Entries Tagged 'Hardware' ↓

Much as expected when I started my weight loss crusade, my clothes no longer fit me right. More specifically, Large shirts look a little big on me, I had to add a new notch in my belt and my jeans hang loose and shapeless off my hips. So, instead of looking trim and attractive, I look like I don’t know how to dress myself, which of course, wasn’t my goal. I’m currently 175 pounds, 20 pound lighter than when I started all this, and it’s very noticeable; I still continue to get comments on my size from people I know.

Anyway, I was planning to stave off buying new clothes (specifically jeans) until I got even close to my target weight. Let’s face it, I’ve still got 15 pounds to go, and if 20 pounds caused such a huge change in my figure, another 15 was sure to do the same. Still, it sucks to have lost all this weight and look scrubby as a result, and since I had some clothes to return from Christmas to return to Kohl’s and Old Navy, I figured I would splurge on at least one pair of new jeans. And there in lies the reason for this post.
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So, I recently bought a Nokia N800, partly because of all the N810 news I’ve seen recently and partly because I wanted a cool new toy. My roommate recently bought an iPhone, which for all of the hype, is kind of lame. Don’t get me wrong, the interface is really slick and using the ‘net anywhere is kind of cool, but it’s a closed system that people keep hacking to add functionality. It also has a really low resolution and doesn’t support Flash, which is pretty lame.

The N800 on the other hand is based on Maemo Linux, is totally open, already has full VoIP functionality, fully supports Flash (meaning YouTube and all-Flash sites work just fine), has about twice the resolution of the iPhone (so I don’t have to keep zooming and scrolling websites) and has a ton of really cool apps. GPS? Check! USB OTG? Check! Expandable memory? Check! True multitasking? Check! Mozilla browser? Check! VNC, SSH and VPN access? Check! Video chat? Check! It even has Skype and Gizmo clients and a port of Pidgin, the greatest chat client ever. Sure I don’t have Internet access anywhere my phone works, but WiFi is so easy to come by that it’s hardly a factor for me. If I really need to I can pair it with a Bluetooth phone and use it that way.
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Well, this site and nearly all the other sites the my friends owned have been moved over to a new server. The overclocked Celeron I had sitting in my parents’ basement on their cable connection just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

The new server? Dreamhost! I got a shared hosting plan and went in on it with 9 other people. Then I found a $97 off coupon (Google it, you’ll see it) and got 2 years of hosting for about $94! Split that 10 ways and that’s about $10 per person got 2 years of hosting! That includes 200GB of storage (increased by 1GB per week), 2 TB of bandwidth (increased by 16MB per week), unlimited domains, unlimited databases and 75 unique user accounts, above other things. They also have one-click installs of a bunch of software, SVN, phpMyAdmin, free anonymous domain registration and a ton of other things that you can find listed on their site.
Bottom line, if you are looking for a new host, check them out! Their service has been pretty solid (despite some early issues, but I think that was our fault) and their wiki has answered every question we’ve had so far.

Thanks to this little tutorial, I was able to make all my hotkeys on my shiney new Logitech diNovo keyboard. As useful as teh site was, there was a LOT left open to figure out. I thought I would take the time to make an easier to follow write-up to help others get their diNovo sets working right in Linux.

Keep in mind I am NOT using the Bluetooth enabled one because it was out of stock when I bought this and, quite honestly, I don’t need it. Also, this was tested and done using Ubuntu Linux (5.10 in fact) so if you are using another distro, things may be a little different. I should also point out quickly that simply switching the keyboard layout in Gnome to “Logitech Desktop Pro” will give you the same functionality as all this will. Also, my keyboard, mouse and number pad worked out of the box so this is really only geared toward getting the media keys working. If youre doesn’t work out of the box, I can’t really help, but I bet Googling a little will get you to this point.
First things first, we need to edit some files. Open these files up in your favorite editor and add the following to them.

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Wow, if that isn’t the understatement of the year. Eesh, I had really hoped to keep up on things better unlike when things were still on outinthecold….. seems I failed.

Anyway, a lot has happened since, Christ, JULY. I did end up getting a job, working as a PHP/MySQL developer for a company named Select Italy; I couldn’t be happier about it. Well, I’m sure if I was making like a million dollars a year I would be happier, but in realistic terms, I’m all set. It’s good to be back on a steady income instead of having my money come in whenever I can get it. It’s also nice to converse with other like-minded individuals and learn even more about web development (or Italy for that matter).

I’ve also learned a TON about Javascript/AJAX use in web development due to a need to spice things up and learn new things. My boss really likes what I’ve been cranking out and I think it’s been turning out pretty slick if I do say so myself. I’ve become the resident Javascript guy, which is ironic because I really expected going in that I would be greatly overshadowed by everyone else’s knowledge on the language. To a point, I am by one of the guys, but I’m the first one to start working it into the actual website on my own instead of just internal applications. Or, that’s how I see it anyway.

The job is part of the reason I haven’t posted on here is so damn long. It’s also why I have no new project sites or updates on existing sites (schoolinsummertime specifically). When you sit and code all day long, it’s hard to come home and actually want to sit in front of the computer even more. I do keep telling myself that “this weekend I’ll work on something” but it hasn’t happened once yet. Sigh….

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. That’s mainly because I haven’t been up to a whole lot lately. That’s not to say things have been boring, but they haven’t been all that great either.

First, earlier this month I was playing volleyball with my roommates and some people that one of them works with when I rolled my ankle. Those of you who don’t know what that means, basically the foot folds over and the outside ball of the ankle hits the floor; not fun and very painful. Here’s a link to a video showing what it looks like when it happens. I’ve been using crutches for a while as a result and I only recently started walking on it again.

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For a few months, I’ve been having problems with my computer. About a year and a half ago, Windows simply woudl not run for more than a month or so before getting a twitchy and needing to be completely removed and reinstalled. I took that as my que to run strictly Linux on the machine and never looked back. I had a solid year of install going when all of a sudden KDE started flaking out. My setting weren’t saving and certain colors in the theme weren’t working at all. Anything GTK-based was completely messed up.

Having gotten used to using KDE, and having recently install Ubuntu on my laptop (which I love now), I opted to install Kubuntu. After about 2 months of using Kubuntu, the system started getting flakey again and would lock up randomly. I thought it was a KDE issue since it was the same version I had been using on Gentoo. So, after trying out a handful of LiveCDs to see what I would dig, I installed PCLinuxOS, which ends up being pretty bloated, but I had a completely working system with all the functionality I needed at the time (including MP3 and video playback) in a matter of minutes. But, like Kubutu, the system was still halting, and halting often.
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So, I don’t think a lot of people know about this (and a quick Google search seems to have confirmed this), but you can send SMS messages to your phone (and other phones) by simply sending an email. I have used this a bit in the past to send messages to friends and have recently started using it to send myself monthly reminders about things (like paying bills and such).
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Recently, I purchased a used Nintendo 64 (N64) from ebay so that I could play Super Smash Brothers. Why? Because it’s the best damn game of all times, that’s why! Well, that may not be entirely true, but it is a hell of a good time when you have a bunch of people to play it with, like parties.
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