Jan 28, 2004
What We're Watching
So once in a while I tackle a "Just Because" project just to see if I can
do it / if it can be done. Often, at the time I feel as though I'm goofing
off when I should be working on something else, only to find that the
skills I picked
up on the little side project came in VERY handy when needed. Setting up
glitchnyc.com as a linux server was one such project, and it's paid out
ten-fold in knowledge and experience for both my job at Strategic and here
at Common Ground.
Today, I finished up another little useless project - the "What We're
Watching" box down at the bottom right of this page. It's pretty cool -
pulling in the live info from our "MythTV" setup at home every 10 minutes
- but really, it's pretty unneccessary. If history continues to repeat
itself, I should be saying "Aha!" sometime in the next year, finding some
task that the skills I gleaned came in handy for. We'll see. In the
meantime, either gawk in voyeuristic glee at the up-to-the minute info of
what's going to be on our boob-tube, or read on for the technical details
See more ...
6:34 pm | permalink |
/technology/web |
0 writebacks |
Touché, Mother Nature.
It
seems all it took was for me to question the weather geniuses at
Weather Underground to get the
heavens to open up.
Well Played.
See
more snow photos (I finally got myself a card reader for home!
Wo0t!)
1:49 am | permalink |
/life |
0 writebacks |
Jan 27, 2004
Yanking our Collective Weather Chain
Ever get the feeling that weather people just get together to make it up
sometimes? Like the weather channel isn't getting enough viewers so they
forge up a nice little NOAA warning about a noreaster that never appears
due to the random nature of meterology.
It seems like every night for a week we've been "supposed to get it
tonight, 0-8 inches!" and then we wake up to zilch. Here's tonights
"advisory." Seems like they're finally zeroing in on an actual prediction
This Afternoon
Occasional sleet or light snow...mixing with spotty freezing drizzle at
times early. Snow becoming more widespread toward evening and possibly
mixing with sleet. Snow accumulation by evening around an inch possible.
Highs in the upper 20s. East winds 15 to 20 mph.
Tonight
Snow...mixing with sleet during the evening. The snow may be heavy at
times. Snow accumulation of 5 to 8 inches. Lows in the mid 20s. Northeast
winds around 15 mph...becoming north 15 to 20 mph after midnight.
3:51 pm | permalink |
/life |
0 writebacks |
Oh yeah.
And I just realized my fly has been down all morning. Really though, I
haven't been to the bathroom since I left the house. Either nobody
noticed,
or no one knew how to tell me.
Awesome.
12:37 pm | permalink |
/life |
1 writebacks |
Novarg (AKA MyDoom) Virus Proves that People Never Learn
A new virus spreading like wildfire today proves and important point to
remember when thinking about computer security.
People never learn. Never.
Watching "hackers" years ago, I laughed when Dade passed
himself off as "Eddie Vedder from IT", using a crude form of social
engineering to extract the modem number he needed. "No one could fall for
that!" I remembered thinking.
Years later, I've learning that people "falling for that" is still the
greatest stumbling block to keeping a network running and secure.
See more ...
12:33 pm | permalink |
/technology/web |
0 writebacks |
Jan 23, 2004
Ka-Blam!
Well, it seems that I've done something to upset the computer gods. I came
in today after busting my butt this week to give a presentation, and had
to move the computer into the conference room.
I don't know if I walked through the bermuda triangle of computing or
what, but by the time I'd made it the 20 feet to the conference room, the
thing was toast.
See more ...
3:34 pm | permalink |
/technology/microsoft |
0 writebacks |
It all comes full circle.
Years
ago I found a few pictures of a band called "flesh for eve" which
was produced by vampire technology. I never really thought much about the
two groups, but now almost 8 years later they're selling the
designs which I'd collected pictures of, and they're still freaking
amazing.
Many of these designs and the general aesthetic influenced the world that
Lex takes place in, especially the Burton-esque stripwear.
Vampiretechnology.com
1:48 am | permalink |
/fiction/lex |
0 writebacks |
Jan 22, 2004
Lex Vignettes 7
I awoke for the first time in the outcity in a bed.
My face was throbbing, swollen and bruised from the falls I'd taken learning on the stripwear. My ribs hurt, too, and I could feel the dirt clinging to my body, crusty in the scabs and caked blood where my body had met the ground.
The Stripwear, sensing I was awake began to organize itself, and I could feel little breezes as it swished through the air above my skin, lifting itself ever so slightly away from my body and unweaving itself from the blanket it had formed while I slept.
See more ...
11:33 pm | permalink |
/fiction/lex |
1 writebacks |
Jan 19, 2004
Well, after flying last time, I'm pretty sure I'm on the CAPPS list
I mean, they made me take of my shoes and scan them, and kinda looked at
me all wide eyed when they saw my name on the list. What'd I do?
Anyway, this was funny.
Threat rating: High. The Bush administration
is
concerned that it may not get a second term.
Therefore, we are
going to change the rules so
that each Democrat vote only counts as
0.2
votes because Democrat is a shorter word than
Republican
What threat to the Bush administration are
you? brought to you by Quizilla
12:17 pm | permalink |
/technology/web/quizzes |
4 writebacks |
Now Computer Really Equals Frenchfry.
A few months back, my computer decided to eat my "mp3" hard drive which
was also home to most of my pictures, and other creative works, alive.
I was not that happy a camper about this, but was able to recover 90% of
my stuff, minus some of my photos.
Tonight, the hard drive which I had recoverd that data TO completly and
unrecoverably crashed so hard that there is no salvaging anything on it.
All I can hope is that I made some backups of the stuff I saved off the
old disk last time. but I don't remember doing that.
This is like losing all your photo albums in a fire. You know you can
replaced the house, but you can't replace the pictures.
Grrrrr.
UPDATE:
I seem to have kept at least a marginally complete backup on CD and
randomly scattered around my different systems & servers, so although a
pain in the butt to have to do this again, I don't think I permanently
lost anything huge.
4:25 am | permalink |
/technology/linux |
0 writebacks |
Jan 16, 2004
Computer = Frenchfry.
THE funniest computer support call I have ever gotten, and possibly one of
the most hillarious things ever said to me (or my voicemail) period,
rediscovered during the rescue
of a failing harddrive. Now in glorious mp3 for your listening pleasure.
The mp3 of DOOM.
The journal of
aeriesstars, the creator of said message
3:30 pm | permalink |
/life/friends |
1 writebacks |
CNN: Philadelphia schools ban soda sales; Snapple, Inc. President Cackles Evilly.
Well, this is genius.
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- Philadelphia officials have banned
the sale of sodas throughout the public school system, a move nutrition
experts said Thursday would help guard children against obesity.
The article says they're expecting kids to drink more juice (AKA. Snapple
or Fruitopia, depending on which owns the rights to the
schools marketing impressions... I mean... Students.)
See more ...
2:23 pm | permalink |
/life/politics |
0 writebacks |
Holy Crap! My Name is a Narsty Porn Site
So every few months or so I tend to google for my various handles and
names to make sure that I'm not showing up anywhere I don't want to.
Eskiff is the username I'm given almost everywhere since there aren't that
many other "Skiffs".
Usually, googling for my full name or that handle just turns up usenet
posts from a lot of other geeks with the same handle (which I'm sure
helped when I was "background checked" applying for a job. Sometimes
they really do just google for you name. There's an Eric Skiff who was a
boozing frat guy who almost got me in trouble!), and if you scroll
waaaaaay down, you might
eventually find the geocities site or the dansmusic archive that held my
musicals. (Don't ask.)
See more ...
12:45 pm | permalink |
/technology/web |
1 writebacks |
Jan 14, 2004
We've Booked the Honeymoon!
Sara
& I have really gotten going with wedding stuff in the past 24 hours.
We've gotten the invite list together, budgeted expenses and stuff, and
now we've even booked the honeymoon! We'll be staying at
"Le
Pavillon Hotel" in New Orleans for the week directly after our
wedding.
Next we firm up with the Caterer, and then it's on to "Save the Dates"
this weekend! This is getting fun!
Le Pavillon Hotel Website
3:14 pm | permalink |
/life/travel |
0 writebacks |
Jan 13, 2004
OpenSource Games Come Of Age
I've been running on Linux for almost a year now, and as such, once in a
while, I want to relax and play a game or two.
Mind you, I've never been an avid gamer (I'm still running on a crappy
old Ati Rage 128), and often opt to play on the
consoles when I do play at all. When I play on a computer, it's either to
play online, or because I'm waiting for something else to finish.
With all that in mind, I've discovered three games recently that are worth
mentioning: Bomberclone, Armagetron, and
FrozenBubble
See more ...
12:29 pm | permalink |
/technology/games |
1 writebacks |
The Model Music Label: Magnatune
I was reading through my Linux
Journal today, and they gave this up-and-coming music label a lot of
play for being free and open.
Magnatune is cool both in terms of the technology they use,
and they way they embrace the music listener as a consumer, rather than
alienate them as a theif or pirate. They believe that the music buyer has
a right to hear the music before they buy it, and that they will not only
support the artists and the label by buying music they like, but also help
them promote it by, get this, TRADING FILES. It's perfectly acceptable by
their liscences, and all they ask is that if you like a group, you pay for
the high quality permanent download.
See more ...
11:45 am | permalink |
/technology/web |
0 writebacks |
Disney Closed Major Animation Studio Yesterday!
This isn't the usual fodder here, but I had to comment. Check out
the
CNN story.
Disney has gone from 2,200 hand animators down to less than 1000 in the
past 3-4 years, and from the looks of it, has just laid off the majority
of
it's 258 person Orlando studio.
See more ...
11:07 am | permalink |
/technology/film |
0 writebacks |
Jan 09, 2004
Fun Flash Games
I was thinking about finally working on that "New Version of Torus" now
that I finally have some flash skills, and wanted to see if you
could
write a decently fun and responsive game in flash. A quick google for
"flash tetris" popped up this neat little site with some great games!
Flash Games
3:08 pm | permalink |
/technology/web |
1 writebacks |
Jan 08, 2004
Jan 04, 2004
"The Neverending Saga of That F8%$)@! Mini-PC" or "Why Not Sleeping Makes You Legally Insane"
So it was mid-November, and I thought I had Christmas all figured out. As I talked about in the last post, I had pretty much finished all the difficult technical stuff getting MythTV working, and was all set to deliver a home-brew Tivo system to Sara for christmas.
Or so I thought...
See more ...
2:50 am | permalink |
/technology/linux |
0 writebacks |
