I went ahead and bought another app. This one is called BlogPress, and allows me to post to my blog from the iPod touch.
— Post From My iPhone
Location:14th Ave N,Fargo,United States
Designed by Apple in Cupertino
So I finally gave in and bought an iPod touch. This is the first Apple product I have ever purchased new. So far, I like it a lot. I’m finding that there is no shortage of applications, and that the ones I have downloaded aren’t too bad.
One of the big things to get used to is the predictive text input. Basically you can get really close to what you want to type and it will make a decision based on what you typed. I have yet to put my faith in it yet fully.
Well, I know that this is a rather short post, but hats because I wrote it out using the wordpress application. Lots of little errors that I don’t feel like going back to fix.
RIP Einstein (2003-2010)
Einstein, my first desktop PC turned home server in the corner, has passed on to the great /dev/null in the sky.
When I first bought him, back in 2003, he was but a refurbished Dell Dimension 2350, with a mere 128MB of RAM. It was the fruit of a summer working for my parents. He arrived while I was at work, and I begged to go home and set him up to play with the then fun new features of Windows XP. That Christmas, I got my first real video game, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, along with a 256MB memory upgrade. Einstein could be called a gaming machine. We had great fun playing with the new Windows Movie Maker 2.0, too.
Einstein soon outgrew his integrated video adapter. I had been browsing the local computer stores for a PCI graphics card, for Einstein only had PCI, no AGP. I found a nice GeForce FX 5200 at OfficeMax for a reasonable price. I added it, and suddenly I could run games at 1024×768! It seriously brought Einstein up to current standards for the time.
The next great improvement was a new 120GB IDE HD and a 512MB stick of RAM, making the two slots add to 768MB, around 2006. It vastly improved storage over the 30GB stock HD that came with him. Now I could have all my games installed at once without swapping back and forth between the big ones. And, everything was much zippier.
When I purchased Galileo in 2007, Einstein started to move to a server role. He didn’t play nice with the video card anymore, which I’ve now found to be defective. I installed Ubuntu Server edition, and Einstein had new life. It was my first home server experience. I installed VMWare Server and ran some virtual machines. I also installed TeamSpeak 2, and ran a voice chat server while in games.
In his last year, he has been my NAS/Print/Remote access server, as well as a TeamSpeak 2 and TS3 server that just sat in the corner and never bothered anyone. He had solid uptime, was quiet (comparatively), and never made a fuss about updates or errors. In his final days I was contemplating reinstalling the OS, but it was so rock solid that I didn’t see the urgency. He’s in a better place now.
I’ve already began working on ghostofeinstein, a virtual machine to take over the duties that Einstein has left behind.
A test, from Drivel
Good Morning!
I’ve been setting up new and exciting things on my Linux laptop. All to get ready for another wonderful semester of learning. Well, not really. I’m mostly procrastinating on other things, like cleaning my kitchen. I’ve now set up Drivel, a product that allows you to post to a wordpress blog, such as this one, from Linux. It means that I don’t have to log in to the site every time I want to post. However, if you want pretty pictures, I have to go in and put them in after the fact. Mildly annoying, but worth not having to log in for a simple post.
So what do I have on tap for this semester? Why, many fun and exciting classes! I have Assembly programming, Random Processes, Technical Writing (yes, another English class) and Senior Design 1 (meaning I’m getting close to graduating). I hope they all go well. I spent nearly $340 on books, only 3 of them, and I’m hoping that it isn’t a rough semester.
Well, that’s all for now. Time to tackle the kitchen, I suppose.
Christmas Blizzard 2009
Happy Holidays. We got a blizzard.
2009 Christmas Village
The season of many holidays has begun. I just this morning put up my annual Christmas Village, this time in my apartment. It is pretty good this year, as I have a nice shelf to put it. I’ve taken a few pictures, and posted them up here for all to see. Enjoy!
Thanksgiving 2009
Ahh yes, the annual stuffing of the faces. My Thanksgiving this year was spent with far more people than ever before, and probably made it one of the best holidays that I can remember. At one meal (yes, there were two!) we had a wonderful brined and oven-roasted bird, a 12 lbs fresh one. It was delicious. Then, at meal #2, three different birds were served. One, as pictured here, was deep fried (I think my favorite), one was smoked (overnight) and the third was grilled (no parenthetical comment needed). All three were wonderful, and the food that went along with them was great.
So, now we’re officially in the Christmas season. The gift buying, the extreme deals on stuff (already seen a few this Cyber Monday), and more food. I hope to keep eating…and eating…and eating…
The Wonderful World of Amateur Radio
So this past weekend the Red River Radio Amateurs had their annual Hamfest. After many suggestions that I take the test and get my FCC license, I studied up and headed out there. I had no idea what to expect, so I brought along a friend to keep me company. When I got there, a gentlemen from the National Weather Service was giving a presentation on WSR-88D (basically, Doppler Radar). That was the first sign that I was in the right place. As we walked through the doors to the flea market area, we knew we were in the right place. Rows of tables lined with radio equipment, computers, electronics parts, and odd stuff that just looked cool. We walked around, finding some interesting items. There was a low-voltage tester that looked about 50-60 years old. It was in a solid metal case, and just looked really cool. We also found an old Commodore 64 (we think…) for sale for $25. But the best would probably be a couple of VHF radios for near $100. Had I gotten my license, I would have gotten a radio there and called it good. Unfortunately, the testing was late in the event, and so most of the good stuff was gone by the time I was license-bound.
I did successfully get my Technician class license. I’m going to be studying up for the General class exam so that I can have access to the lower frequency bands (the ones that go farther distances, like Italy and Spain). Right now I have access to most everything in the 50Mhz+ bands, and am cutting my teeth on VHF (2 meter). I was fortunate to find a gentleman in Fargo that was willing to sell his old handheld to me for a great price. It is a Yaesu FT-11R 2m handheld with a load of features. I also received an offer for a mobile VHF unit, but it was more expensive, and I knew that the handheld would work out of the box with no power concerns (Mobiles need a power supply, like a car, or a bench supply. I have no bench supplies, and I’d like to use it outside the car.) I’m concerned that the handheld’s battery is not very good, but I’m still playing with it and seeing if I can power it without a battery (like…from a car).
All in all, I’m having a great time. I’m meeting new people (unfortunately I haven’t gotten to put faces to call signs yet) and learning a lot about this quite huge world of Amateur Radio.
Out at the RV Park
Photoshop Fun
I had some fun photoshopping this morning. I took a picture of Annie’s Parlour in Minneapolis and transformed it into this. It was quite fun.
Here’s the original for comparison.