Again, up until the wee hours of the morning. This vacation has turned me into a night-shift worker zombie. I did get alot of really fun DVD watching in. I have now finished watching all of the LOTR Extended Edition movies as well as about 6 other titles. The names don't matter, its the fact that I finally sat down and watched a few movies from end to end that matters. I normally can't sit still for that long. I need a movie theater setting usually to do it.

Also, I keep having troubles with the Flickr uploader tool. It keeps stalling on me and either uploading multiple copies of the same image, or else finishes and prompts me that I am done, but never removes the images from its queue that it just uploaded. Its being a pain.

My sisters wedding is this weekend, I got my tux and I am all set. Plus I need to call Lee at some point because apparantly he was trying to get ahold of me (LEE: Sorry my friend, I was deep in vacation catharsis when you must have called me, I will call you tomorrow).

As a sidenote, I think I am going to apply some sort of zebra striping to this blog html design soon. I think I will make it all CSS based also.

Created 196 weeks, 1 day ago

I was going to wait for .net clr 2.0 to be released, but since I have the code cleaned up and in a very easy to maintain place, I figure what the heck, lets go for another minor release. I'll probably do a bunch of one or two test installs this week and finally put together some install documentation and prepare some FAQ's.

Additionally, I added a Captcha feature to the login and contact page.

Those waiting on another version of the mp3t lemon4orange code will have to hold on stop writing me e-mail while I get some more work done on the xml backend for this codebase. Plus I wanted to update the mp3t to have a few new features before it goes out.

1. ability to comment on albums, artists and tracks
2. the ability to star-rate albums, artists and tracks
3. basic tracking of user usage for these functions
4. some kind of profiled playlist building probably using del.ici.ous interface widgets

Created 196 weeks, 2 days ago

But then in started working again

Created 196 weeks, 2 days ago

I have always liked the Opera web client. They have supported tabbed browsing forever; as well as incremental page refreshing on the client and some other really slick tools for people who have needed more out of a browser than a simple render-engine. So I downloaded the new version since they decided to drop ads in the free version. I am impressed on how well it renders my site without having to clean much more of it up (its mostly XHTML 1.1 with a few lingering tables). I have to give the opera team creds on bringing that old browser up to date.

So I decided to test with it now. Just looking at my site, It almost rendered completely the same as FF except for fieldsets. I would still give it an A for rendering, and then another A+ for good UI and an A for the toolset provided (all kinds of new slick tools built into it). And all in an installed 5.15 MB folder. I know that Opera had been pushing the Portable and Embedded Browser technology, and I guess they took that small-footprint optimization and just carried it over (compared to FireFox 15.3 MB [However both occupy RAM @ ~ 22 MB] ).

Wow, those images got way too compressed. I apologize. I am still adjusting some of the encoding options on my file-upload script.

As a side note, I was supposed to be on vacation for 5 days this week. I am just about to use up day 3. I finally got a chance to get out of the house for some outdoor activities today. I just got back from doing some hiking, boy it was really hot.

Get Opera

Created 196 weeks, 2 days ago

Here are a few places I have lived courtesy of Google Earth.

You should be able to just save these files to your computer and then open them to fly to the locations within GoogleEarth.

File Attachment: SanAntonioTexasHome.kmz (442 bytes)

File Attachment: SanAntonioTexasWhereIWork.kmz (422 bytes)

File Attachment: VenturaCaliforniaApartment.kmz (445 bytes)

File Attachment: VenturaCaliforniaHome.kmz (440 bytes)

File Attachment: CarpinteriaSkinmarketLocation.kmz (447 bytes)

Created 196 weeks, 3 days ago

Sunk a 50 foot chip-shot today at Flying L on 13. I chipped it within 10 feet and it rolled right in.  I was pretty proud; I want to think it was because I am improving at golf. OR..... maybe it was the desperation (motivation?) to end a round of 18 holes as soon as possible in the 105 degree heat, with a clould-less sky. Whatever it was, it seemed my brother-in-law and father were playing well too. It was a great game. I am going to get to the range more often as it starts to cool down.

I am craving the left-over sushi from last night. In fact, most of it wasn't even sushi at all. Tori Katsu, Teppan Yaki, edamame, vegetables tempura, agedashi tofu, and some acapulco rolls (really, these are hardly even sushi). HOWEVER, it was a fantastic spread of food, expecially with the Sapporo.

Tomorrow, I and somefriends/ co-workers are heading to a funeral for a friend/co-worker. :(  I can't seem to get anything down that even begins to explain how I feel about the loss I feel.

Created 196 weeks, 5 days ago

I stayed up late to see how my friends and family who remained in the Houston area tonight fared (many of them didn't evacuate [@ 4$ for a gallon of gas, and hours of sitting in a hot car] maybe there was some redeeming value in staying).

Thankfully, it appears now that Rita puttered out and decided against destroying Galveston and Houston. It looks like now that the only people doing cleanup will be the sanitation department and whoever the unlucky business owners were who's buildings caught fire (I wonder how many of those are actually the product of arson under the guise of a disaster).

The news reporters who were on TV in preparation for a huge event looked bored and disinterested in the situation. I don't blame them. I guess the networks had sold some pretty valuable crisis-block advertising and they were obligated to report on each threatening Dorito bag blowing in the direction of their concrete hotel-bunkers.

As is usual, I'm sure the real news is that people living in Starlite Community Mobile Home Park (or any other 1970's established mobile-living community) were decimated by a stiff breeze and their mobile homes not only blew apart, but also exploded, burned down and then were covered in a few feet of mud and plant debris :(.

Good luck getting back home all of you Evacuee's. Look at it as one of those opportunities to smell your home after being away from it for a while. One of those moments when you open the door for the first time in days, take a deep breath and breathe in some smell that you had never associated with your home (cat urine, sandalwood, fridge left without power for a week, flamingos, you can imagne...).

Created 197 weeks, 2 hours ago

Updated the RSS calls to auto-start remote services if they aren't running [had to add a longer expire time to the RSS call though]. This will hopefully prevent the RSS feed from returning null or breaking the page as I thought I saw it do.

Created 197 weeks, 4 days ago

I put up a site to keep track of our infinitly-starting latest campaign that Brad is going to run. I was hoping it would be just a repository of stories, DM text, character sheets, etc. as we try to play remotely.

I think I will write a dice-roller soon, with history (probably using some checksum or maybe just a storage ID for the roll [hey thats not a bad idea]). Maybe also a few name generators and some customizable list and random selectors. It would be nice if the lists could be stored in the DB.

Feel free to stop by and check out the progress, I'm not sure when I will make most of it private to the group of players only [I guess once I finish setting up the accounts for them].

Also, I am moderately excited about the DnD online game that is in development. DDO.

Created 197 weeks, 4 days ago

I got to thinking about what movies I was still lacking in my ‘core’ library of films.

So, the ever growing list starts:

• Boogie Nights
• Rock Star (I know, both of these have MM)
• High Fidelity (purchased)
• Goonies, The (Thanks SIS!)
• Hackers (Thanks SIS!)

I’m going to buy them legit and proper, even though I might discard the case and any of those extranous ‘Extras’ discs (I don’t know why those bug me).

Created 197 weeks, 5 days ago

So, Microsoft MAX is out now in beta. I guess what I was expecting was a MS version of an image indexing/cataloging/searching tool. Instead, it is exactly what it said it would be. Image collection sharing.

So, I guess until someone shares with me some photos layed out in some interesting and compelling fashion I don't have any reason to use this and push yet another imaging product into my friends desktop.

However, the new imaging effects are sweet. Real-time rendering of the reflection maps on my laptop do show that maybe my machine isn't beefy enough to run them real-time without any display issues (there is the occasional hiccup of redraw) and I wonder if that means that the new FX display engine will be just as heavy.

Created 197 weeks, 5 days ago

Updated the site to 4.0 from 3.5 today. I also decided to consolidate some of the writing I was doing around the Web into a .... gasp ... blog on my site.

I need to do some data transformation tasks on some other datastores to get all the older stuff into the new XML format. Ill post an update when it happens.

Created 197 weeks, 6 days ago

http://www.mp3t.com

!!! !!! 2001 
Ac/dc High Voltage [Australia 1975] 1975 
The Alan Parsons Project The Turn of A Friendly Card 1980 
The Alan Parsons Project Eve 1979 
The Alan Parsons Project Gaudi 1987 
The Alan Parsons Project Ammonia Avenue 1984 
The Alan Parsons Project I Robot 1977 
The Alan Parsons Project Pyramid 1978 
The Alan Parsons Project Vulture Culture 1985 
The Alan Parsons Project Stereotomy 1985 
The Alan Parsons Project Freudiana 1990 
The Alan Parsons Project Tales of Mystery and Imagination 1975 
The Alan Parsons Project Eye In the Sky [Arista] 1982 
The Auteurs New Wave 1993 
Barry White The Ultimate Collection 2000 
Better Than Ezra Before the Robots 2005 
Billy Ocean Greatest Hits [Jive] 1989 
Blue Öyster Cult Secret Treaties 1974 
Blue Öyster Cult Don't Fear the Reaper: the Best of Blue Öyster Cult 2000 
Bob Marley Sun is Shining 1999 
Bob Mould Body of Song 2005 
Bob Mould Black Sheets of Rain 1990 
Bob Mould The Last Dog and Pony Show 1998 
Britney Spears ...Baby One More Time 1999 
Britney Spears Oops!...I Did it Again 2000 
Celine Dion One Heart 2003 
Celine Dion A New Day Has Come 2002 
Christina Aguilera Stripped 2002 
City Nord Nachtflug 2002 
Coolio Fantastic Voyage: the Greatest Hits 2001 
Coolio El Cool Magnifico 2002 
The Cure Fascination Street 1989 
The Cure The 13th [#2] 1996 
The Cure Entreat 1991 
The Cure Love Song [Cd/vinyl Single] 1991 
The Cure B Side Collection 1987-1992 Vol. 2 1992 
The Cure A Letter to Elise Single 1992 
The Cure The 13th Mini Single 1996 
The Cure Close to Me Single 1985 
The Cure Never Enough Single 1990 
Depeche Mode I Feel you [#2] 1993 
Depeche Mode Policy of Truth [8 Track] 1990 
Depeche Mode I Feel you [#1] 1993 
Depeche Mode Songs of Faith and Devotion 1993 
Depeche Mode Catching Up With Depeche Mode 1985 
Depeche Mode World In the Eyes [#2] 1990 
Depeche Mode People Are People 1984 
Depeche Mode Violator 1990 
Depeche Mode Policy of Truth [5 Track] 1990 
Depeche Mode 101 1989 
Depeche Mode Home [Us #2]/useless 1997 
Depeche Mode Music For the Masses 1987 
Depeche Mode Enjoy the Silence [Ep] 1990 
Dopplereffekt Linear Accelerator 2003 
Dopplereffekt Gesamtkunstwerk 1999 
The Dust Brothers Fight Club 1999 
The Essence Dancing In the Rain: the Best of the Essence 1995 
Eve 6 Horrorscope 2000 
The Flaming Lips Oh my Gawd!!!...the Flaming Lips 1987 
The Flaming Lips In A Priest Driven Ambulance [Bonus Tracks] 1995 
The Future Sound of London Expander [Single] 1992 
Geddy Lee My Favorite Headache 2000 
Group X Stepping on the Crowtche of your American President 1999 
Jean-Michel Jarre Chronologie 1993 
Jean-Michel Jarre Destination Docland 2003 
Jean-Michel Jarre Equinoxe 1978 
Jean-Michel Jarre Hong Kong 1995 
Jean-Michel Jarre Cities In Concert: Houston/lyon 1987 

Created 198 weeks, 4 days ago