Found this ad on dictionary.com. I didn’t know they’d stoop to the level of ripping off Twitter’s icon. XD
AT&T, wth?
Posted in Computers, Humor, Web Leave a comment
Happy Father’s Day!
Being a dad can be taxing, but I’d definitely do it again (commit to being a dad, that is). This one goes out to my beautiful wife and daughter, thanks for making the journey an interesting one!
Also to all the other dads out there… enjoy your day and make the most of it!
Posted in Personal Leave a comment
Adding to the Carbon Footprint One Stride at a Time.
Being a Night Elf in World of Warcraft had its disadvantages in the first half of Azeroth’s mmo history. Firstly, you were part of the Alliance faction, which meant winning Battle Grounds was an extreme rarity. Secondly, you started out questing in one of the most remote corners of the world, being cut off from both mainlands, and having a virtual ghost town for a Capital City. Thirdly, you were the largest Alliance race, meaning you couldn’t ride, in my opinion, the coolest mount the Alliance had to offer: The gnome-built Mechanostrider. If you tried to buy one, the vendor would chuckle and point out your size, telling you that you would surely crush the delicate mechanics of their metallic bird.
Although the first two issues still exist after two expansions, the last one was lifted in Patch 3.0.8 . (http://www.wowhead.com/?patchnotes=3.0.8-ptr)
After this news, I jumped for joy and ran headlong into the battlegrounds to earn marks of honor for the Black Battlestrider. Mind you, the first problem mentioned was, and of course still is, in effect. I probably spent ten times longer earning those marks than ANY Horde player in WoW. By stroke of luck, my last battle was one in which the Alliance swept Warsong Gulch in a three-to-zero victory over our opponents.
I went to the war-mount dealership and purchased a fully stocked, 0% APR financed Battlestrider with no interest till 2011!
Although I can’t go around corners faster than five mph without rolling the thing, I’m still damn happy with it!
Posted in Gaming, WoW 2 Comments
How Adam Savage Made My Day
Having over 24,000 followers on twitter at the time of this writing, Adam Savage (of MythBusters fame) is no stranger to the venerable “@” tweet. Having been directed (by his Twitter feed) to his outstanding TED talk, I became immediately curious as to how he managed his “Creative Projects” repository of images, having recently begun the task of organizing the thousands of images my wife and I have taken with our family camera over the years, I felt certain that Mr. Savage had a better handle on the intricacies of managing large volumes of digital photos.
Having searched the various lifehacker-esqe blogs and self-help sites, I was unable to find the ultimate mass photo manager. Google’s Picasa 3 is promising but a little clunky (and lacks native Flickr support), F-Spot looks quite nice, but alas is Linux-only (thus alienating my photo collection), and Adobe Organizer which costs money (came with my copy of Photoshop Elements 6) future support and upgrades are a joke here…
Here’s where Adam Savage comes in. Although my luck in the past has been more hit than miss with using the “@” message on Twitter, the prospect of getting to the bottom of this mystery was enough for me to give it a try by asking the man himself:
and much to my surprise, the humble Adam Savage did me the honor of not only answering my question, but explaining his selection as well:
Without going into the details of how Twitter has changed how I view the availability of otherwise unreachable people…
Mr. Savage, thank you for making my day.
Posted in Personal, Web 2 Comments
A Thought Just Occurred To Me.
In nature, seemingly all things have purpose. Forest fires help sequoia seeds to sprout, scavengers dispose of the dead, mounds of bat droppings in a cave provide an infinite food source for all kinds of insects. Everything is perfectly suited to support the other: practical and pragmatic.
Only in the luxury of intelligence and self awareness are pieces not meant to fit together forced into union. Unbalanced ecosystems, pollution, zeppelin travel, humor. None are naturally practical. None are pragmatic. All are introduced or conjured up by humans.
Due to their massive intelligence in contrast to other creatures, human thinking can almost be defined by the ability to perceive the impractical. The human body isn’t efficient in the least for basic survival: Our skin is soft and easily torn. Our nails and teeth are dull, and our strength and stamina is pitiful compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Only through superior intellect can we survive. How ironic that extreme intelligence let’s us afford to be stupid; to imagine the irrational.
Thus, I theorize that if we were to find intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, our first clue would be nonessential technology brought on by the leisurely use of otherwise overwhelming mental facilities.
Posted in Intellectual Insight, Personal Leave a comment
Proof of Concept: The Economic Server Build
Last weekend I had just received all the parts to complete what I felt was a pretty exiting build. With the primary goal of low power consumption and secondary goal of fits-in-my-house, I chose MSI’s new “Nettop” barebone:
MSI Wind Nettop 100
- Intel Atom 330 (Dual-core with Hyperthreading!)
- Small Form Factor (11.8″ x 9.5″ x 2.6″)
- Low Power Consumption (31 Watts idle, according to my Kill-A-Watt)
Okay, so now for some pictures:
Here we see that the machine is quite an exercise in minimalism.
Rather than waste what few bay expansion options I had, I opted to install this SATA hot-swap bay in place of a seldom-used CD drive for future storage/backup needs!
Here is a shot of the front of the "mini-server" after the SATA bay was installed. Note the presence of the multi-card reader...
MSI “Netserver” Final Specs
- CPU: Intel Atom 330 Dual-core @ 1.6GHz with HTT
- This processor appears as four logical cores to the OS which could come in handy for dealing with many threads at once (simultaneous background tasks and multiple server requests)
- Memory: 2GB SODIMM
- For the stripped down Linux Distro I’m using, this is overkill. But at $19 there was no reason not to go for max capacity!
- Storage: 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM
- A trusty old standby from a previous PC build, rated at twice the lifetime of standard hard drives and for continuous operation, this is server-grade stuff.
- Network: Gigabit Ethernet
Conclusion
So far, I’ve been quite pleased with how the build went—there were a couple of snags when I set out to install the OS from a USB stick, my advice: just plunk down the cash for an external CD drive and save yourself the grief.
Low Power Consumption, Kills 66% Fewer Baby Seals!
Operating between 30-40 watts, the Nettop platform sucks far less electricity from the wall than my daily PC (which idles at around 150 watts!), the Intel Atom has some serious “green” cred. (sorry Brian, I couldn’t avoid using the preppy word <g>). Not to mention, stands to take a chunk out of monthly power bill.
Posted in Computers, PC Builds 5 Comments
Another XKCD Post.
I have actually DONE this… Well, maybe I didn’t imagine the lady.
Shooting themselves in the foot…
Earlier last year I discovered the music of My Chemical Romance through this youtube video:
I really liked the song but I didn’t know what it was at first, eventually finding out it was “the ghost of you”. After Kit exposed me to his MCR collection I quickly became a fan. Now after a year I come back to this video to find :
If this had been done a year ago I might never have heard of MCR…
It seems to me that the horse and buggy makers are trying to make it illegal to drive cars in the city limits…
Facebook Ad-Fail
Who can honestly tell me that picture isn’t from a drug bust.
Posted in Humor 2 Comments
A Coloring Tutorial That Saved My Life.
Well, not really. But “Basic Color Blending” by Andantonius from Deviant Art, found here, is one of the most insightful and helpful tutorials I’ve ever seen for digital coloring.
Credit goes to Kit for finding this amazing video first. He showed it to me a while back, and I just now got to watching it since my web speed was increased.
Here’s some before/after images showing my improvement after being enlightened by Andantonius.
Before:
After:
If one looks closely, the color blending, highlights, and shading are of considerably higher quality!
Thanks to Andantonius, my future work is sure to be something I can take pride in.