Old Stereo equipment and refurbishing an old iPod.

Lately I have been buying used stereo equipment. I always wanted a nice component stereo system but never really had the money or space earlier in my life. I recently got a harman / kardon HK3400 tuner / receiver and a harman / kardon FL8300 five disk changer at two different estates sales for $75 and a set of Realistic Minimus-7 speakers for $20. Honestly I haven't been happier with them. I now can utilize my CD collection in my work space while working from home. Quite nice to have hours worth of music on random. It is amazing how well these components work and they are both built in the mid 90s. The tuner has a powered volume knob too which is super nice and you never see that much anymore.

Another project I have been doing is refurbishing my sisters old 8th gen iPod. I had done this already with my 3rd gen iPod a year or so ago and it turned out great. I used RockBox on mine but hers is staying with the original iTunes software. That does limit the size she can use as that software only handles about 250gigs of space where RockBox you can utilize way more. The hardest part with her iPod was removing the back. Talk about painful on the hands. I finally got it off but took me a while to do it as it just made your hands hurt after a while. Was also going to replace the battery but Apple decided to glue it in really well and honestly the battery in the 8th gen is still fine. Overall a fun project and you can get cards built to replace the old platter drives with flash cards for about 40 bucks or so depending on what format you want to go with. If you have one lying around with a bum drive it may be worth it as the hardware in those iPods are great and worth it. A couple photos of doing my iPod with RockBox are below.

The card I got for my SATA flash drive.

The SATA drive in place and ready to close it up.

Had to find a custom version of RockBox that would work with my SATA drive. I may go back and replace my SATA drive with a flash drive down the road as I didn't realize that RockBox had issues with some SATA drives when I did mine. Still it works great and I have 17k songs on it and it is not close to being full. They make these cards for all kinds of flash cards. Check out https://iflash.xyz for more.

Domain issues

I have had my fourcookies.com domain for a while, 2005 I think. I have also had Google Workspaces email for that domain for at least 10 years until recently. Google decided it needed to get money for what they had been giving away for free for years. I really cannot aford $400+ a for about 4 family email addresses and so looked to my domain host to do my email. What a pain the last week has been. I switched it all over to my host Midphase last Thursday and once it propagated I was then unable to make any email addresses. I chatted with support, they updated some TXT records and then said you know what we need to escalate this. That was over 5 days ago. It has been like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at this issue. I have chatted with support twice and they said both times they talked to an engineer and got it to the top of the queue. Nothing. I just did it again this evening but am not holding my breath that anything will happen overnight. (Midphase has departments located in the UK and Utah and should have tech support 24/7/365. Here is to getting my email fixed soon or I may have to ask for my money back and go look at getting it hosted somewhere else. Damn that felt good to vent.

Been a while

 I haven't used this blog like I was expecting. Just found out that Github now forces HTTPS for custom domains which is really nice and for some reason on here it will not update for my custom domain. Says I do not own it though I do. Not sure it is worth figuring it out or not as I may just remove this from my site. We shall see.

SteamTool Library Manager and an SSD

So I ran across a tool recently in a PC Gamer article that was meant for people using an SSD for gaming. I currently have a 250 gig Crucial gen 5 SSD for my OS and a couple games. In my opinion an SSD makes a large difference in boot times for the OS and level loading for games. I am usually the first person in a Battlefield 3 game after a map load and can load a TF2 map super fast. Till now I was using the built in libraries that steam has to put a couple games on the SSD and the rest on a slower standard SATA drive. It was a real pain to move a game back to the SSD this way as you had to download it all over again and then certain games do not keep your key bindings, and I do not use the WASD keyset, which is a whole other post in and of itself (which may get written in the near future) making the usefulness of the loading speed of the SSD useless.

In the above article it referenced the SteamTool Library Manager 1.1. This tool is really sweet. It uses NTFS Junctions to create a folder on the SSD drive to point to a game folder on another drive. You need your drives you are using to be formatted NTFS. You can then move a game or two at a time to your SSD and enjoy the speed of loading etc that it offers. It moves the game back and forth fairly fast and so far most games I have tried work great. I highly suggest this if you have a smaller SSD you are running your OS on. So try this app out if you are in this same situation and let me know what you think.

Note of warning: Since this is a data moving tool there is a possibility if used wrong that you may lose data.

New uses for old hardware.

So I had my D-LINK DIR-655 router give up its routing duties recently and had to replace it. (I ended up replacing it with a Netgear dual band router and love it so far) It was making me restart it about once ever couple days, then daily and then at the end every couple hours. I found this set of instructions on how to set my router as a wireless N access point. It should work for most home routers though these instructions are for a D-Link DIR-655 specifically.

I had a failing access point in the house I had been wanting to replace for a while so figured I would try it out. It works like a charm. You basically turn off the DHCP server, virtual servers and any port forwarding you had setup and give the router a new internal IP Address. Then plug an ethernet cable into one of the LAN ports (Do not use the internet/WAN port when using it as an AP) and you are done. So far it works great as a switch and AP though it cannot do its routing duties anymore.

This bumped me up to 56Mbps wireless in the house and saved me from buying a new wired AP for the house as well.

How did I ever live without github?

So for a while now I have been using Github.com for side website building projects. Just about the most useful tool out there for today's web designer and developer. The way I use github as a staging site for client approvals of design or content. I use the free service but may, down the road, end up paying for an enterprise account. The difference between the two is the free account only lets you have public repositories and the paid account you can have private ones.

You can also use Github.com as a free place to put your personal website or a micro site as they allow you to customize your domain to utilize there web hosting. I pay just for my domain and that is it these days. No need to pay for expensive hosting for small sites anymore.

I am not sure in the past how I lived without version control. It is so useful to have the ability to revert back to another older version at the touch of a button. The Github for windows tool is has a really easy GUI interface for those of us who like visuals to interact with and you can also use your favorite command line as well if you are interested.

Check it out for your next project and start following some people as well for great ideas and interaction within the design/dev community.

What are your thoughts about version control? Have you used Github for something unique? If so tell me about it.

Table uses in Modern Web Design

You hear all the time from web designers and developers that tables are finally dead and should not be used anymore. I honestly beg to differ on this view. I have a few great uses still for these relics of long past website designs. Here are a couple:

• Displaying a menu for a restaurant/bar/wine bar website. Tables are great for this as they easily let you setup lists that are side by side so you can have prices next to your menu. Sure you could also do an un-ordered list but I find that all browsers treat tables almost exactly alike since they are so old.
• Anytime you have to display some type of data that is in a spreadsheet or matrix. Tables let you move data that may be given in an spreadsheet format and display it easily on the web. You can easily color or highlight rows to make viewing easier for this massive amount of data and it is easily formatted. Again all browsers will display this almost similarly across each browser type. 
• Long unruly lists also can be helped by putting the data in a table. It is easy to use a table to help format a long list that is getting out of hand.

The short of it is don't build the whole site in a table like it is the 1990's again but do still use them where they help you the best, managing large amounts of data that has to be displayed on the web. They may be old but they are not totally without there uses. 

fourcookies.com site migration to Github.com

Well it finally came down to a server crashing and me not wanting to play with Apache anymore to move fourcookies.com to Github.com. After a couple false starts I finally have it working. I really suck at DNS so I accidentally set it up to redirect to itself for a while but once that was resolved it is all going smoothly.

If you have ever used Git or Subversion you will understand Github. It is a public place to show off code and they let you host sites for free if you keep the Repo public. (you can edit it and other can ask to contribute to it as well.) A great service and way easier for me to maintain and backup my site.

Check it out if you are looking to put up a quick site. They also have Automatic Page Generator for those of you that do not want to play with the code. Enjoy!

Kindle

Santa got our family a Kindle Touch for Christmas. I was until recently not sold on the ebook/e-reader concept as I am a book lover. I have loved reading since I got hooked at about 4th or 5th grade. I read constantly till I got out of collage. Then my time got limited with a full time job, computer games to play and then later a family. I have a few book shelves full of books, mostly sci-fi and fiction, but still quite the collection.

I love how books smell, the feel of good paper (in most cases for hard cover books), and the heft of a book in your hands. I always thought that an e-reader was for people who wanted to show off their new tech at coffee shops. I had not really played with one other then an iPad at an electronics store and did not want to throw down about 6 bills for it.

The Kindle is downright amazing. The e-ink screen is super easy to read and the screen is just as sensitive as my HTC Incredible's touch screen. It has a built in dictionary that I have to say makes your reading experience that much better. Just hold down your finger on that word and it will give you a definition. You can book mark and highlight what you want and then if you have a social network like Facebook or twitter you can share it with others.

Books will sync across platforms as well. (this seems to be limited to purchased material not your personal documents) We can access books on our phones, the pc or the Kindle.

I still will read physical books and don't think physical books are by any means on the way out but now their is one more person that is now a fan of the ebook.

Fun at Detroit Lakes

Finally.

I am excited due to the fact that I finally took a decent night shot. I have been wanting to get one of these since my 35mm film SLR days.

I was privileged to go camping for a day or so at Detroit Lakes. I have to say the stars are just awesome with so little light pollution. I with the naked eye could see the Milky Way. Totally awesome. Made me miss growing up in the country.

I pulled out my camera, cable release and tripod. I spent about an hour shooting and got a couple good shots. (It takes a good formula to get shots at night and lots of patience) The shot you see here is an 8 min exposure at about f11. I am still working on perfecting this for how I shoot but am happy with the outcome.

Photography

So I am in recent ownership of a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) Camera, after many years of wanting one. A Nikon D3100 camera body with a couple lenses. (I own too older Nikkor lens from my 35mm Nikon N65 SLR days) My lens are at the moment are:

• AF Nikkor 35-70mm 1:2.2-4.5


• AF Nikkor 28-80mm 1:3.3-5.6G


• AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G (with VR)

I have really been enjoying this camera and forgot how much I have missed shooting a decent SLR. I have thrown some of my shots up on Facebook and Google+ and the links are later in the post.

My current project is figuring out how to shoot stars with the right combo of aperture and exposure time. It is a really tricky thing (specially in town where light pollution is rampant) and I am close but still not quite where I have a decent shot. The best tool for shooting stars at night I have found is Google Sky app. Gives you a great idea of where constellations are or specific stars (north star for example)

I have gotten lucky this summer and seen quite a few great sunsets. It has been a rainy summer here in the Pacific NW and that has led to lots of sunsets with interesting cloud structures.

Here are links to my Facebook album of a few shots I have taken so far. Been re-learning some of the principles again and having a great time. I have always looked at the things around me in ways of how would that make a good picture. There is something about freezing something in time that has always drawn me in. Hope you enjoy these and feel free to give me any feedback you want.

Facebook Photography Album
Google+ Photography Album

Go Caleb!

My nephew Caleb is in San Antonio for Spring Break but he is not getting much of a break. He is competing in the Paralympics Swimming Can-Am Championships. He placed 4th in both events he was in yesterday and knocked off a bunch of time on his personal best for both events. You can read more about him on his blog as well. He has more events today and tomorrow and is very relaxed and doing well. He has a good cheering team as well. Grandma, Grandpa, Audrey and the girls flew down to San Antonio on Tuesday of this week to cheer him and give him support.

Gaming Update

Well it has been a while since I last posted so I will do a gaming update. I have not had a ton of time in recent weeks to do much gaming due to work and family stuff. Audrey is in school and has been utilizing the office for studying. I do not honestly mind her taking over that space and using it to it's full advantage so she can get some quiet to get her papers and studying done.

I do tend to game on the weekends and recently have played some TF2, Bioshock (Trying to finish this for Bioshock 2), Borderlands (Walkthrough 2 and I may pick up an add-on here soon), and just started Mass Effect. (Quite good and in the same vein of KOTOR, though a bit more FPS).

If anyone is interested in doing Borderlands add me in game or on steam and we will get to it. I heard one of the add-on's has a safe so you can store guns in it which is awesome. I have a few I would like to keep so I can swap out sets etc.

Anyway I am still gaming just doing a bit less during the week.

The future of Radio

So here in PDX we have had a an upheaval in good Radio DJ's. The main Rock station KUFO Friday, Oct 23rd fired all morning and afternoon staff as well as a ton of other DJ's. Honestly in this listeners view it was the largest mistake they could have done. The Rick Emerson Show (mornings) and Cort and Fatboy (Afternoons) were staple listening for the ride to and from work.

I just saw the new site and dj line up and man they look lame. Good job KUFO and Alpha Broadcasting to go an ruin a good think. If it is not broken don't fix it. These guys don't look like they can tie there shoes between the lot of them. Take a gander at the KUFO.com page and you will see what I mean.

If you like good radio do your self a favor and let KUFO programming managers know what you think.

Again a huge hand to KUFO and Alpha for screwing up a perfectly great radio station.

{UPDATE:}
A great article on the situation Here.

Sorry KUFO your new DJ line up after I got a listen this morning seriously suck. Good job at keeping your talent "Local" by hiring ID10T's from out of town.

Vikings/Twins

Ok the last couple days have been awesome for Minnesota Sports. This last monday the Vikings (With #4 at the helm) smoked Green Bay in a Titan battle that will go down in the ages of sports. Farve was in top form and it is so great to see the Vikings doing well for once early on in a season.

That was then overshadowed by the Twins and Americas Pastime game of the year. Game 163 of regular season to see who goes to the playoffs and who goes back to Detroit. Yes the Twins came back to win it to grab the Division Championship out of the Tigers Claws. It was an amazing game and went to 12 innings.

I have not been this happy for Minnesota Sports since '87 and '91. I would love to see the Twins take down the Yankee's as they are a team to truly hate.

Go Twins! We believe in you!

Inglorious Bastards

I saw the new Quentin Tarantino movie last night and my initial thoughts are "Man, Tarantino likes to hear himself talk about movies" It is a lot of referencing 20's, 30's and 40's movies and Tarantino seems to like to hammer it home with this script on how much he knows about movies in general and wants you to know it. It is kinda annoying in some respects as I wish he would tell a story not show off.

The new Tarantino movie is set in a fictitious WWII timeline where the Third Reich is really into propaganda movies and all the high ranking members decide it is a good idea to all go to a single screening in France of the newest Propaganda movie about a Sniper who killed a lot of allied soldiers in Italy. Being that they are all in one place the Inglorious Bastards, a group of OSS agents behind enemy lines causing the Nazi's trouble in France, are tasked with blowing the Cinema the viewing is in up. There are a few more plot twists then that but that is the gist.

The idea is good and over all the acting is good as well. Tarantino brings his very violent scenes if Nazi killing to the screen with gory detail like his other films. I like Brad Pitt but could not for the life of me get over his very badly acted accent of a man from Tennessee. That just brought me out of the movie each time he talked. I cannot believe he thinks that was good acting in any way and my take is that is how Tarantino wanted him to act.

The best part about this movie is the Villain. He is played by Christoph Waltz. He is super Creepy and very well acted. Tarantino also did his chaptered flash back style of movie which honestly was well done for this story but is getting old with his stuff. To me he feels like he has lost his range of innovative ways to tell his story.

A side note of something else that bothered me was the fonts he used though out the movie. The title sequence he had over three different fonts to give the credits. The all seemed to clash with each other even if they were planned that they should do that they should have picked a few better ones to clash.

In conclusion I would give this a 6 out of 10 rating. You could wait to see this on DVD if you wanted and not miss much. It is no Kill Bill and definitely no Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction but worth watching if you like Tarantino films.

Some Game Reviews of games I am currently playing.

So many Computer Games and so little time to play/enjoy them. The following is a few games I am enjoying at the moment and my feelings about them.

First up: Fallout 3 - I have been playing this for actually quite a while. I have beaten the main games missions and have The Pitt and Operation Anchorage addons. I currently am trying out The Pitt but am disappointed that you basically have to start over with weapons and clothes. I may leave that one for later. I have not tried Operation Anchorage yet but plan on trying that next. I also have to explore a ton more in the game as I went directly to finishing the game as fast as I could. I think I may start over with a new character and try to explore as much as I can this time around. Plus with this game there is a ton of downloadable content at the moment so the game is well worth it.

Second Up: [PROTOTYPE]™ - I just started playing this and it seems to have a great story as well as great visuals. Runs really smooth on my machine (which it should as I just upgrade to 8 gig of memory and have a decent video card.) I have been taking this game slowly as I am still trying to master the controls. It is a third person view game that is a mix of GTA4, Tekken fighter, crysis (for tank/helo game play), and Assassins Creed for acrobatics. I have been only playing one mission and a couple EP Point games each time I play it to enjoy it and get used to it.

Third Up: FarCry 2 - I have been playing this game for what seems like forever. I am not as impressed as when I first started it. It takes a while to get anywhere and the fights are fairly predictable. If you like hunting for diamonds you will like this game as it takes forever to upgrade anything. Leave it for the cheap bin when you have finished all the other good games.

Fourth Up: Crysis and Crysis Warhead - I recently finished both of the single player of these and may try out Crysis War Multiplayer here when I get a chance. Quite good games but you have to have a beast of a system to run them on full Graphics. Single player is quite fun and challenging. Great story and Crysis 2 looks really promising.

Fifth Up: BioShock - I have been in the middle of this game for a while as well. The reason for this is my disk got scratched and I have not been able to play much since then. I may have to find a no-cd crack to finish this game but for the moment gave up. Loved the game but got lost a few times so that made it not as fun. Overall a great game and worth the now 30 dollar purchase.

Sixth Up: Assassins Creed - I am really stuck in this game at the moment so have given it up till I get interested again. Great game but a few missions are very tough so beware for some frustration. I may have to get some ideas from Tutorials (which I hate to do) to get ideas for how to complete the one I am on. Great game and again should be about 30 bucks now.

Seventh Up: Halo and Halo 2 (Both PC) - Yes I have this game and never completed the single player. I got so far and then gave up. Since I have been watching Red Vs Blue again I have been wanting to replay this badly and may re-install it again. UPDATE: Just bought Halo 2 for the PC since it was 15 bucks at Fred Meyer. So far very fun but seems to be quite redundant of Halo. I doubt Halo 3 will ever go to PC so I may never get to finish the story and will never own an XBOX 360 or console platform other then Nintendo Platforms. (Getting a Wii this fall)

Well there you go. A run down of a few games I am in the middle of and never have time to finish. I did not even talk about the games like FT2, L4D, or COD 4 that I play online so when all is said and done there are plenty of things to occupy all that free time I have. (LOL) Enjoy your gaming and look me up if you want to play something online. Steam ID: EDOX, MSN Gamer Tag EDOX33

Quinn Driscoll

I did not know Quinn Driscoll but after yesterday I feel that I do. Quinn was the son of an old co-worker of mine, Scott Driscoll, a guy I looked up to and respected very much. Quinn was the unfortunate victim of a disease that hardens part of your heart causing a massive heart attack. Idiopathic Cardiomyopathy. Quinn was 13 years old.

Quinn died suddenly while in PE class on June 10th 2009. I went to the memorial service held yesterday afternoon to support Scott and his family. In the time I spent listening to Quinn's friends and family remember him I realized that he was very loved and respected on the sports field and off. He was a very active young man and respected by all he came in contact with. Even after death he is giving. His heart is going to the Meyo Clinic for study and his tissues are going to help others live.

What I learned yesterday from the Driscoll family is this... Hug your kids often and remember no matter what happens in your family make it "all good" at the end of each day. Don't let petty things get in the way of having a good relationship with your kids.

I have two young girls. Yesterday I went home, hugged them and took them to the zoo for some family time.

Quinn I did not know you but you have influenced my life already. Thanks for your time with your family and may you rest in peace.

Burgerville FTW

Well it has been way to long since my last visit to the Pacific Northwest's own Burgerville. Got myself a classic Pepper Bacn (yes I spelled it that way on purpose) Cheese Burger and Fries. Oh so hit the spot.

When I moved to Oregon in '98 I could not understand the loyalty that Washington and Oregonians had for BV. I also remember saying to my wife, "Man, burgers there are so expensive." (In comparison to other fast food burger places)

After living here I have realized their is no real comparison at all. BV knows how to make a really good fresh burger. You pay more sure but you get the best. So good job BV on making it just that much better to be an Oregonian.

Google Wave

Have been watching the I/O 2009 Google Wave Dev demo at http://wave.google.com. Looks really cool but so far I am not sure how stable it will be with tons of users. With real time updating character by character.

Personally I would love to see this working with 10K users like some old school forums I used to visit and post on. I would see this slowing way down or being so crazy it would be come unusable.

Still it is exciting to see tech like this for HTML 5 and I hope stuff like this get the IE team realizing that it needs to conform to Web Standards to make the web a happy place for all. Check out the demo if you have time and let me know what you think via twitter or plain old email.