Monthly Archive for January, 2005

Backups

a Flickr photo shareHaving read a few recent posts from Andy Budd and Jason Kottke, I’ve grown sud­denly wor­ried about the prospect of losing my Powerbook’s data. For the past couple of years, I’ve man­u­ally backed up crit­i­cal files to CD, but I was lucky if this got done once per year…

After briefly flirt­ing with DVD archiv­ing (thanks for your help Jason), it was clear that this would be only slightly less annoy­ing than CDs. And, web servers offer even less disk space…

No, I decided that it was time to set up sched­uled back­ups, to hard disk.

First, I started with an old Dell Desk­top, which we set up in our litter-​box closet. We bought a USB Wi-​Fi “G” adapter to con­nect the PC (and our printer) to the net­work. I should also men­tion that I added an 80GB inter­nal drive…

With the hard­ware in place, I decided to use Déjà Vu to run the back­ups — this app does every­thing a backup app should do, but I like the way it is inte­grated in System Pref­er­ences, as a pref­er­ence pane. It’s lean, clean, and fits well into the OS.

After an hour or so of Setup, I’ve got sched­uled weekly back­ups of my user direc­tory, start­ing tonight at 3am…

I know that I’ll sleep more soundly!

January 31, 2005 » Tags: , . » 1 Comment

links for 2005-01-30

January 30, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-29

January 29, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Weighted Category Lists

After a few site tweaks ear­lier in the week allowed me to imple­ment new cat­e­gories in this weblog, I decided to add weighted cat­e­gory lists, much like Flickr & Technorati.

I mod­i­fied an exam­ple given by hitormiss, which looks like this:

<?php
$min­font = 1;
$max­font = 5;
$fontu­nit = "";
<MTCategories>
$catlinks{"<$MTCategoryLabel$>"} = "<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>";
$counts{"<$MTCategoryLabel$>"} = <$MTCategoryCount$>;
</MTCategories>

$spread = max($counts) – min($counts); if ($spread <= 0) { $spread = 1; };
$fontspread = $max­font – $min­font;

$fontstep = $spread / $fontspread; if ($fontstep <= 0) { $fontstep = 1; };
fore­ach ($counts as $cat­name => $count)
{
$catlink = $catlinks{$catname};
print "<a href=\"$catlink\" title=\"$count entries\" class=\"cat".
ROUND(($minfont + ($count/$fontstep)))."\">$catname</a> &nbsp;\n";
}
 ?>

[You can also down­load it in a text file]

Put it in your Move­able Type archive tem­plate, and you’re good to go. It will write 5 CSS classes — cat1, cat2, cat3, cat4, cat5… (of course, you’ll have to define those in your stylesheet!)

You can head over to my archives page, to check out the imple­men­ta­tion. (Notice that the 5 largest cat­e­gories are the orig­i­nal 5… i will be clas­si­fy­ing old entries in the next couple of days…)

(I apol­o­gize if not all the code is view­able here — I sug­gest you high­light and copy/paste to a text editor, which should work)

January 28, 2005 » Tags: , , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-28

January 28, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

The Bravery @ TTs

“mic stand 2″, posted by nedward

On Tues­day, we checked out NYC’s latest hyped offer­ing, The Brav­ery, at TT’s, and it only cost $8. Labeled by the BBC crit­ics as the Sound of 2005, it looks as though they have a shot at living up to the hype.

Usu­ally a staid Cam­bridge crowd, TTs was absolutely electric… check out my photos.

January 27, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-27

January 27, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

8-year Anniversary

Just a note of thanks to Stef & Nobuko for rec­om­mend­ing Dali’s for our anniver­sary dinner.

Pres­ley and I have been together now for 8 years, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a finer expe­ri­ence. Because of the bliz­zard, we had to delay one day, but it was worth the wait… (a couple of photos of us… gag!)

Tapas items that we ordered:

  • Mejil­lones con Agua­cate (Green-​Lipped Mus­sels w/Avocado)
  • Queso de Cabra Montaña (Baked Goat Cheese w/Tomato & Basil)
  • Gambas al Ajillo (Garlic Shrimp)
  • Vieiras al Azafrán (Scal­lops in Saf­fron Cream)
  • Ravi­o­les de Mariscos (Lobster/Crabmeat Ravi­oli w/Langostino Sauce)
  • Solomillo en Tostada (Beef Ten­der­loin w/Pimento on Toast)

And, for dessert:

  • Filloa al Licor (Fruit-​filled Dessert Crepe accented with Choco­late Sauce and Orange Liquor)

Some Anniver­saries past:

January 26, 2005 » Tags: , , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-26

January 26, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Fast Food Nation

Is it wrong to look at moth­ers in the mall food court, and wonder why they let their kids eat McDonald’s and Pizza?

(There are lim­ited culi­nary options near my workplace)

January 25, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Facelift

It was a long time coming, but I gave this weblog yet another design tweak, con­vert­ing the horrid image map nav­i­ga­tion to CSS-styled unordered lists.

This design has served me well for the past 2+ years… a major re-​design has been in plan­ning for more than a year, but I almost enjoy tweak­ing this one more. There is value in constancy.

The real motive for doing this, is that my cat­e­gory choices for posts have been lim­ited to the same 5: books, music, movies, fea­tures, and posts… I couldn’t add new cat­e­gories, because the image nav­i­ga­tion, and com­plex script­ing behind its dis­play wouldn’t allow for it.

Stupid right? Design­ing with flex­i­bil­ity is some­thing that I am learning… pixel-​perfect, heavily-​graphical sites can turn out to be a pigeonhole.

Maybe I just needed 2+ years to strip away, and un-​design it to the point where the con­tent becomes the most impor­tant component.

Anyway, every­thing is a bit in flux at the moment, so there might be fur­ther changes to come.

January 25, 2005 » Tags: , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-25

January 25, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-24

January 24, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Blizzard of 2005

Brookline Ave

I just came in from shov­el­ing the dri­ve­way of our next door neigh­bor, where he kindly let me park the 9-3… more than two feet of snow, bliz­zard con­di­tions, and very cold tem­per­a­tures — reminds me of the Buf­falo bliz­zards of my youth…

Every­thing is closed, and I’m wait­ing to hear if I have to go in to work tomor­row morning… in the mean­time, i put some photos on “Flickr”:.

Also:

January 23, 2005 » Tags: , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-23

January 23, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Pauly Shore is Dead

Pauly & Snoop, in a promotional photo.

Pauly Shore is in Boston this week­end, to show and pro­mote his film, Pauly Shore is Dead, at the Coolidge, and we braved the 2 degree-​cold to wait in line for the mid­night show­ing last night. During a Q&A before the show­ing, Pauly spoke very elo­quently about the project, which he wrote, directed, pro­duced and financed (from his stand-​up earnings).

I think we came for the kitsch value of seeing this fallen icon from our youth — the Wiez… but left having thor­oughly enjoyed the film, for what it was.

Ordi­nar­ily, movies that fea­ture numer­ous cameos are quite a drag to watch… (Bruce Willis in Ocean’s Twelve comes to mind). But, not only does Pauly manage to coup some really funny people, he also wedges them into his plot. Rico Suave sell­ing oranges on the side of the high­way, Todd Bridges play­ing the part of spir­i­tual mentor and cell­mate, Tom Size­more & Michael Madsen with young girls, and Kurt Loder play­ing “diva” during his MTV News updates… all of these are pretty funny.

Go see Pauly & the film, tonight at the Coolidge, 12am. And, the DVD comes out on tues­day, jan­u­ary 25.

January 22, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-22

January 22, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-21

January 21, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Brick

“brick”, posted by nedward

I love the space inside the Enor­mous Room, in Cen­tral Square — espe­cially these steel lanterns (which I hit my head on…)

January 20, 2005 » Tags: , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-20

January 20, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Flickr Struggles

Flickr is having prob­lems again… Stew­art swears that they’ll have it up and stable soon. In the mean time, what to do with my photos? I’ve got 3 birth­days worth of mate­r­ial here, folks…

January 20, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-19

January 19, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

Saab 9-2X

Saab 9-2xThe 9-3 is again in the shop, (needed a new ther­mo­stat), but this time my loaner story is a bit more inter­est­ing that the Kia Rio of last week. You see, I was given a 2004 9-2X loaner – albeit, the base model. What’s funny, how­ever, is that I came away from the expe­ri­ence feel­ing once again that Saab is harm­ing its brand. Why you ask?

First, this is not a Saab. I don’t care if it has a 9-3 front-​end, and grif­fin logo slapped on the wheel… the over­all char­ac­ter of the car screams Japan­ese. Based on the Subaru WRX, Saab sup­pos­edly added a few styl­is­tic and per­for­mance “enhancements”.

I should note that it han­dles well, (AWD is stan­dard), and was fun to hit the MassPike exit ramps at a high veloc­ity. But, as an auto­matic, and lack­ing Turbo, (which Saab invented), I felt like I should have a couple of kiddos in the back seat.

The inte­rior was sur­pris­ingly sparse – the dis­plays were old-​fashioned gray LCD, and the radio knobs was pretty low-​end. In short, is lacks the Saab expe­ri­ence. When I first test-​drove my 9-3, I felt as if I was in an air­plane cock­pit, with its short wind­shield, igni­tion between the seats, (rather than on the steer­ing column), and the way the con­trols lit up. By com­par­i­son, the 9-2X feels very much like all the other cars you’ve ridden in.

Over­all, it is a fine car – though I’m not sure why one wouldn’t just go buy the Subaru ver­sion. GM, (Saab’s parent com­pany), is prob­a­bly trying to attract a lower-​priced market seg­ment – 20-somethings who are attracted to the Saab brand, but who aren’t look­ing to spend $30k.

It was a risky gamble, toying with the unique char­ac­ter of Saab… that said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 9-2X on the road, though there are a glut of old 900s and 9-3s parked in my neighborhood.

January 18, 2005 » Tags: , . » Closed

links for 2005-01-18

January 18, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed

links for 2005-01-16

January 16, 2005 » Tags: . » Closed