Food for Thought

The American character since early in its history has been pulled in two directions and has been unable to commit itself to either. The first direction is toward the dream of the American sublime, to a virgin land and a life of peace, serenity and community. The second direction is the Faustian and rapacious, the desire for power, wealth, productivity and universal knowledge, the urge to dominate nature and remake the world. In many ways the American tragedy is that we want both these things and never seem to respect the contradiction between them.

I finally did it

And I didn't even go blind!!!
/crickets

No but seriously, I HAVE finally done something that I have been contemplating for the past couple years, but never had the courage/cash to really hunker down and do it.

Two weekends ago, on a semi-whim (more on this in a second), I went out to Micro Center and bought a computer.

Well, not exactly. More like I bought a collection of pieces that over the weekend I would cram together and teach to play nice with each other, only then to call it a computer. In the process I believe I also was award my geek diploma.

Overall, it was about what I had anticipated. It was largely "insert plug A into hole B then press the big on button." A lot of that fact could probably be attributed to having the Micro Center brain trust, and my preliminary research to fall back on. Don't get it twisted, I am not recommending walking in one day and laying down a lot of money on something like this with no googling/new-egging (for price comparisions) a priori. There are some tough questions you need to know answers to (i.e. video card amperage requirements, RAM support on your motherboard, your motherboard in general, Intel or AMD, etc.) to ensure the thing doesn't poop out in the first minute of life. I do recommend it to anyone who has ever had the slightest interest in Frankenstein-ing, well, anything. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than building a car, and anymore you will probably use it more.

On the semi-whim comment: I had two main reasons to start looking into a new computer:
1.) My desktop was starting to get pretty slow just from ~4 years of use and being the family's network hub while I have been at school.
2.) I visit digg regularly. In doing so, I have been hearing what I like to refer to as the iCrowd speak pretty highly of this new Windows 7.

Given that the Release Candidate (basically, barring a major FUBAR discovery, the version Microsoft will eventually burn to pretty DVDs and charge >$300 for) was released May 1 for a year long free trial, I figured now would be a good time to get a computer that would be ready for this slick new OS.

Granted, I figured I would be buying an HP or Dell, not parts. And in a year or so. Such is life though; I can't say I regret the decision at all.


I took pictures to show, but realized no card reader like before means needing to find a USB cable for my camera again.... consider it a slight delay...





On to the Windows 7 early impressions. Let me get it out of the way, for an operating system that isn't even "final" yet, 10/10

Pushing on 11/10.

It is functional and pushes Apple on aesthetics like Windows never has before. It is like a hybrid XP/Vista, minus the driver issues inherent with Vista.

Setting up a home network is almost too easy. The first time you start up '7, you are given a long "HomeGroup" number. All you do is type this number onto your other computers (with 7 also installed) and you are connected. However, since I am the only person with 7, I needed to connect with my other XP computers. No problem, just google search "Windows 7 on XP network" and you get millions of other people with the same problem, and easy fixes.

The new Windows Media Player convinced me to change my plans to switch over to iTunes. The album art actually loads this time around and, maybe just my imagination, but it handles my 30GB+ music collection a lot more smoothly.

The new taskbar takes a little getting used to but it really helps to keep your screen looking clean and uncluttered. Also, the start menu has the option of looking like the Vista or XP format. I went Vista, but its nice to know that Grandma has the option to go with what she's used to.

Oh, and it has a timer to switch desktop backgrounds hourly, daily, every 10 seconds, whatever.

And sticky notes. My monitor is saved from Post-It residue forever!!!

I could go on forever, but I'll just sum it up with two big thumbs up.

Beautiful Music my ass

It's been a project a few months in the making and (combined with being in front of a computer about 8 hours a day at work already) a large reason of my dropoff in blog content, but I can finally say I have made some progress on the vinyl to digital conversion.

I can officially put Barry Manilow Live in the done pile and move on to something I actually enjoy. After two straight days of hearing him, I feel like I deserve it.

I remember casually talking to a certain chemistry teacher in high school about the possibility of doing something like this. Knowing that I dabbled in audio engineering at school, he asked me about how complicated it would be to transfer albums to CD. I believe at the time I said I couldn't imagine it being much harder than plugging the "out" of the record player into a line in and using something like Audacity (a wonderful free program, by the way) to record it digitally.

Well, I was half right. Turns out 99% of record players need to have a separate pre-amp to get any kind of clean sound out of them. After a quick google search I came across this bad boy and as of yet have absolutely no complaints. It works exactly as it should. /shameless plug

Moving onward. Once I was getting sound into the computer I dabbled within my slightly more complicated sound editing program to get a layout that would be best suited for this venture, as opposed to, you know, recording a band. After getting all my EQs and other plugins tuned, then it was a simple hit record type of process that I initially thought it would be.

So overall, more complicated than I first thought, but still not too terrible. And yes, I know that there are USB record players out there now that basically take away the need for all this fancy shmancy doo-hickie-ing and whatnot, but going about it the one-stop-shopping way has never really quite been my thing. And, once I get done with all the vinyl, this whole setup is just a switch of plugs away from working for cassette to digital. Talk about flexibility...

If anyone has (or still is) considering this - or wants to offer some monetary compensation in exchange for my best effort at a "digitally remastered" copy of your favs - leave a comment. That is if anyone even reads this anymore...


Helloooo out there.....

Don't talk to cops.

I'm probably on the terrorist watch list already for the title of this, but it needs to be said.

Watch these. Roughly an hour long, but really, really, really informative. James Duane, a professor at Regency Law School talking about why not to talk to police. This isn't me saying cops suck, far from.

Just know your rights



Part 1:


After that, click in the related videos for part 2

Get That Noodle Cooking

Just two months late on this one, but it still deserves to be mentioned.

Black History Month angers me. No, not because there isn't a "White History Month," you tools. Here is my thinking. Why take a race that has felt surpressed and marginalized for decades, and set aside a specfic month to honor their accomplishments?! It just reeks of bad planning to me.

So, two years ago I did a little googling just on a whim to see if anyone else felt this way, and came across this absolutely great essay (article? idk its pretty long...) by John H. McWhorter, called Toward a Usable Black History.

If you've read this far, you are at least remotely interested. Spend the next ten or so minutes reading the article, and discuss. I'm curious to see what you guys have to say.

It's Official

Within 30 days of the postmarked date of the stuff I just sent (gotta love snail mail) I will be a registered voter. Huzzah.

I'll be waiting for my t-shirt in the mail

Proclaiming my Nerd-ness on the mountains

Situation: I just finished a solid 10-hour calculus studying binge. It's 3AM, I wish I could sleep but dreaming about integrals and sums to infinity sucks big ones, so I turn to addictinggames for some lighthearted fun.

I fail miserably.

If you haven't played any tower defense type games then consider yourself lucky. Avoid them like the plauge. They redefine addictive. On this night I speak of I decide to play a little Shock Defense. Nothing special really stands out about this version of tower D. Some you completely create a path, while others are clearly geared towards a specific audience. Anyways, instead of being able to relax I proceed to open Excel and start a spreadsheet "analysis" of a game. A freaking mindless game.

My strategy basically is to only buy the land cannons and air towers and upgrade them to the max as soon as I get them (which, by the way, costs $51 and $62, respectively). If you are at all remotely intelligent as to where they are placed, and always purchase the income tribute, it is possible to get by without losing even one life. Oh, and after level 30 just sell all the air towers and max out on land canons because, well, you know what I'll just show you.

Behold, I am more obsessive compulsive than you:

Wow.

I hate using such a hyperbolous (is that even a real word??) title as I did here with "Wow," but nothing else really seemed to fit. That was all that came to my mind. Apparently, right under everyones nose, someone Potentially (with a capital P) could have had the most monumental scientific discovery since that whole E=mc^2 thing.

And this guy surfs. But only in the summer. Because well, in the winter he likes to snowboard.

A little background from someone who admittedly knows less than other people reading this may. Basically, ever since scientists discovered they could split atoms (circa post WWII) there has been an effort to unify every "theory" of the universe into one simple (heh, relatively speaking) equation. The first person to really attempt this head on and get anywhere close is Einstein. But even he just cracked the surface before his death.

Blah, blah, blah, years pass by, and String Theory becomes the most accepted (or at least the most talked about) "theory of everything." The problem is, String Theory proposes that there are ten dimensions to the universe, and we are living in one.

Seriously, ten. Even George Lucas would have to say, "Let's be real guys." And there is that whole thing were String Theory divides particles into such infintesimally small "strings" (hence the name) that even in this modern age there is no possible way to collect any data to prove or disprove it. The term theory was used very liberally here.

So, November 6th, 2007 rolls around and a dude called Garrett Lisi (remember the name) releases his paper, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything." (If you want to read it, and good luck, click the PDF button on the right of the page-linked). After reading it you may think that he forgot to add the whole "Simple" part into the equation. Basically, rather than ten dimensions, Lisi was able to use the slightly-less-acid-trip-induced idea of just using this one space-time dimension we humans call home.

Pretty outrageous stuff. If it really works. I mean, on the scientific timeline, this thing isn't even in the second trimester yet, so who knows.

Just throwin' some knowledge out there for yalls.

Oh, and Berry is juiced...btw.

Hey look, I'm cultured

Walking out of another boring English lecture today I noticed a small discrete newsstand that I know will make at least one reader very happy.

"Free New York Times, couresty of Student Government Association"

If such quality stuff (that admittedly, I have never read regularly, rather have been force-fed small pieces of) is out there for free, heck yea I'll take one. I have been feeling a bit "out of the loop" lately on pretty much everything outside of Sportscenter so hopefully that will fill the void.

Looks like NYT just found themselves a new regular.