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| Saturday, May 26, 2007 |
| Starcraft 2 |
OMG http://www.starcraft2.com/ it's time to dust off my original and start playing again!
October perhaps?
UPDATE: It's been awhile but almost 2009 and still nothing? Holding off till the next year.. must we? |
posted by mpcc @ 5/26/2007 08:22:00 PM   |
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| Wednesday, April 11, 2007 |
| oh my |
it's been forever! I realized I've had a blog in one form or another since 2004! And I'm still the same, can't seem to keep up with it all the time. Basically not much has changed. I graduate in 3 weeks! I need a job.
Right now I'm checking out 53 CSS tutorials anyone can do , the French version of the office: le bureau , and dress hunting for my friends wedding. I'm partial to this one. I love de.lic.us new addon for firefox. I think I'm going to port over this blog to my own wordpress one. Blogger hasn't changed and still sucks1Labels: catchup french technology |
| posted by mpcc @ 4/11/2007 04:28:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, November 21, 2006 |
| How to explain programming to a non programmer? |
A friend of mine asked me a strange question the other day. First a little background on her. She just graduated in environmental science and is currently working on models in Arc View. She runs these models and has to figure out how to work them. She asked me if I could recommend something on the basics of programming. Nothing in depth just enough so she could understand the models but she doesn't need to actually create them. Anyone have good resources, sites, or books you could recommend? She has no experience with computers other than your everyday use but I like to think I may have rubbed off on her after living together for 2 years.
Here are the one's I've found so far:
I think this one is the best: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming
Labels: programming, reader advice |
| posted by mpcc @ 11/21/2006 09:58:00 PM |
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| Sunday, November 05, 2006 |
| Graduation plans |
I don't really have these yet. I'm not sure what I want to do. Thank god I have till May. I know for certain I don't want a cubicle job. I did that this summer and, if I haven't said it enough, I don't have the attention span for cubicles. I need to tell the company that but not entirely sure how to. My parents have offered to let me stay with them while I'm looking this summer instead of spending next semester doing that. Just knowing that they're ok with that helps stress-wise. I mean that was probably the most stressful thing for my roommates last year. I also have plenty of couches I can crash on if need be, and living with my parents becomes too much (though by then I should just find a job).
As far as locations go I'm looking for a large city. I plan on looking at Chicago, Seattle/Portland area, DC, and Atlanta. Other places are also a possibility but those are the cities I'm actively going to focus on. What I want to do? I don't know. I liked doing the design process this summer but I didn't like the fact that it was in JAVA and a desktop app. Seemed limiting and I just didn't like the outcome. I feel they should scrap it. I'll probably focus on Consulting Firms. Smaller and more diverse in what they offer sounds good.
Anyone want to offer me a job? I enjoy learning new things, have a great work ethic and great references. Send an email to mpchouchou@gmail.com with the subject Real Job Opportunity! ;)
Well that is my pathetic little plug for myself. I'm done.
Labels: personal rant, random |
| posted by mpcc @ 11/05/2006 11:15:00 PM |
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| Friday, November 03, 2006 |
| gotAPI.com layout update |
| gotAPI.com is a great site for programming references. It has recently updated its layout for an easier way to search, including suggestions and they have added a few new references. I used this all summer. The old layout wasn't bad just looked dated. This new one looks fresh and simple. It includes web design languages: html, css, actionscript, and other languages such as ruby on rails, java, c++, mysql and more. Labels: languages, programming, references, site |
| posted by mpcc @ 11/03/2006 08:55:00 AM |
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| Saturday, October 21, 2006 |
| Feeds and updating tags |
| I've been going through my old posts and adding tags. I just realized that it is republishing all the old posts to the feedburner feed. I'm going to probably turn off that off for a day so I can go through and finish all that. I've also been adding some of my older posts that I used to have on xanga and post dating them. Wasn't aware that those were going through too. Sorry about that because those are mostly personal. Blogger needs to add an option to make individual posts private. Labels: blog, update, upkeep |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/21/2006 03:40:00 PM |
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| Advertising |
| I've decieded I don't like cubical jobs. This summer I spent 8-9 hours a day in my cubicle working on only one project, mostly coding and documentation. I liked what I was doing just not the atmosphere. Since I didn't like that I'm looking for other means of an income for once I graduate. If you look over to my right hand side bar you'll find a new decal for the performancing advertising network. If you'd like to advertise here please click that link! Otherwise just keep coming back to check out my blog! Labels: advertising, blog |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/21/2006 03:24:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
| Vista on my Laptop |
I was brave and decided to see how Vista went on my laptop. It works great. In a week or so I'll see if it's still as fast as it is right now. I'm hoping so, but XP was getting slow fast on me lately so we shall see. It was basically a really easy install. Didn't have to visit the dell site once.
The only problem I ran into was getting my wireless card to work. I never got my new Belkin (f5d8011) one to work. Couldn't find any generic drivers for it and the XP one's didn't work. (any ideas out there for me?) I have an older netgear (wg511T) finally worked after I used a hint off another forum that talked about a guy using generic Atheros drivers and those worked great. WPA does not work but I have internet. I like my Belkin better, it isn't falling apart but this will do till Belkin gets drivers out... hint hint.
I'm also trying out the Microsoft OneCareLive Package. I'm always looking for something nice, easy, and non expensive to be able to recommend to friends and family that need help. So far OneCare was really easy to install, comes with 180 day free trial and is surprisingly non intrusive. Labels: beta, guinea pig, OneCare, vista |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/17/2006 11:47:00 PM |
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| Leo on Plein Ecran |
Leo Laport and Kevin Rose are both on the French podcast Plein Ecran (full screen). I haven't watched all of it but, I think I'm going to watch it in French first and then English and see how I do. The link above has an English dubbed version or VO (version originale) and there is also a French Version. It looks like they have a lot of interesting stuff.
From the site "'Plein écran', the high-tech dedicated programm of the french news channel LCI".
You can read what Leo has to say about it at his Vox blog leoville. Just scroll down past the German article, unless you like German too.Labels: french, kevin rose, leo laport, revision 3, tech, TWiT |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/17/2006 05:12:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 10, 2006 |
| Tidbits and Randomness |
I have about 90 tabs open on my laptop in Firefox and another 60 open on my desktop. I have lots to share. I should just do like 100 posts in the next 2 days and I'd have like half that taken care of.
First, three handy little Firefox extensions I highly recommend: NoScript, Flashblock, and GTDgmail. All three work with the Firefox 2.0 beta 2 version and below. Flashblock has been a huge help with some memory management. I saw one person on digg.com saying that it fixed the "memory leak" problem (no I don't know why he used quotes cause it's a real problem for me) but it is helping keeping it's memory usage under 300 even with approx 90 tabs open. I'll eventually do an actual post on GTDGmail. It's a great way to organize even if you don't really follow all the GTD stuff.Labels: firefox extensions, tech |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/10/2006 05:41:00 PM |
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| Monday, October 09, 2006 |
| YouTube acquisition by Google, WOW |
Who would have thought. Google bought YouTube. Good buy for them. GoogleVideo is no where near as popular. I heard the news talking about YouTube and shows on TV have popped up following new stuff going on online; including viral videos of YouTube. It's good to know thought that: "Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." I like the way DownloadSquad named them "GooTube overlords".
Still one huge WOW the rumors have been flying all weekend, everyone thought it was a unbelievable rumor. Go figure!Labels: acquisition, google, technews, wow |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/09/2006 11:20:00 PM |
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| Sunday, October 08, 2006 |
| Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap |
A great song and just seems to sum it all up right now.
Hide and Seek Lyrics
where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to fall
crop circles in the carpet
sinking, feeling
spin me 'round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy
hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first
oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the take over,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life
hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears
they were here first
ooom what d'ya say,
emmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
ooom what d'ya say,
emmm that's all for the best?
of course it is
emmm what d'ya say?
hmmm that it's just what we need
you decided this
mmmm what d'ya say?
hmmm what did she say?
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling
no, i don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit
(hide and seek)
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
(hide and seek)
speak no feeling
no, I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit
(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
oh no, you don't care a bit
(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit
you don't care a bitLabels: music, personal, random |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/08/2006 11:27:00 PM |
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| Saturday, October 07, 2006 |
| Windows Vists RC2 and Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh |
Yeah, it's been awhile. Anyway, the latest release of Vista, RC2 is available at Get Vista 32bit English and the Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh (2TR) is available too.
I already got the Office 2TR going. I like it. It lets you minimize the ribbon by double clicking on one of the menu names and the slash screen looks better. It may just be me but the program also seems to be loading faster. I'm downloading RC2 as we speak. I'm still hoping that it's more stable than the last one. I had a few problems during install and continuously in use if I install the programs I consider essential.
Found from SlashdotLabels: beta, download, office, vista |
| posted by mpcc @ 10/07/2006 12:57:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |
| iTunes vs Urge |
Ok, so I can't actually compare them. I've still never used iTunes, never had an iPod and never wanted one. I love my iRiver clix. Anyway, this wasn't a bash Apple post I'm just saying I've tried out Urge and I like. Sure the music is DRM but duh so is iTunes. I haven't tried out the new program that supposedly rips it but I shall try and get back to you. I like it because it works with my mp3 player. For $15 a month I can listen to any music and put anything on my mp3 player with out having to download it. I'm picky, I listen to some stuff constantly and will be listening to it for the next 5 years and other songs are one hit wonders for me. The only song that I like from that artist and I'll only listen to it for a few weeks and be over it. I also like the radio feature Urge has. Their alternative selection is pretty good, they have pop, classical and even country if you must. Something for everyone. It is kind of annoying having to use WMP. I like the 11 beta much better than 10 but it still hangs on my computer from time to time. Though my computer just may need reformatted. So I just felt like sharing. I highly recommend Urge. Great music selection and its easy and not Apple. Labels: mp3, music, urge |
| posted by mpcc @ 9/19/2006 01:45:00 PM |
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| Sunday, August 13, 2006 |
| Test |
Checking out the new Windows Live Writer (beta) WYSIWYG blog writer. My cat: 
Inserting picture works great. check out my new blog (unstarted) .... inserting links works wonderfully. This feels like cheating. It seems to be an extension of what publishing to blog using Office 2007 beta does. But much more centered around blogging. It even has it formatted exactly how my blogs posts look. Here is a screenshot as I'm writing it.  When I typed up a post for a wordpress blog I could see my cursor but with this blogger one I can't. I wonder if that is due to my theme, blogger or just a bug? Cool idea, especially if you do a lot of blogging offline since you can save them as drafts. You can also insert a map, only option is Windows Live Local but perhaps that will change? All in all, as long as this post publishes I think I"ll use this for awhile. That has always been one of my biggest problems with blogger. Their WYSIWYG editor blows. UPDATE: Ok, turns out there are different views.... weblayout can't see my cursor normal I can. The views are nice. You can see it in your blog, much faster than bloggers preview too, and you can see the html it is creating. Also wandered around the options and it lets you customize the html of images, feed items, snippets, and links as well as has the ability to have plugins. Labels: beta, download, review, test, windows live writer |
| posted by mpcc @ 8/13/2006 11:47:00 PM |
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| Thursday, August 03, 2006 |
| Electronics Protection |
I bought some screen protectors from Shieldzone.com. I will be using them on my new phone (RAZR V3m) and my iRiver. I read a review about this stuff from Techgurls. It looks pretty cool, apparently it's tough enough that even the army was originally using it.
I just ordered it so hopefully I'll get it sometime end of next week. More info to come...Labels: iclix, iriver, review, tech |
| posted by mpcc @ 8/03/2006 11:13:00 PM |
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| Sunday, July 30, 2006 |
| Reading books |
I'm currently reading 2 or 3 books, among other things. Two of them happen to be the same publisher O'Reilly... while the last one is SitePoint. Head Rush Ajax and Head First Design Patters and Build your own site the right way using XHTML and CSS So far I'd recommend all of these books. All three of them teach through example and none of the pages are complete boxes of text, you see how the code effects the page.
The book on XHTML and CSS is definitely for beginners, I skipped the first chapter and a half. It goes so far as assuming nothing, even that you know what a browser does. I almost put it down at that point but I kept with it. I taught myself CSS online just looking at what others had done and feel that to make sure I was staying within standards and all a basic book might be a good idea. And this book does what I want. The writing is entertaining and I can almost here a British dude narrating it! Though that's more to do with the fact that I heard about the book from a British podcaster but, that's later.
On to the Head Rush/First books. I like the way they are very graphical and example driven. You lean what you need as it is needed and each example involves more plus what you have used in the last chapter. I also think it's great for anyone who has problems with short attention span. There are little quizzes along the way and it's a very practical way of learning instead of the theoretical approach you might get in other books.
As you can see I'm on a webdev kick. I think it's really interesting and plan on applying what I"m learning to some forms and a site that I help that is currently all in asp. I think Ajax would be great for it and even help keep down user error.
I'm always open to other book recommendations, in pretty much anything.Labels: ajax, books, css, review, tech, web design |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/30/2006 04:47:00 PM |
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| Monday, July 24, 2006 |
| A quarter century of MTV |
I'm 22 and I grew up with MTV. It started when my parent's were 18 and they watched it well into my early pre-teens. I remember watching Real World with my dad (mom didn't know), Singled Out, cleaning to the music on weekends (yep, they played music videos regularly). At some point, right before puberty hit my mom decided, hmm maybe not a good idea letting me watch mtv so it was refused to me cold turkey, in the middle of a season. I did as all good children do, I snuck in my parents room and watched it on their tv while they were watching tv downstairs. I think they thought I was watching Disney, and my finger was on the last channel button so when they came up stairs, guess what I was watching. Parental controls were on of course. They didn't find out till I was about 17 that I've always know the code. It's the same as our house security code and that was the first one I tried.
I can't say I watch MTV much these days, but when I pull all nighters that's the channel I have on 'cause they play videos in the middle of the night. Real world is no longer believable and I don't care if your parents don't like your significant other or those bratty kids in Laguna Beach. MTV has moved on to the next generation... my sister loves watching it still, I guess I just grew up and the same will happen with the next group of teenyboppers.
Whether you think MTV is the devil or the best thing next to sliced bread you have to give them kudos for hanging on 25 yrs and probably will be around another 25yrs.
Happy birthday MTV.Labels: birthday, mtv, rant |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/24/2006 08:35:00 PM |
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| Yahoo Groups and 10 week free AJAX course |
I'm not a big fan of yahoo groups. Don't get me wrong, they had their time. But today with wikis and forums why deal with all that in an email? There is a 10 week free AJAX course going on and originally the main form of communication was a yahoo group. With over 4000 people that's a hell of a lot of hello emails. So someone (many but this one was just faster in execution) in class got a great idea to start a wiki for the class and a forum (which I get to be a moderator in :)).
It may just be me but having to search through emails to find answers seams to be harder than just going to wiki to get info or asking a question on the forum. Even if you have gmail and searching your email is no big deal still. Why when we have wikis and forums at our disposal?
If you want to check out the class check out the teachers site above and the AJAXWorkshop wiki.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm blogging so much this weekend. Perhaps it's taking my mind off the demo I have to do of my summer project to 10 people to see if it would be useful for another project? Hmm maybe.Labels: ajax, class, freebe, tech |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/23/2006 09:30:00 PM |
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| My Favorite Firefox extensions |
These are the extensions that I install after a new install, although I think after Firefox 2 comes out I may not need all of these:
Google Browser Sync -- great for keeping my desktop and laptop browsers synced
Nightly Tester Tools -- makes older extensions compatible, perfect when new versions of FireFox come out
SessionSaver - sort of redundant with Google Browser Sync but useful none the less
Restart FireFox -- quick way to restart FireFox after loading a new extension
Adblock Filterset.G Updater -- good filterset and auto updater for adblock plus
Tab Mix Plus - good menu and options for tabs
CSSViewer - shows the css used on a page
Greasemonkey - some of the user scripts are useful
Adblock Plus - great ad blocker
Performancing - blogging software, including stats, and a WYSIWYG editor to publish to many types of blogs
ColorZilla - pin pointer allows you to find out the hex and RGB of a color on a site
SingleWindow - forces all external links to open as new tabs in one window
FasterFox -- various settings geared towards making FireFox run faster
Screen Grab! - great program that grabs the whole site, not just what is visible in the screen but also what is below the scroll
Also if you want to see if there is an extension for something you want to do check out I want a FireFox Extension to.... A cool site that has over 200+ extensions and explains the circumstances of why you'd use it.Labels: firefox extensions, personal favs |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/23/2006 08:32:00 PM |
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| toread |
How do you mark those sites that you don't really have a category for or you want to go back to it reletively soon?
Right now I bookmark it with del.icio.us and tag it as toread along with any general tags I can gleam from the parts I have read. This works just fine with me and I think I'll stick to it even after checking out toread.cc.
The idea behind this site is to, using a bookmarklet, email a cached version of this page to your email, "bookmarking by email" as they put it, to read at your leisure. It's a good idea I suppose but personnaly I'd rather it didn't take up inbox space.
The company that does this looks like a japanesse company and possibly also have RSS Readers, but no english version I could see. I'd like this toread site better if you could send it to an RSS feed instead. But then it'd be another del.icio.us.Labels: bookmarklet, review, tech |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/23/2006 04:42:00 PM |
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| Spam.... |
For the last month I've been categorizing my spam by day of the week. The day I get it it goes into that label. I was curious on how much spam I really was getting and how the gmail filters worked. So without further ado .... my stats (word used loosly):
Date: June 18 - July 22
Total: 335 spam mails
Avg. per week (5 weeks): ~67 emails per week
Avg. per day: 9.5 per day
Daily Totals for 5 weeks:
Sunday: 53
Monday: 55
Tuesday: 40
Wednesday: 45
Thursday: 58
Friday: 44
Saturday: 40
On average Gmail caught most of it. I might have gotten 1 or 2 in my inbox a week but that's it.
I remember why I did this. In a podcast from diggnation.com Alex talked about how gmails filters were horrible. My guess is his email address is to out there in the public. If he compared how many gmail is catching to what is getting through.
That's that take it for what it is. Now I'm going to go and delete my spam mail I've been hording for the last month.Labels: random, spam, tech |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/23/2006 12:26:00 PM |
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| Friday, July 21, 2006 |
| Beer Recommendation.... Way off topic |
This is very off topic for me, I usually don't talk about beer here but. It's such a good one! Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat is Leinenkugel's beer of the summer. It's very good. A little citricy and great with an orange. My family is from WI but if you live in the Midwest or atleast near WI you'd probably know the beer. Not sure how far reaching it is. I know you can get cans in WI, only bottles everywhere else. And this very odd beer recommendation is over!Labels: beer, recommendation |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/21/2006 10:08:00 PM |
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| Thursday, July 20, 2006 |
| Gizmodo by invite? |
If you haven't checked out Gizmodo's new site redsign you really should. I love the background color. I suppose it's an off-white but I like to think of it as a pale periwinkle. All in all I like the color. As great as the site is, I knew it had happened but I use RSS to view it so.. just now noticed that comments are by invite!! Taking a hand from google perhaps? I found a want ad for an invite on craigs list of all places. It can't hurt but I'll ask the void... can I get an invite?
Anyway. The point is that I wanted to leave a comment on this page The Internet Is Not A Big Truck: Featuring John Hodgman in reply to another comment. First check out the page, watch the video. I'll wait. ..... Ok, wasn't that funny? Now if you read the comments you'll notice their talk about the Senator using the tube analagy and the fact that yeah it is an older analogy used at one time, but it's the fact that he's using this analogy that is scary.
From the sound of his little speach I'd have assumed some tech support person gave him a dumbed down explaination of the internet thinking (perhaps knowing) he wouldn't understand and/or care for a better explanation. I wouldn't even call it laymens terms, dumbed down is the best description. Do we really want someone who doesn't even really have the basics down in charge of regulating any aspect of the internet? I don't think so. |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/20/2006 07:30:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, July 18, 2006 |
| Iriver Clix Review |
 I've now had my iRiver for about a month. I cannot live without it!! First I want to explain why I choose this one and not an iPod or any Apple product. Next I'll do the good old full feature tell all. Then I'll explain how I use it and the features I use. Did I mention I loooooove it? 'Cause I do.
Ok, first off I'm not a fan of Apple stuff so chances are I'd probably look everywhere else before I even consider an iPod but I do recognize that they're well built and if I wanted something with more storage it would be hard to choose between them and the large capacity irivers. I've never wanted an mp3 player with a hard drive. I'm rough on my mp3 players. Really rough. I drop this one at least once a day. Today was bad. I dropped it like 4 times. So flash memory all the way for me. The clix has more functionality that I use than the iPod Nano the FM radio player is the biggest point.
Instead of a feature tell all here's the Iriver site iRiver America Clix. They do a great job explaining them and I haven't had any problems with it doing what they say it should so far.
The key parts I use are the FM Player, which is about 100 times than the one in my car (granted my car radio is horrible). There is a program called Iriverter that converts and compresses video into a format (I believe .avi) for viewing on the player. I watched Ctrl-Alt-Chicken on it. It look great. Not painful to watch at all. The sound is great and the headphones it came with where really all I need (till my cat ate through it at least). It plays flash games and video. I haven't used much with the games, but I have a feeling once I get back to school, that will be used more.
I sound like a commercial I know. The only problem I've had with it so far is some of the logic behind the menu system. The menu is fast and for the most part makes sense except for if you go to Now Playing. Going back to the menu takes you directly to the main menu. You don't get to see how that track is in the play list. For that you have to go to Music->Song (or however you want to view it) and then it starts over at the first song in that list. Not the one currently playing. For me I'd expect it to find the song I'm playing when I went to music. But that's just me. I'd also like it if it continued playing the music or the radio when playing the flash games. Right now that stuff stops as soon as you start a game. The only game that seems to rely on sounds is the Simon Says type game.
Another minor issue I have with it is that the only way to charge it is through the usb on the computer. I have no problem not being able to play it while it's hooked up to the computer but I'd like an AC way to charge it too.
I did get one accessory with it when I bought it. The FM transmitter works great. Lets you choose any station, not limited to just 3, and charges as you play it which is nice for long drives.
If anyone wants more details let me know, I can always gush some more if needed. As I find things I like/dislike I'll let you know. |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/18/2006 09:47:00 PM |
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| Monday, July 17, 2006 |
| Eating My Words |
My previous post I bitch about the lack of blogging tools available for your average person. Well, I think I've found one. Vox.com . It has a great WYSIWYG editor and is very much community oriented. Not in the myspace type but in more of a local, family, intimate community. Once I have an invite I plan on sending it to my mom. We'll see what she thinks. Check out twit.tv the most current Inside the Net with Amber MacArthur has one of the founders of Six Apart (makers of Vox) Mena Trott. This service will remain free. They are shooting for a fall public release but are accepting emails to recieve an invite right now. Mine took about 2 weeks to get.Labels: blog, Inside the Net, leo laport, TWiT, Vox |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/17/2006 10:43:00 PM |
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| Friday, July 14, 2006 |
| Is blogging for everone? |
I think it should be. And I don't just mean those with or without opinions. I mean those tech savvy and those who aren't. Right now I'm setting up a wordpress blog for me and 5 of my friends. After most graduated and have spread out across the US I thought a group blog would be the best way to keep in touch with everyone and only have to tell "the story" once. This was a great idea in theory. I bought a cheap domain from GoDaddy and set up a GeekLog site. It was ok, turns out geeklog is a little too buggy for me and it intimidated my friends who have no technical background what so ever. They can do the basics but beyond surfing, checking email and downloading music for their mp3 player everything else is a bit over their head. So Geeklog was too geeky for them.
I've now got WordPress set up the theme is better I found a plugin with a better WYSIWYG editor and then using Wink2.0 (great freeware) I made a little how to intro to the site so they could see all the basics and things I thought they should know.
This is working for my friends right now, but if it wasn't for me doing the real techie stuff for them a blog idea wouldn't work. Even blogger generally involves not being afraid of code or messing with things if you want to personalize it. There may be a lot of bloggers out there but the majority of them are tech savvy to a point. Even if it's just the basics. Your everyday person is not on blogs and it's too bad. I'm sure they'd add a great voice that is needed and should be present. Are those who have the tech skills just not paying attention or is it just not noticed? I'm tempted to create my own blogging software. Where to start? |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/14/2006 06:40:00 PM |
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| Wednesday, July 05, 2006 |
| Free Willy Two |
| Lol, I watched Free Willy 2 today. Forgot the Miohel Jackson song that plays in the middle "..have you seen my childhood..." Made me laughe out loud! |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/05/2006 09:18:00 PM |
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| Sunday, July 02, 2006 |
| Are you getting paid for that post? |
 One of the more heated debates in the blogoshere (particularly the tech sites I frequent) is http://www.payperpost.com. If you don't already know about this site it literally does what the title says. Advertisers put up "opportunities" for bloggers to take. I've seen things from opinions about your favorite (they don't give you one) search engine to opinion about a show, and a review of a photo editing software. They all say neutral.
I currently use 3 different editing software's for photos and I planned on talking about them here. Why not add one more? Check it out and compare it with the ones I already use, while getting $5 for it. Who knows maybe I'll find one product to do what the 3 did for me. Am I a sell out? Perhaps, but if it's known ahead of time that parts of the post are getting paid for, and you don't even necessarily have to be positive is there really a moral issue in it?
Check out the comments at TechCrunch.com. Lots of good discussion. Personally I don't think it's wrong if it blends with your blog. Would I accept an opportunity about "Parenting and Pregnancy Opportunity". Hmm for some reason that just doesn't seem to mesh with what I'm doing. Don't worry, unless I become pregnant, which will not be happening anytime soon, that will not be one I will even consider Can this service be used to the detriment of bloggers? Of course. Bloggers are a detriment to themselves. That many uncontrolled opinions is bound to get someone, if not a group ie. the blogosphere, in trouble. Personally I think blogging is a good thing, whether people read your blog or not. As long as there is full disclosure as to what content is getting paid for and whether that has swayed your opinion I have no problem with it. Will everyone do it? Nope, I highly doubt it. Call me a cynic, but I prefer realist. If everyone is not moral/ethical about it should it be allowed? It's the age old question, what kills... guns, alcohol, cars (insert favorite or not so favorite object) or people?
By the way, did I mention I'm getting paid for this post ? I decided to show my opinion on both sides. |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/02/2006 04:28:00 PM |
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| French stuff |
Update: Added 2 more.
LoicLeMeur Wiki: Interesting information about what eh's up to, available in French and English versions.
Le Nouveau Pourvoir des Internautes: Interesting french product. This book was released and now for the second version they are doing it online, wiki style, to allow readers to change it and are doing the revisions in 80 days.
Guitef: Blog covering different things going on, in French.
French Learning Center: A free typ eof online learning classroom, done by the guy behind the podcast The French Podcast. Should also check out the podcast. It's well done. I enjoy this site because there are bilingual books and grammar for all ages.
France with Sebastien is done with the above two. One I just found and has a lot of good information.
DotClear: A blog software develpoed by a french person. This is a link to their forums |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/01/2006 04:03:00 PM |
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| Fantastic Planet scored by everyone.doesntexist |
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Ren? Laloux's french trippy animated, cartoon, film from the 70's.
soundtrack rescored to idm, experimental, type music of: aphex twin, venetian snares, prefuse 73, matmos, clue to kalo, pole, luke vibert, japanese telecom and a few others...
rescoring was done in 2003 by http://everyone.doesntexist.com
why?: for fun; the orginal soundtrack is great as well.
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| posted by mpcc @ 7/01/2006 03:54:00 PM |
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| Tutorials and How tos |
If you enjoy teaching yourself and scouring the web for all those little tidbits of knowledge about whatever title here are some good picks, mostly programming languages and softwares:
TechCheatSheets: from the site: "a collection of the best cheat sheets and quick reference guides on the web. Arranged by tags, you can subscribe to a feed for only the tags you want to monitor. Visitors can also give the listings 1-5 star ratings promising more features to come."
Learn How: A blog site that has a collection of interesting how tos for a variety of things tech related.
Cheat-Sheets: Index with a collection of cheat sheets from asp, php, world of warcraft, css, mysql
Getting Your Own Server: Interesting 2 part guide to getting your own server and what to look for.
Rons Guide: A good, if not kinda old, collection of tutorials for most things to do with web development.
Tutorialism: A digg like system for tutorial entries. |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/01/2006 03:11:00 PM |
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| Time to play catchup |
| I've got tons of tabs up in firefox right now. All waiting to be blogged about, so I've clumped them into groups and will be doing them that way. A few include, tutorials/how to sites, french everything, blogging/websites... etc. |
| posted by mpcc @ 7/01/2006 03:05:00 PM |
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| Saturday, June 24, 2006 |
| Digg 3.0 |
Digg 3.0 will be released this Monday. There are many places online to get commentary on the features and the press release given so I won't go into that, but here's my big reason I'm excited about it. I can't wait till Diggnation 51 is out. If it isn't out soon may not be a reason to view it. It's supposed to be preview of Digg 3.0. They will have a preview of it. Though if it isn't out early
Expanding the categories will be great. It will allow for more users to participate, not that that seems to be an issue, and for those who do participate to hopefully pick a better category. Otherwise everyone will just get more confused. I'm looking forward to the World News category. Digg is the place I get my tech news and more. I check it out at least once a day; more if I'm procrastinating.
I now live on my own. I miss my roommates but that's besides the point. I used to get my news from them. I'm usually on campus for the majority of my day so watching the news isn't high on my priorities list. My roommates generally keep me informed on the large things and anything of interest so this was never an issue. Now, I know nothing. I'll call up one of my ex-roommates and be like what's up in the world?
I'm hoping with expanded categories it'll help inform others and give people more options to the type of news they want to read. Also looking forward to not seeing any more stupid comments "How is this tech related?" They get old fast. |
| posted by mpcc @ 6/24/2006 05:27:00 PM |
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| Iriver Clix |
I'm so excited! I just bought the Iriver Clix. I can't wait to get it. It's beautiful on the web and CNET was actually positive about it just gripping about the storage size. Which for CNET is pretty minor. I also bought the FM tuner/car charger along with it. That's my "practical" buy with it. I'd like the Wireless Cradle with Speakers that doubles as an alarm clock but with the FM tuner I'd be able to charge it in the car so traveling and such will be awesome. Hopefully it will live up to my expectations!
If you're reading this twice sorry, it got deleted for some reason.
Powered by Qumana
Labels: iclix, iriver, mp3 player, review |
| posted by mpcc @ 6/24/2006 04:15:00 PM |
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| Sunday, June 18, 2006 |
| Is purposefully giving women a chance sexist? |
Slashdot: News for nerds, or merely sexist? is in response to this article GNOME Reaches Out to Women on slashdot.org. Here’s alittle on the Slashdot post and then the rest will talk about the article. The little blurb by, I'm assuming, the guy who wrote it isn't at all surprising. I swear the age of the posters at slashdot is just going up (not stating the obvious). I assumed, with so many people retiring, a younger, hopefully less sexist, workforce coming, and many of the internets' users being younger encouraging women wouldn’t be considered a bad thing. I know just because the work force is younger won’t dictate who reads and posts to Slashdot but….
As I said the post itself wasn’t what bugged me. The comments it caused disturbed me. Many were entertaining no big deals like this one “…The only feelings I could express at the command line were male feelings after all. unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep -- More proof Linux is sexist!...” by user faraway when commenters were basically saying women couldn’t use Linux because it was too complicated for them. But others were just demeaning. The article in response has a good point. Firstly raising question to where the information came from, any proof of studies. She goes on to mention the whole point of Google's program. Helping students and encouraging coding etc. Nowhere does it say it is only targeting skilled coders or males. Sure it would be ideal for one opportunity to reach out to everyone but apparently that didn’t happen this year and the GNOME project felt the need to target women specifically.
Why not encourage women?
read more | digg story |
| posted by mpcc @ 6/18/2006 07:54:00 PM |
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| Wednesday, May 31, 2006 |
| Word to Blogger do you copy? |
Sooo… I’m typing this in MS Word Beta 7. Checking out the Word to Blogger Add-In from Microsoft and Google…. Odd combination there. Anyhow looks like a good idea to me. I love the spell-check as you go of word. I know blogger has a spellchecker but I like this! It's so easy too. Just go to Publisher and Blogging to set up your information and then you publish it.
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| posted by mpcc @ 5/31/2006 09:29:00 PM |
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| Sunday, May 28, 2006 |
| A whole bunch of Google |
| If you've been using Google Calendar at all you may have become like me and it's now the only thing you use. I love it. I like how you can create different tags color coded as separate calendars that you can turn off and on at a click. An agenda is created for each week from google calendar and you can have it appear on your gmail. A greasemonkey script was created that achieves just that. Techlifeblogged.com has a great article with pictures that show you exactly how to set it up. Check it out. I'm sure soon Google will have them inter-connected in some way more than just a link to bring it up in the future. |
| posted by mpcc @ 5/28/2006 09:46:00 PM |
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| Saturday, May 27, 2006 |
| Budgeting |
I found this cool new Excel spreadsheet that is setup to make creating and keeping your finances together very easy. I just started it a few days ago. I'm now getting paid monthly which is new for me and not the easiest when needing to pay bills and such. I really like the way Pear Budget works. It does all the calculations for you. You just enter in your constant, variable and invariable expenses and it does the rest.
I'm horrible at staying on a budget or recording any of my expenses. I know its important and I should keep it up but.... Here goes another try. I'll let you know if I'm still keeping it up. |
| posted by mpcc @ 5/27/2006 08:56:00 PM |
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| Two Weeks Later |
Found a place to live, craigslist didn't help all that much. No one responded back to my inqueries. Sooo I found the only place I could that had a month to month lease... without seeing pictures. It's ok. You can tell the place is from the '70s and of course the day I need it my AC is broken. Already in the 90s, not at all normal and not comfortable with no AC.
Anyway. The job is pretty cool. I'm doing software design. It's weird sitting in a cubicle. I'm used to wandering around the company not sitting in the same place for 9 hrs. I'm in a cubical at the end of a row and I have a floor to ceiling window behind me. When I get bored I can just watch outside and see the downtown.
The usual headaches with designing software for someone. They don't know what they really want, keep trying to add stuff and really can't tell you if what you think is going on what they think is going on. Very confusing but a really good learning experience.
It's so nice being out of [University town]. [Working town] is sooo much bigger, like 8 times larger. (I'm either in a really large place (but I'm not) or where I was was not large at all.)
Granted this is my first weekend actually here so, ummm I'm watching tv and baking in my appartment. I kinda want some pudding. Maybe I'll head to target. Make it out of the appartment at least once for the day and the trash needs taken out.
Three day weekend here I come!!!!!! |
| posted by mpcc @ 5/27/2006 07:32:00 PM |
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| Thursday, April 27, 2006 |
| Summer Dreams |
Well, it's coming. I got my internship!! I'll be living farther west than ever before (it's not that far) only 2 states west of the mississippi. I'm using craigslist to look for somewhere to live. So far no luck but waitin gfor 7 emails that I sent out. I'm sooooo excited.
Anyway tonight was fun. Very low key. Made a great dinner with 2 of my room mates had 2 beers and a thing and a half of wine that we got in key west over a wonderful spring break. We made turkey burgers, german potatoe salad and strawbery shortcake. So yummy. Nothing like getting tipsy with the roommates. I'm going to miss them next year. One just went out to the bars. I don't feel like going out. I think I'm going to put in a movie and veg out. One class left tomorrow at noon and then 4 finals. It's almost over.
I'll be moving 3hrs away for the summer. I'll be hopefully moving a week from Monday! One of my roommates will be helping me. I'll have to go home for a doctors appointment and then I start work the 15th I think. Still waiting for the official documentation after filling out everything online. I should be passing the background check.
Now off to pick a movie and then bed. |
| posted by mpcc @ 4/27/2006 11:05:00 PM |
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| Sunday, April 23, 2006 |
| Back to Monday..... |
Lets just say the end of the week and even middle was busy. Three tests later and it's almost over. I can't believe there is only 1 more week of classes and then finals week. And then everyone leaves... It's sad. I need to get our group wiki/blog up. It's going to be kind of a group forum in wiki form for everyone to leave information or just a quick catchup of their news. Much easier than calling 4-6 individual people. I'll post the setup and all when I do it.
I also need to get a wiki organized for a club I'm in. All cabinet information is getting moved to it. Should be a better way of organizing data and making new cabinets coming in a bit more organized.
I'll be so happy once school is over. It's very bitter sweet. I have a phone interview this week sometime. I hope it goes well. Could end up in NE. Never spent any time there, just driving through. As long as I can get out of this state I'll be happy just for the summer. And then I'll get here for a whole new semester.
I fixed a personal computer from a guy at work. Haven't figured out how much to charge him. I hate Windows ME. I ended up having to reformat the thing and reinstalling everything. It kept saying that it needed the driver install disks and would repeatedly install the drivers but it would just keep asking for it. I probably worked on the thing for 8-12 hrs all in all. No idea how much to charge at all. And I need to finish a take home test by 5pm tomorrow that I haven't started yet, I'm just going to do one of the questions I answered all the in class ones.
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| posted by mpcc @ 4/23/2006 11:22:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, April 18, 2006 |
| Tuesday..... |
Two days down, 1 more left. I don't know what to eat for a very late dinner. I had a bowl of salad, a bowl of cottage cheese and a scoop of mashed potatoes. Now I'm stuck and still hungry. I'm trying out the Performancer Blogger extension in firefox. Just popped it up in the middle of homework.. .learning about adding/changing/and organizing linux users and groups..... we'll see how it works. I'm been using googles calendar for a few days. I like it. I was using 30boxes for like 3 months and I like it but it feels heavy. I really like googles minimalist approach. I like the dragging and dropping and I like the multiple calendars with color-coding. You could do colors in 30boxes but it was considered a tag and one more thing to type in while adding the event. You can also share certain calendars with people who have a calendar up (more likely than having a 30boxes acount). I'm hooked. I also have been playing around with google analytics. We had someone from Saudi Arabia and Koreo check out my clubs page. All kinds of neat info available.
Well hadn't planned on talking that much. Just clearing the mind to get down and do some account organization. Joy.
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| posted by mpcc @ 4/18/2006 09:17:00 PM |
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| Monday, April 17, 2006 |
| Monday........ |
Monday. For me it means 5 hours of work, 3 hrs of class (including one that is 2hrs long) and a 1-2.5 hr meeting. My day is pretty filled to say the least.
I'm in a sorority. I'm not the usual type. Trust me. I got "talked into it" by a few friends from a different club I was active in. Decided to give it a try, it's a technical sorority for women in science and engineering. I like the idea of it. It's more achadmecially driven then social as many other sororities are. There are only 20 of us. Tonight was the most drama filled it's been. It's almost the reason I didn't join. I'm in classes with boys all day and my friends that I do hang out with are not girly girls. The huge drama genereally doesn't follow any of us. Tonight was sad and drama filled. Not going into details but it involved 4 crying girls and lots of discussion. (though one girl was having a end of year life crisis)
Tonight was the last meeting of the semester and I'm happy. I know i'll be ready for it again come fall but, a break is ok. I'm the webmaster! along with another club (which i'm getting a wiki ready for) and a site for a department at school.
It's been a weird night and now I get to start homework. Yippy!! 2.5 weeks left. Maybe I'll have a job? |
| posted by mpcc @ 4/17/2006 11:19:00 PM |
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| Friday, April 14, 2006 |
| Late |
| I love the fact that I can go to my departments building and at 2am not only is it still open, but there are more than 2 people in it. Although after driving down our main bar strip I really wish I could have been at the bars instead. |
| posted by mpcc @ 4/14/2006 02:38:00 AM |
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| About Me |
Name: mpcc
Home: Mid-West, United States
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