I’m doing another upgrade here, so if things are sorta tweaked out or broken or just plain weird… it’s me. It’s all me. Feel free to tell me what’s not working for you, though. Maybe I’ll miss something if nobody tells me!
Category: Geekery
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Giant Battle Ducky
My battle monster beat Kyla’s battle monster, nyah nyah!
Bring it on.
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Time of the signs.
Okay, okay, I’ve made one too.
Are you happy now? Thpppt.
(I’m such a follower. But see, I’m mighty selective about who I follow… and it doesn’t hurt that those I’m following are enjoyable to look at from behind. *smirk*)
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Version 2. Or 5, depending.
Why haven’t I been updating lately? It goes something like this: This past weekend, the creator of Monaural Jerk announced a new version release, the first in about two years. So of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to… upgrade!
On the upside: The code is cleaner and neater, the admin interface is vastly improved, the stylesheets are more a part of the core layout engine, the channel management is not only more intuitive but also more useful and… did I mention the admin interface is vastly improved? Good.
On the downside: There’s a bit of a learning curve to figure out the best way to integrate additions, and upgrading from an earlier version still has some kinks to iron out. No, really, those are the only downsides.
I’m nearly ready (minus some stylesheet tinkering and a couple of can’t-live-without features) to replace the “main” site code with the new codebase… which will probably already have occurred if you’re reading this and didn’t come here from a link I personally sent you. Some of the old features and subsections may take a few days to bring back online, but now I know how it’s done so it won’t be a big hassle.
Wow. This is cool. Damned cool.
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Digital Archiving, The Old-Fashioned Way
After basically spending two days flat on my back, I wanted to do something. “Hey,” I thought to myself, “I can add the CDs I’ve acquired in the last year or so to my music catalog!”
Way back in the Dark… that is, the DOS Ages, I registered a little piece of software called Playlist. Its sole purpose was to allow one to efficiently catalog one’s music collection. There were other catalog programs out there, but Playlist was dirt easy: It stored every previous entry for each field, so adding new media from the same artist (for instance) could be accomplished with a minimum of keystrokes. I put 154 CDs into that thing… and the reason I know the exact number will be explained shortly.
Eventually Playlist “went Windows” and earned a new name: Visitrax. Because registered users of the old program could run the full version of the new without paying a second fee, I happily made the transition and hurriedly entered the other 150-some-odd CDs in my collection.
With all of the excitement this past year, somehow I lost track of my Visitrax install. More importantly, I lost track of my old Playlist install directory… in which I had a text file containing the registration code! Eep! I looked on all four of the household computers, I searched through old email archives, and poked around on the various backup CDs. Nope. Somehow when I transitioned to the new PC I managed to leave my only copies of Playlist and Visitrax behind. Damn!
Finally, in desperation, I decided to attach every IDE drive on my shelf to one of the computers to see if I could salvage something from this mess. On (of course) the very last drive in the pile, I found what I was looking for: The Playlist directory with the registration code and (bonus!) the most-recent database… from when I was using Playlist.
Oh well. At least I have those 154 CDs entered in. That only leaves about 200 and some-odd to go… and this time, I’m making more intelligent backups. Argh.
By the way, if you’re at all inclined towards building a catalog of your music, I highly recommend Visitrax. The current version pulls data from CDDB (freedb, actually) for you, and also integrates with Winamp by allowing you to associate a track with its digital version if it’s on your hard drive.
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All Your Rovers Are Belong To Us
My friend Ben and I have been exchanging emails about the Mars Expedition Rovers and other fun Martian exploration topics (who’d have thunk that Pathfinder would be right about where NASA left it, considering the severity of Martian windstorms?), and the topic of remote software programming came up. See, a fair chunk of the software for the new rovers’ missions will be uploaded (and was there ever a more apt use of that term?) after they land. This fact prompted speculation on the sorts of things one could program the rovers to do, or say.
And from there we quickly found ourselves asking, “So what geek from what country is going to hack the Mars Rover first?” For instance, I thought, someone might prompt a rover to transmit:
ALL YOUR MARS BASE ARE BELONG TO US — SOMEONE SET US UP THE MARS
Ben, being a far cleverer sort, supplied the following suggestions:
DUBYA: WHERE IS MY EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM? — MARVIN
WE HAVE ELVIS. LEAVE TWELVE MILLION IN UNMARKED BULLION IN A VALISE AT GROOM LAKE.
I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE.
GREETINGS TO THE PUNY HUMANS. WELCOME TO A NEW AGE OF INTERPLANETARY WAR.
DESTROY ALL YODELING COWBOY MUSIC WITHIN 24 HOURS OR FACE METEORITIC DESTRUCTION.
JPL: WE ARE INSTALLING LINUX ON THIS THING. GET OVER IT.
404 ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND.
JPL: IS ‘RAM DISK’ AN INSTALLATION PROCEDURE?
LOOK, MA, NO HANDS!
WE ARE SUING THE ORSON WELLES ESTATE FOR DEFAMATION AND SLANDER.
WHAT STUPID MONKEY CANCELLED ‘FUTURAMA’? WE WANT AMY WONG DELIVERED UNTO US.
THIS DEVICE HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND MUST BE SHUT DOWN.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? CHECKERS? CHESS? GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?
WE DEMAND THE HEAD OF HEYWOOD FLOYD
MARS HAS HYDRATED AND OXYGENATED ROCKS. SEND POT SEEDS.
DID YOU KNOW THIS THING CAN DO WHEELIES?
ALIEN BABE CAM 24 HOURS A DAY — YOU CAN SEE EVERY PSEUDOPOD!
HAVE FOUND ALIEN EGGS AND ACQUIRED PARASITIC FACEHUGGER. PLEASE SEND RESCUE TEAM.
THIS DEVICE WAS 0WN3D BY A 13-YEAR-OLD IN NEBRASKA WITH A LINUX P-90, A PACKET RADIO TRANSMITTER, 400 FEET OF ALUMINUM FOIL, HIS MOTHER’S SATELLITE DISH, AND A MUTILATED SPEAK AND SPELL. EAT MY SHORTS NASA.
As George Carlin once said, “These are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.” Heh.
Yes, we’re geeks. But we’re damned clever and amusing geeks, if we do say so ourselves…