Love Sculpture- Sabre Dance/Think of Love - British Blues Rock

I'm a blues junkie. I heard a song today that moved me, it was the B-Side to a novelity cover of the classical piece "Sabre Dance."

I'm presenting both songs here. Listen to them, let them move you.

Flooding

There has been extensive flooding in the area that I live. Several months ago, my girlfriend and I were coming home and our car was washed off the road. For whatever reason, I had both my laptops, and my palm top stowed in that car, as well as two analog SLRs, and lots of other personal effect.

Needless to say, I was left just a bit devastated by all of this. It's been quite an ordeal to try and rebuild everything. I lost several posts that I had been working on, documents and pictures, not to mention the film that was in those cameras.

Atari 2600, meet HD tv.

Today, I am back to discuss the difficulties of hooking up an Atari 2600 to a modern TV.

There are half a dozen or so different ways this can be accomplished, ranging from beginner to expert, from cheap to expensive, and from likely to work to likely to destroy your Atari.

Proceed with caution.

Code Monkey

I am a bit of a digital rights activist, and while scouring the internet looking for muscians that don't support DRM, and who don't punish their fans for building publicity, I found this amazing song by Jonathan Coulton.

Jonathan Coulton is an independent artis who publishes all of his work under some form or another of the Creative Commons .

The video is not going to get pulled during youtube's next raid, because it does not violate any copyrights, which is what makes JoCo so cool to me. :-)


For more information on DRM visit DefectiveByDesign.org.

Make Linux Work For You--Today.

It is no secret the I am a huge fan of Linux and Free (open source) software. Of all the computers I own, only one (my new best friend, the HP 200LX) does not run Linux at some capacity.

A lot of my friends and co-workers have expressed curiosity about Linux, or confusion as to why I would use it, I hope to clear up those two questions in this post.

First and foremost, I use Linux because:

• It gives me the control I want over my computer (For example, The CapsLock key on all of my computers has been remapped to control. When I work with other people's computers I end up typing "Z END UP T" a lot).
  
• I didn't have to search through online auctions (or resort to piracy) to find a version that will work on my older computers.
• There are software packages to handle everything I would like to do.
  
• I feel safe. My netbook (Asus eeePC 701), which stays on me nearly all the time, runs Debian. It boots to a command line (there is a GUI, but I tend to prefer the command line for quick work). Most people, when presented with a Linux command line, would be lost.
• Its fun!

A Brief Introduction

I am a student, learning to program. I am a dork, a geek, a nerd. Call me what you will. I tinker with computers and graphic design.

I play old video games; I read old books; I listen to old music.

I am a bit behind the times; I play text adventure games (Or Interactive Fiction, as they are sometimes called); I just got an Atari and 40 or so games.

I collect old and obscure technology, hardware and software, trying to get a feel for where we have come from. At the same time, I try to stay near the front of the pack, keeping an eye on where we are going.

In my field of vision at the moment there are:

5 computers

1. The White Dell Inspiron 1420 I am typing this on (Tri-booting Ubuntu Linux, Slackware 12 and Vista, with Apple wireless keyboard)
2. A Black Asus EEE PC 701 (First Release, with 2GB RAM and 4GB SSD, running Debian)
3. An HP 200LX (An early palmtop, circa 1994, running DOS 5.0 from ROM)
4. A generic Desktop, kludged together from second-hand parts. (256 MB RAM, running Slackware 12 and FreeDOS.)
5. An IBM Thinkpad 380 Z (64 MB RAM, no hard drive, Booting FreeDOS from a floppy. Programs run from a thumb drive by some manner of sorcery.)

There are at least 6 other computers in the house, but I don't feel like hunting them down.
4 typewriters
Black LC Smith and Corona Portable, Circa 1932.
Burgandy LC Smith and Corona Portable, Circa 1929.

Underwood Manual (1926)

Reminton Quite-riter (Mid-Fifties portable).

1 Record player,
Some late 80's model that I purloined from the junk heap, held together with duct tape and rubber bands.



~300 Records;
Some new, most old. Working to catalog them all.