I know it's not as fancy as the old one, but I think it's a much nicer reading/viewing experience (less clutter and fluff, more information density). Lemme know what you think.

FYI: I still need to reimplement mouse gestures. I'll let you know when they're back.

Since I can barely remember the whole blur of a weekend, I'll rely on photographs to tell most of the story, with some highlights thrown in along the way. If you're on a mobile device, take heed; this will be bandwidth intensive.

When we were looking for the Hynes convention center we knew when we were close. There was a long line of people coming from the MTA stop all going in the same direction, and the cosplayers were a pretty good giveaway. We decided to park in the garage next-door, and by the time we got there the line was moving swiftly.

Blur is definitely due to my jogging and not my poor photography... definitely.

Aww yeah, the boys in the house! (Jeremy, Trevor, and Jesse)

By the time we got in the keynote was full, but I've watched the video and Wil knocked it out of the park. Watch it below:

We decided to go to the NVIDIA event which required waiting in line, but not for too long. While we waited we busted out the DSs and loaded pictochat. We got our chatroom to fill up with the people around us who also had DSs and, of course, it quickly evolved into an epic wang drawing contest; Lulz were definitely had. The staff passed 3D glasses out a little before we went into the theater, and jesse's had a patch of green on the inside of the bridge. I didn't think much of it at the time.

Jesse blowing up a thumper while waiting in line.

At the event they debuted the new GeForce GTX 480 for the first time ever! I have to say I was impressed. Besides the somewhat novelty 3D capabilities (which do look pretty awesome with the flicker glasses we got to use at the expo hall booth) it does realtime ray-tracing! If that doesn't impress you, suffice it to say that that's amazing. The real treat came when they announced two people in the audience (out of about 3000 there) would be getting a free GTX 480. They told everyone to look on the bridge of their glasses for a green mark, and wouldn't you know it, Jesse was one of the winners! We were really happy for him, because he of any of us will get the most use out of it.

Waiting for the NVIDIA event to start

There were plenty of places to play games around the convention center. The expo hall was full of videogame companies demoing their latest offerings, there was a classic console (NES, Super NES, ATARI 2600, Sega Genesis, etc) room, a current console room, an arcade, a PC gaming room, a handheld lounge for playing DS and PSP, and tabletop rooms everywhere. It was basically gamer heaven.

Trevor dominated Tetris all weekend

The Classic Console room

Console Room

Console room

We HAD to play the latest Katamari Damacy

Heck yes! Buck Rogers!

I have to say, Sumo rocks for plastering the hand-held lounge with giant beanbag chairs. They offered a much needed respite between gaming, concerts, talks, and the constant onslaught of awesomeness. We played The Downfall of Pompeii, magic, and of course Mario Kart DS on them throughout the weekend.

Trevor and I playing Pompeii

Jesse and Jeremy on a Sumo

Much Magic the Gathering was played:

The first night we decided to go to a screening of a D&D GM documentary. After sitting around a while we were told they were trying to locate the DVD. Shortly thereafter Mike (aka Gabe), the artist of Penny Arcade, came in and went to the front of the room. He told us the documentary people did show up, but wanted to know if we'd like to have an imprompteau GM Q&A with him! Mike (as well as Jerry) is an amazing GM, so what had promised to be an interesting evening turned into an enthralling one. The Q&A was very educational and funny as well. The best part about it is that until recently, Mike wasn't into D&D at all.

The next day we got to the convention extra early so we could go to the Penny Arcade Create-a-strip panel, where we get to watch Jerry and Mike script out and draw a strip. To our surprise they made the comic about the events of the previous night!

Scripting

Scripting

Initial sketch

Initial sketch

There were, of course, some hijinks...

centaur

The finished product:

The finished product

Someone asked Jerry to sing the song he wrote, My Belruel, and it was both lilting and haunting. The dude has a great voice. You can hear him singing it from back in 2007 (it's kind of a tradition now) here.

There were some really cool booths in the expo hall:

NVIDIA and their "Crank that shit up!" slogan

APB

Trevor playing Left4Dead 2 for the first time!

While Jesse and Jeremy played PC games, Trevor and I decided to take a short break to exchange some geocoins in a local geocache.

Found!

We went to "An Evening with Scott Kurtz" on a whim, and it turned out to be one of my favorite moments at PAX East. Scott told the most hilarious and touching stories, and the whole atmosphere was very close and intimate. He certainly gained a reader for life in me.

Sunday morning, the final day, we went to the Blamimation panel by Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub. We had a hell of a good time and played a small part in scripting/recording the next Blamimation.

Blamimation panel

Dueling collaborators

We didn't make it into the first PA Q&A, but we did make it into the second one. Someone asked Jerry and Mike to arm wrestle. I forget who won.

The autograph line was pretty epic, so we played magic while we waited.

Playing magic on a food tray

Epic waiting line (we started out pretty close to the head)

I got my Nintendo DS signed by Jerry and Mike, and my badge signed by Jerry, Mike, Robert Khoo, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub, and musicians Paul & Storm. The autograph line filled up before we could get a place on both of the days that Wil Wheaton was there, so that sucked, but that was the only bad part of the whole weekend.

My PAX East 2010 Badge

That's all I can remember! I have quite a few videos I've yet to convert and upload, but I'll link em' when they're done. For all the PAX East photos you could ever want, including some sweet cosplay outfits, check out flickr and this forum thread. When the unofficial community DVD comes out, there will be information at this site. Finally, search youtube for some great performances by Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, VGO, and many more.

I started using Baking Soda shampoo late last year and it's been going fantastic, so I thought I'd share my experiences.

I'm not exactly sure why I first decided to look up baking soda shampoo, but I think it had to do with the fact that my head gets so oily. I shave my head down to about a half centimeter and I hate exposing my scalp to soaps/shampoos filled with chemicals. I know there are great natural hand-made soaps (Amme uses local handmade soap) but I remembered reading somewhere that you could make your own baking soda shampoo and liked the idea. A quick search online revealed two things: 1. My mind wasn't playing tricks on me, lots of people make and use it. And 2. It's dead simple to make!

The best reason to stop using shampoo is the long list of chemicals most contain. If you're scared by the long unpronounceable names on shampoo labels then baking soda is a great alternative. Baking soda shampoo is also a great once-a-week (or whenever) clarifier or "de-gunk-ifier". Another bonus is savings. While some shampoos are quite cheap, baking soda is even cheaper. I like it because it keeps my scalp clean without stripping so many natural oils that my head goes into overdrive replacing them (the most common cause of excessively oily hair).

I learned most of what I know about baking soda shampoo from naturemoms.com, and I highly recommend you go there and read the excellent article. I use their technique for massaging it into my scalp, pay close attention to that section, and use about the same amount that I would for shampoo. WikiHow also has a great article on shampoo alternatives.

My own favorite recipe for baking soda shampoo is this:

Fill your container (a water-tight one you can get your hand into) 3/4 full with baking soda. I add the tiniest pinch of xanthan gum (you can pick it up at most health-food stores and a little goes a long way) but it's strictly optional. You can also add a drop or two of your favorite essential/scented oil. Then just add enough water to make it a paste, about the consistency of toothpaste. Put the lid on and shake it well and you're done!

If you find the mixture too thick to massage into your hair, or if your hair feels wiry, then add more water. If the baking soda settles out overnight (which can happen if you mix yours more watery and don't use xanthan gum) just give it a quick shake before you use it.

Make sure to rinse your hair thoroughly and, just like regular shampoo, remember not to get it in your eyes!

At any rate, this is the playlist my brain has created in the past two days:

• Bonnie Raitt - Something to Talk About
• Bob Marley - I Shot the Sheriff
• Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
• Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
• Metro Station - Disco

So, what random songs have you had in your head lately?  Don't be embarrassed... hell, Landslide is up there.

Awesome.

It seems a successor to the ubiquitous Chuck Norris Facts meme has arisen. The target? Action movie director Michael Bay.

In the wake of the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie a stream of Michael Bay Facts has been pouring out of twitter, and as with Chuck Norris Facts, most are hysterical.

Since Michael Bay Facts mock their target rather than revere him (he really is a shitty director, though I loved Transformers: ROTF), and since Michael Bay will never be bad-ass like Chuck Norris, I'm sure this meme will be quite short lived. With that in mind, get them while the getting is good. I see io9 has posted some of their favorites, and I'd like to do the same.

These are some of my favs:

• jbneal: When you fist-pound Michael Bay, your hand literally blows up.
• MattCox: In some states, it's illegal to say "Michael Bay" in airports or crowded theaters.
• frontierwoman:To clear a hangover Michael Bay straps a grenade to his head and dives headfirst into empty swimming pools.
• burnflores: Michael Bay doesn't like gum. He chews C4.
• chris7crows: Michael Bay emerged from the womb with a detonator in one hand and a supermodel in the other. His mother then exploded.
• MattCox: Bomb squad was at the library today. Someone returned Michael Bay's autobiography.
• jpmccu: Michael Bay's school film project is lost to the world, as it blew up from awesome. The audience ran away in slow motion.
• DJBullock: Michael doesn't use a camera to film his movies. He burns the movie into the film using the heat of exploding orphanages.
• And possibly my favorite: mrbs: Michael Bay was preceeded down the birth canal by a dove in slow motion. And followed by a column of flame.

It seems Aimee_B_Loved has become the unnoficial queen of #MichaelBayFacts on twitter with a slew of great ones:

• Michael Bay literally fights fire with fire, but insists token minorities do so with clever, urban-sounding comments.
• Michael Bay sleeps on a bed of hot coals and uses bundles of dynamite as pillows.
• As an infant, Michael Bay had to recast his mother because her breasts weren't big enough for the part.
• Michael Bay uses battery acid as lube.
• Michael Bay purposely edits out "sissy shit" like plot and character development.

And then some people are just Doing It Wrong:

• ABAwesome: There are approximately 94 people in the USA with the name "Michael Bay"
• Flonk2: Michael Bay was adopted.

See my own paltry (at least by comparison) MichaelBayFacts here, and let me know what your favorites are that I've missed, or if you think some up on your own, please share them!

We chose to go up the Gorham Mountain trail. It's listed as a moderate trail, but doesn't require any climbing. It did get our hearts pumping though!

There was a nice little overlook that we stopped at to catch our breath and take some photos.

Eventually Amme let me know how she felt about the camera being pointed at her, lol.

When we got to the summit we took a little break to enjoy the beautiful view and how gorgeous the ocean looked.

We still felt pretty energized so we decided to keep going forward instead of backtracking, continuing on the backside of the Gorham trail.

We met up with the Beehive trail and on the way down, saw some hikes taking a more perilous trail above us. The Beehive trail ends at the Park Loop Road at the entrance to Sand Beach.

Once we got there we hiked a ways back towards the car and had a picnic on the rocks just above the rising tide. We ate bologna (Wunderbar!) sandwiches and then sunbathed for a while before heading back to the car. I was too relaxed to remember to take more photos, but Amme did!

While we were hanging out on the rocks some ballsy seagulls pestered us. After feeding them a while they got even bore brazen and tried to grab our bag of orange and banana peels (which is funny because Amme threw them a piece of orange and they were having none of that!). This photo was snapped while he was about 3 feet from my face.

We drove into downtown Bar Harbor after hiking back to the car and got some huge dark chocolate truffles before heading home. I love hiking days!

PS: See the full album in my photos section, or on flickr, or as a nifty slideshow!

Whatcha think?

Barring minor tweaks, My new layout is now done! Most all of it is a 3rd party theme, a first for me! But I chose to use it because I both learned a lot from modifying it, and because programmers always say don't reinvent the wheel! I chose instead to modify a lot of the spacing and positioning, and add some little touches here and there.

I like how much information it shows, hopefully it doesn't look too cluttered. As Tufte says, information is the whole point so your design should focus on it and provide a high density without making it unusable. This isn't exactly ultra dense, but does give you a quick glance at what I'm up to online, as well as focus mainly on the posts--the whole reason for this blog.

I still want to add a couple of navigation links because right now it's hard to go from post to post (done!), but other than that I'm really happy with how it looks and behaves. Please let me know what you think of it, and offer any suggestions/constructive criticisms. This site is for my readers so I want it to be as easy for you to use as possible!

I've also been uploading my backlog of UrbEx photos. I've recently added the rest of the POL Tanks, Coal Elevator, Building 943, and the Civil Defense Bunker.

I came across this via Make:, but the source, and a great gallery of examples, is over at Noise Addicts.

It's strange how well it works out, especially some they have posted. Here are three I did this morning (I could seriously make these all day):

Go try it out!

The new albums are: X-mas 2008, Virginia Fall '08, Nanny's 75th B-day.

Japanese American Memorial

Union Station

Parker on X-mas 2008

Moments later, the page updated with "Retraction on Stave Jobs comment...we don't know how that got in our feed.

The popular apple fan-site MacRumors.com was providing up to the minute coverage on the MacWorld 2009 Keynote address, when the page started displaying profanity and all-CAPS nonsense and 4chan slang.

Screenshots of the initial onslaught follow (Warning: NSFW, profanity):

Shortly thereafter both MacRumorsLive.com and MacRumors.com were down.

UPDATE:

as of 1:29pm EST, MacRumors.com was back online with the following post:

Our MacRumorsLive keynote coverage was hacked today, inserting inappropriate content into the text and photo feeds. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to restore our services. The hack appears to be limited to the MacRumorsLive servers so forum accounts should be safe.

We'll continue Macworld Expo coverage on an ongoing basis this week, and will report on Apple's announcements shortly.

As an aside: Sorry about the long break in posting. This semester is one of my last ones, and consequently one of the hardest yet, so I've not had free time for much of anything. My friends can attest to how little they see of me online, but over the break, at least, posting will resume on a weekly or better schedule. (^_^)

I can't express how proud I am of our nation right now, not just because we've elected the first African American, but because we've elected a truly great man and the leader our country needs. Barack Obama will guide us back to the just path our country needs to be on, and right all of the wrongs our past leaders have done to us as a people.

McCain's concession speech made enough reference to Barack's race to imply that was why he was elected. Such an implication is not true. He won because he stuck to the truth and promised us change. We all now wait to see this change, and I for one am not worried.

That said, I still am immensely proud of seeing this happen in my lifetime. Mock me if you will, but I've always loved Tupac Shakur's aptly titled song Changes. One line of the lines in this song reads:

"And although it seems heaven sent, We ain't ready, to see a black President"

.

Look how far we've come not only in the decade since that line was written, but more importantly, since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965.

The Democrats are back in control and its time to make this nation great once again. I'm proud to be an American.

With just an hour to go until the first polls close, many people have asked me if I'm nervous. I voted two weeks ago and even then I was cautiously optimistic. I am by no means cocky and I knock on wood as I write this, but I think Obama has a fantastic shot.

Matty B. Turned me onto a great website for electoral vote projections and information in general about the elections, www.fivethirtyeight.com, and I've been there throughout the last couple of months. One of the latest articles posted there affirm my optimism:

If those states go roughly as expected (meaning, say, an Obama win in Virginia and a close race in Indiana), we can conclude with almost literal 100 percent certainty that Obama will win the election

fivethirtyeight.com

C'mon Virginia! Vote Obama!

I'm crossing my fingers, eating bread and cinnamon butter in lieu of popcorn, and watchin' the map

Lately I've just been working and finishing up classes. The mall on campus (long stretch of grass, not shopping mall) is once again the constant home of one of the many slacklines owned by those of us that love the discipline. I love having a break between classes and going out there to find that there is always a line set up. Sometimes one of us will put one up, go to class, and come back later, knowing that our friends will make sure nobody steals it while we're gone. I've made some really cool friends through slacklining over the last few years. Amme hasn't had a chance to do it since the beginning of the summer, but she's gotten really good.

I've also started climbing again at the rock gym here on campus. Its free for students which is awesome, and I still fit my shoes so that's a bonus. I can't climb at the level I used to, but I still know how to move and not overexert myself. I'm making progress slowly.

The leaves were all messed up this fall. We had a couple of bouts of cold weather that caused some of the trees to change and others not to, so we didn't get the nice vistas of dense autumnal hues. Instead there were a few beautiful trees surrounded by clumps of green or dead brown. This made for some nice contrast, but I didn't get any good landscape photos. I'll have the photos up on Flickr within a week. I also have some shots from UrbExing around the former Loring Air Force Base on there, so be sure to check those out.

They include our trip to the old Nuclear Weapons Storage Area, the first of its kind in the US! There are no weapons there now, of course, but you can really see how hard they were hiding the stuff from satellite surveillance and how thick the walls and vault doors were. Its pretty nuts thinking back on it. There are also photos of some of the Oakfield Station in Maine, for you railfans.

Classes are good, I'm finishing up my second degree and can't wait for it to be done. I want to WORK not have all of my time monopolized while I pay for it. I'd love to start my own company but I need to learn more about the process. I also need the free time for it. I've let friends down in the past by trying to take on projects that I didn't have time for and I hate myself for doing that even though I'm putting schooling first.

Amme and I went to NY for her cousin Subee's wedding. We had a great time; it's been so long since we saw a lot of the family down there. I have the photos up here and here. BTW: the facebook photo resizing algorithm makes my photos look all artifact-y. If you want a high quality photo from that album email me and I'll send you one.

I have two wisdom teeth coming in. One of them is already exposed and is currently stopping me from opening my mouth all the way. It makes eating difficult. It just started doing that out of the blue, else I would have had it extracted by now. I went to the dentist at the healthcare center here that has a sliding pay scale since I don't have insurance and it's very affordable. They did a panoramic digital x-ray of my jaw, which was very cool. Our vet uses a digital x-ray as well. They can open the image in a viewer and change the contrast, levels, and zoom in and out to get infinitely better images than the film and developer x-rays. That visit was fast and cheap, but to get my tooth extracted the next opening they have is in the end of January! I won't be able to open my mouth at all by then, so I have to look elsewhere for an oral surgeon. I'm homing someone has an opening within a week. I'm tired of eating
soup and cutting things into toddler-sized
pieces.

Amme has been taking good care of me though. I hope I take just as good care of her. I'm anxious to get on with life and make a name for myself, but as long as we have each other I can never be discontented. I could move out to the woods, build us a house, and just provide for us both and be happy forever.

In other news: iPhone 3G! FARK YEAH!

Oh, and for all you haters: Lowest price for a new Tom Tom GPS = $199.
Lowest price for a new iPhone with GPS (and phone, music, video, monkey ball, etc...) = $199. And yes, it will have turn by turn directions in the near future.

Gadget pr0n will follow once I get my invisible shield on it

.

"English System MOTHER-[beep]: Do you speak it?"

What a great few days this has been. This past Friday I went up to Caribou for my nephew's 1 year birthday. For the next 12 months he will be "1 year and N months". When he is 1 year, 6 months, it shall not be said he is "18 months old", or I will start punching people in the teeth. Why? Because one of my pet peeves is people counting a child's age in months after they've reached the next higher increment (YEARS). I am not 1120 16ths of an inch tall, I'm 5 feet 10 inches. Your car doesn't hold 192 cups of gasoline, it holds 12 gallons, etc. He's 1 year old. He's also 12 months old but you don't say that out loud. Wow, rant. Where was I?

Oh yeah, so my nephew, Parker, turned 1 year old last Wednesday, so my mother and sister came up to celebrate with the rest of the family. I hopped in with them at Bangor and we all drove home together. After stopping in to visit Lindsey, I hopped online and played Zombie Master with Doody, B, Jesse, Aaron, and Zach(!!!) while chatting on Skype. It was so awesome to talk to Zach in particular, and great to play with everyone. The internet isn't killing humanity, rather it often brings us close together when we otherwise could not be. After gaming until about 4am, Doody came over and we caught up on stuff before crashing an hour later.

The next day, or later that morning really, we awoke and got ready for the party. Grammy and Grampy, and my godmother and Parker's grammy and grampy and great-grammy and aunt and loads of other friends and family including Mom and Dad all were there (I even convinced Doody to stay!) and we had a great time. Parker got to grab fist-fulls of cake, made by the same lady that made Alyssa and Lindsey and I's first cakes (she came out of retirement from cake making to do this one last one for Lindsey), and we chatted and had fun and ate and opened presents. Parker helped me put a couple of toys together with Alyssa--he kept grabbing and trying to turn the screwdriver--and he is wonderfully smart. It only takes him seconds to figure out new concepts, and he loves all things mechanical. I can see he's going to be a lot like me when I was little, taking things apart and being fascinated by mechanics and electricity.

After the party we managed to get a hold of Jalbey, and we gossiped some more with him before going out to rent Mulberry Street (one of the "8 more films to die for"). We watched that with Dad and it was just so-so, picture a zombie movie where the zombies are actually infected humans turned rat mutants, but it was entertaining at least. We had fun punning though. "You rat bastard" and "President Bush doesn't care about Rat People" were among the best. Doody and I stayed up browsing the internet for a while then crashed again.

Sunday I woke up and cleaned the inside of Amme's Camry, and Dad waxed the crap out of it (it looks like a mirror, beautiful). Before I headed back down to Bangor Doody and I went to the Jade Palace for lunch and had some seriously good buffet and had a couple more good puns ("jimmy's buffet" and "the bob buffet" PROTIP: say buffet as buf-fet). This comes from reading too much Spider Robinson, I'm afraid.

"I swear I won't start singing Peaches & Herb"

After being reunited with my lil' angel on Sunday night, we went to bed so we could wake up at 6am to head down to Boston. We got to Alyssa's around 12pm and went straight out downtown to go visit the Aquarium and do a little souvenir shopping. Later we went home to change and headed back out to the game, Sox vs. Diamondbacks, which was really fun since it was Lindsey and Amme's first games, but incredibly slow since no runs were scored until the 6th inning when Arizona scored 2 runs, and the Sox never did come back, scoring just 1 run. However with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th, the tension was palpable.

"Yes Margaret, it is possible to spend several hours reading about shaving."

At this point, I should mention that I've become a huge shaving nerd. Yes, shaving nerd. This came about from 2 distinct events. Last year I read an article about how you can save a ton of money and get a closer shave with less irritation by switching to a safety razor (the old double edge metal ones). I thought that was really cool but never got around to buying one. Then just a couple of months ago, my friend Andrew told me he'd started shaving with one, and there was a whole online forum devoted to the art of shaving (and lathering, which is almost more important than the razor) called BadgerAndBlade.com. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to check it out. What I found was a very friendly and helpful community of people who had set out to find the secret of getting a better shave, with less irritation, and had ended up finding a place to share stories, make friends, and get guidance on what to buy and how to use it.

I've been shaving with a safety razor and badger-hair brush for a few weeks now and I've never had such a smooth shave or less irritation. Whats more, I spend about $4 on 20 razors, instead of $20 on 4 mach-3 razors!!!

Anyway, I bring this up because The next day we went to the Natick mall. For you Family Guy fans, there WAS a Twinkie factory in Natick, but she's gone :(. Despite that tragedy, we had a blast shopping and hanging out and just enjoying everyone's company. My mission was to find all the shaving supplies I needed but couldn't get in Bangor. This included some shaving soap and/or cream, a high-quality badger-hair brush, aftershave lotion, possibly some cologne, and some good aftershave spash with witch hazel and no alcohol.

Armed with reviews from B&B, and a list of stores with possible supplies, I came away with everything I needed. I also got some new clothes (I clothes shop about every 1.5 years, or 18 months for you unit-impaired new mothers out there).

"Nom nom nom"

Before Amme and I had to head back to Bangor, Alyssa took us all to Asiana Fusion in Watertown, that has absolutely amazing food. This is real asian food, as in authentic Korean bulgogi, kimchi, and kalbi, as well as Pad Thai and other Thai and Japanese and Chinese dishes. Everything we got was just excellent, and we chatted with the Korean girls there and got some most excellent deserts! I highly recommend it to anyone near the Boston/Watertown/Waltham area.

The following morning we all went to Alyssa's work for a little pizza party and met a lot of her co-workers. It was brief but really nice to meet everyone. Amme and I headed home after that and had a pretty un-eventful drive back home. It was really nice to pass out in our own big comfy bed with the A.C. on.

Riley--one of the fur kids--on my lap supervising

Now when you visit this site on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you'll see a layout optimized specifically for those devices! I hope you like it, I sure do.

Also: "Akismet has caught 34,650 spam for you since you first installed it." Best damned plugin ever conceived. Enough said.

Although I haven't blogged about them much, some of you may know I have a somewhat-secret love affair with moleskines that has lasted for a few years now. Nothing quite compares to the feeling of undoing that elastic band, opening up to a fresh page, and writing down anything that comes to mind. One day when I was sketching website layouts in in my large moleskine I stepped back and realized that I needed to change my P.O.V.

The layout I wanted was sitting right in front of me! With that in mind I began making a list of the things I wanted on my desk and although I havn't incorporated all of them (I wanted it to look realistic, but not too cluttered) I'm so far very happy with the initial results. If anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.

This page is meant to have a non-fixed width, meaning you can shrink it down pretty far and still read entries, however you may hide the random goodies like the magazine (which is really meant to be a website title banner with a dash of fun and humor) and latest photo.

The challenge, however, was choosing the height. I assume nobody is using a height of smaller than 800px in this day and age so that was my minimum requirement and that is why you may be thinking that moleskine is awfully short. My laptop is 1280x800 so that's not an unreasonable size, however on non-widescreen monitors it does look a little smooshed. I'll likely make a toggle button to switch from widescreen to 4:3 sizes in the coming weeks. If you are using a smaller resolution than that, lets face it: you need to come join the modern age. If you're on an iPhone your browser will scale the page, and if you're on another moble device that doesn't, use the rss feed.

I hope you all enjoy it, and as I said, if you see anything broken, or that you think needs to be added or changed, please let me know. All constructive criticism is welcome.

I just finished assembling it and took it out for a little ride. Its smooooooth and has a ton of pop.

View more photos on my flickr slideshow

Les Spécifiques

• ELEMENT MIKE V AVIARY DECK - 7.88 width - On sale, and its a helium deck, so its lighter and stronger.
• TENSOR RODNEY MULLEN CUSTOM MIDS TRUCKS - Mullen is my all-time favorite skateboarder and he personally designed these trucks.
• SPITFIRE OLSON LIFERS WHEELS - 57mm, 97a durometer, for a smoother ride over crappy asphalt.
• FKD SAWBLADE SPEED BEARINGS - ABEC 5, IMHO the best balance between speed and durability. These ones have a clear shield so you can see inside, with a red spacer for a little extra bling.
• BLACK MAGIC GRIP TAPE - of course!
• MYSTERY RISERS and hardware - No real difference in performence, but they are white and complemented the trucks nicely.

Now to go work of those extra pounds!

I'll first tell you what I did so you don't have to repeat it, or at the least can save it for last, but if you're impatient just scroll to the end of this post.

The Issues.. Oh god the issues!

The problem started Saturday morning when I was lying in bed and decided to check my email. Our roommate had just moved out and took with him our wireless network (his hardware, but I was managing it), but seeing the little blue "E" icon that meant i have EDGE service, I decided to open the mail app. Instead of a nice tidy inbox, I was greeted with pop-up message saying "Could not activate EDGE: You are not subscribed to EDGE". Now, I don't have a $20/month data plan for nothing. I most certainly was subscribed to EDGE, so pardon my acronym but WTF was this?

I restarted my phone and still got the error message, then turned airplane mode off for 20 seconds and back on again (This is supposed to clear some settings like WiFi so I gave it a shot). Still nothing. Now, I had jailbroken my phone the day before with iLiberty+ (I STRONGLY recommend this program for installing 3rd party apps, unlocking, activating, or bootloader patching), and so was afraid I'd broken it somehow, but I had used EDGE fine after that for the better part of a day so I was on the fence on whether that was the problem. Like any good problem solver I had to rule it out regardless, so I decided to restore my iPhone.

The first thing I did was go into iTunes and hit Restore. Once that was done I tried to get on EDGE with the result of the same error message. Through iLiberty my bootloader had been changed, and more importantly my baseband may have been changed as well. Baseband is the firmware that runs your phone, modem, wireless, and bluetooth hardware, so I was definitely suspect of that. I re-ran iLiberty+ with the option of restoring the baseband and bootloader, and still had no success. Finally I re-re-ran iLiberty+ with a WiFi/EDGE fix I had come across, usually only broken through using ZiPhone (DON'T USE ZiPHONE!) but decided to try it anyway. Of course, no change. I still got that damn error message! This was getting frustrating in the extreme.

After this I called AT&T through 611, and after 30 minutes of work knew the lady, while being extremely nice, had no idea what the problem was. She thought it must be because I was picking up WiFi. Not only were there no hotspots in range, I had WiFi explicitly turned off. Rather than explain this to her I just said thank you and hung up.

Figuring I'd done all I could with hardware, I account was screwed up, I went to AT&T and checked my account. It showed that I had an EDGE data plan and should be working. Nothing on the support site, KB, FAQ, etc. was of any use, and live chat was closed for the day, not that I had high hopes for that... I had a lot of things to do this weekend so I decided I'd just call a different support number on Monday and try again.

The Solution!

I know I know BLAH BLAH BLAH Get to the fix! Okay okay! Flash forward to today. Before calling AT&T back I decided to do some goog-vestigating. Of course this was practically the first thing I did, but hadn't gotten any immediate success, the closest being an AT&T forum where go-phone customers were having a similar issue last December (they fixed this by renewing their monthly contracts a bit early). On this second round of searching I found a couple of potential hits, but the one that finally fixed me was here on Apple Discussions!

To summarize, people fixed this one of two ways. The way that fixed me makes me want to facepalm so hard that I replace Captain Picard as the de-facto image macro. Its an iPhone setting and goes thus:
Settings --> General --> Reset --> Resent Network Settings

I know! "IDIOT!" Why didn't I know that was there? Because there was no "TFM" for me to "R", thats why. I was so relieved when it worked that I cried out in a fit of unbridled joy, to the unease of my co-workers. Not only was my problem fixed, I didn't have to call AT&T back!!!

Now, for those of you who are not so lucky as to have you iPhone placated with this simple settings reset, most of the people on the above thread solved their problem thusly:

It's definitely not an Apple problem, it's a simple checkbox on AT&T's account configuration screen called EDGE Provisioning. Some account changes, like adding a Foundation Account number to your plan to take advantage of company discounts, over-ride the EDGE provisioning setting.

Unfortunately, some AT&T customer service reps think it's iPhone related and don't bother checking your account first before transferring you to Apple. So, do yourselves a favor and ask them to check "EDGE Provisioning" on your account (use their terminology) and they will be able to fix it for you in a second.

Several people on the forum echoed cries of joy as this solved their problem as well. Apparently the number to call is either 800-331-0500 or 877-419-4500 and be sure to ask them to check your "EDGE Provisioning".

So, with a fully functioning iPhone (again jailbroken and running some kick-ass apps!) I leave you this information in hopes that it helps someone out the same issue.

PS: A very special thanks to Joe Maloney1 at the Apple Discussions forum for providing the crucial fix for me!

You know when you're listening to a song and hear a particularly powerful lyric? That verse or phrase that really stirs you or give you goosebumps? Maybe it's the words, or maybe it's just the power with which the singer delivers it. I know I've a couple of those favorite lines, probably a lot more than a couple. At any rate, I'd love to hear lyrics that all of you readers (yeah all four of you) particularly love. I'll start with a couple of mine I've run across just recently. Sometimes they don't pertain to me personally in any way, sometimes they do, but they're always powerful, beautiful, or tragic, and I love hearing them. For the full effect you really have to listen to the song however, so I'll provide audiko.net links with them:

The first is from the song Remembering Sunday by All Time Low, off the album "So Wrong It's Right", with my favorite part being guest-sung by Juliet Simms from Automatic LoveLetter. Its a stirring song in general, and this part in particular, being the climax of the song, is very moving in both its lyrical content and the way Juliet sings it. The meaning of this song is greatly debated, but ultimately I think its up to the individual to decide what it means to them.

Listen along!

I'm not coming back (Forgive me), I've done something so terrible I'm terrified to speak (I'm not calling, I'm not calling) but you'd expect that from me.
I'm mixed up, I'll be blunt (You're driving me crazy).
Now the rain is just washing you out of my hair, and out of my mind.
Keeping an eye on the world from so many thousands of feet off the ground.
I'm over you now, I'm at home in the clouds, towering over your head.

For me it's a very sad verse about a girl that feels she needs to leave the one she loves. This passage starts at 3:22 on the album version. You can also ask the oracle for videos if you want to see it performed live, which I of course recommend you do.

The next passage that made me decide to write this entry is a band I know Doody is very fond of, called Jimmy Eat World. These guys consistently write amazing songs, and have done so for the last 15 years. I could cite many of their songs that have great lyrics, but the most recent one for me is Electable (Give It Up). This one is off their new album, which I was listening to while doing some housework when all of a sudden I stopped and though "Shit thats a cool part!".

Listen along!

Not in my name, you don't speak for me.
I am my voice, and I want to scream.
You want my air, you want my life.
I act as one, but I'm not alone.

The song goes into a breakdown just before Jim Adkins starts singing this verse, and it really adds something powerful to his words. I find this part defiant, frustrated, and empowering all at the same time. I picture him screaming this at a picture of our corrupt president.

So, those are a couple of my recent favs. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Do me a favor and comment to let me know what songs and lyrics you guys have come across. I'd love to hear em!

Damn I've been busy. I'm taking 18 credits this semester in an attempt to finish up my history minor and get my second degree done with. I've been neglecting the Internet Scrabble Club, which is sad because I do enjoy my scrabble. I'm going to play some tonight though. I also haven't been climbing in a VERY long time and that makes me quite sad, so I'll be doing that more in the very near future.

I went up home last weekend to visit with the guys. I didn't get up there until Saturday evening and left Sunday afternoon, but I still had an awesome time. I'm bummed that I didn't get a chance to see Jalbey, but I'll be back up soon.

I hung out with Doody and Jason most of the time... well actually the whole time except for waking my Dad up at 5am making chinese food and eating supper with Amme's mom and cousin. It was pretty awesome just catching up with them and hanging out. Jason found copies of *almost* all of the season 2 TMWS episodes from back in 2000, and then we found a bunch of intros and skits too! We're pretty stoked to go through them and sample some funny moments to play in the new season. To celebrate, we called B on google talk and had a show with us all sitting around the old mixer board just like old times. We missed Jalbey though, and the rest of the guys. We'll get anyone who wants to be into the next shows though. We've also revised our recording procedure so that shows will be up within 30 minutes of their recording, which should be every Thursday night.

We're also going to revamp the TMWS website, as we're not really "feeling it", and we've set up a youtube account to post videos of our hillarious antics and such. For being a spontanious show with no outline, it came out pretty funny. Download it here, or click the iTunes link on that page to subscribe to the podcast. There is also a URL you can enter into any other podcatcher program you may use. Be warned, however, that this show is VERY explicit, and uses the C-word. Yeah, THAT C-word. Sorry Grammy.

Today I was 3 computers deep into remote desktop (RD to one computer, then use that one to get to another, etc). Navigate through that sort of setup long enough, and you start to question what is real, or at least what is actually the machine you are physically sitting in front of. Quite existential, that.

At any rate, on the drive to work today I was doing a little casual geo-wardriving with my new bluetooth GPS receiver and netstumbler and I came across 2 access points within about 100 yards of one another that I found very interesting. They had two distinct names that told me a lot about the persons that set them up.

The first AP was secured and named "Da Internets". This one made me literally LOL, but beyond that, shows that the user was familiar with the silly internet jargon we love to use (the internets, the intarwebs, the interwobbles...) and was therefore smart enough to know they should secure their wireless to prevent theft of their personal information. That, and they probably are stingy about bandwidth usage.

The second AP was unsecured and named "FREE WIRELESS HERE!" There are actually at least 2 types of people that could have set this up. The first would be a generous person who embraces the movement to provide a network of open wireless across America, and knows to not send private info across their wireless, using a wired connection instead. The second type of person is someone dumb enough to not change the DEFAULT PASSWORD for their access point and also not secure their AP. Then some 31337 h4X0r with the default password list saved on his/her laptop connected to the open AP, saw it had a default SSID of "linksys" or "default" or "belkin" and went to 192.168.1.1 and proceeded to log in with the default password and change the SSID if they were lucky, and infect their computers with backdoors or trojans or sniffed their traffic if they were quite unlucky.

Moral of the story: Be generous or be stingy, I don't care. But please secure your AP's admin account!

If you're interested, here are some of the APs I hit before getting onto the interstate last night on the drive home. Red nodes are secure, green are unsecure, and the size of the node is how close to it I was when I picked it up. If I drove around I could pinpoint an individual AP, but as it is the locations are where I was when I first got the signal.

In other news, I'm excited for what may be announced at Mac World next week. Steve Jobs' keynote, or "Stevenote" is 90 minutes long, and new laptops and a video-rental area in the iTunes Store is not enough to cover that! Or is it? Perhaps he will talk about those for 15-30 minutes, rip his shirt-mic off, and say "Thats it bitches! Keep buying iPhones! BAAAAH! BAAAH! and throw a smoke bomb, cackling as the vapor disperses leaving and empty stage. We'll see.

Oh, speaking of DRM free, apparently Amazon is going to start selling Sony mp3s without DRM! Pretty cool stuff if you ask me. This basically us breaking the dinosaur record lable's balls until they're forced to concede un-copy-protected music so we'll start buying it instead of stealing it. Kudos to them, despite their monetary motives, and hopefully it will last.

Remember, Artists wont go hungry if you don't buy their albums. Labels give them next to nothing for their music, and many artists have spoken up about it (Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, NOFX, to name just a few). Because of this, I'm much more likely to pay for a Fat Wrech Chords or Fueled by Ramen album than I am a Sony or RCA one.

Artists go hungry when you don't go to their shows and don't buy their merch. Support your favorite bands by going to some shows and buying t-shirts! You may even fall in love with the opening band you hadn't really heard of and thus further your own happiness.

I had a great Christmas this year as usual. I really feel blessed this time of year when the family comes together and the cards all come in from relatives across the country. Mom flew up to see the baby and have Christmas with us, and I got to play and bond with baby Parker for a whole week. I was really glad to be able to see both Mom and Dad this year, and Amme and I had an all around great week with our families. I got some fantastic new toys this year, but I'm not the bragging type, so I'll just say I am humbled by the generosity of all in my family (which includes Amme's family).

We've been getting inundated with snow this winter. Something I was afraid I'd not see again after the terrible winter we had last year. I believe we're up to 4 or 5 major snow storms this year. And today we're getting another 5-8 inches on top of the 8 we got two days ago! I can't wait to go to the mountain for some serious powder carving on my snowboard!

Trevor came up again this year and spent Christmas with his mother before heading up north to visit with us. Alyssa got Guitar Hero 3 for Christmas and got Amme and all of us guys hooked on it. After arriving back in Bangor I borrowed GH 2 from my friend Carl, then rented GH 3 and We Love Katamari, so we've pretty much been playing PS2 non stop for the past few days. We've beat both Guitar Hero games on easy mode and are half way through both on medium difficulty.

Trevor is a minor scrabble deity (he has to do EVERYTHING to an extreme) so I've been getting coaching from him on becoming a better player. I was fairly dreadful before (I had no strategy to speak of) so I'm excited to play more. Theres a great free program by www.ISC.ro that lets you play scrabble with other people or computers, and they're all rated so you know everyone's relative skill level. I was playing earlier today and almost got trounced by Trevor came to my rescue during the last few seconds of play to win by a scant 12 points.

Every year I hold a New Years Eve party for the Caribou gang, and we usually have some fun idea or gimmick. This year Trevor brought up the idea of building a Rube Goldberg Machine, and though neither of us were sure that we'd have the drive to see it through to completion, it ended up being a great success. Trevor and I did the preliminary setup on the 29th and 30th, and Doody and Jason helped bring it all together on the 31st. Though our engineers Zach and Jesse couldn't make it home, they were definitely there in spirit, and mentioned them a few times while trying to solve various problems. We also missed Jalbey, Johnny, Evan, Justin, and everyone else that couldn't make it up. We hope they all had great times anyway.

Our original intent was to set it off and have it finish its task exactly as the ball dropped in times square (our task was to have a "Happy New Years" sign be raised on a string), but we were sure it would fail in some way at the crucial moment so we set it to record on the DVR just in case. That ended up being unnecessary, however, when it not only worked perfectly when the moment arrived, but also was timed to the second! We took a video of it with Doody's camcorder and threw it on YouTube, you can check it out below or see it on my www.youtube.com/euicho page.

Again its been a fantastic holiday season and thank you to everyone in my life for making this past year great. I can't wait to see what 2008 brings for us all.

According to SPACE.com, a small Orionid meteor shower will hit its peak this Sunday morning (October 21st).

This will be a small (a couple dozen an hour) shower, but could be fun to watch if you bring some warm clothing and a thermos.

I'm definately going to set my cam up and see if I can snag a shot or two. I only got 1 Lyrid earlier this year and it was so faint it wasn't worth posting. Perhaps I'll have better luck this time, though my chances will be less.

At any rate, get the full details from the space.com article.

via space.com

moonset is around 1:30 a.m. local daylight time on Sunday, and that's a good time to begin preparing for your meteor vigil. At its best several hours later, at around 5:00 a.m. when Orion is highest in the sky toward the south, Orionids typically produce around 20 to 25 meteors per hour under a clear, dark sky.

"Orionid meteors are normally dim and not well seen from urban locations," said meteor expert Robert Lunsford, adding, ". . . it is highly suggested that you find a safe rural location to see the best Orionid activity."