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Category Archives: awesome

str8 up coolness!

ze frank’s The Show is “back”

24-Jun-09

…in it’s new & permanently sponsored form, “That makes me think of”, the first of which is here at time.com.

as a fan of the original “The Show”, I see that Time has essentially allowed Ze to exercise his presentational art form to it’s near fullest. while I doubt very much we’ll see anything as awesome, like “fingers in food” (see vid below,) coming out of this new venue, I am excited for the world at large that once we again may bask in his comedic and insightful interpretation of current events.

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LED SHEEP! very cool indie ad

23-Mar-09

this brings a smile.

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addressing the v-strom, aka windstrom, buffeting problems

18-Dec-08

it is well known that the biggest (arguably) design defect in the v-strom is the wind buffeting that can be described as . I experienced it immediately and bought a madstad adjustable windshield bracket which helped, a little. as the winter weather really started kicking in, and I swear my hearing was getting worse, I went for the slick looking and larger (in both width and height) than stock GIVI D260ST Wind Shield.

the install was smooth as can be, the Givi attached to my madstad as readily as the Suzuki stock shield did. with the stock shield, I had madstad adjusted all the way up and forward. with the Givi this was unacceptable as I could no longer see over the shield. so now it’s almost all the way down and pulled a little way back from fully front.

with the Madstad + Givi combo, a total cost of ~$230 new, the buffeting problem as close to gone as anyone could reasonably expect. the shield itself is of high build quality and looks great. it does have one element of concern regarding an appearent “lens effect.” in bright direct sunlight it has been reported that the Givi shield can melt the dashboard. there is a warning sticker on the shield that states this as well. while a little disconcerting, not really a problem since I keep mine covered in the summer.

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amazon mp3 download first purchase impressions

16-Dec-08

since its glorious DRM-free inception at the beginning of 2008, I’ve thought a few times, “hey I should but that album from amazon.” but then I load up rhapsody, which I already pay a ~$10/month subscription for, and there it is (usually…)

well today, as if the amazonian borg collective finally penetrated my mind, I get a no-strings offer of $5 towards their service just because I aready buy tons of my crap from them.

As someone who purchased $25 worth of products from Amazon’s Music or Electronics Stores between November 28, 2008 and December 25, 2008, you’ve qualified for a $5 promotional credit good for music downloads from Amazon MP3, Amazon.com’s digital music service.

it works, I bite. I go straight for an album I know won’t let me down, Metallica, Master of Puppets.

the process was extraordinarly smooth, even as a Linux user! amazon mp3 offers their little download app in four different software package flavors. I choose the most applicable to me, an Ubuntu .deb(ian) pkg.

within seconds it’s downloaded, installed, and my mp3s are on the way.

in short: great experience, if I ever need mp3s again I will buy from amazon. I can’t possibly foresee a single negative to using this service whatsoever.

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a snowman in seven unicode chars

09-Oct-08

☃

(the coolest unicode ☃ ever)
[via waxy and unicodesnowmanforyou]

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California Bureau of Automotive reinstates assitive programs

07-Oct-08

I was totally expecting this program to be dropped due to all the CA budgety delays and global credit crisis’ riggamarole. anyway, good news for my old mercedes that has been sitting collecting bird crap and dust in front of my house.

if you have a california vehicle that doesn’t pass smog, like I do, do not dismay! you will probably be granted assistance under reinstated program known as CAP (consumer assistance program.) just fill out the form found on the ca bureau of automotive website and then after receiving ‘yes, you’re in’ go get the repairs done. in theory, this saves me (and you?) a few hundred buckaronies.

Effective immediately, CAP Repair Assistance and Vehicle Retirement service contracts, as well as the Referee contract, have been reinstated. Today, October 6, 2008, services provided under the CAP contracts may resume. Consumers can contact CAP at (866) 272-9642.

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fired up over mega man 9 on xbox live

29-Sep-08

two days until the nostalgic platformer blast fest commenses. I most enjoyed mega man games 2 through 6 with another go at it sometime in the X series though which I can’t recall.

it is already out on wii and playstation network and coming to xbox live 10/2/08.

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Jean-Luc Picard’s romantic alphabet dance number

24-Sep-08

patrick stewart is just so awesome.

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how to create entire disk image backups across a network

23-Sep-08

using command line utilities to perform powerful tasks brings about a special bit of joy that only a geek can truly enjoy. I shall spare you my story (for now) and simply present the research and study that led to these short and slick commands:

to create entire disk image:
server: nc -l -p 12345 > image.bz2 client: dd if=/dev/sda bs=4M | bzip -9z | nc server's-ip-address 12345

to copy created disk image to new client hard drive:
client: nc -l -p 12345 | dd of=/dev/sda server: bzip2 -dc image.bz2 | nc client's-ip-address 12345

assumptions & prerequisites:

intermediate Linux/unix knowledge (this aint no point ‘n’ click guide)
two networked computers on the same IP subnet; a “server” with ample free disk space and a “client” who’s hard disk you wish to backup/image
client computer must be bootable by USB or CD/DVD – I used a Ubunutu install CD
each computer must have utilities dd, nc, and/or bzip2 or gzip (compression utility)
note: though the compression utility is not required, it is highly recommended as the image you create will be the same size as the hard drive capacity – i.e. 120G drive will create a 120G image file without compression.
you may want to tweak which compression method you use and examine the dd syntax, particularly the bs= portion
it is important to watch the network or process I/O for progress meter as these processes will not terminate automatically due to the nature of nc which maintains a connection until manually broken.

updated 9/24/08: fixed copy created image to new hard drive server steps and added another assumption step. good luck!

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police v-strom motorcycles in Montrose, Colorado

29-Aug-08

this fine specimen of the Suzuki DL650 is the 2007 version outfitted for the man.

I particularly like the luggage bags – utilitarian minimalistism yet stylin’. and while I think the flat black model would look better as a police vehicle, the befitting expression of the boys in blue makes up for it.

[via this stromtrooper thread]

update 9/5/08 – found a black and white one:

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musical enthusiasm – animated gif friday x

22-Aug-08

in honor of this weekends San Francisco Outside Lands festival going on, a couple rockin’ concert-esk animated gifs!

graffiti contest-at the concert3

and don’t miss ye CrowdFire tent to publish your most awesome of media from the festival!

the animation begins after the jump!

More…

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michael phelps – animated gif friday ix

15-Aug-08

phelps goes super saiyajin

a little nostalgia with this one, as gold medalist michael goes super saiyajin with excitement.

and after the jump: phelps goes leo from sparta, and then some weird creature who fires blue plasma from his gaping jaw, and finally an info snippet about phelps’ ~12k calories consumed a day.

More…

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how to teather blackberry and linux via bluetooth

15-Aug-08

this entry outlines the steps I took to successfully get my sprint blackberry pearl (8130 II) to share its data connection with my ubuntu 8.04 laptop by using the phone as a bluetooth modem.

note/disclaimer:
you must have a data plan and it is highly recommended that it be unlimited. additionally, it is my understanding that this is gray area as far as sprint’s acceptable use (AUP) is concerned – chances are strong that this is against it.

a false start, or learning the hard way:
at first I figured bluetooth was most likely more trouble than it’s worth, so I went with this solution that uses a usb cable. after spending literally days figuring out how to hack the various source packages into compiling, the journey ended with this lovely and rather uninformative message:
XmBlackBerry.c:OptionPopupCallback(998) - GPRS modem device Not available

after all that, I was feeling distraught and demotivated – near giving up. then a miracle: I stumbled upon a simple, straight-foward and *functional* bluetooth modem solution .

the polished procedure:
- support in the linux kernel (or modules) for bluetooth, rfcomm protocol, ppp and ppp async connections

- enable bluetooth discovery mode on the blackberry, then get its MAC address and channel using command: hcitool scan

- edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
device MAC-address-goes-here;
channel 3;
}

- add /etc/ppp/peers/blackberry file with the following contents:

debug debug debug
nodetach
/dev/rfcomm0
115200
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/chatscripts/blackberry"
nomultilink
defaultroute
noipdefault
ipcp-restart 7
ipcp-accept-local
ipcp-accept-remote
# need lcp-echo turned off, at least for t-mobile
# disconnects after few mn of inactivity.
# thanks to 'loon' for this info
lcp-echo-interval 0
lcp-echo-failure 999
modem
noauth
nocrtscts
noipdefault
novj # refused anyway, no point in trying every time
usepeerdns
user ""
password ""

- add /etc/chatscripts/blackberry file with the following contents:

ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED ABORT ERROR
SAY "Initializing\n"
'' ATZ
OK-AT-OK ATDT#777
CONNECT \d\c

- if all is setup correctly and BB bluetooth is on, you should now be able to initiate ppp with the following command: pppd call blackberry

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