January 16, 2002

Blog recovery

Woo hoo! I discovered the username for my other blogs. Had to reactivate an old hotmail account I didn't care about. Oh well, it's history in 30 days,so.. Now if I can just figure out a way to combine all the blogs under one username, life will be grand.

Posted by denise at 07:24 AM

PDA Blues

My USB ports flaked out again yesterday. Found this out when I tried to sync my pda. I did a system restore back to the last time I synced and it seemed to work ok, except my pda crashed. That's the second time in a month it's crashed. First time the batt'ries were completely dead, but this second time they still had some juice left, at least according to the pda indicator. Anyway, I replaced the batteries, synced the thing and everything was restored at least back to Thursday. My to-do list is shot, but hey... it syncs.

Ya know, it seems counter-intuitive to put System Restore under Help and Support and not Control Panel, but that's just me.

Posted by denise at 11:59 PM

February 03, 2002

New tools

I'm on the hunt for a cable connection to the wonderful Internet! I'm going to buy a cable modem. I think it would be cheaper in the long run. AT&T will sell you a modem for $199, but I've found some for half that. Plus AT&T as a new user's offer for $25/month for 6 months. I need to get rid of HBO and my Audible subscription. My monthly fee for dialup went up 3 bucks. I should get rid of that, too. But I might need it for backup. Or I'll just switch to Netzero or something.

Then I need to get a scanner. Probably this one but the cnet review says it doesn't scan slides and negatives well which is what I need it for mostly.

There's also this thing. But both are pretty pricey so I dunno.

Then I need to upgrade the old Compaq with more memory and voice recognition software, so my mom can use it (if indeed she ever will). But for some reason that machine won't boot.

One of the things I did today was attach the old HD to the new machine. I was going to try a dual boot because my A+ book made it sound easy. Well, it wasn't, but I didn't really pursue it because I didn't want to screw things up. I was trying to retrieve my books database from the old HD. I created it in Quattro Pro 7, but QP7 won't run on XP. And I couldn't retrieve it into StarOffice in QP7 format. So I was going to go into Win95 and convert the spreadsheet to something StarOffice would read, but I couldn't get the the old machine to boot. I can read the old HD when it's setup as a slave drive on the new machine, but that doesn't help me.

So anyway, I discovered that I had the file on the new box, so I just imported it into WordPerfect (which works on XP although QP does not for some evil reason) as a table. Saved it as an MS Excel spreadsheet. Then I imported that into StarOffice and ureeka! it worked. Whew! All that messin' with the old drive for nothin' and now it won't boot. I might have the jumper settings wrong. But I got my books spreadsheet in an accessible format, so yay!

I visited campmor looking for a balaclava, but found a bunch more stuff I want.. hmm.. decisions.. decisions...

Executive Desicion is a rather chilling movie to watch in light of 9/11.

I got these Creative speakers for my new machine and when I play DVDs there's this wierd sound on the soundtrack kinda like a audio ghost. I don't really know how to describe it. I don't know if it's the speakers or the sound card or the DVD player or what.

Posted by denise at 10:52 AM

February 08, 2002

More new tools

I had the idea to add .5g of memory to my machine, max it out, but now memory's not cheap anymore. Rats!

Bought a cable modem yesterday. It was time!

Posted by denise at 05:14 PM

March 27, 2002

Blogger

I signed up with Blogger and somehow ended up with 2 blogs creatively titled "my blog." They immediately want you to decide on a title and template. Why all the pressure?

Posted by denise at 06:41 PM

July 27, 2002

Link of the half-hour
(This link is rated PG-13.)

Posted by denise at 09:54 AM

Changed my scrollbars. Woo!

Posted by denise at 10:14 AM

Since I'm blogging for the ADA, one thing I wanted to do was to post mini-bios of famous people who have diabetes. So first on my list is Gary Hall, Jr..

Mr. Hall contracted diabetes about 1998 and though his doctor told him he'd have to give up swimming, he went on to win gold medals in Men's Swimming in the 50m and 100m events and 4x100m relay event during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney Australia. And he continues to compete.

Posted by denise at 10:33 AM

Remember when: The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5

Posted by denise at 11:18 AM

Ok, enough fiddling with the site...

Posted by denise at 12:41 PM

Finally got AVIedit to work thanks to the developer. Now I can rip all my video! Well, actually I was able to rip it without AVIedit, but with AVIedit I can eliminate all the commercials. And life without commercials is good!

Posted by denise at 01:48 PM

The Piri Reis Map

Posted by denise at 02:44 PM

The current desktop:

Made by my friend John (one of my sponsors) from a photo I took of azaleas around the house.

Posted by denise at 03:04 PM

Hey! I'm in Welsh!

Artchive
Ar weflog drws nesa yng nghylch y Blogathon, ffeindiais i hyn: The Artchive. Dw i'n jyst dechrau archwilio'r safle. Gawn ni weld...

Postiwyd gan Nic Dafis am 10:18 YH
Dweud eich dweud: Sylwadau (0)

Posted by denise at 04:30 PM

Link of the half hour
Rated G!

Posted by denise at 05:16 PM

Not funny, IE6! I just surfed away for a minute and my post disappeared. Oh well, it wasn't that important anyway...

Posted by denise at 06:59 PM

Links of the half hour (courtesy of Linda)

Posted by denise at 07:58 PM

Ok, I'm looking at the Times Square Cam and I'm wondering, "What are those hordes of people doing out on the street at midnight? In Times Square?"

Posted by denise at 10:54 PM

That chocolate blog next door really is DA BOMB!

While it's true that Hershey's lost its luster for me years ago, progressing from Hershey's to, say, Lindt, isn't the same as going from weed to nose candy.

Posted by denise at 11:00 PM

July 28, 2002

Weblogs of note
Lileks' Daily Bleat
The Flangy News
Wil Wheaton Dot Net
Joyce's Notes
Blather Wodge

And quite possibly the best blog on the planet:
Bruce's Travel Journal

(And, yeah, these are from over on the sidebar. I read them all the time.)

Posted by denise at 12:32 AM

Oops, I'm reading Wil Wheaton's weblog and almost forgot to post. He posts a warm tribute to Gene Roddenberry.

Posted by denise at 01:01 AM

May 04, 2003

Good news, bad news

First, ants: Some black and red ants set up housekeeping in our mailbox. I finally got out the bug spray and with a couple of shots they died with alarming speed. So the good news is that the ants are gone. Bad news is the mailbox is full of dead ants.

Second, OSC: I found a new site by one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card: Uncle Orson Reviews Everything. Consequently there's a link to this cool Rube-Goldberg Honda ad.

Posted by denise at 12:00 AM

July 28, 2003

Links

So Le Grand Boucle starts August 3rd in Corsica.

In other news: The Italians get dissed. (via jce)

Posted by denise at 08:40 PM ~ Comments (1)

July 30, 2003

Ewww!

Lileks has posted samplings from an old Tiger Beat Magazine on his site. Is this wise?

Wow, there's a Tiger Beat website. Good because I really wanted to know what makes Ashton Krutcher cry.

Posted by denise at 06:55 AM ~ Comments (2)

August 05, 2003

The Mentos Conspiracy

We all knew it was true: The Mentos Conspiracy (via Instapundit)

Posted by denise at 07:31 AM

August 12, 2003

Blaster

I heard about the Blaster worm on NPR today. Then I get home and read a couple of complaints about Comcast service being down. Then I read this: 'Worm' shuts down Comcast Internet subscribers. What a coinky-dink! (via Drudge)

Posted by denise at 10:33 PM

August 17, 2003

SF-Lovers

It's been awhile since I was part of SF-Lovers. Glad to see it and Saul Jaffe are still around.

Here's a Strange New Worlds interview from way back (1993, I think) with the venerable and dedicated Saul Jaffe which can also be found on the SF-Lovers site if you dig deep enough.

Posted by denise at 09:48 AM

August 25, 2003

Sir Isaac

James Gleick who wrote Chaos (about chaos theory) and Genius (about Richard Feynman) has written a new (as of May 03) bio of Sir Isaac Newton. Excellent! (via Scripting News and check out Chris Lydon's interview.)

Posted by denise at 06:40 AM

August 29, 2003

Librarians ROCK!

Thanks to Library Stuff I think I've finally got a handle on what RSS is all about. Through one of the presentations I found a free basic news aggregator and now my daily blog troll will be a lot quicker and more efficient.

Posted by denise at 11:20 PM

August 31, 2003

Trakbak

I finally figured out how to add the Trackback feature to my entries. You have to check the "Allow Pings" feature at the bottom of the new entrie page. Now I get to go back to every entry and click that little box. 40-something times. Yay for me.

Update: Ok, I'm not going to do that actually, but I did get my categories to show up at the end of each entry, so yay fer real!

Posted by denise at 07:41 AM

September 01, 2003

Googled!

Hey, far out! My blog shows up in a google search

What does it mean? It means, people, I have ARRIVED!

Ok, no, it just means I'm desparately seeking attention.

And can't spell.

Posted by denise at 04:23 PM

September 02, 2003

Lost in HTMListan

I continue to poke around with the site design. Am I done yet?

Posted by denise at 10:54 PM ~ Comments (2)

September 04, 2003

It's Over

So, I've totally fallen out of love with RSS. Sorry Library Stuff. It could be the aggregator layout or the fact that I filled it so full of stuff, my brain crashed from information overload. Not all the blogs I read regularly have an RSS feed, like James Lileks. Who does he think he is anyway rolling his own and not being a Movable Type lemming like the rest of us?

Posted by denise at 09:28 PM

November 09, 2003

Old Mail

Going through old email I found an link to The Industrious Clock.

You can find more similar artsy stuff at surface.yugop.com. I used one of the flash animation thingees, Oval X3, on that site to make my current background (with Paint Shop Pro's screen capture of course.)

Posted by denise at 02:51 PM

January 28, 2004

Very Powerful, eh?

You're a gryphon. You're very powerful without
needing to brag about it. Creativity is one of
your strong suits. Your outward personality may
change drastically according to your mood,
which is not always a good thing. You're a
loyal guardian when you choose to be and you're
aligned towards *good*.


What mythical beast are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by denise at 09:25 PM ~ Comments (1)

February 08, 2004

Anime

Two nerds discuss anime. I'm not really into anime, so all the more reason for me to blog about it, I suppose. On the Captain's recommendation, I looked up an episode of “Samurai Jack.” It happened to be episode 3 and was a great riff on Seven Samurai with Jack as all 7 samurai, I guess. The animation is inventive and electric and non-repetitive. I love the fact that there's so little dialogue in this episode. Another episode I watched was the one where Jack is transformed into a chicken by a mysterious and irritable stranger and is pressed into the cock-fighting circuit. It's a really hilarious episode.

Posted by denise at 03:45 PM

March 10, 2004

Blogging

Apparently the thing to do nowadays is post pictures of your blogging station on your blog. So here's my "nest:"

Here's the other side:

Lovely, isn't it? It's even messier at the moment.

Posted by denise at 11:22 PM ~ Comments (3)

March 14, 2004

PDA Blues, Pt. 2

I been having trouble syncing my PDA. I've rebooted, reinstalled the software, switched USB ports. I ended up switching to the serial cradle and it worked just fine at least Saturday it did. One day it syncs just fine the next bupkus. The weird thing is that the computer has to recognize the scanner before it will sync the PDA. Stupid electronics!

Posted by denise at 05:21 PM

June 25, 2004

No Comdex

The tech sector is finally on its way back up, so somebody ups and cancels Comdex.

Man...

Posted by denise at 10:22 PM

July 16, 2004

Blog redesign

Redesigned and renamed the blog. "Cinnamon salsa" was just lame and was making me cringe every time I saw it. Plus it has a certain pr0n taint. I thought of "The Salsa Review," but I'm not really all that fond of salsa. Not really keen on food that inflicts pain. I'm biting the food. The food shouldn't be biting me. Then I thought of "The Chocolate Review" or "The Sugar Review" because I actually like chocolate and sugar, but again there's that unsavory taint of smut.

[long, long description of my thinking process deleted.]

So I finally decided on "vewwy, vewwy quiet," since it pretty much describes my life and how often I'm probably going to updating this thing.

And it's still the most influential blog in my house!

Posted by denise at 10:24 PM

Spammers...

To complain: I've had to delete something like 100 spammy comments posted to the same 4 blog entries from the same URL. So I'm trying to figure out how to block URLs.

Criminey people! Don't you have anything better to do?

Posted by denise at 10:32 PM

July 17, 2004

Return of Shatner

Ok, this is my new desktop:

Who knew William Shatner of all people would make a career comeback in his 70s what with his Priceline ads and his new role on the new "The Practice"?

Posted by denise at 11:49 PM

July 18, 2004

Netflummoxed

I'm a big fan of Netflix. I like the convenience of not having to make a trip to the video store. The subscription price is decent, averaging out to about a dollar per DVD. Their costomer service is great. Their selection is excellent. And best of all there are no late fees.

So I was happy to learn that Netflix' profits had nearly doubled last quarter. But then I see this article about Netflix' stock price plummeting. What's the deal? Apparently, expansion costs cut into all those profits. They're also facing competition from Blockbuster, Walmart and video-on-demand.

I don't really see Blockbuster as much of a threat right now since they're currently offering less for more. VOD I don't know about. VOD will probably offer better picture quality and more conveinence, but how much is it going to cost? And will it offer the same features as a DVD?

Walmart is Netflix' biggest threat at the moment. They rolled out their DVD subscription service not long after Netflix. Their subscription rate is a little less, plus they already have a distribution network in place. The one thing they have going against them though is that they're...well...Walmart.

Posted by denise at 07:42 PM

July 30, 2004

Antiques

I just love old tech stuff like this! That job probably required a Ph.D.

How far we've come.(via Boing Boing)

Posted by denise at 06:51 PM

Fighting the Bandits of Sloppy Theology!

The Thinklings have a new web design. Very nice!

UPDATE: They changed it again! Right-o!

(Vodkapundit also has a new Sekimori design. It's so cool, I'm insanely jealous!)

Posted by denise at 07:01 PM ~ Comments (1)

August 04, 2004

No CeBIT

Another IT trade show bites the dust.

Posted by denise at 08:25 PM

September 04, 2004

New addition

I recently (as of yesterday) purchased a digital camera, a Gateway, DC-T50. TigerDirect had them for a pretty decent price, so I went ahead and bought one even though the reviews were fair-to-middlin'. One reason it was so cheap was probably because Gateway is getting out of the digital camera business and going back ot its customized-PC roots. Anyway, now this means I can photoblog.

So far, it's working out ok. The new camera is settling in nicely. The older cameras don't seem to be jealous at all. Here's the first picture I took with it:

Woo, I know. Exciting.

It does take somewhat better pictures, however:

Posted by denise at 07:44 PM

September 16, 2004

Huh? Wow.

First I find out I'm listed on Blogshares. Then I find out I'm on this guy's blogroll which might just be the DFWBlogs blog listing except The Fat Guy's not listed and he's probably the premiere Texas blogger aside from Virginia Postrel who had an essay on NPR today.

Now, I'll pause while I think of ways to make that sentence even more long and rambling.

Posted by denise at 09:01 PM

October 04, 2004

Sad irony

On the day the Rutan brothers open a new chapter in spaceflight, space veteran, Gordon Cooper, passes away. Cooper was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.

Posted by denise at 11:14 AM

October 26, 2004

US Medal Count by State

Ever wondered which US state garnered the most medals in the 2004 Olympic Games? Of course you have!

I compiled this right at the end of the Olympics and then forgot all about it. So, not willing to deprive Internet denizens of any useless information, I submit for your approval (or not) The US Medal Count By State!

Feel free to submit corrections in Comments or by email to d at deniseinglis dot com.

Posted by denise at 11:03 PM

December 28, 2004

Bloglines

After checking out several news aggregators and not liking them. I finally checked out Bloglines. It's web-based which I like better for some reason than another desktop app. So I spent several hours (yes) Sunday night loading it up with some 130 (you heard me) blogs and newsfeeds. While it's a lot easier to keep up with what's going on at various sites it's not saving me any more time because I'm spending more time reading.

I've also discovered that my home-town paper, the Star-Telegram has no RSS feed, so I must deign to read the Dallas Morning News which does. It's not really the Star-Telegram's fault. RealCities.com, their website designer, doesn't offer an RSS feed on any of their newspaper sites. FW Weekly, the alternative paper also has no RSS feed.

Posted by denise at 10:21 PM

December 29, 2004

Buy Marvel

Motley Fool asks the burning question: Whither Marvel?

Where does Marvel stand? As I have said, Marvel is undervalued. Marvel's fundamentals are still strong--they get stronger all the time. As a matter of fact Marvel is a solid stock for the whole year.

Posted by denise at 08:18 PM

BitTorrent creator

Bram Cohen: The Wired Interview

Posted by denise at 09:20 PM

December 31, 2004

Links for more good news in 2004

Microsoft abandons Passport. Yay! (via Slashdot)

Peace in Sudan.

A New Year's Wish from Iraq (via The Thinklings)

Posted by denise at 09:03 PM

January 07, 2005

Fun with search terms

The following search terms appeared in my referrer logs in the following order:

Martina McBride and history of stone rolling fashion.

Posted by denise at 12:22 AM

January 08, 2005

Nerd Alert!

(via Fire Ant Gazette)

Posted by denise at 11:18 PM ~ Comments (2)

February 19, 2005

Recent history

Christie's is auctioning off one of the world's largest collections of computing history.

Posted by denise at 08:05 AM

May 28, 2005

In Memoriam

A couple of weeks ago, I lost a dear family member. I've only just now been able to talk about it. On top of the shock of this sudden death is the knowledge that I was the cause. It was completely my fault and it could have been avoided, if I'd only been paying closer attention. For the rest of my life I'll have to live with the knowledge that I carelessly, accidently washed by handheld with a load of laundry. And it died a sudsy, soapy death.

Notice the screen. Not only is it discolored, but also cracked. That was some spin cycle! The good news is it was a refurbished one, so I'm not out a lot of money.

Posted by denise at 11:52 PM

June 02, 2005

The Mystery of Wi-Fi

I got a laptop a month or so ago with a wi-fi card. I don't have wi-fi at home with my desktop, so I thought I'd just rig up a cable network between the laptop and the desktop until I could get wireless at home. But no. For some reason I keep buying the wrong kind of cable. So I gave up on that and decided after a couple of weeks to just go back to the wi-fi connection and just get a wireless router for the desktop.

What I didn't realize (or most likely forgot) is that when you try to establish a cable network, the laptop turns off the wireless card. It took me an hour of poking around in the network configuration menu before I realized that. Once I realized it had to be turned on again, I spent about 15 minutes looking for a physical switch. Finally, I realized it's a software switch I need to turn on and that took about 3 seconds once I found it. D'oh!

So earlier this week, I took my laptop to work and took it to Barnes and Noble to do some surfing at lunchtime. (My work has good wi-fi, but I don't feel comfortable using it since I'm not going to be using it for work-related stuff.) You have to pay for the wi-fi at B&N, but it's a good connection. Anyway, when I parked where I usually do I wasn't getting as good a connection as usual, so I drove to the other side of the building. On that side of the building are a few restaurants including a Hooters. Interestingly, a Hooter's connection showed up on my available connections list and I discovered a good, strong, free wi-fi connection I can access from the Hooter's parking lot! w00t!

In case you're wondering, it's the Hooter's on Collins and I-30, north side of the building.

Posted by denise at 11:53 PM

June 14, 2005

Stuff

For some reason, MT-Blacklist had recently begun blocking all URLs posted in comments, including mine. So I did a reinstall.

The good news is now everything seems to be working as it should.

The bad news is now my blog is getting pinged within an inch of it's life by some poker site (well, actually several.)

But the good news is I don't see any of those trackbacks appearing anywhere on the site, so maybe Blacklist is doing it's job.

Except I'm getting a ton of e-mail as MT is setup to send an email informing me of each and every ping.

UPDATE: I did have to go through Blacklist and delete each ping even though I didn't see anything on the blog. I think we're all squared away now.

-----

Totally useless, but funny site: kittenwar.com

Posted by denise at 11:22 PM

June 18, 2005

Hacking Censorship

From the Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! Department: Chinese bloggers have found ways to create MSN Spaces blogs that include the forbidden words. (via Scripting News)

Posted by denise at 10:29 PM

July 03, 2005

The KLV - The Bible Used by K'Peter and K'Paul

A few weeks ago Eric at the Fire Ant Gazette wrote about the Klingon version of the Bible and a podcast that is actually based around scripture readings from that version. I complained in the comments that translating the Bible into Klingon was a waste of time and money when so many real people in the world didn't have the Bible in their own language. My opinion was based on the assumption that non-Christians had done the Klingon translation. Why I came to that conclusion, I haven't a clue. I suppose because I felt a hostility toward Christianity from Gene Roddenberry, as well a several Trek actors and fans. Obviously, many Christians are Star Trek fans, including me.

I listened to the podcast hosted by Joel Anderson and found it to be an honest and worthy effort to glorify the name of Jesus. If you're a Christian and a Star Trek fan I highly recommend it.

Stick it in your qogh!^*

(^*Klingon for "ear")

Posted by denise at 10:23 PM

July 11, 2005

Links

Robert Cringely has plans to not only podcast, but videoblog as well. I'm looking forward to "NerdTV", sounds fun and will be a great follow up to "Triumph of the Nerds" and "Nerds 2.0.1"

My old former college room-mate, Linda, has revitalized her blog, Exasperated. It's all about home-schooling, scrapbooking and going to places that I don't get to go to (like Disneyland). Check it out!

Wittingshire has beautiful flower photos (as usual) and don't miss the wonderful essay following on the Ring of Power.

Posted by denise at 10:03 PM ~ Comments (1)

July 16, 2005

Coupla apps

1.) The other day I needed some sort of font viewer that would give me a simple way to look at all my fonts in one window. So I googled "free font viewer" and the first thing that came up was Styopkin Software's "Free & Easy Font Viewer". Highly recommended as a simple font viewer. If you're looking for a more full-featured font manager try out their "Advanced Font Viewer."

2.) I heard about Copernic Desktop Search on the Chris Pirillo Show not long ago. I decided to try it out since Windows search is servicable, but slow. In a word, Copernic Desktop Search is AMAZING.

It continually indexes your drive(s) (I think) which makes searching a lot faster. It searches text, audio and video files and even email and bookmarks, virtually any file you have on your drive. Refining your search is easy. The results page is well-organized. You can choose to sort results a number of different ways. My favorite feature, however, is the preview window. Not only does it allow you to view the text files it brings up, but it also allows you to view email. For music and video files, it shows the id3 tag info or other metadata and offers a media player so that you can listen to the song or watch the video. Click on a bookmark in the results window and you can see the webpage in the preview window. Way cool!

Copernic Desktop Search has quickly become an indispensible tool in my geek toolbox!

Posted by denise at 11:59 PM

July 20, 2005

Hail and Farewell

James Doohan, Star Trek's "Scotty" died today at the age of 85. He'd been in failing health for some time, still it's sad news.

Doohan was born in Canada and served in the Canadian army during World War II. He took part in the Normandy invasion and suffered serious injuries including the loss of his middle finger.

In addition to his role as Scotty in "Star Trek," he was a much-sought-after character actor and did an amazing amount of voice-acting. He was a master at many dialects and even created the first words of Klingon heard in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".

He was a favorite of Star Trek fans and a great guy. He'll be missed. FoxNews has more (and better) details about his life.

TrekToday
Lileks' tribute

Posted by denise at 10:43 PM

July 24, 2005

Underwhelming

Microsoft is changing the name of it's new OS from the tough and slightly dopey pre-release name of "Longhorn" to the pretty, meaningless name of "Windows Vista."

Pardon me, while I stifle a yawn.

Posted by denise at 10:32 AM

August 06, 2005

Blogathon 2005

It's August 6 and that must mean it's BLOGATHON! Blogathon is the blogging event held (almost) annually whereby bloggers sign up to blog for 24 hours straight (posting twice an hour) on behalf of their favorite charities.

I sponsored two bloggers this year:
Julie Neidlinger of the Lone Prairie Blog who's blogging for Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree
and
Eric Siegmund of the Fire Ant Gazette who's blogging for Midland Fair Havens, a Midland, Texas ministry that serves single moms and their kids.

Eric's got a music contest going and Julie's writing an episodic story about Bob the Doormat complete with photos. Madness and mayhem are bound to ensue!

Posted by denise at 12:22 PM ~ Comments (4)

August 07, 2005

No visible passes

I was hoping I might get a glimpse of Discovery as it made it's landing at KSC even if I had to get up around 3:30 am. But apparently it's not going to be visible in North America. Oh well. As long as they return safely. Godspeed Discovery!

Posted by denise at 08:54 PM

Blogathon 2005: The Finale

Looks like Blogathon 2005 was a rousing success. A lot of money was raised and a lot of great blogging was done and at least two great ministries were blessed. Thanks to Eric and Julie for lasting to the very end. Huzzah!

Oh and my Fire Ant Gazette contest answers:

Hour 2 - 9:00 am - USA for Africa - We Are the World
Hour 3 - 10:00 am - The Art of Noise - Paranoia
Hour 4 - 11:00 am - Tommy James and the Shondells - Mirage
Hour 5 - 12:00 pm - Billy Joel - This is the Time
Hour 6 - 1:00 pm - Rolling Stone - Jumpin' Jack Flash
Hour 7 - 2:00 pm - Bobby Sherman - Julie Do Ya Love Me
Hour 8 - 3:00 pm - Mick Jagger/David Bowie - Dancing in the Street
Hour 9 - 4:00 pm - Robert Palmer - Addicted to Love
Hour 10 - 5:00 pm - Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart - Out & About
Hour 11 - 6:00 pm - The Buckinghams - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy
Hour 12 - 7:00 pm - Prince & the Revolution - Kiss
Hour 13 - 8:00 pm - The Dave Clark Five - You've Got What it Takes
Hour 14 - 9:00 pm - Pete Townshend - Face the Face
Hour 15 - 10:00 pm - Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
Hour 16 - 11:00 pm - Mike + The Mechanics - All I Need is a Miracle
Hour 24 - 7:00 am - INXS - What You Need

Now I need to buy all these songs from iTunes.

Posted by denise at 09:01 PM

August 24, 2005

43things.com

Put your to-do list on the web for everyone to see! It's sort of the "flickr" for personal goals. Find out who shares similar goals. Encourage others!

Posted by denise at 10:19 PM

August 29, 2005

Blogrolling Rolls On

I don't know how long blogrolling.com has been around, but when I first saw it on someone's website, I politely declined: "I can create my own blogroll thank you very much." So the other day, on one site (Polipundit, I think, maybe) I saw how the blogroll put the sites with the freshest content at the top. I'd seen this before, of course, but for some reason this appealed to me this particular time. So I signed up with blogrolling.com and found it to be a great way to organize all the very many blogs that I try to read. It also works with sites that aren't necessarily blogs like Bruce Marchiano's which is a great content-rich site, but suffers because it's not a blog. (He could call it BruceBlog.)

After using blogrolling.com for about a week I've noticed that sites I know are updated daily don't get rolled up to the top of the blogroll. That might be because I'm using the javascript code instead of the RSS code, but I can't figure out how to make the RSS code work. Oh well, I've got them all listed and it's really easy to add sites to my blogroll and that's what counts at this point.

Posted by denise at 12:04 AM ~ Comments (6)

October 13, 2005

Death to Musicmatch!

Well, maybe not death. Perhaps torture. Because it's certainly torture to have to use it to buy music. It's slow and clunky and bloated to begin with and it starts up every time I plug in one of my mp3 players. Well, sometimes it starts up. Sometimes it doesn't.

I use Windows Media Player to organize all my audio, so Musicmatch is a bit redundant in that area. I just need it to buy music. I was willing to keep it around when my new Dell mp3 player demanded a Musicmatch upgrade before I could use the player. (Or so I thought. It works fine with WMP.) At that time I noticed that Musicmatch had apparently been purchased by Yahoo. Ok, great. But when I tried to buy a song the other day - one song - Musicmatch asked me to supply my Yahoo ID as well as my Musicmatch ID because it's going to merge the two. I don't need that. I need a song. Of course, I didn't remember my Yahoo ID. I finally remembered the last username I used. Got a new password. Logged in, etc. And when I finally got a chance to search for the song I wanted, Musicmatch didn't even have it.

I give up! Musicmatch is history! Grrr!

Posted by denise at 12:22 AM ~ Comments (2)

October 16, 2005

Famous Last Words?

The battery in the Suburban is dead. The guy at the Jiffy Lube told me I needed a new battery, but I didn't believe him because, hey!, it's starts up just fine!

But now it's deader than the Ranger's chances of ever winning the Pennant.

So I've decided I'm going to try to put in a new one myself. I mean, I've got a wrench. I've got the Internet.

How hard could it be?

Posted by denise at 10:40 PM ~ Comments (3)

October 21, 2005

A few thousand science fiction covers

If you're a die-hard science fiction fan, check out this site. It's pretty amazing. (via Chaos Manor)

Posted by denise at 09:18 PM ~ Comments (3)

November 05, 2005

King Kong

Because we're nothing but geeks around here (and by "we", of course, I mean "me"), I have to point you to the official site for the new King Kong movie. Be sure to check out the trailer if you haven't seen it. A couple of interesting bits o' trivia from the site: Andy Serkis (Gollum from "Lord of the Rings") worked as the "stand-in" for Kong, doing the same sort of motion-capture work he did for Gollum. Also, the visual effects were done by Weta Digital who did the effects for the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the upcoming "Chronicles of Narnia".

There's a King King vs. Godzilla/T-Rex scene at the end of the trailer, but Peter Jackson's Godzilla ain't got rhythm.

Tags: King Kong

Posted by denise at 10:53 PM ~ Comments (2)

November 15, 2005

Your Random FOLDOC Word of the Day

cyberchondriac

<jargon, humour> (After "hypochondriac")

1. A user who always thinks there is something wrong with his computer.

2. Someone who uses the World-Wide Web to indulge their hyperchondria.

• FOLDOC

Posted by denise at 11:45 PM

November 21, 2005

Your Random FOLDOC Word of the Day

stack puke

Some processor architectures are said to "puke their guts onto the stack" to save their internal state during exception processing. The Motorola 68020, for example, regurgitates up to 92 bytes on a bus fault. On a pipelined machine, this can take a while.

• FOLDOC

Posted by denise at 11:32 PM

December 03, 2005

Today's spam

Today I received a spam comment with this URL:

URL: http://spam.com/

At least they're honest!

Posted by denise at 10:57 PM

January 21, 2006

iFox

While tooling around the Mozilla site looking for plug-ins for Firefox, I was reminded that this browser is skinnable. I came across this great, minimalist, Mac OS-emulating skin, iFox. Since this skin takes up less browser window real estate than the default Firefox skin, I was able to restore my Google toolbar as well as my Copernic toolbar and still have more website viewing space than with the default skin.

Sweeeet!

Posted by denise at 11:10 AM ~ Comments (4)

February 03, 2006

fastr

Ok, so much for my resolution to blog more.

Here's a new time-waster: fastr. Try to guess the keyword common to the group of flickr photos that appear. It's highly addictive!

Posted by denise at 08:46 PM ~ Comments (1)

February 12, 2006

Apple coughs up another iPod

Apple finally makes an iPod that fits me: iPod Nano, 1 GB, $149; the right size, the right price. Fortunately, my Palm Tungsten E2 with a 1 GB SD card, running RealPlayer, does the same thing, plus it keeps my contacts and notes handy.

So I continue to remain iPod free! You lose Apple!

Posted by denise at 01:35 AM

March 10, 2006

Which Star Trek character are you?

Jean-Luc Picard. You command your ship with an

iron fist and the children love you.

Bah!!! Humbug!! KIDS!!! >_<


Which Star Trek Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Quizilla, friend of lazy unmotivated bloggers throughout the blogosphere!)

Posted by denise at 12:07 AM ~ Comments (1)

June 06, 2006

Stronghold Crusader

I love sim games and I recently rediscovered an old one, "Stronghold Crusader." It's a simple concept: build your castle and army and try to capture your enemy's castle before he captures yours. Of course, I always lose.

I noticed I hadn't played it in about two years and I quickly discovered why. Besides the always losing thing, it's also the Mother of All Time-Sinks! Argh.

Now, I only play to hear the greeting.

Technorati tags: Stronghold Crusader, time sink, sim games, get a life!

Stronghold Crusader  time sink  sim games  get a life!  

Posted by denise at 09:11 PM

June 07, 2006

Clusty.com scares me

I discovered the Clusty.com search engine via Instapundit. Instead of giving you an infodump like Google or MSN does, Clusty.com "clusters" the search results into various categories and document types, so that you can further narrow your search. Sounds pretty cool, right? So why does it scare me? Because when I did a vanity search, it gave me links to stuff I'd written that I'd totally forgotten about and assumed was no longer on the web. For instance, there's this "encouraging" message I left on Harlan Ellison's website after he had his heart attack several years ago.

Denise Inglis (dinglis@acuvax.acu.edu) Wed Apr 17 12:00:42 1996
Quadrulple bypass! Dang! You don't do anything in halves, do you? Tell the Ticktockman to kiss your &%$, and get well soon. I'll be saying a prayer for you and Susan.

Yes! I used a bad word (that I have, here, replaced with random letters) in a message I sent while working at a Christian college library. And it's still around 10 years later! There's other fun stuff there too, like the Celtic Studies bibliography that seems to be propagating and messages to various Star Trek listservs that I'm not sure should really be public, but oh well. Let this be a lesson to one and all that what happens on the Internet stays on the Internet...forever...for anyone to find.

So go do a vanity search (or any kind of search) on Clusty.com and get scared!

Technorati tags: clusty.com, Harlan Ellison

clusty com  Harlan Ellison  

Posted by denise at 12:40 PM

June 09, 2006

Stronghold Crusader, Part Deux

Must. Stop. Playing. This. Game.

Must. Stop.

Technorati tags: Stronghold Crusader, time sink, sim games, help me!

Stronghold Crusader  time sink  sim games  help me!  

Posted by denise at 11:16 PM

June 18, 2006

Stronghold Crusader, Parte Tres

Looks like I haven't posted anything for a week. Have I been playing that much Stronghold Crusader? Apparently, I have.

D'oh!

I haven't been reading many of my favorite blogs either. I even think I'm starting to dream about the game. Guess this means I really need to quit!

Technorati tags: Stronghold Crusader, time sink, sim games

Stronghold Crusader  time sink sim games  

Posted by denise at 10:46 PM

Handy Recovery

Last Saturday, I went to a family wedding. Naturally, I took a bunch of pictures. When I got home I downloaded them off my camera, but in the middle of that, I started deleting them thinking I'd finished downloading them. I lost about half my pictures.

I never do this.

So I was desperate for a recovery tool. After trying out a couple, I settled for Handy Recovery, mainly because it was cheaper, $30 instead of $49 for the other two programs I demoed. Handy Recovery was simple to use and worked like a charm. Pictures restored!

Technorati tags: Handy Recovery

Handy Recovery  

Posted by denise at 10:51 PM ~ Comments (2)

June 21, 2006

flickr

I've added some photos to my flickr site. So check it out!

I'm going to start up an old project I had of taking at least one picture everyday and combining that with another thing I wanted to do which is taking pictures of all the churches in town (or wherever). Consider this a work in progress since I may be replacing some of these pictures as I take better ones.

Technorati tags: flickr

flickr  

Posted by denise at 12:07 AM ~ Comments (2)

August 06, 2006

The mercurial Darth Vader

(via Wingin' It!)

Technorati tags: Darth Vader

Darth Vader  

Posted by denise at 11:07 PM ~ Comments (1)

A few Firefox extensions

Here are a few Firefox extensions I find extremely handy.

1. Movie Dude 1.5.13b: a Greasemonkey script that "cross-links" various movie sites. Perfect for when you're researching movie information and want to add movies to your Netflix queue or read reviews.
2. Sessionsaver .2: saves your last browsing session. Really handy if you're area is prone to power outages or if your system is prone to crashes.
3. TimeTracker 1.1.2: keeps track of the time you waste spend surfing the Internet. A time-clock appears in the lower right corner of your browser showing how much time you spend actively surfing the net.

   

   Place your mouse cursor over the clock and it will show you how much time you've spent surfing the 'Net since you installed the program. You can stop the clock whenever you like by left-clicking and you also have the option of filtering out sites you don't want time-tracked.

   

   (Dang, that's 43 hours I'll never get back... )
   

Technorati tags: Firefox extentions, Mozilla Add-ons, Movie Dude, Greasemonkey, Sessionsaver, TimeTracker

Firefox extensions  Mozilla Add ons  Movie Dude  Greasemonkey  Sessionsaver  TimeTracker  

Posted by denise at 11:16 PM

August 19, 2006

Connectivity issues

Wednesday, I had a brief power outage and since then my internet connection's been sluggish. I think it's the router again. Now I have to go through the ritual: unplug the cable modem, then the wireless router, wait 3 minutes. Then, stand on my head, spin like a top, sacrifice a chicken, etc.

So I've decided to put my router on notice!

(via Thinklings. Get your own "On Notice" board here.)

Technorati: Netgear Wireless Router MR814 v2

Tagjag: Netgear Wireless Router MR814 v2

Posted by denise at 06:02 PM ~ Comments (2)

August 20, 2006

Links, various and sundry

...from across the blogosphere!

• I could totally use 1 terabyte of storage space. (via Scripting News.)

• A two-legged dog. No kidding! (via Evangelical Outpost.)

• Why YouTube was invented. (via Lintefiniel Musing)

• Build your own cat tree. (That makes me want to be a cat.) (via Digg.com)

• A USB incense burner. (via Cranky Geeks)

• And finally, spelling with zombies (via Boing Boing):
  

• And a bonus lifehack: Never use Lubriderm as a facial cream. This stuff buuuuurrrrrnnnns. I've gotta go wash this stuff off....

Technorati: disk storage, two-legged dogs, insane cats, cat trees, USB incense burner, zombies, Lubriderm

Tagjag: disk storage, two-legged dogs, insane cats, cat trees, USB incense burner, zombies, Lubriderm

Posted by denise at 11:41 PM

August 21, 2006

Geeky goodness

Last Saturday, tired of entering Technorati tags by hand, I decided to look for some sort of short cut to make it quicker and easier to tag my posts. Of course, I came across Technorati Tools and found tagging resources there. I ended up cobbling together a javascript bookmarklet from one I found on Andrew Beacock's site and this one I found on FreeHogg. (They're virtually the same with some minor variations.) Then I used the CSS from Finian Darragh's Tag Generator. Since I also like to add Tagjag (or Gada.be) tags to my posts, too, it was easy to make the few modifications to the script to accomodate those tags as well. Then, I copped the Technorati .gif from FeedHogg and made my own Tagjag icon from the site's icon, added those into the javascript and waalaa! new javascript bookmarklets for my tags. It's not a perfect solution, but it beats coding the tags by hand.

On a side note, I know nothing about javascript, but it turned out that it wasn't so difficult to work with after all.

Andrew Beacock's and FeedHogg's javascript bookmarklet for Technorati tags (Click and drag this to your toolbar)

Technorati: Javascript bookmarklet for Technorati tags

Tagjag: Javascript bookmarklet for Tagjag tags

Posted by denise at 11:57 PM ~ Comments (2)

August 26, 2006

Videos of the Day

I haven't posted since Tuesday? Where does the time go?

Well, anyway, you have to watch these videos:

"Minority Report" becomes reality. Honestly, this is much better than what we saw in that movie! (via Mark Lowry's Ramblings). Download the video podcast here.

Only in America: Redneck Bottle Rocket Launcher - Google Video. (via digg.com)

Technorati: touch-driven computer screen, TED, Jeff Han, bottle rocket launcher

Tagjag: touch-driven computer screen, TED, Jeff Han, bottle rocket launcher

Posted by denise at 07:17 PM ~ Comments (2)