Webs’ Random Ideas

Well instead of fussing around with old technology in my computer, I took my friends advice and I’m gonna take in-store credit from Monarch and upgrade the dinosaur I call my computer.  It’s really exciting for me because I have never really been so close to the forefront of technology as I will soon be.  I’m gonna save money and just go with the socket 939 AMD 3000, but I will have a nice new motherboard from Asus, and a PCI-Express NVidia 7600 Video card .  Can’t wait.

Well it’s nice to see that our government cares that our leading scientist in global warming states that we have 10 years to reverse the impact we have on global warming before its to late.  Oh and in case it didn’t seep in, OUR GOVERNMENT DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SCIENCE!!  Check out the link below.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/20.html#a7587

Apparently more than many would think.  Check out this Engadget article.  Now our military can stay farther out of harms way by controlling an automatic rifle from afar.  I’m still not completely convinced this is a good idea.  Yea its great our military is out of the way, but isn’t easier to kill someone when your not standing in front of them, holding the weapon that fires the shot.  I think for many military personnel that use this, it will be too much like a video game.  There are already plenty of innocent life’s being lost, and floating around on the Internet are videos of innocent Iraqi’s being killed.  But in case Rumsfeld hasn’t realized this yet, there is still one way to completely ensure the safety of our Military.  Any guesses?  BRING THEM HOME!!!!!  Well I guess either way its another step forward to a machine fought war.

No this post isn’t about me and my latest trek.  I just read an article on BBC’s news site about Steve Vaught.  What a great story an what an interesting individual.  He is taking a trek across America, from California to New York.  And he’s doing it on foot.  And he’s come across some interesting things, such as the four mile stretch that had 21 fast food restaurants.  You can find his link on the left column of my website or down below.

FatManWalking

I feel that since I’ve got this blog, it’s my duty to divulge all my techie secrets.  Give me time and the rest will come out. 

Well by the title of the post you can tell I’m not reporting on something new, but man do I hate Real Player.  If you are a tech like me or just a regular annoyed user, then you know what I’m talking about.  There isn’t any concrete proof but I’m sure that the Real company is involved with spyware and adware in some way or another.  Regardless their program is incredibly annoying, and if you try to get rid of it once you have it, good luck, it’s there to stay!

Well fret no more about Real Player, because I have found the awesome alternative.  Real Alternative (If you click the link you have to scroll down quite a ways).  This program rocks.  It plays Real media files and the program wasn’t created on the sole purpose of trying to take over the world.  Unfortunately the link above was the best I could find, but it still gives all the necessary info about the program and has a link to download it.  I highly recommend this program to anyone.

The other night I saw George Clooney’s new movie "Good Night and Good Luck".  What an awesome film.  Dynamite directing, acting, and writing; everything you need for a top-notch film.  Below are the famous words from Murrow that helped to lead our nation away from fascism.

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Good night, and good luck.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well I have been home for a day and already my parents are cracking the whip .  Well… actually I knew I was going to help them with the basement baseboards. Above is the picture of my Dad’s ex-boss, Vic,  who was helping me.  He is retired now and is one of the best wood workers I have ever worked with or seen.  And considering he is 90 years young (and moves like someone in their 60’s), all of the work he does is spectacular.  But I especially liked our work bench we had in my parents basement (some might call it a ping pong table…). Anyways, baseboard work is usually not hard, most of it consists of cutting boards at a 45 degree angle and measuring lengths of the boards.  But our house has special (by special I mean there are some strange and just down-right stupid) features.  So we actually had to measures some strange angles which means that I actually got a chance to use that geometry I learned in high school.  So how’d it go you ask?  Well we started by measuring the weird angles.  After we measured some distances Vic looked at me and I looked back at him and he said, "So… do you remember anything about geometry?"  I went on the Internet to look up how to find angles of right triangles (yes I know it is simple math, but I haven’t used it for a while ), and when I thought I had an answer Vic said he knew what to do.  There were only a couple other oddities we ran into.  Below is a picture of one of them.

It might be hard to distinguish, but this is a picture of a corner where the wall meets the carpet.  This particular part of the wall had a lot of extra dry wall on it.  Don’t ask me why, but it had so much that if we applied the baseboard, it wouldn’t have sat flush on the wall, in fact it would have been about an 1/8th to 1/4 of an inch off the wall.  So I took a tool and shaved off what wasn’t needed.  If you look in the pictures you can see chunks of what was on the wall.  I know that the picture is small, but compared to the size of the picture, it’s a lot of extra crap that was applied in great amounts to many sections of the basement wall near the floor.

The other thing we ran into was that a lot of the wall was either concave or convex.  They were not flush, so it appears that the baseboard bows out somewhat.  Well regardless this is my first baseboard experience, and I think if I had to I could do it by myself.  I actually had a good time working on it and it was surprising how quickly time went by.  For more pictures view my image gallery at the top of the page.

Well I have decided to build a Myth TV box this summer.  My roommate and I do not pay for cable TV, but my girlfriend does, so I plan to put it in her apartment so that I can watch the occasional show.  Essentially a Myth TV box is a PVR box.  PVR stands for Personnel Video Recorder and is almost synonymous with DVR (Digital Video Recorder) which is the same thing as a TiVo or the box you get from your local cable company.  If you’ve heard of the media center computers being sold with Windows Media Center, then you know what I’m talking about.  A lot of the media center computers are being used as PVR boxes, so that you can set up scheduling of your favorite shows.

Well Myth TV does the same thing, except that its free.  It is a program you can use with Linux, Check It OUT. Well then someone decided to streamline the whole process and create a version of Knoppix called KnoppMyth.  This will automatically install Linux on your computer and Myth TV and it has an easy to use intuitive interface.  Once everything is installed, Myth TV setup will run and you can get your PVR box rolling. The only drawback to using Myth TV versus a DVR box from Best Buy, local cable company, etc is that Myth TV uses mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 decoding (whatever your decoder card can support) as the format for the files.  Versus a DVR box, this is a drawback because most DVR boxes have a proprietary file type that compresses the shows your record to a small sized file.  The files are much smaller on a DVR box then what it would be if you used mpeg-2.  Meaning you need more storage space for Myth TV than for DVRs, which in turn gets converted to cash.  However, this is also a plus for PVR boxes because those other DVR boxes use a proprietary format that you can only access from that box, and if the box has a DVD burner like my parents box, then the files are still in the proprietary format when burned to DVD.  Meaning you still need a box that is the same model number to playback the DVD you burned. With Myth TV you do not have to worry about this because the files are decoded into a format you can use on other devices, and are not proprietary to the MYth TV box.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well I finally got out of the old apartment to spend some time with the family and the dog.

I will have some posts soon

My friend Pete has a hilarious video where one of his friends got together with a bunch of people and decided that a group of them would drive the speed limit, 55, on Atlanta’s interstate.  This is a must see.
Pete’s Blog