Aug 202010
 
 Friday, 20 August 2010  Posted by at 09:04 geek, history, quotes Tagged with: , ,  No Responses »

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

– Winston Churchill

Feb 212010
 
 Sunday, 21 February 2010  Posted by at 11:35 geek, misc Tagged with: , , ,  No Responses »

OK, my blackberry pearl is two years old, the battery barely holds a charge, and the trackball is flaky at best. Most of the time it wont scroll down. So, its time for a new phone. I am staying with AT&T, but not sure what to do about a phone. Hence I need your advice.

Option 1: Refurbished iPhone 3G 8GB for $50. Currently showing as out of stock on the web page so I would need to wait until they restock. Supposedly has the full one year warranty from Apple.

Option 2: New iPhone 3G 8GB for $100. Available now, from the web page, Apple Store, or the AT&T store.

Option 3: Motorola Backflip for $100 (after $100 rebate). Not released until March 7.

Feb 092010
 
 Tuesday, 9 February 2010  Posted by at 09:56 events, geek, humor, misc, TV Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

My favorite Superbowl ads:

Mars’ Snickers: You’re Not You When You’re Hungry
Very clever.

Doritos: Underdog
Made me laugh out loud.

Bridgestone Whale of a Tale
Free Willy meets Bachelor Party – how could you go wrong?

Intel: Lunchroom Boast
Appeals to me as a geek.

Volkswagen: PunchDub
I think I still have a bruise from when I was a kid and someone yelled “Punch Bug Yeelow!”

Coke: Sleepwalker
Just beautiful.

Google: Search On
Simple, compeliing and touching.

FloTV: Moments
Ah, nastaglia. And The Who meets Will-I-Am.

Sep 182009
 
 Friday, 18 September 2009  Posted by at 15:17 geek, Judaica, misc Tagged with: , , , , , ,  No Responses »

Floating around Teh InterWebs:

According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5769.
According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4706.

This means that the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,063 years.
This period was known as the Dark Ages

It is actually 5770 as of today, 18 September. A happy & a healthy new year to everyone. May you be inscribed in the book of life for another year. Shana Tova.

Aug 272009
 
 Thursday, 27 August 2009  Posted by at 11:19 geek Tagged with: ,  No Responses »

OK, brain trust…

I have two dead systems at home and need to increase my storage capacity… this leaves me a few options…

Option One
Try to piece together a single working system with parts I have from the two I have, plus duct tape etc. The newest of these systems dates back to 2006 and has a sempron processor – not a big deal as I am primarally interest in storage, but its old tech.And a fair bit of work as I try and figure out whats working and what isn’t not to mention unknown expense.

Option Two
On CraigsList I found a Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS, with four drive bays and two 250GB HDDs already in it. I have two 320GB IDE drives that can be pulled from the dead systems and put in the new system. This would give me just over 1TB of storage. However, its old tech still using IDE drives, that particular NAS does not have that great reviews, and I will have filled up all the open bays.

Option Three
New Egg has the D-Link DNS-321 for $120 with a $30 mail in rebate from D-Link. It is only two drive bays, but they are SATA. I can get a Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drive for $84, making final cost $174 after the mail in rebate. And this would give me an open bay for further expansion.

EDIT: This NAS has excellent reviews and is apparently extremely hackable. Also, I found a SAMSUNG EcoGreen 1TB drive for $80 brining the overall cost down to $170 after rebate.
EDIT 2: A good summary of how to and the hacks is here.

Option Four
Build a new system. Really, this is the same as option one, as I want to keep costs down.

So, thoughts?

Aug 262009
 
 Wednesday, 26 August 2009  Posted by at 14:55 Blogging, geek Tagged with: , ,  No Responses »

OK, So I have changed from using the Live+Press plug into cross post to LJ from my Word Press blog, to using JournalPress.

I have done this for a variety of reasons. First, JournalPress worked better for posting to a community from Lukas & my cookbook blog which is mirrored to LJ here.

Second, JournalPress provides more granular security controls. When I post a private entry in WP, I wanted it to post Friends Only to LJ. Live+Press would not let me do that, but JournalPress does. And that was what I wanted.

So, this is a bit of a test post to see how things go…

Edit… ok, I screwed up… links are now fixed.

Aug 202009
 
 Thursday, 20 August 2009  Posted by at 08:56 geek, life, work Tagged with: , , ,  No Responses »

Yesterday at lunch, a group of us are sitting together and M comes and joins us with a meatball sub. She is taking it out of the wrapper and one of the meatballs starts to fall. She catches it and as she does so says ‘I lost my poor meatball.’

Now, M is Canadian and had a *very* puzzled look when I commented that no one sneezed. The entire table then broke out into a chorus of ‘On Top of Spaghetti’ further confusing and amusing the Canadian among us.

This then prompted B to ask how, prior to the internet age and forwarded emails, viral videos, etc. things like On Top of Spaghetti became as ubiquitous as they did. We all paused for a moment as we considered this, and then the conversation moved on.

Any thoughts?