avablog

I was browsing my Webalizer logs this morning like I do every day and was surprised to see that my mention of Steve Carrell’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was a pretty hot search topic. So this post doesn’t come across as too blatant a hit-whoring tactic, I will say that I’m consistently amazed […]

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There’s a story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today about Disney being in serious talks to buy Pixar.  This would be a huge win for Steve Jobs.  Absolutely huge.  And not just because it would make his stake in Pixar worth about $4 billion.  Consider the investment genius here, from the […]

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I was perusing my Webalizer logs today and saw seven referrals from someplace called IowaBlogs.net this month. I looked them up and see they’re a kind of clearing house for Iowa-related blogs (well, they call themselves a “hub” of Iowa blogs). Or at least for blogs that originate in Iowa or mention Iowa or have […]

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Mike Evangelist is writing a book about his time at Apple.  I mean, it’s just too close to Mac Evangelist.  I ain’t going to fault the guy his marketing skills. He has a good piece in the Guardian today about the behind-the-scenes preparation for a MacWorld keynote event.  Since I’m waist deep in MWSF hype […]

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I’ve let the last couple MacWorlds slip by without too much notice. I really haven’t been in the market for any new kit, and I didn’t have the time to play with it even if I did somehow manage to shop for it. But I’m pretty excited about this month’s show, mostly because of the […]

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When Kevin was in town this past weekend for our New Year’s celebration, I decided it might be a good time to upgrade Ubuntu on my PC (a PC which, I’ll note here, doesn’t get used a whole lot ). Kevin’s a real guru when it comes to this Linux stuff. And thank goodness, because […]

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I admit it: I’m a Webalizer junkie. One of the most interesting things about putting all of this information out on my site has been watching how people from all over the world interact with it. Even more than the number of page hits or KB transferred, I’m always curious to see which search terms […]

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The Webcam software I use lets me archive my captured images as a .mov time-lapse movie. Which is pretty cool. I hadn’t taken advantage of the feature…before today. Now, when you click on the nichecam link over there on the right, that page has a link to the movie footage from the previous day. WARNING: […]

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The latest feature to hit my Gmail account is Web Clips. It’s an RSS feed aggregator that appears at the top of my inbox. I can enter in the addresses of whichever blogs or sites I want to track, and I’ll have access to those sites’ latest stories right from Gmail. Man, this is nice. […]

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You may have noticed the small block of ad links over there on the right side of the page. The idea is that the thousands of people who visit this blog will click on links to ads for potato casserole, and I’ll subsequently become rich beyond my wildest dreams. Here’s how it works. Every time […]

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I’ve always enjoyed Webcams. No, no, not THOSE Webcams. Just regular ol’ Webcams pointed at stuff like cubicles or busy intersections or someone’s Halloween decorations. They’re a great combination of technology and voyeurism. I bought an iSight camera not too long after they were introduced. At the time, I wasn’t sure of much more than […]

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I’m not the most popular guy in the world (couldn’t guess from all the comments on the blog, eh?). It’s one thing to know that and to have fully internalized every aspect of that reality. But it’s another thing to have my Gmail account constantly slapping me in the face with these 100 invites. “Send […]

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The Seagate HD I ordered for the ministack arrived yesterday, so I was able to get that installed and running last evening. I moved my g2data directory again, so it now resides on the new drive. Speed seems OK this morning. Tonight I plan to connect my keyboard to the mini so I can restart […]

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I’ve been trying to figure out how to serve images to the blog now that I’m running Gallery2, which stores its sized images in .dat files rather than as scaled jpegs. I think I’ve figured out a method. So, here goes. The downside is that the images aren’t stored locally, although I do have copies […]

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Leah’s been beefing about the performance of the gallery since nicheplayer was moved over to the mini. From what I can determine, the slowdown is probably twofold. First, Gallery2 is a bit of a pig. It’s just slower than the 1.x versions. Second, the mini has a notebook drive in it, which runs at 5400RPM. […]

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I finally let my .Mac membership expire. Really, I never used my .mac e-mail address anymore, which was the only real benefit to the service for me. Now that I’m hosting all my sites and calendars from the mini, there’s no point in shelling out $100/yr for .Mac. Letting go, however, hasn’t been as easy […]

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I just sold my Cube last night on eBay. The auction price jumped $90 in the last 30 seconds, which is always a welcome turn of events when you’re a seller. As I was getting the Cube backed up and ready for sale, I was looking for information on how to give a buyer that […]

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Send me an e-mail that asks me to send it along to (x#) other people. I’m sure that something really cool happens if I add my name to the list and pester 10 of my friends to do the same, but on the chance that even one of these people finds these kinds of things […]

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I’ve decided to remove the login requirement for getting to the blog. What this means is that you’ll no longer have to log in just to get to some blog content. If you want to see the juicy posts about Ava, though, you will have to login. Here’s how that works: In the menu on […]

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Thanks to my good pal Kevin, I now have a pretty cool calendar app that you can see via the Web. Here’s how it works: Leah and/or I update our calendar here at home using Apple’s calendaring app, iCal. There are other applications you can use on other platforms, I just happen to use a […]

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