Well it looks like we might get some form of a hurricane by way of Earl. Not exactly A fitting macho name but it's a rather powerful storm none the less.So questions for today are storm related,

1, Have you even been through a hurricane? (This will be my second, the first was Bob.)

2. What was the worse storm you have ever been thru?

3. Given storm damage effects, what's the longest you've been without power?

4. Besides power what else have you lost due to storms?

To everyone potentially effected out there, be safe and God Bless.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 0 comments

I had heard and read alot about the book Daemon especially it’s technically plausible plot. So like any good geek, I decided to check it out myself. While doing so I find out the writer had a good amount of real world technical experience and he marketed the book himself.With that I headed over to Amazon and found the book on sale, along with it’s sequel priced in a very interesting way. Buy both and there is no S&H. Buy the 1st and you’ll pay the extra S&H for almost the price of both books. So I grabbed both. School starts in a few days so I set aside some time to give the book a real good start. The rest is my review.

Overall

It was a fun read but I wasn’t blown away. What could have been such a completely cool techno thriller ended up more about violence then brains.

The Good

If you like the pace at which James Paterson handled something like “When the Wind Blows” you’ll love this book. It moves along at a very made for movies type of tempo. Each character is introduced and slotted into the story before you even notice it. The usage of technology was not to the level at which I was expecting. I understand that my background is a bit different from alot of folks but they practically explain everything to you via the Sebeck Character. Yup he’s an older guy who.....wait for it.......has let the world of technology slide right by him so another char Ross, has to explain everything to him.

The not so good

Well the idea isn’t new. I was only 20-30 pages in when I had flashbacks of the X-files episode Kill Switch. I’m sure there are plenty of others but that’s the first that jumped to mind. Having spent enough time coding in multiple languages for both commercial and DOD companies, the idea that a few people could code up something so intricate and complex in the time allotted is almost laughable. Not to mention the program never screws up and always does exactly what they coded up. In the real world, projects of any size and scope need SWIT and HSWIT (Software Integration Testing) Hardware and Software integration testing. Which typically takes just as long, if not longer to get running given all the debugging, recoding, unit testing again and again, etc, etc. Plus all the hardware never fails. Not even a bad ram stick, hard drive or nic. I spent less then a year doing my last job and during that time found 1 onboard bluetooth failure, 2 bad onboard cat6 interfaces and 1 hard drive fail 1 week in. This all came from brand new HP machines. Yet the program in this book has perfect hardware no matter what the load. Plausible..no...techno fiction...yes.

But the most glaring problem with the Daemon is...the humans. Maybe I’m ruining the second book , which I will eventually read, but humans are fallible. Yet the daemon makes heavy use of them to the point that you almost wonder when they’ll realize they don’t need the daemon because they can do it them self. Then again, that is what alot of people reading this book are talking about. How almost everything in our society is dependent upon some form of computing and how if any part of that dependency falters the whole “house of cards” come tumbling down. Maybe my gardening background gives me a sense of ease with regards to letting go of technology. It would require alot of extra work but I could provide the fruits and veggies and a neighbor could provide at least 4 types of live stock by way of goat and such. That’s why I laughed when the book said the world would be forced back to an agrarian society. Sorry but there is too much money in High Fructose Corn Syrup alone to allow this fall back to happen.

“Hey wait a minute” moments

There were a few of these type moments in the book but I’ll stick to the one that sorta highlights how this book was written. Spammers, we all love to hate them but, as it has been said a bazillion times, if spammers weren’t making any money there would be no spam. So here we have this oh so powerful all seeing Daemon with the ability to take over large high security networks so what does it do to them? Does it take over their networks which would stop the spam, put them out of business and give the Daemon more hardware to help expand it’s reach? Nope it just kills them. Huh? Oh right, because people like needless violence.

Now for the horrible.

In all honesty, there is one scene that is beyond morally offensive and does nothing to help the story or any character development. I can only guess it’s for all the overly sexed males (between the ages of 14-32) that find this sort of degenerate behavior ???exciting???. Taking it one step further I continued reading ready to return the book if there was any hint of anything similar. Thankfully there was just that one, but one horrible scene was too much. Leaving me with how multiple characters are asked if they believe in God with everyone answering no. Now I know it’s all cool and elitist of some to take this route but again, I didn’t see any need for the question to be asked in the first place. Makes me want to write and release more of my Pro-Religion / Pro-Christian stories.

So what do I take away from all of this? If everyone wasn’t so dependent upon their computers this would never happen. Deep. Oh and the NSA, FBI and a few other govt agencies are clueless. Like Carnivore wrote itself. So, anyone want to buy a slightly used book?

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 1 comments

(piped in crowd noise)

Iiiiiiits time for your favorite internet based game show

Lets!!!

Sue !!!

Everyone!!!

Yeeeaaaaaa!!!

And your host...everyone's favorite wacky lawyer Marrrrrrkkkkkkkk.

Thank you thank you thank you. Let's get one thing out of the way, INAL but I play one on the internet!!!!

(faked crowd roars and laughter)

As the fabulously gorgeous Cindy brings out the bio for this weeks contestant, let's listen to Chuck tell us the players so far.

Thaaaaaankkkks Mark. Welllll, it started with that wacky news tycoon suing for the use of a word, which a certain Facebooook creator saw so he sued everyone for the word book, before that we had that super serious ipod maker suing android and recently we have Oracle er Sun er Oracle suing Google for Java. Well that's all for now Mark, back to you.

Isn't Cindy a picture of beauty? Come on crowd given her a nice hand.

In my hand is the bio and announcement of the latest contestant to enter the game. Any guesses?

(crowd yells out random names)

Give me a drum roll guys because here is our next entrant!!!!

(drum roll)

Their name is.................

Paul Allen and he's suing the entire Internet!!! Ladies and gentlemen with that move Paul jumps to the top of the suing everyone score board by going after the largest group of people.

We hear that Larry Ellison has already asked for a recount and has contacted his lawyers.

On a side note, I , you host, will be filing suit against Pixar and Disney for coming up with the Cars movie concept. I obviously create that story when I was 4 playing with my hot wheels cars at my grandmother's on her oval rug. We kept the rug so it should be no problem with the prior art angle.

(All these guys are worth billions of dollars and instead of buying them self a nice island somewhere and enjoying life, they stick around and sue people. Can this world be any more screwed up?)

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 1 comments

1. Do you still have a VCR?

2. Do you still have a CRT (big picture tube) monitor?

3. Do you still have a planner / organizer / pda?

4. Do you still have a AOL/IM username? ICQ?

5. Do you still have a CB (citizen's Band Radio)?

6. Do you still have a portable CD player?

7. Do you still have a portable "boombox" with a cassette player?

8. Do you still have a 56K modem (or less) ?

9. Do you still have a Kodak insta-matic camera? The one that the picture would pop out and develop in your hand.

10. Do you still have any of your concert tickets before you would just print them out via the Internet?

Enjoy.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 2 comments

I know I'm going to sound like a broken record but man these companies don't seem to care what they do to your machine. And before anyone jumps up and down and says, "see a certain CEO was right, flash is evil" get your facts straight. The article deals with how sites are misusing flash to keep flash cookies on your devices/pcs.

I will break policy and post a link to ARS given people need to know this info STAT to help protect themself. Ad firm sued for allegedly re-creating deleted cookies.

As the article points out there is a Firefox plug-in to help keep YOUR pc clean called Better Privacy.

On a personal note, this event doesn't surprise me given the billions of dollars earned each year via user tracking. Any and all companies can and will track you to increase their bottom line. On the other side of things, upstanding sites that do not partake in such activities need to get the word out that they do in fact respect their users privacy.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 2 comments

I post this entry under the category of family because as the father of the house I think the time has come to start pulling back. With more and more of our lives going social, our privacy is eroding away. As an adult I can make (somewhat) educated decisions but my children cannot. That is why as of today I have removed all videos from this site and all photos containing my sons. Yes I know they will forever live somewhere cached on the net but from this point on, that will stop.

To begin, we will continue to share photo's with family and friends but in a locked down manner. I plan to find some form of photo sharing sw that will run on my site that will allow only those with user name and passwords to view photos. Anything forward/outside facing will not contain pictures of either my children or wife. I will continue to post technical photos, scenery, etc etc just as in the past. But shots of my family will remain under lock and key.

When we get this new system up and working I will be contacting those who I know in the real world. For those of you who I have come to know me via this website I would ask that you respect this move and not take it as any form of insult. To be honest most of you could probably do with one less kid-doing-something-cute type picture and will understand perfectly. If you ARE insulted, then I suggest finding another site to read because the Internet is not my family and it never will be.

Thanks for understanding and God Bless.

Category: Family | Permalink | 2 locked comments

As all of you know I am constantly advocating the FOSS way of doing things when it fits the need. I also make sure to say that everyone, should use the right tool for the right job. For a while Google has been the right tool but their privacy and over-reaching eye into things is really starting to get on my nerves. In the past open source search engines have been less then usable resulting in their quick death. Well I am happy to report, Duck Duck Go is for real.

I've had DDG as my default search engine for about a month now and I can honestly say, I can't tell the difference. I'm finding what I want, when I want, in the manner I want to search for it. Regular expression tricks (Formula1 + "Red Bull") work great and the keyboard short cuts really speed things up. Others reviewing it seem to like it as much as I do. But if you need only one reason to switch, privacy is the one.

"By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."

Need I say more? Thought not. Now go and give the Duck a try. ;-)

Category: Technology | Permalink | 5 locked comments

My brother got the Antivirus Spyware on his Dell laptop. He's the Chiropractor and I'm the geek so you know who is asked to fix it. But it added more data to my initial assumptions. While doing IT work for the HS I will soon be teaching at, I started to notice a correlation between users who ran some form of flashblock, adblock and or javascript block in their browser and those who didn't. The ones who did run the addons never once called me for infections. There was other issues usually hardware related but never for infections. On the other hand, when called to clean a machine I never found any of the above listed plugins running in the browser. Come to find out my brother did not either.

The next piece of the puzzle was the actual websites being visited. This was the real shocker. CNN, ESPN, CBS SPORTS, and a Golf Site that my brother appears to visit alot, were all listed as the last sites being visited. Now unless all these users deleted only their most recent surfing history (not likely given their backgrounds) these well known sites were somehow responsible for infecting these people. Add to that list the NY times, USA Today and a few other big names and the pictures becomes clear. The actual sites are not infected but rather the adservers that run ads on these sites appear to be the issue at hand. I say appear because I can't seem to infect my VM XPsp3 machine at these sites. Granted I didn't see every add available but it only takes one to cause the infection. We also know this has been going on for quite some time now. Google adsense help spread malware.

Now I know at this very moment a certain person is getting ready to dump some words into my comment section. He'll use words like "you're stealing" from me, and it's not fair, and I only use respectable adservers, etc etc.

So I will put this point blank, Do you trust every single ad on every single adserver that YOU don't control? If not are you willing to pay for lost wages, damaged hardware, etc etc associated with an ad you showed on your site? I'm guessing no, for obvious reasons. So where does that leave us?

Lets see, if you are trying to run a business like my brother is, you cannot afford to be handing your hardware to someone else (in this case me) when you get a virus. In this case it only cost him time and effort which too a doctor IS money. As for the teachers at the school, they lose time and effort as well. Since they cannot use their in room pcs they have to find another one to enter their grades, attendance and such. Keep in mind that Attendance is a huge part of their job. If their PC is down and they cannot enter in an absence and something happens to that student they are now legally liable.

To finish the internet is an ugly place to both play and work. As a surfer you HAVE to protect yourself or you will be infected one way or another. As a site owner trying to earn a living, you have picked one of the worse business models out there. If you run a site that runs ads, chances are you will serve up a virus at some point. Heck even Google ads (text) were compromised. News will spread fast and people will block your ads for fear of infection and you'll be out of business fast. You could put up a pay wall which would make your site much safer. But there is alot of free and legal content out there. Are you really that much better then them? Probably not which means you won't survive. My personal opinion is this, return to what a web site should be used for. A line in your business spreadsheet labeled advertisement. Use it to build your services which are concrete and tangible. Do you make fly fishing rods? The best muffler in the world? Great put up a website so I can find it (like Cervelo, Trek, Look, Shimano, etc etc) and learn about your products. Beyond that I don't see how any long term gains can be made given the current state of the internet. And I especially don't see me allowing ads, flash or javascript to be run on every site I visit unless things really change security wise.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go and check on my brother's machine which has been scanning while I wrote this. Appears ESPN and few others cost me some time and effort as well. Were do I send my bill?

Category: Technology | Permalink | 8 locked comments

Stolen from the guys over at Jupiter Broadcasting Network. (great idea guys) JBN source

1. What is the best movie trilogy of all time?

But first a few rules.

Has to be original production. No books, remake, comics, video game or Anima. And... you are allowed to drop any single movie to make your three. So if there were say 4 movies in the series, you could drop the third, and keep 1,2, and 4. Lastly it has to have staying power which means you could watch it over and over and over and never get board with it. Got it? Good.

2. On the flip side, and there are no rules for this one, what is the worse trilogy ever?

Have fun and multiple posts are allowed if someone shoots down any of your submissions.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 3 locked comments

Today's world is all about stocks and market caps and shares. Then there is the cash reserves, on hand, in hand, in pocket, with and without lint in pocket, and on and on the financial world tries to complicate things. But far away from the stodgy board members and execs who only want to see spreadsheets showing higher and higher numbers, there are engineers and creators. These people are not drawn to a project because someone's spreadsheet allocated their resources. No they are driven by something much more noble; the desire to design.

Somewhere in an unknown basement located who knows where, there is an engineer creating something that will never see the light of day. It's mind blowing, truly revolutionary and all that. But like I said it will never see the light of day. Why? Because someone in the marketing department has no idea how to market the engineer's next big thing. The marketer only deals in sounds bites. They skim the surface only giving the basic info in hopes of selling that thing to some potential buyer. To most, the engineer's idea(s) are a complete failure. To a select few, they will marvel and gasp at it's sheer audacity. If lucky the label "Ahead of it's time" will be applied giving some form of pat on the back to it's creator. But most will never get it and the idea will be lost forever. So even though I am clearly not a fan of their supposed privacy ideals, I salute Google and their ability to allow engineers and designer to do what they do best. Design unconstrained by someone's spreadsheet.

I don't know who the source is but I do know the quote which fits perfectly.

"“The only real failure in life is the failure to try.”"

Please Google, never stop encouraging your engineers to try.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 0 locked comments

As all my regular readers know, I have an organic garden. I can kinda say that now given this is my third year of using nothing but organic methods. Well this year turned out to be a big year for landscaping. The combination of my injury and our budget led to alot less maintenance work being done in the garden. To get an idea of the tasks/goals I had set for myself, here is a picture of our orchard. All the apple and pear trees are in but still need to add a few other things like plums, blueberry bushes and maybe something else. We'd also like to add a bird bath to the mix along with some ground cover and some hostas.

As you can see from the picture it's kinda barren but as my wife stated, it's a blank pallet for us to create with.

So yes I've been spending alot less time in the garden weeding and making sure things are just right. Problem is, nature doesn't hold on until you get back. Oh no, it keeps growing in an attempt to take over. So this year has been the year of the weeds. My original plan for weed reduction was to have clover out compete with them in the walk ways. Simply put it didn't work. The weeds just grew within them. I also tried mulching but as you can see in the next picture, that didn't work either. Normally mulch works pretty well but when you have heavy rain and alot of foot traffic things tend to move which exposes bare ground. This in turn leads to weeds. But I think this next issue has to be my biggest "issue".

My land has a slope to it. Through composting and such I've built up the dirt in the rows. Problem is, where the row ends and where the path begins is not ideal. When you combine a slop with a hard to identify row vs walkway barrier with a tiny slope of its own you have problems. Looking at the picture will give you a good idea at what I'm talking about. Even my wonderful buckwheat planted with my tomatoes have a very blurred boundary line.

Ok so we've stated our problem and now in true engineering form let's discuss different solutions and then tell you which one I settled on.

1. Go crazy with mulch in the walkways. This is a good idea but again it doesn't solve the boundary issue. Not to mention given the slight slope from walkway to row this will pull back during rain storms and we'll get weeds.

2. Plant more clover. Clover is a wonder thing but as for density I don't think it fills in enough to smoother weeds. I will continue to use it to help rebuild the dirt but as for walkway cover, fail.

3. Raised beds. A number of people have suggest that I just go raised beds. It seems like alot of work building all that stuff up. Not to mention the ton of dirt I would need to bring it up to my height. Maybe when I'm much older and bending over is beyond my ability I'll reconsider it but right now, overkill.

Which brings us to the solution. At least I hope it's the solution. I'm going to call it boxed gardening because you build wooded boxes around the rows but only use 2x6s. It's fast, easy and makes things much simpler.

So what does this solution provide us.

As I stated, building them is drop dead easy. Next, it provides a clear and easy to identify boundary. My kids can see it and that will help avoid mistakes in the way of stepping on plants. Even though the wood is only ~6in high it will provide a perfect barrier for using coco shells. Dump the shells in, spread them around and you're done. No more worrying about them slipping off the row into the walkway given the slight slope. And for the anal retentive part in all of use gardeners, a very clean look to it. As for the walkways, I will continue to mulch but, again the mulch has a barrier so it shouldn't move far since it's closed in.

To end it's officially summer. My sandwiches are filled with garden lettuce, pickles, peppers and tomatoes slices. Yum.

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 0 locked comments

I really wish I was this wonderfully prolific writer but in the end that isn’t me. So here is the great news. Starting in Sept I will be teaching Engineering at the same High School I was just doing “IT” work for. And if that weren’t enough, I will also be tasked with help the Engineering department grow. That means I get to teach circuit theory, CAD and Engineering principles my first year and probably adding to that with digital next year. I'll be saying a whole bunch of extra prayers tonight thanking the Good Lord for such a wonderful opportunity.

Cool Or What!

Category: Family | Permalink | 3 locked comments

Download: mp3
Show Notes via Del.icio.us
Artists: PeerGynt, DarkCoffee, Robert Walker, Man!, Orlando . Please send all feedback to atrfeedback@gmail.com.
Thanks for listening.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 0 locked comments

Yes I had a FB account but it didn't last. Over the short time I had it I was barraged with needless crap. Drug wars this, and farmland that, and so and so just earned himself some bread at some virtual store. Then there was the multiple screens. You had a wall, a place to chat, a comments section, and a few others I never figured out. What a mess. Then the day came that I tried to tailor my settings. I'm sorry but if someone like myself with an Electrical Engineering Degree can't intuitively figure out how to control my privacy and other such things, then your site is broke. Or as we have come to find out, are using a site in which until recently (still don't believe them) was built to harvest your personal information. Mr. Zuck and friends do not want you to hide anything because they cannot sell which you are not willing to share. So every time they updated they defaulted alot of "things" to open. I have a number of people who say they spend hours going over every setting after each update to put back what they set up.

I then found out that fb was allowing a hate group against cyclists to continue even though other groups had been shut down for alot less. They had pictures showing injured accident victims, and a boat load of legally liable comments. But nothing was done even after the group was reported multiple times. As a victim of a hit and run accident I can not support anyone who advocates violence against cyclists. (or anyone for that matter but that's a whole other post) So I shut my account down, which was no easy task, boy do they make it hard to find, and walked away. Later I was asked why I haven't posted in a while. When I explained I got pretty much the same response. "Yeah.. that's a ..um.... not good... well...BUT I CAN'T LEAVE because all my friends are there and I have to use fb because everyone I know is there and yeah their privacy sucks and yeah it's kinda confusing BUT ALL MY FRIENDS ARE THERE. I have 357 friends and I love talking to them..... and if I just spend a bit more time I can earn a car on beachball wars..." and on and on it would go.

Clearly I don't understand. Clearly I don't have what it takes to push aside what matters most to me, privacy, time spent protecting that, etc etc, just so I can say, "FB me." Why are people so willing to give up so much when the tools to do the same thing are out there? Email, IM, IRC, Blogs, etc etc. And please don't tell me, "but I found so many of my old friends out there and fb made it so easy to help find them." Ever heard of Google? Plus how does one find a friend from school by the name of John Doe when his account name is LazerGuy375?

So where am I going with this rant? Simple, to where I always end up, in the land of FOSS. Where instead of some CEO controlling what your privacy settings are, you do.

Ladies and Gents, in two months time (hopefully) Diaspora will be released. A social network with your privacy needs in mind not some CEO's bank account.

Will it thrive? Who knows. Will it draw people in? Again who knows. Will you all come back to laugh and insult me when it flops? Maybe. No matter what, if it does work as advertised, and gets used, you'll find me on it. Privacy in tack, supporting FOSS.

--rant mode off

Category: Technology | Permalink | 2 locked comments

So it’s been about 3 weeks?????? since we first got our Playstation 3 and so far we are happy. Ok, my oldest son loves it but that’s to be expected. You let your son play video games? If I had a nickle for every time I heard that I’d be rich. Repeat after me, there is nothing wrong with playing video games. I grew up playing them so I don’t see the problem. If you use restraint and control over average time played and content, there are zero issues. By the way, notice I said average time played. Because when school was in I barely had time to touch any games except maybe for fri/sat night after work. But when finals were done I would veg out in front of the thing and have fun. So enough of the tangent let’s get to the review.

Game Play - So far I’ve only played Lego Star Wars so the resolution isn’t exactly breathtaking but artifacts or -pixelation- “are none to be found.” I’d love to get either an F1 or WRC game but the prices for a new game are a bit much. So I’m going to hold off on giving a grade and probably hold off as well on buying new games.

BlueRay/DVD/CD play - To begin, unless you buy the additional remote all control must be done with the game controller. This is not ideal but once you get use to it, it works ok. We have yet to rent a Blue Ray disk because our current set up will not support full 1080p so it’s sorta pointless. At present we have HDMI connected to component for 1080i max resolution since our tv does not have an HDMI port. It has DVI which won’t work due to Sony’s crappy and stupid DRM hand shake thing that doesn’t work with it. As for regular DVDs, they are up-sampled so when we rented Planet Earth it looked really nice. But to be honest I’ve seen better. When the day comes that our current set ups and dies on us, then we’ll see how great 1080p looks. Grade = B.

Streaming - Strangely enough this has been the strongest aspect of the PS3. We have been using our NetFlicks DVD alot since our account allows unlimited streaming. Once the initial buffering completes you are treated to a very nice image dependent upon the original source.

I have also set up Tversity on my newly refurbished W2K machine (which now runs XP SP3) so I am able to stream all my online content thru my home’s network. HAK5, Tekzilla, BOL, Linux Action show, etc etc are all downloaded automatically via an RSS feed. All you need to do is have the pc running and the PS3 finds the server and plays anything Tversity downloaded. HD content is crystal clear and without hesitations. I can do the same thing with my Ubuntu machine using PS3 MediaServer I’m just holding off on committing to any one solution. There may be a NAS in our future which will take care of this. Grade = A.

Pandora - I will push aside the web browser for a second and only focus on the app it self. You’ll see why later. If you run Pandora on your pc you get the exact same thing on the PS3 screen. You can vote, select channels, etc etc. It’s all there. Control is again via the controller but it works just like a mouse so it’s pretty intuitive. The sound quality is very good given we don’t pay the monthly fee. Instead we just put up with the commercials. So far the commercials are family friendly and acceptable. I used the SPDIF connector to my stereo so keeping things digital helps with sound quality. Grade = A

Browser - Let’s just cut right to the chase. It’s horrible. I’ve done some checking on the Sony forum and it seems I’m not alone. The users says it’s a resolution thing with going from some small res to blown up on a tv. If true I wish they could figure something out because when you get a news update and click on it, you get a browser type window that looks pretty good. I even watched the Grand Turismo trailer and it looked clean. Can you use it as is? Yes. Will you be completely disappointed when watching YouTube stuff? Not completely but close. I so wanted this feature to rock so I can watch my CycloCross races that are posted via a YouTube CycloCross Channel and maybe I still can. There are a number of sites that will download the actual file to your machine. If it works I’ll download the files I need to watch for local viewing. When done I’ll delete them to make sure I don’t break any rules. Grade = D.

Areas we haven’t tried. Photo galleries, Demo’s, the Free Playstation account ( I signed up, got the email but the log in keeps timing out. Could be my firewall. need to investigate), etc. When we do I’ll post another entry.

So what is our initial review results? B + A + A + D. if B and D = C, then C and A = B so finally A and B => A-. Simply put if you are looking for an entire multimedia device you really can’t go wrong with a PS3. Adding to all of this is Hulu. Supposedly you’ll be able to watch TV shows using Hulu on your PS3. It will required a fee but even so it will make paying outrageous cable/Sat dish fees completely useless. If Hulu allows free accounts supported by commercials, I wouldn't be surprise to see ISPs and cable companies pulling some stunts to stop this from being a viable alternative. Think very limited bandwidth unless you watch there stuff.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 1 locked comments

I was sent a link to Bit-Tech for an article about a certain device . The article wasn't all that interesting but I did find two gems in the comments.

The first:

"PC's fail to keep things simple.

Hardware shouldn't conflict.

Software shouldn't crash or contain bugs.

Viruses shouldn't be able to install themselves.

User interfaces should be (isaac12345's words) intuitive, simple and be easy to use, and understand.

The learning curve should be tiny. But the more advanced of us can then take off and do whatever.

The PC fails the less technically-minded. Even the Mac fails to some degree despite everyones trumpeting.

"

I have said this a million of times. MS is not the greatest OS in the world. But I do think they get alot of third party blame for stuff they cannot control. MS set up WHQL (it's not perfect but at least they try, sorta) to insure that all hardware comes with proper drivers and such. Not everyone uses this process and many game it. That MS can support every piece of hardware out there is a bit mind boggling. We know the fruit company takes the opposite approach and limits their HW selection. This in turn allows them to focus on making "it all just work." But as the commenter above correctly states, this system is not perfect either. Then we have Linux which has neither any form of WHQL certification nor do they (intentionally) limit what they support. But given their license they run into proprietary driver issues (think SW modems back the day, wifi, some video cards, etc etc) among other issues.

So on the surface I can understand why this person posted this comment. But after taking a step back, it's obvious he's living in some form of Utopian word. Are cars perfect? No. Refrigerators. Nope. Clocks. Nope. Heck even something so simple as light switches have issues. Sadly people have lost their homes in fires due to switches shorting out.

But the biggest issue has to be both of the above mentioned companies are business'. I.e. they are in it to make money. There is nothing wrong with that on the surface but when it comes to releasing features things get muddy. Here is an example. Your company makes TARDIS'. For your next release you have 10 new awesome features ready to go. Are you really going to release every one of those features all at once? Or will you release 5 in this release. Then release another 2 or 3 in the next release and on and on? We know the answer to this. Making it even worse is if my company is the only one making TARDIS'. We could turn this entry into one big debate about free markets and competition but I'd rather talk Elmo with my 2year old. Because I feel I'd get more accomplish with my son.

So trying to keep these Questions OS agnostic (and anyone who not go that root (get it root) will be beat about the head and chest with my son's Duplo blocks), ....here they are.

1. Have Computers progressed enough in the last 5 years? 10 Years?

2. What form of learning curve should a computer be expected to have?

3. You can't drive a car unless you pass both a written and hands on test. These rules hope to keep roads safe. Would the internet and such be "safer" if a test were required?

4. What is the next step in development for the computer?

5. The same person who's comment I used also posted the following statement. "The iPad is Speak'n'Spell for kids and adults." I will not allow full comments for this question, it's a multiple choice. Your answers are: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, I want to kill him.

Enjoy.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 2 locked comments

I was going to post this entry on Sunday but decided to calm down first. Well it's now Wednesday and I'm still hot. Nothing gets me going faster then when I see any form of debate being distorted before the debate even begins. Let me explain.

On my way to Sunday's bike ride I heard (via radio) the last few minutes of some political debate for Rhode Island. As you know Sunday's, especially early Sunday morning's are not prime listening time so I just put up with it. With only a few minutes remaining the event happened.

"With only 2 minutes left in this debate we have one final question....

Do you support a woman's right to choose?

There are so many things wrong with this statement it's not funny.

1. For such an important topic you leave it for the last minute? Sounds like you want sounds bites but no real discussion.

2. The commentator asks if you "support" something. This is a positive because being against something would mean you are bad.

3. Next up, the words, "woman's right." No mention of the baby's rights. Keep in mind, when a women is shot while pregnant the police file two charges against the attacker. So why are we not talking about the baby's right?

4. "To Choose" Such simple and elegant words. It's like deciding whether you will have Italian or Ranch dressing on your salad. No big deal right, all you're doing is terminating a perfectly viable life.

So here is where I'm going with this. If you want to debate, and I mean truly debate the topic, USE THE BLOODY WORD!! It's called ABORTION. And just to be completely fair I'll let Merriam-Webster give us the definition.

Definition of Abortion

"Pronunciation: \ə-ˈbȯr-shən\

Function: noun

Date: 1547

1 : the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: as a : spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation — compare miscarriage b : induced expulsion of a human fetus c : expulsion of a fetus by a domestic animal often due to infection at any time before completion of pregnancy "

Category: Religion | Permalink | 0 locked comments

Deep down I'm like a little kid again. Joystick in hand, games on the screen, tons of fun to be had. But my logical side expresses it's happiness with the overall picture. (What am I talk about?) We bought a PS3 but not for the reasons you think.

Yes the PS3 plays games but we bought it to stream Netflicks, Pandora, all my RSS feed tech shows, play blue ray, dvd, audio CDs (if needed) , show pictures, watch YouTube ( think cyclocross and such) etc etc etc.

1. So what do you have in your house to play / stream media with?

2. What is your current favorite console game?

3. what are some of your favorites from days gone past?

4. So you're not in the market for a ps3, Ok then what device out there has your attention for media dispersal etc etc etc?

p.s. the PS3 replaces my tried and true Micro-Itx machine running GeexBox. Given the low pwr consumption I think that may turn into my new firewall, DHCP, etc etc machine running Smoothwall.

p.s. Lego Star Wars is soooooo much fun no matter what age you are. ;-)

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 5 locked comments

Lets get right to the point.

To the three males (and I now use that term very loosely) that own VW Beetles, I call your manhood into question. Straight from the article:

"VW's Beetle is the auto most likely to be purchased by a woman, a study of U.S. vehicle registrations shows."

Source: LATimes

So how did I get to this point? Easy. When I drive around I noticed that certain vehicles tended to be driven by women. Rav4, HondaCR-V and most notably the VW Beetle. Heck my wife wants one in Red so she could add magnetic dots and a split antenna to complete the look. But I could only pick on those driving them with no real evidence. Well it's true, the evidence is in and you are truly GIRLY MEN.

LOL.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 9 locked comments

This year has been so different from last year’s very wet spring that it doesn’t seem fair to compare. But compare I will. Last year was wet beyond wet so the lettuce, arugula and broccoli just kept growing. This year all three started bolting about week and half ago. Last year nearly all the peas got washed away. (take a breath) This year we ended up with nearly three full servings of oh so wonderful peas.

Last season (feel like we are repeating?) was year 1 for the strawberries so nothing was expected. This year we were inundated with strawberries for about 3 weeks. It was awesome. We even gave some to a coworker who lives up the street from us. Rumor has it the full serving we gave him didn’t quite make it home. To be honest I don’t fault or blame him. It’s not every day you get to eat minute old strawberries. The other crop that pretty much got wiped out last year was green beans. Last year’s remaining crop never produced enough to create a single serving for any meal. So lets move on to this years changes.

To begin, I’m growing buckwheat in and around my tomatoes this year. If you’ve been reading along, it’s for a number of reasons beyond the obvious mulching effect. First, to smother weeds by out competing for the sun. ie mulch. Next, buckwheat takes nutrients, nitrogen for example, out of the air and releases it into the ground. The tomatoes love this and so far have showed their appreciation by growing very strong trunks. Lastly, when the buckwheat flowers, it attracts beneficial insects. So far I’ve seen a Praying Mantis chowing down, a wasp going to town on a larvae of some sort, and tons of hover flies. Hover flies eat alot of, as my son would say, “Bad Buggies” in both their larvae and adult stages. I”m sorry but I cannot say enough about this set up. God clearly knew what he was doing when he set this whole insect world in motion. From now on, when I plant tomatoes, it will always be with buckwheat. Since we’re on the subject of mulch, ok maybe we glanced by, this years find was Coco Shells.

I normally use straw as my goto mulch but this year had us receive record rain fall to the point of floods and some really nasty damage. The result of this, many fields were destroyed so straw was not available. So off to my local discount garden supply store to see what else I could use. There I found coco shells at a good price. I remembered seeing it on a number of GardenGirl shows and remembered the benefits. Spreading it was beyond easy even around both my onion and carrots so I think I may have jumped the straw wagon.

Also new this year are pole beans, beets, onions, and in Oct ...garlic. The pole beans are kinda scaring me because they are climbing the trellis like there is a prize for reaching the top first. For those of you wondering, the trellis is over 6 ft tall. With more then 6 plants already reaching at least 5 ft, I envision “many a beans filled” meal. The onions on the other hand are a test since it’s their first year. I planted both yellow and red and so far the sprouting rate appears to be equal. That brings us to beets. So far the results are only so so. Given all the landscaping I’ve been doing the weeds did have a period of growth so I might have lost some seedlings then. But the remaining two or three plants look very healthy and I can’t wait to try them. I’m also going to throw some beet seeds in the ground when ever I rip a lettuce head out. What’s the worse that can happen? They grow? ;-)

That brings us to the pepper plants. Last year I grew a whole row with very little results. I had Jalapeno, Serrano, California Green, something Red, and a few others. This year I only grew 1 Jalapeno and 1 Marconi. I started both plants indoors given our short growing season. It’s scary not having a fall back plan but so far it’s worked out. The first Jala is just waiting to be picked while the other pepper plant is starting to flower. The marconi is suppose to have a shorter growing period when compared to other peppers but so far the Jala has outgrown it. If they bare enough veggies then I won’t increase next season. But then again my little voice is telling me I should no matter what, just to be safe.

Finally, for me it’s not really prime growing season until I make a sandwich that contains a slice of fresh tomato, some lettuce and peppers along with some cukes on the side. All from my garden, of course. So until then, get out there and plant something.

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 2 locked comments