14 Aug 2004
Hmm. I’ve decided that P2P networks can be a most useful device indeed. Despite their potential for abuse.
I lost the Gateway Windows Me CD (I have absolutely NO idea how that was managed, seeing that EVERY OTHER system disc is still in my folder for such things, but hey!) for the Celery laptop, and have just finished downloading a nice new full ISO of Windows Me (heh, I laughed when the ISO preparer was marked as Microsoft themselves… yay for direct ripping!). I was half expecting it not to work or something, but hey, it does. Very cool.
Yes, this evidently makes me an evil pirate, and the peer to peer networks should be shut down, and users should never lose discs. Well, that would be okay, if copyright law in this esteemed country made provision for “Fair Use”. No matter what I do, I’d be breaking the law. I can’t keep a copy locally, and I can’t download a copy remotely… what’s a geek to do? Heh, hardly a geek, even – this thing is running Millenium. Ah well. It works okay, despite all the bad press. It was built by an OEM, and came with an OEM dist. of Millenium (which, of course, I have now lost and replaced with a stock image of, but hey), so it has to run acceptably.
Hmmmm. Yes. Now I can finally dub (well, not strictly dub, but meh:P) some of the accumulating Platform 7 recordings (on tape) to file… well, I could before, if I could be bothered to move my desktop into the lounge room. But that’s just too far away, and would mean too much time spent away from email ;)
“Copying files needed for Windows Setup…“ Hurry up and copy already!!! Sigh.
In other interesting news, I’ve discovered why Google isn’t indexing this website properly. Apparently my URL’s are too complex… SE’s can deal with query strings to an extent, but apparently any more than two and a bit and they start to struggle/or at least ignore bits.
The solution would basically mean either using URI’s of the form http://baseaddress/?$style.$page.$extravariable1.$extravariable2 etc., or using mod_rewrite to make even more friendly URL’s.
I’m not sure exactly what would be the most scalable way to do this, and haven’t got time immediately available to determine this… I may look at it next weekend, or later next week depending on other workload and the progress of existing web projects.
And that concludes my procrastination for this half hour… back to the Extension seminar preparation and things like that!
14 Aug 2004
Original Post: http://sc.dalegroup.net/index.php?page=news&nid=85
I was doing the daily blog-run, and came across a website (not one of my regulars, I just stumbled accross it) which used something called “Audblog”.
It’s not quite voice recognition, but it’s pretty damn close to what I wanted/want. You call, it records and posts. No speech2text conversion in there, but hey… that’s alright, it’s close enough.
Pretty damn cool. http://www.audblog.com/ for more info. It’s a pay-service, and US-based, so calls from landlines would be expensiveish (haha, oh, the irony of it all… I get cheaper calls to telephones in the US than I do to mobiles in Australia… hehehe).
Unfortunately, you have to specify a (US) telephone number to join, but hey. Yes, I did try…
14 Aug 2004
Wow. This computer is now magically capable of actually DOWNLOADING Stuff™ without my having to first download it onto my desktop then push content onto it using Samba!
I’m awed! Heh, that said, because it was a nasty-install-over-the-top job, there’s probably still virii and spyware lurking in the depths, just waiting for me to do the wrong thing and accidentally activate it, but hey. I’m doing the obligatory Windows Update thang, and then it’s straight off to AVG to download the latest definitions and other such things.
Yay! Heh, I haven’t been so excited about a Windows install for quite a while now… Oh well, there’s still time for it to shatter my expectations, I suppose ;)
13 Aug 2004
*sticks fingers in ears* I CAN’T HEAR THE ASSESSMENTS LOOMING! THEY’RE NOT THERE!!!
Sigh. Had physics today, that was good for a laugh. Or a cry at its pathetic nature. Or something. That said, I can just see myself really bombing out SOMEHOW when the marks come back. Pfft.
Oh, yeah, and they just went and moved our yearlies back two weeks. Three weeks to go, or thereabouts. Maybe four? I don’t know. I don’t remember the date, but it’s too close.
Pfft, screw the yearly drama production.
The school can hire more people like Will to do stuff for them. Throughly uninterested. I’m so over it, really. Sure, the fact that our exams are a week after or something probably doesn’t INCREASE my interest, but that’s not the only factor influencing the decision, either.
I have an extension assessment/seminar presentation to give on Monday. I consider myself to be screwed for it, and am preparing to fail. No, that wasn’t a defeatist attitude speaking… it was me, typing. This one seems to have sort of crept up on me without notice… although I know that’s not true. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Yes, anyway. At least there is a day of Nothingness next week. I really AM looking forward to the atheletics carnival, as scary as that may seem. It’s a day sans work or assessments or immediate stress. Can’t wait.
I need sleep. Today was so exhausting. Goodnight, all.
11 Aug 2004
Yeah! Brrraaaaaaand new BenQ 19” LCD just arrived, and it’s kickin’.
http://www.benq.com.au/HomeShowProduct.asp?prodID=239
Model number is FP992, and it’s pretty funky. Aside from being just plain HUUUUUUUGE, it also displays Stuff™, which is always desirable in a monitor. Further, it’s the heaviest damn LCD screen I’ve ever had to deal with. And it does portrait mode, which is always interesting. Haven’t had a chance to play with that properly, yet. On the to-do list.
Oh, yeah, and it works sexily with our DVD player (which has VGA output), after a spot of hacking (yeah, go figure – less than 3 hours out of the box, and already it’s being hacked with!).
This evening has been throughly unproductive, I’m glad to say. Eye-candy for the masses!