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