V is for Verbose

Test draft post

2008-05-04T20:30:00.000-05:00

This should be posted Sunday around 8:30

test 2

2008-05-04T20:00:00.000-05:00

this should be posted at 8:00

Scribefire test

2008-05-01T21:09:00.001-05:00

This is a test using scribefire

Preview looks pretty good
No short cut for bold and others = though there probably is...

This will be saved

2008-05-01T20:29:00.000-05:00

save me

Test from Ecto

2008-05-01T18:07:00.000-05:00

Trying out Ecto using a blogspot blog.

Here is a photo I dragged in from iphoto:

Here is some text underneath the picture. Does it go to the side or below?

Looks like you can resize the images.

Here's another, this one is from iMedia browser:

I set it to float left....

Two carriage returns above

Switch to Wordpress

2006-01-22T13:42:00.000-06:00

Due to organization issues, I am moving permantly over to wordpress.
Find my blog at: vlandham.wordpress.com

Blogera: I'll switch your RSS feed. remind me.

Favorites Added

2006-01-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

Check out my new favorites section on the wordpress blog.

It comes with my own kickin' icons, and a free frogurt (that's good).

I'll probably end up switching over to wordpress completely, and then maybe host my own blog, if / when I get the hardware to do it.

For now, check out the wordpress blog, and any comments / critiques are most welcome.

Rate my Clothes

2006-01-14T23:31:00.000-06:00

Today we visited the local clothing resale shop, the Arizona Trading Company, for some hip new threads. We also tried the trade-in option for the first time with some clothes that were going to the thrift-store anyways.

It was kind of an odd feeling as we waited for the woman behind the counter to decide what the store would accept and what we would have to lug back home. All the clothing I had brought in I don’t wear anymore because of sizing errors on my part when I purchased them from the thrift store (its easy to get button-downs that are too big and not really realize it when you’re doing it).

But I would wear them if they fit me. I thought most of it was pretty cool stuff. But while she pawed through our sacks, refolding those items unfit for the ATC, it felt as if my entire wardrobe was being judged by the hippest-of-hip townies. I got nervous while she worked.

Not that I try really hard to get only cool clothes, but I have been making more of an effort recently to dress a little like the groovy kids.

That’s why I felt a little let down when I saw the “not-accepted” pile and realized that she chose almost nothing to keep. It felt like a rejection letter from the townies informing me of my non-coolness.

I guess that’s ok, I don’t really want to be a townie anyways.

Fun Site: Symbols.com

2006-01-13T15:34:00.000-06:00

For my wife's birthday, she wanted to redo our spice rack with glass bottles and spices that she might actually use (I guess Bed Bath & Beyond isn't up on the necessary spices for cool hip twenty-somethings). I got the idea that it would be cool if each spice was labelled with a recognizable symbol for easy retrieval from the rack without having to squint at the names of each one.

Enter symbols.com . This is an amazing online database of around 2,500 symbols and their origins and meanings. What is cool is that you can search in a multitude of ways, my favorite being the "graphic index" search in which you describe the structure of the symbol you want and it comes back with a listing of the most probable matches.

I didn't use the search too much though, just browsing through the symbols was cool enough. It was hard choosing the right 16 for the spice rack, but I think I did a decent job.

We will find out in a few days when the labels finally come in. Stupid Office Depot only carries a small circular label -- and I needed a medium!

The Symbol above is the one I choose to represent "sage". I think it matches up pretty well. Read about it Here.

VMware: my new co-worker

2006-01-08T05:01:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago I got to try the recently-made-free VMware Player on my work computer. This software allows you to play virtual machines on your system, and with a little hackery from digg, you can create your own VMware systems.

Basically this allows you to run any operating system on top of Windows XP, as if it were on a separate computer.

I used the instructions from the hackery site to get Ubuntu Linux running in around 20 minutes. They also have a bunch of ready-mades on their website that should work instantly.

You can install a complete operating system, everything from formatting the "drive" to changing the IP address, without affecting the actual system it is running on. I don't know all the details about how this works, only that the player uses a file that acts like the hard-disk and the rest of the system.

The really cool thing about this software is that it creates virtual network cards for your virtual machines, so it should be possible to create a little virtual network of "computers" that could all communicate with each other and could be used for learning and testing how a network is set up. I set up an Apache web server on my virtual machine and was able to access it from the real computer it was running on. Pretty fun.

I've read a lot about network systems, but haven't gotten a chance to really implement anything on a larger scale, but this program might allow me to do just that.

One issue though is that your real machine has to be pretty kickin to handle multiple virtual machines. I almost crashed my work computer, which is the fastest system I've used, with two virtual pc's, itunes, and our ticket management program open. But you can control how much RAM each virtual machine you create uses, which I didn't really mess around with yet.

If you have a XP machine that is wasting most of its clock cycles just idling, try some of the ready-mades out. Next work day, I am going to try to get a few virtual machines networked together and then finally start implementing a firewall with ipcop, or perhaps openbsd.

You could also install an unpatched version of XP or 98 as a virtural machine and see how long it takes to get infected with the Mblaster worm. Or try out that new Sasser worm that was emailed to you out, just to see what it does to your system. I won't hurt your real set-up one bit, and clean up is as easy as clicking "delete".

the Wordpress vs Blogger Battle

2006-01-02T22:46:00.000-06:00

So today I discovered the joys of WordPress.
Wordpress is another blogging "engine" that might beat out blogger for my current favorite blog site. It allows for easy tagging of your posts, something I have been wanting from blogger since day one.

In fact, there are multiple things about the default set up that I enjoy in Wordpress. The search engine feature is very nice, as is the easy adding of links and link categories.

Check out my basic Wordpress site here

I might eventually switch to Wordpress in the very near future. There are just a couple things that blogger does better:

Ability to email to post new blogs (which is what I'm doing now).
Storage of pictures instead of just linking to them
spell checker.

If i can figure out work arounds for 2 out of 3 of those issues, I may leave blogger in the dust.
What do you think? I'm still not ready to commit to a hosted solution, but is WordPress worth it? or will blogger get tags soon?

AOL and Google, Sitting in a Tree...

2005-12-20T23:37:00.000-06:00

I'm a little confused over the news that Google has bought 5% of AOL's stock and will now be giving special treatment to AOL.

I've always looked at AOL and Google as opposites. AOL, with it's messy and unnecessary user interface meant to confuse people into thinking this is how the Internet actually is. Google, on the other hand, having the most stripped down interfaces possible. What real, long-term gain can Google get from this? I was hoping AOL would file for bankruptcy in a few years.

Now all this could change.

There was talk of giving priority to AOL sites in Google searches, and even non-text adds in Google. Both of these things would suck big time.

Don't abandon us Google! We always knew you as the underdog, fighting against the corruptness and stupidity of Large Corporations. Don't succumb to their ways!

Will the cool kids of the Internet be forced to switch to Yahoo? Or will Google, in it's infinite wisdom, rise from this stronger and more useful than before?

Only time will tell.

All I know is that AOL leaves a bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths, and I wouldn't be spending one billion dollars to French-kiss them.

New Features in Gmail

2005-12-15T10:32:00.000-06:00

Just off the digg.com presses, Gmail has a couple of new features that should make it more attractive to people used to an Outlook environment.

One, is the ability to create contact groups. So you can make a group of all of the cool kids you email funny videos to, and make sharing bizarro humor all the more simple.

The other feature is the ability to create a "I'm on vacation" message that will auto-reply to people when they try to send you something. I hadn't seen this feature anywhere else until I started working with Outlook at my new job. I don't think this ability is really necessary, but I'm sure some people would scoff at Gmail for not having it. Well scoff no more!

At my new help-desk position, around 50% of the calls we get are email related, and a majority of those calls are problems with either Outlook, or Outlook Web Access. If the people with these problems had a bit more knowledge and time, I would be really tempted to set up a Gmail account for them and have them use it.

Really, the 20 Mb limit on KU's student emails is a joke. 2.6 gigs would allow people the freedom they need in how they save emails. Plus, I've already heard the "I accidentally deleted my entire inbox, save me" line too many times. With Gmail, you could say "ok, click on "All Mail" see the messages you lost? great!"

And Outlook Web Access DOES NOT have a "select all" feature, which makes transferring emails from one place to another very tedious.

Now I just need to figure a way to have Gmail connect to the KU Exchange Server, and everyone would be happy.

Comedians of Comedy

2005-12-10T15:30:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note:

There is a new show on Comedy Central called "Comedians of Comedy" which follows 4 stand-up comedians as they travel around in an RV doing shows.

Its probably the funniest "reality" TV show you will ever watch.

The comedians are :
Patton Oswalt
Brian Posehn
Zach Galifianakis
Maria Bamford

Most of the show is just them goofing around.

I guess it comes on at 10 pm, but I've been just getting the torrents and watching them at my leisure.
You should too.

Kansas gets Slashdotted

2005-12-09T22:56:00.000-06:00

Crazy crazy times. The news about the ongoing bizarre and disturbing turn of events surrounding the "battle" between religion and science became slashdot worthy today.

The particular war at the moment is between a Dr. Mirecki, an atheist and professor at KU who was going to teach a class on Creationism, and the fundamental Christians who apparently control much of Kansas.

He referred to them as "fundies" and then he got beat up, cancelled the class and resigned as chairman of the department of religion.

Though CNN messed up the details, and say he sent an email around to different people with these statements in them. My understanding, and what I read in the Kansan was that he posted to a Yahoo group for atheists. Completely different.

He also had previously made comments on this same Yahoo group about when he was a child he almost threw up when he thought about the wafer taken at communion turning into the flesh of Jesus Christ.

What hits me over the head every time I hear another chapter of this tale is how unchristian the Christians in this story appear to act.

If the original report was true (and I think that it is) then that means some Christian was actively searching through atheist Yahoo groups just trying to dig something up. To me, that seems a little ridiculous. Someone went out, found these comments that Dr. Mirecki made on a forum, and distributed it out to the masses in hopes that someone with power would make a ruckus. And of course someone did.

When did it become the Christian way to go stirring up trouble? I agree the professors comments were unprofessional and mean, but on the forum he was basically just puffing himself up a bit in front of his friends.

And then someone else went searching for all the other stupid stuff Dr. Mirecki said on this Yahoo group, just to try to get him in more trouble. And their plan worked great.

This isn't what Christianity is about!

Where is the calm persuasive discussion about differences in opinion?
Where is the acceptance of all people regardless of transgressions?

I don't want to go into this too much more, because it is too touchy of a subject to really speak your mind in a public place such as this, but just a few more things:

No one who would have taken this class would have been converted in either way to one side or the other. This was a fight, not for the students, but for the politics of college.
There were only 11 people signed up to take it before it was cancelled. (Out of 100 possible spots).
This kind of behaviour just gives opponents of Christianity more fodder to throw at us and makes Christians in general look like bullies.
Don't post rude things about people that can fire you, or who can and will beat you up on a country road
"Fundies" is actually a pretty funny word, and should be used more often, with an expanded meaning to someone who is fanatical about any particular subject.

My own Network Topology

2005-12-04T23:41:00.000-06:00

Instead of studying for finals, I decided to create a little diagram of my network at home. I used the trial version of OmniGraffle Pro, with some free downloadable stencils to make a pretty accurate mapping of what we have here.

OmniGraffle is actually a pretty nice program, and with a little work, you could do a lot with it.
But I don't think I'll ever use it enough to justify the $129 price tag. That's a bit much, in my opinion, I'll just stick to the trial version.

In the diagram, the little black boxes represent WRT54g routers, and the little white box is a little Linksys switch I have. Everything on the top line is in my office upstairs. The hardware on the lower level is downstairs (well the iBook can go anywhere).

If you wanted to, you could create much better maps then this one, but in about 30 min. this is what I came up with.

So what does your Network look like?

(FYI I had to use the capture-screen-image feature of my Mac to get a version of this in an image format, as the export feature dosen't seem to work for the demo. Plus you can only add 20 objects, so I couldn't fit my printer on there.)

Trick for printing graphs in Microsoft Office

2005-12-04T22:35:00.000-06:00

My wife recently came up with a very intelligent way to print
multiple Excel graphs on one page, without dealing with formatting
issues in Word, or anything goofy like that. There is probably--
should be-- a built in way to do this, but I haven't used Excel enough
to know it, and this works fine.

She wanted to have four Excel graphs on one page, to save paper and
because it looks nice. So she simply copied each graph and pasted
them into an empty Powerpoint slide. There is a default Powerpoint
template that allows for a graph and a title. If you double click on
the graph place-holder Microsoft opens up its crappy graph maker,
which does you no good. BUT, if you single click on the place-holder
and then paste, your graph will fill up the entire slide. You can
decide if you want to keep the title or not.

When she had all of her graphs on different slides, she went to print,
and then chose the four slides on one page printing option. Genius!
Everything was lined up right and all it takes is a little copying and
pasting.

Again, I played no part in this unique solution. I actually wasted
time trying to figure out a way to print graphs in Excel, but to no
avail.

I don't know how often anyone needs to print multiple graphs to a
page, but you could also apply it to pictures or other similar
objects. Even better, print it to a pdf file, then load it back onto
a slide and you can print 16 graphs on one page! Genius!

This brings up the fact that I'm dying to have a native, Apple built,
Cocoa Office suite for the Mac. Please! Microsoft Word is slow,
jittery, goofy, and lazy. And the other Office products aren't much
better! Pages is nice, but it really is for laying out interesting
documents, and not lab reports or regular everyday stuff. Open
office is coming, but not really here for the Mac yet, and I would be
happy with just Text Edit, except when I need to use tables, graphs,
pictures, etc.

Please Apple Hurry!

Return of the W.R.T.

2005-12-03T13:12:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, I was saddened to learn that Linksys had changed the best home router available for the worse. In case you don't follow the router scene much (I know I don't), here's just a bit of backstory:

The Linksys WRT54G has been considered one of the best home / small office routers availible for the geek with too much free time. Why? Because people found out that it was running Linux. And even better, due to weird copywrite laws that I won't pretend to understand, they had to release the source code for the software-- aka "firmware" --that ran on it. Meaning anyone could take their software, look at it, improve it, and release it again. All for free.
And many people did that.

Thus, you could take this $50 router, add someone's improved software, and make it almost as powerful as a router you might pay $600 dollars for. That's a pretty good deal.

Then tragedy stuck... To save a few bucks, for the newest versions of this router Linksys has changed the internals of this model and crippled it from allowing this change in software to work. (And they changed the operating system, so anything Linux wouldn't run anyways.)
And I cried at night.

But now, they've released the old (good) WRT54G under a new name: WRT54GL! It's got all the cool features that it did before they crippled it, but it costs $70 now. So, basically they want geeks that want to hack these routers pay a few more dollars to be able to do it. This is still a good thing, because at least you can still buy it somewhere.

I have two of the original one's, and they are great. One is running the original Linksys firmware. The other is connected to the computer we have hooked up to the TV and is running the dd-wrt firmware, so that it can run in client mode and connect to the other router upstairs.

This saves me from drilling a hole trough the ceiling to connect this computer to the network. I thought that was a good idea, my wife did not.

So, if you are in need of a router, and want the option to someday modify it to make it much more powerful, go grab a WRT54GL today!

And if you want more info about the WRT54g and its possibilities, check here or here for a mostly complete list of the firmwares you can get. Its really pretty exciting stuff... If you're in to routers.

And hopefully someday electronic makers will figure out better ways to name their hardware, so we aren't all left memorizing silly strings of random characters. I mean really, how hard would it be to come up with a naming scheme similar to vechiles for digital cameras, routers and the like.

It would be much cooler to say the Linksys "Firebrand" then WRT54g anyday.

Can you digg it

2005-11-24T08:24:00.000-06:00

Just a quick post, before it's off to crazy farm for Thanksgiving.

A site that has been rivaling del.icio.us for my attention lately is digg.com.

Digg.com is a site where the readers rate each news story as the come up and the ones with the most votes come to the front page while the boring ones don't. So the effect is that you get to see everything that everyone thinks is cool and not a lot of boring stuff.

If you want, you can join in the fun and rate the stories yourself, but you don't have to, in order to enjoy it.

Right now they have a bunch of articles on the Xbox 360 (what's this about it crashing?? Stupid Microsoft, when will they learn.) but the articles and topics change pretty rapidly.

Check it out, it's pretty cool. And have a wonderful, if not awkward, Thanksgiving.

Best Video Games of All Time: Why Sonic Sucks

2005-11-18T16:17:00.000-06:00

They had a site on del.icio.us today that summed up a ton of "Top 10" lists for the greatest video games ever. I didn't read them all but they have a summary of all the reviews near the bottom that show Link and Mario leading the pack of characters in the best games ever. They also make note that Sega has a very poor showing. Sonic, Sega's mascot has never been in the same field / ballpark / game as the other console poster children.

And here's why:
Sonic was always too good for his own good. He tried too hard. Sonic and his crew told people they were cool, and therefore, by definition, they were not. See at him over there... Looking so cool. But look closely at the fear in his eye. There is a hole in his soul that coolness will never fill.

Like Poochie from the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. Being too cool is a guaranteed failure.

So, if you ever want to become one of the greatest video game characters of all time, play it cool, but not too cool. And it helps if you are a racial sterotype, or an elf.

Update: I forgot to mention that my wife's blog asks the question: "Who would win in a fight, Kirby or Rogue?" which is why I wanted to post about video game matchups.

I hate Criptically Simple Solutions

2005-11-11T21:42:00.000-06:00

So my friend has had an iBook for probably over a year now, and his airport card has been flaky at best for most of that time. I installed tiger on it with all the updates, we messed with the hardware itself, plugging it in and cursing at it, and what not. But the problem only got worse.

We tried everything I could find, but he finally told me to switch it back to panther, when the computer could at least get on some of the time.

So I had it backing up his documents, and I was getting ready to wipe and install, when I decided to check my friend google one more time. Among the hundreds of people with similar sounding problems, but no working solutions, I found one person on a forum with the exact same problems as we did. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and he finds out the antenna that plugs into the airport card wasn't pushed in all the way... You have to really snap it in.

Damn it if that didn't fix our problem too. The apple "genius's" who upgraded his ram never plugged the airport card in correctly, and our messing with the system is what caused even more problems. This solution is far too simple to ever be found. The antenna looked plugged in when it wasn't, and it just took some brute force to correct. This isn't how computer problems should be solved! Stupid airport antenna, why didn't they just build the antenna port into the regular connection?

Simple problems like these are the hardest to solve, as all it takes is desperation.

Website: Kill Bill's Browser

2005-11-10T14:20:00.000-06:00

Here's something off the del.icio.us feed that is kind of funny.

http://www.killbillsbrowser.com/

It gives you just some (13) of the reasons why you should be using firefox instead of IE (internet explorer).

My favorites:
The paperclip. What a truely horrible thing to be built into an operating system.

and

You won't miss hearing:

"I verified my credit card number since the computer said it had spyware, but now I can't email..."

very funny, and so true.
Also funny because we just watched Kill Bill last night

Everyone Should be Using Del.icio.us

2005-11-07T08:35:00.000-06:00

Del.icio.us is a great online resource with a catchy name. Del.icio.us is an online, taggable, social bookmark manager. This means basically you can bookmark a page in del.icio.us, and then get to it from any other computer later on.

Lets say that you were researching a school paper and you were doing it both at home and at school. Well, instead of emailing yourself all the links back and forth (which would be very painful to do with anything but gmail), you just add them to your del.icio.us account and your done. When you switch computers, you just log into del.icio.us and they are all there.

Better still, you can "tag" each link and provide a description so you can find it later. Tags are keywords that you group content under. They are similar to folders, except an object could have several tags, but could only be in one folder. So, you could tag each link you find with "school", "paper", and then the specific topic you are looking at. Then when you wanted to find them again they would all be under the proper tags. Excellent!

Even better still, del.icio.us is a social system, meaning you share your bookmarks with others and can see other peoples bookmarks. This is particularly nice, as you can search for similar tags from other people. For example, the science tag will give you links to such sites as the Nobel Prize Internet Archive .
My favorite tags: website, apple, css, security, and freebsd.
Check out my del.icio.us account here

And if you want to see whats cool on the Internet at this very moment, then check out the popular section. Its delicious.

Everyone should read "A List Apart"

2005-11-04T21:35:00.000-06:00

If I had just an inkling of talent for it, all I would want to do with the rest of my life is design websites. Of course I am currently working towards more practical and better suited careers for myself. However, website design is just something that is inexplicably fascinating to me, and if was good at it, I would make a career out of it.

Regardless of artistic talent, we can all aspire to be website snobs. Being a website snob takes very little talent, and just a little background reading about how websites should look and act. A List Apart is where I go to learn about proper website design. It is a beautiful resource filled with articles written by website designers for website designers. Read a few of these essays, and you'll start to understand the infinite complexity of website design, or at least how picky some people can be.

And then try out your website snobbery: when you see a site written in all flash, scoff at it and then point and laugh with others around you. When a site is using tables instead of CSS exclaim "How crude!" to whomever is nearest to you. Soon everyone will know you are an expert website critic.

Maybe that's what I'll become someday, a website critic. They have movie/food/music critics, why not website critics?
I'll get my own column in the Lawrence.com paper. And they'll increase my bandwidth limit too, so I can review more sites... A perfect plan!

Flickr Update

2005-11-02T09:24:00.000-06:00

a quick note for anyone interested, I have just added a bunch of wedding pictures to our flickr site. After 4 months, we figured it was about time to get these developed.
I'll be adding more soon, but these are the first.
Get there from the link on the side or

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vlandham

Some of the previews have heads cut-off, but that doesn't show up in the real picture. I think I just set the wrong dimensions when importing.

what Pittstate has given me

2005-10-29T23:06:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note, to try to get into the blogging habit again.

My decision to graduate with a biology degree and go into computer science directly afterwards has made the first four years of college a little bit of a time-sink. But, one thing I have learned how to do well is Lab Reports. I don't expect to encounter many in the Comp Sci field, but when I do, I'll be ready for them.

Like in assembly language lab (another time-sink of a different color), the labs are slow and sometimes painful. But the lab reports are effortless fluff.

So thank you PSU for teaching me the craft of pounding out BS at an accelerated rate.

Uselessness of email part 2

2005-10-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

Another way email can become useless, that I've seen a couple of times, is when the amount of garbage coming in greatly out numbers the number of communications containing real information. That is to say, when spam overruns your email. For some, this problem is unavoidable. If you have your email address on a website to contact for tech support, for example, you are probably going to have a lot of junk mail. Nothing much you can do about it.
However, many people I see with this problem are not tech savvy in this way, and still get a ton of emails that they cannot (or think they cannot)do anything about. For example, my grandfather probably gets a few dozen spam messages a day. The same for my mother, and even my old hotmail address. Right now it has something like 2000 unread messages not marked as spam by hotmail (cause hotmail blows) but absolutely worthless to me.

For the technologically hip, there are ways to combat this spam in the form of filters and email rules, etc. But for my grandfather, he doesn't understand the concept of web-based email(like hotmail or gmail) and only understands that email gets downloaded to his computer with another application (namely Mac's Mail app). He is at no level to start an active battle against his spam, and I don't have enough free time or care to start it for him.

This makes email useless because you spend much more time sorting through spam than reading email. Why would anyone go through the trouble of deleting 40 spam messages just to see the latest joke about bridge players from aunt Kathy? It doesn't make sense.

My proposed solution is something I've been advocating to my uninformed elders for quite some time: get a new email address. This is usually received with a cold shudder, and the remark that it would be far too difficult to switch addresses now, all my contacts and friends already know this one.

Blah! There is probably less then a dozen people that email my grandfather every month. It would take one email to less then 20 people (once they understand they can email more than one person at the same time) to successfully alert those people of your change. This is far less trouble than what he's doing now:
His current email address came from his original Earthlink dialup connection. It only has 10 mb of space, and so a few 2 megapixel pictures can completely fill it up. Also, my grandfather has since switched to DSL, and so pays an extra $15 a month JUST to keep this one very very crappy email address. Ridiculous.

A new email address would make his life a lot easier.

And how do we avoid clogging new email up with just as much spam and repeating the whole process? Simple: Don't email anyone that you don't trust with your new email address. Don't post it anywhere on the internet. Don't sign up for any "free deals" with it. Just email friends with it. Use your OLD crappy email to do all that other stuff you need an email for. In short: Don't make all the same mistakes you used to with your old address.
This makes email (and life) fun again. I actually use 4 email accounts to segment this process even more. Sign up with suspicious stuff with my crappy hotmail and yahoo accounts, keep my gmails clean and wonderful.

There are other tricks to helping with the tides of spam, but I've bored you enough already, and you probably haven't gotten this far down anyways.

The possible uselessness of email

2005-10-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

My wife's grandmother commented the other day that since her computer got fried in a lightening storm, she hasn't been able to check her email. And that storm happened in August.

It got me thinking about how easily email can become useless as a form of communication for some people. This storm gave her no time to warn people that she might not be able to receive email for awhile, and so in all probability, anyone who has sent her an email recently has no idea that she's not getting them. Thus, this form of communication could even be destructive in some ways, as people think she's getting information they are sending her and will expect her to act on this information in some way. While anything sent to her via email probably isn't critical news, its still interesting how this form of communication can lead to the wrong assumption that your transmissions are actually being pickuped.

Like an answering machine: I could leave messages all day long (or until the machine is filled up) but if you're not there to push the button, you won't here a word of it. Yet, I would still expect you to have received my communication soon after I sent it.

The problem with this form of information transfer is that there is no confirmation that your information has indeed been received and understood by its intended target. We know if we sent the email, or voice mail to the right place, but we really have no idea if anyone is checking that particular place.

I guess what I'm saying here, is call people who are too lazy / busy to check their email, and don't leave a message.
This post is boring but I have another one coming that's even worse!

Post from the phone. here

2005-10-05T07:44:00.000-05:00

Post from the phone. here is another cool trick: you can blog from your cell phone!

stupid spam

2005-09-25T22:36:00.000-05:00

Jeff is right. This is a flaw of blogger that because it is so good / popular, it attracts spammers to add to the site.
I'll wait and see how bad it gets. I might restrict the posting a bit if I need to.

Jeff asleep in the car.

2005-09-24T17:14:00.000-05:00

Jeff asleep in the car.
Originally uploaded by vlandham.

I forgot about this picture.
Very funny.
You don't forget either.

More Fun Photos

2005-09-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

Two other pictures of our apartment have been added. Check them out on the Flickr Link.

Now I think it's your turn, Jeff. Lets see some of your new place!

I'll add more pictures in the next few days.

The couch is now in place!

2005-09-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

It did indeed come today. Although, the rain and mud made it a bit more difficult to get inside, and also left a nice mess for me to clean up, it came just the same.
We have a fully annotated picture with it in it.
go Here for a direct link, or browse through with the flickr link to the right.
I'll try to post some other shots of our new place, so you all can get the feel of it...

Couch Countdown

2005-09-12T16:24:00.000-05:00

Well its been a long time since purchase, but our couch should be (fingers crossed) dropped off to us tommorrow by 12 pm. Score.

Life...

2005-09-11T09:40:00.000-05:00

So I'm supposed to write about my life and not just Mac stuff. (What you don't realize is Mac stuff IS my life). But as you are probably the only person that might read this, I guess I should comply.

Right now I've been focusing a lot on learning to program. Before this semester, I hadn't written a program for the last 3 years. So I'm a bit rusty to say the least. Now that I'm getting back into it, it seems that my programming experience is a bit different than many of the other students. I recognize a few things that the other students have even heard about yet (like pointers and linked lists) but have trouble dealing with really basic fundamentals too (like arrays... Damn you arrays!). So, I'm really just trying to stay ahead of the game. And then I ask a bunch of questions from the nice TA when I don't understand something.
Anyways, we just got our first big project, so we will see how easy that is for me.

My other classes aren't as interesting. I have a crappy logic class that is just here to flunk and confuse students. The concepts aren't hard to get, but using the stuff you "learn" in class isn't very easy. Example problem: " prove that (p ^ q) v (q -> r) ^ (~r v q) <=> (q ^ r) " Its really a matter of not seeing any use for this kind of knowledge. Oh well I'm sure it will come to me eventually...

So there is my life right at this moment, now can I talk about more mac stuff?? (Did you see the iPod Nano?? sweeet!!)

My new ibook

2005-08-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

I've had my new ibook for a little less than a month now, and I really enjoy using it. I added as much RAM to it that I could, and bumped the standard 40 gig hard drive up to the 80 gig one. Its got built in wireless, bluetooth, and a decent battery life of around 4 hours.

I really just wanted to highlight one feature of the new ibooks that I find particularly amazingly useful: you can use the track pad to scroll up and down on pages, just by using two fingers instead of one. Its really like having the scroll ball of a mouse whenever you want it. Instead of going over to the little arrows and clicking them up or down, or even using short cut keys, I can just lower my index finger slightly and I am scrolling. Pretty cool eh?
I'll be sure to get back to the coolness of my ibook in some other posts, but that is my favorite feature so far.

Men who Know

2005-08-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

I was looking at old war posters tonight, and couldn't help but post about this one I found.
It's pretty funny

Who knew, there are a TON of posters about syphilis!

Check out this great resource Here

Says that they are mostly in the public domain too!
Here is a better way to search through them

My current Podcasts:

2005-08-29T19:47:00.000-05:00

Coverville -- My favorite, does a 40 min show of covers of other songs. Very cool.
Ebert & Roeper -- Not bad to hear two old guys bicker about movies
IndieFeed -- I like the Indie version, but whichever one you like, its free music, and cool music.

Podcasts and itunes

2005-08-29T19:44:00.000-05:00

So, you've downloaded the most recent version of itunes and installed it right? Good.
Open the program, and look around a bit. What we will be interested in is the new menu item that says "Podcasts" with that wierd purple icoon next to it. Click on it to take you to the podcast menu.
You will see an empty library as you have not gotten any podcasts yet, right? right.
In the lower left had corner of the main window you will see a link titled "Podcast Directory".
Click on that, and you'll be wisked away to the podcast section of the music store.
On the left you will see "Today's Top Podcasts" and in the center is a few podcasts that apple wants to showcase for whatever reason.
Today's Top section is a great place to look for good podcasts, as there are alot of crappy ones, and sometimes its hard to tell what's worth downloading and whats not.
So try clicking on one of the top podcasts. I'll try the "Ebert & Roeper" movie review one.
That will take you to a page where you can gain some more info about your podcast of choice.
In the lower section, you will see the podcasts that are availible for download. To the upper right is a link to the podcast's website. And near the center, is a button that says "Subscribe" click on that.
FYI the word "subscribe" isn't a very good choice as it implies that you will be purchasing something, like a magizine. But I ensure you most of these are free. They should have gotten a better word for that, or made up one of their own... like "Podscribe" or "Podgrab" or whatever.
They will pop up a little message asking "are you sure?" and click ok to start getting your podcast!
So it will return to your podcast library, but NOW you will actually have a listing in your directory. And your itunes will be churing to download your new podcast. Once it gets done, you can start listening to your hip new podcast right now.

To mess a little more, click on the "settings" button in the lower left hand corner, and see what you can see. I like changing the the "Keep:" option to "All unplayed episodes" but thats just cause I don't want to fill up my new ibooks hard drive. But you do what you want.

IF you get bored with your podcast, or pick a lemon, simply select "unsubscribe" and its gone.
On the otherhand, if you want more of your podcast, click on the little black arrow next to it's name and you can select other episodes to "GET"
so go getting!

Podcasts are good for you

2005-08-29T19:25:00.000-05:00

Podcasts are getting even bigger and cooler, so I thought I might mention them. The latest iTunes program (4.9) comes with built in support for the downloading and management of podcasts. Also the latest firmware of ipods (you are updating your firmware right?) include support for podcasts as well.
But what is a podcast? According to the coolest online encyclopedia around, wikipedia.org, Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet.
Basically, a podcast is a radio show that is online instead of the radio. This method of distribution, the Internet that is, makes it possible for just about anybody to make a podcast for their own. That being the case, it is far more likely that you find a podcast that perks your interest rather than a true radio show.
Another benefit to podcasts over real radio, is that you can listen to your podcasts at any time you want. And if you have a ipod (where podcasts get their name) then you can listen to them where ever you want as well. If you want you can listen to them over and over again, as they are downloaded to your harddrive just like a song in itunes.
And best of all, almost all of them are free, and pretty simple to use.
So thats why you need to start listening to podcasts. Next post, I'll describe the procedure used to "subscribe" to a podcast from itunes.

Test of DashBlog

2005-08-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

This post is coming from the cool widget "DashBlog". It allows you to blog from a little widget in tiger. Very cool. Too bad xanga isn't cool enough to do this!

Xanga Sucks

2005-08-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

I'm just amazed that people actually use xanga (including all my friends and family). The basic version sucks so much compared to any other blogging service: no spell check, no posting by email, no nothing. Just a look at the list of "premium" features and see how many are given to us by blogger for nothing! I'm not going to post stuff on it anymore. I'm just staying with blogger, thank you very much.

Turn on shortcut keys in Gmail!

2005-05-02T10:06:00.000-05:00

Gmail is a very awesome free webmail based email system, of which I will write more on later. But for now, turn on the shortcut keys to make your gmailing even better!

click on "settings"
select "keyboard shortcuts on"
click "save" at the bottom.

Now you can use:
c -- compose message
y -- archive message
j -- move to older message
k -- move to newer message

tab + return -- in many browsers, this sends the email you are composing. Hasen't worked in Safari yet, but hopefully that will change.

Short cut Keys are a way of Life!

2005-04-28T23:51:00.000-05:00

There is little in the computing world that I enjoy better than shortcut keys. The mouse is to be avoided at all times. It slows you down, makes you weak. Like a frail old woman, with large bulbous fingers. Shortcut keys are one reason I like the Mac system so much. It's full of standardized shortcuts that make me pen italian sonnets to show my love for them.

Note: I'll use "apple" for the command key (the one with the apple on it)
and "ctrl" for the control key, because I'm lazy.

Obvious:
apple + c -- copy
apple + x -- cuts
apple + v -- pastes
apple + z -- undo (if available)

In the Finder (Desktop):
apple + tab -- can switch between open applications very easily.
apple + h -- hides an application
apple + q -- quits an application
apple + w -- closes windows
apple + delete -- deletes item
shift + apple + delete -- empties trash
shift + apple + n -- makes a new folder
shift + apple + a -- opens up to the "applications" folder

In Firefox:
apple + t -- opens new tab
apple + n -- opens new window
apple + w -- closes current tab / window
ctrl + tab -- switches between tabs
apple + l -- highlights URL so you can go to a new location
apple + r -- reloads page
/ -- search on page -- very helpful. try it now. do it.

General Text:
apple + left / right arrow -- move to far right / left of line
apple + shift + left / right arrow -- select all to the left / right

This is barely scratching the surface, but it's a good start.
Here's a link to apples shortcut site: ClickMe

What's your favorite shortcut?

Explore the Census!

2005-04-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

Social Explorer

This is a very cool site that one of my RSS feeds just alerted me of. Basically, they have put much of the 200 census into an interactive map form that you can zoom in and change what your looking at all really easily. Just select "Census 2000 maps" and pick what you want to look at and you are ready to go. I liked the "Foreign-Born Place of Birth" option a lot. You can pick out patterns in communities which is actually pretty interesting.

Plus you can zoom in to a very specific area, which is very nice (you can even see street names!).

Here is an image of the Foreign-Born Koreans living in Hawaii in 2000. Each red dot represents 10 individuals. The green circular areas are supposed to be military establishments. So you can see there is a definite pattern to be seen.
(I did this to show that you can get to Hawaii / Alaska, but you have to zoom out from the first map, and then zoom back towards the ocean until you find it.)

Another cool map I looked at was the number of individuals using public transportation in the greater Kansas City area. It really is a testament to the horribly crappy public transportation system we have there. It sucks.

But this site is very cool. and informational too!
here's the link directly to the Census 2000 section:
http://www.socialexplorer.com/maps/Census2000Maps.asp

What maps did you find? make a slideshow of them!

RSS is the future today!

2005-04-25T00:15:00.000-05:00

Perhaps not entirely, but its a good start. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" (at least it does now) and is a great way to read sites that update often. Using a RSS aggregator such as NetNewsWire Lite, one can compile dozens of sites into one common interface which allows you to read new information really fast, and get a lot of new information at one time.

Say you've got a bunch of blogs you read everyday, plus you've got to get your news fix from yahoo or google news or whatever. Why go to each individual site when you can get all that reading done in one swoop?? Plus with all the free time you save, you can subscribe to more blogs and more news and stuff your head even more in the same amount of time!

Set up NetNewsWire Lite:
First download and install it to you applications folder. Then Drag it to your dock. Start it up, and you'll have a bunch of feeds that you probably aren't too interested in, but thats ok, because they show you how it works. Click on the NetNewsWire Lite drop down menu and click on "Preferences" Click on the "Browsing" tab and check the "Open links in background" option. Click the "Downloading" tab and change the Refresh rate to "Every 30 Minutes" Close out of the Preferences window

The hardest part of setting up the aggregator is actually finding the feeds to the sites you want. There's got to be an easy way, I just don't know it. For xanga sites, you can use the afore mentioned rss helper since xanga can't do it on there own. Just type the username into the box and it will find the URL for the feed. Copy the URL and go back to NetNewsWire Lite. Click on the "Subscribe" button at the top and the link should appear. Hit ok, and you've got some feeds to read! For news sites, you can usually find a link somewhere on the page. Like at news.yahoo.com there's a section on the left call "News via RSS" . Click on the yellow box, copy the URL and subscribe to it in the RSS aggregator of your choice.

You can delete the feeds you don't like by selecting them and hitting the "delete" key. You can even group your feeds into different folders by clicking "File" and then "New Group". Then drag similar feeds to that folder. Pretty nice.

What's cool is that you can let your unread feeds build up and then read them all at once. As long as NetNewsWire Lite is running it will check every 30 minutes for new feeds, and it keeps a running total on the dock icon, which is very cool.

Shortcut keys:
hitting the spacebar will move through each new feed entry. It will also page-down for longer blog entries. This is the easiest way I've found to navigate through your feeds. Command + k will mark all in the particular fee as "read". Sometimes necessary because the technology isn't perfect.

Macs do it Better

2005-04-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I really like the Mac. The GUI is clean and very functional, the Unix underneath is powerful and secure, and the hardware developed by Apple is top notch and can't be touched.

So here's a list of my most beloved applications that make my Mac experience all the more enjoyable. Hopefully I will be elaborating on each of these programs in some detail later on.

Adium X -- Nice Instant Messenger Client. Very configurable, clean, and cool. 2.0 will be even cooler. Talk on aol and msn and yahoo with one program? I don't believe it!

NetNewsWire Lite -- RSS feed client. Read all of your wicked cool xanga blogs at one time. Lite version is free, and has all the features I could ever want.

SubEthaEdit -- Allows multiple people to edit a single text document from different computers in different locations, in real time! This would be awesome at a business with a bunch of macs on the network. Also is just a really functional text editor in general, especially for working with html / ruby / perl / etc.

QuickSilver -- This is a great way to get around your mac with no mouse needed. I use it to open up programs really quickly, but you could also use it to... browse your iTunes library, open bookmarks, search google / IMDB / any other searchable site, etc etc . If you start using it, you won't stop.

Firefox -- Not mac specific, but the best browser hands down. Safari is nice for some things, but Firefox is just better. Plus open source is always a good thing. So are lots and lots of actually useful plugins.
(And if you are using Internet Explorer on the Mac, don't tell anyone because they will make fun of you. And so will I. )

GmailStatus -- If you are still using crap hotmail or crap yahoo stop. Find someone, and get yourself a gmail account. Set it up and import your contacts, and never touch hotmail / yahoo again. Really, gmail is that much better. I'll 'blog' about that later. Then get yourself the GmailStatus program. This is a simple app that will gracefully notify you of new messages. I believe there are other programs that do this that might be newer, but I like the way this one looks, so I'll stick with it for now.

Sidenote -- Just started using this, but I think it might be really useful. Creates a little note taking box that will hide when you don't need it. But you can create multiple notes within one window, save them, edit them, send them to other programs. Really, think this could be something special. I'll try it out some more and check back...

Voodoo Pad -- Not Freeware like the above ones, but still an interesting program. It allows you to make a personal wiki on your computer as a way to organize ideas and link them to other ideas. It's pretty useful, I should use it more often since I paid for it. But they do have a fully functional free version that limits the number of pages you can create.

Toast -- Certainly not free, but still the best CD / DVD burning program that I've found / tried for the mac.

I also use the built in programs like iTunes, iPhoto, etc. But enough people talk about them, I shouldn't have to. But I might later.