Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category

I have had a number of unrelated ideas lately, all of which I’ll share:

• I’m thinking about upgrading my processor and motherboard (here is what I have now). Some of the latest games (the Lost Coast demo for example) have really shown a bottleneck in that region. I have no idea what to upgrade to, however. Suggestions are welcome.
• I hope to get a new build of Googlebar Lite out soon.
• I also hope to put together a downloadable version of my toolbar tutorial. After that is done, I’ll begin work on the next incarnation of said tutorial (which should be a big improvement).
• This weekend, I’m going to begin playing with Movable Type. My ultimate goal is to move the main Born Geek website away from hand-coding, which would be very convenient for me. I may provide some links to my testing, so that you can see what’s going on.
• The Lost Coast demo for Half-Life 2 has inspired me to play through the game again. I’m approximately 2/3 of the way through, and am enjoying every minute of it.

Nearly 40 days ago, my family and I moved to a new house. And sadly, there are still boxes nearly everywhere you look. But we’re definitely a long way from where we started. Most everything major has been repaired, and several exciting new features are coming this week: our backup generator and wood-pellet stove.

Just tonight, I actually got around to unpacking a couple of boxes in my room (something I’ve been horribly negligent about). I just counted, and was shocked to learn that I still have 13 boxes left to open! Fortunately, the majority of them are in my sister’s room (which isn’t being used). With any luck, I can make more progress on the unpacking front this week. Most of the remaining stuff will go through the following decision making process:

1. Is the item in question something I need to keep? Yes: keep it. No: proceed to 2.
2. Is the item valuable enough (and in good enough condition) to auction off on eBay? Yes: auction the item off. No: proceed to 3.
3. Can the item live somewhere else? Probably not, so proceed to 4.
4. Throw item away.

• I still have no connection to the internet at home (although our network has been set up). Running a cable up to my room looks like it will be too difficult, so I’m researching some wireless solutions. I hope to be up and running tonight (tomorrow night at the latest).
• Googlebar Lite development has been very slow recently. Once I get back online, I hope to make some progress on this front: version 3.0 is long overdue. Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 and Beta 1 support will finally be available in 3.0, so that should please a number of people.
• My 22″ monitor got hosed during the move. I’ve gone back to my 19″ (which can only do 1280×1024), and I’m looking for a replacement (I’ve got to have 1600×1200). Dare I go to the dark side and buy an LCD?
• I turned 25 yesterday.

Moving day was rather eventful yesterday. My folks ran into a problem which almost caused the deal on our old house to fall through (which would have been a very bad thing), but it all got worked out and we’re now moved in. And so now the fun begins. There are a lot of repairs that need to be done to the house:

1. The hot water heater is broken (I took a cold shower this morning).
2. Both air conditioners are broken, so it’s rather hot on the second floor.
3. All of the smoke alarms around the house are ‘peeping’ (the backup batteries in them are dead).
4. Our cable hookup has been pushed out until Saturday.
5. There are apparently some mice in the house (our cat should have some fun with this).
6. Some wood around the dormer windows is rotting.
7. The previous owners left a broken refrigerator and freezer for us to cart off to the dump (gee, thanks).

I fixed the smoke alarm problem last night (at least the ones upstairs), so that’s one job done. And several of the more important jobs are being taken care of today. It will take some real engineering to get a CAT-5 cable up to my room on the second floor, so that I can hook up my computer to our network. And we’ll need to run the incoming coax cable over to our library, where we plan to put our NAT box and cable modem.

Anyways, things are starting to get back to normal. I plan to hook up my computer and begin unpacking my stuff tonight. One of these days, I might even get some pictures up somewhere. Googlebar Lite 3.0 development work should begin again soon - it will be out no later than the weekend of October 8-9.

With the movers coming Tuesday afternoon, anything and everything in sight is being placed in a box. Most of our stuff gets packed Tuesday, and the rest gets packed Wednesday morning. Later that same day, we close on our current house and on the new one. Then everything gets moved in to the new house after that. I’m definitely looking forward to the end of all that.

I still have a decent amount of stuff to pack in my room, although I have made excellent progress. I would estimate that I’m nearly 85% done. But with tomorrow evening being the only time I have to finish everything, I’m beginning to panic a little bit. I know I’ll get it done - it just seems so overwhelming now. There’s no telling how many boxes I’ve already packed. 15? 20? 25? It’s a lot, I know that. And so much of it is junk!

This is my last post from this house (my computer gets packed up tomorrow night when I get home from work). And please note that I will be “off the air” for several days. With any luck, I can continue to make blog posts from work. But don’t expect any progress on the Born Geek front: updates there will most likely resume in a week (or two).

My family and I move one week from today, so we’re beginning to kick our packing efforts into high gear. Until one packs up all of his belongings, one doesn’t realize how much junk has accumulated through the years. I’ve packed up a total of five fairly large boxes so far, and their contents consist of only my books and computer game boxes. A tiny ripple in a very large pond.

Fortunately, I’m moving up in room size. I outgrew my current room a number of years ago, so it’s well past time to have something larger. My new room provides substantially more real estate (having two closets will help tremendously), so I won’t be nearly as cramped as I am currently. As soon as I have a sizable down payment stored away in the bank, I’ll get a place of my own (and then I’ll really be moving up)!

Unfortunately, all of this activity is hurting my Googlebar Lite 3.0 efforts. We are unlikely to have internet connectivity for a few days at the new house, so that won’t help matters (although I can still work behind the scenes). So, don’t be surprised if version 3.0 shows up later than expected.

Seeing as it has been a long time since I last made a backup of stuff on my computer system (the last one I did was on April 17th), I decided that it was well past time to make another. In the process of doing so, I had the opportunity to do a little “fall cleaning” on my computer. I have since learned that my computer is surprisingly unorganized.

A number of redundant files were lying around (mostly stuff that can be recreated from other files that I have). So this was the first batch of stuff to be discarded. I also had a ton of really old stuff, some of it dating back to my early “JGB Productions” days. I zipped up all of said old stuff (so it wouldn’t lie fallow anymore), and then placed it in a safe place: just in case. There were a number of instances where files just needed to be zipped up: one folder of server logs was well over 110 MB and, after compression, was a mere 4 MB.

I believe I removed between 1000 and 1500 files in the process. Unfortunately, I didn’t calculate the entire disk savings, but it must be upwards of 1 GB or more (a number of duplicate MP3’s were also tossed out). All in all, the experience was a good one for me. Not only have I backed up vital data, I’ve tidied up my virtual home. It sure feels good to get clean!

(Apologies if this post jumps from one topic to another; I have a great deal on my mind).

For an incredibly long 13 weeks, my family has been trying to sell our house. Anytime anyone wanted to view it, we would end up having to go somewhere. It didn’t take very long to run out of places to visit so, needless to say, we quickly became quite bored of this routine. My mother is particularly tired of it, since she stays home during the day. So every time someone came to view the house, she would have to leave. Thankfully, we have just received our first offer for the house. The folks want to close in an incredibly short amount of time, so I expect things to get hectic around here very shortly. Please bear with me if my posts become erratic. I may not have internet connectivity for a few days (something I already loathe), so updates may be few and far between for a short while.

I continue to make excellent progress on Googlebar Lite 2.2. Just tonight I fixed a lurking bug that was recently reported, added a brand new option, and made several other miscellaneous changes. Some strings need to be translated, and a new feature or two may still need to be added, but this release is already shaping up to be a good one.

Various theme tweaks continue at this site. I located a very inefficient styling problem earlier this week (regarding the background rendering for each page), and squashed that bug. I’m not happy with the way comments are styled, so I plan to alter that in the coming days. I also hope to eventually get a contact page up on this site. Other general improvements are also planned.

Jessie went away last summer, a couple of months ago.
After all our time together, it was hard to see her go.
She called me right up when she arrived, asked me one more time to come.
A living on an L.A. freeway ain’t my kind of having fun.

I think I’d rather be a cowboy. I think I’d rather ride the range.
I think I’d rather be a cowboy than to lay me down in love and lady’s chains.

We were just beginning, it was such an easy way.
Laying back up in the mountains making songs for sunny days.
She got tired of picking daisies and cooking my meals for me.
She can live the life she wants to, yes, it’s all right with me.

I think I’d rather be a cowboy. I think I’d rather ride the range.
I think I’d rather be a cowboy than to lay me down in love and lady’s chains.

I’d rather live on the side of a mountain than wander through canyons of concrete and steel.
I’d rather laugh with the rain and sunshine and lay down my sundown in some starry field.

Oh, but I miss her in the morning when I awake alone.
The absence of her laughter is a cold and empty sound.
But her memory always makes me smile and I want you to know,
I love her, yes I love her; just enough to let her go.

I think I’d rather be a cowboy. I think I’d rather ride the range.
I think I’d rather be a cowboy than to lay me down in love and lady’s chains.
I think I’d rather be a cowboy. I think I’d rather ride the range.
I think I’d rather be a cowboy than to lay me down in love and lady’s chains.

We are experiencing some wickedly hot temperatures here in North Carolina. It’s forecast to be 99 degrees today (heat indicies of 105-110) and 101 degrees tomorrow (heat indicies of 110-115). And it even continues into Wednesday! With temperatures like this, there’s virtually nothing you can do except stay indoors. I’m sure plenty of people are heading to their local pool or swimming hole, but I prefer to stay in the A/C. Plus, I’ve been sick, so swimming around wouldn’t do me any good anyways. Thankfully, it looks like things will cool off this coming weekend. Autumn just can’t get here fast enough!