Here’s something a bit different…while Stumbling on the internet I ran across this site called Sand Fantasy. According to the website, “Ilana Yahav draws on sand, using only her fingers. As she weaves together sand, lighting and music, Ilana creates incredible three dimensional images.”
Watch the video clips to get a better idea of what she does. It’s quite impressive. The “Just Imagine” clip really shows her talent.
Awhile back I did a piece on the Razr cell phone and part of that article talked about getting wallpapers to the phone by bluetooth. I also had some sample wallpapers that I made at the default size for the razr which is 176×220. As I’ve looked through the stats for our site I noticed alot of people coming to from searches for 176×220 wallpapers, so I thought I’d post some more. I always want new wallpapers for my phone or computer becuase I just can’t stand it to look the same very long. Feel free to download these and use them on your devices, don’t feel free to post them elsewhere without giving proper credit. With the exception of the Narnia wallpaper the rest are all from my photoblog Jasonspix.com
If you read back in some of my earlier posts you’ll see where I talked about going 3 months without pop. I ended up going 9 weeks before I gave up. The hardest part of going without pop was the initial week. The reason I gave up wasn’t necessarily because I just had to have pop, but because the results weren’t as dramatic as I had expected.
I figured I’d lose more weight than I did (not that I really need to lose a lot) and my energy level after 2 months was not much higher than before. So I decided I was done with that experiment and decided to give exercise a try.
I’ve never been one for routine exercise, I’ve always been skinny and even now at 35 I haven’t put on that much weight. I’m actually statistically right in the weight range that is ideal for my age, height and sex. However, i have noticed that there is more weight settling in my mid-section. So I signed up at a fitness center and have been going 2 and 3 times a week for 3 weeks now. I have to say that I have noticed a significant difference in just the 3 weeks, much more so than the 9 weeks with no pop. So, hopefully I can keep this up.
I’ve been using Opera 9 beta for a couple of days. I’ve been a Firefox user for a long time. Last week I gave Internet Explorer 7 beta a try for a week and though it’s a vast improvement over IE6 I went back to Firefox. So, while I was experimenting I thought I’d give Opera a try. So far other than a few websites that don’t work quite right I’m highly impressed. The WordPress version 2.0.1’s editor seems to have issues with Opera and acts a bit funny.
The skins are cool and the widgets built into version 9 are handy as well. I’ve been impressed with the speed of Opera as well. I’m seriously considering switching from Firefox to Opera!
While reading the May issue of Wired I ran across a short article about a UK based TV show called “The IT Crowd.” I’m always up for new shows and this one got my attention since I’m in IT (or MIS or IS or Stupid computer guys or whatever you call the computer department in your company). We jumped on a bitTorrent search and found the 6 episodes from season one readily available.
I’ve only watched the first episode but it cracked me up. I have to admit that I’m a geek, but not quite as hardcore geeky as these guys. At least I don’t think I am.
Anyways, check it out. If you work or have ever worked in the computer department of a business you’ll get a kick out of it. Like I said I only watched the first episode so I can’t vouch for the cleanliness of the show yet, but what I did watch was clean. The show is produced by the same guy who did the original “The Office” show and from the episodes I watched of that show it was not clean at all.
UPDATE: I have watched another episode and there were a few curse words. There were some that were bleeped out as well, so it’s not totally clean.
I’ve been running Internet Explorer beta 2 version 7.0.5335.5 for about a week now. The beta for IE7 has been out for a month or so now and I decided to give it a try using only IE instead of my normal favorite Firefox.
I have to say that I was highly impressed. IE7 is a big jump forward for Internet Explorer and Microsoft has done a good job with this version. Of course they have lots to glean from Firefox and even Opera, but this version in my opinion sends them in the right direction. I don’t really think any of the new features are new from a browser point of view. They finally added tabs which is a must for any browser. The reworked interface was done very well and though it took a little getting used to overall I liked it.
I’m not sure what other features are planned for the final release but one thing this is missing is the ability to skin or theme the browser. We are all individuals and we don’t like being like everyone else. That’s why I change my desktop wallpaper 2 or 3 times a week I guess. From a couple of things I’ve read there might be two different versions of IE7 one that comes with Windows Vista and a version that will run on other operating systems like XP. My guess is that the Vista version will have more features to entice us to move up to Vista.
There was one feature that I liked that Firefox doesn’t have and I don’t know if Opera does or not but that was the Quick tabs view. When you have multiple tabs open you can a click a button and have an overview of the pages you have on each of the tabs. This feature isn’t earth shattering, but it seems like it could be pretty useful.
I did run into several problems with websites like Yahoo! movies page not wanting to show a trailer because it thought I didn’t have Windows Media Player installed even though I actually do. There were a couple of other instances of wierdness with websites, I’m guessing this is becuase of being a beta version as well as websites that might need some tweaking to recognize the new version.
So after using IE7 for a week is this new version good enough to draw me back away from Firefox? Sorry, not yet. The bugs I can live with, it is a beta version after all. I’d say as far as speed IE7 and Firefox seemed to handle about the same. I think for me the difference comes with Firefox’s ability to be theme’d as well as Firefox’s extensions. The ability to add on user created enhancements is huge and Microsoft needs to add this ability.
Before there was XP Remote Desktop/Terminal services there was Netmeeting Desktop Sharing. I know some of you are saying “yeah, but what about VNC?” I’ve used it and it works well also, but mostly I use the XP Desktop Connection and Netmeeting simply because they are already there. Call me lazy. Netmeeting is nifty for those few Windows 98 machines you might still have lurking around. Plus unlike Terminal Services on Windows Server 2000 and 2003 with Netmeeting Remote Desktop you can take control of a desktop and the machine who’s desktop you have control of is able to see what you see, which can make troubleshooting a user’s computer a bit easier. I know there’s remote assistance but that doesn’t exitst for Windows 98 and I don’t think it does for Windows 2000 either.
Anyways, I configured a Windows 98 computer to allow me to connect to it’s desktop anytime using netmeeting. When you set it up it makes you put in a password. I’ve used so many passwords, I couldn’t remember what I had set it to. If you try and change the password it wants the old password in order to do so. Never fear, just delete one key in the registry and you’ll be back up and running.
Find the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Conferencing\Mcpt
Now, delete it. You can go back in and setup Netmeeting’s desktop sharing and configure a new password without putting in the old password, hopefully one you’ll remember next time.
I’ve picked up numerous books from the library on photography and most haven’t been much help. They either talk about film concepts, which I could care less about (I don’t know film and don’t want to learn it), or they talk about concepts and things which either don’t make sense or aren’t explained very well.
This book I really like so far. Bryan Peterson does an excellent job of helping you to see things in a creative way to improve your photography skills. He doesn’t go into the technical matter of photography as far as exposure and lighting and aperature. To me these concepts are better learned by practice than a book. But he gives great advice on composition and color and point of view.
For example here is an exercise in learning your lenses. Take one of your lenses that is capable of viewing at 35mm. Pick a subject and get far enough away from the subject that it is in the center of the view finder with alot of space on all sides. Take 5 steps forward, re-focus and snap, take 5 steps forward, re-focus and snap. Keep doing this until you get so close to the subject that you can’t focus on it any longer. Now go back to where you started and do the process again, this time on your knees. Now go back to where you started and do it again, this time on your belly. Do this process at 35mm, 50mm, 60mm, 70mm, 80mm and 105mm. He says if you do this once a week for 3 months you will gain a knowledge of your lenses that 90% of photographers do not have.
I ordered the book from Half.com for $15.00 used and think it’s one of the few photography books that really will help in shooting. One of the other things that impressed me was that the examples in the book truly are good shots that I would love to be able to capture. So often you look at a photography how-to book and the person telling you how to shoot better has crappy shots.
We ran into a problem with a PC that had the Microsoft Firewall Client 2000 from ISA (Internet Security and Accelerator) on it. We recently upgraded our ISA server to the 2004 version. You can run the older client on the newer version but it doesn’t encrypt the traffic and it allows traffic that is normally blocked on a user level to work. So, we disabled the ability for the old client to work and began removing it from all of our computers and then installing the new version.
On one PC the old version wouldn’t un-install correctly and the new version won’t install if it’s not removed. You will get an error message that says something like “Microsoft Firewall Client 2004 cannot be installed over a previous version. Please remove the older version and try again.” Well, since the uninstall failed and it removed the old version from the Add/Remove programs we were stuck. After some poking around in the internet I found instructions on Microsoft’s site for removing the client from a Windows 98 computer. The computer I was working on is actually Windows XP, but the instructions worked on it as well. Here are the registry keys that need to be removed, so that the new version won’t think the old version is still installed:
Remove 8A95A7C8EBA9A954A939802C184A2A46
from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\
Remove 8A95A7C8EBA9A954A939802C184A2A46
from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\
Remove Firewall Client
from HKEY_Current_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Remove Firewall Client
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\
Remove Firewall Client
from HKEY_USERS\Software\Microsoft\
Remove 8A95A7C8EBA9A954A939802C184A2A46
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\Installer\Features\
Remove 8A95A7C8EBA9A954A939802C184A2A46
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\Installer\Products\
Remove 945E895D0A5100149B4B8D6E01A3DA26
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Components\
Remove 8A95A7C8EBA9A954A939802C184A2A46
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Features\
Remove the C”\Program Files\Microsoft Firewall Client
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Folders\
Remove the {8C7A59A8-9ABE-459A-9A93-08C281A4A264}
from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
The instructions also said to find the Wspcpl32.cpl file in %Windir%\System. Delete this file to remove the Firewall Client icon in Control Panel. I didn’t need to do this step, I guess the uninstall did this before failing. I did find the install directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Firewall Client and deleted it. After these steps the Firewall Client 2004 installed without a problem.
A discussion while driving home from school.