Going along with the 7-11 and Kwik-E-Mart post from earlier, Rebecca turned us into Simpsons characters.
Everyone’s doing it, and you can go to The Simpsons Movie website to do it, too.
Archive for the ‘Geeky’ Category
Think I’m turning Simpsons, I really think so
Monday, July 9th, 2007Apple WWDC keynote was kind of… meh
Monday, June 11th, 2007I’m often a fan of the keynotes that Steve Jobs gives at either MacWorld Expo or the WWDC, and the one today has left me with a lot of mixed feelings. Either way, no matter what happens at these events, you expect something to wow you. Big or little, I usually feel like something cool just happened.
Today, I just didn’t get that feeling.
Ok, I am not forgetting that this is the “World Wide Developers Conference”, so these guys are concerned about hardware as much as they are the lines of code that they can manipulate and build cool software with, so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of product updates and launches.
Jobs, instead, gives us a demo of the really cool features that Apple is excited about and think will be uber sweet for us, the consumers, to get our hands on… again. I mean, there were a few, new neat things announced, but we saw this same keynote in January. Left me feeling a little let down, but there were some interesting things announced today that made me chime into the “cool” vibe that Steve was touting.
The next version of Mac OS X is $129 across the board, for all flavors. Boot Camp will be built-in, so you’ll be able to run XP and Vista out of the box. A new Finder, but that gives me reason to pause in that I’ll have to relearn a few things, no biggie. Anything that helps file management and work flow is a great concept to me.
They also announced a Windows version of Safari, and I am debating with myself as to how I feel about it. As cool as Safari looks, there are elements about it that I can’t handle when it comes to making it my default browser. Maybe version 3 will change my mind, but I’m still resisting the urge to download the beta for now. Bottom line, Safari beach-balls on me too often for me to go back to it, but my mind remains constantly open.
On top of that, Apple launched a redesign to their website. It has a heavy Web 2.0 look and feel to it now, complete with fun AJAX things here and there. Looks nice.
Other than that, not too much else sticks out to me. iPhone still sounds cool, I hope it works well when it’s released, and making software for it sounds pretty easy if you are skilled at making web applications in general. I think I’d be more excited about the outcome if this new OS was coming out next month and not October, but the waiting is half the fun. Kinda.
30 years of Star Wars
Thursday, May 24th, 2007
I realize that it’s the 30th anniversary of Star Wars this week, but what really gets to me is this action figure package that I found in a Toys R’ Us a few weeks ago.
When, at any point, did Boba Fett[wiki] or Darth Vader[wiki] ride a motorcycle? And if they did anything remotely close to riding a said, similar vehicle, you can bet your butt that it didn’t have wheels on it. Am I right or am I right?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the first three flicks. We even taped Star Wars[imdb] onto beta when they played it on national TV, and I watched that tape over and over until you could barely make out the video on the screen. I must have been four at the time, and affinity has wained very little, more so for the original three. As cool as Samual Jackson is with a light saber, I just can’t wrap my appreciation around the last three. Well, the battle with all the wookies in #3 was pretty awesome, but the rest left me a little unsatisfied.
Alas, the 30 year empire of George Lucas[wiki] is going strong. Good for him, but senseless toys like this make me sad. Legos I get, but stuff that wasn’t even in the movie is just ridiculous.
Follow up thoughts on SuperHappyDevHouse
Monday, May 14th, 2007My post about attending the SuperHappyDevHouse at the Bryght offices in Vancouver was pretty last minute, so I thought I would do my best to give a post-game reaction to the festivities.
In all honesty, I went there with the intent of doing something kinda geeky and fun, but the fun really got put in front of the geeky. While the true hackers and do’ers were on the main floor doing some, what looked like, intense coding, I was manning the grill for hot action with some brats. And the way the sun was shining on the rooftop patio, I quickly made myself at home up there. The keg was up there too, so I was far from alone.
Talked to a lot of really cool folks while I was up there. In no particular order, Jordan Behan, Roland Tanglao, Jason Vanderhill, Boris Mann, Richard Eriksson, Kris Krug, Ianiv, Ivan, John Biehler, and big shout outs to good pals Duane Storey and the Dave Olsen.
I’m unaware if anything monumental came from the event, but there were a chunk of folks who were looking to do something that sounded neat. I don’t think that I was completely out of my element there, but hard coding is a tad out of the realms of the things I know and like to do. I overheard that one of said coders asked Rebecca why she was there once they found out that she was “just a blogger“.
Bottom line, I had a lot of fun. People that I hung around and chatted with were a great group of folks, and we certainly had a good exchange of ideas, concepts, slams, jokes, laughter, and so on. Being that I have a few Drupal projects that I have been working on, these are the right folks to be talking to.
SuperHappyDevHouse – Vancouver Edition
Friday, May 11th, 2007
Not sure what trouble I’ve signed up for, but this sounds like a good time. Compared to some of the folks that will be attending this, they will completely put me to shame with their talents and geeky ninja stylings. It doesn’t help that I’m posting this completely last minute, but something is better than nothing.
If you want to attend, sign up on Upcoming.org or get yourself on the SocialText Wiki.
I’ve been working on a few projects involving Drupal, and these are the folks to be talking to about it. Hopefully the whole night won’t be laced with geeky work talk, but worse things could happen. You could feed a bunch of geeks alcohol. God help us with what could happen next.
The new daylight savings time
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007A recent update to my Mac came down. It was for the change to daylight savings time[wiki], being that it has changed as of 2007.
I’ve got some top secret news which won’t be revealed to the general public until March 11, 2007. Unwary people will be getting a rude awakening. On that day, in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, people in most states of the U.S. will turn their clocks forward one hour at 2:00 a.m. to take advantage of longer daylight hours and reduced energy bills.
Previously, Daylight Savings Time was implemented on the first Sunday of April and ended on the last Sunday in October for participating states (Indiana, split between two time zones, didn’t’ participate). The passage of the Energy Act of 2005 now puts the end of daylight saving time to the first Sunday in November. In total, Americans will have about a month of additional daylight to get their chores done. The change is expected to advantage children who celebrate Halloween by ‘trick or treating’, and also to cut down on traffic accidents, many of which occur in the twilight drive-time hours. [associatedcontent]
Now, you know that there are going to be a core of people who have no clue that this has changed, and it’s probably the same group of people who forget to set their clocks one hour ahead when the changes happened before. Still, this is a problem that is going to affect a lot of people. Their schedules will be messed up, and it’s a good bet that a lot of folks will miss church on Sunday.
That little update that came down is the kicker, and some people are screaming the return of Y2K[wiki]. We all know what happened then, but it was kinda hard to miss. This? I’m not so sure that throngs of people are aware that when the change happens, their computers and other electronic gadgets that normally change on their own will have missed the memo[cnet]. Will they still show up to work late on Monday? That remains to be seen.
Still, another thing to worry about with the changing of the clocks. First you lose an hour of sleep, then you have to adjust to the change. When it’s time for you to go to bed, your internal clock says you’re not ready. So with a whole month to change that, how much more can we get screwed up?
By the way, this is your warning. Just doing my part to spread the word because Canada is apart of this as much as the U.S. made the switch.
Why won’t the speakers work on my PowerBook?
Friday, February 16th, 2007This has been a problem of mine for the past year. The internal speakers on my PowerBook G4 just stopped working one day, but the headphone jack still operates without a problem. There is the fact that this thing is nearly four years old and the first generation of the 17-inch models. You would think that they just broke and wouldn’t want to put out audio because its senior citizen status when it comes to the world of computers. It’s not the case, and long story short, it has to be a software problem.
I’ve done numerous things over the past few days. Actually, I’ve tried a few various times, mostly whenever I have the patience and courage to try some potential solutions. Still nothing works.
I’ve basically tried everything that I could find here with no success. You can even find a post there by yours truly, begging for answers.
My pursuit will continue, but I doubt that I’ll be successful. Dealing with a sinus thing over the past three days, I’ve given it a good try. I know, get something new. Wish it was that easy. This baby needs to last me just a little while longer.
The best of the worst domains out there
Monday, January 22nd, 2007I know that I don’t have the most amazing domain name for my blog here, but at least it’s not as bad as some of these. Caught wind of this from PC World, and it is the “top ten worst domain names” that, oddly enough, companies actually use.
A few of my favorites…
1. A site called ‘Who Represents‘ where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
www.whorepresents.com [...]3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisland.net [...]10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe ? Try their brochure website at
www.gotahoe.com [easywebbers]
Try them out for yourself. They all work, and some are more legit than others.
WordPress releases and betas
Thursday, January 18th, 2007I’m knee deep in the world of WordPress right now. I actually oversee five setups, and when there is a new release of an upgrade, that’s five sites I have to work through. Backup here, backup there, overwrite the old, and in with the new. It’s a few hour process when all is said and done.
The big thing right now is that 2.0.7 was released just a few days ago. In fact, 2.0.6 was released not even two weeks ago, and I’d avoid that version if I were you. There was some security concerns in the PHP, meaning that could allow some hacking to happen to your blog. Not good.
The hugely geeky reason that I know this is that I have recently joined up with the development mailing list. Just a couple of days after the 2.0.6 release, there was an announcement on the list about the issue and a test version sent out to all subscribers for testing. This is why I always hesitate to be on that “bleeding edge” of things. It’s good to let people much smarter than you test things out if you don’t have the resources to do it yourself.
The WordPress Podcast is what really got me into the idea of joining the testers mailing list. WordPress 2.1 is in beta, and I get a kick out of seeing the exchange of knowledge about what’s new, what doesn’t work, and so on. You can get more info about it at WordPress Planet.
I did a local install of it and made a preliminary look through of the next generation of WordPress. There’s some interesting things, but it’s still too early for me to report on it. Regardless, I’m looking forward to the full release, as many folks have for over the past year.
The WP Podcast did just mention that there is talk about a 120-day turnaround between versions 2.1 and 2.2, a vast departure of the development, or lack there of, that we’ve seen from the WordPress folks. This won’t stop me from doing development from here on out in 2.1. Who knows when it will go into full release.
Wrote this post while waiting for the last of the sites to finish updating and listening to the They Might Be Giants podcast. Holy crap. Now back to your regularly scheduled geekiness.
Update: This post about 10 things you should know about WordPress 2.1 is a really great read about the new version that should be coming out soon. In fact, this article sites as January 22, 2007 being the day that this version is to be fully released.
I’m a sucker for the Apple hoopla
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007For years now, I’ve been a slave to the keynotes that Steve Jobs[wiki] has been putting on nearly every six months. I think it’s safe to say that Rebecca will soon become a switcher, but that will have to wait until this freaking country says I can have a job. Let’s also hope that I won’t be making a double dip for her next birthday of multiple Apple products, but she got a good account of what it’s like on keynote day with me.
Because I know that there are other Apple heads out there who don’t follow the bleeding edge like I do, here’s the major bullet points of what was unleashed today.
- The iPhone was officially announced; shipping in June (freaking sweet)
- Apple Computer, Inc. will drop their middle name, now known as Apple, Inc. [macrumors]
- iTV is to be officially known as Apple TV; shipping in Febuary
- Paramount Pictures is now offering their catalog of movies on iTunes [macrumors]
- Not in the keynote, but Airport Extreme with 802.11n compatibility released today
The keynote will be available for viewing on Apple’s website later today[apple]. And for the most part, this I can handle. Not pressing hard for a new cellphone right now as much as I’d like to upgrade my laptop into the Intel world. I think Rebecca will be the first one in our home to get one though. Aside from me saying that just because it’s her birthday, but she’s put up with me for this long? Yeah, I’d say that she’s deserving of some new toys.
Hi, my name is John Bollwitt. I'm a broadcast radio engineering/I.T. technician in Vancouver and co-founder of 