My blog of randomness

I'm moving Blogs!

2008-09-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Well - it's been a while, but I was finally able to kick off my podcast project, and it's now in full swing. I will be moving this blog to http://www.thestealthmac.com/blog

please point your rss readers to there, and check out the podcast! - here's the link to subscribe

rss feed

here is the link directly to the show: Episode 1

busy...

2008-08-17T12:15:00.001-07:00

been a while since I've updated.

Work has been real busy, the project put on hold from the flooding is back at full steam. Also last week my MacBook Pro died and I had to take it into Applecare - they fixed all my issues, was really satisfied!

Started the new podcast site and forum - not going to talk too much about it at present, but it's coming soon. It will be a mix audio podcast and video "screencast" format - more info to follow.

Also - wife and I splurged and got a new Cannon D40 SLR. Pretty snazzy if I say so!

Please be patient, more is coming soon.

flickr pro

2008-07-09T05:06:00.001-07:00

Recently I talked with my mom, now she's probably the typical person for a late baby boomer, not so tech savvy and fascinated with the ability to pull up an ebay listing and view an item. I've been doing tech support for a good most of my adult life - I've been working with computers for over 20 years now. So naturally I am considered your geek next door, that guy in the office that someone from work can ask questions to, etc.. but one thing I've grown to hate over the years is family and neighbor tech support. At first I thought it was cool, but now it does nothing more than to annoy me, so anymore I point them to an article I find on google or tell them to call Dell/(respective OEM dealer here). I am THE tech support for my mom. SHe has my old Alienware 51M laptop and uses dial-up on netzero to access the internet (Both of which I pay for.)

Now usually I use my .mac photo galleries for publishing photos to the web, and recently found out my mother has an older IE browser that won't let her view the pictures, which has been bumming her out for months. I have a 10 month old son, so new pictures for my mom is crucial. I pointed her to my flickr account. It was a free account and I posted pics now and then up there to play around. I never took it too seriously... that is until last night.

My mom called ecstatic - she was able to look at my pictures - all 80 or so of them. And new ones she had never seen. So I told her I'd upload a bunch more, she almost started to cry on the phone. It's funny how sometimes it's the little things that really mean the most to my mom, and I often forget that.

So I pulled up the flicker upload tool, drug in almost 300 pics from my iPhoto library and let the thing fire off. This is when I found that my free account wasn't going to cut it. You are limited in the amount you can upload monthly (30 MB I believe) and people can only see the last 200 photos uploaded. So I upgraded to the pro account, for 25 bucks a year you can't seem to beat it! Unlimited upload, and no limit on the number of photos people can see.

So I guess my point to all this rambling is:
1. flickr pro account is worth it
2. .mac isn't always a good solution if you are trying to reach a large audience
3. sometimes it's the little things that make a huge difference to someone
4. never try to make a blog post without caffeine, I tend to ramble

Week outlook

2008-07-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

This week looks to be a busy one - I have some upcoming server load and configures being planned. As well as getting ready for the family coming out this week for my son's baptism. It will be hectic to say the least.

I have ordered my Blue Snowball microphonee and will be setting up my "studio" shortly in preparation for my podcast/screencast. Not too sure what exactly I will be doing for my first show - planning on doing a weekly cast of some-sort. Inspired by Don of ScreenCastsOnline, but I am definitely not going to be attempting anything close to what he is doing.

Looking forward to the iPhone 2.0 software release as well - wondering how much of an impact that will have on my current iPhone 2G. Not even considering a 3G at this point.

I'm also looking for some killer app that ties all my current systems together - twitter, facebook, friendfeed, brightkite, etc... something that will tie them all up and cobine them into one usable interface.

Spike TV golf Commercial

2008-07-04T19:01:00.001-07:00

I saw this tonight and damn near fell over laughing...

Happy 4th

2008-07-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Wishing you all a Happy 4th of July.

2008-07-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

IT Guy Vs Dumb Employees - Watch more free videos

Someone from work sent me this - you'll appreciate it if you do any kind of IT support work.

Why I love the internet

2008-07-02T05:35:00.001-07:00

While I was working yesterday I received a twitter from Don McAlister talking about Geoff Smith's new album. I headed over to the site and checked it out - decided to download it. I posted a quick message in twitter about getting the new album, and within minutes Geoff Smith himself direct messaged me to see how the experience went.

I got instant feedback from the artist himself - the internet makes direct contact to people you never thought was possible before - while I know this concept is neither new or revolutionary, it's a wonderful feeling when it happens to you. There is more to this story as well...

I had thought I purchased the album, as I settled down after dinner to actually pull the feed from my email and download the album I had come to the conclusion that my paypal transaction had never gone through. So after spending 10 minutes trying to find my RSA keyfob I logged in and purchased the album. I got the standard email but had issues finding the link for the album. Once again I posted a twitter message and quickly Geoff responded.

Because twitter was having issues (normal really) the ability to communicate with Geoff had broken down for the night, But when I got into the office this morning, there were 2 emails, one from Geoff and one from Klaus - both of them asking what they can do to help me. A few email exchanges later with Klaus and the issue was resolved.

I was so happy with the service I received from Geoff and Klaus I had to let everyone know.

Spore Creature Creator

2008-06-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

been playing in the Spore Creature Creator lately, uploaded 2 videos and took a few pics, pretty interesting.

Hoping the game will be just as fun and intuitive!

Visiting Browser's

2008-06-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Been playing in Google Analytics looking at various logs for my blog.. found it interesting that the largest browser share is Safari - this is somewhat expected since I blog mostly about Mac related topics... nontheless I found this interesting.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

If you haven't played in Google Analytics, I recommend you take a peak, it's pretty neat!

Thinking of doing a media cast - what is a media cast you ask? It's a mixture video blog, screencast, podcast and blog post - depending on the mood I am in, you might get one of the above... what do you all think? Is it worth the time to explore all of those various medias?

tank pictures

2008-06-16T18:09:00.001-07:00

I was playing with my camera the other day and took a bunch of pics of the fishtank

here are a few teasers, the rest can be found in my web gallery here

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

MarioKart and Wii-Fit

2008-05-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

Been getting a few new toys for the wii - we got MarioKart and an additional wheel. Pretty damn fun game if I say so. I haven't had much time to play with the motorcycles yet... My wife, as usual, is better at this than I am. I've beaten the Mushroom cup and that's about it - she's already working thru the Special Cup races. I haven't had much time to play since work has been real busy.

Also - just got the Wii-Fit - this thing is pretty damn cool! While I don't think it will make me a buff body builder it will,
however, get me to get off my butt and start to work out more. So far the Ski-Jump game is my favorite. The yoga poses are damn hard for me, I have no sense of balance at all.

While the workouts they make you do are simple and could be done without shelling out the $90.00 for it, the way it tracks and motivates you to continue to improve, in my opinion is a selling point of the device / software.

New Laptop Stand

2008-05-01T19:47:00.001-07:00

TUAW recently reviewed the Ergotron Neo-Flex Combo Lift Stand. I've been looking for a laptop stand since I usually rock the dual screen laptop and external monitor when I am working in my home office. The current setup I had wasn't cutting it - a simple laptop cooler stand that raised the laptop only a few inches and the monitor stand would not go low enough to make the two screens line up.

I checked the unit out at the site and it looked like it was the answer to all my problems. Luckily I found it on Amazon and it arrived today. I was fairly easy to set up, and the whole thing is very sturdy. The only gripe I have is that both the laptop holder and the monitor holder are set at an angle so that they angle in towards each other, it's very slight and it's something I would naturally do but the mounts are permanently at this angle, other that that all other ranges of motion are adjustable and the laptop plate is very sturdy. Here are some pics.

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New banner

2008-04-28T21:28:00.001-07:00

Well I finally broke down and created a new banner for the blog...

so what do you think?

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Tank Tour

2008-04-23T21:56:00.001-07:00

I was messing around with my video camera and iMovie the other night and made this simple and quick tour of my Reeftank.

TV Shows & Movies on Mac

2008-04-19T17:18:00.001-07:00

Why buy a television, cable or rent DVD's when you can get all the same content online, and most of it for free?

Joost is set up like a tv with cable - they bost over 20,000 shows.

Hulu.com - this site streams content from many major studios - both TV shows and movies such as Nip/Tuck, The Office and The Simpsons. One thing I love about this site is many of the shows are closed captioned, having a deaf wife, I've become sensitive to how much online media is unaccessible to her because she cannot understand what's being said.

Many of the channels and studios also stream their own content online - one example is South Park.

and lastly there is iTunes as well - now offering rentals of many movie titles, they also offer lots of tv shows, and have a season pass feature. The biggest reason to use iTunes to purchase content is that it becomes portable if you have an iPod or iPhone.

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Use Mac for anything challenge...

2008-04-19T15:19:00.001-07:00

Lately I've been kicking around the idea of using my Mac for every task in my daily life - from waking me up with alarm clocks, to reading news, to planning my meals and making shopping lists - everything. I will be blogging over the next few weeks as I come up with new and creative ideas on how to use my Mac. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please drop me a line.

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Daily running apps

2008-04-19T13:23:00.001-07:00

So lately I've been loading up on the applications I use daily on my mac. I currently use my MacBook Pro (first gen) for working at home as well as everything else I do. My "work PC" is really a Dell D610 running XP with SP2 and Office 03.

Since I'm not too fond of the Dell I have created a Virtual Machine in Paralles. It's running XP SP2 and Office 2003. I've loaded my VPN client on the VM and I can easily join my VPN and use my VM for all my work needs and still have my Mac and Mac apps available for use. Very handy - everything is stable and runs very fast.

On my day to day use of my mac I found myself using these apps most frequently:

Skitch - this is for taking quick screen shots, annotating them and uploading to my .mac or weblog quickly and easily.
Cover Sutra - this little app I never imagined I'd use as much as I do - but anytime I'm working I have iTunes playing my favorite music - this app lets me rate, pause, skip all very quickly from the keyboard - and it has growl support.
Growl - this little gem is one of the best apps for the mac - it's a notification app that shows various info in the corner you decide. Things like mail messages, tweets, iTunes music - the list goes on and on.
Typinator - just recently got this in a bundle purchase, but basically you program key "words" and they expand to something else - example, to get my email i type eem and it expands to my email address.
Twitterific - I've become a twitter junky lately, and this app I have found to be my favorite twitter app so far.
Caffeine - this app keeps the mac from screen dimming while I am in the middle of watching some video on YouTube or some other non standard Apple video app. Keeps the screensaver from activating as well. I use this all day while I work.
Hazel - I use my desktop as a dumping grounds - this app does a wonderful job of keeping it tidy for me.
Spanning Sync - I use this in conjunction with another application that runs on my Windows VM to sync my outlook calendar with my google calendar and then my iCal with the Google calendar, not the mose elegant but all my work appointments are synced on my iPhone.

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update

2008-04-19T12:50:00.001-07:00

been a while since I have updated. All is well - had bronchitis, then had family visit and have been working a ton. I'm planning to start updating this more...

Stay Tuned!

iPhoto PhotoBook

2007-11-01T07:03:00.001-07:00

My grandma's birthday was this month - so I thought I'd try out the photobook feature from iPhoto.

Click here for some unboxing pron of the book and a page by page tour.

I will note that the pictures used for this book were scans of 35mm slides that are over 30 years old, dusty and been stored in a garage for the last 10 years The quality of the pictures isn't the greatest, but overall I was very impressed with the product.

Leopard!

2007-11-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

Around noon on release day the FedEx truck pulled up, delivering the little brown box that contained Leopard.

I had spent earlier that morning running the Apple Backup - backing up all my data 2 and 3 times, not to mention I have the original 120 gb hdd loaded with Tiger still sitting in the corner. So one way or another I was backed up and ready to go.

The upgrade went well and painless - no issues. The only annoyance I had was at the beginning when I thought it was upgrading only to realize after 20 mins it was still verifying my DVD. But that is my only complaint - so really everything else went smooth.

I have to say I like leopard - as an IT person though I have to say, it's not that huge of an improvement. It's not like jumping from windows 98 to XP, there aren't that many core changes. But the OS is beautiful, responsive and so far - stable.

You can't really blame Apple, Microsoft or anyone else at this point - we are beyond the basic needs of an operating system. Now it really is about add ons and eye candy.

where have I been?

2007-10-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

been a long time since the last post - in that period I've had my son and gotten a promotion. So needless to say I have been busy ....

here is where much of my free time, if any, has gone to

Free PACS system

2007-08-22T18:41:00.001-07:00

Just found this: http://www.pacsone.net/index.htm?

I'm thinking of loading it up on a spare workstation I have and playing with it.

NerdTest

2007-08-19T06:43:00.001-07:00

35.714285714285715% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

The Escrow juggle

2007-08-14T13:54:00.000-07:00

Just got my property taxes for the year - so I check my escrow to see if there is enough to cover the payment... not even close. The mortgage company wasn't taking enough for the taxes.. this was expected since it was a new house and my taxes were 7$ last year, but it was still a pain to call in and have them readjust it - I was trying to do the math and follow along just to ensure there would be no screw ups.

Anyway - it's all settled now, that was my math moment of the week. My mother in law (math teacher) would be proud!

BASH & SQL

2007-08-14T10:37:00.001-07:00

I spent 9 hours yesterday writing my first BASH script. While BASH isn't the hardest to understand, it's a little confusing for someone who has more of a VB background than C. The script basically takes and variable value (number of times to run) and performs an sql script that many times. The SQL script pulls 1 record from a table that has a flag set to N, updates various other tables and then inserts a record into another table and updates the flag on the original table to Y.

If you are wondering what this is for, it's to resend some information into a long term archive. The host system believes these records were already archived, so this is to trick the system into re archiving those exams.

The system can handle about 100 new entries into the queue every 15 mins, so I have a crontab entry to run the script once every 15 mins, placing 100 entries into the queue.

With 175k entries to be re archived, I estimate around 18.5 days to complete the migration.

I'd post the script here, but unfortunately it contains proprietary info in it.

My Apple Care Story

2007-08-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

So.... around July 25th I decide to load bootcamp. I download the app, run the tool and go to burn a cd for drivers. The cd won't burn and I get a failed to calibrate error. So then I continue to try and burn several different cds - different typed and brands. All of them fail to burn. So the next day I call Apple and schedule a repair and to send it to their facility in Texas. The box arrives the next day and I send it off.

On the 28th I checked my status online and it showed it was ready to be shipped back. On the 29th when my laptop didn't show up I called Apple care - they said it was waiting on a part and would be shipped after the part came in.

So 11 days later, on the 9th of August my laptop showed up - but DHL sent it to the wrong house down the street. So I had to track it down and convince the people that it was delivered to that the package was really mine. After I finally got it home, I started it up and found that they had wiped my HDD. No worries since I had backed up the computer before I sent it off.

So I started to reload all my apps - when I went to reload my saved data I found that my backups were bad and I was unalble to recover any data. Not anyones fault but my own for not checking my backup after it was performed.

To make things even better, when I went to burn a cd (the initial reason I sent it to applecare) I was still unable to, and was getting the same errors. I found that they had replaced my system board but didn't even touch my super drive.

I decided I would try to clean the lense on my superdrive and see if that would fix my issue. While I had the mac open I also noted the part number and model number of my superdrive just in case it needs to be replaced. At this point I'm afraid to call Applecare again and loose my mac for another 10 days.

I used an Isoprpyl Alcohol wipe (for electronics) and cleaned the lense, then reassembled the mac - booted it up and tested it, it successfully bured 2 cd-r's in a row, with no errors.

So - for a trip to applecare I got a wiped hdd, a new systemboard and it still had burning issues, I should had just tried to fix it myself in the beginning!

Speed Test

2007-07-18T20:51:00.001-07:00

So my speed is about spot on for what I am paying for

http://www.speedtest.net/

technorati tags:bandwidth, internet, speedtest

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Podcast thoughts

2007-07-17T07:46:00.001-07:00

I'm still in the beginning stages of breating a weekly podcast on reef tanks, and I'm still trying to come up with a few show ideas before I start recording.

I wonder of there are any good sites on brainstorming ideas for discussion.

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Itunes scripts for deleting unwanted tracks on the fly

2007-07-17T07:38:00.001-07:00

In this article I’ll be showing you how to easily clear your library of unwanted tracks using a custom Applescript and Quicksilver trigger.Like many of you, I’m a keyboard junkie. I listen to music all day and I’m constantly switching between shuffled and non-shuffled play, skipping tracks and repeating them all without lifting my hands from the keyboard. There are a lot of apps that do this but I am partial to Quicksilver’s iTunes plugin when used with key-combo triggers. I’m not going to explain how to set this up (see MacApper for a nice run down similar to the basics of what I’ll describe here).

Vaporize The Unwanted (Kinkless iTunes 1) | Kinkless

Once again some cool stuff I need to check out.

technorati tags:itunes, gtd, applescript, KGTD

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Bash Scripting

2007-07-17T07:18:00.001-07:00

Lifehacker posted this story a few days back. Looks interesting. I'll have to play with this soon

Learn to write bash scripts

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Darn clouds!

2007-07-03T20:06:00.001-07:00

3rd of July Weather

Well looks like my stargazing fun is over for the night, and possibly for a few days as well

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Pics of Jupiter

2007-07-03T19:46:00.001-07:00

P7030009.JPG

I was playing with my telescope and found Jupiter. At first you could see 3-4 moons around it too, but the clouds moved in and I lost visability.

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Kinkless GTD site gets a makeover

2007-06-24T07:29:00.001-07:00

Kinkless.com and “The Kinkless Desktop”

I may have to check this out soon!

technorati tags:GTD, KinklessGTD, Mac, Omni, Outliner

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2007-06-24T07:25:00.001-07:00

Fake Steve: At this point even I'm sick of the iPhone"It won't cure cancer or regrow your hair or make you lose weight. For that you'll need Linux, from what I'm told."

43f Feature: Michael Buffington’s “How I use iGTD” | 43 Folders

technorati tags:fake, steve, jobs, iPhone, linux

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BSOD used as icon for windows machines in Leopard

2007-06-24T07:13:00.001-07:00

Roundup: Mega Leopard Update, Not To Be Missed - Gizmodo

I thought this was rather humorous

technorati tags:leopard, mac, osx, windows, network

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iPhone Blues

2007-06-24T06:40:00.001-07:00

Well - I checked around in my company about trading in my Palm Treo for an iPhone when it comes out and while they said it's not impossible, it's very impractical.

I'd have to buy it, get a contract - then cancel the contract and then have it added to my corporate account - racking up a large ammount of fees in the process...

oh well - not like I need it anyway, just looked like a really cool gadget (and I love gadgets!)

technorati tags:iphone, treo

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My first post

2007-06-24T05:59:00.001-07:00

this is my first post in my new blog.