Video of the Day: Shit Apple Fanatics Say

H/T: TechBlog

And Part Deux:

They see me trollin’ They hatin’

Arizona’s apparently managed to take care of all the pressing issues facing the state since a bill that basically bans trolling on teh interwebz is sitting on Jan Brewer’s desk.

Being obnoxious on the Internet may soon cease to be a fundamental right in Arizona, where lawmakers approved a measure that effectively makes trolling illegal.

[…]

Like so much other knee-jerk technology legislation, Arizona’s bill is noble at heart. Its goal is to stop cyber-bullying by outlawing threats and intimidation delivered via Internet.

But as Media Coalition–an organization that includes film and music industry trade groups–points out, the bill is far too broad, both in its language and its scope. By using vague terms like “annoy” and “offend,” the bill risks criminalizing standard Internet practice of acting like a jerk in the comments section of a blog post. Because the bill isn’t limited to one-on-one communication, all open communication on the Internet could be considered a Class 1 misdemeanor if someone deemed the language offensive.

Never mind the mess of a legal battle this will create (like Arizona needs more with SB 1070 and the state’s reluctance to actually implement the medical-marijuana referendum passed the same year), it’s just another instance of government trying to regulate something it doesn’t understand.

I’m sorry, but the internet is not just a series of tubes. And it’s time that they figure that out.

Finally!

The team behind Windows Live Writer, my blogging software of choice, finally released the finished product for WLW 2011 yesterday. I’d been playing around with the beta versions of it, which I’ve liked for the most part, but now that the final is out, here are my thoughts.

• The “ribbon” interface at the top takes some getting used to, but once you figure out where everything is, it really is more user-friendly than the old way. It’s just that whole learning curve thing.
• For the most part, they took a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude with the software. Which is a good thing, since next to nothing was broken with it.
• Overall, I think the experience with the software has been improved.

Oh, and there’s one more really, really big improvement…

FAIL of the day: The iPad

Possibly the worst name ever?

see more Epic Fails

Nah, the “exotic petting zoo” around here has to be worse.

Way worse.

Update on the computer problems

I took the computer apart and debugged, thinking I found why it wouldn’t start and dreading what it would cost for me to fix it.

And then last night I hit the power button just for the hell of it and it started up just fine and has been working perfectly since.

What the fuck, man? Really?

I’m hoping that it was just some weird glitch, but who knows. I won’t be breathing easy for a while…

Twitter lists: Great idea, but useless so far

Yesterday, I became one of the five percent of Twitter users to get the new “lists” feature, which allows you to sort the people you follow into groups and view all their tweets separately fron the normal timeline.

Just one problem, though. As far as I’m concerned, the feature is useless.

You should just be able to check a box and, BAM, they’re added to that list. Well, it doesn’t work that way. A good portion of the time I’m having to check the box multiple times for it to take, if it will take at all

So, Twitter, please wait until a feature’s ready for prime time before you roll it out.

kthxbai!

Twigle?

Apparently, “The Google” wants to be cool…

That, I’d assume, is why they’re reportedly trying to acquire Twitter:

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

As a Twitter-er, I’d welcome Google. I remember what they did with Blogger. When I got on Blogger, it was just as Google was really starting to get itself wrapped up in Blogger and making it better. There were some growing pains along the way, but Google made Blogger into what it is today.

Soon enough, Google will own us all… and I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing.

Before Twitter was cool…

It seems that now everybody has been jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.

Two local TV stations (@KBMTNews and @KFDMNews), the local paper (@BmtEnterprise), and even the Beaumont District of TxDOT (@TxDOTBeaumont) are on Twitter now.

Twitter is now, apparently, “cool.”

I’m thinking it’s about time that Twitter veterans unite and scream something:

WE WERE ON TWITTER BEFORE IT WAS COOL!

I need to make up a badge or something…

Get more out of Twhirl

Twitter’s @donthorp, after a conversation with @GadgetVirtuoso, blogged a hack to TweetDeck that allows your Twitter timeline to be updated more frequently without sacrificing reply requests.

It clicked that the same hack could work in Twhirl, my Twitter client of choice.

The newest version of Twhirl is set up to allow Twitter Search to automatically search for replies. And since Twitter Search doesn’t count against the API limits, it’s essentially a “free” request.

It’s easy to set up too.

1. Click on the wrench icon near the top right corner of your Twhirl window.
2. Click on the Network tab.
3. Change the two settings within the red boxes to the values shown:
   
4. Click Save.

Now you’ll recieve all your replies and get your DM’s and Tweets more frequently.

Working with a new toy now

Recently I found out that the cell plan mine is attached to has unlimited texting.

Before that, I was allowed something like 250 a month.

Neither of these facts I knew.

As you can see, nobody ever tells me anything.

Anywho, I’d been wanting to get a new cell phone for a while. The one I had was never really a good one and I’d gotten tired of it’s crap.

Since I now had an unlimited texting plan, I figured I’d get a phone that was good for texting. You know, something with a real keyboard and not that joke of typing with the number pad.

So now I’m the proud owner of an LG enV².

So far I’m really liking it. The keyboard’s nice and handy, even though I look like I’m saying a BlackBerry prayer when I’m using it.

It’s kept me much more active on Twitter, which I do like.

All in all, I’m really happy with the phone I got.

Coming to you live from Windows 7

Today I dug up and installed a copy of the much vaunted Windows 7 public beta and installed it in a Virtual Machine.

I’m going to play around with it for a few days. After I get a good feel for it, I’ll do a post on my thoughts.

Video of the day: The next big thing from Apple

It’s amazing what they think of!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

The Onion did an AMAZING job with this, didn’t they?

Amazing

Yesterday I put 2 gigs of RAM in my computer as a late Christmas present to myself, giving myself 4 gigs total.

I think back to the first computer my dad bought 12 years ago. It had 8 megs of ram and a 1.6 gig hard drive.

My current hard drive checks in at 300 gigs.

It amazes me how much things have advanced in that time.

And yes, my computer’s running much faster now.

Random thoughts about Ike and anything else I decide to rant about

Howdy y'all.

That's right, folks, I'm home!

On to the random thoughts:

• First, let me take the time to thank K T Cat and Dean for
• As much as I love Fort Worth, damn it feels good to be home, even without A/C
• The MLB's ad in the Chronicle is total bullshit. Let me take this time to pass on a little message to Bud Selig: FUCK YOU!
• The only thing that's missing from making being home totally 1000% awesome is not having A/C. I sure hope the tree guys get here soon.
• Tomorrow I'll be working with my cousin Wes to fix our fence. Wes built our fence after Rita and then hired me to help him building them. It'll be fun to work with him again.
• I might be getting a job helping out with the recovery soon. Not only is it good money, but it's helping the area get back on it's feet.
• After not sitting at it for a week and a half, my own computer feels foreign to me. I swear.
• Not having A/C sucks. I'd probably vote for Obama if he sent someone to take care of the tree leaning on the house tomorrow.
• Fort Worth to Beaumont's a long drive with the dogs... probably took about 7 1/2 hours since we hit a few backups on the way home.
• Massey's is awesome. If you're ever in Fort Worth, go there and have a chicken fried steak. Best I've ever had I think.

That's all I can think of for now y'all.

I'll leave K T and Dean here to guest-blog for a while while I get back in the groove of things and all that.

The Latest Seinfeld - Gates Ad

K T Cat here again, filling in for the vacationing fleeing Justin. Here's a quickie I think you'll like. I don't get what the point of it is, but it's funny.

Computer Guts

Welcome to Friday Photo, a new feature where I share photos that I've taken with the world.

When I built my computer two years ago, I took some pictures thinking that I'd do a blog post about it.

I got tired of taking pictures really fast, so I stopped. but I still got a couple cool pictures before I did.

Maybe it's just the geek in me, but I've always found that pictures of computer guts can look pretty cool.

In retrospect, I should have used this picture instead of the stock one from FreeDIgitalPhotos.net for this post on Wednesday.

I had to go and make this a lot harder than it could have been, didn't I?

Wednesday afternoon I woke my computer from sleep mode and it made this awful noise. I knew from the start that the problem was a fan, so I shut it down and cleaned them.

Well, that didn't fix it.

So I started testing fans to see which it was, and quickly figured out that it was coming from the power supply.

I took it out and dusted it out good. Still no dice.

Most techs at this point would replace that power supply, and that's what I was leaning towards.

Except I didn't feel like buying a new one.

Because I'm cheap and replacing the fan is hella cheaper.

So yesterday after lunch I bought a fan to replace the one that was bad. I had to more or less take the power supply completely apart to get the old one to remove it. Two of the screws were in places I couldn't get my screwdriver so I had to get creative.

Then I slapped the new one in and tested it on the power supply's internal fan plug. No dice. Oh well, I said to myself, I'll just hook it up like any other case fan.

Put it all back together and now here I am.

Even with as much of a pain as that was, taking at least an hour and a half, the $40 or so I saved by just buying a new fan was worth the effort.

Technorati Tags: power supply

My experience with Windows Update error code 80071a90

(Note to my regular readers: The only reason I wrote this post is because there's not much help for this situation to be found on Google. Don't worry, I won't be blogging about weird error codes from now on.)

Today I wiped out my system and did a clean install of Vista.

While it was downloading updates I kept getting the above error code for two updates. I googled it and found nothing but a bunch of posts that more or less said "what does code 80071a90 mean?"

Well, I can't tell you what it means, but I can tell you how I got around it.

On a shot-in-the-dark guess, I set Windows Update to just install one of the two updates. As the updates were most of a year apart, I set the older one to go first.

It installed fine.

I restarted and installed the other one.

It installed fine.

So I guess the code means "these updates don't play well together, install them separately."

(if anybody wants to know I was installing Ultimate x64 on a homebrew machine)

Technorati Tags: Windows update,error 80071a90

UPDATE 8/17/12: Amazingly, this is by far the most-visited post on the blog and still gets comments every once in a while. Because of time constraints I have now, I've disabled comments on this post since I don't really have time to moderate them anymore.

Wow that brings back memories

I've been wanting a digital P&S for a while because SLR cameras, like the Rebel XT I normally use, just aren't suitable for everything.

Sometimes you just want something simple and easy to carry around, ya know? Not to mention that a lot of sports venues don't allow long-lensed cameras.

Yesterday my mom gave me a point and shoot digital camera that she'd bought a replacement for.

It's a Gateway DC-M42. Nothing impressive at 4 megapixels (half of what my Rebel has), but the price was certainly right!

That's not the interesting part.

I found the camera case I knew I had from years back and I stumbled upon something more interesting: my old Kodak Advantix C650 APS camera, still in the case, along with a roll of unexposed APS film and a battery for it.

The camera looks like it's been to hell and back. It's got what look like teeth marks from a dog chewing through the case (although said case has no teeth marls that I can see) and there's something loose on the innards of the camera. It probably doesn't work anyway.

Seeing it brought back some good memories. I used this camera as my main one from either 1999 or 2000 when we bought it until 2001 when I got my first SLR, a 35mm Rebel 2000, but still using it for a while as a P&S for those times I didn't feel like lugging around all my gear.

This makes me wonder, do they still even sell or develop APS film?

Technorati Tags: camera,digital camera,Gateway,Gateway DC-M42,APS,Advanced Photo System,Kodak Advantix C650

Updated: I'd do something about how the new Zune software kicks ass, but...

...I'm stuck with this:

Bad omen if you're stuck trying to update firmware for 20 minutes.

UPDATE: After uninstalling and reinstalling the Zune software, it's working fine now.