Finally, a New Laptop (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 1 week ago • 1,371 views

Laptop #1 is a Dell which was the subject of many recalls and class action lawsuits. Nowadays it's tiny and too slow for use even as a paper weight.

Laptop #2 is a $2300+ Sony (that I'm still paying for!) with a faulty video card, apparently. It's fast, big, and beautiful except that you can't look at the screen without going blind. (Replacing the video card requires replacement of the entire motherboard at a cost near the original selling price. )

Laptop #3 is was a rather inexpensive Toshiba which I got for Charms, but was hijacked by me after the Sony went to crap. It's been all I've used for the past ~2 years, but I knocked it off a high counter the other day and it passed away. Fortunately, a new one is in the mail.

Laptop #4 has yet to be received, but it is a Toshiba A205-S7466 (available exclusively from Costco.com [We love Costco]). Here are the specs:

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo Processor; 1.5GHz; 2MB L2; 667MHz FSB
RAM 2GB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (max 4GB)
Hard Drive 200GB; 4200RPM
Optical Drive HD-DVD; CD-R/W; DVD-R/W; DVD-RAM
Display 15.4" TruBrite WXGA 1280x800
Communications 10/100 Ethernet (no Gigabit ); 802.11a/g/n (yay for Draft N! ); IEEE 1394; 4x USB2.0
Other ExpressCard/(34|54); 5-in-1 SD, memory stick (pro), (no CF )

Five free HD-DVD movies come with the drive, but of course it's not very likely we'll ever sit and watch a feature length film via laptop. And since we're more fans of Blu-Ray, it's unlikely we'll ever buy an HD-DVD player. Still nice to have I guess.

Unfortunately, it comes preloaded with Vista (Home Premium). I'd much rather have XP, but from what I've read I'll have a hell of a time getting XP drivers for all the hardware and since Toshiba offers no support in this arena I don't want to risk shooting myself in the foot, so I guess I'll have to stay burdened with the big, bloated, unwanted OS that'll monopolize half of my massive RAM.

Dictionary of Limericks Called OEDILF (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 1 week ago • 1,391 views
It is a project that started a few years back called "The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form." The title says exactly what it is, but basically it's a dictionary of definitions written by the site's members in the form of limericks.

Here's a link to all the ones I submitted long, long ago. They all aren't very good, but it was all in good fun.

Here's my definition of attacked:
After insuring their gear was unpacked,
They gobbled the vittles they'd sacked
And extinguished their fire
Then began to perspire,
When a malnourished Sasquatch attacked.
Are any of you the type who likes to author written works of your very own? I'd be interested to read something of yours, whether creative, non-fiction, long, or short.

First Mass-Market $200 Linux PC on Sale at Wal-Mart (next to their line of redneck zombie clothing) (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 2,343 views

Wired.com writes about this new $200 PC running the Enlightenment desktop manager on Ubuntu Linux and powered by a 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU, 512 megs of RAM, and an 80GB drive.

Ubuntu Linux is a very powerful, robust operating system derived from Debian (which is what runs VideoSift). This could be the first big step toward Linux PCs taking over... Okay, so they probably won't take over, but at least they'll become more popular and offer lots more people an affordable computer.

It'd actually be a box very worth buying for simple things such as a development/test server, data backup, or other such tasks.

Here is the item page at WalMart.com, and below are the item description and not-so-detailed specs from that page:

Key Features & Benefits:
  • 1.5 GHz Via Technologies C7-D processor
    Delivers energy-saving performance
  • 512 MB of DDR2 system memory
    Offers good performance and is expandable to 2 GB
  • 80 GB hard disk drive
    Provides space for documents, games, photos and music
  • DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive
    Lets you play DVDs and burn your own CDs for entertainment and data backup
  • 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
    Connects to a local area network or broadband Internet devices
  • gOS operating system
    Enables you to use the supplied OpenOffice.org 2.2 software suite
Specifications
Hard Drive Size:80 GB
System RAM:512 MB
Operating System:gOS
Model No.:TC2502
Shipping Weight (in pounds):21.0
Product in Inches (L x W x H):23.0 x 23.0 x 11.4

(If you don't get the "redneck zombie clothing" reference, see SwampGirl's Halloween Post.)

Blog Title, Sidebar, and WYSIWYG Settings (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 1,461 views
Charter member Account Preferences have been updated to allow Sift Bloggers to control three new settings:

  1. Blog Title - You can specify a title by which your blog can be identified

  2. Custom Sidebar - You can define contents for a custom sidebar panel displayed on all your blog pages

  3. WYSIWYG Editor - The "What You See Is What You Get" blog editor can now be disabled. This is mainly for bloggers who would prefer to edit the HTML of their blogs manually, rather than letting the fancy WYSIWYG editor do the work.

As a side note, it came to my attention that several bloggers have been including images that are well above the 540px width limit. In FireFox they were just being auto-cropped, but in Internet Explorer (IE) browsers it was stretching the page out super wide and/or pushing all blog contents down to the bottom of the page below the sidebar. Now all images, regardless of actual size, will automatically be shrunken to fit by your browser, so if you're using an IE browser and are still seeing any such problems, do a hard reload (ctrl+shift+reload) to get the update.

Please note that when embedding videos and other such objects, you must not exceed the maximum width of 540 pixels or it will severely mess up the browsing experience of your readers. Unfortunately there's no way for us to automatically adjust those to fit.

It's been only a short while and this Sift Blog thing is really taking off! I'm having a great time reading your blogs, especially those with your photos. All you charters who are abstaining, please don't hesitate to jump right in and start posting.

Yoshi the Ragdoll and His Little Brother Kiko the Maltepoo (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 2,393 views

Please allow me to introduce you to our children. These are all old pictures, but they're the best I have at hand. 

Our oldest son is named Yoshi. We got his name from the big green dinosaur. He is a flame point colored Ragdoll just over 4 years old and our pride and joy. He is adorable and sweet in every way. He always follows us around, so no matter where you sit or stand, if you turn around chances are he'll be right there rubbing his handsome face against you. He had a bad bladder condition that requires prescription food and he also has a vomiting problem. (There are very few clean areas left on the carpet of our entire home.)

Our youngest son is named Kiko. We'd like to claim it is derived from the Japanese word meaning 'white snow' but in reality it's from a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce. He is a very intelligent white Maltepoo (half Maltese, half Poodle) approaching 3 years old. He flew to us from Texas, and we thought he was a cute little maniac when we held him at the airport for the first time even though he was covered in pee. We trained him from the start to use dog litter and he's very good about it, only occasionally standing half-way in and puddling up all over the floor, but hey at least we don't have to walk him. The standard dog litter is very high maintenance as it starts to stink and you need to clean it constantly, so we developed our own system with a thick layer of cat litter beneath the layer of dog litter and now his liquid messes are always neat, tidy, enormous, manageable clumps.

Santiago Canyon Fire in Irvine, California (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 1,523 views
Just thought I'd share a couple of photos I took the first night of the so-called "Santiago" arson fire, Saturday, October 21, 2007. Charms and I were driving home from about 20 minutes away when we first spotted flames and enormous plumes of smoke rising from the top of a very distant hill. I joshingly suggested it was the hill across from our abode, and it wasn't until we were off the freeway heading toward home that we discovered how near it really was.

This was a horrible tragedy for so many people and we have so much respect and appreciation for all the firefighters and volunteers that have and continue to help protect homes and lives. It disgusts me to no end that the same type of [expletive deleted] who believe vehemently in 9/11 conspiracies are now also contending that these fires were all started by firefighters themselves because they wanted to collect overtime pay.

This is a shot from the Woodbury Town Center down the street. Notice all the onlookers. The streets were actually lined with parked cars. If many were like us, they were watching to get a handle on how worried we needed to be.

This is from a little while later after the flames spread eastward. The series of lights at the bottom of the hill line a toll road. This burning came as close as just feet away from homes in the village of Portola Springs just on the other side of the road.

Here's a short clip I found on YouTube that starts at the corner where the first photo above was taken and ends around where the second was taken. It gives you a little bit of an idea of the wanton disregard in the air for what was to come.

News coverage seems to have died down, but the fire is still currently burning 9 days later, homes are still being evacuated, and it isn't expected to be squelched before Friday. Wouldn't it be nice if the genius engineers in this country could designed a "bomb" that would suck the oxygen out of a large area or otherwise smother it with massive force.

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Blog Editor (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 2,317 views

A big improvement in blogging has been made for all Sift Bloggers who are less than very technically inclined when it comes to HTML programming. We've incorporated a fantastic JavaScript WYSIWYG editor (courtesy of MoxieCode Systems).

Currently, it's active for all new blog  posting and existing post editing, but it will soon be made optional via account preferences (for those of us who prefer manual HTML). Most features are included in the toolbar embedded at the bottom of the input form, however the one thing that's a little tricky (unfortunately there's no way around it) is when it comes to inserting video embed code. Instead of simply pasting it into the form, you have to click the "HTML" button to access the source code of your blog entry and paste the video embed code there.

We're hoping this is going to be something very positive for all you bloggers out there, so please share your thoughts and experiences with it.

Added Typical "Blog Archive" Sidebar (Blog Post)

posted by lucky760 1 decade 7 years 3 weeks ago • 1,283 views
Just added a new sidebar panel to the blog pages containing the obligatory "archive" links to collapse and expand blog post information by year and month. It seems to be in working order, but if you experience any difficulties or think it's not functioning properly please report here.

As requested by some members, the next additions to these charter member blogs may be to have a WYSIWYG editor available, specify your own title for it, and also maybe have a custom sidebar panel (a la channels) that you can play around with. Look for such features to appear in the coming weeks.

Side note: This is my absolutely very first blog post ever. I wish it were something a bit more spectacular, but this is the way the cookie crumbles. Of course, it is still a "dear diary" moment...


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