lottadot

You didn't get mad

2011-05-26T21:26:00.001-04:00

I saw this over on imakeshinythings and thought it was interesting. That said, I agree with some of what the Teaparty believes (or I think they believe) but...

The actual author is unknown but he/she speaks volumes.

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks.

You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

No…..You finally got mad

When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

All in with Xcode4

2011-02-09T07:25:00.002-05:00

I've jumped on the Xcode4 bandwagon.
One word of caution, if you are using Hudson (now Jenkins?). Don't uninstall your existing Xcode3. Just 'move' it:


$ cd /
sudo mv Developer Xcode3

Now with your existing Hudson build environment, alter the builds to use /Xcode3/usr/bin/xcodebuild.

When you install Xcode4, it will install itself into /Developer, and you can begin playing with making Xcode4 projects auto-build with Hudson CI.

Computer sysadmin's becoming plumbers

2010-04-23T18:54:00.004-04:00

A sysadmin once had a problem with his pipes and he called a plumber to fix it. The plumber did his work and handed over the bill to his client. “WHAT??? So much for 30 minutes of work??” said the sysadmin. “I need to work whole day to earn this amount!”

“Well, my friend,” said the plumber, “when I worked as a sysadmin, I had to work whole day for this amount too.”

I'm not exactly sure where that joke originally came from, but it's still classic. Oh, and. I'm posting this with my iPad :)

Boosting Aperture 3 Performance

2010-03-04T09:53:00.002-05:00

There's an excellent discussion about performance expectations with regard to professional Apps in the Aperture Installation, Setup and General Usage Forums.

This guy, Kevin Doyle, who ever he is knows his stuff. And he's apparently spent a significant amount of his own time trying to help the forum members in that thread. It's over 9 pages in length.

While I do a number of things he's already mentioned, I had never tried defragging. I bought iDefrag based upon his recommendation. And the results? Fantastic! Aperture's even faster with a nice cleanly defragged volume.

So if you read that forum thread, and were hesitant about iDefrag, don't wait. It's worth every penny.

Aperture Facial Recognition

2010-02-15T12:26:00.005-05:00

When I think of Aperture 3's facial regonition, I think of the faces of all my friends and family. Smiling, joyous, not trying to hide their faces from my camera. However, Facial Recognition doesn't necessarily conform to my mind's meanderings about how it should be. Look at what Aperture correctly identified as a face from my library!

Aperture identified one of the faces that was painted on the chopper's tank! How cool is that?!? You should checkout the original photograph that shows the tank's detail.

Aperture v3 Upgrade Version Checklist

2010-02-15T10:43:00.005-05:00

This weekend I upgraded to Aperture Version 3. The process went so smoothly, I thought I would detail how I did it.

The upgrade process for Aperture isn't any different from the upgrade process for any other software. Nor even the process to upgrade from v1 to v2. The golden rule to remember is don't rush it. I know when my serial number came, I was practically drooling to "just upgrade". But I held myself back, because I knew if I did that, bad things could happen. Instead, I'd rather not be risking losing data and have a weekend where I'm pissed off. Here are the things I did to make it happen:

Went into Aperture, and deleted any projects/photographs that I could. The less data there is, the less time the upgrade will take.

Then I emptied the trashses. System, Aperture, etc.

Backups. I backed up everything. I backed up my OS drive, my Aperture drive. Everything. To do this I disconnected the Spolight drive, I turned the Drobo off. I also stopped Nambu (twitter), Dropbox, Evernote, etc. Then I fired up Super Duper and ran it's jobs. The process takes about 24 hours total. Not fun, but safety is priority number one.

Backed up the Aperture Library to as many different locations/hard drives as I could. When done, I dismounted and disconnected as many of these drives as I could.

Disk Utility. I ran the 'fix volume' (ie disk permissions) for each and every volume. Some consider this step as being overkill. I'd rather be safe, then sorry.

I renamed /Volumes/Applications/Aperture.app to Aperture_v2.app.

In Finder, I deleted where my Aperture Library normally was. I did this because I had 5 other copies of it, and I wanted to put the new V3 in the exact same location (ie a seperate hard drive, from my system drive).

Finally I downloaded, installed and ran Aperture V3. With it, I created a new v3 Library in the same location (same filename) as where the old v2 library was located.

Then I imported the v2 library. I started this process about 9am on Valentine's day (my wife was still asleep). By the time the evening came around (about 8pm) it had finished. To be fair, I don't know how long it took. It may have taken 2 hours, it may have taken 11 hours. I think I chose a good day to do the upgrade. I wasn't able to be on the computer at all. If I had been, I'd have probably been checking it every 5 minutes and wasted an entire day waiting for it to complete.

That's really the entire process I went through. Total time was about three days.

I don't intend to re-process many of the prior v2 projects that are now imported into the v3 library. I am doing it on the Cozumel project from our trip in December. I know I will want to edit more of those photographs (and post them to Flickr). The rest of the projects, I probably won't modify, so there is no need to reprocess them into v3.

For the curious, here's specific information:

Aperture Library size: About 120GB

Primary Aperture machine: Mac Pro, 2.28GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB Ram. Filled with 1TB SATA drives. 1 4-port fw/800 Drobo, many external drives (all collected over the years).

Backup Method: Superduper

The import: I did not turn off Faces/Geo-Tagging. Both were left on. (Infact, I'm naming faces right this moment).

Ohio Mega Millions Lottery not very Random?

2010-01-25T14:20:00.007-05:00

Do you play the Ohio Mega Millions Lottery? Do you always check your ticket's numbers?

We do play the lottery on occasion. Specifically, when the amount of the Mega Millions goes at or above 100 Million dollars. We do an office pool, $2 per person. We purchase the tickets at lunch, on the day of the drawing and then email a scan of them all to whomever participated in the group buy.

Here's where things get interesting. We purchased our tickets Friday, January 22nd 2010 at a local Columbus Ohio Lottery vendor. We do the auto-lotto, so that it generates the numbers for us.

One would think "auto lotto" would be fairly random.

One would be wrong! Look at the these two tickets!

The Ohio Lottery Mega Million's random ticket number generator gave *two* tickets with the exact same numbers in one setting. Even statistically speaking, this should *never* happen. Yet it did.

It's one thing if the ticket's a winner, but if it's not, then for every two tickets your purchase you may in affect only be purchasing one ticket's worth of chances to win the lottery.

(Note: I blurred out the actual main parts of the ticket numbers, because each ticket is actually a $2 winner.)

Mac Tablet Predictions: Mobile Bonus

2010-01-03T09:59:00.004-05:00

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon (daring fireball and John Siracusa), among many others by now...

Yes, it'll have a ~10 inch screen. And do graphics. And video. No, it's not CocoaTouch, it's CocoaTouch+. It'll have iWork installed on it (Siracusa). One of the things everyone's seemed to miss is the way the Tablet will pimp Apple's Mobile Me.

Many of the people who will purchase the new Apple Tablet at launch already own one Mac. Maybe even a Mac and an iPhone, but definitely one Mac. So they purchase a Mac Tablet (to be one of the cool kids? who knows). But they want all their stuff on the Tablet, just like their other machine. I mean, who wants to be in the computer room on the desktop iMac, then later lounging on the couch with the Tablet and not have their bookmarks syncing. Or not be able to get to their files? (How many mac people do you associate with that can mount remote disk shares from other computers?^[1]) If it's not "just there" on the Tablet, people will have "issues" with the device.

A simple Mobile Me subscription solves all this. Everything's in sync and the user doesn't have to do squat. And it's more income for Apple. It'll be another neatly wrapped tie-in to another Apple product that prompts you to open your wallet even further for Apple's coffers, and there'll be many many people in line soon to do it. Heck, just think of 125k developers, many of them will purchase the thing. Not that they'll use it but they'll most assuredly better become aquainted with it to write code for it, not to mention testing (and bragging on #iphonedev about your purchase). And yes, count me in that group that'll be buying it. <sigh>

^[1] I'm not harping on Mac users. Most windows users have the same issue. Hell, most computer users have the same issue.

Keeping up with Flickr

2009-10-22T09:46:00.003-04:00

A co-worker gave me a link to 10 Flickr Groups For Serious Shutterbugs. Which overall is a pretty good article. But...

I've found it incredibly difficult to keep up with the Flickr users. I tried to check the feeds of the groups I belong to to review their pictures. I can't keep up. And that's not even counting the attempts at trying to be involved with their discussion groups. I can blow a few hours each nite on the couch with the laptop trying to look at all the photos in the Flickr groups I belong to. And yes, I've tried RSS'ing them.

The system I came up with is to read the RSS feed for the local flickr user group. That way if there are events or discussion, or what-not, I generally read the new posts within a week. As to all the other Flickr groups that I belong, I've relented and don't participate in their discussion forums. I try to look at new photos posted once per week. Generally on the weekends when we are vegging in front of the TV at the end of the day.

Of course, there's also the emails, public comments and private comments that I receive from my own photo's. I try to respond to them as best I can - when it makes sense to do so. Someone quipping "Nice Photo!", that generally doesn't warrant a response in my book . I know there are some Flickr users who'll post a "thanks" comment for each one of the niceties that someone's posted on a photo's discussion thread. I'm not one of them. Not that I don't appreciate it, but a photo with 30 "thank you" comments? Nah, that's not me.

A real timesaver: summarize

2009-06-10T13:56:00.003-04:00

If you're like me, time over the course a weekday is very valuable. Free-time is scarcer then it's ever been it seems. But how would you like to get at least a few minutes back for yourself?

If you're a Mac user, remember the folllowing out-of-the-box key command: cmd-control-s. What is it? The "Summarize" service. Use this the next time you are surfing with Safari and you come across a long article, that you'd like to read, but don't really have the time to spend reading it. Highlight the text of the article. Press cmd-control-s. Use the slider to adjust the number of sentences and paragraphs in the summary. Less time available means crank down the sentences and/or paragraphs. More time? Crank the slider up.

If an article has several pages, look for the "printable" version of the article. Choose it, and then use the summarize technique above on it.

This little key combination can save you loads of time. To be honest, I don't use it all the time. In fact, sometimes I'll go for a spell without using it at all. Then realize I've been "wasting my time" by not using it and pick it up again. :)

How long do you keep old machine backups?

2009-04-05T09:05:00.002-04:00

I'm spring cleaning the computer room. No, I've not moved anything physically. Rather, I've powered on all the old hard drives and and backing up, backing up the backups, verifying the backups are working (or have worked) etc etc.

One of the drives is a full backup of my old G5 PowerMac tower (which I need to sell. If you're interested, let me know). It was replaced by the current machine, a Mac Pro Tower in late 2008.

Why do I still have a backup of it the old G5 machine?

Do I absolutely need that backup?

I don't think I should. I "migrated" the old machine to the new (via OSX's migration tool, when you buy a new machine).

One would think that the fact it was migrated alone would alleviate the need for keeping the backup of the old machine.

Yet, here I am, looking at this drive, thinking I should format it, relabel it and use it for some other task. Have I formatted it? Nope. Will I? Probably not. Unless I need the diskspace. Which ATM I don't think I do. So the drive will continue to sit there, unused, untouched. But just incase I need a file from the old machine, which I would have deleted from the current machine, there the drive sits.

And the G5 still sits in the corner of the room, ready and packaged to be sold, and that's still not done yet either. Procrastination++.

Face recognition in photographs: OpenCV and iPhone

2009-03-29T07:31:00.005-04:00

Last Wednesday at our March 2009 Central Ohio Linux User's Group meeting (COLUG) the topic was Social Networking on the 'net. That of course led to some discussion about privacy. Inevitably the Google came up because of it's intertwining of it's services. Case in point; Gmail and Picaso. Upload photos to Picaso, and it can start matching faces in photographs with people you know. Are you sending those pictures through Gmail at all? Who's in your contacts in Gmail?

jawildman demonstrated how the facial recognition worked within Google's Picaso. It's amazing technology that seems to work very well.

Hence the reason for this post. After the meeting I stumbled upon OpenCV. OpenCV is "A computer vision library" that focuses mainly on real-time image processing (thanks Wikipedia).

And someone's done the work to link the library to your XCode iPhone projects: Using OpenCV on iPhone. How cool is that? They even took the time to wrap it all up in a nice git-clonable repo with example iPhone Xcode project that'll run in the simulator and "just work". It seems to work quite well.

Now to come up with some iPhone Application ideas that could use this and sell well in the AppStore. ;)

Can books be cursed?

2009-03-22T14:12:00.002-04:00

A while back I was reading "When Ghosts Speak". If you've viewed the front page of this blog, it shows that I'm 'reading it'. Well, I was. I finished it. I didn't update the blog. Yes, I need to. I will. soon.

But that's not the point of this post. I was reading that book and "Ghosts amoung us". I didn't feel anything odd while I was reading them, but my wife did!

She just brought this up the other day by saying something towards "Those books gave me kreeps". I was surprised, and noted that I didn't recall her saying anything about it when I had the books here from the library (for a total of about a month). She says that she mentioned it a number of times. I don't recall this.

But what she did say is that she felt like someone was here with us while I was reading the books, and left when the books left.

What's weird is that I've always considered myself more psychic then her, if I am psychic. I get vibes from people. I believe I've seen spirits a few times.

But I didn't get a feeling off the books at all. In fact, I quite enjoyed reading the books and thought I got a lot out of both of them.

My mom's since given us a few quince seeds, which I need to put above the doors. My wife took one and put it in her purse, but I don't think the quince seeds are intended for that use. Anyone know?

I wish my laptop...

2009-01-30T19:28:00.002-05:00

I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2008), 17", 4GB Ram. I received it two xmas's ago from my employer. It was s'posed to be my "main machine" that I'd use for everything. The laptop held up to that requirement for a bit, but then...

Then we switched from a LAMP shop to a .Net shop. It's a vast change that affected everything.

Including my needs as the developer/network admin/sql-dba. I knew I could run Visual Studio via Parrallels or VMWare just fine. I had never tried running it 24/7, along with MS SQL admin tools and various other win32/64 apps. I quickly found out 4GB of RAM really wasn't going to cut it.

And that's where this blog entry comes in. I wish laptop could handle 12GB of RAM. On the surface, that seems like an extravagent amount of RAM. However, run a WinXP VM, a Win2k3SVR VM (Sharepoint Devel), then run LAMP on the local machine (because we still use it, and seemingly always will, where it fits to be the "best tool" for the job that we have the authority to make the decision) and then XCode for Cocoa. And what do you have at the end of the day? a 10GB RAM requirement.

That's what I have on my new Mac Pro tower, and it flies. I wish the laptop could have done it, I'd still use it as my one and only machine.

Why business phones are awesome no more

2009-01-10T11:16:00.002-05:00

When I first started in IT, I thought getting a pager was the coolest thing. I could carry it around, almost like a badge. "See, I'm important!" it yelled to everyone. "Everyone can contact me" whenever needed! Of my group of friends, I was the first to get one. I was kewl. At bars I looked like someone important. I could pickup chicks with it because they could see I was "the man". I dreamt of the day of having a work-provided cell phone, because though I wanted a cell phone, they were much too expensive at the time to justify the monthly.

Years later, I graduated to my first personal cellphone. It was now a badge of importance. By this time in my life I was married with kids and house in the burbs with my very own brick of a cell phone. It was convenient to have, and one typically justified the monthly cost as "I need this".

The curse of curses was soon to arrive, I just didn't see it in my headlights. It came around the corner in an awesomely brilliant flat-black motorola disguise, the Nextel.

Over time I moved IT jobs just like everyone normally does when they're young. I had recently moved to a new venue. They suggested that with the importance of IT ever-increasing, IT needed cellphones. We received Nextel phones. We were the only staff provided phones. We were l337.

It took only about a week or two for the honeymoon to wear off. When you are on the couch for the evening and someone from work beeps in "Shane, Shane are you there. I thought of something" and then 10 minutes later does it again... and again. When your wife ends up describing the phone as "that damned beepy thing" and "if you don't shut it up I'm going to throw it in the toilet". When your heart skips a beat and you cringe anytime you hear the Nextel beeps no matter where you are, you know something's not quite right.

Luckily it only lasted about a year. It turns out the Nextel coverage out where we were wasn't all that great. We were missing calls and having connectivity issues.

Our phones were upgraded to Sprint phones. I liked this phone very much. I could tap into it to get online when needed with my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8000 I believe, cool at the time but now viewed as a "brick"). This phone was reliable, the coverage was excellent. It was tiny and silver and with the remote connectivity was everything I'd ever wanted in a phone. I pulled old code from my sourcecode repo's from the pager-days for announcements. Our equipment and systems SMS text'd us as needed. Even threw a nice little perl scripted web page up so people could SMS page easily enough.

Alas, this too was not to last. We weren't the only ones given phones. This time it was corporate bigwigs that were using Sprint phones with us. And it turned out some of them weren't having much luck with reception.

When our contact was up, we switched to Verizon. All staff who had phones sang with glee. Except me. I was quite happy with my prior phone. We were told Verizon would give us the best coverage. Which some of our staff do agree with. But not me, I wasn't having problem-free reception. And I couldn't just tap into the phone's bluetooth to get online with a laptop. Oh no, Verizon plays games with crippling phone's bluetooth protocols. So you can't always sync your phone's contact information in/out. And you certainly cannot assume that you'll be able to use the phone's bandwidth to get your laptop online.

We've stayed with Verizon for quite a few years (still are to this day, in-fact). We'd even been upgraded from the normal tiny cellphones to the WinMobile PDA/phones.

I hated these WinMobile phones. Winmobile (was it 4? or 5?) version at the time sucked. Slow. Crashed all the time. I immediately begged for a different phone. Nope, this one's what everyone wants, it has a keyboard and everything and you can get your Outlook on it". Sigh. (To my supervisor's credit, he did bend over backwards and was able to finagle a choice for me, but the choice was a phone without Bluetooth or one with but Verizon had hacked it so bad no one who had it could get online. Though I had a choice, I really didn't).

The phones we were given just flat out sucked. They crashed all the time. Eventually only a full reset helped. But you had to put all your information back into it every-time you did a full reset. Once, ok. Twice, no problemo. Tenth time, forgetaboutit! Slowly, but assuredly, it turned out I wasn't the only one having such problems. A staff revolt ensued. People were missing calls. Their phones crashed. Verizon sent us new "black" versions of the phones that were supposedly better. For a short time period they were. But they really were not.

Fast forward to this past year. It was deemed these WinMobile phones had to go. Viva La Revolucion! I rejoiced! We were about 3 months from the supposed iPhone 3G rollout. That's the phone I wanted. Everything I had read signaled this would be the phone to have for quite some time.

But wouldn't you know it, I was presented with a shiny silver box from Verizon. My new shiny silver Blackberry phone arrived! They had bought everyone Blackberries. Why? So everyone can "stay in touch" and "your Outlook is in it" and "it has a keyboard" and "it doesn't crash".

Keep in mind this was done about 3 months before the 3G iPhone was announced. I pleaded this was a rush decision, that we should have at-least waited for the new to-be-released iPhone to appear to make a decision. Nope. This was it.

I had joined the Crackerberry gang.

People that I knew, that had a Blackberry, welcomed me. "Your one of us now, young Padawan" they said. "You can download stuff on this and use it as an mp3 player" (I was already on my 2nd or 3rd iPod by then). "You can reply to your email wherever you are" they exclaimed.

Blech! By this time, I didn't want to be connected 24/7. In-fact, I was damn well tired of it. Sure, I have IM running most days and nites. Yes, IRC too. But that's to "my electronic life". It's to keep in touch with people on freenode and open source projects and side-work. I will admit I use IM to communicate with a select few of my real life friends that are electronically inclined.

Most of my friends don't know what IRC, IM and Twitter are. They have a cell and they use SMS. Some have a gmail or some-such free email and only occasionally check it.

When I go home, I can turn these things off if I choose. In-fact, I can turn the entire computer and network off if I like and it in silence and read a book. Or go take some photographs. Whatever it is, I can disconnect and be in peace.

You can't turn the blackberry off. You can't stop it from beeping that there are new corporate emails because someone from work couldn't sleep and are emailing at unGodly hours.

And if you do turn it off?!? The faithful scream "but you're not supposed to turn it off!! You'll miss something!!".

I did not like the Blackberry phone. The UI was horrid. The browser was severely lacking and painful to use. They keyboard was small, the keys were lit with a blue that made it hard to see them. People will be quick to point out this is not blackberry's fault, but the phone manufacturer's. Yes, I know. Guilt by association.

But worst of all, I did not like the fact that I could not seemingly keep my work information on the phone totally separate from the personal stuff when I synced the phone. In iCalendar, I had two calendars, one for each. I use Exchange for work, and various pop/iMap for personal (ie gmail) picked up with Mail.app. Everything was kept 100% separate, even contacts. I was told the answer was "well just put everything Outlook".

Say what?!? That's totally *not* what I want. I don't want anyone at work to know that from 6-8pm I'm going to Lady Heather's place for a 2 hour wild session. (ahem joke...).

I was just tired of being on call 24/7 all the time. "But the website's important, it can't go down". "You need to be online all the time". Yes, I realize this has nothing to do with the Blackberry, per se. It's corporate policy. Many would say "If you don't like it, leave" I suppose.

Uh, no. 100% uptime is what you want? Then buy a load balancer set and redundant equipment. Shell out the cash for infrastructure. Make it happen.

When the iPhone 3G came out, I waited in line and bought one. I spent that week investigating it, to see if I could do everything with it that my Blackberry did.

It did (and more!), and I gleefully turned in my Blackberry.

Yes, that's right. I said it. I willfully gave my Blackberry back. I gave up my free ~$85/month phone.

My neighbors and friends with Blackberries did not understand how I could do such a faux pas. "I'd give anything if my employer gave me a phone" I heard that several times. I heard the "You're an idiot" in some people's breath or in their tones. People casually whipped out their Blackberries and demonstrated how easy it was to do the things they do with their phones. They eagerly showed me, visually showed me, sometimes stepping into my face near forcefully, that I was insane and must come back to the fold.

It's been near 6 or 7 months now that I've left "the clan". The past year has seen some of the quietest, most stressless (from work, anyway) times that I can ever recall. I'm not reading work email all the time. I'm not on a beck and call.

And I absolutely love my phone. It works. It works as advertised. My work and personal information is on it, and it's 100% seperate. If I need to, with a click, it can sync back and forth with work's systems giving me email and calendar and contact information. Or not, if that's what I want. Most amazingly of all, I can code up whatever app I want for it if choose to (which I do!). This phone is one of, if not the best gadget, that I've ever purchased. It is so useful, that this is the first time in my life that if I lost the phone I would really be "lost" because of the conveniences it provides.

For those of you who may have read all of this, take heart. Load balancers and equipment for redundancy were ordered too!! The light at the end of the human-on-call-for-24/7-uptime is shining!!

Cocoa programming for Tiger

2009-01-01T20:20:00.002-05:00

I believe I have the old version of the Hillegass Cocoa Programming for OSX (link) laying around somewhere. I haven't had a need for it for a long time now. It's not new, it was read a few times over years. If you're in Central Ohio and you're interested in having it, drop me a note. If you're still running tiger and have thought about becoming a Cocoa programmer, this is great book.

Evolve TV show

2008-12-22T21:27:00.004-05:00

The history channel has a really fascinating show out called Evolve. We've only caught two of them so far (I'm typing this while we are watching one about sealife. The Indonesean mimic octopus is just amazing). Catch the show if you can!

PS I'm testing writing and posting this from my iPhone. So far, so good; I'll see how the browsers render it tomorrow one the laptop.

Success with iPhone Provisioning Profiles

2008-10-25T17:17:00.006-04:00

I spent all day (literally, all day) trying to setup my iPhone app such that it would run on my physical iPhone. For those of you who have problems, some of this may help you.

My application has always run OK in the simulator. Since I've had the phone for a few months now, and I'm recently a certified Apple iPhone Developer (paid the $99 too) I thought it was about time to get my app on my iPhone.

I just didn't think it'd take me an entire day. And by entire - it was actually more then a day; I had setup my 'Team' and done the root CSR request about a week earlier. Over the span of the week, I had skimmed the documentation. And I had scheduled today, the entire day for iPhone stuff. Meaning code, and putting the app on the phone.

I started this morning. Followed the doc's in the how-to tabs. And had absolutely no luck. From the dreaded (0xE800003A) error, to (0xE8000001), "handle_install: Installation failed", (0xE800003A) Verifying Application, etc etc. "

Late this afternoon I gave up; I shut everything down, rebooted, deleted /Developer, rebooted, then downloaded Xcode 3.1.1 and the 2.1 iPhone SDK. And proceeded to start over.

After all the installations, then I went into Xcode "documentation" and let it "download" . Then I devised a strategy - I had been doing bits and pieces of trying different things all da long -- things people suggested in Apple's Developer Forums and many other "non-official" sites (easily findable via the Google). I decided I would start completely over with my developer setting as well. Here's what I did:

Deleted Xcode and iPhone SDK (mentioned above) and reinstalled. I don't think you must reboot, but after an XCode installation your boot cache's will be updated so I think it's a good idea to do the reboot.

I deleted ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/*.

I went into the iPhone Developer Program and revoked my certificate and re-did it, as well as deleting all of my provisions.

Then I created a new app ID. I called it "My Application Suite App ID" . I gave it a wildcard. Why? Well, the more I'd read, the more I decided this was the correct way to do this. It would let me put any iPhone app that I compiled on my iPHone. Oh, and don't use the "App ID Name" of "test". I spent the afternoon getting frustrated trying to get all this to work. The system does not seem to like things named with 'test'. YMMV.

Once the Privisioning is approved and you can download it, drag and drop the file onto XCode. That installs it.

Now, take the iPhone, goto settings:general::profile and delete any out of it. reboot the phone. launch xcode, then plug the phone in. switch xcode and goto the organizer (cmd-control-o) and make sure your provision is added (checked) to the iphone device. One the phone it'll look like this:

Now we create a simple Xcode app to see if it'll even run on the phone., In Xcode, cmd-shift-n for a new project. It will be of type iPhone Navigation-Based-Applicaiton. (The following is in the iPhone Develper Docs, but I'll quickly summerize for the sake it): Call it 'Foo' or whatever. Expand the Targets folder in "Groups & Files". Click on 'Foo' within the Targets folder. Click the "info" blue-circle icon in the top bar of the window. Switch to 'Build' Tab. There's section called "code signing". You want to change the "iPhone Developer" to "iPhone Developer: Firstname Lastname" and they "any iPhone OS Device" to the name of your provision, namely in my case "My Development Provisioning Profile". Close the window.

Then test it all cmd-r. In a minute or so the app should be running on your phone. Not that it'll do much, but that's left for you to hack at :)

There were a few sites I found helpful in figuring all this out: preflightingapplication errors (0xe8000001), mac rumors forums, Debugging iPhone provision profiles/certificats and Apple's discussion forums.

Apple iPhone Developer Tech Talks

2008-10-10T11:30:00.002-04:00

Apple Launches iPhone Developer Tech Talks.

I suppose that explains why Apple held that NDA out so long. By doing so, no one could have possibly usurped Apple with their down Developer Conference/Talks.

5x5 week 3 review

2008-10-06T16:57:00.003-04:00

I'm a little late posting my week #3 results. However, I made it to the gym everyday and added cardio...

I added 10 minutes of cardio on an eliptical machine after the workout. I did it twice. On Friday, I ran out of juice and skipped it. But to make up, over the weekend I went and did about 45 minutes worth of cardio.

Is it working? I think so. I'm feeling stronger. My shorts are now nearly falling off me (I'm going to have to buy some belts). I'm not going to bother posting the weights, since I'm on track (or better). The 5x5 suggests only measuring your fat/weight every 2 weeks. Given that, and the fact that I forgot to do that this past weekend, I'm got nothing to report on that front either.

I intend to do that this Saturday morning, however. I will post the information hopefully Saturday morning.

Ohio would be PERFECT for this

2008-09-29T09:30:00.001-04:00

There is one project that would jump-start the Ohio Economy and put Ohio on the map for some years; High Speed Rail.

California is attempting to build a high speed train system that would connect Anahim, Los Angeles, Fresno and San Francisco. They have launched a $9.9 billion state bond offering to finance the proposal.

Ohio needs to do the exact same thing. Such a train system would connect Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. Phase two could connect Toledo, Akron/Canton and the South-East Appelachian area. Phase three could go to Indianapolis, Detroit and Pittsburgh.

This is what's wrong with blogging

2008-09-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

People post crap. They make a "huge issue" of "something important" yet don't do due-diligence to research it. Then they look like idiots for barking about something that is a non-issue.

Case in point: Ars's Apple's patch release policy is a concern for enterprise IT (be sure to see Gandhim3
's comment further down the page). Anyone who has a responsibility with managing a bunch of machines (whether Windows, Mac, Linux, Sparc, etc) has the responsibility to read the documentation and learn the recommended methods of management. It's called common sense and "Best Practices".

In this case, anyone w/o their head up their ass would know about ARD. And if you team it up with a neat little piece of hardware called an Xserve with OSX Server and a little bit of reading you find out there's an entire community of people doing this. And they have discussion forums too: Apple Remote Desktop Forum, Mac OS X Server Forum.

Neat, huh?

It's articles like these that remind me why I quit reading Ars a few years ago. Maybe I'll delete it from my rss feeds yet again.

P.S. I love that "Dear sophisticate IT manager morons..." :)

My photo at the Rubin Museum of Art

2008-09-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

One of my wildlife photos is being used with an exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art, in New York.

It's in their "Family Programs" Bhutan exhibit The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan.

For those that have never heard of a "Takin"; Takin Information.

My Photo's famous!

2008-09-28T06:41:00.005-04:00

One of my Portland Photo's has been used in a local visitor's guide!

Personally, it's not "one of my best". It was early in the morning, hazy. But the Eco-Tour was an absolute blast. I'd do it again in a heartbeat the next time I'm out west.

Here's a link to the visitor's guide.

2nd week of Stronglifsts.com 5x5 Report

2008-09-27T05:22:00.004-04:00

This is my report after doing 2 weeks of the Stronglifts 5x5
Beginner Strength Training Program. I intend to post regular updates that detail how it's going.

Oh Gawd I'm sore

My whole body is sore; legs, ass, back. The only solace I have is it's a "good sore". It wears off late in the the 2nd day (ie the day after you lifted).

Realizations

Some things I've learned:

Make sure you have everything in your gym back the nite before. (I lift first thing each morning)

Don't leave home w/o your notebook to know which routine you should do, and the weights you should be using (I did)

My gym needs another squat rack

People that use the smith machine for squats, I have to try not to look at them like they are chumps

My gym needs more 2.5lb weights

That prone position for 90 seconds makes my whole body shake! It literally pulls all the last remaining energy I've got straight out of my body

Goals

How'd I do with my basic goals?

I did not miss a workout! Check!

I did not falter and mis a rep! Check!

While both of those made me feel good, I have to realize I'm using extremely light weights; the level of impressiveness is directly relational to the amount of weight you are using :)

I made 1 consequential mistake this week. I forgot my "gym card" so I didn't know what weights I should be lifting. Rather then drive all the way back home @5:15am, I guessed; luckily I guessed high, and was able to do the weight. This made my squat and bench jump more then it normally would have from my week 1 results.

Overall, I'm having difficulty not adding more weight. I am feeling very confident I could do significantly more weight on the deadlift. I have to work hard to resist the temptation not to throw another set of 45's on there. I keep telling myself "use light weight to learn proper form, and build slowly. The thing is, I'm not conditioned for slow. I want my code compiled quickly. I want to drive vehicles quickly. I want to see my fat be 10% and my squat near 300lbs and I want it now! ;)

I am also having difficulty deciding on the weights to warm up with on the squat. Friday, I did: bar-barx5,bar+20,+20,bar+45 x 5,bar+45+20 x 5,bar+45+40 x 5. I think those were too much. I was more worn out by the time I completed the 5x5 squats then I've ever been. I don't know if it was because I did too many warmups that sapped my energy; or maybe it's because of the additional weight, or maybe it was because it was Friday morning and I was just plain tired from the week of work. I don't know.

My progress

Pre-Start specifics

My Weight and Fat Percentages
Week	Weight	Gut	Body-fat [1]
PRE	250	43"	20.0%
1	245	43"	19.6%
2	241	43"	18.6%
[1] using healthcentral.com's measurement method

5x5 Week #2 Results

Here is how I managed to do, weight-wise:

How much I've lifted
B	lbs	A	lbs	B	lbs
Squat	165	Squat	175	Squat	180
Press	80	Bench	175	Press	85
Deadlift	145	Inverted Row	3xF	Deadlift	155

Overall

My muscles are harder, sorer. My legs are stronger - I've noticed I'll do stairs 2 at a time like when I was much younger, without thinking about it. Though my fat percentage says it's lower, I'm not feeling it. I'm not seeing it either, my body looks as fat as it's looked for many years now.

1st week of Stronglifts.com 5x5 Report

2008-09-21T10:11:00.003-04:00

This week I started the Stronglifts 5x5 Beginner Strength Training Program. I intend to post regular updates that detail how it's going.

Why?

Because I'm out of shape. I'm in my late 30's. I feel like I have a body of someone in their late 40's. I sit at at desk all day writing code. When I do get out (to mountain bike, hike, hunt, gardening, housework, whatever) I'm sucking wind and my back is sore.

I know my core is out of shape. I can feel it.

When I've tried some of the stretches that are recommended in the 5x5 forums I've found that I have great limitations in my lower back, hips and thighs. My range of movement in all of them is pathetic.

I think all of this is related to me blowing a disk out a few years ago in my lower back. I believe my body wasn't meant to sit as much as I regularly do. I'm trying to undue years of this and institute a framework that I can exercise by for the rest of my life. ie "fix the core".

My Goal(s)

First one: just to do this, 3 times x week, like you are supposed to. That means waking up on time, getting to the gym on time. Going to bed on time.
Second one: increase strength 5x5 @200lbs squat (or more) at the end
Third one: use this to work toards decreasing my fat percentage to 10-12% over the next year or two.

Starting weights?

My first difficulty has been determining what starting weights to use. When I looked at the spreadsheet that people often use to track their progress (downloadble from the Stronglifts website on the 5x5 page, the bottom), I felt I could definitely lift more then it's starting weight on all exercises.

The question remainde: could I complete a 5x5 with a heavier starting weight? It doesn't matter if I can squat a max of 250lbs. If I can't do it 5x5, that's not where I needed to start. And if I can't do it with proper form, it doesn't count either.

I decided to go with the bar and 2 45's. That's 135lbs total. I figured "I should be able to do this".

After reading the stronglifts website, I found the mantra "Start light, focus on correct technique and add weight progressively. " so I knew I was on the right track.

At the moment I'm more concerned about form. I know I can lift more weight than this, but I want to train myself to have correct form and posture. Yes, I'm trying to undue years of messing around in the weight room (ie smith machine) off-and-on.

Starting Information

Pre-Start specifics

Pre-Start specifics

Weight	245
Height	5'9"
Gut	43"
Body-fat	19.6% ([1])

5x5 Week #1 Results

A	lbs	B	lbs	A	lbs
Squat	135	Squat	140	Squat	155
Bench	135	Overhead Press [2]	140	Bench	155
Barbell Row [3]	100	Deadlift	135	Barbell Row	135

Fat Results

Week #1 Fat Results

Weight	242
Height	5'9"
Gut	43"
Body-fat	19.6% ([1])

Overall

Overall I feel good that I completed the first full week. And I feel great. Friday taking the stairs at work, my legs didn't burn. My back didn't ache at the end of the day from being in the chair so much! I noticed I think my posture throughtout the day might have been more upright. Forcing myself to get out of bed @5am (and go to bed @9pm Sunday evening) is rough. There sure is a huge difference in the amount one can squat using the smith machine and not. I am glad I am finally not using it.

There is a new guy at the gym, doing a similar workout. We are intersecting on the gym's loan squat rack M&F. Not good. It slows me down.

I've found the B-workout, with the deadlifts, is a much faster workout then A. The dips, holy hell, do they end up zapping every once of energy I have left at the end of the workout (and by then, there's not much left let me tell you).

I'm sore. Yes, I admit it. I lift first thing in the morning. I get up @5am and drive to the gym. The rest of that day, I've not been sore. But about the afternoon of the next day, my ass my ass my ass!! So that evening when I get home from work I stretch and stretch and rub and stretch. I'm considering trying to implement some stretching/cardio/yoga on the Tuesdays/Thursdays inbetween each workout to help.

I did not "watch what I ate", however I did try to eat something more then 3 times/day. Which, by the end of the week, I had to! I was hungry about every 3 hours. Not the "I'm bored" hungry, the "my stomach feels empty and is now growling" hungry. I'm not too concerned about what I eat. My meals usually consist of:

My normal daily diet

Morning	Afternoon	Evening
Bowl of oatmeal, glass of v8, green tea	Leftovers from prior evening dinner or a baloney/turkey sandwhich, apple, banana, veggies, yogurt	Roast, Chili, Grilled Chicken, Grilled Pork, Spaghetti, veggies (steamed++), salad. Rarely desert.

So now I'm supplementing with a piece of fruit and maybe a granola bar @10am and 3pm. One day I ate a pre-dinner at 5pm. Dinner's normally at 6:30 (depends on when I get home from work too).

This week was also more difficult on the diet; my wife made a pan of Apple Dumplings the Sunday before I was to start this. It's a rare thing - about once every year or two. So each evening through the week we had Apple Dumplings ala-mode for desert.

[1] using healthcentral.com's measurement method

[2] I actually did Power Cleans here (ie going from the floor, all the way above my head, on each rep). Woops!

[3] Barbell Row or Power Cleans, your choice according to 5x5, just remember to alternate

A PhD qualifies you!

2008-08-25T10:59:00.002-04:00

Re: The Global Warming Petition Project

It would seem a PhD instantly qualifies you for a hell of a lot outside of your area of expertise.
Compare this to the people who actually study this stuff full-time: Climatology (40), Meteorology (341), Atmospheric Science (114). LOL.

Chuck Norris can fix everything

2008-08-07T16:47:00.001-04:00

This is classic: "Chuck Norris"-ing code

cuil must be better

2008-07-28T10:54:00.002-04:00

www.cuil.com must be a better search engine -- when you search for "Miserable Failure" you get both GW Bush's white house page and Jimmy Carter's page as well

AT&T's direct fulfillment deal for iPhone

2008-07-25T06:17:00.004-04:00

My wife's iPhone came in this week (Tuesday, infact). We picked it up last nite. I had ordered it from the closest AT&T Store 2 saturday's ago.

The direct fulfillment process was great. No long lines. No BS. When the phone shipped, I received an email notice. When it arrived at the store, they emailed me. We went it with her (now old) sprint phone. The guy ported the number. Tried to sell us accessories. And we were on our way home.

The next time we upgrade iPhones, I'm doing it w/ the fulfillment process. No lines, no bullshit.

So far she seems quite happy with it. Now she wants her own iTunes account, Jotta account, etc.

Everything's a changin'

2008-07-23T16:08:00.002-04:00

Of late, I've been geeking out. We are in the midst of changing everything. We've moved from CVS and CVSweb to SVN with Mantis and ViewVC (integrated, of course). We've moved from physical hardware to VM's. And we're moving from Perl and LAMP to Objective-C (Cocoa) and C# (.Net). Obviously I've been doing a lot of reading lately. These are huge changes and often by the end of the week my brain is fried. So far I'm hanging in there. We'll see how well this all works out in a few months.

iPod Touch app bundle solution

2008-07-22T13:36:00.005-04:00

A while back I posted about not being able to reinstall my iPod Touch's application bundle.

If found a solution....

Sell the thing on Craigs list and buy an iPhone v2 :)

The trouble is, after seeing the new phone, my wife wants one too.

iPod Touch application bundle won't reinstall

2008-06-25T13:29:00.004-04:00

I bought my IPod Touch 16GB new in Fall 2007. Loved it. When the January Application Bundle became available, I paid up and got the new apps. Loved 'em. Been using it ever since.

This week I needed to wipe all my information off the iPod. So I hit http://www.apple.com/support/ and started reading. I found HT1376 Installing, verifying, or reinstalling the iPod touch January Software Upgrade. Perfect, I can wipe it via a factory-reset and it'll reinstall the new apps. Just what I needed.

Ah but no. The new application bundle doesn't reinstall. I filed a support by clicking 'support' within iTunes itself. No answer.

So I went to the Apple discussions boards and found this thread: Restored iPod, can't get january software update.

Apparently I may not be the only one with this problem.

Since I've yet to receive a response from Apple wrt the support request filed in iTunes, I went ahead and sent email to support@apple.com explaining all this today.

We'll see if Apple's support responds and what they say. I've asked them to either send me the app-bundle, or make my iTunes account show it in the queue or tell me what to do to make the application bundle be reinstalled. That's all I want - the app's that I paid for!!

iPhone Orig vs iPhone 3G Cost comparison

2008-06-12T06:22:00.007-04:00

Erik doesn't like the iPhone 3G Pricing. So I thought I'd compare the numbers...

I put together a quick cost comparison spreadsheet on google docs. The way I see it, the new phone cost $6.00/mo more then the old phone did.

IMHO, If that's a deal breaker, you shouldn't be spending anywhere near $80/mo for a phone.

Ohio's Strickland is screwing up

2008-06-09T10:20:00.003-04:00

Re: State shouldn't limit flexible workweek

Strickland is screwing up (see Strickland takes away flexible hours and State workers back to 8-to-5). He's messing with state worker's schedules. He's making it more difficult for people with kids (single parents even more so), unionized workers and people taking classes to stay employed with the state.

Why does it take Strickland's office to deem such policies down upon management of State Agencies. Can't those whom run each agency not manage their own employees time, schedule and workload? Don't they know their own employees the best to judge how to handle them? Really, is the state going to lose money if an employee leaves for an hour to go to a dentist appointment and then work an hour late to make up the work?

With the brain-drain of higher-educated people leaving the state for jobs why would one create rules that prevent them from shifting schedules to take classes and/or training. That seems counterproductive to keeping a highly educated workforce.

If Strickland's moves are meant to drive people to leave state employment, it's working. Those that can leave, will. Those that can't leave, won't. Let's be realistic, those are the bottom dwellers that private employment would never employ in the first place. He'll claim that his leadership has saved the state vast sums of money. In reality, he's driving away from state employment those that are most wanted. He'll claim up front goals and savings. But just a few short years from now all state agencies will feel the pain two-fold.

I'm beginning to regret having voted for him. And that's saying a lot, because Taft's administration was a total flop. And they mention this guy from Vice President with Obama? The thought makes me want to scream!

Also related: Ohio State Workers Are Coping: It’s Now 8 to 5, With a 5-Day Week and Strickland Diet to Slim Down Government, Gambling Machine Expansion to Fatten Coffers

Why is China still a 'developing country'?

2008-05-22T08:34:00.003-04:00

So why is China still referred to as a "currently developing country"? (1/4 way down ) when they manufacture most of the goods that are purchased in the US? I mean, really, if a country has the infrastructure to produce that much, and the people enough to produce that much, and the infrastructure to keep all those people alive, they're no longer developing.

You can't argue that "the country is so vast that populations/parts don't have running water and electricity. Well, technically you can argue whatever you'd like. But the US has parts where there is no running water, and no electricity.

You can't use Government as a factor. They have one. It's stable. There are many countries that wish they had this.

If it's because parts of their population are uneducated (the same can be said about the US, honestly) - that's by choice of their government. Their government's making fistfulls of money yet they chose to only spend $19/student on textbooks. Does that make them a developing country?

So why is this? Will someone from the lazyweb please explain this to me?

You've got friends!

2008-05-14T20:46:00.008-04:00

Recall, from the sys-admin days of ol' (yes, we know you did your due and did the peon job years ago) the AOL sound "You've got mail!" that you'd hear buzzing from people's machines?

I saw the following picture in my email inbox. It made me think of that damned annoying "You've got mail" sound, but instead "You've got Friends". It seems in Ohio, once the weather gets a bit warmer everyone gets their camera out.

I guess on one hand it's "nice to have friends". The funny thing is, look at the dates. That second weekend in may there were a lot of shutters 'a clickin' :)

Lessons learned from a Nature Photography Newbie

2008-05-06T06:07:00.005-04:00

This past winter marks the second season which I have ventured out into the wilderness to photograph turkeys. This year, I made the trip out to the woods a number of times yet I had success on only three of those trips. Here are a few things I've learned which I think are the most important when attempting something like this.

Timing

Based upon my analysis, some of the trips were too soon - they weren't close enough to their mating season crazyness. In Ohio, March seems to be the month. January and February are too soon. You might see some then. But you won't see 50 birds at a time. April's no good too, the spring turkey hunting season starts. Depending on your location, these times will vary.

Competition

I also found evidence that someone's poaching on our land. We found black shotgun shells on our land near the house where the turkeys come up to. These shells are not our "color" nor our "brand" that we typically use. If I hit the lottery I would love to invest in some cameras to catch this person or these people!

Then there's the coyotes and the cats. Yes, I mean bobcats. Yes, they're in Ohio. Get over it. (so are small bears, for that matter). Apparently they enjoy a good turkey dinner as well. We've found a number of carcasses leftover in the woods nearby. Not much was ever left except feathers and claws. Nearly all were hens, for the curious.

Tips

So after sitting through sun, sleet, rain and snow, here are the top few things I learned while trying to photograph wildlife this year:

Always use a tripod. Don't leave home without it. If you do, drive back and get it. Just because your eyes think there's enough light outside that morning doesn't mean your lenses, filters and magnifiers will. Add in possible low-light and motion from the animals and you've got one thing - blur if you don't have a tripod.

Bundle up! It's far colder sitting in a metal chair outside in a blind then it is standing outside the house. The longer you are out there before the sun comes up (you are out there before the sun comes up, yes?) the colder it becomes, quickly! Like everyone says, wear layers. I found bringing different hats helps; as it becomes warmer I can ditch the thicker ones for thinner ones.

Valley's are cold! If you start at the top of a hill when you get to the bottom and setup your blind and equipment it's going to be colder down there!

Condensation kills! Be careful about condensation from your heat, your breath, the sunshine coming in and your camera. Especially if there's a frost and/or dew. If the tip of your lens is outside the blind, or near the opening and it's temperature is different from the rest of the camera you can end up with water where you don't want water.

Cold kills batteries! If you hadn't heard this before, then you've not been doing photography long or you live where it's not cold. Either way, the cold will suck the energy from your batteries like you cannot believe. Bring extra's. During the long lulls where you aren't seeing much action of your blind, don't hesitate to pull the camera from the tripod mount and stuff the body in your jacket.

Cold messes with LCD's. The LCD in the viewfinder on mine started acting up. Instead of f4.5 it looked more like f4.L. I've not figured out yet whether this is a flaw, or it was from the cold, or both. Nor have I decided whether or not to send the body to Canon for a fix. When the camera body's temperature was raised, the problem went away - that's why I suggested putting the camera body in your jacket (someplace warmer) when not being used. (If I knew of a way to get a picture of the LCD in the viewfinder, I'd be able to show this to you).

Diet. Don't eat that huge steak and potato meal the night before. And stay away from a lot of beer. Oh, and beans too. The next day in a small blind isn't pleasant. It can be extreme in a two person blind with two people! The point I'm getting at is you may have to adjust the size of your urin bottle and other necessary equipment to handle the fallout of the previous night's festivities. Use your best judgement here.

Stretch before you go out to the woods. You will be cramped in a blind for at-least half a day, maybe an entire day. If your body is nice and stretched out you won't cramp up being stuck in a chair in a small blind in a tiny space for hours on end. During the day try to stretch your limbs too. If you google on "office stretches" that people do in their office chairs, the premise for your situation in your blind is the same. Stretch as much as possible. You will be thankful you did it once you finally stand up and have to walk your gear back out of the woods.

Bring a watch, pen and paper. When you start seeing eyes and heads popping out of the brush, note the date and the times. Animals tend to be cyclical, especially if you are routinely spreading food out for them to eat. They'll come back and make your location part of their routine. Over time, adjust your estimated times based on sunrise and sunset. Some magazines, like Field & Stream will publish ~~sun tables~~ Solunar Tables that you can analyze and possibly use. (see Field & Stream Interactive Weather and Wildlife Best Times to Hunt & Fish as well as Sunshine Applet)

Lens cleaning equipment. You're bound to drag your nose across your lcd screen. You're bound to breath towards the camera thereby fogging up the lcd screen and viewfinder (note that this is the exact time the animals will pop out of the woods on you, when you can't see squat). If you'll be changing lenses you're bound to drop one on the ground it'll roll through the grass, weeds and snow. So bring a towel. Bring the normal lens cloth and other misc gear to clean them. Nothing kills the spirit worse then going back to camp, looking at your pictures and finding out there was dirt somewhere that's in every single frame you snapped.

Know when to leave. If you've walked in with all your gear, don't wait until you are bone tired to packup and leave. Leave sooner. There's no reason to be that tired when you've still got to packup and haul all your gear out of the woods. My gear isn't light, I can't afford those sweet lightweight tripods in the B&H catalog, mine's from eBay. So don't wait. Leave while you are ahead, especially if the walk is long and up hill.

The main thing is have fun. If you are lucky enough to have picked a good spot, you'll capture what you came for. If not, well then there's always everything else out in the wild.

America Celebrates Tax Freedom Day

2008-04-23T11:22:00.002-04:00

It seems today is Tax Freedom day.
I'd settle for it being a national holiday so we all get the day off from work. That'd make it something meaningful for me.

Blackberry server names

2008-04-23T10:43:00.003-04:00

The person at work responsible for ditching these Godforsaken Motorola-Q's did a trial period with an iPhone. But couldn't get iMap to work. And since it doesn't do native Microsoft Exchange (yet), it's been deemed we should all switch to something that does - so we are to have Blackberry's. Needless to say, this has had some in the IT department jabber channel bemoaning a bit. Consequently, being the good selfless IT staff that we are, we were helping our server minion setup the required-in-house-blackberry-server. (No, we didn't do any physical work, not even any clicking on 'install.exe', that's his job!) Here's what we came up with:

Elderberry

Shrubbery

ElderBerryShrubbery

wishiwasaniphone

whenIgrowupIwannabeaniphone

I don't understand Twitter

2008-04-23T10:35:00.004-04:00

There, I said it. I don't understand Twitter. Or more accurately, I don't understand the need for Twitter.

Ya see, I don't want everyone on the earth knowing what I do 24/7. I sure as hell don't want to have to go and type what I'm doing, in, all the time, either.
And honestly, I'm not sure that I want, nor need, to know what all my friends are doing all the time, either. I'd much rather be sitting down having a beer with them, or chatting on IM/IRC with them. I'd even settle for talking on the phone, which I thoroughly loath talking on the phone. But it'd be better then getting tweets from all of them.
Am I becoming an old curmudgeon? Or lazy? Or am I just being a realistic non-geek who has better things to do with my time?
Update: apparently I'm not the only one: Twitter Away Your Life With Social Networking.

Printing a photograph for above-the-mantel

2008-04-20T08:52:00.011-04:00

I have only "professionaly" printed one of my photographs. I think the term to use is "Large Format Printing". I think the final size was 30x20. It was a request from someone who wanted it above their mantel. For this article's sake, let's assume it was similar to this one:

My problem was I knew next to nothing about printers. In fact, we have multiple color laser printers at work that do 8.5x11 normal sheet prints. Every single time I've attempted to use them, I had different results. Whether it was printing from driver version X, Y, Z, or color detail "high" or "photo" or printing straight from Photoshop or from Photoshop through Aperture. It all frustrated me enough that I've always tried desperately not to print anything. It's easier to email, post to flickr, .mac or just make a website/webpage to share the photos.

Then it just so happened that I went to a The Columbus Digital Photography and Photoshop Meetup Group meeting at a coffee house one evening and found out the organizer prints out many different photographs, some in very, very large sizes. I thought I'd hit the jackpot of knowledge! He recommended Signway Graphics . After much procrastination and surfing trying to figure out color spaces, bleeds, dimensions, pixel rules, etc, I relented and contacted Signway to have my print made.

And it turned out fantastic! Signway was great. The cost was very reasonable. You can take your photo(s) in on a USB drive/CD or email them. The owners are very, very, patient. I didn't know that much about how all this "print stuff" works.

Here are some of the things I learned through the process:

Just because an image looks good on a screen, doesn't mean it'll make a good print

Dark things on a photo on the screen will probably look even darker when printed. And unless that is the affect you are going for, lighten it up in Photoshop

color calibration with your computer screen(s) is imporant. If you find yourself saying "but at home it didn't look like that" you need to be calibrated!

Don't shoot JPG, Shoot RAW. When you shoot in-camera JPG's, the camera lets you choose the "quality", meaning it lets you choose the level of compression. Resizing, or up-sizing, a compressed JPG isn't all that much fun. Maybe if you know Photoshop better then I do. But the quality you'll get resizing a JPG versus resizing a RAW is not comparable. Use RAW!

Color mode: Always use sRGb color space, since that's what most printers use

Delivering the file: If you give a printer a PSD they seem to like that. Always save yours in compatibility mode incase you have a higher version of Photoshop then they do.

Resolution (Pixels/inch) versus print-size, you generally want 300, however, for a big print that you won't be physically close to you can go lower because the detail in the print doesn't need to be as clear. Your printer will be able to tell you what Resolution you should really be using.

The pixel-depth of your camera directly affects the maximum size you can print. (If you Google it you can find many charts that show estimates). The guyst of it is something like this:

Megapixels File Resolution Print Size

High Quality (300dpi) Max(150dpi)

4 2664x1632 8"x5.5" 16.5"x11"

8 3264x2448 11"x8" 22"x16"

10 4290x2800 13"x8.5" 26"x17"

Megapixels	File Resolution	Print Size
	High Quality (300dpi)	Max(150dpi)
4	2664x1632	8"x5.5"	16.5"x11"
8	3264x2448	11"x8"	22"x16"
10	4290x2800	13"x8.5"	26"x17"

So, when I compare my Canon 40D I get 3892 × 2586 (or 3888x2592). Which if you take a Pixels-per-Inch (PPI) of 300 that's 3888/300 = 12.96 inches wide by 2492/300 = 8.64 inches tall.

Whether I alter the PPI, downsize the photo, upsize it, or any combination thereof depends on the physical printing device that's being used.

You can use Photoshop or any image editting program to resize your digital file so you can print it bigger. Here is a link to a free how-to (using Photoshop). If you don't have photoshop, you can probably very easily adapt it to whatever image editting application you are using:

Resizing Practice Exercises for Photoshop CS2 Basics Lesson 2

This resizing seems to be an art in and of itself (like everything with this digital photgraphy stuff eh?)

I hope this helps someone. I'm definitely not an expert regarding any of this. But I spent a good bit of time surfing and skimming books at the library and Borders (and drinking coffee with the group!) trying to make heads or tails of it all. Hopefully this saved you some time.

One last prop: Signway Graphics.

Credits:

Canon 40d photo

Single parents cost taxpayers bazillions

2008-04-15T17:45:00.006-04:00

CNN posted an article from the AP titled Study: Single parents cost taxpayers $112 billion. The gist of it sponsors of the study are recommending lawmakers invest more money in programs aimed at strengthening marriages. Others, not associated with the study, question whether that's a good idea and instead recommend investing resources into programs for things such as job creation.

Such a program [bolster(ing) marriages] has been in place in Oklahoma since 2001; Texas last year earmarked about $15 million in federal funds for marriage education.

Let's see, what does a single parent need? Money? Yep, a job would help that (ignore child support). What about... oh... day care?!?. These states spending money on marriage-programs are fools. I wonder if those programs are being pushed by the religious right. The two states they mention, Oklahoma and Texas sure aren't known for their bible-beltedness.

Let me say it again - day care. A big third is education. And they can't take courses if they don't have day care. And most of them can't have day care without money.

Well, in Ohio single women used to have dirt-cheap near-free daycare if they were in school too. But our recent block-head governor got rid of that.

But what about Vermont?!?

2008-03-03T20:45:00.002-05:00

I have not seen a single poll regarding tommorrow's primary in Vermont. As an Ohioan, I am truly concerned about what's happening in Vermont. Obviously, their results are going to influence so much of our future.

heh

I was kicked out of the Arnold Classic...

2008-03-01T20:40:00.010-05:00

I was kicked out of the 2008 Arnold Classic's Amateur IFBB International Female Bodybuilding competition because I didn't have a "pitpass".

Now, minutes before I had sat in the press area (for about an hour or 2) taking photographs of the Men's and Women's Arm Wrestling championships. I was watching the 2008 Arnold Classic Armwrestling Challenge (ACAC). I'd never been that close to something like that in my life. It was also my first time ever seeing true arm wrestling "done properly". Here's one of my frames:

I was right smack at the front of the stage. It was sweet!! (btw, the bearded man on the left side of the picture, George Iszakouits, has won the competition for six straight years now).

Then it was over and they started gearing up for the
female competition. And that's when they started asking for these damn passes.

Which ironically I didn't happen to have ;) Arg!

See more of my Arnold Classic 2008 pictures in my Arnold Classic 2008 Flickr set.

Easy Rider Bike Expo and Concert

2008-02-18T18:34:00.008-05:00

This weekend I went with Croz to the Easyrider Bike Show at Vet's in downtown Columbus. This was my first time at the show. I don't recall ever hearing about it in the past.

It turns out a friend of mine had his bike in the show and it took 2nd place in the Spectator's Class!

Here's a picture of just-the-bike:

Then we caught a concert by a band called Toyz. They

played some good ol classic rock tunes and were quite good.

Of course, we snapped some pictures :) I'll be putting them up on Flickr as soon as I get done editting them. I didn't realize they had concerts and events and stuff at a show like this - so I didn't bring the 70-200 lens :( Croz had his and was getting some sweet photo's of the band. My 17-55 just didn't have enough range to get in close :( I'll have to bring it with me next year! But it was the first time I'd ever sat in the front row for a concert!

Flickr Meet - CMH Bike Show Discussion

Photography Blind

2008-02-11T18:33:00.002-05:00

This weekend I did some "prep-work" to prepare for Turkey pictures this spring. I wanted to see how the Canon 40D would do w/ the Sigma 70-200 and the 2x converter. Here's a picture of the blind:

What I found out was the range I have w/ this camera and lens isn't much better then the 300D w/ the 70-300 Sigma lens (which I gave to my mom). However, since the 70-200 is a quicker lens it did better in low-light.

Oh, and watch out for condensation dripping off the top of the blind onto the lens, camera and yourself. Not fun. Very cold. And mice seem to like blinds that aren't used all that often :(

For the interested - some of my prior turkey pictures.

Flickr Meetup - Ohio Theatre Statistics

2008-01-15T08:18:00.001-05:00

Apparently a few of you liked the Flickr group meetup stats I posted yesterday (see prior article). So much so that it was requested I run the stat-beast against the second tour, the tour of the Ohio Theatre.

Here's the nitty gritty:

There is a total of 210 images tagged with
flickr tag 'cmhflickrmeet092207', posted by
20 different people (ie flickr accounts). Average ISO Speed was 390.

The distribution of make of Cameras:

What modes were their cameras in?

Was Exposure Bias used?

And the top few Exposures used:

And the top few Apertures used:

Flickr Meetup - Statehouse Tour Statistics

2008-01-14T08:44:00.002-05:00

In May, 2007, our local Flickr group Flickr Meet - Columbus Ohio did a group tour of the Columbus Ohio StateHouse. Then in September we did a Tour of the Ohio Theatre. Now, thanks to croz1007 we are gearing up to do a tour of the Columbus Ohio Southern Theatre.

After seeing many of my photos that did not come out so well, and many more from others that came out great I was wondering what they did differently, that I didn't do?!? Then the thought occurred to me that I could look at the EXIF information from their photos. By looking at the photo to try and determine the circumstances of it's unique situation, and the EXIF, maybe I'd learn something.

And so I began clicking. And clicking. Then realized there's atleast 50 or more photos, and this wasn't going to work. Perl to the rescue! I spent part of yesterday's NFL football games tinkering with code and readin the Flickr and misc documentaiton. I ended up with a small perl script to generate some statistics. Here is what it found:

There is a total of 381 images tagged with
flickr tag 'cmhflickrmeet063007', posted by
17 different people (ie flickr accounts). Average ISO Speed was 550.

The distribution of make of Cameras:

What modes were their cameras in?

Was Exposure Bias used?

And the top few Exposures used:

And the top few Apertures used:

I don't know that this information will help anyone. Hell, I'm not sure it'll help me, since I spent all my time reading the Flickr API Documentation and poking around with a perl script instead of analyzing the pictures/data. Hopefully this week I will find the time to look through all the pictures and compare all the numbers.

Special thanks to the authors of the Flickr API as well as the 100% free-as-in-beer Perl Module Flickr::API and GD::Graph.

If you have any thoughts on whether this would be worthwhile to run after each meetup, or how it could be improved, please post a comment. Thanks!

Music Labels scream Steal Our Tunes

2008-01-11T07:08:00.001-05:00

Ok, I'll admit it. I like iTunes. Infact, I've purchased quite a bit of music from iTunes over the past few years inorder to feed my iPods. Some people, mostly geeks, sometimes ask "Why?" What they are really asking is is "Why would you purchase music from iTunes, that's DRM'd?"

My answer to this is fairly simple:

iTunes is easy.

iTunes is convenient.

iTunes "just works".

I've never been inconvenienced by iTune's DRM.

Unless I've wanted to share music (illegally?), I've not been inconvenienced by iTunes.

Now when I say "illegally share music" it's mainly when one of my kids comes over and says "Oh you have the new Korn CD. Can you burn it for me?".

It was one thing when the kids were younger and living at home. We all shared tapes, cd's, vcr movies, dvd's. ¹ But now that they don't live here, I don't think that "sharing" is right. It's a different location (in our case, cities now). If they want a cd, they should purchase it just like everyone else in the world.

Or, when I am listening to something and a friend says "Oh, I love that song. Oh you have the entire CD, can you burn it for me?"

I want to scream "no!". ²

The point that I'm trying to make by all this typing is that the music industry is really screwing themselves by trying to obfuscate iTunes. When I've had friends ask me to burn them something I'd say "Sorry, I bought this from iTunes, it's encrypted, it won't let me share it". ³

That used to be the end of the discussion. Now they follow up with "Well, why didn't you just buy it from Amazon, stuff from there isn't encrypted."

And you know, they're right. The music downloaded from Amazon isn't encrypted. I can burn it, copy it, ftp it, nntp it, scp it, rsync it, share it, copy it to USB keychain devices, etc. Neighbors can come over and grab a copy and I can go over to their house and get a copy of what they just bought.

And the labels are trying to obfuscate iTunes? What complete idiots they are. I'm at the point where I think the labels get what they deserve. They finally had a system where most people using it were not hindered by the DRM. It's a popular online system, there is a lot of people using it. One would think the Music Labels would be extactic about this. People purchasing music that they can't so easily "just share with anyone".

No, instead the Music Labels are once again showing their greed. They want to distrubute the music on their own and garner all the profits from that. I cannot blame them from wanting to maximize profit from the content they own. However, it took them so many years before they finally had a system like iTunes. And now they are screwing with it.

I think the Music Labels are idiots.

¹ When the kids were in middle-school and high school, cd's were easy gifts for them. And they'd listen to them for hours, and hours. Sometimes (dreadedly) the same cd over, and over, and over. But if they both wanted some CD by {insert artist here} there's no reason for us to buy two of them. It's simply unaffordable, and to be honest ridiculous to think we'd do otherwise.

² Some of have said that though it's technically illegal to share music, the labels are such asses that, well, go ahead and do it anyway. I dislike the idea of that way of thinking. I try not to use that way of thinking to justify sharing anything. However, with each bone-headed decision by the big-4 Music Labels, it seems more and more difficult to not think like that.

³ Yes, I know this isn't exactly true. Yes, you can burn any purchased music to CD. However, you are burning an MP3 to CD, not the Audio track back to another CD. The quality of the CD would be, in my opininon, 'lame'. Rather then try to explain this (to some that will just look back with a glassy-eyed-stare) I just lie. It's easier that way.

Hayden Falls Photos

2008-01-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are always saying "I should stop at Hayden Falls" and never have, here's a picture of it for you:

I've been in Columbus for a number of years, kept telling my self I'd go there. And never did. The falls are smack in the middle of suburbia and easy to get to. When it was in the 60's earlier this week I couldn't resist finally going. It was late in the day so I had to be careful trying to pick an aperture/shutter/iso to get enough light at the bottom of the canyon. I treated the whole thing like an exercise from my new book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson.

I also attempted to "stop motion" of water:

Though that didn't come out so well.

Richardson calls it quits?!?

2008-01-09T22:28:00.002-05:00

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson quits his Presidential Bid. His campaign didn't do all that well in Iowa nor New Hampshire.

I first heard mention of this while listening to the local NPR station on the way home from my CMH Digital Photography and Photoshop Meetup Group meeting at a local coffee place. It wasn't suprising, considering he'd not done that well in the primaries.

Earlier, before I left for the meeting, during Hardball someone piped up that Richardson was never in it to be the President - instead his goal was the vice-presidency. I'd never heard that before. I don't know whether to chaulk it up to Hardball BS or what. Who knows. I guess time will tell.

I had always assumed that there'd be a large part of the population that won't vote for a black man. Then another large part that won't vote for a woman. (Note: I'm not advocating either way of thinking, but I've travelled the US and though no one seems to want to say it, those two Democratic front-runners have an uphill battle in parts of the US, misguided the reasoning may be). Therefore this situation would leave Richardson set for the position (besides the fact that he seemed to have a lot of experience and knowledge w/ foreign policy).

With Richardson out, maybe Edwards will be in this so-called pole-position in waiting out the struggle between Obama and Clinton.

Oh, CNN is running similar so it must be true. ;)

Real Life Mobile Penryn vs Merom Benchmarks

2008-01-09T21:05:00.001-05:00

Mac Rumors has an article saying there will be new MacBook Pro's with the just-released Penryn processors. According to Anandtech this will yield up to a 40 % increase in some applications.

This all figures, seeing as I just received my new 17" MacBook Pro 2 weeks ago.

Poor Hugo Chavez

2008-01-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

Poor Hugo Chavez. He just can't win. He tried to use a hostage situation to embarass Columbia. Even Oliver Stone joined in the frey, hoping to embarass the Bush Administration. It turns out it was a setup - he was totally played by the jungle rebels.

But ya know what? When you go to bed with dogs, you generally wake up with fleas.

And that's exactly what happened. Chavez has to feel like he was played the fool - because he was.

The true winner in the whole ordeal was Oliver Stone - he walks away with a Movie deal.

Political hostage's son found in Bogota

Battle-Tested and the NFL?

2008-01-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

I think the NFL should ban the word "Battle Tested" from all game announcements and broadcasts.

they aren't fighting in a battle (infact most of the current players probably never have)

they aren't having things shot at them

they aren't fighting (for democracy)

Maybe, just maybe, if a player is playing in Cleveland, they are battle-tested. Afterall, they do on occasion have illegally-smuggled-contraband thrown at them.

Oh, and Andrea Kremer's nose and mouth look exactly like Edie Falco's.

Brandweek and Chevy Malibu

2008-01-05T19:22:00.000-05:00

Brandweek says "GM Can't Stock Malibus".

I wonder if the thought "A good product sells itself" ever crossed their minds. Or here's another: "Gee, a link to the product we're referring to would be great". Maybe Chevy told them not to link directly to the Malibu, fearing even more backorders for the vehicle.

Did you get that not linking to the product you're discussing annoys the crap out of me?

The funny thing is, I saw an add for the car yesterday and I thought "Now that's a sharp car. I wonder how Chevy came up with it?". Then today I saw the article in Brandweek's RSS feed.

It's ironic how a branding website would determine GM can't stock the car because of Marketing success.

Links: Motortrends Malibu 2008 pictures and Google Image Search.

Realtime wildlife watching (deer/turkey)

2008-01-05T17:28:00.000-05:00

Today I first read about "The Bug" over at Engadget's CES coverage website. Their article about The Bug's Announcement got my curiosity going. They didn't have a link to The Bug's website in the article, so I found it.

All I can say is this thing looks cool! My first thought when I read this was "I could build a realtime deer/turkey watching device!" I couldn't find the exact specs for the camera on their website. I don't know if that's because there aren't any specifications online yet, or the fact that I gave up looking fairly quickly because I can smell the food my wife's preparing for dinner.

But the bug's apparently got it's own rechargable battery. If it's waterproof, and the battery is big enough (your you can wire it to a big d++ battery(ies)) then you could leave it broadcasting to your wifi unit and pickup relatively live camera feed from it. Toss in some motion detection analysis of every-few-frames and it would be very cool. On one of the pages they advertise a developer-kit. I think I read it's free. Well, if they have any common sense it'd be free. Oh, and work on OSX, too :)

Concerns for now: waterproofedness, battery life, cost, developer tools and framework, convincing my wife this is worth shelling out large cash for it

Update: Subversion checkout: svn://bugcommunity.com/

Everyone's leaving Ohio!

2008-01-05T15:08:00.001-05:00

Our local newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, has an article titled "More people leaving Ohio". Basically, the article is stating that more people are leaving Ohio then coming here. This claim is based on the fact that United Van Lines says for the 15th consecutive year, 57% percent of the moves they have made are out of Ohio.

No one should be suprised hearing this news. That's right, absolutely no one.

Ohio's Economy sucks. We have auto plants closing, or near-closing every year. Many of those who worked in the manufacturing industry that we've known over years, are gone, retired (not by choice) or are working in jobs that are no where near as advanced (nor well paying) as what they were doing in the steel and auto industries. Some of our cities don't rank well. Topics of discussion with family members are often dominated with the debate of whether to accept the then-current early retirement package being offered by insert manufacturing company with a union here.

We in Ohio cannot seem to keep religious matters from imposing upon everyone in the state. We seem to have religious wacko's coming out of the wood work (ahem, from the Cincinati area) working to tell everyone how to act. Will the young people in our state stay in such an environment? No, they won't. Look at the populations of some states out west. They are closing grade schools because there is no young population base that's marrying and having kids to supply the schools. They're all leaving or already left (we have family in Oklahoma, someday I'll write about that).

The higher-education situation in Ohio sucks too. For a few years now, there've been a lot Ohioans going to North Carolina (and obviously other states). Why? Because it's cheaper to go there in-order to send their kids to college. Yes, for a few years they are paying NC's out-of-state tuition rate, but it's far cheaper to do so then stay in Ohio and pay Ohio's in-state rates. Obviously, after you've moved down south to educate your family, and enjoyed the warmer temperatures, why would you move back to Ohio? Answer: you won't.

The last 15 years of "Republican Control" have stagnated Ohio's Economy. The decision to cut higher education funding (hence force the Colleges to significantly increase their rates) immediately started killing Ohio's economy because it's becoming near impossible for many people to send their kids to state schools. Prior to this, in-state schools were always the cheaper schools to send your children to. Another boneheaded cut - From 2001 to 2003 Ohio cut $268 million out of their child care assistance fund. If you have a part of our population who aren't making squat, have children, want to goto college and will eventually have a decent income from having gone to college why would you cut their knees out from underneath them? If they cannot afford childcare, they won't attend college. It's that simple; Help them help themselves to earn a decent income and fuel that tax base.

Thankfully Ken Blackwell didn't win the election. We'd already discussed how soon we could relocate out of the state if he'd won.

This all lends itself to a higher-education brain-drain throughout the state. Who thinks that will help attract industry? (I will admit the decision to drop Ohio's Tangible Personal Property Tax was a smart, belated, move).

If you have no people, you have no tax base. That's a brow-raising thought isn't it? Look out west for what Ohio could easily become.

NASA Making life?!?

2007-12-28T06:49:00.000-05:00

Here's one for the X-files. We went to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and took the tours et all. We had a great time. On one of the buses we kept noticing some strange message flashing on the screen. Seemingly in no specific order, in between tour-videos. I was finally able to snap a picture of it. Lo and behold what does it say?

"One of our primary objectives at NASA is to MAKE life"

Yes. Not FIND, but MAKE!

Office Cubicle Prank II

2007-12-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

Some new Dell's came in (it's the end-of-the-year-ordering-spree). And what do you do with a bunch of Dell boxes in an office full of cubicles? Why you wall-off an entrance!

Here's a close-up of the note that was put up:

What's even funnier is this guy is the first one to arrive at the office in the morning. A good half hour before everyone else. So he either moves them aside or waits for one of us to arrive.
If I'd not have been so lazy, I should have shown up early with a cup of coffee in hand saying "ah yeah, ah listen... mmm kay"

Apple's Newton II Tablet Mac

2007-11-06T10:17:00.000-05:00

ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God
with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the
night he can join us in our quest for the Holy Newton II.
GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen...
Uh, he's already got one, you see?
ARTHUR: What?
GALAHAD: He says they've already got one!
ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one?
GUARD: Oh, yes, it's very nice-a [To Other Guards] I told him we already got one.

(Quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

OSX Leopard and Wireless network Compromised

2007-11-02T10:43:00.000-04:00

I upgraded to Leopard Friday nite when it came out. Since then when I'm at work using our wifi network (encrypted with WPA2) I've this pop up:

Incase you have images turned off, it reads: "the wireless network appears to have been compromised and will be disabled for about a minute."

Since I have admin access to the wifi router, I know it's not been compromised. But the message is somewhat disturbing anyway.

Office Cubicle Prank II

2007-10-10T20:28:00.001-04:00

1. Obtain huge boxes filled with heavy equipment and pile boxes in only isle between cubicles (and only exit out)
2. Call "Bill, come here quick"
3. Wait for fun to begin ;)

OSCON 2007 Pictures

2007-08-27T08:23:00.000-04:00

This year I was finally able to attend OSCON. I had a good time, learned quite a bit. Portland's a nice city, from what I saw I could easily live up there. Here's some of my photos in a slideshow

(If you don't like slideshow's, then here's a direct-link to the pictures).

cloogle

2007-01-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

def.: cloogle - verb, the act of (or the suggestion to perform the act of), using google to get a clue on a subject.

First peak at a PS3 Linux and MythTV

2007-01-03T14:11:00.000-05:00

This past weekend our local Linux user group had its monthly meeting and someone brought their newest toy, a PS3. What was interesting is he'd put a Linux Distro on their, and then MythTV on it (the front end, he has the myth-master in his basement loaded with a few capture boards).

I think he said it took about an hour to install. It was very slick. Apparently you can assign cores to the alternative OS. And that OS runs under a hardware hypervisor so it can't access the PS3 (so you can't fiddle and mess with it). But you don't need a hardware hack or new bios or anything (ahem, XBox) to run Linux on it.

What would be cool is if Linux could stay running on a few of the cores while you played games on the PS3 on it's normal OS with the rest of the cores.

Hunting Masacer

2007-01-01T09:37:00.001-05:00

This year in Ohio, hunters took 111,672 deer during the state’s weeklong deer-gun season. If you combine the adult seasons, youth seasons, muzzleloader season and archery season the total was 166,534.

However, there is a dark side so these statistics. It's the number of unknown deer that were taken but never reported.

This year we saw it again. Idiots had shot deer, pulled the skin back, taken some of the hind quarter meat, and then left them. They didn't take the rest of it to claim it with the state. They didn't take the rest of it to process it and use it for it's meat, hide, etc.

We saw this on the side of the road:

Infact, on the left, you can see the road.

In the picture below, these are most of the legs, which they threw further off the side of the road into the woods - just visible if you peered into the front of the forest from the roadside.

It looked as though they used some plastic bags and paper to take their haul away. They left some of the internals w/ the extra bags and what-not to litter it up.

What a shame. The pictures are very depressing to look at. It is idiots such as this that giving hunting a bad name.

first post!

2006-10-28T20:48:00.000-04:00

first post! just like /.!