Archive for the Geek Log Category

  • What Were They Thinking? - October 16th, 2008

    • Well, the new Apple MacBook is out, and it’s a beautiful looking machine, made with all kinds of new ideas, etc., etc., etc. But, my goodness! What were they thinking? In a time when computer prices are dropping like stones, Apple chose to increase the price point! But wait … there’s more! They went to a [...]

  • Where I’ve Been … - September 5th, 2008

    • For those wondering what the heck has had Geren all tied up for the past several weeks … I’ve been busy moving GTV (Howard County’s cable TV station on Comcast 99/Verizon 44) to co-exist with HCC-TV (Howard Community College’s educational cable TV facility on Comcast 96/Verizon 41), and working to build the new, state-of-the-art facility [...]

  • A Little Bored, A Little Lazy - September 4th, 2008

    • Obvioulsy, I loaded up a new theme on the blog yesterday. And, yes, I know it’s got an Apple logo at the top. No, I haven’t bought one … yet. But, as WordPress has moved forward through the versions, there are a lot of changes in the stylesheet tags for images, and I’ve been both [...]

  • Google’s Shiny New Browser - September 3rd, 2008

    • Google Chrome browser

    Google has released the beta version of “Chrome,” their new open-source browser. Chrome is touted as being a fast, stable browser designed from the ground up to do a good job of running today’s java- and flash-laden web sites. Generally speaking, it performs well. About the only thing I couldn’t get to [...]

  • Too Bizarre To Not Share - August 3rd, 2008

    • From our friend Theresa, this was just too strange to keep to myself.

    Post Revisions:
    3 August, 2008 @ 13:13 by Geren

  • Adobe Video Workshop - August 1st, 2008

    • Want to learn a lot about Adobe products easily? Visit the Adobe Video Workshop. There are literally hundreds of awesome tutorials on everything Adobe. Get yourself a cup of coffee and a comfy chair for this one!
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for this post.

  • DIY Steadicam? You BETCHA - June 21st, 2008

    • As some of you may know, I’ve been fooling around with the idea of building my own video camera stabilization rig. There are a bunch of commercial units available from Steadicam/Tiffen, Glidecam, and a collection of eBay stores based somewhere in India. These are all fairly impressive units, but some also have some pretty impressive [...]

  • New Machine Not a Safe Machine? - June 18th, 2008

    • When you buy a new computer or other electronic device, or receive one from your employer, you pretty much expect that it won’t spew viruses or SPAM all over the place, right? Don’t be so sure.
    ABCNews ran a story on their web site today about a poor fellow in Massachusetts who lost his job because [...]

  • What’s the Buzz, iPhone? - June 10th, 2008

    • Apple announced their new iPhone yesterday, amid much hoopla. It’s a faster, 3G machine with a built-in GPS, and, it’s half the cost of the phones we recently bought — something that analysts suggested that Apple was very unlikely to do.
    The new phone will ship with Apple’s new iPhone OS (version 2.0), which sports an [...]

  • A Week Early! - March 28th, 2008

    • For those interested, the new PC arrived yesterday — a week earlier than expected, and a day prior to Dell’s estimated shipping date. I’ll have to admit that was fairly impressive. Last night, we went out and picked up a couple of external 500GB drives.
    So far, the machine itself ain’t too shabby, either. I’ve managed [...]

  • Well, Lookie There! - March 25th, 2008

    • Seems I’ve made the front page of the Baltimore Examiner web site today with this article. If you’re looking at the print edition, it’s on page 5. Isn’t that special?
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  • The Geren In The Dell? - March 20th, 2008

    • Hi, Ho! the derry-o, Geren bought a Dell?
    Last night (or was it early this morning), I ordered a new Dell Inspiron desktop computer. Yes, I really wanted an iMac. Yes, I said I’d never buy anything else from Dell. But, the reality is that I just can’t afford the Apple at this point (can’t truly [...]

  • Post Editing Tools - February 15th, 2008

    • In the past, I’ve mentioned that I like to use the Windows Live Writer tool to enter and edit postings for this site. Unfortunately, it’s not available for the Mac, so I’ve been looking for new blogging tools. Today, I’m trying one called Qumana, and one of the things that’s attractive about it is that [...]

  • When the Mouse is Not Mightier Than the Sword - February 6th, 2008

    • I mentioned yesterday that I have a visiting iMac here fro evaluation, and so far I’m pretty impressed with the machine. Sure, it has a few quirks, but most are of little consequence.
    The Mighty Mouse (shown at left), however, is more than a bit of an annoyance — an ergonomic nightmare, in my opinion. Sure, [...]

  • iMac In The House - February 5th, 2008

    • I’ve got a visiting computer — a brand-spanking-new Apple 20″ iMac. By and large, I really like it. A lot.
    This particular iMac belongs to the church I work for. There are a few reasons I’m playing with it. First, it’s the computer that we’re going to be using to replace the aging PC in [...]

  • Blogging from Word? - January 24th, 2008

    • I’m playing with the trial version of Office2007. Yeah, I know. I’m Mr. OpenOffice.org, aren’t I.

    Well, I heard tell that Micro$oft might have finally gotten Office right. If nothing else, they’ve certainly improved things. One nifty feature is that you can write blog entries from within M$Word. You can see a screen grab made while [...]

  • What’s New On Our Other Sites? - January 9th, 2008

    • You may have noticed that I took out the sidebar item for the RSS feeds from our other web sites. Mostly, I did it because they were not properly updating on a regular basis. For instance, the section for Orchard Studios should, for the past three days, been indicating that the feed was missing.
    The big [...]

  • Ways to Get Screwed - January 3rd, 2008

    • Way #1 — Live in Maryland
    Maryland has, for years, been known as “The Fee State.” Well, now it’s January 3, 2008, and Maryland’s new sales tax is in effect — 6% now, instead of 5%, as well as a doubled cigarette tax! At least the ciggie tax doesn’t affect me. And, fortunately, we bought the [...]

  • What a Crock - December 13th, 2007

    • Whatever respect I had left for Merriam-Webster and their little book of words has evaporated with the announcement of this years word of the year:
    w00t
    What?!? It’s not even a word! It’s got two zeros in there. Words are made up of letters, not numerals. GMAFB!
    At least the Oxford folks’ word of the year makes some [...]

  • In The Race for Space - November 26th, 2007

    • And I’m not talkin’ closet space, here…
    China’s space agency released a picture of the Moon today, taken from their Chang’e space probe.
    China’s program has advanced at a very impressive pace, and some would say that they might be on track to put an astronaut on the Moon in the next few years. However, [...]

  • Lightroom Users’ Blog - November 6th, 2007

    • I just stumbled across a great blog for users of Adobe Lightroom. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips features all kinds of neat add-ins, tips and techniques for Lightroom users.
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  • Runs Like A Mad Dog - October 17th, 2007

    • I have this Western Digital “My Book” 250GB drive, and it was running pretty slow and funky. The case was a pretty poor design, and the thing would get really, really hot, and then shut down. Or, sometimes, it just wouldn’t spin up. So, I “modified” the case (meaning, broke all the little tabs) so that [...]

  • Battlestar Returns - September 28th, 2007

    •  SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica returns November 24 at 9PM … So say we all!

    Some (like me) will remember Edward James Olmos in another life, as Lt. Martin Castillo on Miami Vice. In that role, he was the calm, cool, collected and calculating officer in charge of Miami’s vice squad, which included Don Johnson’s “Sonny” Crockett and [...]

  • Ok, I was bored - September 11th, 2007

    • via Will

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  • Another (Ho Hum) Site Update - August 22nd, 2007

    • I’ve done a little site updating, again. Those who don’t care about the geek stuff can move on.
    This update is tri-fold and pretty major.
    ICDSoft, our web host, has indicated that they may stop supporting MySQL 4 by the end of the year. So, I decided that I ought get on the stick and upgrade the [...]

  • Some Things I Haven’t Written About In A While … - August 17th, 2007

    • Kiah – The bird. Remember her? Shortly after we got her, I took her down to the avian vet for a check-out. It seemed to the vet that she was generally healthy, but, a bit under-weight. She weighed about 76 grams that day, and a bird her age should weigh at least 85 grams. Well, [...]

  • Minor Tweak - August 12th, 2007

    • I just got around to making an adjustment to the site that I’ve been meaning to for some time — I’ve moved the comments bit to the bottom of the article. It really makes more sense to comment on something after you’ve read it — at least that’s my opinion.
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for [...]

  • Apple Releases New iMacs - August 8th, 2007

    •   So Sexy!
    Apple have released the latest incarnation of the iMac, and it’s a stunner — and a lean, mean, computin’ machine!
    The base model is a 20″ wide-screen with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 250GB SATA drive, 8X “SuperDrive” and ATI Radeon graphics with 128MB memory — for under $1200. The $2300 top-of-the-line [...]

  • Can You Find Me On The Internet? Of Course You Can! - August 3rd, 2007

    • Donna sent me a link to this article on the Time/CNN web site a little while ago. Go read the article now, and then come back to the rest of this post.

    Well, lessee, “Spock” is not officially open for business yet — still in “invitation only beta,” which means they have to come to you [...]

  • Atomic Power Redux? - July 12th, 2007

    • In the predawn hours of March 28, 1979, a pressure valve suddenly malfunctioned at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The accident started at the plant’s Unit 2 reactor when a small valve failed to close, causing cooling water to drain from the nuclear core. The core quickly began to [...]

  • WLW Problem Fixed - June 26th, 2007

    • Thanks to the great support desk at ICDSoft, my problem using Windows Live Writer has been resolved. Seems that they’ve seen a wave of exploits against sites that use the method of updating that WLW and WordPress use to exchange site information, so, they simply blocked all access to the files on their servers. They’re [...]

  • Now, Why’d That Happen?!? - June 24th, 2007

    • We’ve been using Windows Live Writer for posting to the web site, and I, at least, really like the way it works. Or rather, worked. For some reason, we’ve suddenly started getting a “(403) Forbidden” error when trying to post to the site. What I don’t remember is whether or not I’ve posted using Live [...]

  • Cool In-Post Slide Show - June 24th, 2007

    • Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
    I just found this really cool flickr slide show inserter called flickrslidr. All ya gotta do is go to the site, fill in the requested information, click the button, and copy-n-paste the provided code. What could be easier?!?
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  • What is it With Cables? - June 15th, 2007

    • I went over to that big box store that’s all blue with the yellow price-tag-shaped sign today, with the idea of buying a DVD Recorder. What I really want is something that will record either a true DV digital signal, or at least component. However, that’ll cost me a grand or more, and that’s just [...]

  • Goin’ On Safari - June 13th, 2007

    • Apple have release a beta version of the Safari web browser for Windows XP and Vista. While some say that it’s buggy, it is, after all, beta software. What do you expect? Apple expect to have all the little kinks worked out before the slated official release in October.
    Being the Apple slut that I [...]

  • Trippin’ the Light Fantastic - June 13th, 2007

    • [UPDATE: Well, that sure was fast! The guys (a couple of nutcases!) from Verizon showed up around 8:45 or so, and by 10:45, they were gone. In that short time, they hooked up and initialized four STBs (1 HD/DVR, 3 SD) and a wireless internet router. And, our telephones still work! I'm impressed!]
    FiOS comes today. [...]

  • Finally it Offers Service! - May 25th, 2007

    • Ugh. That was pretty bad. Ah, well. Whaddaya want fer nuffin! Anyway, among other errands last night, we ordered Verizon’s FiOS service, finally. We got the letter in the mail earlier in the week that indicated that the complete service package was finally available in our neighborhood, and, I know that it really is, as our next door neighbor’s installation is already [...]

  • Yet Another Reason I Hate Microsoft - May 15th, 2007

    • Microsoft claims patents on Linux kernel
    This is bordering on insanity. If Micro$oft is allowed by the courts to proceed in matters such as this, it will be opening the door to legalizing monopolies, and encourage stifling innovation. Micro$oft really wants to completely own the computer software market, forcing consumers to buy computers that run only [...]

  • Further Proof that Apples Rock - May 11th, 2007

    • Post Revisions:There are no revisions for this post.

  • Upgrade Complete - May 9th, 2007

    • Blather de la Semaine is now up on the latest, greatest version of WordPress (version 2.1.3) with only one, minor, explosion. An update was applied to the affecting plug-in, and all is now back to what we might consider “normal” operation.
    Donna and I hope you will continue to enjoy Blather de la Semaine …
    Post Revisions:There [...]

  • WordPress Update Time - May 9th, 2007

    • Okay, here we go again. I’m updating WordPress this morning. Hopefully, nothing will explode.
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  • But Wait, There’s More - April 26th, 2007

    • I finally got around to ordering/downloading/installing Adobe’s Lightroom program. I wanted to take advantage of their $100-off introductory pricing.

    After having played with the public beta versions, and even with the original trial version, I must say that the final release version is a vastly different program, at least under the skin. Loading and operating [...]

  • When Things Just Work… - April 24th, 2007

    • I just love it when things just work. For instance, this morning, I added wireless networking capability on the little production sub-LAN at work. I selected a Linksys WAP45G wireless access point. Within about 10 minutes, I had three laptops and a PDA up and on-line.
    That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!
    Post [...]

  • Not Pretty… - April 11th, 2007

    • Last night, we purchased a new hard disk for my laptop, and I began the setup process. The laptop BIOS recognized the new drive instantly, and all appeared to be going well. I partitioned and formatted the drive, and then began a program to attempt to clone the setup of the old drive. With this program [...]

  • We Are Back … - April 10th, 2007

    • Well, folks, we are back from our trip to Williamsburg. We rolled in around 10:30 last night. I’ll try to get some “trip wrap-up” pictures posted today — I was just too exhausted to do it last night.
    The laptop (remember the laptop?) seems to have been able to get over at least some of its [...]

  • Pooched - April 6th, 2007

    • Damn if my laptop isn’t pooched. I had got the most important stuff off the drive (I hope), and asked Norton Disk Doctor to have another look. It, again, indicated that it couldn’t work on the drive because something else had it in use, and that I should schedule a repair and reboot the computer.
    And [...]

  • Welcome to My Morning - April 6th, 2007

    • Yes, we’re heading out to Williamsburg at some point late this morning. At least, I think that’s the plan. Donna had a couple of medical tests to go to this morning before we left, and I figured I’d take the time to fix what I thought might be a minor problem on my laptop.
     
    Ugh.
    So, what’s [...]

  • Ooops - March 27th, 2007

    • Okay, well, we’re back. Sorry ’bout that. I installed a plug-in that was supposed to help make the site a little more search engine friendly. Instead, it seems to have made everything go blank. Hopefully, it didn’t screw with anything else. If so, I’m going to be really hoppin’ down somebody’s throat about it.
    Post Revisions:There [...]

  • Viewing MSOffice Documents Online Made Easy … for WordPress - March 21st, 2007

    • ThinkFree, one of a number of companies to offer low-cost alternatives to the MSOffice, have released a new plugin for WordPress that allows viewing of Office documents on a WP site, such as this one.
    As an example, here’s a Powerpoint that Donna did for the camera club some time back: Composition 102 (this is [...]

  • Aw, CRAP! - March 4th, 2007

    • SciFi finally gets it together, and gives us what looks like a decent Battlestar episode, and Comcast takes a shit! Frak!
    UPDATE: Just before midnight, Comcrap got their act back together enough for us to see the midnight showing. Thanks to Rob, I’ll still be able to get a DVD burn, though. Thanks, Rob!
    Post Revisions:There are [...]

  • Further Proof of a Flawed Design - February 27th, 2007

    • I’ve long felt that the design of NASA’s current space shuttle was flawed from the beginning. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. It’s a piece of junk. We can’t even launch the damned thing after a hail storm!
    We’ve been launching rockets from Cape Kennedaveral since we’ve been launching rockets. You might think [...]

  • Free (or Cheap) PDF Creator - February 27th, 2007

    • If you need a way to create PDF files, but don’t use a program that supports writing PDF files directly (such as OpenOffice), then consider PDF995. This package installs easily, and looks like any other printer to applications. To create a PDF, simply print the file, and choose PDF995 as the output.
    The free version [...]

  • What’s Up With Battlestar Galactica? - February 26th, 2007

    •  I promised long ago that I wouldn’t write incessantly about BSG. And, I haven’t. Okay, it wasn’t all that long ago. But, that’s not the point.
    The point is, what the frak is up with Battlestar going into the second half of season three? It used to be that the shows led from one to the [...]

  • Testing Video. Please Don’t Pay Any Attention … For Now - February 23rd, 2007

    • I’m running a test here, to see if I can get this thing to host a Flash movie. It’s not been promising so far, as WP keeps changing the code for some reason.

    If all works this time, then you should be able to play a little animation in the player above.
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  • Life Before Battlestar Galactica - February 23rd, 2007

    • So, what were some of our favorite Battlestar Galactica characters doing before the show?

    Here’s actress Grace Park circa 2005 in an image by Antoine Verglas, a photographer who is fairly well known in commercial photography circles.
    Here’s Grace’s “bio” from the SciFi site:
    In just a few short years, Grace Park has managed to rack up [...]

  • KITT, I Need You! - February 19th, 2007

    • This kind of thing certainly won’t be any worse than some of the idiots on the roads these days. Heck, a self-driving car would probably be much safer on its worst day!
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  • The World’s Oddest WordPress - February 17th, 2007

    • Um, there’s no real describing this. It’s just, well, bizarre.
    http://mrswordpress.com/
    I think it’s supposed to be humor. But then, I don’t know. Maybe someone’s trying to make some sort of point. If nothing else, it’s a diversion…
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  • WordPress 2.1 Comments - February 15th, 2007

    • I took the day off from the TV station to wait for FedEx to deliver the new AcoustiSoundâ„¢ multi-track hard disk recorder. I’ve not been wasting time, however, while waiting for it to arrive. Instead, I’ve been working on a new web site for one of my clients, and I figured that this would be [...]

  • Need a Little Code Help - February 14th, 2007

    • Those who know me know that I am not much of a coder any more. Sure, I can hack up something existing to suit my needs, and I can look at code in most programming languages, and figure out what it does. But, in terms of writing something from scratch, I’m pretty much useless any [...]

  • No Vista in Our Future - February 12th, 2007

    • I’ve run the Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor on all the PC’s here, and found that only of them is fully compatible with the new operating system. Two of the computers that won’t run Vista are laptops that are less than two years old! Problems listed range from drivers (minor) to video card upgrade requirements on the laptops [...]

  • Catching up … How’ve you been? - February 12th, 2007

    • It’s been a few days since I’ve had anything to say. Well, that’s not really true. I’ve just been too busy to write anything since last week sometime. The only reason I have the time right now is that a client had to cancel an appointment today. So, just what’s been up?
    Last Wednesday night, I [...]

  • Ooops … Gotta Watch Those Upgrades! - February 3rd, 2007

    • Looks like when I updated to WordPress 2.0.7, some of the functionality of the “Calendar” page and the “Coming Up” section of the sidebar broke — something I didn’t discover until Thom commented that he didn’t know from the site about the George Lepp talk yesterday until way too late. I then commented that it [...]

  • Patch your Windows for new Daylight Savings Time Rules - January 31st, 2007

    • In August of 2005 the United States Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which changes the dates of both the start and end of daylight saving time (DST). When this law goes into effect in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week [...]

  • Sync Your PocketPC With Google Calender - January 30th, 2007

    • There are several programs out there that will sync your PDA with Google Calendar, but most require that you use MSOutlook as an intermediary application — first updateting your PC, and then syncing the PDA calender to the PC. I wanted a completely independent solution.
    What I finally found is an application called Calsyncum, which is [...]

  • Writing with a PDA - January 29th, 2007

    • Writing a blog entry or a PDA screen can be an ercercise in frustration, especially when portions of the text box are obscured. It takes a bit of getting used to.
    So this is a test post using the Opera browser and writing with the little stylus right on the screen. It’s amazing.
    I remember [...]

  • It’s On The Truck! - January 29th, 2007

    • According to FedEx, my little box of Dell goodness is on the truck, and on its way to me!
    There are a couple of items that, in retrospect, I wish I had ordered along with the machine — specifically, the VGA adapter cable and the car charger. I mean, I’d already broken the budget. I won’t [...]

  • Shipped! - January 26th, 2007

    • According to Dell, my little machine will leave their plant today, and I should have it on Monday! I am so excited! Interestingly, it shipped according to the original “estimated” schedule, not the revised schedule that didn’t show up until after I placed the order.
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  • BDLS Now PDA Friendly - January 24th, 2007

    • Thanks to Alex King, Blather de la Semaine is now PDA friendly, at least on the most common platforms. I have added his WordPress Mobile Edition package, which will automatically detect the most common PDA and web-enabled phone browsers, and serve up a plain, but usable version of the site. For those with your own [...]

  • It’s gonna be a Dell - January 24th, 2007

    • Well, after a much more realistic needs analysis, and a fair chunk of research, I decided to get the Dell PDA. Early this morning, I ordered the Dell Axim X51v.
    Yes, it broke the heck out of the budget, because I had originally set a limit of $399MSRP. Nowadays, many items of this type sell for [...]

  • Standards? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Standards! - January 23rd, 2007

    • (with apologies to Mel Brooks, and all who went before…)
    As mentioned previously, I’m considering the purchase of a PDA. While the idea of a $250 piece of software on a tiny little chip to keep track of the birds we’ve seen has sort of gone by the way-side (as Rob points out, “$250 (plus $275 [...]

  • Centon Electronics - January 23rd, 2007

    • I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but Centon Electronics is a great, low-priced purveyor of memory products. If you’re in need of a memory upgrade for your computer, FLASH cards for your PDA or digital camera, or one of those little USB memory drive thingies, these people are the folks to see. I’ve been [...]

  • WordPress 2.1 - January 23rd, 2007

    • It seems like just the other day that I upgraded this site to version 2.0.7 of WordPress. Now, version 2.1 is available.
    2.1 is a major, major upgrade, with a huge chunk of the code completely re-written. As usual, I’m going to wait a couple of weeks at least to apply the update. But, with it [...]

  • A PDA for the Birds? - January 22nd, 2007

    • Believe it or not, I’m actually considering getting a PDA. Yeah, me. The guy who had the original PDA (an Apple Newton), and gave up using it. Okay, we’re considering it. So, what got us started on this?
    We were at the local wild bird emporium, when I spotted this nifty $500 package:  A nice little PDA (Palm [...]

  • Helluva Week - January 12th, 2007

    • It’s been a helluva week. I really don’t remember being this stressed in a while. I don’t even remember some days!
    I do know that our little government PEG channel, Howard County GTV, went on the air on Verizon FiOS in both Howard and Anne Arundel Counties today at 12:44PM. Our set up is not quite [...]

  • WordPress Upgrade - January 7th, 2007

    • I’ve just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.0.6. You shouldn’t notice anything different. But, if you do, please let me know!
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  • And, We’re Back - January 2nd, 2007

    • As it turns out, the issue appears to have not been with my provider, ICDSoft, but rather, something between the company that provides their upstream and the local telco people in Boston. Probably a 99¢ fuse.
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  • Welcome to a New Year - January 2nd, 2007

    • Well, isn’t this special … Only a couple of days into the new year, and someone’s lost all the DNS info for ICDSoft’s world. I can’t even get to the support site, or the sales site.
    Of course, this comes just a couple of days after I sing ICDSoft’s praises to a good friend who [...]

  • No Free Lunch … - December 28th, 2006

    • Or, video, for that matter.
    We received a mailer from Verizon the other day, pushing their FiOS system for TV. Some of you may remember that I’ve been pretty excited about the technology — and the chance to get away from Comcast. And, the price that Verizon’s advertising ($39.95 a month) is really enticing.
    Until you get [...]

  • Geeky Goodness, and Data Access - November 29th, 2006

    • As I mentioned earlier today, an old hard disk took a crap on me, and caused one of my machines to not boot up. Frankly, there were a few other minor issues with that computer, too, like the core temperature that was generally about 120% of rated temperature, and a +5V rail that was running [...]

  • Bound To Happen … - November 29th, 2006

    • It was bound to happen sooner or later. After a whole lotta years, the original ‘C’ drive in my aging 750MHz Athlon PC died. Of course, that means that the machine won’t boot, and that means that, for the moment, there’s no access to any of the data that’s on the other drives in that [...]

  • Image Popups - October 23rd, 2006

    • I’ve installed a goodie that will cause most of the linked images to pop-up in a new little JavaScript window. It seems, however, that some of the links created with the Microsoft Live Writer program behave … oddly. Ah, well. Time to tweak.
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  • Aha! - October 16th, 2006

    • Okay. I’ve finally figured out how to do something I’ve wanted to do for some time now — have newly updated or edited posts pop back to the top of the blog, effectively refreshing posts when they’re edited. Cool beans. Now, if I can only figure out how to have new comments cause the modified [...]

  • Comments Broken - October 16th, 2006

    • For some reason, comments broke. I don’t know what changed. Actually, I do. I tried a new comments form, and it didn’t work. I switched back to the old one, but now it doesn’t work, either. Very odd. I’ll get it working again … eventually.
    [UPDATE: Comments are fixed.]
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  • Good News for Babylon 5 Junkies - October 8th, 2006

    • [via Wil Wheaton]
    JMS is writing/producing/directing a series of direct to DVD Babylon 5 movies. Called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, the first one, Voices in the Dark starts shooting in Vancouver in November
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  • iMac + Ikea = Ideal? - October 7th, 2006

    • At least 116 pictures of iMacs perched on Ikea furniture.
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  • Battlestar Friday — The New Season Begins (wink) - October 6th, 2006

    • Okay, so I promised Donna that I wasn’t going to go into full geek mode and blog about every little thing that’s Battlestar Gallactica related on an every Friday basis like Friend Will has done in the past. However, season three starts tonight, and it promises to be exciting. 9PM Eastern time on SciFi. I [...]

  • Why? Because it Works - October 5th, 2006

    • Maybe a better title for this would be, “Why? Because it doesn’t work.” 
    Last night was a clincher. I’m phasing out the desktop PCs. We’ll hang on to the laptops, though.
    As I mentioned the other day, for some reason, most of the Windows machines are being junk lately, particularly my relatively new HP and Donna’s old A-Open. [...]

  • Tonight’s Garbage Night … - October 1st, 2006

    • This is garbage night in our neighborhood. And, along with the various and sundry things that normal people throw away (cleanings from the cats’ litter boxes, chicken bones, microwave dinner trays, empty containers that Howard County doesn’t recycle, etc.), I’m very tempted to add a couple of PCs.
    One is a fairly recent HP P4 2.8GHz [...]

  • Donna’s Photo Blog Lives! - September 29th, 2006

    • Damn, I’m fast. Donna’s photo log site is up, too, though there’s not much there as yet … she has to tag her flickr images appropriately so they’ll propogate into the site.
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  • Geren’s Photo Blog Lives! - September 29th, 2006

    • Geren’s Photolog / Photo Blog has been moved to it’s own page. You can see it here. There’s still a bit of tweaking to do, both here and on the photo blog site. Once I’m done with that, I’ll also switch Donna’s over to an identicle configuration. We won’t stop posting pictures here, but there [...]

  • Going Simple? - September 28th, 2006

    • Okay, no one can complain that this is hard to read. There are some things broken and missing … temporarily. And, I have to replace all the header pictures with ones that Donna and I have taken. But don’t tell me it’s hard to read.
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  • Poll Results - September 27th, 2006

    • A few days ago, I posted a poll soliciting your input regarding the appearance of this site. Well, my seven known readers have all responded (well, there are seven responses, anyway). If I average the results, the general gist is that the worst bit about the site is the color scheme. The shades-of-gray-text on a [...]

  • In a Democracy, Your Vote Matters - September 19th, 2006

    • Of course, this blog is not exactly a democracy. That said, some folks have commented to me recently that they dislike the current design. So, here’s your chance to sound off a little bit, and answer the poll below.
    [poll=2]
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  • Deeply Rooted - September 2nd, 2006

    • I wrote previously that there was no built-in flickr integration for Windows Live Writer. However, the Windows Live Writer Plugins site has a couple of excellent plugins available.
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for this post.

  • Multiple Image Test - September 1st, 2006

    • This is a test using multiple images from my local hard drive, uploaded directly to the site via FTP (in theory).
    Other people have reported difficulty in uploading multiple images to a weblog. I’m guessing, since it worked fine here, that they had a setting out of whack. It doesn’t work via the “upload [...]

  • Live Writer Page Layout - September 1st, 2006

    •  

    I’m still fooling with Live Writer, and in many ways, it’s really excellent. These images were all dragged in from my flickr space, though links don’t work at present. I’m sure that will come in a later version. Anyway, this layout was done entirely with the Live Writer program, making quick photo album page [...]

  • Windows Live Writer - September 1st, 2006

    • So, I’m playing with a new blog authoring program called Windows Live Writer. It’s got some pretty cool features, such as drag-n-drop image placement (the image at left was simply dragged in from Adobe Lightroom).
    It also is a more-or-less WSIWYG editor — I even seen the post using the page style as I’m typing the [...]

  • No More Aggregations - August 31st, 2006

    • Astute visitors will notice that I’ve removed the “Aggregations” page from the site, mostly because the pages I was aggregating weren’t updating with any particular regularity, with a couple of exceptions. No big loss, I don’t think.
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  • Beware AOL’s Freeware - August 29th, 2006

    • According to a New York Times article:
    “Dealing yet another blow to AOL, a leading software watchdog group warned users away from AOL’s free client software yesterday on the ground that it displayed characteristics consistent with “badware.â€?”
    I couldn’t agree more. Having AOL software installed on your computer is a bad thing.
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for [...]

  • DTV Reception on the Cheap - August 15th, 2006

    • At the end of my discussion on getting a DTV set without breaking the bank, I mentioned that you can view these beautiful digital pictures without spending an arm and a leg, too. What’s the secret?
    There are a few ways to get digital signals into your home. You desires and viewing habits will dictate the [...]

  • Alphabet Soup — Buying a New TV - August 11th, 2006

    • As I’ve written before, TV as we now know it in the United States is due for a change.
    Since I wrote that last article, the end date of the transition from our current broadcasting standard has been set: February 17, 2009 is the date that your standard television set will go dark. Or, more appropriately, [...]

  • Please Stand By … - August 9th, 2006

    • [UPDATE] We have completed the update to WordPress 2.0.4 on Blather de la Semaine. Everything appears to have gone quite smoothly. Please let us know if, unbeknownst to us, something really fell in the crapper.
    I also cleaned up a bunch of extra garbage that was hanging around the installation — mostly plug-ins and themes that [...]

  • Prints Like Polaroid? - August 2nd, 2006

    • As some may know, I recently replaced yet another printer. This time, the new printer is an HP Photosmart 8250. I really like the print quality, the speed and the pricing. But, I’ve noticed a couple somethings that are a little odd …
    For test prints and “contact sheets,” I don’t really like to use the [...]

  • Ooops …. - July 28th, 2006

    • I apologize to my Internet Explorer readers for the snafu in the formatting after the posting of the “Bad Apples” story. It seems that in the cutting and the pasting from e-mail to WordPress, some odd-ball formats were included, but never properly closed, thus trashing the rest of the page. It’s, obviously, fixed now.
    We now [...]

  • Where Have All the Pictures Gone? - July 19th, 2006

    • It is possible that the images may be missing from the site. flickr is temporarily offline while the correct a minor storage fiasco, and complete a transfer of several terabytes of data across a few thousand miles.
    Man, I need my flickr fix!
    Complete story here
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  • Tweak! - June 29th, 2006

    • As you can see, I’ve been doing a little tweaking of the site. Nothing major — putting variants of a few “lost” items back, and a little CSS modification. There will be more, as I get or make time.
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  • The Problem With Inkjets - June 26th, 2006

    • There’s an inherant problem with inkjet printers, aside from all those discussions of permanence and reduced gamut a pigments v. dyes and what not. It’s a simple problem. If you don’t print with them a lot (meaning several prints a day), you run the risk of ink drying in the printhead and clogging the thing [...]

  • If it’s not one thing … - June 25th, 2006

    • it’s another. Of course. Somehow, I managed to break one of the “static pages” that’s made up of PHP and HTML code. Seems that the version of the plug-in that allows PHP code to be executed on a page was not quite up to par with the latest version of WordPress. So, I’ve updated the [...]

  • Emorate Flickr Photo Comment Tool - June 24th, 2006

    • — from gerenm - (?)
    The Emorate Flickr Photo Comment Tool is a very cool bookmark tool that automatically generates code to insert flickr images into comments or blog entries. You can choose from several image sizes from a 75×75 thumbnail, all the way up to the original size. It’s especially useful for forum discussions [...]

  • Largely Painless - June 23rd, 2006

    • Well, the backend is upgraded to WordPress 2.0.3, and it was mostly painless. There’s still the issue of the older posts not being easily accessible. But, I figure I’ll get that licked eventually. Otherwise, things appear to be functioning reasonably well. If you notice any weirdness, there’s always the comments page …
    Post Revisions:There are no [...]

  • PLEASE STAND BY - June 23rd, 2006

    • I have decided that I have some time this morning to begin the upgrade to WordPress 2.0.3. Things will be broken. Please stand by….
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  • Uh, Where Have All The Posts Gone? - June 23rd, 2006

    • Last night and this morning, I discovered that a lot of early posts are missing from the site. I was trying to reference one of my old posts in a discussion thread on another site. Now, I find that if I know something specific about that post, I can search for it, but it’s not [...]

  • No Interim - June 20th, 2006

    • Donna and I have decided that we both like the overall look of this “interim” site design. So, instead of going through all of the hassles and hoops to do a complete site redesign (in my copious spare time), we”ve decided that I’ll just personalize this theme to our preferences. So, welcome to our new, [...]

  • Interim - June 16th, 2006

    • As I reported earlier in the day, something corrupted the style sheet for the site, and really messed a lot of things up. Of course, I didn’t have a copy of the most recent version any where. And, I was planning to completely change the site, anyway. So, in the interim, you’ll be looking at [...]

  • BROKEN! - June 16th, 2006

    • Well, it appears that something corrupted the style sheet for the site. I had planned on redesigning this thing over the coming weeks, and now it appears it will happen sooner. Please bear with the mess until I get it fixed.
    Bah!
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  • Google Browser Sync - June 13th, 2006

    • Okay, Firefox users. This little tool from Google is really slick. The Google Browser Sync plug-in for Firefox allows you to automagically synchronize your browsing experience, no matter what computer you’re using — so long as you’re running Firefox as your web browser.
    No more copying favorites around, or loosing track of where you were, just [...]

  • GTV’s New Master Control Room - May 31st, 2006

    • Here’s another recently nearly completed project - upgrading Howard County GTV’s antiquated, tape-based playout system to a nearly state-of-the-art media server-based solution.
    Since this picture was taken, I’ve removed the trashy shelving from behind the desk, and moved our closed-captioning operation from our studio control room, and integrated it into our master control operation.
    The three BetacamSP [...]

  • Protect Your E-mail Address - May 29th, 2006

    • One problem for webmasters and those desiring easy e-mail links on their web sites is that of the huge volume of SPAM. Spammers routinely crawl web sites looking for mailto: tags, and harvesting the addresses! There are several ways to deal with this, but perhaps the easiest is to use this site to automatically create [...]

  • Even More Computers! - May 11th, 2006

    • Late last night, Donna decided that she wanted to replace the last of the PIII, Win98 machines. This would be the bargain machine I picked up for her last year. She also saw the convenience I’ve been enjoying with my new laptop. So, she ordered up another Dell box — this time a mid-line laptop. [...]

  • No Compromise, No Joke - May 4th, 2006

    • I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m not saying that the Compaq laptop was a lesser compromise solution. The technical specs are identical to the Dell I had originally specified, and the work I’ve done with it thus far shows that it’s going to perform wonderfully. I’m already editing video on it for [...]

  • Dudette Gotta Dell … I Didn’t - May 3rd, 2006

    • I addition to going to the Corcoran this past weekend, Donna and I did a little shopping …
    For business purposes, we both needed new computers — Donna a desktop, and I a laptop. The plan was (sorta) to have both machines be Dells. I had very specific needs for the laptop, as some of the [...]

  • Bad Link - April 16th, 2006

    • I just discovered I badly linked the gallery page on my Intimate Landscapes post. The link has been corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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  • Google Calendar - April 13th, 2006

    • Google have announced the launch of their Calendar web application.
    My initial reaction, after having spent 20 minutes trying to get into it this morning is a resounding, “ho-hum.”
    It doesn’t seem to integrate with other Google services, such as Gmail. It doesn’t import events from other calendars, or export them, either. When inviting others to a [...]

  • Go, Go, Go! - April 3rd, 2006

    • Well, the speed seems to have returned to my DSL line. Over the course of today, it’s gone from dial-up-like to being back to its zippity-do-da speed that I like so much. I’m guessing that Verizon was doing a lot of upgrade work (both hardware and software) and they had to temporarily re-route the data [...]

  • Where has all my Broadband Gone? - April 2nd, 2006

    • Over the past couple of days, my DSL line has suddenly gone from super-zippy to super-slow — I feel like I’m on a dial-up line. Nothing here has changed, so I’m at a loss. And, with my schedule, I won’t be able to get into it with Verizon before Tuesday. Anyone else out there noticing [...]

  • Orchard Studios Web Site Live! - March 29th, 2006

    • Well, after a marathon session today, the Orchard Studios web site is up, running and presentable. There are still a few things to do there — meta tags need to be added and updated, and I need to sprinkle some images around here and there. But, by and large, it’s good to go!
    Tomorrow’s tasks include [...]

  • More Geekery … - March 28th, 2006

    • Fixed the contact page. The plug-in is technically for WP2.0, but, it works enough for here for the moment….
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  • eBay Auctions! - March 28th, 2006

    • Here’s a new feature at gerenm.net … a listing of my eBay auctions. It’ll be permanently stuffed into the sidebar, and will look something like this:
    Current eBay Auctions

    < ?php _rssLinkList(array("rss_feed_url"=>“http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=SearchResults&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&saprclo=&fsop=1&fsoo=1&sass=gerenm&catref=C6&ftrv=1&ftrt=1&sacat=-1&from=R10&satitle=&saprchi=&frpp=25″,
    “num_items”=>10,
    “show_description”=>false,
    “random”=>false,
    [...]

  • Hmmm …. - March 28th, 2006

    • So, I’m looking for a base skin for the new Orchard Studios site, and I came across a WordPress themeset called Minima Plus. I’m wondering, how can it still be minima, if you add a plus to it?
    Also, as soon as I get a chance, I’ll be doing a little write up on a potentially [...]

  • Now, why’d that break?!? - March 24th, 2006

    • Seems like a little problem appeared in the comment spam detection over the last couple of days. I haven’t got the foggiest idea what, as I’ve not monkeyed with that since I installed it. So, for now, the second level comment spam detection has been disabled. Not to worry, though. There’s still the first and [...]

  • Seagate … ZZZAAAPPP!!! - March 22nd, 2006

    • I’ve lost another battle with another Seagate hard disk. This one, surprisingly, is a SCSI! It’s in an array at the TV station. It was replaced back in January, and took a dump again yesterday. Back in January, it was actually dead.
    This time, it was an apparent firmware issue with the array itself. It seems [...]

  • Upgrading WordPress - March 16th, 2006

    • I’ve been beating the latest version of WordPress around a bit, both on the WordPress.com site, and have decided that it’s pretty stable now that it’s in version 2.02, and it’s probably worthwhile to upgrade.
    The first of my sites to get the upgrade is the On30Guy blog site, which I had been running [...]

  • Book Blurb - March 5th, 2006

    • Ever wanted to publish your own book? Blurb.com will allow you to do just that — from your own blog!
    They’re in beta now, with public launch expected in the spring.
    Cool.
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  • Humming Along - February 28th, 2006

    • The PC is once again humming along. A new, not-Seagate 160GB hard disk has been installed, and the drive letters all straightened out. OpenOffice.org is still pooched, for some reason, which is annoying. But otherwise, things seem to be going smoothly. A reinstall of OpenOffice will probably cure its ills.
    I also took the opportunity to [...]

  • I’ve Said it Before … - February 27th, 2006

    • … And I’ll say it again.
    SEAGATE DRIVES SUCK!
    Once again, I’ve been bitten by someone’s suggestion that I should be buying Seagate drives instead of Maxtor. Once again, I find myself in a situation where it is quite likely that gigabytes of important data have swirled down the data toilet.
    Of course, it was not backed up. [...]

  • Bad Boy and the LUMIX DMC-LZ2 - February 16th, 2006

    • LUMIX DMC-LZ2
    Uploaded by gerenm.

    I was a bad boy yesterday. I went into the local CompUSA for a package of DVD+R media, and came away with a new digital camera.
    I’ve been wanting a fairly decent point-n-shoot digital for a while now. It’s nice to be able to “carry,” while not having [...]

  • Gotta Watch What I Say … - January 25th, 2006

    • The previous entry, “Pussy Repair Bills” was entered innocently enough. But, I forgot that I have “pretty URLs” enabled. Pretty URLs is a feature that makes human-readable URLs for all archives, as opposed to links that are just strings of numbers. Unfortunately, “pussy” is a trap-word for my referrer-spam-detection.
    Any “incoming” link — even from [...]

  • New Macs Run Windows - January 11th, 2006

    • Well, yes and no. Apparently, although the new iMac and MacBook Pro will ship with MacOS X, there’s nothing to stop users from loading Windows on the machines.
    “That’s fine with us. We don’t mind. If there are people who love our hardware but are forced to put up with a Windows world, then that’s OK.”
    Read [...]

  • Fun With flickr - January 10th, 2006

    • Over at flagrantdisregard.com is a great collection of flickr toys. Lots of fun for girls and boys …
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  • flickr galleries - January 8th, 2006

    • I’ve found an excellent plug-in for WordPress that allows embedding flickr galleries into a “page.” The only bit that doesn’t work exactly as I would like is the navigation menu. The tab is not highlighting when you’re actively on a gallery page.
    Right now, the main galleries page is showing all of my flickr pro “sets”, [...]

  • flickr’ing - January 7th, 2006

    • #flickr_badge_source_txt {padding:0; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif; color:#666666;}
    #flickr_badge_icon {display:block !important; margin:0 !important; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;}
    #flickr_icon_td {padding:0 5px 0 0 !important;}
    .flickr_badge_image {text-align:center !important;}
    .flickr_badge_image img {border: 1px solid black !important;}
    #flickr_badge_uber_wrapper {width:150px;}
    #flickr_www {display:block; text-align:center; padding:0 10px 0 10px !important; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif !important; color:#3993ff !important;}
    #flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:hover,
    #flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:link,
    #flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:active,
    #flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:visited {text-decoration:none [...]

  • Color Scheme - January 7th, 2006

    • Finally got around to getting the colors tweaked, and the links page working correctly. The galleries are still a little wonky, though. In the long run, I’m going to try to figure out how to do a pretty flickr integration, and move the galleries there. I also realized that the post author and category weren’t [...]

  • Verizon Gains Cable TV Franchise in Howard County - January 5th, 2006

    • This is exciting news for those of us in the “TV Biz” in Howard County. Verizon has been awarded a Cable TV Franchise in Howard County. This means that cable TV subscribers in Howard County will finally have a choice, at least when they begin service sometime in April.
    I, for one, am less than enamored [...]

  • FlashMP3 and FlashVideo - January 4th, 2006

    • This could be interesting down the line, and for some other projects I’m involved in …
    FlashMP3Player
    FlashVLog
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  • Close Your Windows! - January 3rd, 2006

    • via the internet
    Huge virus threat rocks Microsoft
    Gee, now there’s a surprise ….
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  • True Colors - January 3rd, 2006

    • Slowly, but surely, as I get some time during the course of the next couple of days, I’ll be adjusting the colors here. Or, they may all change in one swoop. We shall see….
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  • Galleries … - January 2nd, 2006

    • The Galleries are back — finally. It’s not perfect. For some reason, I can’t get rid of or relocate the menues the way I want. I’ll figure it out eventually, when I have some time to hack at it.
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  • New Look for Blather de la Semaine - December 29th, 2005

    • I stumbled upon this new theme while doing some updates to the On30Guy web site over at Wordpress.com. It’s a good deal more customizable (and more easily customized) than most, and it plays reasonably well with the galleries (which, you may notice, are missing — they’ll be back before the day’s out). I should have [...]

  • Aggregation Aggrivation - December 27th, 2005

    • Just about the time I thought I had those RSS feeds on the Aggregations page straight, Rob went and reinvented his wheel again. Now, he’s added a photoblog and a metablog. On top of that, he’s got a flickr photostream.
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  • Serendipity Not - December 27th, 2005

    • I spent (read wasted) a couple of hours this evening playing with a blogging system called Serendipity. While I’m quite certain that it’s got some great things going for it — really, it does — it’s got some serious growing pains to overcome before it’s anywhere near ready for prime time.
    Things I really liked [...]

  • Google Blog Search - December 27th, 2005

    • Google’s Blog Search is a pretty cool thing. For instance, here’s a list of model railroad-related blog entries.
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  • A Couple of Updates - December 27th, 2005

    • Here are a couple of late Christmas presents for you: I’ve added a couple of feeds to the Aggregations page, and there are some new members of the Photostreams.
    I’ve added feeds for Rob’s Kitchen Kinesis, Turbonerd and My Big Ol’ Soapbox sites. And, I’ve added btezra to my contacts at flickr. His latest images are [...]

  • Gettin’ the Hang of Gmail - December 22nd, 2005

    • As I mentioned the other day, I’ve switched all of my e-mail to Gmail.
    As I get the hang of Gmail’s storage and organizational methods, I like it more and more! Threaded messages are stored as “conversations,” and those with the most recent activity bubble to the top. Others drift down the list as [...]

  • Performancing Testing - December 21st, 2005

    • I mentioned the Performancing plug-in for Firefox 1.5 a little while ago. Rob’s experiencing some difficulties in posting to WP blogs using it — specifically it’s adding spaces to the beginning of the title. I figured I’d finally get around to trying it [...]

  • Performancing for Firefox 1.5 - December 21st, 2005

    • Performancing for Firefox 1.5 is a tool that every blogger using WordPress, Movable Type or Blogger really ought to have. It allows access to a one-button editor for quick blog entry, and can be used to create entries for as many blogs as you’ve got.
    Very cool.
    So, why didn’t I use it for this [...]

  • Newswire Updates - December 20th, 2005

    • I’ve made a couple of changes in the Newswire.
    First, I’ve picked up the Tech News Headlines feed from The Associated Press. And, since the page is getting a bit long, I’ve added navigation links within the page.
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  • Digital TV deadline could be 2/17/09! - December 20th, 2005

    • Digital TV deadline could be 2/17/09!
    One thing I’ve said continuously is that for this to work, the FCC, broadcasters and TV manufacturers have got to get off their butts and educate the public — NOW! Otherwise, the transition is going to be a rather major fiasco.
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  • WordPress 2.0 - December 20th, 2005

    • WordPress 2.0 is right around the corner. In fact, the “final” release candidate is available for download now. As I mentioned before, many of my customizations and plug-ins are going to go right out the window. Owen Winkler outlines what’s not going to work.
    I’m guessing I’m going to wait quite a while before I [...]

  • Music A Gone-Gone … - December 19th, 2005

    • For those who are interested, and have been following along, the keyboard is gone. It left on Friday. As it was going out the door, a new (to me) computer was coming in.
    What I got was a lightly-used HP 763n PC. Yeah, I know. Not a Mac. Sorry.
    The detailed specs are here. Basically, it’s a [...]

  • PITA Project - December 16th, 2005

    • Moving e-mail from POP3 or IMAP to Gmail is not exactly an easy thing … nor particularly clean. It seems that, no matter what you try, there’s not a way to maintain the original message date/time stamping. So, transferred stuff ends up as “newer” than your new mail, if that makes any sense.
    If anyone knows [...]

  • Switching to Gmail - December 16th, 2005

    • Many months ago, I was lucky enough to get a Gmail invite. I signed up right away, but never really used the account all that much. Yesterday, I finally decided that Gmail works really well, and that I would switch over entirely.

    There are a few reasons I’m switching. First off, let me tell you that [...]

  • New Printer … Epilog - December 14th, 2005

    • It’s in. It’s installed. It prints.
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  • New Printer … Has Arrived! - December 14th, 2005

    • The new (used) Epson 1280 printer arrived around 7:50 last night. Despite being out so late, the UPS driver was cheerful, and even set the box inside the house for me. And, the tracking was accurate. Amazing.
    Anyway, I unpacked the machine, and found that it was freezing cold. So, rather than risk any damage due [...]

  • We Now Return You To Our Regular Theme, Already in Progress … - December 13th, 2005

    • We’re back. I spent a few moments experimenting with a very cool themeset called Kiwi. It’s a verison of the theme for the site no.oneslisting.com. It breaks every one of the customizations I’ve done here, but it’s very cool. I may try implementing it on a new site somewhere, just for headaches.
    Post Revisions:There are no [...]

  • The Trouble is Not in Your Set … - December 13th, 2005

    • I’m experimenting. Things are going to get broken. Please stand by.
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  • New Printer Cometh - December 10th, 2005

    • I received word today that the new (to us) Epson 1280 printer has been shipped, and I should receive it in a few days. Next up, ordering the CIS/CFS for it.
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  • Related(?) Posts - December 9th, 2005

    • I’ve installed a little plug-in that lists posts similar to the current post for your enjoyment. I’m not sure how the thing works, meaning, how it decides what’s related. The logic is a little questionable. But, you may find something else worth reading here.
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  • iGuy! - December 8th, 2005

    • via Halley

    This is just too cool. Wish I could afford an iPod!
    Hey, Theresa — you could get Rob one for his Nano!
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  • It’s back! - December 8th, 2005

    • After several weeks of peace and quite in my referrer logs, the referrer SPAM from porn, drug, fake Rolex and other illicet sites has come back with a vengance. Is there any real way to stop this crap? My rewrite rules are getting unwieldy, to say the least!
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  • More Wonderfulness - December 7th, 2005

    • Here’s another one for observant readers — Photostream. I’m gettin’ to really like some of the cool things that can be done with RSS. Photostream is another set of RSS feeds. These are of some of my favorite Flickr streams. Right now, I’m only showing the most recent image from each stream. I trust you [...]

  • Aggregations - December 7th, 2005

    • Sharp-eyed readers will notice a new menu tab in the page header called Aggregations. Curious readers will want to know what it’s all about. For those who’ve not yet clicked upon it, it’s basically a set of aggregated links to the last ten posts on some of my favorite blogs and web sites. I’ll be [...]

  • New Printer? - December 5th, 2005

    • I’ve decided that the time has come to acquire a tabloid-format photo printer and a continuous inkflow system (CIS). Of course, right now there’s no way I can afford to buy new, so, I’m perusing the deals on eBay.
    There are quite a few excellent prices on Epson 1280’s out there, which prints at 5760 x [...]

  • Firefox 1.5 - December 2nd, 2005

    • I just upgraded my browser to Firefox 1.5. One guy reported problems with it with both WordPress and Movable Type, but no one seems to be able to reproduce what he’s seeing. Let’s see if my luck’s any good…
    Some of the new features of 1.5 are here.
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  • So Much for PS3 - December 2nd, 2005

    • No, this has nothing to do with Sony’s Playstation 3. C’mon, you all know me better than that. I don’t do console games, and I rarely even do PC games. So, why am I dismissing PS3?
    Actually, it’s my PC’s third power supply, and it’s about to go. Since I built this machine 5 years ago, [...]

  • WordPress 2.0 - November 29th, 2005

    • WordPress 2.0 is coming, and apparently fairly soon. I’ve been seeing some bits of that development over at my On30Guy WordPress.com site.
    Pretty much everything I see, I like. However, I’m dreading the upgrade, both here and at Orchard Studios. Both sites are heavily customized and use a large number of plug-ins — plug-ins which [...]

  • Burp … - November 29th, 2005

    • ICDSoft had a little burp last night during a server core upgrade. It was supposed to be a 10 minute scheduled shut down, but something went kerfluey. Subsequently, I’ve missed a bunch of e-mail — about 4 hours worth. I’m not sure yet whether it was queued or not.
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  • Your Maps, Your Way - November 9th, 2005

    • Here’s an interesting idea — customize Yahoo!s maps to itegrate them into your site. Very cool.
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  • Local News Added to Newswire - November 7th, 2005

    • We’ve added feeds for local (Columbia, Maryland) area news to the Newswire tab. Now you can check out what’s happening in our neck-o-the-woods.
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  • On Web Site Design - October 24th, 2005

    • I’m getting ready to lauch yet another new domain, this time for Orchard Studios, our venture into the business of photography. I provide the link for reference only, as at this point, there’s nothing there.
    I’m planning to manage the site using WordPress, of course. I don’t think that I want to build this in Dreamweaver [...]

  • Star of the Show - October 21st, 2005

    • As I mentioned yesterday, I attended a video production trade show yesterday, along with my boss at GTV. And, we went with a fairly specific agenda. One of the things that I wanted to look closely at was the new JVC GY-HD100U HDV camcorder.
    This puppy was the star of the show! All day long, the [...]

  • BMWFilms.com - October 20th, 2005

    • Very, very cool.
    http://usa.bmwfilms.com
    Did I mention very, very cool?
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  • Moving … - October 19th, 2005

    • I’ve been having speed issues with the server that this site is hosted on for the past day or so. ICDSoft believes this to be a problem between Hong Kong, where the server resides, and the U.S. As a result, they’re going to be migrating the domain to a newer, U.S.-based server, where it can [...]

  • RSS Links Update II - October 19th, 2005

    • Okay, now I get it!
    It seems the problem I was having with the RSS links was not actually a problem at all. I thought that the list was not updating, because I was not seeing the newest entries where I expected them. Since they weren’t where I expected them, I didn’t look far enough to [...]

  • RSS Links Update - October 18th, 2005

    • There appears to be some problem with the RSS feed from the On30 Guy site at Worpress.com. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it doesn’t seem to want to update. Viewing the XML output shows the newest entries, but they’re not displaying here. I’m going to leave things up, and maybe it will [...]

  • RSS Links - October 15th, 2005

    • I’ve added a little function to the sidebar that displays links to the most recent entries on my On30Guy model railroading site. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to get to it, but it’s there. The links will open in a new browser window.
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  • gada.be there…. - October 10th, 2005

    • via Halley
    Okay, this looks cool…

    Chris Pirillo writes about gada.be service.
    More information at the gada.be site.
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  • Zap-a-Zap-a-Zap! - October 8th, 2005

    • It seems that the flickering and blooming issue with the $5 19″ monitor was, indeed, a serious issue. I decided this morning to hook it up to my laptop, in an attempt to determine whether or not the problem was in the monitor or in the computer.
    Things seemed to be proceeding normally with the boot [...]

  • Coming Along Nicely… - October 7th, 2005

    • Donna’s new PC is coming along fairly nicely. About 95% of her applications are installed, and the hardware’s working generally well. The $5 monitor is a touch flaky — it tends to bloom a bit now and then. I may have to get another one next week. But, there were plenty there.
    There are still a [...]

  • Such a Deal I Got For You… - October 7th, 2005

    • I never made it to “work” at Mr. Z’s today. I had to drop the tapes from last night’s shoot at the studio, and make a trip to the surplus store at the county. Howard County gives its employees second crack at all the stuff that’s been written off or surplussed out. First crack goes [...]

  • Leave it to Comcast … - October 1st, 2005

    • It has been several months now since we switched from Comcast’s high-speed internet service to Verizon DSL. On a whim, I decided to check and see if Comcast had ever bothered to cancel my e-mail account. Nope! 215 SPAM messages there. It seems that they’ve never bothered to delete my account from the data base [...]

  • Google and Page Ranking - September 24th, 2005

    • I found this interesting article on how Google ranks pages. The cat’s out of the bag, folks!
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  • Illustrator Alternative - September 19th, 2005

    • via e-mail
    Looking for an alternative to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw? Then try Inkscape, an open source alternative that’s freely available for Windows, Linux and MacOS-X.
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  • What? Nothing Since Saturday? - September 13th, 2005

    • Yeah, I know. We’ve not posted anything since Saturday! Sometimes, it just works out that way. I did post updates to a few entries, but updated entries don’t bubble to the top of the page … yet. I’m trying to figure out how to get WordPress to do a sort that is first by date [...]

  • Little Adjustments - September 8th, 2005

    • I’ve been slogging along throuhg all the posts with images, moving the images and links into Gallery2 galleries, and getting all the links to work. I think that I’ve gotten all of mine moved over. Tomorrow, I’ll attack Donna’s.
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  • A Few Glitches … - September 7th, 2005

    • Something hit my computer tonight. I’m not sure what. The thing got freaky and I had to reboot. The first time around, I got the very frightening and annoying “Primary HD Failure,” followed by the equally frightening and annoying “NTLDR Not Found” error, and, of course, the boot failed. No, I wasn’t poking around at [...]

  • Header Graphic - September 7th, 2005

    • /geren/DelMarVa/Chincateague Sunset 1.jpg
    For those interested, here’s the full version of the photograph that I took the header graphic from. I made this photograph a few years ago, before I had a digital camera, using my old Canon Rebel S-II, and a Canon 35-80mm zoom, on Ilford XP2 chromogenic black-and-white film. No exposure information was recorded, [...]

  • Web Mastering 101 — Why You Should Keep Your Images Local - September 6th, 2005

    • via Rob
    Here’s an excellent reason why you should never, ever hotlink to images on someone else’s site. (Note - may no longer be funny once website owner clues in.)
    I love it! Looks like something I would do to someone who torqued me off — except I might not be as kind! Almost as good as [...]

  • Images with Borders - September 6th, 2005

    • You may notice that some images have borders around them now, and many do not. Images that have borders are linked either to a gallery or image within a gallery. In any case, clicking on an image with a border will allow you to access and view related images. Neat, uh, huh?
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  • Republishing RSS Feeds - September 3rd, 2005

    • A new version of Fetch-RSS has been released. Fetch-RSS is a plug-in for WordPress that would allow me to republish the RSS feed from another blog or web site. Depending on the feed, that could be headlines, excerpts or whole pages. Sounds pretty cool, huh?
    But, why would I want to do this?
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  • Oops, Lost the Talkr … - September 2nd, 2005

    • I just realized that when I change the site templates, I lost (meaning I screwed up and forgot to add) all the talkr podcast links. Was anybody listening? Or, should I just kill the feed?
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  • Testing, testing … - September 2nd, 2005

    • At the request of one of the developer’s I’m going to be breaking the galleries over night tonight. They’ll be back on line sometime either early tomorrow morning, or tomorrow evening.
    [Note: I chose to break only one of the galleries that I know is at issue, instead of the whole shootin' match. So, for the [...]

  • Got it Goin’ On, Now, Baby! - September 1st, 2005

    • Okay, there was something pretty whacked out in a template somewhere, and it plain wasn’t going to work here. I’ve gotten a new batch of templates for the gallery that look okay (still some tweaking required), and I’m busy uploading the new photo albums. So far, nothing has exploded. I say, enjoy!
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  • Something’ Still Broke - September 1st, 2005

    • Damn! I’ve run into a problem. For some reason, I’m getting nasty errors in galleries that contain more than 20 images, because the gallery index spans more than one page. Not sure yet what’s going on, and I’ve got to leave for TV-land in a few minutes. Bah!
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  • Galleries … an Update - September 1st, 2005

    • Thanks to some great help from Brian and “Ozgreg” at the WPG2 support forum, Gallery2 RC2 is now fully integrated into Blather de la Semaine. As it turns out, I probably could have retained the previous theme templates, but, that’s okay. Maybe, if I get the urge, I’ll switch back sometime down the road.
    Of course, [...]