2.8!
Posted by Tyler in Administrative on June 14th, 2009
Upgraded to wordpress 2.8 this morning. My host finally made the upgrade availably by the back-end installer. Woo!
Website, Behind the Curtain
Posted by Tyler in Administrative on May 26th, 2009
I am a little tired of just posting text and linking elsewhere for pictures. It really limits the bredth of content I can post about when I have nothing to show for it. This has been primarily predicated on my frugal/cheep-ness with the hosting. I’ve paid for the smallest of the small server space and bandwidth since the website’s inception. I think it’s time to pony up and pay for a little more than just that. On top of that, I need to find some direction with the blog. Who the hell cares about the mundane. I really need to put some effort into building conent.
For now the wordpress platform will work just fine. I am probably going to pick a new theme beyond the drab I have now.
I’ve been inspired by some of my friends and colleagues out there in the sake world and think it’s high time I take ownership of this website. I spend enough time in front of the computer anyway, I might as well make it worth my time (and yours).
Look for some change here on the site in the coming weeks (probably by the end of next month). I need to make these changes before my summer class starts. Once I hit the books of linear algebra and differential equations, I don’t know if I’ll have time to breathe and blog at the same time.
n-band
I think I’ve started to notice a pattern. As soon as I come home, power up the laptop, and try to stream, copy, or transfer anything over the network, my throughput is appreciably decreased compared to 5-6 AM. I’ve been reading lately that the frequency band used by 802.11b and g routers is clogged with a bunch of other garbage such as the wireless noise from microwaves, wireless telephones, and baby monitors. All that suff will be found with a greater density in a place such as my apartment. And more people power on said devices when they get home from work. So, I think it may be time to invest in an n-band router. I’ve had my eye on the Apple Time Capusle (the newer, refreshed version) that can run dual band wireless networks (two at a time, one on the N-band and the other b/g). I still need the older, slower b/g for some legacy hardware such as my Nintendo DS, Wii, iPod Touch, etc. The only problem is the price. The Apple TC (1TB) is a whopping $500. Meh, such is the price of fandom, I guess. Better start saving my pennies again.
Patrol
Posted by Tyler in SAR, Uncategorized on May 17th, 2009
Today was the first patrol shift in a couple of months. Nothing too exciting to report about. We spent the entire day out in Malibu Creek State Park working the team test for a few people who missed it earlier in the year. I must admit, I rather enjoyed the test more the first time it was administered – it was probably 20 degrees cooler than it was today. The rock pool was a zoo with so many people swimming, jumping, and lounging in the near-sewer water. We got a medical call that rounded out the afternoon. Wheeled him out in a litter on a litter-wheel and let the paramedics take him out of the park. Thankfully we didn’t have to respond to broken legs or faces this time around with so many people jumping into the rock pool (notice how it’s called the “rock pool? That’s what most people lose to when going head or feet first into a the shallow end). I’ve got one more shift this month in a couple of weeks. Here’s to hoping it’s a tad cooler and less crowded.
Summer months are out busy months.
I have a blog?
Posted by Tyler in Miscellaneous on May 10th, 2009
It’s been a while since the last post. I’ll admit, my attention has been elsewhere with the recent flurry of studying and homework for my first graduate couse at USC. Thankfully that’s behind me now. I’ve got about 2 months of down time before my summer session. So, I should probably spend some more time working on good, quality things to say here.
Today is Mothers’ Day (or is it Mother’s Day – I don’t know the appropriate context). I’ll be treating dear Mom for dinner this evening in Ojai and presenting her with the gift that all three of her boys pitched in for. It’ll be good.
A short post, I know, but I’ll spend a little more time here in the coming months. I have plenty of things I want to do and very little time to do it.
Music Drive
Posted by Tyler in Miscellaneous, gadget on April 5th, 2009
Regrettably, I have run out of room on my 320Gb external hard drive for music, podcasts, and audiobooks. I’ve come to the difficult conclusion that some podcasts will need to be deleted upon listen. I love to archive all my media for some possible re-listen in the future, but now that the drive is filled to the brim, I am out of luck. I’d love to go get another, bigger hard drive, but this is one of those drives powered by the USB connection. There are a few models that are slightly larger, but nonething in the way of 1Tb of space. The idea was to make this drive portable with my laptop and a standalone storage solution for music when an electric wall outlet was not to be found. I am trying to setup an iTunes library on my NAS server to house podcast episodes I don’t watch/listen to anywhere but at home. However, the latency between the NAS, the drives spinning up from sleep, and the hastle of switching libraries is not making it easy. If anyone has a possible solution to this quandry, please let me know.
Sapporo Snow Festival Pictures
I am finally getting around to posting some pictures of my day at the Sapporo Snow Festival this past February. I am going to update this post as I get more albums up onto Facebook, so check back.
Magic
Posted by Tyler in Miscellaneous on April 4th, 2009
I cannot tell you how much of a difference that a full, uninterrupted night of sleep makes when you are sick. It’s almost like magic. Last night was a complete 9+ hours of sleep and I feel better by an order of magnitude. Coffee in the morning certainly helps as well, but I can’t recall when in the past week I have felt so good. I am so looking forward to the weekend and getting back to some things that have been shelved for too long (books are the literal example).
Backups
It’s time I took backing up my system and all my data seriously. I already back up all the local files on my laptop via time machine. Which is great in case of a hard disk failure, but that doesn’t deal with the great concern I have regarding immolation through fire. If anything were to happen here at the apartment and all my computer hardware were to go up in smoke, I’d have no backup. I need to create an offsite backup. So, recently, I just paid for an external enclosure to make good use of an old 750Gb IDE hard drive I had lying around. I think I’ll make routine copies of all my data and drop the hard drive off at my parents’ place. It’ll be a little tedious to go and fetch the hard drive every month or so just to update all the files, but it sure beats paying some questionable offsite backup service upwards of $100 per year. I am over at my folks’ place often enough to where I can easily make the swap without too much of a headache. The money spent on the hard drive, enclosure, and gas to and from my parents is cheap insurance and a great bargain on peace of mind. Ultimately, I’d like to be running a RAID array here at the aparmtnet to make my more routine and frequent backups bomb-proof in case of disk failure. But until I come up with the cash and time to do that, this ferrying back and forth of a single drive will have to do.
Sick and Studying
I’ve got a midterm on Tuesday and it’s just my luck to go and get sick with some kind of cold. Blargh. It’s so much fun to wrestle with illness and understanding the stress dependence of creep. Woo.
But in a happier light, an aunt and two cousins are in town from Denver and I’ll be spending all day on Thursday with them. So, I guess, it’s beter I get sick now rather than later this week.