Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

New Product From Google :)

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Posted 02 Apr 2007 — by nick
Category Fun, News, Technology

Just in case you didn’t catch this on Google today: they are offering a free broadband service in your home now. All you need to do is contact them to receive a free kit – complete with a wireless router, spool of Fiber Optic Cable and Installation CD. They are calling it TiSP. Here is a sample from the FAQs:

Is this offering a tiered service? How does Google’s position on Net Neutrality effect TiSP?
Although we understand that there’s a lot of crap on the web, we also believe strongly in providing equal opportunity access to all our users. While we won’t limit your surfing choices, we do offer three levels of TiSP service:

Trickle The #2 Royal Flush

Download speed (max)

8 Mbps
(10X basic DSL)

16 Mbps
(20X basic DSL)

32 Mbps
(40X basic DSL)

Upload speed (max)

2 Mbps

4 Mbps

8 Mbps

Price

Free

$9.95/mo.

$24.95/mo.
Actual speeds will vary, depending on network traffic and sewer line conditions. Users with low-flow toilets may simultaneously experience a saving-the-environment glow and slower-data-speed blues.

Apparently installation is simple. You attach a weight to the end of the fiber and flush it down your Toilet, letting the spool roll out. Then you connect the other end of the fiber to your TiSP wireless router and one of their Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) hooks up your fiber to an Internet access node.

Ah… happy April 1st.

VW: Ze German Engineering

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Posted 28 Mar 2007 — by nick
Category Fun, Technology, Volkswagen


Well I did it. After 8 months of searching, pondering and saving I bought a car. I had long since decided to buy a Volkswagen for their reliability and attention to detail – as one sales guy told me “there is a high correlation between engineers and Volkswagens.”

About a month ago I visited my dealer to talk to Brooks, my third sales guy – I didn’t really get along with the previous two. I had long ago decided I wanted a black, two door, manual rabbit which was suprisingly hard to find. Brooks was pretty accomodating, he didn’t have what I wanted on the lot and instead of trying to get me to buy something else or change my preferences on color, etc he began searching other dealers to make a trade for my car. About a week later he called me and said he found one.

She was leaving the line in Wolfsburg, Germany and would be in the USA on the March 22 and ready for me to check out shortly after that. A couple weeks past. On Monday, Brooks called me and said she arrived and was being unwrapped – she would be ready for pick up at 4:00. So exciting! I met up with Brooks at the dealer around 4:00 after work and we looked over the car, went through the necessary paper work, haggled over add-on packages, APR, etc. and at 6:15 I drove my new rabbit off the lot with just 12 miles on it. 🙂

I’m taking suggestions for names, keep in mind she is a girl (of course).

News from Lake Wobegon

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Posted 16 Feb 2007 — by nick
Category Fun, Podcasts, Poetry, Technology


Many thanks to Beno for bringing this to my attention: The great story teller Garrison Keillor finally available on iTunes. Listening to GK serves as a reminder of his mastery of comedy and story. Check out A Prairie Home Companion – the APM radio show he anchors and source of the podcast. The segment on iTunes is “News From Lake Wobegon” – a standard segment of each APHC installment.

Occasionally I listen to The Writers Almanac by GK, another production of American Public Media. It highlights a poem each day and gives history on literary figures.

“That’s the news from Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”

Snowday?

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Posted 13 Feb 2007 — by nick
Category Creation, Technology, Winter

Remember how fun snowdays used to be as a kid? You know the routine, wake up as usual but make sure to take your time getting ready. Watch the school closings scroll across the tv below the morning news casters – “I didn’t see district 300 that time, maybe the next time around, or the one after that. Surely they can’t be expecting us to go outside in this!” When in reality all you can think about doing is climbing the biggest hill in the neighborhood sled in hand – heart racing as you head for the enormous-very-dangerous-looking ramp the older boys built.

Years have passed since the snowdays of youth. Today I learned something about snowdays in the adult world that caused me to long for the ones of childhood. A blizzard-ish storm started beating on Chambana last evening and supposed to continue on through the tonight – resulting in the University of Illinois closing for at least today, maybe tomorrow as well. Since I work for the U of I that meant I was sent home this morning after working just a few short hours.

That’s how I learned that when you’re an adult a snowday doesn’t mean sledding, hot chocolate and naps, but instead means your home becomes your office. Here is a picture of my new office:

Comfy huh? It doubles as a bedroom – which is convenient for those long afternoons after a big lunch.

When you work in IT as a Network Nerd you are the people responsible for making it possible to work from home. Translation : there is no good excuse for me to not be working today. The change of scenery is nice though.

Toys and Vacation

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Posted 18 Jan 2007 — by nick
Category Creation, Fun, Technology

The whirlwind of holidays is over now; or more accurately, recovery from the whirlwind of holidays is now complete. The past month saw me bouncing around the suburbs visiting family, enjoying the eerie quiet that consumes the vacated campus, hosting visitors for New Years and breathing the beautiful snowy air of Upper Peninsula Michigan.

As usual I received an unholy amount of gifts from my family – including gift cards meant for a Nintendo Wii, which Best Buy has yet to get in stock. Among my gifts, Settlers of Catan, firefly and multiple excellent books. With the cash-money my job provides me I was able to buy things for people that were along the lines of their desires and meaningful to them – my brother got a burr grinder which was hard for me to part with since I so badly wanted it for myself. Enjoy it Chris!

In addition to the loot received from my family I purchased a palm treo680 for myself. For the most part I’m pleased with it, however it crashes more than I would admit is acceptable. My treo had been in my possession nearly 3 weeks when Mr. Steve Jobs announced the new apple iPhone. If you know me at all you know the past week has been quite the mind game – “should I keep my treo or return it and wait for an iPhone?”

I’ve decided to keep it and commit to buying an iPhone as my next over-powered-all-in-one-cellular device.

I leave you now with this wonderful picture of me holding my baby.


Chris documented the UP Snowboarding trip pictorially with his new camera, you can find some of them in his Picasa Album.

"Facts are not what most humans believe … "

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Posted 21 Dec 2006 — by nick
Category Books, Fun, Technology


While on iTunes the other day I noticed a free audiobook that seemed interesting enough: The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman. The audiobook, read by the author – John Hodgman, claims to be an almanac of complete world knowledge according to the writer. The past several days have found my office mate and I listening to the book while working – chuckling due to the absurdity.

Here is a quote from the book I found hilarious and quite summarily appropriate of the book. I’ve transcribed it here for you:

“The main advantage that this book has over libraries and indeed all of it’s almanacian predecessors is that all the historical oddities and amazing true facts contained here in are lies, made up by me. And it is this astonishing innovation that allows each entry to contain many more truths than if it were merely factual.

If this last point seems confusing to you consider the banal and truthful statement that follows:

Fredric Chopin was a Polish composer in the romantic style who wrote primarily for the piano.

I guess this is sort of interesting, as most facts are, but history has shown us again and again that Facts are not what most humans believe, they are not that which moves most men or women to love, or hate, or joy or cry.

Now compare this statement:

Fredric Chopin was a Polish composer in the Romantic style who was obsessed with lady bugs, often letting dozens of them gallop over his neck, arms and long tapering fingers while playing the piano.

Obvious the lie is so much more compelling. It shocks the mind and plays on the readers imagination with lady bug covered hands. New resonances emerge and new melodies of insight – not just into the nature of Chopin but also the art of composing, the history of the lady bug as good luck charm and colio–opterophilia (spelling – meaning ?). It also finally explains how Chopin solved his terrible aphid problem.”

You may recognize the voice and or face of John Hodgman as the PC from the recent “Buy a Mac” commercials in which he has done an amazing job encapsulating the ineptitude of a common PC/PC user 🙂

Download the free audiobook and enjoy the many laughs guaranteed through a listening, if you find yourself financially inclined, purchase the book.

Foxy Tunes

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Posted 08 Nov 2006 — by nick
Category Technology

I came across this plugin for firefox. It lets you control iTunes from your browser. A pretty sweet tool for those of us that tend to lose applications under piles of other applications. It’s called FoxyTunes. Check it out.

Technical Difficulties

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Posted 25 Sep 2006 — by nick
Category Technology

Recent vissual poo-poo was indicative of some technical difficulties around here. My picture wasn’t loading and several of the links weren’t working on the sidebar over there. These due to the recent iLife server move – which just so happens to be where I serve up some of my sweetness from. That should all be fixed now because of my sweet server admin skills.

Those of you that subscribe via a feed won’t be getting this as beta blogger is having issues with it’s feeds at present. To fix that one follow the instructions in that link.

Other nerdish things include:

  • I’m currently working on coding a light-weight-uber-awesome-messageboard-esque deal for mI-Life (our iLife facebook-ish deal).
  • I’m reading up on PVST (per vlan spanning tree) standard as defined by Cisco Systems for work related knowledge, but mostly for fun.
  • I just bought some wireless headphones for work – they rock my face off.

I’ll post something more meaningful in the coming days, I hope…

Unplugging

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Posted 18 Sep 2006 — by nick
Category Spirituality, Technology

Two weeks, hard to believe but that’s how long it’s been since I started my new job – assumed my new identity, a Network Designer for the University of Illinois’ IT group. I realize that might sound like Yiddish or something to a lot of the world but it’s what I do. There is something beautiful about the science of information transportation through the ages, from inking cave walls, to oral tradition, to written manuscripts, monks and the like, to postage mail, to telegrams and the telephone, and emails, the web, etc at present. The technological advances in last 20 years have made this life skill fascinating and boasted a job field that employs me.

Have you ever paused and thought for a moment how much your life depends on email, the web, a computer? It can be so hard for me to fully grasp my dependence – largely I think because of the magnitude of it. My life is saturated by this thing. Even now I have returned home from work and I am sitting in front of my laptop, something I’ve been doing all day long. Yesterday I took a Sabbath’s rest, usual for my Sunday, only this time was different. I unplugged. It wasn’t intentional though, our power had flickered while I was running in the early morning, resulting in my computer rebooting and me being logged out of gmail. I didn’t realize this until mid-afternoon and decided to keep it this way – not logged in. I continued my rest, enjoying the ending of a book I had been reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, spending sometime with a couple close friends, and watched the delightful film A Mighty Wind – a favorite of mine. As I crawled into bed my heart warmed as I spoke with my God, relaxed I sank into sleep un-plagued by the pulls of responsibilities and worries.

Opening my inbox at work this morning, offered me a handful of emails from the past day – none so urgent as to warrant guilt for neglecting them. The thing that surprised me the most about this whole experience is how much more rested I felt by simply not checking my email. I think I may embrace this practice on a more regular basis – you should try it.

I had grand thoughts of writing about my new job and how I’m doing, posting pictures and stuff, but I’ve grown tired of this keyboard under finger and I think I’ll go unplug for the evening. Or at least a little while 🙂

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