Archive for July, 2004
Cookout and Archives
Posted by david | Filed under DSL, Fun, midrange.com
Today was a somewhat busy day … went to the annual Broadband Reports Chicago / SBC – Ameritech Midwest Cookout held at kcazzie’s house.
It was enjoyable … lots of yaking about geeky stuff.
When I got home I started working on implementing a requested feature for the mailing list archives so that the number of results / page could be selected and remembered. Took a few hours to code and test, but it appears to be working well.
I also used the change as an opportunity to change the way the list index pages are generated … now I’m using Jamon … which is a nice templating engine for Java. I’m not using nearly all the capabilities of the package, but I’m pleased with the results.
iSeries Blogger Button
Posted by david | Filed under Blogs, iSeries
Ok iSeries Bloggers … now WE have a button!
I would suggest you reference it like this:
<a href="http://www.iseries.ibm.com" title="IBM iSeries — For when you can't afford to be out of business"><img src="/images/iseries-button.png" alt="IBM iSeries"/></a>
Feel free to use the button graphic on your site … but, please, copy it to your own server instead of referencing mine 
If you do decide to use the image … trackback to this post. Maybe I’ll setup an iSeries blog agregator sometime.
Case in point: Electronic voting
Posted by david | Filed under Politics, Technology
MIAMI, July 27 – Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
- The New York Times
Ok, I think the people who are all for electronic voting without the need for a paper trail have proven the case against electronic voting.
Sheesh … the only case for not having a paper trail is so the results can be manipulated without anyone being aware of it. That’s why criminals don’t like checks.
A few blog changes
Posted by david | Filed under Blogs
Well, for those of you who care (and I know there aren’t many of you), I’ve made some changes on the blog … some of them obvious, others not so much.
First, I’m using Wordpress 1.3 alpha 2. Yes, I know … alpha code is untested. But heck, this isn’t exactly a mission critical website. I’m actually checking it out of cvs so I can keep my few customizations intact.
Second, you may notice the removal of the “Links” on the side bar (Over there –>) and the addition of “Blogs that I read”. Ginny got me hooked on Bloglines, which is an online feed agregator. I used to use RssOwl, but it was a pain using it at both work and home. Now that I’m using Bloglines, I don’t get notified that something is new when I already read it at another location. It’s also got a nice Windows tray application that tells me when one of my feeds has been updated.
Next on the list is fix the styles … need to tweak some of the spacing.
Fancy titles
Posted by david | Filed under Blogs
Found a pretty cool plugin for Wordpress that gives me fancy image titles for the posts.
All I have to supply is a font file and the TitleImages plugin does the rest.
I had to tweak the plug-in a bit so that thte images work with the permalinks, but that wasn’t too difficult.
Video capture card problem — RESOLVED!
Posted by david | Filed under Computers, Linux, Microsoft, Technology, Tivo-nation
Well, the video capture card problem has been resolved.
I ended up going over to Frys yesterday and picked up a motherboard, cpu, and memory (2 motherboards, actually, more about that later).
The upgrade went smoothly … Linux adapted to the new hardware without a problem. Windows XP, however, wouldn’t even boot. I had to reinstall. I kind of expected that.
However, the capture card is seen by the PCI bus now, and is fully functional in XP. I need to figure out how to make it work in Linux though.
Video capture card problems
Posted by david | Filed under Computers, Linux, Technology, Tivo-nation
Well, I got the video capture card finally … plugged it into my system (mordor) and … it didn’t work.
Tried a few different configurations, even booted up into WinXP (mordor usually runs Redhat Linux Fedora, but the card was just never seen.
I brought the card into work and plugged it into my workstation … it was seen and recognized as soon as I logged on.
Well, that obviously means my play machine is broken. Time to upgrade.
I think I’ll swing by Frys today and see about picking up a cheap motherboard & CPU. I think they have them on sale again.
One small step for man …
Posted by david | Filed under Fun, Technology
… one giant leap for mankind.
35 years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
NASA has a very nice portal with pictures and video.
I was 6 years old at the time … and my parents let me stay up far past my bed time so we could watch the news specials.
To be honest … I strongly suspect that this is what started me on the path to technology.
Switch to Firefox!
Posted by david | Filed under Microsoft, Technology
Found another link on Mike Wills site about promoting the switch from IE to Firefox .
After IE crashed on me a few times while trying to actually write blog entries … I decided to give Mozilla Firefox a try.
So far I’m convinced … it hasn’t crashed once, and I really like the extensions that are available.
I had started using Mozillia Thunderbird for my email some time ago … it’s nice, but there are a few things I’d like to see in it.
Right now I’m using Firefox at both home and work without any problems. I only have run into a few sites that don’t work quite right, and one site that outright blocks anything but IE (which I think is incredibly stupid … but it takes all kinds).
Renaissance Faire and accents
Posted by david | Filed under General
Today we went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire up near the Illinois / Wisconsin boarder.
It was a nice day … not too hot, not muggy at all, and there was a reasonable breeze.
It was warm enough, however, for me to forgo the normal ‘garb’ that I wear to the ren faire. Ginny brought, and wore, hers though.
As usual, there was the usual characters … some of who we’ve seen before. A few that we haven’t.
One such character was this gentleman who had taken up residence in a portable privy … who Ginny decided to torment a bit.
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