I have a habit of pushing things that I like onto my friends, family and basically anyone who will listen. When I first fell in love with the Franklin Day Planner I extolled it’s virtues till I was blue in the face. Later came the PalmPilot and I’ve been carrying on about that awesome device since 1997! My most recent ‘favorite thing to talk about’ has been Movable Type and creating your own weblog. Well, my buddy Dan finally yielded and created his own.
Month / October 2003
Are You Ready For A Revolution?
Some people may not like the fact that they are older when they have a birthday, but when you receive 3 tickets to The Matrix Reloaded at the local IMAX theatre for the opening night, it’s hard not to like your birthday! Of course I don’t mind getting older, so birthdays are always fun, but this one was extra sweet.
In addition to the tickets to the The Matrix, I also received the The Matrix Reloaded DVD as well as some great clothes, cigars, money and a gift card to Barnes & Noble (which I desperately needed). Although all the clothes that I received are great, one of the standouts was a T-Shirt that Holly got me. It’s a special Tour de France official 100th anniversary T-Shirt. It’s very, very cool.
I’m With The Band
Have you ever had that perverse little thrill when you find yourself on the inside of something you think is cool? Maybe it’s a clique, or a special event and you find yourself on the inside of what’s happening and you suddenly that you’re special. It’s a really cool feeling and that happened to me the other day.
I was at my favorite cigar store, for a relaxing smoke after my NPUG Meeting. Those meetings leave me a little drained, so I’ve taken the habit of visting the cigar store and just hanging out. It feels good to be the customer and let someone else take the lead as it were. Anyway, I was sitting back and enjoying a Heilos natural and talking it up with the owner. We were on the subject of cigars we’ve tried and began discussing Cuban cigars.
<Mr. Peabody and Sherman>
For those that don’t know, since the Kennedy Era, we’ve had a trade embargo with Cuba. That means that bringing Cuban cigars into the US is illegal. I’ve smoked my fair share of Cuban cigars before, but they aren’t easy to come by. Usually, I come across one after somone has gone abroad and snuck a few back to the states. If I had to count, I’d say I’ve had maybe 10 in my lifetime. That’s not to say that they were the best cigars I’ve ever had. Most, if not all, of the famous tobacco growers have left Cuba long ago and started new plantations in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, etc. Although Cuban cigars can be quite good, I tend to prefer other leaf. However, Cuban cigars are hard to come by, so I still keep my eye out in case I find one. 😉
</Mr. Peabody and Sherman>
Creating A Photo Weblog
One of the things that has become very popular is something called a moblog. It’s like a weblog, but instead of posting text, you post images. This fad starting gaining in popularity earlier this year with the release of the camera phone. Since you have a mobile phone and the ability to take snapshots with it, it’s quite easy to simply e-mail the photo to your moblog and share it with the world. Although I don’t have a camera phone just yet, I created a moblog for this site anyway as a way to share snapshots that didn’t fit into my Photo Gallery. So even if you don’t have a camera phone, that’s no reason not to create a moblog.
My Mom recently returned from a trip to Seattle with two of her friends. I had loaned her my digital camera and she had taken 140 photos and wanted to share them with her buddies. Since she already has a weblog it seemed only natural that I add a photo feature to it. This sent me down the path of trying to find an easy to use solution for her website. I could create photo galleries like I have on my site, but she needs something easier to use. Something that didn’t require having to learn how to use FTP, or edit configuration files.
When Good Routines Go Bad
2003 has been a tough year for me. My consulting firm has been going through a lot of changes and looking back on it now, I also hit severe burnout from my overload of work during the summer. It was in July when I started climbing out of my quagmire of funk and thanks to a good friend of mine, was turned on to FlyLady.net. I began building new routines and slowly but surely began putting order and stability back into my life. I started with small baby steps and simple routines and gradually built up from there.
For example, my morning routine is to wake up and take Gracie for a quick pee. Then I put out her food and while she eats, I clean the kitchen, do the dishes and shine the sink. In the thirty minutes it takes for her food to digest, I write on my weblog and post an entry for the day as I eat my own breakfast. With an entry posted, I then take Gracie for walk in the backyard and down the hill so that she could do her business. After that, I do my “three S’s” and be in my office working by 8am.
A Strange Thing Happened On The Way To Reformat
After my post yesterday, I decided it was time to wipe out my hard drive and start fresh. Figuring it would only take a few hours, I thought I could steal a little time while I worked on a Linux server to rebuild my main PC. I put in my Windows XP CD and as usual I heard the drive spin up. I was closing a few applications before I shut down the PC to reboot and install when all of a sudden, I heard a “PUH” and something hit my leg hard. I looked down and saw the faceplate to the CD-ROM drive next to my leg along with several shards of what was my Windows XP Professional CD. The CD had exploded. :O
As I inspected the drive, I realized that the CD had disintegrated in the drive. There were pieces everywhere. Unable to open, or close the drive tray, I had to shut down the computer and remove the entire drive. Once disconnected, I disected the drive and tried to pull out all the pieces. They were everywhere! To make sure that I had them all, I began re-assembling the CD like a jigsaw puzzle. Slowly I began putting all the pieces back together. At one point, getting out the last piece reminded me of trying to get a guitar pick out of a guitar when it drops into the sound hole.
I’m Going To Drive My Friends Crazy
A few weeks ago I wrote how I had migrated Holly to the iMac, but that I had run into some hurdles running the 10.0.4 version of OS X and that I needed to upgrade to 10.2. My experience thus far had been mixed, but overall was positive. The OS X 10.2 CD that I purchased via eBay arrived and the following weekend I decided to make the upgrade.
Making A Backup
I hadn’t done all that much in the initial setup. I had Holly’s e-mail client setup and the St. Edwards Youth Choir in her address book. All of her main data is stored on a small windows server, but I had been unsuccessful in connecting to it. Even though she had very little data, I wanted to back it up and save from having to re-enter all of that information. Luckily I had a good friend who had my back. Mike Rohde is a long time Macphile and he had a contact with Apple that told him everything I needed to do to back up Holly’s data. I simply used an FTP client on my main Windows workstation and transferred the files to the server.
Web Video That Finally Works
I have been wanting to video conference as long as I can remember. Maybe it was the video phones from the Bond movies, but I’ve always thought that video connections were cool. I dreamed of the day that I could pick up a phone and actually see the person I was talking to. When broadband Internet finally landed a few years back, I was hoping that my fantasies of being able to talk to friends via the web would finally be realized. Unfortunately, I never found a solution that worked well, but a friend of mine may have found the holy grail of web video.
I have tried just about every video software out there. Microsoft’s NetMeeting, CUSeeMe, Yahoo’s SuperWebCam and everything in between. Could I see video? Sure, but the experience wasn’t great and adding audio to the mix didn’t make things any better. For my web site, I opted for a simple snapshot program that uploads a photos once every minute. You can see it on the webcam page.
Monkey Is Home!
On Saturday afternoon, Holly and I went to the vet and picked up Monkey from the hospital. He had been there since Monday, so we were quite happy when we heard the news that we could bring our baby home. However, just because he’s home doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods just yet. His liver is beginning to respond to the treatment and that’s great news, but we still have a long way to go.
With his feeding tube still in place, we have been feeding him every 4 hours by injecting his food directly into his stomach with a syringe. The food is called A/D and it’s a canned food that you can only get from your vet. We mix it with water and then draw it into the syringe. In the morning we have to add antibiotics and supplements into the food. At night, we add just the antibiotics. The vet originally said that we had to do the feedings 4 times a day, but given the amounts of food that we have to give him, it’s worked out to 6 times a day and sometimes as many as 8. It seems every time I turn around, it’s time to give Monkey more food. 😛
Matrix Overloaded
It’s hard to believe, but the third installment of The Matrix trilogy is almost upon us. It seems like just yesterday I was just frothing at the mouth to see The Matrix Reloaded and to be quite honest I thought my excitement for the final chapter to be somewhat waning. Of course that’s before I saw the Ultra Theatrical Trailer.
The Wachowski brothers never cease to amaze me. When the maximum quicktime preview that you can normally see is 640 x 480, they go and realease a better than DVD quality 1024 x 532 102MB file. Although I had seen the other three television trailers, I was totally unprepared for this ultra theatrial trailer. I’m not lying when I say this, after I watched it… I wept.
I may be the target demographic for these movies and simply acting out a pavolvian response, but I think Andy and Larry are cinematic geniuses. Regardless if you are a fan of their movies or not, they have done more to alter the future of visual arts than any other directors in history. Forget the fact that there hasn’t been an action scene in a movie that hasn’t been influenced by The Matrix, it seems that almost everything has been touched in some way. From advertising to eyeware, to even windsurfing. So I know that it can’t just be me that these movies resonate with can I?