Archive for the ‘General’ category

Desktop 3.0

When I set my office up six years ago, who would have thought about 24″ LCD Monitors? Not me, for sure.

I had to turn the desk around so everyone could enjoy them.

Filed under General, Play : Comments (0) : Oct 7th, 2007

two boys and a bot…

With the release of Ustream TV, tech evangelist Chris Pirillo, created a live stream and IRC chat room for his community. As a regular in his original chat, #lockergnome, we were asked if we would like to volunteer to assist with moderating the new #chris chat. I don’t usually volunteer for stuff, but I thought that this would be an “experience”.

About two months ago this kid, Master_Taco, brought a bot into the chat, claiming that he had approval, yada, yada, yada. Chris had requested a trivia bot, so it was no big deal. I don’t mind trivia as I am really good at it. Eventually, things started going downhill with this bot. Master_Taco started adding “features” to this bot, again claiming he had approval. Along the way this other neanderthal, adaminnb, arrived. This guy was a real piece of work. He was acting like he had a severe mental disability to skirt the rules. We banned adaminnb several times. In time he earned a network ban from the Wyldryde IRC network. He even fabricated an appeal from his “mother” to attempt to remove the ban. I have known the operators of this network for some time now and you really have to be an idiot to achieve the g:line ban.

So, a couple of days ago, “one of our operatives” was in adaminnb’s chat. He saw that adaminnb was not disabled and that he and Master_Taco were pulling this stunt merely to annoy the channel operators. Well, it worked. Both are now banned.

Annoying other people for “fun” is bad enough, but preying on the sympathies of others by claiming you are disabled is lower than whale shit in my book.

So here it is, you guys had better watch where you are going, because your karma is about to run over your dogma.

Have a nice day losers.

Filed under General : Comments (10) : Aug 17th, 2007

laptop linux…part deux

Now that I had the basics working on the laptop, it was time to play some music and watch some movies. The packages I settled on are the Rhythmbox Player with the gstreamer plugin, and Totem-xine.

First, install the livna repository into yum.

Next, install the packages with yum.

yum -y remove totem;yum -y install totem-xine gstreamer-plugins-ugly rhythmbox

I found the following shell script at Fedora Forums. It claims to play everything.

For Core 6:

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY yum -y install mencoder echo -e "remove totem\n install totem-xine libdvdcss libdvdnav xine-lib-extras-nonfree\n run\n quit" | yum -y shell yum -y install mplayerplug-in mozplugger evince vlc compat-libstdc++-33 wget http://software-dl.real.com/217bb62ac033864a3d19/unix/RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm rpm -Uvh RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm cd /tmp wget http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20061022.tar.bz2 tar -jxvf all-20061022.tar.bz2 su -c 'mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/codecs' su -c 'cp all-20061022/* /usr/local/lib/codecs' rm -rf /tmp/all-20061022* su -c 'ln -sf /usr/local/lib/codecs /usr/lib/codecs && ln -sf /usr/local/lib/codecs /usr/local/lib/win32 && ln -sf /usr/local/lib/codecs /usr/lib/win32'

Adjust your version accordingly.

Enjoy

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Jun 21st, 2007

too much stuff…

My buddy Brent came by to show off his new Mac Book Pro. Nice machine, btw. Anyway he wanted to know if I had any Windows discs as he has a code number but not the disc. Lucky for him I was in the process of organizing my CD’s, when I found to my surprise an XP Pro disc and Code and the book and the little sticky thing for the computer.

You see the thing is, I have absolutely no idea where this disc came from. So I sold it to him for a Franklin. : )

Have you ever come across a Franklin without knowing it?

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Apr 7th, 2007

come get some…

Ok, this has gone too far. You assholes that are filled with hate and discontent are mucking it up for the people that want to make the world a better place. Why oh why do assholes have to threaten good people? Do you have a three-inch tool? An I.Q. no better than your shoe size? Or are you just angry because your daddy…

If you really want to do harm to someone, come and get some. I will be happy to show you who’s who and what’s what. And you may want to pack a lunch, and make sure your life insurance is paid up, because we are going to be here for some time and you WILL get the…

Oh, and when you have had enough, I would be happy to call the medics. You are on your own for the bills.

Are you chicken???

I’m waiting…

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Mar 28th, 2007

Upgrades…software and hardware…

I’d take a picture of the snow, but we’ve all seen snow before. I need to update this pic.

Updated: January 17, 2007

The Gallery has been updated to 1.4.10. I have also setup a web hosting box, using ShowDisk.com as the domain controller. I am only waiting on DNS propogation for the final testing.

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Jan 11th, 2007

are bloggers journalists…???

In this age of instant access to information, anyone with a just a little gumption can publish articles on teh internet. The recent gifts sent out by Microsoft have created a furvor in the online publishing community. The acceptance of these gifts brings to light the subject of ethics in publishing.

By strict definition a journalist is a professional, i.e. one who gets paid to write articles. Since the blogger is a recent phenomenon, it is difficult to nail down a definition. I would say that a blogger writes for the love of it, without the restraints imposed by a publisher or an editor.

Most people don’t have any ethics, it’s not their fault, yet. And since I have had many hours of training in the subject I will attempt to make this perfectly clear. As long as their is NOT a conflict of interest, anything goes. While the monetary value of these “gifts” may be beyond any companies gift limits, do we really care?

NO, FUCK NO, HELL NO, what about NO don’t you understand. – can’t do that on CNet.

Some have brought up the point that journalists have certain protections that bloggers don’t enjoy. The First Amendment guarantees rights to everyone, not just some. I would say that bloggers have MORE freedom to post about whatever they want. The state of California has decided that “online journalists” have the same rights as any other journalist. There has also been some that see this “gifting” by Microsoft as a bribe. So what… Sour grapes… You don’t have to like it. Just because you think that doesn’t make it so.

A recent example of “professional” journalism. “The mix of rain and snow combined to create some wet heavy snow that caused the avalanche. They did do some…” From a college graduate I’m sure. :-\

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink.

^^Won’t see that on CNet either.

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Jan 2nd, 2007

no tv and no internet make blaster…

By my calculations, the storm that just ravaged the Pacific Coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia happens about every 10 years. Reports indicate that near hurricane force winds have knocked out power to over 1.5 million homes. I lost power for about 24 hours. The UPS’s worked as expected with no casualties due to the power outage. However, the UT2004 server is down due to a loud noise now coming from it. Sounds like a PSU fan.

The game is back up. I guess computers don’t like freezing weather.

Notable Pacific Storms. Columbus Day 1962.

Props out to our utility brothers and sisters. Without them, none of this would happen.

Filed under General : Comments (0) : Dec 15th, 2006

rain and updates and plugins…

Since we have had a record for November rainfall, I have been staying inside alot lately. It’s nice to not have to go down to Pier 4. This has also given me time to update and plugin to google adsense as fish don’t move when the rivers are flooding…again.

During the past few weeks I managed to validate the blog code and CSS, and updated to version 2.0.5. I have also added the Coppermine and AdSense-Deluxe plugins. It appears cpg is going to 1.4.10.

Recently, I set up a Zen Cart at showdisk.com. A commercial site that I can pedal my wares around and give some others the chance to get the exposure. Storage is the only real thing that is keeping me from opening an online auction service using a consignment system. Here is the AdSense Sidebox for Zen Cart.

Here is the e107 AdSense plugin. Registration is required. Coming soon to davidprentice.com.

Filed under Business, General : Comments (0) : Nov 20th, 2006