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.
August 21, 2005
To Bee or Not To Bee
to_bee_or_not_to_bee.mp3 - 10MB - 29:27
Oblivion and Rose talk between shows of Shakespeare in the Park, Life in the Kingdom.
No notes this time.
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
- call: 206-FEW-EBLO (206-339-3256)
- skype: oblivion9999
- Subscribe to my podcasts via RSS:
June 10, 2005
Catching up.
I suck. Way behind on posting. A few things:
- Going to Alaska soon. Woot! I need more Compact Flash memory.
- I met Drew of the Dawn and Drew Show podcast and took him for an airplane ride. We recorded the intercom and radio traffic, and he made a show of it. Listen here. Usually they're rated R, but this one is just PG.
- For your dose of gay culture and other sex talk, make sure you check out Urban Family Night, especially Episode #17. Think an audio gang-bang version of Savage Love. Rated R.
- Another great laugh, even if somewhat offensive, is Keith and the Girl. God, they make me laugh. Also rated R.
- Also, I recently bought an iRiver iFR-899 1GB mp3 player/recorder a) for the upcoming trip b) to perhaps start podcasting on my own.
- Tonight we read-through this year's Shakespeare in the Park. A. gave me a LOT of lines this year. Wow. It'll be fun.
- I know there's more, but off to work I go.
Later.
February 06, 2005
Weekend Update
It was a busy but fun weekend. It started on Friday when I headed out to Campbell Airport to meet up with a friend from ground school and go for a ride in her and her husband's new used airplane, a 1981 Piper Archer.
On the way to the airport, I stopped to shoot a few of the locals. Click for a larger version and you'll see that there are some nice racks out there.
Click for larger.
There was a ton of commercial traffic heading out west for the evening. Check out all of the contrails in this picture.
Click for larger.
Since sunset was coming up quickly, we weren't up long, but it was a nice evening flight. I have over 70 hours of flying, and believe it or not, this was my first time as a passenger in a light airplane. It's nice, there's a lot more time for looking at scenery and taking pictures. Here's where we went.
SATURDAY
It had been a few months since I got some stick time of my own, but the only time I was able to reserve an airplane at Westosha was on Sunday, and the weather was looking to not hold out for me (after a mostly gorgeous week). On the way home from my flight with Lindy, I decided to call the scheduler again, and to my surprise, someone had canceled their flight for Saturday morning. I booked Cessna 172, N9815L from 11:30 to 1:00 P.M. It ended up being a beautiful day to fly. I didn't get to take too many pictures since I was busy flying and stuff, but I snapped a few of where A. and I were married.
Click for larger.
After that, I turned towards my old home base, Campbell Airport (C81) and realized just how strong the wind was coming out of 180. I was bearing about 100 degrees, though the heading out the nose of the airplane was more like 140 degrees. WINDY, but incredibly smooth, considering the forcast said it'd be a bumpy day. I did one landing at C81 and while I was waiting my turn to take off, I snapped a picture of a few other people taking advantage of the beautiful break in the weather.
Click for larger.
After an uneventful takeoff and a short hop, I was coming up on my current home base of Westosha Airport (5K6). You know you're close when you see Wilmot 'Mountain' ski hill.
Click for larger.
I shot two landings back at Westosha refuled the plane and handed it off to the next guy. I only logged 0.8 hours, but I got in three landings to refresh my 90 day currency so I am able to take passengers again.
It's amazing how happy flying makes me. I smiled like an idiot the whole way home. Getting to have the top down on a 50+ degree day in February didn't hurt, either.
Click for larger.
All of that by 1:00 P.M., and I wasn't even done yet. After this, A., the wunder-hund Martini and I went and found our first geocache, but that write-up is going to have to wait for another day.
December 14, 2004
Web Voodoo
I've done some hacking on the web server tonight to thwart at least some image/bandwidth leeches. Please PLEASE let me know if you see any broken links or images. Thanks.
