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My nexus one: a mini-review

2010-01-11T12:13:00.002-05:00

So I picked up the nexus one last week. I'll run down some pros/cons and questions. Leave comments if you have others and I'll edit the post.

A little back story first: I wanted the "google" phone for a little while, waiting until generation 2 (post-G1). I nearly jumped on the droid but then got the rumors of this coming straight from google. I kinda figured that Verizon would find a way to limit the phone and screw the whole thing up, so I waited. So glad I did. You can read technical reviews all over, so I'll skip that here. I will say that the phone is slick, hardware is nice, and that if the screen was any sharper I'd use it to shave. Also, my last phone was a RAZR, so this a pretty big upgrade for me.

Pro-tip #1: As I noted previously, I got mine unlocked. I had always thought that phone companies subsidized phones in order to lock you in to a two-year plan, guaranteeing their income stream. Apparently, I was wrong. They just spread the cost of the phone (and then some) over the two years. Lesson to all- check the prices on the service packages and do the math before signing up.

The good stuff:

So far coverage has been good, or as good as it had been before. Wireless network was super easy to set up, and my phone automatically hops on the two networks I have setup with no troubles at all. Voice quality is also good.
Syncing to my gmail, contacts, and calendar was as easy as entering my login information. I was able to import the phone numbers off of my SIM card and they were loaded to my contacts. I did have to go in and merge these; I also had to set all the numbers from my SIM to be marked as "mobile" instead of "other". I am not sure if they were wrong on the SIM or if this is a bug of some sort. In any case, it was pretty easy. I at least now have a good seed of an address book (which I had started when doing Christmas cards).
Setup was a breeze. The animated backgrounds are cool. Good preloaded applications. The "Google Goggles" (free in market) is slick. Speech-to-text on all text boxes is pretty good. Not perfect, but good.
The LED trackball is actually really useful for navigating links on web pages, moving the cursor in a text field, and for being notified.
Youtube videos are fantastic.
The keyboard (software) is quite good.
I had to look up how to put music on, but once I did it was easy.
Usage is pretty intuitive.
Headphones, charger, and micro-USB cable included. Good to see standardization on cables so I can get some more cheap. (Compare this to my iPod.)
Purchasing through the marker uses your Google checkout (which you needed to set up to buy the phone). It worked easily and I was playing Tetris in no time.

The cons:

No Google reader or Google tasks apps. I am using a bookmark for the first (the mobile site is good) and an app called gTasks (free) for the second. I got the tasks app when I went to reference my shopping list in the lower level of Ikea and had no signal.
Haven't seen an app for gChat either, though I haven't looked that hard yet.
Not sure how voice mail works- I haven't gotten any yet.
For some reason I have a hard time getting the keyboard to come up in the messaging app. Using the trackball helps here.
The clock shows the weather when the alarm goes off. This is a con only because it was 9°F this morning. This did not help me get out of bed.
I am glad spare cables are cheap as I am going to be getting a few and leaving them at work, in the car, etc. Going to need to plug in every night I would say. I probably can't fully judge average power-consumption based on the first day of constant use, but this thing is going to use it's charge, that's for sure.

Summary:

Overall, I am loving this thing. Having twitter (using seesmic) and Reader there while waiting for something and having a minute or two is great. Having Wikipedia and the rest of the internet right there as well is super great. I am really looking forward to this week's episode of This Week In Google to see what the power-users (mostly Gina Trapani) think. I'm definitely in the honeymoon stage right now, and I have some learning to do to move beyond the basics, but I am looking forward to it. I am very happy so far.

If anyone has any question or you want to get together and check this thing out, let me know.

google phone on the way

2010-01-07T15:12:00.003-05:00

My advice on the Nexus One: Buy it no contract, then get the Even More Plus contract.

New User, with 2 year contract: $179 + (24 x $79.99) + $35 (activation fee) = $2133.76

Existing User, with 2 year contract: $279 + (24 x $79.99) + $35 (activation fee) = $2233.76

Existing User, no contract, unlocked phone: $529 + (24 x $59.99) + $35 (activation fee) = $2063.75

The no annual contract plan is $20 per month cheaper for the same exact plan. It's more money up front, but cheaper in the long run.

So what did you do last year?

2010-01-04T09:50:00.003-05:00

Walking into to work today I had that normal "here we go again" feeling. That feeling of "it's cold and I just got to the moon in Beyond Good and Evil last night and boy I'd rather be playing that right now" sort of way. You know the one. I got to the office, grabbed my coffee, and was walking down the hall thinking that I'm going to do this-and-that in 2010 when it struck me that this was the same thing I was thinking one year ago. What exactly did I do in 2009? I got some stuff done and had some good times, but what about the "big picture" stuff? I guess the years really do fly by as you get older if you let them; maybe I haven't kept my focus on what is important to me; maybe, just maybe, I'm not even sure what those things are anyway, and I really need to take a minute and figure that out before I end up doing this again in 2011 or 2012 or 2050 or [last year of my existence here].

A bit of a wake up call, that.

It's not even Friday

2009-10-13T09:36:00.002-04:00

OH MY GOD! THIRTEEN!
Triskaidekaphobia!
So very afraid...

launch parties

2009-09-23T21:06:00.003-04:00

The Windows 7 launch party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ.

The #1 related video is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUoaOiErFo? I can only assume that's for Karmic Koala.

hiking

2009-09-06T19:31:00.002-04:00

Lafayette was packed. Je ne suis pas Québécois- everyone else was.

#17

2009-09-04T14:18:00.002-04:00

Style, but no substance. It's unfulfilling living a gadabout's life.

#16

2009-09-04T10:33:00.002-04:00

Watch "The Price Is Right". Cheer as the discs carom down! Man, I love Plinko!

#15

2009-09-02T10:33:00.002-04:00

Through inane haikus, this abecedarian grows, creatively.

#14

2009-09-01T13:17:00.006-04:00

The cool breeze signals another fecund season cycling to a close.

#13

2009-08-31T21:31:00.002-04:00

Monday. Work Again. From what source came the diktat that this is success?

#12

2009-08-30T17:11:00.002-04:00

Interlocuter- Why can't I speak directly? T'would be easier.

#11

2009-08-29T11:08:00.003-04:00

Fresh berries aging; "Waste not, want not", I chose mine with a chary eye.

#10

2009-08-28T11:49:00.002-04:00

Clear, cool, and sunny! I find much delectation in such fair weather.

#9

2009-08-27T20:08:00.002-04:00

Bug bites on my feet: so itchy, so annoying. A spider, perhaps?

#8

2009-08-27T06:38:00.002-04:00

I arise itching. Some unseen nocturnal bug biting where exposed.

#7

2009-08-26T14:10:00.001-04:00

Once again tardy... The weather was beautiful, I went for a run.

#6

2009-08-24T21:14:00.002-04:00

Atmosphere stifling- sweat does not evaporate; I long for a storm.

#5

2009-08-24T10:01:00.001-04:00

Rain on the Mass pike. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Ah, but the rainbows!

#4

2009-08-23T10:31:00.001-04:00

Once more a late post after a night in the woods. Primed to return home.

#3

2009-08-22T11:26:00.001-04:00

Cloudy morning sky causes a late awakening. Lunch time already?

#2

2009-08-20T18:44:00.001-04:00

Finally summer- hot and humid once again. I could do without.

#1

2009-08-19T21:02:00.002-04:00

Japanese poems with a vocabulary of limited breadth.

next generation youtube

2009-03-03T23:01:00.001-05:00

Here's the link to the videos: http://www.jandrewedits.com/

Watch them all. I promise you won't be disappointed.

porter

2009-01-25T18:17:00.003-05:00

Decided to make a porter today. Here's the steps, as usual:

Got the water up to about 180°F
Add 1 lb of Black Patent grains
Steeped at 180°–185°F for 20 minutes
Added 6.6 lbs of Cooper's Dark Malt Extract
Brought to a boil
Added 1/2 oz Northern Brewer hops (8.5%)
Boiled for 30 minutes
Added 3/4 oz Northern Brewer hops (8.5%)
Boiled for 30 minutes
Added 1/4 oz Willamette hops (4.4%)
Boiled for 5 minutes
Put in sink to cool
Brewed a pot of french roast coffee
Added coffee, water, and cooled it down
Measured original gravity; 1.046%
Added yeast
Commenced waiting

To save time, I ate some dinner and watched an episode of Planet Earth, which is fantastic. If you have an HD setup, you should get this as soon as you can. I sanitized during the steeping of the grains.

Final notes:

Bottled on February 8, 2009
Final gravity 1.022
It's looking/smelling/testing promising
I had to dump three bottles out due to not having enough caps. Totally stupid move on my part. Lesson learned.

hey seriously guys!

2009-01-08T19:52:00.002-05:00

I just uncapped one of those cranberry-orange beers I made, and I must say, she is a tart little bastard! And once again I score- it's not that bad!

hey guys!

2009-01-08T18:52:00.001-05:00

Remember back when I made my pumpkin ale? I just cracked one open, and... and... it's not that bad!

2008-12-28T21:47:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas, ya scurvy dogs!

mixtapes

2008-12-22T22:29:00.002-05:00

Yeah so I hear that people got the CDs, but I totally forgot track listings. Here's the artist/track. If you want the album they are from, drop me an email. Or check wikipedia maybe.

October:
Germs - The Other Newest One
Daft Punk - Human After All
Jets to Brazil - Conrad
Minor Threat - Minor Threat
Sarah Mclachlan - Possession
Tagada Jones - Combien de Temps
The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
Tom Waits - The Pontiac
Superdrag - Señorita

November:
Los Straitjackets - Midnight in Salerno
Prodigyremixed.com - Action Radar (FakeID Mix)
The Airborne Toxic Event - Missy
Okkervil River - A Girl in Port
Cracker - Truckload of Art
Coldplay - Life in Technicolor
Colin Hay - Overkill
Lifetime - Ostichsized
The Sports Inferno - MSU Rant

Hope you enjoyed! If you didn't get one and you want one, let me know.

Merry Christmas!

kubuntu 8.10

2008-12-21T18:25:00.002-05:00

I liked KDE on my ubuntu setup, but I decided it was time to upgrade. I did my media machine first, since I really only had to back up movies, and then I did a clean install. KDE 4.1 took a little getting used to (some different paradigms in effect here), but once I figured out what was going on, I loved it. I upgraded the main machine today. It looks great, and seems to be really usable and customizable to my preferences. My preferences basically being the defaults, this was easy.

In short, a couple a snowstorms shutting me into my apartment resulted in me updating the linux on two machines, organizing photos, making backups, and finishing reading "Ender's Game".

It's pretty geeky no matter how you look at it.

networking

2008-12-19T00:55:00.003-05:00

My network connection has dropped out twice tonight while uploading pictures. Yeah, it's a lot of data, but still, this is ridiculous. I'm not even really sure what is going wring; my networking skills are weak at best. My router did need an update, but when I tried that (after pausing everything else), it was taking forever, so I killed it. It's firmware, not a new OS.

I need more skills. Girls like guys with skills.

I just want to put vacation photos on the web!

San Francisco Photos

2008-12-17T23:15:00.003-05:00

I got back from a kick-ass San Francisco vacation the other day, and I am uploading photos now. I am going with picasa first, and then facebook, since I want to a) share with non-facebook people, and b) it's an export option in digiKam. My main issue so far seems to be that it is taking forever to upload the first (huge) batch of photos, and I think I know why. Apparently, picasa is resizing my photos to 1200x1600, and I am uploading full-size, so I am wasting bandwidth. This max-size would have been nice to know beforehand! Facebook apparently has a max dimension of 640. That I am going to resize first. Neither were up-front or clear about this; hell, picasa still shows the original uploaded size.

This would have been nice to know first.

UPDATE: Picasa allows the full size, but you have to go with the "Download" menu to get it. I was going to delete this little rant, but since I couldn't find much on the image size issue on the web, people can learn from my mistakes.

free tunes for you!

2008-11-25T11:07:00.002-05:00

Remember back in October when I said I had mixtape ready? Well, I finally bought some blank CDs, so if you want one, email me or leave a comment. Since I am so late, this comes with a pretty nifty paper sleeve, and a BONUS MIXTAPE!

Wicked exciting.

So yeah, if you want it, let me know your address. And you KNOW you want it, so it's really just a matter of addresses at this point.

cranberry-orange or orange-cranberry?

2008-11-24T22:34:00.002-05:00

The final flavor will be the judge. So far, it smells great. Super great. This is one beer I am psyched about!

Here's the recipe:

1 3/4 lbs crystal malt 40
3.3 lbs Thomas Cooper Light Malt Extract
3.3 lbs Thomas Cooper Wheat Malt Extract
2 oz Kent Goldings Hops, 4.9%
1/2 oz Saaz Hops, 5.8%
11g Nottingham brewing yeast
Peels of 5 pretty good sized navel oranges
2 qts 365 Organic cranberry juice

... and here's the steps:

Heat water to ~150°F
Start sanitizing necessary equipment (fermenter, hydrometer, airlock, strainer)
Add crystal malt
Rinse necessary equipment
Add heat, mine was about 190°F–200°F for 15–20 minutes
Take out grains, add malt extracts
Bring wort to boil
Add 1 oz Kent Goldings hops
Boil vigorously for 30 minutes
While boiling wort, wash and peel oranges with vegetable peeler
When 30 minutes is up, add orange peels and remainder of Kent Goldings hops to wort
Boil vigorously another 30 minutes. Enjoy the aroma; holy sweet god damn it's so good!
Add Saaz hops
Boil for 5 minutes
Put the brewpot in the ice water in the sink
Add cranberry juice
Add 2–3 gallons water to fermenter
Start the yeast according to packet directions
Stir wort and cool to about 100°F
Add cooled wort to fermenter; add more water if needed
Measure original gravity: 1.044 is what I have got
Add yeast
Put on the lid, add water to air lock, put it away, and begin waiting

I am more excited about this beer than any of the other three so far. Seriously, the orange and hops combination is one of the best smells ever smelt by man. This man, anyway.

UPDATES:

Final gravity is 1.018
Bottled on December 6, 2008.

morning off

2008-11-24T22:33:00.003-05:00

So for those of you who missed the news, a power cable blew out downtown, causing some fires underground and some manhole cover explosions. Apparently no one was hurt, which is good. The power went out for a bunch of the theater district and back bay, including the Hancock tower, where I work. That meant, in a nutshell, that I had the morning off. I spent it bottling my pumpkin ale. I do not have high hopes for it. The taste I had had a very bitter bite to it—too much pumpkin pie spice, methinks. It reminded me of the spice beer referenced in Dune. I checked the mirror and what do you know? My eyes had already turned blue!

Oh wait, that's a recessive gene, not a dependency on [spoiler alert!] dead worm.

Anyways, I got it bottled, cleaned everything up, and by that time things were getting back to normal, so I grabbed dunkin' donuts and a veggie sub at the local sub shop and headed in. This really worked out in my favor, since I had meant to bottle that this past weekend in order to get another batch brewed before I went home for Thanksgiving.

The post regarding that brew is forthcoming.

go speed go!

2008-11-19T21:16:00.003-05:00

Do you ever have one of those days where you just need to get pumped up to do your job or whatever? And maybe your tunes aren't cutting it? Yeah, me too. So here's what I did:

I took a ripped version of Speed Racer to work, downloaded mplayer (because I was missing some codec somewhere to get the sound to play, and it just worked, and it rules), and I just play it and listen to it during the day. I pretty much have it memorized anyway. It totally gets me going every time.

You should watch it. I tear up during the final race every single time. Seriously. I almost cheer out loud.

It may be ridiculous, but this is pretty much my favorite movie.

my first mead

2008-11-14T19:28:00.002-05:00

This is how I did it, for good or ill:

Put a gallon of water in my brew pot and starting heating
Mixed some Clorox and water to sanitize my hydrometer, stopper, airlock, and jug
Added 3 lbs of honey from Trader Joe's to the water
Got the water up to around 180°F, and left it about there, really just took the lid off and left the heat on. I think it got a little hotter.
Left it on for a half hour or so
I skimmed the scum off the surface as needed
I then realized I had no funnel, so I MacGyver'd (or MacGruber'd, maybe?) one out of aluminum foil and duct tape
Added some champagne yeast to water, per the directions
Dumped the honey water (must) into the jug
Added the yeast (most of it, didn't need it all) to the jug. Couldn't take a hydrometer reading in the pot, since it was too shallow, and didn't dare in the jug, since I didn't want to lose it. I guess we'll have to guess the strength.
Topped it off with some more must, and put in the airlock.
I wrapped the jug in a dark t shirt to help block the light
Cleaned up.

We'll see how this turns out. Even if it sucks, what am I out, ten bucks? Not a bad little experiment.

my great day

2008-11-13T21:43:00.003-05:00

Today I actually got into work on time and got some stuff done. Went to T-Mobile to see if they could fix my phone (the screens stopped working), they couldn't, but since I have the insurance and they replaced my phone six weeks ago, I called them up, and they're sending me a new one. I wanted to be mad but the two girls I talked to were really sweet. Then I had lunch, which was also pretty good. Things were going OK.

Then I learned that I have no other tasks at work except the one that the CEO is hot-to-trot for and is kind of a pain in the ace. Then I got to tell my friend (whose project I have been working on for about a year) that her stuff has gotten postponed, again.

Then on the way home, I was going to go to the gym, but instead I drove my car into the back of someone else's car on the Mass pike. Nothing major at all, no one was hurt, my car's front bumper has a little damage (who cares?), his just has a scratch. He had to stop quick for another fender-bender (again, no one hurt), and apparently new Mercedes' have better stopping ability than old Civics, by about a couple feet. Unless, of course, the Mercedes is in front. Who'd have guessed?

I then went to the grocery store quick, then the liquor store for some Guinness, and then home. Got home, went to put on some comfortable wind pants, couldn't find them, filled out the accident report, cracked open a beer, and watched Speed Racer to cheer me up.

I couldn't even call my insurance company, since my phone is busted.

It's not even Monday; what the heck?

UPDATE: If Dinosaur Comics doesn't make everything ok, I don't know what does. And for the record, it did.

my very own pumpkin ale

2008-11-10T23:47:00.008-05:00

Last Saturday I brewed up a batch of pumpkin ale. It was my very own recipe, loosely based on some I had found online. Here's the notes:

Ingredients:

1lb 2 row grains
3.3lbs Thomas Cooper Malt Extract, Light
3lbs L.D. Carlson Breiss Dried Malt Extract, Golden Light
3 cans Libby's canned pumpkin
3oz East Kent Golding hops (for brewing), 4.8%
1.5oz Hallertau hops (for finishing), 3.9%
11g Nottingham brewing yeast
1tsp (heaping) pumpkin pie spice

Steps:

Steep grains at 160°-170°F for 20 minutes
Strain to pail, and then back to brew pot
Heat wort to boil while sanitizing other equipment. Put can of malt syrup in hot water
When the wort is boiling, turn off the heat, add malt syrup, dried malt, pumpkin, and half of the brewing hops
Return to boil. Boil for 30 minutes
Add the rest of the brewing hops. Boil for 30 minutes
Add spice and finsihing hops. Brew for a couple more minutes
Cool it down, strain into fermenter, measure original gravity, and add yeast

Notes:

Original Gravity: 1.057
I steeped the grains too hot, about 190°F. Need to be more careful.
My carbon monoxide detector went off. I had to open some windows and turn on the fan. Should have done this from the start, as the one burner of my stove was going for hours.
To strain I used a large steamer. It worked really well.
Getting the wort back to a boil when I added the malt took a while. Also, my brew pot was quite full.
I used canned pumpkin since the grocery store did not have pumpkins for sale. This was a bit of a pain, as the wort ended up thick, and straining it was time-consuming, and a pain in general. This could really haunt me when it comes time to bottle.
The wort smelled delicious

We'll see how it turns out.

UPDATES:

Gravity at 1.020 on November 14
Gravity at 1.018 on November 16. I was going to rack it today, but it's still going I guess.
Gravity still at 1.018 on November 24. I bottled it.

sharing music is fun

2008-10-31T13:45:00.002-04:00

I let some of the guys I work with know that my music is on share, so they can listen if they want. I just asked them not to judge; we all have crappy music hidden in our collections.

Anyway, they're all separately perusing the folder structure, and my manager finds the Black Flag “Live '84” album. "Oh hey", he says, "I think I was at that show."

Crap like that makes me love my job.

music is getting around

2008-10-29T13:20:00.005-04:00

So I finally broke down and got a new iPod the other day. I got the 120GB Classic. "Casey," you may ask, "aren't you all Ubuntu at home? Why would you get a closed-source, fancy-pants iPod?"

I'll tell you why: iPods are nice. My last one, a 2nd gen 10GB, just died. Finally. Some people buy toys, get fancy accessories, and baby them. Not me. I used the crappy case it came in, for about a year, and after that, threw it in my school bag or pocket, and went through a year of grad school in it. I was not gentle. I ran that thing dead, or close to it, most days of the week. I had to get the headphone jack fixed once (due to a design flaw which they fixed in later models) but that was the only problem I ever had with it. It even once got half immersed in lemonade overnight, but I just let it dry out, and all was good, though the buttons were a bit sticky. That was years ago.

In short, it was easy to use, I used in constantly, and it took the beating. I was sold on it.

However, all good things come to an end, and it was no different. I am still not entirely sure if it was the battery being completely gone, or the disk, but in any case, I wanted a new one since I had outgrown 10GB, and it was a pain to add new music. Which brings us to the present day...

I went to the apple store at lunch, picked the new one up (silver, not black), and took it home. Booted up windows, got the latest iTunes, plugged it in, and made sure the software was up to date. Rebooted to Ubuntu. Plugged the iPod in, fired up Amarok, mimicked the settings I had for my shuffle, connected, and loaded an album. (Incidentally, it was Minor Threat's “First Two 7"s”, just to keep with that DIY spirit) Ejected. It played. Perfectly.

Nice.

Caveats: The album artwork did not go over. I checked the tags, and not all the songs had the artwork, so I grabbed a well-tagged album. Still no luck. Ok, no worries, I can figure this out later. I also have not tried loading photos or video.

At this juncture, I figure all that stuff is gravy. I really just wanted an mp3 player that I could use to travel with all my tunes (currently about 37GB and growing). I am guessing in another five years this will all be on my phone, but for now, given past history, this is/should be the solution.

Act II:

You may remember from earlier posts that I had transported all my music to work, 1 or 2 GB at a time, to have on my work machine. I did this since my iPod had poor battery life. I like this setup, since I have some big studio headphones at work, and I like having it all there. Less to carry back and forth. Anyways... at the time I was moving stuff, I had not unlocked my iTunes and Audible content, so was using iTunes to listen to it all. I didn't have a lot of locked up tracks, but some, and it was newer stuff, so I wanted it available. I have since unlocked the works, at home, and have cleaned up some tags in the process. I wanted all that at work, but I didn't want to move it all piecemeal. I now had a solution.

Since all my stuff at home was unlocked, decently tagged, and organized, I simply dragged my ~/Music folder onto the mounted iPod. When I got to work, I uninstalled iTunes (no need for that anymore, and I suspect it was jamming me from sharing the folder my tunes are in), renamed my current music folder (always have backups), mounted the iPod, and dragged the Music folder from my iPod (which was mounted as an external drive, since iTunes wasn't there to lock it up) to C:\. I then decided to kick it old-school, and installed winamp. Oh yeah, that's right kids, I went back to your grandpa's mp3 playing windows app. That's how we did it back in my day. I set the local media folder during setup, and voilà! DRM-free tunes for me! A couple clicks later, read-only access was granted for everyone on the network. Sharing is caring, after all.

Dénouement:

I now have a lighter weight method of listening to and sharing my music at work. I am going back to PA this weekend, and I have a convenient way to take and listen to whatever I want on the way; planning out what I may or may not want to hear on two five and a half hour drives through western Mass. and upstate New York is no longer something I need to do. I have a new toy. If having all my music wasn't fun enough, I also now have a project: I need to get album covers, photos, and videos syncing from Ubuntu.

Sometimes you got to love being a geek.

Free Music to Share with Friends - October '08

2008-10-15T22:58:00.002-04:00

I'm working on a new mixtape- I've got a good playlist going right now. All new tunes*, or mostly new, at least. The format is new-fangled 8-track. I am defining that as 8 songs and a short story. If you've got an address, the ability to play CDs, and about a half an hour, then get on board.

*And by "new", I mean "new to my collection"

True Brew IPA

2008-10-13T22:28:00.009-04:00

Tonight, after much procrastination (much), I brewed my second batch of beer. I used a kit again, but this time I feel like I had a better idea of what I was doing. I also wrote down how long it took, so next time I'll know, and be able to judge if I have time or not. Here's the info:

I used an IPA kit from Crosby & Baker
Began boiling water about 6:30 pm
Sanitized what I needed while waiting for the boil (big time saver)
It took about 45 minutes to get the water boiling. It was about 2 gallons
Blah, blah, blah, following instructions...
Beer fermenting and all cleaned up at 9:50pm
Original gravity 1.048- a little low, but oh well

Total time to brew: ~3 1/2 hours and bottle of merlot.

My biggest improvement over the first brew was starting the boil before sanitizing the fermentation gear. The initial boil takes 45 minutes, so there's plenty of time for sanitizing and dinner if everything is clean to start with, which it should be (and was).

Another big plus was the fact that I had a bunch of new tunes from emusic from yesterday. Tonight's soundtrack consisted of an EP and a missing track of Dashboard Confessional, Minor Threat's "First Two 7"s", Tagada Jones' "Le Feu Aux Poudres", and The Gaslight Anthem's "The '59 Sound". I like emusic since I get to gamble on bands (since the music is cheap and it's a fixed number of tracks per month so I'm forced to get something), and this month the two gambles (Tagada Jones and The Gaslight Anthem) were big, big wins. I found out about both of them from some random punk internet radio channel, and they are both great. The Gaslight Anthem is somewhere between Springsteen and The Killers, and definitely New Jersey, and they are excellent; I think anyone reading this would like them. That's three, maybe four, people total, but I think you would all dig them. If you want a copy, shoot me an email. Tagada Jones is a hardcore band from France and also excellent, but in a completely different way. Same goes for them. I'm kinda rediscovering hardcore punk, and really appreciating it for the first time, I think. Also, that DIY attitude is a great soundtrack for any home project. As for Dashboard Confessional, well, I'm not ashamed to admit I have feelings. Maybe that's what being grown up is all about? I think that has a lot to do with it.

I could have used all this information ten years ago. Given my genes, the best part of my life is getting shorter in a painfully real way every day. But then, I'm living it, so you got to love that.

All in all, I wouldn't change it for the world. Unless this batch of beer comes out less than spectacular. In that case, I would change recipes. :)

Next up: Homemade recipe for pumpkin ale!

ADDENDUM:

Notes from racking:

Began santizing about 7:30
Beer in bottles and equipment soaking at 9:00
Final gravity 1.020 (which is a bit high, given the recipe)
All put away at 9:30 (well, some stuff was drying

Total time to rack: ~2 hours and bottle of Newcastle.

The racking was a lot more steady, in terms of doing stuff. Really the final soak was my only break, and that wasn't much of one. Not a bad way to spend a couple of Monday nights, all told. For some reason I have gotten a low alcohol content with both these recipes. The first time, I figured I just screwed up. This time, however, I was quite careful at each step with sanitizing, temperatures, and general instruction following. I wonder if I've just gotten some sub-par yeast or maybe not enough sugars? I will have to look into it. And honestly, if this is my only problem, I'm cool with that. I don't like the super-strong stuff anyway, so as long as it's tasty, who cares if it's only 3.5%-4.0%?

I guess we'll see how it is in a month, eh?

Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes

2008-08-28T15:47:00.001-04:00

Direct link

There are a lot of really good talks on this site, this is one of my favorites.

go and enjoy

2008-08-04T21:30:00.002-04:00

Classic English Pale Ale - July 2008

2008-07-13T15:48:00.009-04:00

My first batch of homemade beer. I am using the Brewer's Best Classic English Pale Ale ingredient kit from L.D. Carlson. I am also using their equipment kit.

If you want to read the steps involved, it's on their site. It's not terribly exciting. I took a couple of pictures anyway.

Here's the info I'm tracking.
- Brewed on July 13, 2008
- original gravity: 1.042
- final gravity: 1.018
- Bottled July 21, 2008
- Recipe says ready to go in 2 weeks, best after aging another 3 weeks after that

Notes:
- I had to repitch some yeast a few days into the fermentation. I don't know if I added the original batch at too high of a temperature, or if my brewing conditions were too warm or what. It seemed to help. I also got a floating thermometer, so that should be a bit handy.
- I could have saved time in the initial brewing step by doing my sterilization while waiting for my boil.
- I used to the dishwasher to clean my bottles in the following manner: Firstly, my bottles were well rinsed. I then did a full wash when I had a about 2 1/2 cases (a full load). I put them all back in boxes and then in a big rubbermaid container I already had in storage. The day before I was ready to bottle, I put them into the dishwasher again, and did the full cycle with no soap. I figure this would take care of any soap residue from the first wash, plus my dishwasher has a sanitize cycle, so this saves me a lot of bottle washing. Hopefully it worked. One caveat here: long-neck bottles don't fit on the top shelf. Must drink more Newcastle.
- The final bottling took about 2 1/2 hours start to finish. Watching the water & sugar boil seemed to take forever (watched pots and all that), the bottling was fine, but the kicker was the cleaning when done. Everything but my stock pot was dirty.
- I put the bathmat from the bathroom in front of the kitchen sink, since I was getting water everywhere and the linoleum was getting quite slippery.
- The old "rubber band on the sink sprayer" gag worked well for washing my bottling pail in the sink. The other I just filled from the bathtub faucet. (Not while bathing; I am not Kramer.)
- Must have more towels clean and ready for next time. Cloth napkins not absorbent enough.
- If you like really flat, really warm beer, a glass of the stuff going into the bottles is right up your alley. It's like licking the spoon.

Yeah, so that's that. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'm thinking about an IPA for round two.

UPDATE: I cracked open a bottle or two the other night. Not bad. A bit fruity- which I read can be a side effect of a too-warm fermentation temperature. For my first brew, however, I'm pretty happy.

Round two begins this weekend maybe?

photo op

2008-07-09T22:57:00.002-04:00

What are you people using for photo management on your computers? I can't use iPhoto anymore (due to the jump to ubuntu full time).

BTW: I started that little project tonight (got the rest of the parts this morning) since I was going to brew some beer (project #2) when I came to the realization that I did not have a thermometer for cooking. I am not done yet with the computer; details to come. I've taken a bunch of pictures already. Hence the question.

project updates

2008-07-08T19:20:00.004-04:00

Ok, so in the last post you learned that I am now TV-less. I know now how the peoples of yesteryear discovered and invented. It's called "learning by doing". That is what I am engaging myself in. It's awesome.

I currently have two main projects in the works:

#1 Building a media computer
A while ago my [cheap-ass] DVD player died. I've been using my old powerbook as my iPod syncing source, downloaded movie player, and DVD player since then. What I really wanted, however, was a dedicated machine to do all this. The powerbook really wasn't up to the task. I've also decided that it's time for me to use open source as much as possible. My main computer at home is ubuntu already, so it's not too much of a jump. To build the machine. I'm basically following this guy's steps, minus the tuner card (since I have no input on that front anyway). I got one piece today, but UPS screwed up so I have to wait till tomorrow for the rest. What I have done in the meantime was to a) unlock my DRM tunes and audible.com books (not really that many tracks) and b) get my iPods to sync with amarok. Not too difficult, really. Hopefully I'll have that stuff running this week sometime.

#2. Brewing my own beer
This is pretty straightforward; I'm just following directions. I've got some friends who have done it, and I've been wanting too for a while now. I went to the modern brewer, got some stuff, and now I just need to get a big pot to boil in. It needs to be stainless or enameled steel. I'm leaning towards getting a turkey fryer for this use, since then I'd have one of those as well. For bottles, I collected all I need over the fourth. Right now, I just need the pot, I need to wash a bunch of stuff, and then I need to brew the wort and wait a little while. Should be fun.

I'll take pictures get the steps up here for both projects. Other than that, it's been a lot of reading, online and off. Some cooking. Even a little exercise. Honestly, I actually feel smarter without the TV constantly on. It's crazy.

Tashfeen wins the prize for first commenter in the last post. I'm going to name the prize as one free ticket to see Hellboy II, since we just made plans to go see it. Should be good; I'm really looking forward to Guillermo del Toro's directing. Megan will get the runner-up prize, which I have yet to figure what it is. I'll know it when I see it.

so yeah, it's been a while...

2008-06-30T23:51:00.002-04:00

So it's been a while. If you check this space regularly, you've most likely stopped checking. If you've got this bad boy on your rss feed, and I do recommend the rss feeds, then kudos to you.

So what has been happening that has caused me to not write? Apathy, mostly, I suppose. I've been working a lot, hanging out with friends, and just not writing. I have recently turned my life around by canceling my cable. I tell you, it's great. I still have the internet, I still have netflix, and now I am reading again. I now go to bed instead of just flipping channels. I tell you, it's great. I feel alive again.

The moral of this story? Stop watching tv instead of living. You're going to die soon.

Side note 1: I've got an account on goodreads.com now, for you readers out there.
Side note 2: Netflix Metalocalypse. Today.

I think I'm going to try to write some posts again, but better thought out than this one. I've even got a couple projects lined up that I plan on taking pictures of and getting up here. We'll see how it goes.

First one to leave a comment wins a prize.

too funny

2007-08-23T10:20:00.000-04:00

at least I've got my health

2007-08-20T18:41:00.001-04:00

So I've been laying low for a while, and by "a while", I mean "the month of August". I thought I had pulled a muscle while hiking that led to a pinched sciatic nerve (read: pain). Last Tuesday I found out I have this. I still get the sciatica, but now with a back brace too.

Basically, I have been laying around on my floor and doing as much as I can, but it hurts. I can walk about a block before needing a rest. Today I went into work and lasted until two o'clock. I have another appointment on Friday. It kinda sucks since I can't really do anything- it hurts to walk, it hurts to sit for any extended period, and it really hurts to drive. I'm getting better, I've done a bit of reading, a lot of movie watching, and I've caught up on my sleep.

But yeah, I've not been terribly active. I'll let you know when I'm healed. So that's where I've been.

Ok, off to grocery store. Wish me luck.

minesweeper

2007-08-07T07:15:00.000-04:00

So awesome.

John Edwards will talk about impeachment tonight

2007-07-23T13:20:00.000-04:00

The following is from an A28.org newsletter. Please vote the impeachment questions up on the link below if you'd like to hear an answer. We deserve one. Thanks.

John Edwards will talk about impeachment tonight

John Edwards has announced that immediately following tonight's CNN-YouTube debate he will conduct a 30-minute live webcast on five web sites, where he will answer questions submitted to the campaign prior to and during the debate.

You can submit questions directly on JohnEdwards.com or by text messaging the word DEBATE to 30644. The campaign will also include questions from social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Care2, and Twitter in a live feed on JohnEdwards.com.

Edwards has committed to answering the two user-submitted questions with the most votes at http://www.communitycounts.us/. The question currently in first place is Impeachment of GW Bush; Necessary to thwart future abuses? Eight other questions about impeachment have been submitted. Please go to http://www.communitycounts.us/?q=demdebate&search=impeach and vote them up by clicking on ANSWER above each of them.

And be sure to submit your own impeachment questions directly at JohnEdwards.com or by text message.

The post-debate webcast will air live on the following websites: the campaign website (www.johnedwards.com), Edwards' MySpace page (myspace.com/johnedwards), CommunityCounts.us, Ustream.tv, and Care2.com.

Letter to my representative

2007-07-21T12:11:00.000-04:00

I recently sent an email to my representative in the House of Representatives. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Markey-

As my representative in the House, I urge you to support House Resolution 333 to impeach the Vice President. I also urge you to seriously consider impeachment proceedings against the President himself.

It is my opinion that the executive branch is abusing their powers, with illegal wiretapping being my main grievance. I am however, extremely upset and disappointed with Congress as a whole, as they have allowed these actions to continue unfettered. Many congressmen want to appear to be leading, but none are willing to take the chance to actually do it. The front-runners in the upcoming presidential race are prime examples of bark without any bite.

Please lead. Please do the right thing. Protect our inalienable rights, and remove from office those who would dare to even attempt curbing them or taking them away.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Casey Boardman

You can find your own representative at the House website.

goon squads

2007-07-10T20:17:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I have to share it. So here it goes...

You've seen the imaginary competitions before, generally "March Madness"-style, of famous villains, deciding who is the top villain of all time. I'll tell you who it is: Darth Vader. He's a badass. Throughout history, villains, even super awesome ones like Mumm-ra are known for having sub-par goons working for them. (He made it to the finals, by the way. Check out that URL. Who else is bad enough to get their title in their wikipedia URL?

So who has the best goons? I think Jango Fett clones could probably handle the Foot Clan, but who else is even up to the fight?

I'll tell you who.

Years before her time, about the turn of the last century, one woman created not one, but two formidable forces. Who? The Wicked Witch of the West, that's who. Not only crazy goose-stepping, big-hatted, guards, but EVIL FLYING MONKEYS! Holy sweet goddamn! That's bad ass!

And that's what I thought of. If I had a goon squad, what would I want? Monkeys? Not bad... maybe. Flying monkeys? Oh hells yeah. No brainer.

tunes, mostly

2007-07-09T20:55:00.000-04:00

I've been busy lately, and it's been hot. Also, it's summer, so go outside already!

It's a bit rainy tonight, and I'm catching up on forgotten and/or neglected bits of life (cleaning, budget, etc.), so how about a post for old times sake, eh? Since I haven't written an actual post since April, and nothing substantial since ever, I'll give you the low down...

1. The new job is going well. Not as technically challenging as it could be, but honestly, it's summer, and I'd rather be outside, so who cares?
2. I've been hiking a bunch. A crew of old coworkers has been getting together and it's been a blast.
3. I bought a motorcycle back in May. I've been riding it a bunch. It's fun.
4. I had two weddings and a bachelor party in June. All fun.
5. I'm in a kickball league on Thursdays. It started last week.
6. I've got nearly all the album covers for my tunes downloaded in iTunes, so they show up all fancy. I'm loading gigabyte #4 of music onto my USB key to take to work now. I'm slowly (1GB at a time) taking all my tunes to work. If you want to see what I am listening to, get yourself a last.fm account.

Oh and I bought some curtains. Which, incidentally, I should really be hanging now. Exciting, isn't it?

lol**ts

2007-06-19T19:22:00.000-04:00

The story, the lolcats.

Bonus! Robots are the new kittens!

2007-05-23T20:17:00.000-04:00

Holy crap Casey! Are you still alive? You haven't posted in a while!

That's the kind of email I'd get if any of you bastards cared.

I've been busy with the new job; I signed up for the gym; I bought a motorcycle to ride; and I read dinosaur comics the rest of the time.

Life is good.

old school

2007-05-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

David Blane Parody

It's videos like that that the internet was made for. That and porn.

link

2007-05-03T19:30:00.000-04:00

I wish I knew why this dance was so cool.

Dell to Offer Ubuntu 7.04

2007-05-01T22:15:00.000-04:00

Dell to Offer Ubuntu 7.04

the new gig

2007-04-22T15:34:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, I have a new job. I now work for a financial management firm. It's pretty nice, at least after my first week on the job. I get to work downtown, which is pretty exciting. I've been living in or around Boston for going on seven years now, and this is my first time actually working in the city. It's pretty cool.

So that's my big news, and the main reason I haven't been posting/heard from/stressed the last couple months. Looking for a new job, quitting your old job, and generally figuring out what the hell is going on can get to you. This week was pretty good; I think I'm getting adjusted to the new routine. I've got a walk to and from the commuter rail every day, which is good because riding the train forces me to be on time. Now I have to start working in some exercise, but at least now I am getting a least some walking in every day. I need the routine.

The work is still software engineering, though now it is much more support, and fixing up internal applications, rather than continuous work on a single product. This is a nice change of pace, and I get to work with some new stuff as well. So far the people seem really good, too. All in all, I'm pretty happy about the whole deal.

I am going to miss the old crew, though. I was working with some damn fine people at the old job. They even got me some parting gifts, including a gift certificate for BBQ, a gift set featuring an "Initech" coffee mug, and 30-rack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. They know how to put a smile on my face.

It's gorgeous today, go outside.

2007-04-15T00:17:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I'm just wound too tight.

Happy Easter!

2007-04-10T20:45:00.000-04:00

Happy belated Easter. I spend my time back in the home state of PA. The project I am on at work is winding right down. Life has been good but at the same time not exciting at all.

Yeah, but I'm still alive.

why not?

2007-03-22T10:46:00.000-04:00

Bum rush the charts

tunes

2007-03-20T20:33:00.000-04:00

I've been needing tunes, so I'm giving eMusic.com a shot. It's ten bucks a month for thirty (non-DRM) downloads. There is a free trial, and then the real deal starts up. There is some decent indie stuff on there, and a bunch of classical. I like the indie stuff, and I've been meaning to get into the classical (trying to class up the joint, don't you know), so it works for me. At least for now.

The biggest problem is that, since you are limited to thirty tracks, you end up (or I did) getting a partial album, since the credits don't roll over. Whatever. Thirty-three cents a track is a deal.

Downloads so far? Tom Waits, Taking Back Sunday, Flogging Molly, Demetri Martin, and four tracks from Thursday. Next month I'm getting some Wagner, and a couple more Thursday tracks.

Rolling Stone : Leaving Iraq: The Grim Truth

2007-03-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

The article.

Interesting read.

time change

2007-03-13T19:38:00.000-04:00

This time change has been great. The sun is out later, it's warm, it's gorgeous. For some reason, though, I have been exhausted at night. I'm going to sleep early tonight.

That was boring.

Ubuntu spreading

2007-03-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

The French Parliament switches to Ubuntu | The Fridge

Ubuntu is a pretty good system. I've been using it at home, and though it isn't perfect, it'd be good for work for sure (browsing, email, open office applications). I'll put it this way, I'd use it.

shuffled smiles of spring

2007-03-12T14:25:00.000-04:00

Nothing puts a smile on my face quite like hitting "shuffle all songs" on the iPod, and ending up with a playlist better than any I could have made myself.

Spring is the in the air, change is on the wind, and good tunes are in my ears. I am all smiles today.

old school posting

2007-03-08T22:59:00.000-05:00

An actual post about my life now. Try not to fall asleep.

I had been thinking about trying out emusic for some tunes. I've been needing some new ones. I downloaded a few albums on The Pirate Bay, but I do want to support the artists (and legitimate sale of non-DRM'd tracks), so I decided to go legit if I I was going to actually buy the album, or if the artist was not so stinking rich for me to not care.

I'll go off on my soapbox of not needing to personally supporting record executives riding around in limos sometime later.

To make a long story short, I wasn't sure if I liked Tom Waits or not. I loved him in Coffee and Cigarettes, and I knew a song or two he had written, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I downloaded his new collection, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards to give it a try.

Damn. It's good. Really good. So that convinced me to sign up for eMusic, to get the tracks legitimately.

Two things to take away from this:
1. The "illegal" download is the complete reason I expanded my horizons and bit and bought something I wasn't going to anyways.
2. Tom Waits is awesome, and not only for making Iggy Pop uncomfortable.

Now on to part 2:
One of my friends lost her hard drive, and subsequently her tunes. She sent out an email asking her friends to each burn two or three albums for her. I thought this idea was awesome: basically asking each of your friends for their own "desert island list", and actually getting it.

The three I sent:
1. The Get Up Kids - Something To Write Home About
2. Dashboard Confessional - A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
3. Brian Setzer Orchestra - The Dirty Boogie

If I was on the desert island myself, the [last two on the] list would probably be different, but I figure that this would be a good mix to start a collection on, and they're all solid. You have to have some variety in there.

So here's the challenge: Give me your desert island list. And pretend you're on the island alone, so you're not embarrassed by the fact that you like Shakira. There's nothing wrong with that. She's pretty.

updates

2007-03-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

I added a bunch of the links I had before. They're on the right. I thought I had backed up my old index page, but apparently I was wrong. If you're missing some links, let me know.

U.S. Military Budget

2007-03-05T14:59:00.000-05:00

Military budget of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's way to much.

million dollar strong

2007-03-03T12:27:00.000-05:00

New layout

2007-02-28T21:54:00.000-05:00

I needed a new layout. I went with the most basic one blogger had. They've done a lot of good stuff to help you lay tings out, similar to google home. I'll see how I like it in a few days.

I have to go watch LOST now.

tagging blog posts

2007-02-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

So that's how you tag stuff in blogger. You use a label. So clear now.

YouTube - Olbermann: BUSH SECRETLY FUNDING AL QAEDA part # 1

2007-02-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

2007-02-26T18:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long time since my last post. Been busy at getting stuff done while alternating in equal amounts with putting off doing anything. The second one involved beer.

Anyhoo... I was cleaning up my old Northeastern web page (I'm going to clean that up and make it a bit more professional) and I found the following random images:

#1. Molly, my old roommate

#2. Jack Black

#3. News about Uranus

That's right, pictures. You'd better watch your ass, muted.

address book update

2007-02-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

I bought a new phone last week. The super glue was no longer holding on the antenna on my old one. This one is nice in that it has bluetooth, so I could sync it with my computer. If only I had the address book on my computer up to date...

I ended up exporting my address book from gmail, which was a mess. I could then import this into OS X's "Address Book" application. All I had to do then was a hell of a lot of cleanup; time consuming, but not altogether difficult. After adding phone numbers from my old phone to this, I downloaded and ran a handy little application called AddressBookToCSV which exported my address book to a comma-separated value file for importing back into gmail. This went off without a hitch.

Well, ok, there was a hitch or two. Gmail and my phone don't store contacts exactly the same way that address book does, so I end up with multiple entries for the same person if they have multiple email addresses (gmail) or phone numbers (phone). Not a huge problem, and easy enough to [not] deal with.

This also means I have up to date contact information, which means it shouldn't be hard to keep it that way. It's all maintenance from here on out. Sweet.

setup

2007-02-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

I have subversion setup on the ubuntu box, and my files from my mac (and ubuntu) in source control, and it seems to be working pretty damn good. That's a huge goal done.

late night

2007-02-07T19:04:00.000-05:00

LOST returns to television tonight. At 10pm. The problem with convoluted plot lines is that you can't get new viewers; no one can just jump into this show and have any idea what the heck is going on. And the hardcore viewers can't not watch, so the time slot gets pushed back.

I'm falling asleep already. I may need a nap this evening. Or a torrent tomorrow. Whatever.

Refuse to be Terrorized

2007-02-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

Refuse to be Terrorized

I'll put up links on the ridiculousness of the mooninite attack later.

work news

2007-01-31T21:13:00.000-05:00

Good News #1: Today we wrapped up an internal release of the software we have been working on for the past year. It's really just improvements to the underlying structure of the code, making it a lot more solid, a lot more flexible, and all in all a lot more correct. The code is 100% cleaner and we've got something really good. We had to make some compromises to launch last year to get it out in time, and we learned a lot along the way. I'm proud of it now and really proud of the team. Tomorrow we start adding some features.

Good News #2: The annual January weight-loss competition ended with me as a champ. 9 pounds (4.455% of my original weight) lighter. I've still got a lot of extra on me. We decided to do it again in February, starting Monday.

Good News #3: My coworker Josh made it official today that he is moving to greener pastures in professional sense. I put this in "Good News" since Josh is a damn find software engineer and I think he's going to do a lot of good out there. It's been great working with him, and he'll be missed.

Bad News: None.

The scariest story of the year | Democracy in America | Economist.com

2007-01-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

The scariest story of the year | Democracy in America | Economist.com

Seriously. Seeing as how everyone is ostensibly worried about terrorism, you'd think that would have been a headline.

further geekery

2007-01-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

I'm doing the half day again today. I woke up late, my sinuses were full, everyone has been sick at work, and I don't have anything super-pressing going on, so I see no reason to risk my health.

I did some push ups and sit ups (which were very difficult) and went for a nice walk. It's really sunny out and it's quite a beautiful winter day. I listened to BBC Newshour from last night (podcast) while I was out and about, and then came home and had a nice bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and maple syrup. I'm having some tea now.

During breakfast, I finally figured out how to forward my Northeastern CCS email to my regular account. It's called a '.forward' file and it's really ridiculously easy. I sent a few test messages from my work account. Voila! Another task on my geek todo list down. (I have a couple different todo lists; "geek" is just one of them.)

So that's been my morning. It's nearly time to be off to work.

Oh, before I forget, I updated my LinkedIn profile a bit last night (just jobs and school), so if you are on that site link up with me.

Ok, off I go.

geek

2007-01-29T23:25:00.000-05:00

I finally got my ubuntu box all set up as a webserver, as well as setting up apache to give access to my subversion repository as well. (If you don't understand that, no worries, it's geek-talk.) That's a big set-up step that I have been meaning to get working for a while; you got to have source control for any sort of project. It really wasn't that painful, either. I learned a lot as I went along, and made a few missteps, but I'm happy with the result.

I also started my taxes last Saturday, and it looks like I'm going to owe some. Which figures, since I did that freelance gig last summer. I really wanted to spend that money on other stuff, too. Oh well.

So that's my big news. Exciting, eh?

'There is no war on terror' | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

2007-01-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

'There is no war on terror' | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

geek videos

2007-01-25T21:48:00.000-05:00

The other day I found (via reddit) a talk given by Kent Beck sometime last year. He's what you'd call a big deal in the software engineering field. The talk was really good, not so much technical as a personal/professional talk about life, and was exactly what I needed to hear on an otherwise downer day (sometimes I get in a professional funk).

Anyway, you can find the talk here on youtube; the title of the talk is "Ease at Work" Enjoy.

little tasks

2007-01-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

I was sick this weekend. It sucked. Oh well.

I think I'm all done playing around with my ubuntu machine to make it look a bit more like my mac; no more brown backgrounds for me! It's pretty nice, except I boned the icons in azureus somehow, so now the "file open" and "create torrent" icons are super huge. Not a big deal, since I hardly ever actually look at that app, just check status every once in a while.

So far I like amarok quite a bit. The hardest part of using ubuntu (for me, anyways) has been trying to figure out what app to use. There are about a million different apps for whatever you want to do, and it's hard to know which is best. The good folks over at lifehacker have a few guides, so if you're interested, check them out. Their tips are generally pretty good.

Anyway, that's my big excitement. Yeah, real big, I know. Later.

half day file copy

2007-01-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

So I decided to sleep in this morning for a bit and take a half day so that I could get my files transferred from my backup to the mac. I hit a snag along the way.

I had backed up the files by simply copying my home directory onto my ubuntu machine by booting my mac up in target disk mode, where it acts just like an external firewire drive. That was really handy and pretty quick. The problems occurred, however, when attempting to write the files back this morning. For some reason, I could not write to the mac. Even as root. Weird. I couldn't find a setting on the mac or on the web, so I decided to plug in the ethernet (wireless is too slow for this much stuff) and go the scp route.

Music is copying now. Photos and Movies are left. Those are the big three.

Weird that the firewire wouldn't work, though.

hard drive installed

2007-01-17T23:15:00.000-05:00

I installed my new hard drive in the laptop tonight. The old one was nearly dead. OS X is all installed, updates are downloading now. I'll probably restore my files tomorrow.

The only casualty was the little spring under my F11 key. Not too shabby for an amateur.

Rollins opinion on Net Neutrality

2007-01-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Throw away your TV - Rollins opinion on Net Neutrality

my sister is coming

2007-01-13T10:22:00.000-05:00

My sister is bumming a ride from a friend and is coming to visit me this weekend. Sweet! If only I could think of something fun to do...

usability

2007-01-09T22:20:00.000-05:00

So Macworld is happening, Steve Jobs' keynote presentation was today. Apple is introducing some good stuff. Check it out. The presentation is long, about 2 hours, and so far (I'm watching it now) it's good. You should watch it to see how the usability on the new iPhone is. Here's a hint: it's good. Damn good. Every other phone is shit. Text messaging on other phones is shit.

Apple is good at usability. I think they really nailed it here.

Anyway, it's worth looking at. Especially if you write software, because this is how things should work.

2007 - resolutions

2007-01-06T14:22:00.000-05:00

We're almost a week into 2007, and so far the resolutions are going alright. I also started reading lifehacker again, which is handy, and gave me a bit of a kick-start. Things I am doing:

1. Got a spreadsheet with a project monthly budget.
- I also made a spreadsheet just to track every cent I actually spend this month, in order to see how good my guesswork is. I usually have this stuff on random scraps of paper, so I figured that I should get it all collected in one place, rather than redoing it every time I want to figure out where my money is going.

2. Dieting. Well, cutting back to reasonable amounts of healthy food is more like it. The office "how much weight can you lose in January" contest is back on, and honestly, I am tubby. This has not been bad at all, since when I cut back on amount, I generally eat a lot better in terms of variety. I feel a hell of a lot better already as well.

3. Exercise. Ok, this has been a slower start. I've gone for a run a couple of times, but I'm leaning more towards getting in the habit of walking now, since it takes less motivation. And really, I am a creature of habit. If I can get in the mode of walking (or doing anything, really) at a given time every day, I can keep it up. So I figure that I can move on to running and more strenuous forms of working out once I am in the habit of doing something. I'm a string believer in small steps. I already went for an hour walk this morning. It was really tough to do in this harsh New England winter. (That, of course, was sarcasm. It's just about 70° today, my windows and back door are open to let the breeze through.) So anyway, I'm working on it.

4. Organization / Motivation
- I have a hard time motivating myself to do anything. I had found before that the "Getting Things Done" process has a lot of helpful ideas. So I've been going with that, keeping lists of what I need to/want to do around. My company even got me one of those Hipster PDAs, though they don't know it.

5. Side projects
- I've been meaning to do more as far as working on different stuff at home. Geeky stuff. Resolution #4 has been a big help in this arena. I've got my network set up a bit better for transferring files between my ubuntu box and the powerbook. I got azureus up and running, subversion installed (still needs some configuration, and apache running. In other words, a lot of the base framework for development has been laid down. I've been babying the powerbook lately, since the hard drive is a ticking time bomb. I backed that up for the last time last night, and ordered a new drive this morning. So hopefully by the end of next week I'm going to be back to using OS X as my prime operating system.
- Also, I am all caught up on The Office (which, oddly, make me miss my home state, in addition to laughing out loud).

So there it is, my second post of the year. I have to go clean the kitchen and take the garbage out now. Until next time...

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

Let's make 2007 a good one, shall we?

Merry Christmas

2006-12-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

I am back. Christmas was good. I ate and ate and ate some more. Exercise began today with running about a mile and half one way, and then walking back. The first mile in the cold air cleared out a lot of phlegm. It's nice to be able to breath again. I've been stuffed up lately.

This running was brought about by the fact that I've been putting on some pounds lately. Well, basically since I stopped exercising last summer. Having a girlfriend will cramp any workout regime; having a harpy who can't be left alone for two goddamned seconds and actually trying to date her for six months is worse. Stress adds to the fat, don't you know. And then, of course, the drinking after it's all done just to get it out of your head; trying to get your mind back. It really is true that if you hear the same shit over and over you start to believe it.

Man I don't miss that bullshit at all; it does piss me off that just the thought of it can piss me off so much. That's my own fault, that I put up with it so long. Live and learn.

ANYWAY... I've been eating lots. Last week's Christmas party leftovers at work meant chicken parm three meals a day. And then homecookin'; I decided to shoot for the too heavy for my own good weight of 200lbs while at home. I left after lunch yesterday feeling crappy since I was basically forcing fudge down my throat, and I was breathing pretty hard while tying my shoes. A car ride featuring a coke, filet-o'fish, fries, and a vanilla shake later, I hopped on the scale and saw "199.0" looking back at me over the horizon of my stomach.

Today I barely ate anything and went running. I feel a lot better. I don't know when I'll feel hungry again. I'm kinda curious.

I've got to get my life right again. Here's to beginning right now.

my boring week

2006-12-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

And now for the recap of the last seven days of my life.

Last Saturday: I woke up at about 1 in the afternoon and pulled a muscle in my neck/upper back. I could barely move all last weekend, which didn't interfere with my plans of Metroid Prime and movie watching at all.

Last Sunday: Same as Saturday, but with a morning visit to WebMd and the addition of an icepack. The icepack, by the way, is an immense help if you ever pull anything.

Monday: Went to work. Neck was still pretty stiff, but better. Eric laughed every time I had to turn my head and said something to the effect that I looked like Frankenstein. Dave had what I feel to be a more accurate description of the situation when he said hat my movements reminded him of Michael Keaton's portrayal of Batman. Metroid Prime at night.

Tuesday: I called the dealership garage, as my check engine light was on. I had figured it was an oxygen sensor, and it was. They fixed it that afternoon. I also learned why I got a good deal on my car (from a used car place, naturally). Maintenance needs exist. I can do a bunch myself, but some I could not. That was crappy news, but I took it for what it was. Also, I felt somewhat better because when I picked up the car I noticed that there were some good looking women walking around that place. The cashier was, how can I put this delicately?, stacked. I did my best not to stare but my mood upon leaving was good, even though I had just spent hundreds of dollars, and I was going to need to spend more. Metroid Prime at night. I also got the reimbursement check from my travel from a month ago. It made me laugh out loud since the value of the check was pretty much the same as the bills for the car were going to be. I can't get ahead, but I somehow seem to stay even, barely.

Wednesday: Called to schedule an appointment for the timing belt. Nothing spectacular the rest of the day. Metroid Prime at night, along with some budgeting and planning.

Thursday: Dropped of the car for the timing belt. They replace a bunch of other seals and belts with this one since they pretty much have to take the engine out of the car. Different girl at the cashier's desk. Cuter. This girl was put together like a woman should be. I realised on the way home that I haven't felt that way about a women since the last girl I dated nearly broke my will to live. That was a bad relationship. I think I've now woken up to the fact that I could have a good one again; I'm not broken. I then pictured George Costanza yelling, "I'm back, baby!". That's how I felt. And more Metroid, of course.

Friday: I had a BOMBA for lunch. This is a sandwich (which I'm sure I've written about before) from the local sub shop. It's basically a steak and cheese with onions, peppers, mushrooms, and salami on very good bread. I put Tabasco on it. And one of my coworkers had gotten some pizza but they put pepperoni on it by mistake, so I threw that in to. This is the best sandwich in the world. Period. And this was a good one. Seriously, I can't stress it enough. Best. In. The. World. Anything else is just playing for second. Beat a boss in Metroid, got the spider ball, watched Glengarry, Glen Ross. Poked around the internet for some fonts and design ideas for a redesign for this site.

And that brings us to today: Woke up a twenty after noon, made an egg, oatmeal, and coffee. Currently typing away on this. I've got some errands to run, I need to go for a walk, my hair is in desperate need of a trim, and there is laundry to do. I also want to get Apache up and running on this machine, and working on trying out some different development ideas I've been wanting to try.

That's one heck of a laundry list of a post. Sorry to bore.

break even day

2006-12-05T22:48:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you just break even? Not one where nothing happens, but one where you have some really good, and some utter crap? I had one of those. I'd explain it more, but I'm tired. Too much Metroid on the GameCube last night, and too much beans and rice on the dinner plate this evening.

I may get back to regular post one of these days.

Thank You For Smoking

2006-12-01T22:28:00.001-05:00

This movie was one that had been near the top of my queue for a while. I finally watched it tonight. It was great. It really is "a movie about spin", not about tobacco. I liked it because it not only ripped "big tobacco" (indirectly, and well), but tore into media, show biz, lobbyists, and government, (again, indirectly, and well) as well.

Naturally, I like this sort of criticism. I compare it to Stephen Colbert ripping the White House Pres Corp; sure he made fun of the President, but he also made fun of the people whose duty it is to call him out on his [purported] wrongdoings, and who did not. All parties involved there had it coming. The parties in this film (including you) do as well.

Netflix that shit now.