WWDC 2007 Opening- PC Guy is Steve Jobs

Sorry my Mac Office kind of pissed me off a bit today so I had to be reminded that Microsoft is still the enemy and that my mac is the bomb diggity lol.

~~In Memory of Sadie P.

My grandmother Sadie P passed away today. I know immediate feelings of condolences and things come to might but although they appreciated they kind of aren't needed. Grandma was my fathers mother. For some reason my family wasn't really close to that side of the family. Not all of them but a lot of them. Sadie P kind of fell into the same category. There was some bad blood between my dad and Grandmother. I think some thing happened in his childhood but the main issue I knew about was a disagreement about a house deed. Either way the only time I really saw Grandma was at funerals, Christmas, weddings, or if she needed something fixed at the house. The bad part is that Grandma lived about 5 mins away from my home. I dont want this post to be negative though. I wanted to share one memory from my childhood that happened because I stayed at my grandmothers house. I actually think it was the only time I ever stayed at my grandmothers house. Anyway I was around 6 or 7 during this particular summer. Next to my grandmother lived a family with another little girl about my age. From what I can remember the girl was brown skin with fish eye glasses. At the same time we were kids so we didn't care what we looked like, we just wanted to play lol.

The way we actually got to play was that a pretty bad summer storm came up. Once it had passed I of course decided to go jump in some puddles. While I was out there the little girl came out and started playing in the mud too. She was a girl after my own heart so we started to play lol. We ended up finding this little area of dirt that had not been covered by grass and we made the coolest mud castle. For two days we worked on our mud castle, bringing in cups of water to keep the mud wet. To say the least we had a blast.

On my grandmothers behalf as dirty as I got she did nothing but laugh at me when I came in for lunch or dinner. She cleaned me up fed me and sent me back out to have the time of my life. Got to admit that was a pretty awesome stay at grandma's house.

Ok one more story that she and I laughed about though it was pretty serious. Grandma started loosing her eye sight a couple years ago. On her way home after she had her first surgery to clear out some of the blockages, she hit her self in the good eye getting out of the car. My father my grandmother and I laughed so hard about that. You have to realize that my grand mother had this very distinctive laugh. It was a deep guttural laugh that kind of started and stopped rhythmically. Her laugh kind of forced you laugh along with her.

I will miss that laugh but I am so glad that she is no longer in pain. Rest in peace grandma --rest in peace.

~J

I.C. Norcom - Dance Routine

Ok one more. Yall better play!!! Class of 97'

ICN Norcom Deja Vu'

I wanted to post this in honor of Sony, and my 10th high school anniversary. Get down Norcom get down!!

Setting up an imaging/drive cloning server

I work in a lab with over thirty computers. Students and Faculty both use these computer heavily. To say the least they get very junked up. I decided to implement a new way to reload the system instead of each one from scratch or buy manually connecting drives to use an old version of Norton Ghost. With a little bit of searching I came upon a program named G4U which stands for Ghost for Unix with no relation to Norton Ghost. G4U is a Unix-based (or G4L which is Ghost for Linux-based) app that will clone drives to a FTP server. Sweet!! It Seemed easy. I had a Mac with OSX. I turned on the FTP server from system preferences, and I downloaded and burn the G4U ISO created the "install" user account with admin privileges. I booted off the burned CD and --errors!! Many funky errors. With some research I found that the FTP server built into OS X is a stripped down version of the original Darwin client. I ended up having to use another ftp server that is also built-in but I configured it through an open-source GUI name Pure-FTPd Manager. 5 minutes. No lie, 5 minutes and I had it up and running but there was one trick. You have to create an "install" user in the Pure-FTPd Manager. (I also want to thrown in there that if you don't use the default folder for saving the images...you will need to change what ever folder you want to use to read+write in the Virtual folders tab) So lets go through the steps:

1. Download and burn the G4U ISO
2. Download and install Pure-FTPd Manager
3. Create a virtual user named "install"
4. Find the computer's local ip address from the network icon in system prefrences. (Even though it is listed in the status screen of Pure-FTPd that is the public address which may not always work depending on your firewall)
5. Boot the computer from the G4U CD you burned.
6. To create/upload an image type

    uploaddisk ipaddress filename.gz

1. To restore from an image type

    slurpdisk ipaddress filename.gz 

7. Restart the computer

I hope this helps!!

Blackle --Google environmentally freindly!

Global warming blah blah blah.....ice caps melting blah blah blah....Earth needs our help. Ok sweet I'm all set to do what I can. Now what can my broke a$$ do to actually help? I want an electric car, but I can't afford one. I want compact fluorescents but they are like $5.00 a pop, and I would need almost 20 of them. I'd love to buy a LCD to save energy but my CRT is working fine, and I think I would prefer to eat this month lol.

Ok so here is what you can do, but first a quick technology lesson (You want some cheese with that wine?? lol ). CRTs work by basically shooting by photons at a phosphorus screen. It takes three of those guns, one for each color Red, Green, and Blue. That takes a lot of energy. The closer to white the color, the more power it takes. Now some quick stats. Google is searched almost 200 million times a day globally. We all know, and love the clean basic look of the regular Google interface. Well that interface is primarily white. Now if that background color was changed to black so none of those guns were used, there could be a power saving of over 750 megawatt hours per year. So less carbon emissions from coal burning power plants; therefore we help save the earth. Awesome. So why don't they do it?

Well keep in mind Google has probably done studies, and paid millions of dollars to see what colors look best on their site. So they aren't changing crap lol. (I do want to say that in their defence Google has covered every available area on the roofs of their campus with solar panels.)

There is an alternative though, Blackle.com. It is Google with an environmental twist. So finally after all that you can save power by simply changing your search habits by going to Blackle.com . There ya go, and that won't cost you a dime. Now if they only had an iBlackle lol.

Ask a ninja : Global Warming

CReSIS All-Hands Retreat

I had to write a blurb for our web page so I figured I might as well post it on my blog so you all know what I am doing. BTW The GRID part is me lol.

---

Held in the scenic town of Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, the purposes of the CReSIS All-Hands Retreat were to both decide which experiments were going to take place in the field, and secondly to allow the faculty and staff of CReSIS to meet.


The fieldwork consists of Polar Study Seasons in both Greenland, and Antarctica. The Greenland study will take place in either May or June of 2008 before the ice begins to thaw. During this time the seismic studies of the ice sheets will be taken to assist in learning of the structure of the ice sheets. This research along with core samples will allow 3-D models to be designed that will be used to track ice sheet movement, and melting. Two portable GRID computer systems will be field tested during this time to process raw data. This data will then be used to help decide the next day’s selection of study area. The Antarctic study will take place in November or December of 2008. During the Antarctic study the debut of an 1100 pound unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will highlight the study session. This UAV will primarily be utilized to study glaciers, which are not safe for on-the-ground human study. The then perfected portable GRID will process the data directly from the UAV storage devices to select the next study area.

The secondary purpose of the retreat was communication. Scientist, and technologist often have a disconnect to the big picture of how a project that is being worked on, relates to others. The retreat allowed those multiple subsections of CReSIS to meet, and to establish dialogues. Sensor staff met with robotics staff. GRID specialist met with data processing staff. Radar specialist met with power staff. Due to the realized need for a centralized repository of information about the different persons who work on the CReSIS project, a decision for an on-line profile for every member was added as a goal for the technology group. Along with student mapping these additions by far will add to the success of the research project by opening those doors of communication across areas of specialization.

I am not alone lol

So I am down in MO for a CReSIS conference. The whole point of this conference is for fellow scientist and researchers to meet so we can make sure we are all on the same page or at least in the same book--ok at least the same state lol. Anyway big words abound and plans are unrolled and rolled back. Mean while I'm sitting there going what the hell. Yeah ummm I didn't know about any of that lol. Apparently my whole job at EC is revolving around research for CReSIS. Cool, now I know lol. So anyway last night some of the conference members and myself gathered together to watch a movie and ind of get to know each other a bit better. Well I was talking to one person when I just couldn't take it anymore. I asked the all important question. "What the hell are we supposed to be doing?lol" She fell out laughing and said "you too?? I thought it was just me lol. " So apparently we need to make a key item on the agenda "What you should know about CReSIS when you Begin" or some type of orientation thing cause everyone is lost accept the older professors that have been in it from the beginning. So basically here is what I have to do as far as I have figured out. My job is to take data and process it using MATLAB on the GRID. I am supposed to make two portable GRID systems for deployment in Greenland next summer and then again in Antarctica next December. Sweet ok now I can deal with that. Now one question...how do I use MATLAB lol?? I know I will get there but this is gonna take some hard work ..but hey, at least it is educational work instead of corporate crap.

New iMacs Whoot!! I'm so getting one --or 10--for the lab lol

So I was watching the text feed from the Apple Summer Press conference on Engadget. (I'm an Apple fan boy, what can I say lol) Brother Steve decided to revamp the entire iMac line. Now why this is so important to me is because I just got my boss to sign off on purchasing a few new 17" iMacs. Well brother Steve must have heard my prayer because he axed the 17" model and replaced it with a 20" model at the same rice point with improved specs!!! The other cool thing is the look. Aluminum and glass, I should repeat it like a Chinese monk aluminum and glass--aluminum and glass lol. The new iMac is the hotness and I'm getting one. High-ho diddly!!! Thanks Brother Steve and all hail Apple lol.

My condolences to the family of "Tourettes Guy"

Exert from TourettesGuy.com August 4, 2007 A couple of days ago we received some terrible news about Danny. Late last week Danny passed away. About a month ago Danny was involved in a bad car accident. He had been out of the hospital for a couple of days staying with a friend when he suffered some medical complications. He unexpectedly passed away in the night. We here at TourettesGUY.com are deeply saddened by this news as we love Danny. The reality of Danny's death hasn't sunk in yet, even a few days later. It is our burden to share this news with you - the millions of fans who also love Danny. In about a week we will be putting the videos back up. We thought about taking the site down for good, but Danny's videos are already all over the internet and we felt that we could do some good with the site. We will be releasing all the videos along with one last new video in a high quality DVD format in memory of Danny. This DVD will be free to download, but you will also be able to purchase a physical copy. All proceeds from the DVD will go to Danny's family. When the site is completely back up, we will have a service enabling you to send your condolences. We would also like to hear how Danny has positively influenced your life. Please be respectful, and send your letters to letters@tourettesguy.com. Shortly, we will be posting a letter from the person who discovered Danny. We will miss you Danny!!! May you finally rest in peace. The Big Admin.

1964-2007

How to hide files in an image

I just thought this was very cool. Once again that DOS command from the command line is:

copy /b image.jpg + archive.zip newimagename.jpg