Work and Play

I'm posting this from work at the moment. It's 4:06am which means that I'm working the night shift again. I really don't mind working graveyards that much. It's been exceptionally quiet tonight and hope it stays that way until 7am. This gives me a chance to update this blog!
I managed to screw up my home computer yesterday. I had recently installed Ubuntu Linux on the hard drive, because I've been meaning to test drive the software for quite some time now. Installation was a breeze and I had the system up and running in no time. I installed a few extras to enhance the features, and I even spent some time getting to know how to use the terminal to type in commands. The one part of the installation that didn't go smoothly, was that although my ATI graphics card was detected, I couldn't change the screen resolution higher than 1024x768. I spent some time trying to figure out how to correct this problem, and found others with similar grief. In the end, I found step by step instructions, along with a repository link for the files I'd need. All I ended up doing was killing the software. I was left staring at a blank screen.
Not all was lost however. After years of computer use, I've learned a trick or two. I turned off my computer and switched hard drive cables around. You see, before I installed Ubuntu, I had disconnected the hard drive with Windows XP on it. I installed Ubuntu on my 2nd hard drive. When the screen blanked, I just plugged the cable back in and my Windows XP loaded up just like it's always done. Now I have to figure out how to repair Ubuntu if I can, otherwise I'll have to reinstall it all over again. I liked the look and feel of it, and I'd like to give it more of a chance before I decide if I like it or Windows better. I may end up settling on a dual boot option, as my wife likes to use MS Excel and Word occasionally. She's never been as fond of Open source as I have.

Orange you photogenic

I haven't even turned on my camera for a week! Am I suffering from the winter blahs? I don't think so, but I can't say for sure. I just haven't been inspired to capture anything lately. The last photo I took was last weekend. My family went out to the local mall, because my wife and daughter were both getting eye exams. I brought the camera along just in case.
This juice store we popped into was overloading the orange colour sensors in my brain, and I pulled out my camera and fired off a shot while my daughter picked out a drink from their menu. The drink was just so-so, but I like the way the photo turned out.

Digg revisited

I've been visiting digg.com for some time now and love to find interesting and strange news/links on the web. I've found another site that's similar to digg, but offers me something that digg doesnt; a chance to win a prize. The site is called Digital Journal.
At first glance it looks similar to digg with topics submitted by members and others can post their comments on those topics.
Readers of my blog will remember that I won an MP4 player a while back, and I posted some photos of it here.
Since then, I've been entering online contests that I come across in the hopes that lightning does strike the same place twice. Well, Digital Journal is offering anyone a chance to win a prize of either an Xbox360 or a Dell Computer. Check out the site for more details, and watch out for that lightning.

A Look Back

The first computer that I used was way back in high school in the seventies. It was a typewriter style terminal that we entered our programs into and the data was transmited to the local university where their large computer did the computations for us. We didn't see the results until the next day when a delivery arrived to our school with all our results. If there were any errors in our programs, we'd have to start all over again and wait another day again to see the results.
I've been surfing the Internet since the early days of MS-DOS and dial up modems. My first real powerhouse computer was a 286 IBM compatible computer. It had a whopping 16 MB hard drive and a 5.25" floppy drive. I bought and installed a 14.4 modem later on and I remember the first time I used my modem. I had come across a phone number of a local modem Bulletin Board and dialed them up to find out what it was all about. I found an active forum, some file downloads and a few more phone numbers to keep me going. I was hooked. I joined several BBSs' in the area and there was a couple of times that I dialed a long distance number to access some remote BBS that offered something I couldn't find locally.
I take my broadband connection for granted these days, and get a bit frustrated when the load time on my browser takes longer than several seconds. I've forgotten about those long overnight downloads I used to endure to download the latest shareware demo of some new game.
The Internet has grown a lot since I first logged on, and I can't even begin to imagine what the future will bring. How will we access all this information in say 20 years from now. Your guess is as good as mine.

Scanning for a scanner

I have a ton of slides and prints that I have taken over the years, that I would love to convert to digital. I've been searching for some time now for an affordable way to convert them and still retain their quality. True film scanners are way too expensive for the amount of slides I own, and the flatbed scanner types probably wouldn't do a good enough job to satisfy my needs. I have an old Visioneer scanner hooked up to my old computer. It will only work with Windows 98, which is why I haven't used it on my main computer.
The other day, I pulled out some old photos, and out of curiousity, I scanned them to see what I would end up with. I uploaded them to my webspace, and was able to retrieve them on my computer. Here are a couple of birds that I saw while I was in Australia, including a Kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree! I also scanned a photo of me hiding in a baobob tree. The photo quality on the old scanner isn't too bad for blogging, but I know I'll need a better one for my archival purposes.

Ah hem, testing one two three. Is this thing on?

Recently, I was asked if I would be willing to help out a small game company with some voice-over work. They are a small group based in Romania, and were looking for native English speakers for their project. I agreed to lend a hand..er voice. I sent a demo recording which they liked, and I was provided with a script to read. I recorded it using Audacity and sent them the finished copy. I'm not sure when the game will be released, but I'll post more info here when I receive it.

Computer guru to the rescue

My wifes nephew came over the other night with his new laptop. He just wanted to learn how to burn photos onto DVD. He has a Sony Vaio with all the bells and whistles. I noticed while we were burning the photos, that his new computer was running a lot slower than my old desktop. I did some probing around and found that he didn't have any active anti-virus software installed or running on his system. We hooked up to my signal wirelessly and I downloaded and installed a few antivirus/spyware checkers. I ran all the checks and by the time I was done, the software had found 147 threats to his system! Here are the links to the software I used in case you too are in need.
Antivir
Adaware
Spybot

Gonna get me a flying car

It's just a coincidence that yesterday I posted a photo of traffic in the city and today I find a couple of articles about a flying car coming in the not too distant future.
I've been talking/dreaming about owning a flying car for years now, so when I saw the links for it online, I quickly surfed over to learn more.
It seems that there is an actual company in Israel working on this exciting concept. They already have a working prototype and hope to have them operational and up for sale by 2012. You can read more about the X-Hawk on their website or watch the sample video here. The line for the flying cars starts directly behind me!

Here's a humourous video with two guys sitting in traffic talking about a flying car. The beginning of the video sounds like things I've been saying for years.
"I gotta believe that there's somebody else out there thinking about the flying car besides me, somebody who's not afraid to throw their hats over the wall for the good of mankind...If more people threw their hats over the wall, we wouldn't be sitting in this mess right now, we'd be zooming over it in a flying car." The video gets crazy when the passenger tries to find out how far the driver would go to own his very own flying car. Weird, but good for a laugh.
edit: (Video Rated PG-13 for my younger readers)

Hitting the road?

Well, I've made the decision and am in the process of creating a new blog on a different site. The site provider is Frihost and I'll be using Wordpress as my blogging software. Everything is new to me and I've got a lot to learn. I'm taking my time getting it set up so that I get it all configured properly. I'm finding that I like Wordpress a lot more than Blogger. I've also installed it on my computer as well to learn more about its features.
I don't plan on abandoning this site however, as the new blog will be for a totally different purpose. I'll still log on here every so often to post a photo and leave an update on what I've been up to.
I seem to have recovered about 80% from my vertigo, and am actually looking forward to returning to work.
The photo above was taken at dusk as the fog was rolling into town last night. I had the ISO setting up to 800 which explains the graininess of the shot. I love this intersection at this time of day, as you can see a long line of rush hour traffic backed up for as far as the eye can see, right into the city. I love it because I'm travelling in the opposite direction. After taking the photo, I was home in only a few minutes.