April 18, 2007
PC, TV, etc.
So last week I lost a huge post about the new PC and how that build went (thank you, Firefox!). Basically, it went well with the exception of one bad stick of RAM in the pair I bought. So I ordered a new pair and ran on one stick (1GB) until the replacement arrived and I RMA'd the bad stuff. Thank you Newegg.com.
The machine is running the SMP console client for Folding@Home. It's crunching along nicely and has helped halt and somewhat reverse my precipitous fall on Team DnD #53338. To really keep up, though, I really need a PS3. Maybe later this year. I've played a few games on the new box (Flight Sim X mostly) but haven't bought anything new for it yet. Thinking Madden '07, NHL '07, and maybe F.E.A.R. will be among the first purchases. I haven't done any recording or editing on it yet either, but soon.
One thing that did suck up a bunch of silly time last weekend was playing WinAmp visualizations on my other recent acquisition - a 61" TV. A friend's parents' were upgrading to High Def. from their 'lowly' Sony KP-61HS10, so I 'did them a favor,' by getting it out of the way very cheaply.
The cool thing is that this thing actually DOES do HD, if you have the right source. It doesn't have an HD tuner, but can display HD from one of the component inputs. And the vid card on the new computer? Puts out HD on the component outs :D So I was playing Flight Sim, Iron Aces, and WinAmp visualizations at 1080i. Text wasn't very sharp at all, but everything else was great. As for getting it home, a good friend helped move it. It was a challenge in that it only fit in the van by 1/8" and had to go in a very specific way. I had to lay it back for the trip, which worried me, but it thankfully survived intact. It now graces our living room until I get my ass around to finishing out the basement.
One MAJOR annoyance that happened last week is that Google-bot ATE ALL OF MY MYTHTV RECORDINGS (a la Spider of Doom)!!!!!! I'm not sure if I was more mad at Google, the MythTV package maintainers, or myself. What basically happened is this:
- A recent update to MythTV removed the .htaccess file I had in place to require passwords to get to the MythWeb interface to MythTV (the REALLY stupid thing is that the .htaccess file mine was replaced with WARNS that you should use authentication for just this reason, but DISABLES IT BY DEFAULT!!!!!).
- That or another update removed the robots.txt file I had in place to prevent spiders from crawling MythWeb OR I forgot to put one in place when I built this box (I know I had one on some install at some point).
- Googlebot came along and indexed MythWeb, which included hitting the links for deleting recordings.
- I got home to watch some TV, found 2 recordings, and flipped out.
- In researching what I thought was a hack of my system, I noticed apache still getting flooded with requests from Google-bot, so I shut down apache, fixes robots.txt and .htaccess and picked up the shattered pieces of my life.
Now you know. Grrrrrrr. BTW, the bot also seemed to hit some "Never Record" and "Record Later" links, because future scheduling was all borked, too. Oh, and it seems that all of that incoming traffic from Google-Bot was enough to piss off Comcast who decided to change my officially dynamic, but for all practical purposes, static IP address. GGGrrrrrrr!
Anyway, that's about all the time I have for catch-up right now.
I'm supposed to be jammin' tonight live on JVonD Radio, so check out JVonD.com for more info.
Later.
BTW, Firefox or MovableType tried to lose this post, too, but I was too clever for them and had done a copy to the clipboard before I clicked "Save." Let's try this again. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
January 13, 2006
Social Injustice
030_social_injustice.mp3 - 2.0MB - 5:42
This is a shorty.
0:00 - Black youth scares suburban white lady.
2:39 - Adam Curry is a smarmy douche in DSC-314.
3:36 - I'm outtie.
3:50 - A voicemail comment from The Flying Vealchart Company.
4:42 - My own promo.
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
- call: 206-FEW-EBLO (206-339-3256)
- skype: oblivion9999 - now with voicemail!
- Subscribe to my podcasts via RSS: 
- Add yourself to my Frappr Map.
- Friend me on MySpace.
- My banners and promos
June 27, 2005
I Am A Faggot!
Since getting the iRiver, I've been collecting some audio files to start a podcast of sorts - not that it's going to be a 'show' or anything like that, it's just a collection of Eblo-type things that I talk out instead of typing out. I happened to have an, um, interesting driving experience today. I decided this would be my first audio post. I hope you enjoy this mp3.
If you'd like to subscribe to these audio enclosures, add this url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Eblo to iPodder, Bloglines, or any other aggregator of your choosing.
Some post-audio notes: I HATE the word 'faggot.' Even when gay folk use it, I get that queasy feeling in my stomach like when black people first really started throwing 'nigger' around. But 'nigger' is now 'nigga' so using a word to take away its power just might work. Still, 'faggot' if a hum-dinger - or as George Carlin might say, "That's a heavy word."
And something else I meant to say but forgot is that I didn't mind the implication that I might be gay: a) I've got nothing against being gay b) she obviously has no idea who I sleep with c) I REALLY wanted to yell back to her, "Yeah, I LOVE the cock!" just to shock her back. No. what pissed me off - actually knocked the wind out of my sails - was that this woman's weapon of choice - her cuss word - her 'fuck you' was "faggot". This woman lives somewhere near me. That just makes me sick. It makes me want to move to Boystown.
Speaking of Boystown, I was, coincidentally, hoping to go down (no pun) to the Gay Pride Parade this year. It's been a few years since we've been. I was even planning to try to promote The Urban Family Night Podcast in some way, but it didn't work out. So instead, I'll just add yet another link to them here.
December 16, 2004
Pissy pissy.
Ok, I was in a bad mood and copied over vast parts of the story from e-mail and IM, but I decided not to go through with it. Suffice it to say that the last 24 hours have been frustrating. Ah well, I'm only a little sick, and not injured nor dead, so life really isn't that bad.
But I DID have comment spam this morning, so you all get a post, as promised. What a guy, huh?
November 01, 2004
Photo Thieves Should Be Shot
Going back to the topic of pictures, I need to rant a little bit. People need to learn some respect for pictures posted by others. I know the internet is a stealing free-for-all grab-fest and photos/sound clips/etc. get snarfed all over the place. But do me a favor - if you're going to steal a picture from me, which I'm not saying you should, at least have the decency not to link directly to the source on my server. If you steal my or my wife's creativity, don't steal our bandwidth, too. And yes, we know who you are, referrer entries in the logs give your blogs away. If you like our images enough to use them, we're flattered. But at the same time, we're pissed off that you didn't ask to use them first.
How hard is it to drop a line saying, "Hey, I love you pic of xxxx. Would you mind if I used it as a banner for my blog?" Or if you're just linking to it as a 'Hey, look at this cool pic I found. . . .' post, why not give a little credit for where you found the picture? And no, I'm not just talking about 'Look what Google turned up.' How about a pointer to the poem that goes with the picture? How about finding out if the photo has some special meaning to the person who took it?
Oh, well, you can't go to a movie anymore without someone's cell phone going off halfway through, why the hell should this surprise me. People are just damned rude.
