Guess what? I made some new shirts for my Zazzle store last night.
Check them out and let me know what you think. Here is a brief description of each as they came into my head:
Another in an apparently LONG line of ‘My Other T-Shirt’ shirts. I couldn’t find anything exactly the same, but only mildly different already on the nets, so we’ll see if I have blatantly ripped off someone else when the DMCA notice lands in my inbox.
My other T-Shirt was at the dry-cleaners on Alderaan… so yeah.
I get a LOT of help desk tickets daily. Approximately 2/3 (ish) of them are so vague, i have to wonder if these people even know what the real issue is. I’ve wanted to start answering all emails and phone calls with a paraphrase from Star Trek: Please State The Nature of your IT EMERGENCY (because they are ALL emergencies, right?) now i have a t-shirt that says it for me!
A couple more one-offs, because t-shirts get boring sometimes. You need a hoodie and a mug of coffee on a cold day in Seattle to do the deep thinking required to under stand the #NSA…
The last thing is just a self-indulgent crap-shoot. Like MC Front’s glasses, I don’t actually expect anyone to BUY this, but just knowing that i can put it up for sale makes me feel good about myself:
Well, it’s done. Mostly. I took the box apart last week or so, reconfigured some stuff, removed and re-seated the CPU, added an older 500 gig HDD… and then, installed Mythbuntu. er… 3 times actually. Yeah, took me 3 install attempts to get it working right. Not sure exactly HOW I screwed up the first 2, but #3 was the winner by far. Here’s a sample of my progression:
Attempt #1:
Install FAILED miserably due to selecting the wrong drive. Yes folks. Instead of simply setting up a fresh install on the new 500gig HDD, for some reason i told the installer to put it on the original 750gig drive. I dunno exactly why. Something about how SATA was set up in the bios and I got a little confused. I’m really lucky that I didn’t over-wright the entire disc. Seriously, could have lost 1000 episodes of Charmed that I’ve been saving for my *ahem* daughter.
Attempt #2
Install FTW!! yay! OS installed without a hitch [Mythbuntu 11.04], although it did hog some bandwidth with updates and such. Dylan got a little pissed because he was trying to watch something on Netflix at this time, and it kept losing the connection. 2 things got screwy on this install which is why I had to try, try again: 1) I did …something… to LIRC. Still not exactly sure, but it worked at first, except that it was reading each buttonpress twice. I checked the usual sites and forums for the answer and edited some config files, and then it completely broke, and I couldn’t get it working again. I probably could have fixed it eventually if it weren’t for 2) Frakking BOXEE. Apparently, every time Ubuntu gets upgraded to a new version something happens that breaks Boxee. The reason is almost always that Boxee is behind the times. This time around it’s a dependancie issue. Some little media player’s library was updated and most major OSs went with the NEW version, effectively dropping the OLD version from all repositories. Unfortunatly, Boxee depended on the OLD library. There was a long and convoluted way to edit the .deb file so that it would use the NEW library, but there was also something about it messing up HULU and some other stuff, so it became painfully obvious that the only solution was to:
ATTEMPT #3!!!
Beautimus. Downloaded and installed Mythbuntu 10.10. Slightly older version, sure. whatev. BUT, everything fucking works out of the BOX YO! LIRC didn’t have the same duplicate button press issue, Boxee and Hulu Desktop installed without a hitch, and with 2 small copy-paste codes into the main menu file, I had a nice *working* interface. There was one little issue with the sound being incredibly low. But that was fixed easily with some careful adjustments to ALSA mixer (EVERYTHINGGOESUPTOTHEMAXIMUM!).
Yeah baby! now everything WORKS, and functions and is pretty awesome. Now I just need to find a nice, cheap little dual PCI (not e) tuner card and we’re golden. Anyways, that was over a week ago, so I’ll try to get some screen shots of the new system one of these days… maybe. Working VER HARD on secret project#2 right now.
It’s quite late. Almost 2 am, and I’m exhausted. But for a nerd, you have to stay up late to get shit done.
We’ve been busy as hell lately for a relatively few reasons.
We moved. Packed up house and kids and drove 2 miles down the road to set up shop in the BFE. House is nice. A little smaller than the last one, with more weeds and dirt, and bugs. But its nice. Always takes me a while to get used to a new place though. Great thing about this place; Awesome double garage with work room. Yes. Totally. Will soon be lining up computer boxes and shit. gonna be awesome. So the move has taken up a lot of time and effort, which is worth it.
Getting Secret Project #2 off the ground (Secret Project #1 is still under development, stay tuned). A LOT of research, forms, digging, phone calls, money, etc going into this one, which will eventually allow the completion of Secret Project #1, and a slew of future Secret Projects to be completed. It will also, hopefully, reduce the stress put on The Samurai and his family. It will also give me more free time in the long run. Haven’t even got the damned monsoons yet.
Other stuff, every day stuff, stuff I’d rather not get into.
Anyway, I digress, and my intros running long. The point of this post is to begin a story about a Family Media Center which has been slowly falling apart since early inception. Not sure if I mentioned this on my blog, although I’m sure I complained a lot on Twitter. The origin was this: Low cost substitute for overgrown Satellite TV bill. No Shit, huh? Inception began with being given a quite old Shuttle XPC. Which is basically a very, very small form factor PC with all the bells and whistles except for extra space for stuff like new hdds and cards. Which was fine, didn’t need much to get it working. The original vid card died after a day and substitute had to be ordered as I was out of PCIe cards. meh. THEN, it turned out that a P4 2.6ghz wasn’t good enough for our friends at Hulu. Fuckers. So, it was swapped with a Micro atx with an Intel Core2Duo and a couple gigs in my old cube case with the noisy fans. (sad: the xpc died a few weeks later of natural causes and is somewhere in the new garage awaiting organ transplants to other machines)
So, we were doing fairly well with the thing running Kubuntu 10.04 as a base with Boxee and Hulu Desktop, and of course the wii for Netflix. I’d finally figured out (sort of) LIRC, and had yet-another-goddamn-remote in the pile. All was good until a few weeks before the move when ALL CBS content started acting funny in both Boxee and on the website. Only CBS content… weird, showed up into the top left quarter of the screen for no reason. [EDIT: figured this out this morning; fixed by turning off Harware Acceleration with Flash] Still ran great on the lap tops, but not on the damned media center. So, I’m in the process of rebuilding, and expanding. I think I’ve got the phantom ‘over clock’ errors figured out with the shite bios the thing has, and added another 300gig HDD. I’m also going to do the install correctly this time. Since I have another PCI slot, I will end up getting a cheap digital tuner card for attaching to the aerial, and will need a back end to record the free ota trans from local TV. This will be accomplished with a neat Mythbuntu install! hahaha. I used to use KnoppMyth, which was pretty awesome, but abandoned it years ago when we moved to satellite raping, i mean service. To be fair, I did try this weekend to re-install Kubuntu etc… But for some reason couldn’t get LIRC working, and that would be a no-go for us. Hate getting up to do shit. Plus with Mythbuntu I don’t think we’ll have the same problems with Hulu Desktop going black every 10 minutes on the dot. Everything integrated from the start will be a nice change of pace for this machine. Will beable to launch Boxee and Hulu from the front end, and then have a ready to go box for when I’m able to install the tuner card. Damn, might have to get another HDD with a few TBs available, huh? Well, all that does is change my priority for distributing the content on my network. Can always get an xbox to run a Myth front end, or even XBMC. Or even cheaper, get a couple of little Apple TVs to run Boxee in other rooms 🙂 NACH. OK, like I said. 2:00am and tired as hell. Will detail whats going on with the rest in the morning, or later. thanks, -SE7EN
[NOTE: I actually wrote this several weeks ago, and forgot to hit the PUBLISH button. All apologies, 7]
Saw this tweet today from @Hodgman (John Hodgman – Expert), in which he shares a new “Judge John Hodgman” podcast, and enlightens us with a video of something mentioned during said podcast.
Now, if you have an extra 28 minutes, I really recommend listening to the podcast, its quite funny. Basically the two sides are arguing over the proper way to open a banana, the ‘usual way’ involving holding the banana by its body, and peeling down using the stem, and the ‘other way’ like a monkey, pinching the bottom and peeling open like a bag of chips. (See ‘how to peel a banana like a monkey‘) what makes it funnier, is that both of these guys are lawyers in Canada (or barristers i guess). So Hodgman pretty much makes fun of them for being Canadian through about half the show. At one point the Judge asks about the “Atheists Nightmare” (at around 13:00 in the podcast) about how the banana is absolute proof of God’s existence. Mostly due to things like shape, and the handy tab on top. He asks if one or the other of these guys is against God, and basically just mocks them more… either way…
The accompanying video, the Atheists Nightmare, was an old one that I remember with a famous actor and a famous creationist talking about how the banana is proof of God’s existence.
See it for yourself:
I won’t debate the former argument here, but I CAN absolutely refute the idea that GOD invented the banana…
This is probably what you think of when you think BANANA (as I usually do)
Banana Cross Section - Via WIKIPEDIA
This, is what wild bananas look like:
This is probably the most prolific pic of the inside of a wild banana:
Inside a wild banana
Seriously. Bananas have been grown and cultivated by MAN to be edible BY MAN, and for thousands of years. I have yet to find any evidence that Monkeys in the wild eat bananas even remotely similar to the Cavendish. Try it. Go to YouTube and type in “monkey eating banana.” Go ahead, I’ll wait for you… Done? ok then: what you probably saw was either a monkey in a zoo eating a long yellow banana, or monkeys in their actual habitat eating something vaguely yellow that looks more like a small football.
The Banana we are all used to simply does not exist in nature. Its a product of human cultivation and a desire to eat something that does NOT have giant seeds in the middle. Like a Watermelon. Do you think seedless watermelons are natural? well, they aren’t. How would it propagate if there are no seeds? hmmm?
And this brings me to my biggest gripe about people. There is a LOT of argument going on about ‘Genetically Modified Food.’ Basically a scientist adds or removes genes in a plant that will make that plant all around better for humans to plant, grow, harvest and eat. Which has actually been going on for a LONG time. EVERYTHING that we eat is genetically engineered. Everything.
Name me one food found in a modern mega-mart (Including so-called healthfood stores) that is NOT a product of hundreds if not thousands of years of human cultivation, influence and interference. Come on, you can do it can’t you?
Avacados: Most avocados found in markets around the world are grown from grafting. Meaning that the base plant is started, and then a stalk of another plant is grafted to it, and grows with the exact same characteristics of that plant. Basically, its a clone. And humans have been doing this for over 4,000 years. This is especially true of the Haas avocado, whose mother tree was planted in a California front yard in the 1920’s, patented and grafted into millions upon millions of trees.
Wheat: EVERY human consumed form of wheat on the planet has been bred and cultivated to be edible by humans, and to grow and breed in a manner directed by humans. There is evidence of wheat and barley cultivation as far back as 25,000 years ago in Turkey.
Domesticated animals: ALL animals grown for food purposes (and most especially the ones bred for pets) have been inter-bred and cultivated for certain characteristics that humans find desirable. MY dog, for instance, is a pure bred Beagle, whose beginnings go back to hunting dogs in Greece about 2,500 years ago. They were later brought to England and bred with other dogs with various traits that helped in hunting, tracking, obedience, etc. The Beagle did not simply sprout up like she is today. She was bred that way.
See also, This Guy’s recent post on ‘Natural vs. Artificial.’
The whole of history is about Man forming his environment around him, and creating his own sustainable (and delicious) food. We were most definetly NOT plopped down in a garden of perfect fruit, veg and meat. We made the garden.
This is why i do not understand half of the world freaking out about ‘genetically modified’ food. We’ve essentially been modifying our own food for THOUSANDS of years. TENS of THOUSANDS of years. There is no reason to all of a sudden go, “Wait! stop, it isn’t natural!!” It’s perfectly natural for humans to do this. We’ve been doing it since we decided it’s a better system than starvation.
Its simply AGRICULTURE, and it can and will continue. And its pretty awesome when you think about it, isn’t it? Man, against all odds, creates his own reality out of the raw materials he has before him. And does a damned good job of it to boot! Seriously, how awesome is it that we can do this?
(also, Dear Creationists: if you want to prove Creationism, and disprove Evolution, Do.Not.Use.Food.As.An.Example., food pretty much confirms Evolution, OK?)
An email I received (yet again [Edited for brevity]):
From: Co-Worker-Who-Forwards-Everything Sent: TODAY To: [EVERYONE THEY KNOW + ME]
Subject: FW: 112 emergency call number
IN AN EMERGENCY DIAL 112 ON YOUR CELL PHONE
Some knew about the red light on cars, but not the 112.
…Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on… Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called112 on her cell phone… The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren’t… Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her.
…I never knew about the 112 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a safe place…. *Speaking to a service representative at Bell Mobility confirmed that 112 was a direct link to State trooper info. So, now it’s your turn to let your friends know about 112.
This applies to ALL 50 states
According to EVERY web page I looked at regarding this, 112 is the official emergency number in the European Union. And worldwide all GSM networks such as AT&T or T-Mobile, are required to forward 112 to the local equivalent. NOT Verizon or Sprint. Those last 22 run on CDMA networks (mostly). Pretty much the only document I can find that mentions CDMA emergency numbers is from the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association: See here (pdf)
If you are using a CDMA digital mobile phone, you should
dial ‘000’ to connect to the emergency call service. Dialling
the GSM international emergency call number ‘112’ from a
CDMA mobile phone will not work.
So for the US, on a GSM Mobile phone, 112 just forwards to 911. OR, you could just dial 911…
——————————————————–
The following was tacked on to the latest edition of this particular email. I did NOT edit this part, this is EXACTLY the way it was in the email I received, as if to back up the obviously fake story above:
1. snopes.com: Cell phone 112 Emergency ••
Will dialing 112 connect you with an emergency call center when your cell phone has no signal?
…Claim: Even when your cell phone signal is blocked, dialing 112 will connect you with an emergency call center. Example: [Collected on the Internet,…
…your mobile phone has no signal (so even if you were in a tunnel) if you dial 112 it diverts to a satellite signal and puts you through to the 999 call…
….The global mobile emergency number, 112, is “special” in the sense that (unlike other local emergency numbers, such as 999) it will use any tower your…
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:18:08 GMT http://www.snopes.com/science/mobile.asp
As for connecting to a satellite etc… Uh no. Need Proof? SEE HERE. Any cell carrier is required to transfer a 911 call no matter what, weather the phone is on a different network, not activated, locked, whatever. But if there’s no signal, no TOWER anywhere nearby…in a freaking TUNNEL… it’s not physically possible. The Snopes quotes above are terribly out of context, and mangled.
Actual quote from the Snopes.com URL above:
Claim: Even when your cell phone signal is blocked, dialing 112 will connect you with an emergency call center.
Status:False.
Another one for the “Unbelievably Gullible” pile, along with the ‘Bill Gates pays you to Spam people” and all the other hoax emails that have been going around since email was invented.
People, please. PLEASE learn the truth and pass it on.
For more information use your favorite Search Engine.
Also, please be sure to read: Wikipedia’s List of Common Misconceptions. (Soon to be required reading in the 4th Grade)
I had some ideas here, and now I can’t seem to remember any of them. Man, what the heck happened? I can think of 50 good ideas for a post while I’m driving, but as soon as i get to a pen, can’t remember. ah… anyways,
Here are 3 decent Romantic Comedies that we watched recently, and liked a lot:
When in Rome
Lighthearted Romantic Comedy. Girl steals coins from fountain and ends up cursed with too many admirers (who are almost all from New York City for some reason). She fights them off with a stick until they all come together to help her win love. Nice. Quite hilarious at times.
The Ugly Truth
Badly Directed Romantic Comedy. Decent, but with so many other great/good ones out there, leave it on the shelf or in your queue for a time when you get really bored. The girl from Knocked Up and the guy from 300 have good chemistry and the script was funny, it just didn’t have the right flow. I always blame direction and editing for these issues.
The Proposal
Funny Romantic Comedy. Bullock and Reynolds are great, and I’d like to see them do some more together. This one starts out a bit slow and unsteady, but momentum builds up and within the first 15-20 minutes finds its pace and keeps it. Bullock was nominated for a Golden Globe on this one, and she earned it. Just the scene with her and Betty White in the woods should have won her the award…
I shall be participating in the WordPress.com Post a Day Challenge for 2011. It’s kind of important to me that i do something like this every day. It was hard in 2010 due to all the excitement and weird stuff that happened [no matter how many promises I made myself about it]. I managed for almost a month to post a picture/doodle/note every day, and something a little longer every week. I can continue that proud tradition, right?
It is important to me that I do something creative every day. It’s only the 4th already, so i can catch up easily. my break from the blog-o-sphere is over.
This is only one of my resolutions this year. there will be more to follow. Great things on the horizon.
-Se7en/GTD
–M.A.W.G.
[UPDATE 1/11/11: Yeah, that didn’t really work out. Lets try for a weekly, and maybe we’ll get a couple. Theres just not enough going on in my brain right now. Good luck to all the others doing theirs… GTD]
Now you can be the first on your block to own…. this: or these:
And other fine merch emblazoned with ‘Robot Meat’ original art.
Seriously though, I think this is a pretty big step for me. Not just to create something, and to send it out into the world, but to see if anyone will actually want to plunk down coinage for it. This year has been pretty interesting in a lot of different ways for me. One thing i decided early on in 2010 was that I would try to ramp up my creativity. I’ve done that in different ways, writing this blog on a fairly regular basis for one. And everything from my ‘Doodles of the Day’ and the more informal ‘Creative Output’ posts, pretty much the opposite of my old early 20’s approach, drawing and painting, then hiding it all in the closet.
The options available at the store are fairly limited right now, and i consider this attempt to be in Beta. As I progress and post more content I will expand the store as well. Maybe if I think there is enough interest in the store I’ll do something else with a POD site and have prints and things…. but thats getting the cart ahead of the llama, if you know what I mean!
This started out as a little robot guy, but as I doodled in between running reports this morning he kind of evolved and sprouted a buttload of arms, so I figured, why not! It’s a Beholder.
[UPDATE: I’m still trying to upload the picture, but the WP app crashes every time. Probably have to wait until I get home.]
[UPDATE2: OK, trying this again, only from home on the POS laptop…]
A Beholder. Don't look him in the eye. Use +5 Axe. Beware of Grue.
I have discovered that the only way to share my Netflix viewing habits with you is to either a) write up a couple of posts with recommendations, or b) set up an RSS feed and send out to the world EVERYTHING I watch. Since I’m not willing to share *quite* that much, I’ll post some of my favorite stuff that I’ve watched this year.
Americans love British comedy. In fact, I’d say that it’s Un-American to not like British Comedy. What’s that? You say you don’t like British humor, or any kind of ‘foreign’ entertainment? How little you know.
Assorted Robot Meats 