My Slice of Reality,

Jeremy has a running list of web services to ping in your blog software. I added quite a few of them to Tealart so we’ll see how performance is affected. Pingomatic should be updated fairly soon (according to Matt) to ping everything listed but until then…no harm done. Obviously, don’t try pinging them all (why would a US blog need to ping japan?) because the performance would be worse than a stoned out camel playing Halo 2.

permalink • • zero comments

I had a very interesting experience yesterday that made me feel good about this weblog. I met Kristin through our Drexel community a few months ago when it first opened. She wanted to ask me some questions about the IST program (was thinking of transferring) and of course I agreed to answer her questions. Since then we’ve talked fairly frequently and even hung out for the first time Sat. and Sunday which was fun.

Then, she IM’s me last night asking if Sam was my roommate? I inquired as to why and she said because she wants to learn how to knit and he seemed to be fairly knowledgeable about it and she wanted someone to teach her hands on. Sadly, I had to explain that no, Sam was not my roommate (though he’d love to be haha) but actually lived in Missouri.

I then asked how she found out about Sam and she responded “from your weblog.” Wow. Someone reads our site! I felt so happy! Those kinds of personal touches are the things that makes writing on this blank wall feel good sometimes. That and I’ve also had a few old friends email me because of, you guessed it, this weblog. It’s just funny how those things work.

permalink • • zero comments

It’s been widely stated that Snoop Dogg’s new cover of Riders on the Storm (featuring original members from the Doors too) will be released only on the upcoming Need for Speed: Underground 2. That means that radio, music videos, etc. take the back seat to a video game for the first time.

However, I hate to say it Snoop but you already got boned. It was released on BitTorrent networks a couple of days ago. It’s actually a pretty decent remix. Not the greatest I’ve ever heard, and nowhere near as good as the original song, but fairly decent nontheless. Snoop has the right kind of voice to mix it up.

Note: If you’re looking for the track try checking out either Filelist or Suprnova. They just might have what you’re looking for. Not that I condone illegal filesharing. No sir, Mr. RIAA representative. Not at all

permalink • • one comment

Down here in the data center or, to be more accurate, the room next to it called “Newtown Squares” we’re constantly inundated with the noise from said DC. It’s an always present, overwelming, floor vibrating hum. Whether its from the massive air conditioners they have or the power systems or ventilation, lord knows but its there. The first day or two that you’re here - its annoying. The second and third day, you barely notice it.

Today however, it cut off. The other intern and I looked at each other astonishment to suddenly be blessed with complete and total quiet. We freaked. Its never a good thing when the dohicky that does the whatzit shutdowns.

Thankfully its back on and so is our noise. Ahhh, thank god for being unable to hear a phone call from two feet away. What would I do without you?

10:04 Update: It’s off again. I think the worlds ending. Can I have my bear-bear yet?

permalink • • zero comments

Apparently there is now a site to rate your highschool, middle school or even elementary teachers thats getting pretty big. That just strikes me as very…odd. I mean, college communities have had it for a while now. Lord knows Drexel has gone through almost three of them but in college our input is actually benaficial. We have multiple teachers teaching the same class so you can get the one that more suits your style. Also, if a teacher is really terrible normally we can get them pushed off into the sidelines instead of teaching or, in the best case, fired if we work hard enough.

God luck pulling that off in highschool, let alone elementary school! Are there even enough children with net awarness in elementary school to do this? Or, even scarier, do they have enough maturity to do it without bias from “she gave me detention for kissing a girl on the playground” type syndrome. Hell, in college we can’t even pull that off.

permalink • • one comment

I’ve been using GAIM (on Windows and Linux) as my primary IM client lately because its really cross-platform, supports all the major services and works fairly well. On the Mac I use Adium which frankly kicks the crap out of every other client I’ve seen on all platforms except for file send, voice and direct connection functions. However…I might be changing my IM platform of choice soon. A new version of Trillian is in the works apparently, and it looks good.

It supports an even cleaner and more customizeable interface than previous versions but adds alot of features. Complete feature compatibility with all major services is the big selling point. By complete, I mean voice, video, file send, etc., all as if you were using the native clients. It also has an interesting integrated “Instant Lookup” capability which queries Wikipedia for interesting words/phrases said in each IM window. Could be interesting, or annoying, depending upon your take of it but it can also be disabled.

Really one of the coolest points for me though is the updated archiving tools (tons of search options) and the Rendevous support. Finally I’ll be able to do local network chats with my friends in class. Since most of them used AIM (which just blows) I couldn’t talk to them without adding them in iChat or Adium but now it’ll be possible since even the basic version of Trillian will support that. Apparently.

Talk about sweet. I’m really looking forward to it. Question is, when the hell is it coming out?

permalink • • zero comments

To all of our dedicated readers (all three of you), I wanted go give you the heads up that sometime in the next few days there might be a period where Tealart is unreachable. The reason is that we’ll soon be moving to another host that will give us a much greater chance for expansion and control than our current host provides. Now, having said that, we’ve really had no complaints with our current host, it’s just that I have a few projects (as does Sam) that could quickly escalatue our traffic and storage requirements beyond what our current (free) host provides.

What will this new server look like? Glad you asked! My friend Darin at X1host is providing us with a VPS server that has 5 Gb of storage and 200 Gb of transfer per month, for about $20 a month. What’s a VPS? Its basically a virtual, dedicated server. For all intents and purposes, Tealart will be on its own dedicated REL3 box with complete root access, even though we’re sharing a box with other sites as well. It’s all done through Virtuozzo server software which seems pretty similar to VMware, just more ISP oriented.

We’ll keep you up to date with any further updates when we actually make the changes. Take care!

permalink • • zero comments

Well, the time has finally come my friends to say goodbye to what once was a titan in the freeware computer industry; Nullsoft. Apparently, AOL has all but doomed them to the same fate that has befallen many great companies (coughICQcough since the dot com buy outs. Who in the audience has not used some version of Winamp and fallen in love with its simplistic interface, easy to develop plugins, and great community? Granted, they haven’t developed a good version since 2.91 and the 3.x series was a debacle that only Microsoft could say “Hehe, we beat you!” but who’s counting, right?

Anyways, I saluate you Winamp. You really whooped the Llama’s ass. For a while.

permalink • • zero comments

For the love of god and all thats holy - STOP with the “go vote” posts! I read about 100 feeds a day (that have new posts but subscribe to about 250) and I swear just about every blog had a post telling their readers to go vote. Ummm, hello? Do you honestly think that most blog readers would be forgetting that its election day and not already have planned to go vote? Even more, what the hell is it with foreign blogs telling me to go vote? Most of your readers aren’t even in America traditionally. Jeez. I just want this day to be over with so that the blogsphere can get back to normal.

permalink • • zero comments

After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

permalink • • zero comments