Moving! by HMX
So my host, SiteGround is having a ridiculous special on hosting. For $9.95, you get a domain name plus a year of hosting. Normally is is $9.95/mo, or roughly $120/yr so you pay for one month, get 11 free. Can’t beat that deal, or at least I don’t feel as if I could let it pass. The reason for this is I have been wanting to move to something shorter than what I currently have. At the time it seemed cool, but I miss the shortness of zhe.net, my previous domain, and this one is just too prone to random typos. So now we are moving to hniw.us. For the curious, it stands for 2,4,6,8,10,12-hexanitro-2,4,6,8,10,12-hexaazaisowurtzitan and also goes by the name CL-20. Some of you may recognize CL-20, and what makes it so great is that it is more explosive than HMX. I’m a (al)chemist and I like things that go ’splody’, but I am smart enough not to pursue this field. Instead, I read about nitroamines and am grateful that I don’t have to bother learning mechanisms for organic chemistry. The move probably won’t happen until sometime in 2010, but it will happen. I’ll let you all know when everything is up and running.
So if you are interested, it is SiteGround. I don’t know when the sale ends, but I’m sure it will probably coincide with the 25th of this month, or maybe the 31st.
It almost makes me wish I had an iPhone by HMX
Having recently come into possession of an iPod Touch, I am now learning the joys of the App Store. For what I need, the Touch is great but there are times when I wish I had a built in mic like the iPhone. One reason, to record lectures and meetings, is functional while the other is pure fun. I don’t care about VoIP. The number one reason for Touch owners to demand a mic is a app by Smule called ‘I am T-Pain’. It’s an auto-tuner in your pocket that I believe allows you to sing along with various T-Pain tracks. It may allow you to do more but I’ll never know as I have no iPhone and I don’t see the iPhone moving to a decent carrier in the US anytime soon. For those of you with iPhones, the app is $3 and is sure to keep you and your friends entertained long enough to justify the cost. Video after the break. (more…)
On ‘Real’ Math vs ‘Fake’ Math by HMX
How hard drive space has been a contentious issue for quite a while. The issue is that when one purchases a 500GB or worse, a 2TB hard drive, they get home only to discover that their new drive shows up as anything but what it is listed as. Some attribute this to hard drive manufactures using ‘fake’ – or base 10 – math to accurately represent the metric kilo, mega, giga and tera prefixes. The confusion comes from the historic fact that at one point in time 210, a value of 1024, was approximated with the metric kilo prefix. As I’m sure you are well aware, 1000(or 103 as implied by kilo) ≠ 1024(210). When it was first used, the error involved ~2.34%. For an 80MB hard drive, this was acceptable. As hard drives increased into the 100s, 1000s and 1000000s of MBs, the error involved in this historic approximation became more and more pronounced as manufacturers stuck to the strict SI definition of each prefix while operating systems continued to rely upon base 2, or binary, definitions. (more…)
On Discovering Discovery by HMX
In the late summer of 2003, when I had the pleasure of hearing The Postal Service being played in a Biloxi Hot Topic, I must admit that I was smitten. Being a fan of 80s synthpop bands such as The Petshop Boys and Depeche Mode, I immediately latched on to this new band and was even treated to a delightful tale as to how they came to name the band. It has now been 6 years since that faithful trip and I have remained faithful to the Postal Service, but with no new album in site, I have had to begin looking for new sources of similar sound to fill the gaping hole left by Ben and Jimmy. (more…)
Update: New Look! by HMX
Here is something that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. I originally took inspiration from Photocrati Lightbox theme, but couldn’t see myself paying for something that I could recreate myself. This has been a long, and frustrating, endeavor as I attempted to automate and integrate as much as possible. I wanted to keep the webcam, but I wanted it fully integrated with the Nextgen Gallery plugin. After many late nights, I believe I have come up with a solution that works. As I have only tested it myself, I thought that I could roll out the new design – in celebration of the Blythe New Year – and leave a camera pointed out my window while Oppenheimer and I take a trip to warmer climates.
During that time, I hope that what few readers I have will visit and enjoy the view from my living room window. If you notice that anything is broken, please leave a comment here and I will try to address it as soon as possible. Commenting should be open, so there is no need to register. You’re comments might not immediately appear the first time, but once I approve them then you should be good to go from now and until eternity. Let me know what is broken, how the site looks in whatever browser you are using. If something is off, could you try to do a screen capture and post it here for me to see along with your browser name and version.
I admit, if you use IE then things will probably look horrid. I am a Mac and linux user and I’ve viewed the site primarily on webkit/khtml and gecko based browsers only. I have tried to stick to standards and there is some CSS3 thrown in – mostly for @font-face support – so as long as your browser is well behaved, the site should be well behaved. In the case of IE lte 7, your millage may vary. That being said, even with IE 8 something things might not look as I expect them to. As it stands, the site on my MBP looks almost identical in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. When I land in Phoenix tomorrow, I’ll check things and try to post screenshots of what the site should look like. I’ll also be posting more pictures of a younger Oppie that were left on Blythe’s machine.
Update: Commenting should now work, I hope. If not, send me an @ msg on twitter or find me on fb.
Links:
Safari 4
Firefox 3.5
Opera 10
Ted Kennedy, 22 Feb. 1932 – 25 Aug. 2009 by HMX
I just want to take a moment to celebrate the memory of Ted Kennedy, youngest of the Kennedy boys who passed away yesterday after loosing a battle to brain cancer. It ended a long career of public service, which began in 1962 after a special election to fill the senate seat once held by his brother John. Mr. Kennedy, like his brother’s John F. and Robert Kennedy will be missed.
On Ukuleles by HMX
For my birthday, I decided to invest in a ukulele after watching some pretty awesome performances on youtube1,2. It took a while for the uke to arrive – a Lanikai LU-21T Tenor Ukulele – and when it did, both Blythe and I fiddled around with it for a bit before it was relegated to its case as we began the process of moving her two blocks and me two(three?) states. Recently, having arrived and settled into my new northwestern home, I picked up my ukulele again as a means of entertaining myself by doing something productive. Well, that isn’t exactly true. During a conversation with a villutus sicarius, while watching Jake Shimabukuro tear it up on youtube, I pulled out my own uke to practice some chords and today Blythe has trilled me by alerting me of a source for tabs of our favorite Britney Spears
I know, Britney Spears? What must I be thinking? Honestly, I can’t provide anyone with a satisfactory answer other than I have been oddly attracted to the song Toxic ever since hearing it in 2004. But back to the story at hand. I now have tablature for the song Toxic, as played by Molly Lewis, and the opening is hard as f*** to play on my poor Lanikai. Molly’s Fluke has some sustaining power or I just really suck at hammer-on/pull-offs because I can’t get it…yet. I haven’t given up, but in the mean time I have taken to trying out some of the easier tunes available at Ukulele Hunt such as Take On Me
1 Jake Shimabukuro playing As My Guitar Gently Weeps
2 Molly Lewis playing Toxic
On Insomnia: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by HMX
Insomnia is a cruel mistress; despite that, there are some nice aspects of finding myself awake – night after night – at 2 a.m. and beyond — the opportunity to watch movies I might otherwise not watch. That is the case tonight, as I find myself unable to sleep and with a middling curiosity to explore the features of my Roku Digital Video Player. The player was provided – for free – by Qwest and works quite nicely as I recently made the switch from Blockbuster Total Access to Netflix. The change had been coming, I was just too stubborn to change until Blockbuster change their policy on in-store returns. Following confirmation of the change – which they never sent me notice off – I closed the account and jumped ship to Netflix and I’ve been pretty happy every since.
On Geography Lessons by HMX
I normally try not to propagate this type of information, but this was too unbelievable to pass up on. I still don’t know if it is a fake or not, but having spotted two occurrences from supposedly separate broadcasts, I am now questioning the geographical knowledge of the map-makers working for Fox News. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I will provide links to the two incidents and let you find the mistakes for yourself. If you don’t spot it immediately, it’s alright. Just remember that ‘the nile’ is not just river in Egypt. (more…)
Apple WWDC 2009 by HMX
Today Apple invited to developers and press to San Francisco to hear what they’ve been working on in Cupertino since their last press outing. Known for their secrecy, these events are always big draws for Apple, often preceded by weeks of speculation based on rumors as to what new gadgets Apple will be announcing. This years event was no let down, with announcements running the gamut from a complete refresh of the entire Macbook Pro line (including the promotion of the unibody 13in Macbook to pro status), price reductions, a shipping date for Snow Leopard and new iPhones. The excitement, for me, was the announcement of Snow Leopard and the new Mac hardware. It will ship in September and only set you back $29 for a single license of $49 for a family license. The pricing is in line with Apple’s view of what Snow Leopard is and more along the lines of what I feel the cost for Windows 7 should be. I won’t bore you with all the details of this morning’s announcements, but you’ll be able to find links to the announcements and video, when available, after the break.
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