Category Archives: Cool Stuff

Volkswagen Advertisements featuring Peter Stormare

Posted on April 22, 2006 | Comments Off on Volkswagen Advertisements featuring Peter Stormare

Ok, It's a given that I'm a Peter Stormare fan. I've enjoyed his performance in just about every movie I've seen him being terrifying in "Fargo" or playing Satan in "Constantine". He tends to make a movie or tv show more interesting.

That being the case, the Volkswagen ads featuring him "Unpimping the auto" is perfect! The goal of an advertisement is to make you remember the product. With Peter Stormare in the video, it works. The expression on his face as he hits the button is great.

For more videos on google of Volkswagen GTI advertisements see here. 

Music I'm listening to now:
"Defeat You" by Smash Mouth from their "Astro Lounge " album.
 

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different

Spring time

Posted on April 14, 2006 | Comments Off on Spring time

TomatoesSoon I'll be able to plant these tomatoes in the ground. We haven't decided what we'll grow this season, but at the least it will be Tomatoes and Mixed lettuce. Cucumbers grow in the shade but tend to take over all the ground.

Cleaning the backyard was a hassle. Instead of raking up the old leaves and dead grass I lowered my mulching lawn mower, attached the bag and scooped nearly all of it up.  Afterwards, it was just a matter of cleaning up the leftover leaves and matted dead grass.

Can't wait to plant these.

 

Music I'm listening to now:
"100 Years" by "Five For Fighting" from the "The Battle for Everything " album.

 

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Posted in Cool Stuff

Fault Tolerant Servers

Posted on March 27, 2006 | Comments Off on Fault Tolerant Servers

Words you never want to see on a Server console:

Hit F1 to Rebuild Drive

Needless to say, I was a little Worried. The Proliant is an Odd and quirky server to set up. The 256 megs of RAM in it do not have a sequential addressing scheme. For the Non technical: It has big gaps in it's memory. To get Linux to "see" the memory properly, you have to map the memory segments in grub.conf or Linux will think you have 640K only and will just not install. 

Aside from this, the server  is a Pentium Pro with Old SCSI drives that are one big sequential volume. I've set it up and forgot about how I did that exactly. Being a bit of a chicken, I did NOT hit F1, backed up the server and then rebooted and hit F1. It came up perfectly and near as I can tell, the files are intact. RAID is a beautiful thing.

BTW, I know the Proliant 5000 is an old  server with "old" technology, but that's exactly why I'm using it. Linux has a small footprint so it doesn't need a "Kick Ass" server to run nicely. To make life more fun, Compaq SCSI drives are more reliable than IDE with a lower MTBF.


Music I'm listening to right Now:
"On her Mind" by Duncan Sheik from his "Daylight" Album.

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different

Backup Server is up and running

Posted on March 25, 2006 | Comments Off on Backup Server is up and running

Ok, some background: My current server is an Old Comaq Proliant 5000. The current Kernel does not support my SCSI drive array without recompiling the Kernel. To make matter worse, one of the drives in the array is reporting that it needs rebuilding. I have a backup server (which while faster is not as Fault Tolerant) for just this contingency.

Build the Server: Done
Install All needed PERL Modules: Done
Install MySQL: Done
Install Movable Type: Done
Restore the DB and certain Directories: Done
Test MT: No Good

The problem: Getting GD to work. 

What a Pain that was. I have a tendancy of getting proficient on things that work, so when something new breaks, it takes me a little while to figure it out properly. In this case, the "fix" was re installing GD-Devel.


Music I'm listening to now:
"Would You…?" by "Touch and Go" from their "I Find You Very Attractive" Album. 

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Posted in Cool Stuff

Flickr Meetup – The Elephants Have Arrived

Posted on March 21, 2006 | Comments Off on Flickr Meetup – The Elephants Have Arrived

Went to see the Elephants march into NYC. It was a lot of fun, and I met more people from Flickr. The funny thing is: Couldn’t get too many photos of the Elephants! Those guys are Fast! LarimdaME did a great job of wrangling us all together. Other than freezing my toes, it was a great.

Got a lot of other shots that I put up in Flickr.


Music I’m listening to now:
“Crazy” by Seal from Seal (1991)

Note: Seal’s Music Never gets Old.

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Ajaxify: EnhancedEntryEditing by Arvind Satyanarayan

Posted on March 19, 2006 | Comments Off on Ajaxify: EnhancedEntryEditing by Arvind Satyanarayan

Ajaxify: EnhancedEntryEditing by Arvind Satyanarayan is a Very cool and useful Movable Type Plugin.

It makes use of another program called TinyMCE for creating and Editing Movable type pages. Turns out that you can configure TinyMCE for all sorts of Options.

 

Among Other Things:

  1. Easy Ordered  Lists
  2. Tables
  3. Insert/Edit Flash
  4. Easy Font Control
  5. Easy HTML Code viewing/editing
  6. Easy Custom Character (∞) insertion
  7. Sub and Super Script
  8. Easy Color Control

It's a Nice plugin.

 


Music I'm listening to now:
Nothing, I'm watching TV (TLC on Cable) with my Wife

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Posted in Cool Stuff

Mars Needs Women

Posted on March 18, 2006 | Comments Off on Mars Needs Women

No not really, but the Title got your attention. Google now has Google Mars. This is on top of Google Moon and Google Earth. You could read about it here on Google Blog.

It's a pretty interesting site that allows you to, among other things, allows you to find out where various space craft (or their remains) is located on Mars surface. As a child, I had a gigantic Map of Mars on my wall from the National Geographic. The Google Mars site makes me wish we had Web pages back in the day…


Unrelated: "Mars Needs Women" was a movie in 1967. You so have to go to BMovie Central to see an actual clip of the movie. I kid you not, the Main character, Dop, wears what looks like a Wet suit with Duct Tape for Silver Stripes.


Music I'm listening to now:
"Did You Get My Message?" by Jason Mraz  from Mr. A-Z

 

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different

Flickr Meetup – Hey Hot Shot!

Posted on March 18, 2006 | Comments Off on Flickr Meetup – Hey Hot Shot!

Via the NYC Social Flickr group, photographers have the opportunity to meet people with the same interest in photography. It also gives you the opportunity to meet people who actually post on Flickr. This is the second one I've been too and like the first, it was a lot of fun. This is the photo we took in the Really Small vestibule at Nyonya, a really good Malaysian restaurant on Grand Street. Many is the time I've eaten there and I highly recommend it. A few of us went there after meeting at the Hey Hot Shot reception.

In this meet up, we went to the Jen Bekman gallery Wednesday night. Lots of great photo's displayed, interesting people; in short, It was a lot of fun. I got wind of it via the NYC Social Flickr group, but it's been advertised via word of mouth all over the place.

The "Hey Hot Shot" competition is a great idea by Jen Bekman. It gives interested photographers a chance to submit their work, have it reviewed by professionals and, if selected by the panel, displayed. I think it's a great idea and I hope for it's a continued success.

Photo originally posted by me on my Flickr account. 


Music I'm listening to now:
"Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head" by Gorillaz from Demon Days

 

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Posted in Cool Stuff

Photostroll – American Museum of Natural History

Posted on February 27, 2006 | Comments Off on Photostroll – American Museum of Natural History

Went on a Photostroll organized by Ken on Sunday. It was a lot colder than this shot show, but it was a great deal of fun. When we do the next one, my wife and I are sure to go.

See our photos here.

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Images

New York City Photobloggers 6

Posted on February 16, 2006 | Comments Off on New York City Photobloggers 6


After being Sick in bed most of this week, I was finally able to work on the Photo’s I took at NYCPB 6. IMO, All the presenters gave good examples of their work. It was pretty interesting an I recommend you check out the Work represented there:

NYCPB’s Featured Photobloggers:
Corrie and Lex officersrow.org
Joseph Holmes Joe’s NYC
Noah Kalina Noah kalina Interiors
Tod Seelie Of Quiet
Jimmie Yoo cornershots.com
Reza Mazaheri Photos by Reza Mazaheri

I posted my photo of the Event on Flickr

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Images