well, that's all for right now. The only other thing is the Picasa Photo Viewer, which is pitched to you at update/install or first run (I don't remember which… it gets installed even if you don't set image file associations to it). I declined then tried it out later. It's pretty cool… filled with Picasa tricks (starring with Picasa closed, anyone?) and pretty quick to boot. The interface is a nice full screen overlay with pretty effects (though you can get it into a window with Alt+Tab). It's not replacing Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for me right now, but it's definitely a keeper.

U3 to PortableApps?

2009-01-01T18:08:00.001-08:00

Looking around the internet, I see this isn't quite unknown, but you can actually unzip .u3p files and get at the stuff inside. Most interestingly, the .exe files. Yes, you can run at least some of them. But, as I thought could be the case, Tim Clark on a PortableApps Forums thread pointed out the flaw:

As stated above not all U3 programs can be extracted and run. Some depend on the U3 platform to run.

So, you can get it out and run it, but don't expect true portability without the U3 software (and even then I've heard some U3 apps do leave traces on the host computer).

If you don't know what I'm talking about with the traces stuff, check out this page at the PortableApps Forums and read John Haller's first reply.

Short post, but something I wanted to write about. Happy New Year!

Jamendo is… wow

2008-12-27T22:57:00.001-08:00

If you have a fast connection, I'd say head over there RIGHT NOW. Jamendo. The interface is nice, and there is a lot of legal free music, most of it under Creative Commons licenses. Awesome… albums and albums of free music. Good stuff there, too.

This was one of the items on the list I linked to not too long ago, just so you know.

a couple cool things

2008-12-25T00:17:00.000-08:00

I was checking out this blog. It belongs to StormEffect, one of the users on NBR (Notebookreview.com forums). On it I found a couple things that looked really interesting, so I thought I'd link them here. As far as the oil-filled computer goes, you can see for yourself that there is a measure of doubt about it from the comments below the article. However, if you go to the actual website, you can find hard facts--bench marks and the like. Anyways, looks interesting. And the possibilities...aquarium computers? =]

Oh, and the Cooliris. I only just got it installed, so I can't comment too extensively on it's stability and productivity, but it sure seems fast and pretty slick. One thing I like about it, if I'm getting this right, is that it allows you to view the full image when you click on one from the wall, without actually following the link as in Google search. Anyways, it seems like it could be useful.

So, that's it for now. Merry Christmas!

digital decadence

2008-12-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

For my birthday, I just received a Canon PowerShot SD790 IS Digital ELPH. I must say, my parents did an excellent job in picking this camera out. I, of course, wanted to get some perspective on it, so I found this article from PCMAG.com. Turns out it was their Editor's Choice! For a point-and-shoot, I like the variety of settings available, such as exposure, shutter speed, and ISO speed. It's pretty loaded. And it's a looker, too, with sleek, brushed metal lines. Oh, and a nifty little feature. When you rotate the camera around, the display on the nice, big screen rotates to fit your perspective! Anyways, it'll be nice to have some digitial uploadability, as much as I like learning how to use my oldschool 35mm Canon. I can't wait to put it to use!

what about woot?

2008-12-22T18:15:00.001-08:00

I don't remember why, but a while ago I ran into and read this blog post from late last year (I suppose I could probably dig through my Google Web History…) about the origin of the word "woot," aptly named The Real History and Origin of Woot and w00t. The post is long by itself, casting away various theories of origin and giving its blessing to the 1993-dance-catch-phrase theory, but the comments are much longer. Like a big long argument. Hummm. Some interesting stuff, but not without less polite interruptions.

I actually first heard the word from a guy who used to go to our school (he was in high school, I'm thinking, and I probably in junior-high). I just thought he made it up at first. We picked it up at school, and I saw it online later on which told me it was something others said, too.

So, where and when did you first hear woot? What does it mean to you? How do you use it?

Windows 7 taskbar looks sweet

2008-12-22T16:45:00.001-08:00

Maybe.

It's actually become fairly like the OS X dock. The idea is, "why show a button for an app that already has one in Quick Launch?" So Quick Launch is getting consolidated. This is actually a pretty big move, considering how long the taskbar has been relatively the same. And I'm told there will not be an option to go back to the old style. It's a pretty cool idea, but of course it has risks and naysayers. One person pointed out that taking the text off of the title bar could remove a source of information via changing window titles (e.g. a game score or inbox count). Good point. Also, it was asked in the comments, "how do you know what's running and what's not?" Also a very good point. I think if the W7 team can pull off making it concise, clear, and useful, it's worth it (and customers might even like it).

Also interesting: Aero Peek. Move the mouse over a window thumbnail from the taskbar and that window appears and others fade away. Sounds like a cool feature to me. Not actually switching, but you can get a bigger look if you want to.

This post over at the Engineering Windows 7 blog (yup, from the MS team) illustrates and talks about the new taskbar in depth. Definitely worth reading if your interested in that sort of thing.

a nice list of legal free music + personal additions

2008-12-22T16:35:00.001-08:00

Edit by Nathaniel, January 08, 2008: It looks like that post was actually a rip, or a repost of this Download Squad post. Or possibly the other way around, but I would guess DLS had it first.

I ran across this list of legal free music a while ago and took a look at it again recently. It has 35 different sources, which sort of seems strange in a world where bootlegging music is just a matter of clicking on that strange looking "u" or that familiar lemon. The ones I've used before on the list are:

mp3.com
purevolume; free streaming of songs from loads and loads of bands, free mp3's from some
music.Download.com; thousands of free mp3's… I've found and downloaded some stuff I liked (Armor of God, Pillow, andrew lawler); also some artists on there with just streaming
Last.FM; I've never used their internet radio service before (except for an on demand song one time, I think), but I have snagged some downloads from the site. The download page has a tag cloud so you can see what genres are popular. Lots of music, and lots of variety, I would guess.
Spiral Frog; downloaded three whole albums and then some from them. The cache? DRMed WMA files. The license expire after a couple months, I think, and you have to take a survey at the site, which isn't actually so bad. I suppose if you can stand DRMed music, and your device supports it (*cough* no iPods! *cough*), you might want to take a look. They actually do have a lot, and I did buy a hard copy of an album after downloading it late last year. I've heard it said it's a good way to try out music you might buy, and I think I agree; it would be easy enough to pop it into your favorite media software (sans iTunes) and see if you like it (though the site does offer streaming, too… take your pick). Well, if your a Windows user and if you have broadband.

They also mention on the page Nine Inch Nails' free release of The Slip. I had actually heard about it before I saw that, but in any case, the music is still available, though a hard copy has been released, I think (or get it anywhere… it's legal to torrent and share it). The nin site has the files in all sorts of formats, and if you're an audio freak, you can always grab the FLAC files and transcode them to whatever you like. My track recommendations are Discipline and Letting You. And, by the way, this is industrial, so if you dislike such heavy music, you'll probably want to skip it.

Finally, I thought I would discuss the YouTube way. You can find a lot… and I mean a lot of music on YouTube. Videos that are just blank or a picture or the like the whole way through just for the sake of the audio track are pretty obviously pirating (albeit low quality pirating) if it's copyrighted. But what about music videos? Is it fair use to upload a self made or mixed video with a copyrighted song? I don't know. How about snagging official music videos made officially available? It's pretty easy to grab the audio with FLV Extract. But is it legal and right? I haven't found out, but it is on my mind (at least in the back of it). Feel free to share anything you know or think about this or any additional legal free music sources.

Review: Digital Photo Design

2008-12-18T21:15:00.001-08:00

Digital Photo Design: How to Compose Winning Pictures
Paul Comon

I saw this book earlier this year, I think, reviewed in a photography magazine. The idea of a book just about composition appealed to me. My mom gave me a copy for my birthday in August. I took a while in reading it. The writing style is a little formal, but fortunately it's not hard to digest.

I actually felt like I had become a student of the Paul Comon school after I read it. But, I still certainly realize, like he says in the book, there are no hard and fast rules. Therefore, fear not to read it; you are not required to follow. ;)

That being said, the book is excellent. The principles are well laid out, and I suppose he covers everything in the usual gamut of photographer's composition (though I haven't read very many books on composition…). His approach is generally non-technical; whether you just have your old point and shoot or a brand spanking new DSLR, you can benefit from the reading. Matter of fact, though digital is more powerful in ways, you can still definitely take away stuff from the book if you're using a film camera.

I also like the design of the book (I have the paperback) very well. The pages are quite clean, using color and shapes in a pleasing manner. The font is fitting and pleasant, and the new age lowercase look actually works. Comon is also a very good photographer. His pictures illustrate his points well (and he specifically talks about the pictures; teaching by example, comparison, and your perception). A good chunk of the photos are in black and white, but color pictures are interspersed throughout, and he does have a whole section on "Color & Shades."

Recommended.

This is the rewrite of the review; the first version I put up felt pretty contrived… I disliked it, so I am replacing it with this rewrite/edit. I hope you enjoy it, and apologize for any revulsion caused by the previous version. I felt like I didn't really know *how* to write a book review, so I did some research. This page seems to be a pretty good guide, but my results were meh. And… if you still want to read the old version, I put it up here.

it shall not perish

2008-12-18T21:01:00.001-08:00

You know what? I don't think rock music is going to die, to fade back to folk and classical… if we still have the skill and complexity of classical music (and the style is still alive… neo-classical, anyone?), we shall still have that of rock.

Viva la rock!

Dare to disagree? Say on.

Quick foobar post

2008-12-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

Just in case anyone's interested, I learned how to run Winamp visualizations in foobar. That was one of the major things I felt was missing in foobar. Simply download the zip file posted here, and follow the readme instructions.

I didn't want to have Winamp installed just for the visualizations, so I ran a quick install, as minimal as possible, and checked to see if the foobar plugin worked. It detected the visualization files in the Winamp install folder.

I then tried moving the plugins folder into the foobar directory, and then uninstalling Winamp, but, although I think there's a way somehow, I couldn't get the foobar plugin to point anywhere other than the Winamp folder, and didn't want to spend any more time on it.

So, I made a folder called 'Winamp' in the Program Files directory, and then just stuck the files straight in there. It still wasn't very happy with that, so I put them back into a directory called 'plugins', as they were orginally. That worked. So then I wanted to make sure I had only the necessary files, so I moved them out of the folder one by one and checked each time to see if all the visualizations were detected. I pared it down to these:

the AVS folder
the Milkdrop2 folder
milk2.ini (this may have been created as soon as I first ran it; not sure)
nscrt.dll
vis_avs.dat
vis_avs.dll
vis_milk2.dll
vis_nsfs.dll

So, that's it! Cool.

-pixelot

{o,o}
|)__)
-"-"-

A Different Christmas Poem

2008-12-13T16:53:00.001-08:00

A Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..

To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Really it's all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my father's before me.
My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

" So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

Matthew sent me an email with this poem. It was requested that it was sent on. I liked it pretty well, so I decided to post it here. It is important to remember those who serve to defend our freedoms.

Also, this was the address at the end of the email:

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

Harmonica mic and Dell repairs...

2008-12-12T15:22:00.000-08:00

So, today I stopped in at J's Place on my Christmas shopping rounds, and vaguely wondered if he had any mics. I was looking for one for my harmonica, as I have a Leem GA410D amp that was given to me, but no mic to go with it. It's just a small guitar amp, but that's perfect for that essential blues harp sound. Also, I had checked at WC Marketplace while shopping there, and saw a few cheap $15 mics, and one nice $188 Shure SM58 Vocal, which is pretty much the standard for vocal mics. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for....I knew what Adam Gussow recommends, but not sure if I could find that kind of mic, especially as he got his a long time ago in some obscure store. Anyways, I was just looking around, and saw this box that said "Shure" on it and "microphone" and had a little picture of a mic, but kind of a strange-looking mic, more like you'd see on an old ham radio or something. I asked the guy if he had any mics, and he said he was out of stock, and asked what I was looking for. But when I mentioned harmonica, he went over and pulled that mic out, and said it was a harmonica mic he'd had around for a few years (the box says 2001 on it). It's a Shure 520DX, also known as the "Green Bullet". If you looked at the picture linked there, you can see why. He told me it listed at $150, but I could have it for $85, which I think is a deal, considering current online prices are a little above that, and no shipping and handling.

When I got home, I plugged it in and tried it out. I was getting some undesirable feedback with sudden attacks on the harp, but it sounded pretty good. Then I looked up the manual online, only to have my mom point out that it probably came with one, which I quickly found in the box. Funny. Anyways, once I followed it's recommendations, I got a better sound. It's pretty sweet. The only thing that I'm not completely happy with is that, with a normal vocal mike, you can use your right hand quite well for vibrato, whereas this is a little bigger around. Oh well. Anyways, it IS pretty much the standard, time-tested favorite for blues harmonica. So, cool.

Also today, the Dell tech came and replaced my motherboard and LCD screen on the good old Vostro 1400. I had called Dell on Monday complaining about some graphics issues. I had initially seen my display divide into little, rectangular pieces, and start rapidly jiggling back and forth, and then go black. I powered it off. I ran it in safe mode, and uninstalled my nVidia drivers, then installed a different version, 180.70, although I see a newer version is now available from LaptopVideo2Go. I had no problems until a couple days later, while sitting in Bucer's in Moscow, ID. My screen did the same trick, except this time in a tasteful shade of pink, broken up with little black strips here and there. I powered off and back on, this time resolved to call Dell as soon as possible. I did so, the representative, after a little troubleshooting, advised that he would send a tech out with a new mobo and screen. In my opinion, they could've just replaced the mobo, or even just the gfx card, although it's kind of better to replace the whole deal in these cases, but I wasn't complaining about the screen, especially since I had a minor scratch on mine. At any rate, out he came. It was the same guy who replaced my mobo last year, when I complained about audio issues often experienced with this line of Vostros and Inspirons. The condition is pretty widespread, and solutions range from DIY frequency adjusters, tape between the wifi card and speaker cables, and installing drivers for different graphics cards. Not to go into the technical details right now, but there's supposed to be some conflict between maybe the wifi and audio, and/or gfx and audio being on the same PCI or something.... (Speaking of which, my new mobo audio sounds just as good, if not better, than previously. Great!)

Anyhow, he disassembled it, replaced the motherboard and screen (giving me an opportunity to clean out some of the dust with compressed air and oil the screen hinges), and reassembled it! Sweetness. And, so far, everything looks wicked awesome.

As a sidenote, I also finally put my MD button to use. I still am afraid to hit it when the laptop is off, for fear it will screw up my boot partitions, but, in Windows, I now have it set to turn off my screen (using Monitoroff, of course). Instructions here. I downloaded the zip file, and just edited the registry entries before incorporating them, and used Monitoroff instead of the other program.

Next on the list? Maybe try out KDE in Ubuntu, perhaps set the MD button to boot Ubuntu per this guide, perhaps buy a 9-cell battery....options, options.

Well, that's it for now!

-pixelot

manual installation of the Picasa Facebook plugin

2008-12-06T17:33:00.001-08:00

Update, March 30, 2009: I updated the post to note that the Vista folder is in a bit of a different place. Also, I found out today that version 2 of the plugin was released in January. And I didn't even notice until when investigating the Vista path via my bro on his Vista laptop, I saw the file name and the extension of the plugin was different and that he actually had a Facebook icon in his Picasa. Also, the new version seems to install fine automatically (just a couple of boxes to click through). I did a small test and it seems to work fine using my Picasa 3 installation. The new plugin is for Window/Mac Picasa 2 or 3 (still no Linux, augggg!). The old version of the plugin seems to be working, still, and is still downloadable by the address I specified in the post (as of 03.30.09) so if anybody wants it, get it there; if that link goes dead, I uploaded it here. Oh, and I couldn't say anything about manual installation of either plugin on a Mac... sorry, I don't own one and don't feel like chasing down the correct folder. /end of update

The Picasa Facebook plugin is brilliant. There is a Linux version of Picasa, too, but unfortunately, the plugin only works with the Windows (and now Mac) version.

It downsizes the images in Picasa and uploads them to Facebook, which makes it tons faster. Pretty seamlessly. Which is nice, especially if you're on dial-up. And a great solution for anyone, considering you can't download the full size images off of Facebook anyway (not as far as I know).

I would just link and leave if that was all there was to it. Unfortunately, I had to manually install the plugin. There is a installation button on the Facebook page, but it doesn't work (at least for some people). So, I knocked together a guide in a Facebook note. This is the rewrite. Please note, although I have heard the plugin works with Picasa3, this guide is for Picasa2. It may or may not work for installing it in Picasa3. I don't know. If anyone has info on this, please tell me.

So, if the installation doesn't work automatically for you, follow these instructions. These are for XP, but pretty much the only difference in Vista is that the folder to put it in is different:
C:\Users\[your username here]\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2\buttons\

Have your web browser running
Paste http://www.webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/facebook.pbf into a new tab or window and go or just follow this link
For version 2 of the plugin, http://www.webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/packages/v2/facebook_v2.pbz or link
If your browser asks you what to do with the file, choose to save it and select whatever location you want (don't forget where, though)
If your browser didn't ask you what to do with the file, you should be seeing what is actually the content of the file. It's a bunch of text. If you don't understand it, don't worry, it doesn't matter. Just save it like you would a webpage (File > Save as or Save Page As) to wherever you like.
Now, we have to put the file in the right place. Copy the file first.
Open My Computer. Open C:\Documents and Settings\[your username here]\
Now, you're going to have to have hidden files visible to continue (Tools > Folder Options, View tab, Show hidden files and folders, OK)
Now open \Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\buttons. (So now you're in C:\Documents and Settings\[your username here]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\buttons)
Paste facebook.pbf into this folder
Now, open Picasa
Open the Tools menu and select Configure Buttons…
On the left side will be your Available Buttons, on the right side your Current Buttons. Find the Facebook button on the left, select it, and click Add>>
The Facebook button will appear with your other buttons on near the bottom of the Picasa window.
Select some pictures, click the button, follow the prompts, and enjoy! Keep your eyes peeled: there should be a link at the bottom of the window that appears at some time, offering to let you enable Extended Access (it's a Facebook thing). Do it. Otherwise, you'll have to approve all photos you upload from Picasa on Facebook itself before they are published. That's a drag.

Notes: if you're not a power user, you probably will want to turn off hidden files. Just follow the same steps you used to turn them on, except this time select Do not show hidden files and folders.

Feel free to ask questions and otherwise comment.

a little bit on UAC

2008-11-26T12:49:00.001-08:00

Ok.. I felt compelled this post a while ago, but I didn't get around to it… until now.

I must credit Claus over at GSD for inspiration for this post.

Really, I hadn't seen User Account Control as helpful before, more like annoying. Actually, I have XP, not Vista, but I have had a little experience with it, and my fellow blogger, Matthew, has deigned to turn it off. And said something to the effect of "Vista is okay IF you turn off User Account Control." Alright… that seems quite understandable from what I've heard. UAC seems like a nanny instead of a helpful tool. I actually have experienced something of the sort: the excellent (and free) Comodo Firewall Pro has a sort of anti-malware feature called Defense+. That got pretty annoying… extracting files with 7-Zip and having it scream, freaking about about installing programs, etcetera. So I disabled it (thank goodness for the option).

And now the "But."

But… such tight system control and checks can be helpful if implemented and presented in a efficient, clear, and pleasing manner. Enter Microsoft on Windows 7 and TweakUAC on Vista.

Microsoft has been making changes to UAC from feedback data they've gathered. Evidently, an alarming (to them) amount of people disable it on Vista.

So, it changed my mind about UAC. Bring it on… IF it's done right.

Windows virtual desktops done right-er

2008-11-26T12:21:00.001-08:00

I discovered a new virtual desktop app a while ago… through Grand Stream Dreams, not surprisingly… all the previous ones were rather disappointing after having used Linux multi-desktops. Vista/XP Virtual Desktops is much closer. Still is a little clunky compared to Linux, but it seems significantly better than everything else I've tried. A few of sweet features: a min-toolbar that is somewhat like what you might see in Ubuntu (shows you what desktop you're on and lets you switch desktops), the ability to move windows between desktops (suhhh-weeeetness!!!!), and live desktop previews in Vista using DWM. No 3D cube goodies, but quite functional. I'm reluctant to use it all the time because of it's memory usage, but those of you with and abundance of memory might consider trying it out.

two things on Google Chrome

2008-11-23T18:00:00.001-08:00

First, a easy way to block ads in Chrome… it's from Lifehacker Australia… I haven't tried it, but it looks like it could be a pretty tight solution and work for other browsers, too, since it uses a local proxy. [link]

And second, Chrome themes seem to be broken now… with an update to Chrome… not sure when this exactly happened, but it did. Likely enough some themes have been updated, but not you won't put a hole through your monitor when Chrome keeps crashing when you use a custom theme.

my final word on CD DRM…

2008-11-23T16:27:00.001-08:00

…for now, that is. My previous posts were: DRM CD's are uncool, More on the DRM CD case, the great DRM aha!

On October 7th, I followed the instructions posted at the CDFreaks Club to remove Macrovision CDS-300 drivers. This consists of finding the file sdcplh.sys on your Windows partition/drive, deleting it, and restarting Windows. Boom. It worked. Marvelously. I also decided to disable Autorun on my optical drive, but it turns out that for all my knowledge, I didn't know how. Lol. Annoyances.org readily gave the solution. Like many things in Windows, it was in the Registry, but TweakUI handled it easily. So anyway, I could rip tracks fine now, no scrambled audio effect. Great! I tested it out by ripping the first and last tracks. No problems detected, MP3's played fine. I'm pretty sure this only affects Windows, so if you use Mac or Linux, rest easy. It seems kind of stupid for me to get suckered in like that. Oh well, now I know.

removing CDS-300

So, here's a step by step on how to get rid of the CDS-300 protection (How do you know it's CDS-300? There is a folder named CDS300 on the disc. Simple as that):

Start Menu > Search
If needed, click to search All files and folders
Type in sdcplh.sys and then press Search
Once it has been found, right click it and select Delete and select Yes if you are asked for confirmation
Restart your computer once the file has been deleted
Once you're back, enjoy unscrambled ripping of your CD!

Thanks to CDFreaks (hyqwn) and Alex Halderman and Edward Felten.

And if you ever insert that CD into a Windows computer again, I recommend holding down Shift whilst you do (i.e. press down before you put the disc in, let up a few seconds after the CD tray has closed or, in the case of a slot loader, you've inserted the disc) so that the program will not Autorun.

Also of note, there is an Uninstall.exe on the disc. I'm not sure if this would actually remove the driver (sdcplh.sys), but it does at least set the "agreement" status on the disc's autorunning up to "not agreed."

Here are some pics… before and after removing sdcplh.sys

successful ripping!

There are also two other protections schemes I found out about during my research, MediaMax and XCP. I actually thought I had XCP on my CD, but it turned out to be Macrovision's CDS-300. So, I actually learned a fair bit about XCP and MediaMax. Much information can be found in Alex Halderman and Edward Felten's whitepaper. XCP, which only works on Windows, installs a rootkit on your system, which malware can and has taken advantage of. MediaMax, which works on Window and Mac (though the Mac version actually requires the user to start the installer), if Autorun is enabled (and it is by default), actually does automatically install software on your computer without notifying or asking you. Furthermore, MediaMax also opens up a security hole, as described in the whitepaper.

removing XCP

I've never actually encountered XCP (though I thought I had), but I'll list some instructions that I think would work to get rid of it, based on information I've gleaned from the internet. I am told that if the disc uses XCP protection, you'll see a file on it called VERSION.DAT (you might just see VERSION, depending on your Windows settings)

open Run (Start Menu > Run or in Vista, just type in the search box)
type cmd /k sc delete $sys$aries and press Enter
restart your computer
open Command Prompt (Start Menu > All Programs/Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt)
type cd \ and press Enter
type del $sys$*.* /s
wait until it's done (it will have a list of deleted files and then finally display the prompt C:\>)
restart your computer (I don't know if it's really necessary, but it's not a bad idea)
You're done; I do recommend downloading CCleaner to clean up your Registry, though. Just open up CCleaner, click the Registry button on the left, and click Scan for Issues. Once the scan is done, click Fix selected issues… when it asks you if you want to backup changes to the registry, just click yes and save it in My Documents or somewhere else convenient. That way, you can just double click the file to reverse your changes if your computer starts acting wacky after this (assuming the Registry cleanup somehow created a problem that made things act wacky).

Thanks to Black and White Incorporated for the information.

removing MediaMax

The other big CD protection software is MediaMax. Halderman and Felten kindly explained how to remove the Windows version.

open Command Prompt (Start Menu > All Programs/Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt)
type sc stop sbcphid and press Enter
type del %windir%\system32\drivers\sbcphid.sys and press Enter

In the future, always hold down the Shift key like I described earlier, if you put the disc in a Windows computer, because the software on the disc WILL install stuff without your consent. Unless you have Autorun turned off.

Regarding the Mac OS X version of MediaMax: I don't know too much about it, but I did find out that OS X does have an autorun feature (called 'autostart', I am told) that can start the process, but it still needs your permission to install the software. Don't give it that permission. Deny and rip away! If you do install it… I'm afraid I don't know how to remove it. Good luck if you try, and please share any findings with the community.

Well, that's it for now. Hope you have fun avoiding DRM.

Facebook ads… worthless?

2008-11-19T16:47:00.001-08:00

Just saw this:

Christianity and profanity

2008-11-16T20:47:00.001-08:00

Alright, I know. I opened a can of worms just by saying that. But I'm prepared to put them on the hook.

I wanted to blog about this a while back. In fact, what started it all was me asking (or was it telling) a friend (OK… an internet friend) was cussing on IM. And he said 'why?' So that got me Googling on it, which dug up… previous cans of worms. Specifically, some of the stuff I turned up, for reference:

Grudem and Piper on Profanity :: :: A Reformed, Christian Blog
constantly..in need of grace...: Glorious Biblical Profanity
Profanity and Christianity « JP’s Mind

And that post, by the way, was when I ran into JP's Mind, in case you ever noticed the link to it on the blog.

So, the argument rages on.
"Swearing is wrong."
"It's the only way I can adequately express myself."
"Hey, even Paul used profanity."

Each argument, each opinion, we could follow on a network of its own, but this is what I have to say. It's not about walking the line. Something I have learned is that righteousness isn't a line; it's a direction. That being said, we would want to be walking in righteousness. Which brings us back to the question, does profanity belong on the road of righteousness?

I see this is going to get a little more involved…

First, we have to know what profanity is. The Encarta® World English Dictionary (eh, it's on my laptop) defines the verb transitive as "to treat something sacred with disrespect." Using God's name as a swear word would fall under this description, I think. The other word that comes to my mind is obscenity. And what is an obscenity? Merely something that you are not supposed to see. So when we make things that should not be seen visible, it's an obscenity. What's not supposed to be seen? Check the Bible for answers on that one. One other angle we might hit on is the word cursing. Wishing or commanding something bad on someone. Really, we can't do that except what we ourselves would do or influence others to do. Still, I don't have as good a handle on this one. In the back of my mind, it seems I remember someone saying when we curse, it does have an effect. Maybe I should ask around.

Anyway, neither profaning things nor making visible that which should not be sounds like something Christians should be doing. When it comes down to that, it's easy. The answer is, it's wrong.

Really, the whole thing revolves around three things in my opinion: the dynamic nature of language, the intent of the heart, and stumbling blocks.

So, we should first realize the dynamic nature of language. Some of the things we say today that don't seem offensive at all might have been highly offensive 200 years ago. Language changes. Definitions change. Keep that in mind. But also keep in mind, God was holy 200 years ago, and he still is. Respect his name. Also, what was obscene 200 years ago is still obscene today, though our culture seeks to define it as acceptable.

Secondly, the intent of the heart; it can be good or evil. If you say "son of mutton chop" but mean "son of a ***" in your heart, that's wrong. That's not to say we can't express anger. I was reading something in my Googling that said it well (indirect quote, click for original): 'When I say "Damn!" after hitting my thumb with a hammer, it doesn't mean I'm calling down eternal damnation on the hammer. It means "ouch!"' In that situation, the intent of the heart isn't cursing somebody, it's saying "I hurt!" Or "I'm annoyed!" On a personal level, this seems agreeable, but I think it could be a stumbling block, and people could also get the wrong idea if you're saying "Oh ***!" every time something irks you.

Back to the stumbling block. I think a person can be a stumbling block in two ways: by doing something that is definitely Biblically wrong (which might encourage others to do the same, both those who know it to be against God's law and those who don't), and by doing something that would violate the conscience of a brother or sister in Christ (in their presence, or such), e.g., Delbert believes it's wrong to eat hamburgers, and Bob walks into the break room with a quarter pounder, plops down beside him, and starts chomping away (to take it a little further… Bob: "Oh, hey, Delbert, man, you gotta try this. Oh, yeah, I know you don't believe in hamburgers, but one little bite won't hurt. C'mon man, yur missin' out!").

Alright, I think I've gotten my thoughts expressed. I welcome yours.

a few hopefully helpful utilities - miniLinkfest

2008-11-16T20:40:00.001-08:00

Unlocker (Windows) - Ever have a flash drive or such that Windows just doesn't want to Safely Remove? Fire up this baby and see what's holding on to it. I think if it's explorer.exe, it should be safe to Unlock it or just yank out the drive, as long as you know you aren't transferring data to or from it, or moving files around on it. Otherwise, assuming you aren't doing data work like I just mentioned see what else is tying up your device (backup managers, mp3 player managers, and so on…). Can also help you out the same way if you have a file you want to work with, but you get a message something else is using it. I'm not sure, but I think it might even help you get past an Access Denied (you'd probably have to be an administrator). Brilliant little tool.

ExifTool (Windows/Mac/Linux under Perl) - this one is a command line tool for dealing with metadata. I found this tool in a search for something to edit the date taken on digital photos, because sometimes one forgets to reset their camera clock. *Ahem* Certainly not me. Never. Anyway, to fix my mistake, I mean such a mistake, this will do the trick (though I haven't actually put it to use yet). Now, I know all you out there are shivering in fear of using a command line tool on your beautiful photos. Well, make backups of them before you start anyway, but there are some GUI's to make things so much safer and more comfortable.
ExifToolGUI - Windows (tested on XP SP2). Lot's of nice GUI options for accessing the awesome power of ExifTool. You'll need to download ExifTool separately.
Mac users, you can check out the "Related Utilities" section on the ExifTool homepage.
Linux users, stop being a weenie and use the command line. Heh.

PDFCreator (Windows) - It installs as a printer on your system and allows you to make PDF files from any app that can print to it. Pretty nifty. Now I can make PDF's from WordPerfect 8 (yep, that's what I use, for real).

Hope this brightens your day at least a little bit.

Ubuntu tips

2008-11-14T14:03:00.000-08:00

Just a few things about Ubuntu in the last couple days that might be helpful.

1. If compiz crashes on you, simply type compiz in the terminal to restart it.
2. sudo apt-get upgrade is useful to update all your packages. (tx Thomas from NBR)
3. Ctrl+L opens an "Open Location" dialogue.
4. If your volume doesn't get as loud as you think it should, double-click on the volume icon in the panel and make sure that everything is all the way up. (tx Calvin from NBR)
5. Here and here are a couple of really awesome GDM (login) themes.

there is time

2008-11-06T19:55:00.001-08:00

I congratulate president elect Obama on his success.

I also say to the conservatives: don't freak out. Especially not right now. We have over two months until Obama takes office, and when that time arrives, still don't freak out. Just obey your leaders and work with President Obama, and appreciate his service. And pray for him a TON. Dead serious. The Bible says to pray for your leaders, and we can especially pray for his protection. He has indeed achieved the status of being the first black person to take this office. And I might add with such overwhelming approval. I am proud that America can overcome racism in such a big way. It's radical application of overcoming evil with good.

Regarding the two months: Barack Obama has already started the transition process to the position, and we should be ready, too. One of the things that I am most troubled about is Obama's wish to make his first act as president the signing of the Freedom of Choice Act.

This will be a huge step in favor of abortion, and that's not good at all. Let us pray that such a thing will not come to pass. Let us pray hard in this time of transition, both for our new president and his policies and for our current president, who has endured great unpopularity for his consistency with what he believes and who must tie up loose ends and finish his job in a two months, that to him, may seem altogether too short.

xkcd hits it on the head

2008-11-04T21:43:00.001-08:00

Woot. Palin 2012? Maybe. Doesn't matter right now.

McCain concedes

2008-11-04T20:19:00.001-08:00

According to what I am hearing on Twitter election, McCain has called Obama to concede and congratulate. Well, here we go. About to get a huge dose of what we deserve.

Election Results

2008-11-04T19:39:00.001-08:00

Not the actual official results, but CNN has a pretty cool page for keeping track… this is the presidential page, with all it's sweet Flash glory. I recommend you go check it out and keep it up in your browser.

here we are

2008-11-03T20:46:00.001-08:00

The day is almost upon us. And then we find out what direction we have chosen to take… what is in out hearts will be reflected upon our ballots.

Well, of course, a substantial amount of us have already voted. But anyway, yeah, tomorrow is the day… the showdown. I plan to listen to the radio (KMBI/NPR Spokane) and be online to monitor the results live and hot!

lol at Ron Paul

2008-10-31T11:14:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking of you, Matthew… lol!

Ok, so it's an xkcd comic series… pretty funny.

Or you could just go to part one and hit the button.

Quick post...

2008-10-28T22:24:00.000-07:00

Recommend checking out this Mozilla Minefield alpha. It's fast. Download link here. Cheers!

fixed Sansa and Rockboxin' fun

2008-10-28T20:52:00.001-07:00

I got my Sansa fixed up on Sunday. What was happening is that only the ring would light up when I turned the thing on and I had to "reset" (really a forced power off, it seems) to get it off. I was advised to drain the battery, charge it, and then see what happened. I did, and same result. Some more talk online informed me that the daughter card may have come loose. Over the span of two days I got it all the way open (part of this took over two hours on IRC and a video from someone on there… how nice of them), disconnected the daughter card for sure, and reconnected it. I plugged my Sansa in on USB and the wheel came on but it seems the player turned off. I put the battery back in and tried again, this time presented with a blessed SanDisk logo. Whoooo-hooo!

I had intended to start hacking my Sansa after the warranty had expired, but I figured that I might as well start then since I had been poking around on the insides of the thing. I downloaded the alternative mp3 player firmware Rockbox and installed it on my Sansa (it keeps the original firmware on, too). And, wow, Rockbox blows the original firmware away in most areas. Very very customizable and supports plugins, which you can use even while you're playing music. These plugins fall under the categories of Applications, Demos, and Games. And yes, you can even play Doom.

on the election

2008-10-22T16:07:00.001-07:00

One could say a lot about this election. I'll try to keep my thoughts concise, but we'll see what comes.

First of all, one thing we can certainly be sure of in America is there is a reason why this place is so messed up: we reap what we sow and we sowed sin. And now we have a mess. Go figure.

The other thing we can be sure of: we can should repent, and there's no time like now (alright, well… earlier, actually).

But these issues do have realities, specifics and not just generals; meaning there are certain problems.

On the presidential candidates--

Neither Obama nor McCain are, in my opinion, an ideal person to be leading our nation. I would vote for McCain if I could, but I don't think he's perfect. His healthcare plan is expensive enough, I'd say. And his mortgage idea is also another staggering amount, following up on the recent corporate bailout. And frankly, we deserve someone like Obama, but I pray that God will be gracious to us.

Barack Obama is in fact, the most liberal senator in our nation at this time. This is based on his voting record, I would believe, but I'm not sure. In any case, even if he was the most perfect candidate in every other way, I cannot support a man who condones the murder of our unborn. It's murder, plain and simple, and I don't support those who support murder. His other policies aren't that great either; his healthcare keeps with the socialistic trend the US has been seeing. I have to give a McCain a point here… well, at least a partial point; his healthcare plan is more market based, which is good, because the government shouldn't really be involved in healthcare at all… so let's wean the American people off of it. On the other hand, though, McCain want to give tax cuts so people can buy their own insurance. Good or bad? It's not direct healthcare, but I don't know, their might be rules on what you could do with the money you save… I really don't know.

The US and world economies, healthcare, and environmental issues certainly might be hot button right now, but they are not the only issues (and I got issues with those issues anyway.. lolz). Some of the more important things to me right now, though, are easing off with governmental control, a huge reality check on environmental issues (as in, stop the idiocy, please!), and big black and white sin issues like abortion and homosexuality. A candidate who will state his intentions, hold a Biblical and conservative view, have some backbone, and not cave in to political and public pressure is one that would get my vote. And the presidential candidate that fits this description is not Barack Obama. But it's not John McCain either. Still, it's ignoring our duty to not vote and not take a stand. My ballot would have a bubble next to John McCain not because he's perfect, but because he best represents my beliefs as a Christian.

I urge the people of America to vote according to their convictions, not their feelings.

first Linkfest

2008-10-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

In the tradition of Grand Stream Dreams, I bring you our very first Linkfest.

Boston.com - World Series game could be delayed for Obama pitch - You might have heard that Barack Oboma had purchased an half hour time slot on at least some networks to promote his cause. Clever of him. But possibly delay the World Series? It's only by a few minutes, I know, and I'm not a big baseball fan… but still, let's hope people get mad at him for this…

Fox News - Obama Ads Invade Video Games - Obama billboards show up in Burnout Paradise on Xbox Live… hmmm… ok… I didn't know their were ads, but hey, I suppose if they pay for them… but a little weird anyway.

Newsweek - Who Are the 10% Who Think U.S. on Right Track? - A viewpoint on who actually thinks things are good. Meh. Not extrememly persuasive.

Schlissel's blog - Some of My Best Friends Are Sarah Palin - A good post about Sarah standing on what she believes and representing us as Christians… and being us.

LA Times - Greenspace blog - Bottled water not so pure - Really? I would have never guessed…

PC World - Microsoft Sues DHL After Train Dumps 21,600 Xboxes - Ummm… ouch? Not good, DHL.

Ars Technia - Revenues rise as Google says hard times will drive business - Woot for Google! They seem to be doing pretty good as the world economy melts down… that's my kind of company. Kinda like our local banks: they are still going strong since they've invested wisely (read: with discretion… *cough* Citibank et all *cough*).

MercuryNews.com - Q&A with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla - Pretty good interview. Nothing ugly. Lilly thinks Chrome isn't exactly competition… it's just Google helping Mozilla out with their mission: making the web a better place. I like that Firefox slogan, by the way: "Take back the Web." Pretty sick. Anyway, also some stuff on Firefox Mobile, of which alpha versions are coming soon.

Sioux City Journal.com - Senator's lawsuit against God is tossed out - This feels like it should be on the Drudge Report, but, LOL, what were you thinking?

redemption in a blog - Optimize Firefox’s memory usage by tweaking session preferences - If you're a heavy heavy tab user in Firefox, you might take a look at this if things have been slowing down.

Matasano Chargen - Detecting Anonymizing Proxies - An interesting blog post on detecting the use of a proxy server. Technical and hopefully helpful illustrations. A good read. Edit, October 24, 2008: The link is still 404, but I looked up the Google cache. No pictures, I'm afraid, but it's better than nothing.

a parting with wisdom

2008-10-10T18:34:00.001-07:00

I got up around 5:00 AM today… it felt like the middle of the night. We left around 5:30, bound for the city of Fruitland, Idaho, which is quite close to Ontario, Oregon. I think we got there at about 11-something, our time. Fruitland and Ontario are in the Mountain Time Zone, which is an our ahead of us.

After a relatively brief wait in the front room, I went back into a room and got asked some of the usual questions (allegories, prescriptions). I got x-rayed too… kind of interesting, I stood sort of under/inside the machine, bit down on this thing, put my hands onto a couple of bars, and closed my eyes. The machine, scanned around my head to get a complete view of my teeth. You could see the wisdom teeth pretty well in the print, and you could see my eye sockets, too. A little creepy…

After that, Doctor Hillam came in and had a consultation with me and the parents. He told us what to expect after the surgery, what I could eat, what to do, and what not to do. He said it was the perfect time to get them out, and I agree. It's a four day weekend, which means time to recover and do homework, and I still live at home, which means people to take care of me. =^)

Anyway, after the consultation, I went to the lavatory, and then went to the surgery room. The nurse, or assistant, or whatever she was, who was in there, hooked me up with some monitors: blood pressure, heart, and some sensor that went on my finger which I do no know the purpose of. Mom suggests that it may have been a blood sugar monitor.

The doc came in and I got hooked up with an IV. Either before or after that, I don't remember which, they gave me oxygen through the nose. I think my vision might have started to go a little weird after they started pumping the sedative… but I don't remember. In fact, it was sort of dreamy after that… and then I slowly woke up in the recovery room. I was a bit dizzy, and my vision a little messed up. After a while, I pulled on my sweater, and a while after that, I walked out to the car with Mom. I think I looked OK compared to some poor girl who walked out shortly after we arrived in Fruitland.

Anyway, I'm on Vicoprofen right now, have an icepack strapped to my head (check out the Facebook pics, LOL), will be taking antobiotics, and doing mouthwash.

classy Firefox

2008-10-09T18:10:00.001-07:00

I personally am not not a huge fan of Firefox 3's default theme, at least not on XP. There are, of course, tons of themes out there, and quite a few now available for Firefox 3.

Winstripe Modern does an excellent job of giving the Firefox 1.5 look. Quite classy. Available for Linux and Windows. One or both might work for Mac, but I don't know.
[Update: July 3, 2009: I have updated to Firefox 3.5. Winstripe Modern is not compatible, and the author states he has no intention of updating it. It might work with a hack, I don't know and I don't want to try. Because I found something I like better: Winestripe RealFox, rarin' and ready to go with Firefox 3.5. Rock on classiness!]
[Update: July 5, 2009: Unfortunately, Winestripe RealFox is Windows only at the moment. However, the developer said on Mozilla Add-Ons that he is working on making it work for Linux, which is good news. In the meantime, here are some 3.0-up alternative Winestripe type themes to pick through. Good luck.]
[Update: September 2, 2009: Wanting a bit more modern functionality with the classic look, I've now switched to StrataStripeStripe, which I like a lot. It's marked as experimental at the moment, and I really don't know what OS compatibility is like right now, except that there was a report in the reviews from the ninth of last month that it didn't work in Vista. Hope it works for you if you like it and cheers!]

Firefox 2 also had a theme that was, in my opinion, better than Firefox 3. Firefox 2, the theme, reloaded has resurrected the theme. It's not perfect, though. One of it's most glaring shortcomings is that checkmarks do not display. So, am I working offline? I can't tell, unless I actually try to navigate to some pages. Arg. Also, somehow it doesn't seem as tight as the original theme. It could just be from views of Matthew's eye-candied Firefox 2 theme (he used an extension for it… I don't remember what it was called, though), since I had been using a Firefox 3 Beta for a while before 3.0. But I did use Fx 2 for a while after I reinstalled Windows in June… hmmm. Whatever. Theme appears to be for all OS's.

Simple Green was a theme I used back in my Firefox 2 days… It looks like the Netscape Navigator 8 theme. I checked today, and yes, there is a version available for Firefox 3. Sweet!

What?

2008-10-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

Check out this link. And the source. Weird, huh?

Google invents a time machine

2008-10-07T16:50:00.001-07:00

In case you haven't heard about it yet, Google has released a searchable index of the web in 2001. In other words, it's like searching Google in 2001. And you can view the old pages from archive.org Internet Archive. Gnarly.

the great DRM aha!

2008-10-05T21:41:00.001-07:00

Why am I getting nowhere on my case?

It's CDS, not XCP.

Let me elaborate.

My Switchfoot CD is protected with Cactus Data Shield, not Extended Copy Protection.

Now how did that happen…? I see that the Wikipedia article on the album mentions that some copies of the album were protected by Cactus. Ok. Why didn't I figure this out sooner?

A Google search led me to this page, which mentioned CDS-300, which struck a familar note with me from browsing the CD. Aha.

Alright. Hopefully I should be able to fix it with this new knowledge, and some helpful info from that page. And then I'll post on what happens, some summary information on this stuff, and info on how to avoid or fix the situation.

feed your Fox some candy

2008-10-05T20:37:00.001-07:00

If you use Vista with Aero enabled, this one's for you. Using the Glasser extension and some Stylish styles, you can get an effect much like IE 7 with Aero. It looks good, too. Maybe better than IE 7.

OMF tournaments!

2008-10-02T17:36:00.001-07:00

Here's for you, Matthew. X-BoT's OMF Universe. Lots of tournaments.

iTunes saved!

2008-10-02T17:03:00.001-07:00

Sigh. The royalty rates didn't go up, and Apple keeps on selling the tunes.

Other news: Nintendo shows off the DSi. It launches in Japan on the first. Hmmm… it has a web browser… this should be interesting.

And… watch the VP debate if you can. We don't have live TV, so it's a no go for me, but if you do, hit the tube tonight.

Linux rocks.

2008-09-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

I think that sums it up nicely. =D

keep up with the election… Twitter style!

2008-09-29T17:38:00.001-07:00

This is pretty rad… live updates from Twitter users, and you can filter by candidate and VP. It's like a stream of politics. [link]

More on the DRM CD case

2008-09-29T17:13:00.001-07:00

I read a really great white paper on Thursday on this issue from a couple guys at Princeton University, J. Alex Halderman and Edward W. Felten. Excellent work. They seriously tore apart this stuff, and they know what they're talking about. I found it with a Google search, but it was on copyright.gov, and don't ask me what it was doing there. I found a link to it on Wikipedia that was hosted at Princeton: here. And here is the original link I found.

The story goes that Mark Russovich first discovered this, or at least was the first to make it public, when RootkitRevealer turned up evidence of a rootkit. He eventually tracked it back to a protection technology on CD's, which reminded him of a CD he had recently bought that was copy-protected.

If you do accept the license agreement on the program that autoruns, something called active protection software will installed on your system, and a rootkit installed to attempt prevention of defeating the system. The whitepaper goes into detail in this, but it is very well written and clearly worded, so worry not. And, back to the CD, what also autoruns when you insert the CD (of course assuming AutoRun is enabled) is a executable named go.exe (though I have not been able to detect it so far) which is passive protection software.

Since Microsoft added this rootkit to their definitions in the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, and I downloaded the September version, and it supposedly runs automatically after downloading, the rootkit should be taken care of. And, assuming everything is the same as mentioned in the whitepaper, it seems to be upon testing. What I did was to prefix the name of a text file with "$sys$" (no quotes). If the rootkit was in effect, that file should have disappeared, as mentioned by Mark Russovich in his blog post. And it didn't. Hmmm. But, much to my chagrin, the rogue drivers that the active protection software put on my system seem to still be in effect, though I cannot find them. Arg. I ran a Symantec tool that would take care of the rootkit, but the tool didn't find it, which confirmed that it wasn't there. The drivers still seem to be having the scrambled-audio effect on protected discs. Or at least this one.

One idea that I have is that I could have a new version of XCP. That would be extremely uncool.

Also something I read; there is evidence that the makers of XCP stole parts of open-source software and illegally put it in the XCP software.

So, this is really getting to be a nasty business. I'll make at least one more post on this.

Here's another cool feature of Ubuntu.

2008-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

When you mouse over a music file, it plays! No media player needs to be open.

DRM CD's are uncool

2008-09-25T18:13:00.001-07:00

Not too long ago, I got my Switchfoot CD, Nothing is Sound. It was all good, until I noticed the CD case said that the content was protected. Ummm… hmmm. That made me think of DRM. I popped the disc into my laptop, and sure enough, a program autoran… a nice and shiny Flash app that would let me listen to the CD, burn copies (limited copies, of course), or rip the music to my hard drive. I ended up ripping it. Took long enough. Once it was finally done, it was easy enough to launch Winamp and play the tracks. And the catch? They were in restricted Windows Media Audio format, or WMA DRM. Ok, so that works… I can listen to it, and the MP3 player I had ordered supports WMA DRM. Even so, I found the DRM annoying, especially since I didn't know about it when I ordered the album… and the app would rip the music at a maximum level of 192 Kbps, which is OK, but not the best possible quality.

Time to experiment. And… Winamp won't play the disc as a music CD. The audio files couldn't be found from Explorer. I had heard of DRM being removable, so I looked around online. OK, it could be done, but the programs were not free, and according to a blog post I found, doing it that way is illegal. Supposedly there is a analog loophole as mentioned in the post, but I didn't go that way… I think my sound card might not even support it anyway.

I stuck the thing in my old CD player and hit play. And it played. Ok, so the standard music CD data was there. I booted Ubuntu to see what I could do from there. Sweet! I could access the music data from there. Turns out it had both music and data on it, something I believe is called a multi-mode disc.

OK, so simple enough. Rip the CD to FLAC from Ubuntu, encode into MP3 in Windows, using BonkEnc. Easy as pie… almost. Everything was good, except for the fact that a few minutes of garbage sound were getting tacked onto the last track. The CD played just fine in Ubuntu, but for some reason or another, there was a problem ripping the last track.

I ended up using BonkEnc to transcode the last track to WAV, and then fired up Audacity for a little down and dirty editing. I could get the exact length of the ripped WMA using Winamp, and so I planned to trim the file down to that length. Except, Audacity doesn't seem to have any jump to time function. Arg. I hit Google looking for a plugin or some sort of solution, but didn't turn up anything.

So, I had to do it the hard way: zoom waaaay in. I found the time, put the marker there, highlighted back, and trimmed. Saved the WAV, transcoded back into FLAC. Woot. Transcode into MP3, and it's ready for my MP3 player.

It took long enough, but I got a set of unrestricted FLAC files. Later I read that the band wasn't exactly happy about the copy protection Sparrow Records put on their album. They even posted a workaround online, but Sony took it down, and I haven't found out what it is. I did found out on Wikipedia that this stuff is called Extended Copy Protection. And it's evil… but more on that later… it got enough publicity in 2005 anyway.

more Chrome stuff

2008-09-25T17:53:00.001-07:00

Mirror: (direct download, by Zonator.com): a tool for Google Chrome, although it seems to work for Firefox and Internet Explorer, too. What it consists of is an always-on-top box that you can drag links and tabs from Firefox onto and it will open them with your program of choice. From the readme: "While using Chrome, Google's new browser, we found that a lot of sites sites don't work, due to missing plugins for the new platform." OK, and you can open them in another browser with Mirror. Handy. Maybe.

CrossOver Chromium: Can't wait to try Chrome on Mac or Linux? Wine makes it possible. Check it out.

Chrome themes: Hack your Chrome! Also, check out this blog post for instructions on installing the themes.

Cheers!

whoa, Avant!

2008-09-25T17:20:00.001-07:00

Yes, despite being sick, I shall put up some posts. =)

I recently tried out the Avant Browser again. It is actually a shell to Internet Explorer, something I already knew, but a very impressive shell at that. The interface seem fairly cluttered, but it is brimming with features. Useful features, at that. Some of them are: mouse gestures, an ad blocker (which seems to have a preloaded list! woot!), add-ons and IE add-ons support, and an online browser data storage service (Bookmarks, RSS Feeds, AutoFills). Also interesting and kind of cool is the ability to display multiple web pages at once; in windows inside the browser, really. I remember someone saying a browser that could display multiple pages at once would win them over. Well, there you go. Pretty easy, too, just cascade or tile horizontally or vertically.

The reason I uninstalled it again this time (though I reinstalled it to write this)? It kept setting IE as my default browser. But it doesn't seem to be doing that now… hmmm.

Ugh… I hate being sick :(

2008-09-25T16:59:00.001-07:00

I have blown my nose what seems to be a numberless amount of times today (depleting the school tissue supply a bit) and sneezed enough times to expect to have to go chasing after my head the next time. I hate having a cold.

the economy is exploding!!!

2008-09-23T17:35:00.001-07:00

I could say it's not as bad as the post title sounds... but... well... it is. I don't claim to be an expert, in fact Matthew took Economics class in high school, whereas I haven't, but in any case, the US economy is starting to bend, or rather snap, under the load of debt. This debt has been blamed on people not being able to pay back housing loans, and lending companies going broke because of it. Lehmanns went bust, but the US government bailed out AIG out with a $85 million loan, I think. They've also bailed out a bunch of other companies, too... to be honest, I'm not quite sure what's happening right now, but I do know huge package (like $700 billion) to support the companies that are going broke is being hashed out in the government.

Sorry.... this post is a little scrambled... but oh well, maybe I can write more and better later... feel free to help out, Matthew. :p

TCP/IP

2008-09-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Edit by Nathaniel; December 11, 2008: I found out this is pirated. Phooey. So... link removed and you can buy it here in hard copy, PDF, or both.

Check this [link removed] out if you want an in-depth explanation of TCP/IP.

Edit by Nathaniel; September 23: Just warning you, this is a 12.7 megabyte PDF, so if you have a slow internet connection like me... now you know. Ta!

that Chrome thing...

2008-09-18T17:19:00.001-07:00

Google's released the first beta of their browser, Chrome, on September 2. Of course, it might be in beta for years, but anyway... the browser's features and some of what's under the hood were known the day before from a comic that was leaked onto the internet. The comic has since been released by Google. Google then released the browser a day early.

Chrome gained usage share quickly, surpassing Opera, in fact. At least for a while. It's currently at 0.68%, according to Net Applications. Check out their Chrome tracking for updated info.

And my opinion....

It's pretty sweet. The browser is lightweight and very usable. It feels like an awesome minamilist meld of Safari and Firefox. I really like the UI. And... add feed management, and then really nobody should use IE!

Of course, the browser is having it's share of troubles, such as being affected by the 2 second stop Flash bug like Firefox, or getting Hotmail's gander up because of the browser's user agent, which, interestingly enough, includes Safari and Mozilla.

So... I like Chrome. But it's not replacing Firefox for me. Except for one thing. Gmail. I use Gmail in Chrome as an application, which works much like Prism in Firefox. It's pretty speedy with Gmail, and the cache keeps loading time pretty quick, which is great because I'm on dial-up. And I don't have to reload Gmail if I have to restart Firefox or it crashes.

And... some links.

Wikipedia article for the technical rundown.

Grand Stream Dreams has two good posts on Chrome, here, where he shares a bunch of links, and here, where he pokes Chrome with a stick; reccomended reading, as he points out the real installer of Chrome (since the installer downloads Chrome from the internet) and also points out a sweet way to get the nightly builds.

September 19, 2008 Edit: Hmm, I forgot to post a link to Chrome. Lol. Download Chrome.

New (to me) camera.

2008-09-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

I got this camera at a yard sale in Moscow, ID for $15. It's a Canon Rebel EOS Ti 35mm. Here is the camera, and the User Manual, which was nice since it didn't come with the camera. I don't mind that it's not digital, and it is quite nice, so I'm looking forward to experimenting! =)