Your somewhat daily dose of Shoo.
My coworker’s son just finished school learning 3D modeling and computer graphics design. Very cool stuff- I believe he uses Maya (a prominent 3D CG program).
He’s looking for a job - any takers?
Video of his work is after the break. Video autostarts.
Here’s his contact info: http://jmccarty.cgsociety.org/gallery/
I bought a new laptop this week. I’ve been searching around for a while, even kicking around the idea of getting a MacBook, but I came across a HP Pavillion dv6000 this week and it fit the bill. I knew it was time to upgrade when I kept bothering Mrs. Shoo to use her laptop. My other laptop works just fine, and I think I’ve already found a home for it, but I’ve got it loaded with Ubuntu and the majority of the applications I use are in a Windows world (Virtual PC, Remote Desktop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio).
Nerd details:
AMD Turion 64
250GB; 2GB Ram - Upgradeable to 4GB
NVIDIA 8400 256mb Dedicated Memory
15.4″ Brightview Screen
Webcam and mic in screen.
HD-DVD Multi Record Drive
Mobile Remote
Vista Home Premium
It’s a pretty sweet laptop. I’ve been using it for about a week and had have no complaints. Okay, I do have one complaint and that’s all the preloaded junk I had to take off, but that was to be expected. The keyboard has taken a little getting used too. The keys have more of a click feed back than other laptop keyboards that I’ve used, but I’ve grown to like it.
I like the touch sensitive media keys just above the keyboard. They’re back lit with blue light, and the volume control you slide your finger across. There’s also a button to turn off the mouse touch pad. Handy if you’re typing a document and keep moving the cursor.
I’ve been plugged in most of the time I’ve used the laptop, but I got about an hour and a half worth of processor intensive multi-tasking usage unplugged, which isn’t bad at all. I assume you could get close to 3 hours if it was just word processing and light internet browsing.
It’s a pretty sharp looking laptop too. The screen is white with a light silver pattern in the background. The keyboard is silver and the base of the laptop is black. Looks like a professional laptop, but not a boring suit laptop.
The laptop is loaded with 3 USB ports, firewire, s-video, vga connection, rj-45 (lan), rj-11 (modem), 5-1 memory card reader, and even a HDMI connector. It also has great set of Altec Lansing speakers which are located above the keyboard.
One complaint that I had about my old laptop was that screen was too close to the keyboard when it was closed and would occasionally rub against the keys and cause marks on the screen. Not the case with this one. There is plenty of clearance between the keyboard and the screen and I don’t think I’ll have the same issue. Neat thing is that the screen is latchless and closes shut using a hinge mechanism.
Now to build some websites so I can pay this thing off!
Santa was pretty good to Mr. Shoo this year and left enough Best Buy gift cards and cash to be able to get an iPod Touch. The Touch is very similar to the iPhone except that it’s not a phone, doesn’t have an external speaker, and doesn’t have bluetooth capability. What it does have is Wifi, photo slideshow, a web browser, about 8GB of storage, and it’s thinner than an iPhone. Not too shabby.
First thoughts:
Unlike Dave and his iPhone, I can manually manage my music, videos, and play directly from the iPod. Dave, something I did find out is that there is a 3rd party utility to copy your music from an iPod to your iTunes library if you use the Jailbreak hack (more on that later).
One of the first things I tried out was the web browser. Just unbelievable how easy it is to use. The browser allows for full page viewing of websites as well as modified mobile versions. Google has some iPhone/touch optimized pages for gmail, search, and calendar. With a double tap of the finger one can easily zoom in and check out a portion of a webpage. Of course, I checked out http://m.spfldbloggers.com first - and of course, I found out I need to fix a few features.
A neat thing that I can do from my touch since I am connected to the Internet via wifi is buy music from the iTunes library. Last night I bought my first album from iTunes while laying in bed half awake. It was way too easy. I clicked buy, entered my password and immediately after that I was automatically downloading new tracks to my iPod. The album also included some bonus features so as soon as I synced back with iTunes, iTunes started downloading new videos. All way too cool!
Jailbreak
Jailbreak is the method to get 3rd party apps installed on an iPhone / Touch. There are 100’s of tutorials out there so I thought I give one a shot. One of the first steps is to downgrade the firmware to 1.1.1. In 1.1.1 there is an exploit in the web browser to allow access to the root of the system so it’s possible to install applications. The Jailbreak software uses this exploit and then patches it right away. More info here.
CrunchGear has the easiest tutorial so far.
I gave it a shot tonight. Really easy to do. I installed a few apps under the 1.1.1 version, but when I went to upgrade to 1.1.2 I didn’t get the pre-installer for Jailbreak installed correctly so it reverted back to the factory settings. Eventually, I’ll try it again because it’s possible to get the same functionality from the iPhone of Google Maps and Email for the Touch that’s not currently included with the Touch.
So why didn’t you just get an iPhone?
Honestly, because I was worried about dropping a device that I would have so much invested interest into and having to pay for extra fees for mobile internet. You wouldn’t believe, but ol’ Shoo can be a bit clumsy at times. The rumor is that by June there will be a new 3G version of the iPhone and the current version will be out of date. And I guess the biggest reason why I didn’t get one was because somewhere in the iPhone contract there is small print that I must get a new puppy for GTG. Well, that’s what she keeps telling me.
Worth it?
Of course you could buy a Zune and be perfectly happy, but you wouldn’t have a kick ass UI (user interface) or a full internet browser. Yes, it’s worth it if you have the moola.
What kind of tools do you use for work and/or home (aka Your Digital Life)?
I’ve seen this on a few blogs floating around as a meme.
I am a huge fan of Wordpress, I’ve been typing entries into the blog-o-sphere for the last four years. In that time, I’ve upgraded countless times, changed plugins, and modified the crap out of it. I stand strong by it as one of the best and most versatile blogging platforms on the net. And it’s free.
Iggy, a local spfldblogger, is having some issues with it after moving from one blogging platform to Wordpress. Now Iggy you get cynical sometimes; so beware, this is not a potshot at you. I just feel like that I’ve been using the software for a great length of time that I have some authority on the subject and I should give back to what has been given to me for free.
Okay first of all…
The issue of your RSS feed being broke after changing themes is not impossible, but more than likely it was your RSS reader that cached your feed and you thought it was broken. My reasoning is because the framework, the code that supplies all the data connections and inter workings to the front end, works independently to what theme you’re working with.
The address to the RSS feed is always going to be http://sitename/wordpress/feed, or if Wordpress is in the root of the site, http://sitename/feed. The feed to comments is http://sitename/comments/feed.
The best way to debug this is to go directly to those pages. Another reason it may have broke is that the feed was invalid after trying to pass an invalid character in the feed. Wordpress should have handled everything, but by an oddball chance that could be your answer.
Next.
Speaking of RSS feeds. Why is the default setting to choose full or partial feed? How come I can’t have both without finding a plug-in to do this for me?
This would require modifying the framework and those nice paths shown up above would have to be modified. Why fix something when it’s not broke? And partial feeds, we’re not on 56k modems anymore.
Picture This.
I have yet to get time to find a plug-in to handle photos the way I want within WordPress.
I don’t know what you’re trying to do with your photos, but the easiest way is to upload them using the upload utility under the post editor. Wordpress does not manage photo albums, but a lot of photo sharing sites allow for easy export or direct publishing from photo sites like Flickr.
Page Me.
Page creation is easy enough but fails miserably all the same. I can’t create a page that has no parent at all. So I create a new category so that I can post the content I want within that category. However there are two problems with this. One the title of the new category wants to take over in the header. Two when I click to post only to the new category within my post. The content is still posted to the main page even though the main page was not selected. I don’t want the content posted on the main page. If I did I wouldn’t be wanting to create a new page or category now would I?
I am confused, so I’ll outline page creation the best way I can. A page is considered a static blog post, but totally seperate from the blog. Like if you wanted to post your contact information. When you create a new page, it will be posted as a link - depending on your theme, on the main page. The only way around this is to edit the header to exclude the link.
k2.
While the K2 theme is far from perfect it does make doing some task simple if you know where to look. Personally I still feel much of this functionality should be included within WordPress as default and set to be controlled under one of the numerous Dashboard tabs.
K2 is awesome, and I am using it on Gotshoo. The GUI presentation manager allows a user to move and configure modules, like Flickr thumbnails or latest posts, around the site with the click of a mouse. It would be cool if it was a default, but I think the reasoning for not using it to manage every type of theme would be that it would break a lot of other themes considering not everyone’s CSS follows the same structure. The K2 theme is special because it was specifically coded to handle those events.
Nope.
I think WordPress either is in denial or doesn’t care that it’s overall user base has changed. Originally the product was designed for web designers and administrators. However many people have sung the praises of WordPress. To the point where many less technical driven users are trying to put the product to use. I think many of these people have given up this endeavor do to the lack of ease of use.
Everything has a learning curve. You can’t go out and drive a Ferrari and expect it to drive flawlessly without knowing how to drive stick or corner hi-speed curves. Post some questions, I’ll do my best to answer.
The power supply died on my computer last week. I could have gotten something a little more cost efficient, but the workstation is my baby. That and the last pair of shoes GTG bought convinced me I needed to upgrade.
Here’s the old PSU.
Notice all the cables. I don’t even use half of them, so this time I got a modular power supply.
It even had its own tackle box.
This is what I mean by modular. Now I won’t have all that extra clutter.
Here it is compared to the old power supply. Look at that fan! Arrr…rrrr…rr.
Bluuuue.
580 W Hiper Power Supply Type R
I couldn’t believe the amount of cameras and cell phones raised up in the air at Lollapalooza. Maybe my age is showing, but the glow of 1 1/2″ screens has replaced the historically bright Bic lighter; although, the “concert smell” is still there.
Back in the day when I could frequent concerts more often, I would drag along my Sony Cybershot 1.3 megapixel camera. At the time I got it it was still not the top of the line, but it sure cost me a pretty penny. It was almost big as a brick. Its size saved it from a few mosh pits.
With the advent of YouTube and mainstream media being intergrated to the internet, I can watch the shows I saw by the concert promoter online, then watch it from 50 other different angles from user generated videos.
It’s just one of those things that I am still taken back by.
Ed and I reminisced between shows how we use to ‘discover’ new music. Way before Bit Torrent, Kazaa, or Napster music had to be found the old fashion way by searching for FTPs by yet to be developed non-Google search engines. A FTP is just a server that hosts files in the same way a web server hosts web pages. You’d find a FTP and try to download as much music as possible because there was no way of knowing how long it would be around. And you had to do it with a 56k modem, or a much faster connection if you were on campus.
“Back in my day it took 45 minutes to download one song, and that was in the cold with no shoes”
So when are the hooverboards going to be around?
(Warning to the average Gotshoo reader: There’s a lot of computer jargon / nerd speak in this post. You might want to skip on by to the puppy pictures)
I dove head first into Windows Vista without looking back. Microsoft fan boy? Eh, more like I was tired with XP. I’ve been using Vista since about the day it came out. I like it, it’s clean, it’s fast, and it works for me.
The only exception is that the software I use for video editing, Sony Vegas Movie Studio, will only work for Windows XP (and Sony does not plan to update this version to be compatible with Vista). I found this out after buying a legit copy and moving to Vista.
Now I’ve got the Ultimate version of Vista which is packaged with Windows Movie Maker. It’s a great program, but it does really simple stuff with video and I want to use the software that I paid for which has a ton more features.
In order to dual boot, the usual operation is to partition a hard drive into different parts. This just means that the computer can see two different areas to store information - ie two different hard drives. Well I already had three drives in my system, and wanted to use one as my Vista drive, one as my XP drive, and the third as my shared media drive between the two systems.
I searched Google for a few hours to find a tutorial on how to install Vista and XP on two different drives and run in a dual boot system. The tutorials I found online were limited and lack instruction. The process I list down below was mainly through trial and error.
I am posting this as future reference for myself and anyone else that comes across this post via a search engine.
The run down:
Make sure to make backups of the files you change, might save you from a headache later on.
In my bios I am able to set the primary hard drive - the hard drive that the computer is going to try to boot with. I have two SATA drives and one IDE. Vista is already installed on one of the SATA drives and XP will be installed on the IDE drive.
You’ll want to install each operating system by itself. Either in bios change the order of procession of the drives or physically remove the alternate drive when installing the OS.
In this configuration, Vista will be the primary (master) drive and XP will be the secondary (slave) drive.
After installing XP, the boot.ini needs to be changed to reflect the new position . Right click on the “My Computer” icon and go to properties. Go to the “Advanced” tab. Under the “Startup and Recovery” section, click the “Settings” button. This will open the boot.ini.
You’ll want to edit the boot.ini in XP because Vista will not allow you to directly edit the file.
If you installed XP on the primary drive then the boot.ini more than likely looks like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
Because we are setting the Vista drive back to the primpary position we will need to change the file. The primary drive is in position 0, the next drive is in position 1. We’ll change the file so that when we go to boot XP the boot file will know which drive holds the windows directory.
Change the value between the ( ) after rdisk to the corresponding disk.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptInThe processesion order of hard drives is zero based (0,1,2,3…). Setting rdisk to 1 means that XP is installed on the second hard drive.
Once XP is installed, I can go back into bios and change my Vista drive back to the primary drive.
If you have taken out the Vista drive, swap the drives back in making Vista the master and XP the slave.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to download and install EasyBCD in Vista. EasyBCD let’s you easily configure the boot file for Vista because the boot.ini file does not exist.
Once in EasyBCD, click the “Add/Remove Entries” button.
Click the Windows tab and select “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3.”
You’ll want to change the drive letter to the letter that represents the drive in Vista. In my configuration it was E. Click the save button then click “View Settings.”
Your config file should look something like this:
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows VistaEntry #1
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \WindowsEntry #2
Name: Microsoft Windows XP
BCD ID: {c6523d86-fde4-11db-9b60-0013d450d9a7}
Drive: E:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:
Once you’ve saved the Vista boot file then you’re finished. You should be able to reboot and be greeted by the boot manager.
I just chucked another 500 GB drive into the mighty Shoo computer.
(Can you tell I have nothing else to blog about?)
Anyone watch The Office tonight? Any predictions on Pam and Jim, or Jim and Karen? I think Michael breaking up with Jan is going to set into action Karen breaking it off with Jim just as Pam starts dating another guy.
Yup, you heard it here first.
Some friendly nerd tips from Shoo.
This week has been back to school week. I am in class brushing up and being taught the latest in object oriented programming with Visual Studio .Net 2005. The teacher has been awesome. He’s funny, knowledgeable, and relates the concepts to real world activities. Us geeks, like to make fun of the DBAs and end-users of the programming world.
Oddly enough, my fellow classmates are all from the state agency that I interned at right out of college. The guy next to me asked my old boss about me and said the guy was even able to pronounce my last name. Wow! Didn’t know I left that much of a lasting impression. I spent most of my time waiting for things to do.
I even rethought some of the stuff I’ve done in PHP in how that I could use it better by using object oriented programming. It has always been one of those things that I just write code from start to finish, but if I had thought a few steps ahead of myself I could create a structure that would not only allow me to manipulate data, create search, find, update functions but turn around and use the code for the same data in a different fashion.
I’ve been like in nerd heaven all week. OMG.
What’s cool about Visual Studio .Net is that you can write in any type of code supported (C#, C++, Visual Basic - I think there are 43 languages supported) and you’ll use the same libraries to write methods to interact with databases, send emails, or even logging and they’ll be the same in any language you choose. The only thing that is different is the syntax. You can even have a Visual Basic program talking to a C# program with ease because each application is compiled and wrapped in the .Net module and then turned into machine code.
What is also cool is that when building an application now it doesn’t matter if it is a Windows app or a website the only thing that is going to be different is the UI (user interface), as long your business (logic that manipulates and finds the data) and data (logic that interacts with the database provides code to interact with the SQL server) layers are built correctly.
Like I said - nerd heaven.
It’s nice to change it up and absorb new information and drink free Mountain Dew for a week.
It’s about 12:02 right now and I wish I was in bed. Today was a long one. Technically not over yet. I am logged into a remote location trying to do an update to their system that is not cooperating; gotta finish it before I go to bed. Would have done it during normal working hours, but I was in class today, as well as, the rest of the week for Visual Studio .Net.
I’d tell you more about my day, but it looks like I just finished what I needed to get done.
PS And I’ve got Ubuntu loaded on my laptop with wireless networking working.
This Sunday March 11th marks daylight saving time. You get to spring forward an hour and possibly mess up your Outlook meetings.
Wait, are we jumping the gun on this?
On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November. The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to resume the 2005 Daylight Saving Time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete. Source: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html
If you have automatic updates turned off on your Windows XP or Apple machine you may want to manually add the new time zone rules.
Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst
Windows Vista: You’re set.
Apple: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305056
If you have applications running on Java (which my work does - I’ve had a busy week): http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/
I didn’t think it would improve my speeds that much, but wow; everything pops up crisp now. Check out OpenDNS.com.
Don’t have to sign up for anything, just change the DNS entries in your router and you’re good to go. It will fix your typos like www.gotshoo.cmo, correcting it to www.gotshoo.com. I don’t know how they do it, but they have some anti-phishing protection.
Very cool.
My typical time to load a page went from 2-5 secs to literally .5 sec.
Well not on gotshoo yet.
After what seems like 6 months, the gravatar.com site is back online new and improved. If you don’t know what is a gravatar - it just a photo icon that is related to your email address. Before, on gotshoo, when making comments, if you had a gravatar it would display nicely next to your name.
The new site allows people to rate their own gravatar (this used to be done through a panel of real people) and images can be cropped on the site. So no need to find someone with Photoshop to crop out a nice picture.
The site is very web 2.0 and easy to use. You can also add multiple email addresses for one account.
I’ll be adding the feature back to gotshoo.com soon.
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