Marwencol

I can't wait to see Marwencol. Ever since watching Ira Glass' portrait of the world of Mark Hogancamp I've wanted to know more about him and see more of his pictures. Looks like I'll be able to do just that, eventually (and I hope soon).

A bit of back story: Mark was jumped outside a bar one night by five men and left for dead. He recovered, albeit with some brain damage that makes him rather timid, yet he often fills with rage when amongst "outsiders". So now he lives in a remote area where he has built the village of Marwincol in near perfect 1/6 human proportions and he photographs his 1/6 soldiers fighting the SS in the Battle of Marwencol. Mark shows up as a character in the village as does his brother and ex-wife along with many others.

If, like me, you want to be notified when this movie will be played send an e-mail to info@marwencol.com.

Millennium

I just restarted watching this show again and it's pretty darn good. Nice and dark. Solid writing, excellent acting. Good stuff all the way around.

my mac mini is showing it's age

Assuming we get a bonus early next year I think a portion of that is going to go towards a new Mac. My 1.5 Ghz G4 Mac Mini is really showing it's age. It's still a nice machine, don't get me wrong, but the lack of IO is really a limiting factor when doing anything fun (read Final Cut and Photoshop). In addition it does not support 802.11n which is nice to have as the machine is in a room without access to wired Ethernet.

When the time goes to upgrade, and I'm stuck between wants of a 24" iMac and a Mac Pro, I'll probably turn this machine into a Linux machine without any graphical interface and I'll then replace the Pentium III machine at work with the mini. I'd like to sneak it into the data center and plug it directly into the server farm switches but I'm not going to be that bold (or stupid). Or maybe I'll leave OS X on the box and migrate all my perl/expect scripts to OS X (which really isn't much of a 'migration' in the first place).

For some reason I'm still leaning towards Linux though. Perpahs it's time to investigate and see what's out there. Last time I loaded Linux on a PowerPC mac I used Yellow Dog with great success. Perhaps I'll go that route again.

A song about insomnia.

I was going to write a song about insomnia last night around 3 am but then I remembered that one has already been written and performed by The Beatles on The White Album. There's no way I could top that so here it is, I'm So Tired by The Beatles:

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.

I'm so tired I don't know what to do
I'm so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git.

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
(mumbling)

Final Cut: I really don't know what I'm doing

I decided to arrange some of my video clips into a short movie complete with voice over narraition last night on the Mac. I did not get very far at all. Turns our Final Cut is not what I'd describe as "intuitive" out of the box if you've never used it before. So I'll be watching a few training clips as time allows.

By the way, anyone know someone who teaches piano lessons?

shot some good video last night

Last night I got a touch bored so I headed out into Durham with the Canon Rebel T1i and the tripod. I got some good video clips around Durham but not of anything terribly exciting. The purpose was to shoot some background shots and to master zoom and focus when shooting video (on the Rebel video is shot quite differently from photos and it's quite easy to shoot a blurry few seconds of video by accident).

Next up - load some of the video into Final Cut Express and learn the art of editing.

My how time flies!

Is it April 1st already? I would have though so reading this article. I LOL'ed.

Let's hear it for a PC I do like

My good, old, reliable Linux box running CentOS. It's a Pentium III running at a blazing 731.217 Mhz. Got to love it. Oh, and for those interested: 1462.71 bogomips. Not what you'd call a hot rod but so very functional. It serves as my backup platform for Packeteer devices and is my machine for all things perl/expect which is, to say, a lot. I just started a project to upgrade an insane amount of routers all requiring TFTP transfer and while other team members were scrambling around trying to set up a TFTP server on a Windows server I quietly and easily enabled the TFTP server on my Linux box and was up and running in five easy minutes. The best part? The Linux TFTP server far outclasses the hacked-up, added on, hardly functional Windows TFTP server and it handles more concurrent sessions despite running on hardware several generations older.

So, yes. I love my Linux box. The box was manufactured way back in the day as a Windows machine by Dell. See? I haven't always not liked Dell (I just despise my possessed Latitude D630).

I really do despise my PC

It's the 'mystery mouse clicks' that drive me over the edge. I'll just be using the built-in stick mouse (that I don't like) no navigate around (trackpad disabled.. or is it?) when, all of the sudden and without my intent and I believe input, windows will be selected, things will be dragged.. you name it. It's just like the POS decides to start selecting things just to aggravate the hell out of me. And it does, quite often.

Is it any wonder I go running for my Mac at 5 pm? No.

Newsflash......

.....Greg has taken his medication and is feeling much better. You may emerge from your hiding places under your desk.

/and no, he still does not like his computer very much.

I F-ing hate my F-ing PC

My PC (a Dell some-kind-of-horrible-pile-of-crap laptop) is my main interface to work. It is my portal to all things that I need to fulfill my job requirements and it is also the main impediment keeping me from doing so many days!!!! IT'S SO ANNOYING I WANT TO SHOUT!!

Need to undock and go to a conference room? Ok, but you're taking a lot of chances. Want to re-dock? Oh, that's a near guaranteed seizure waiting to happen. The 3.5 gig RAM limit in XP? Oh, heck, nobody needs more than 640k anyway. (and don't mention Vista as a solution here - Vista regularly craps itself with less than 4 gigs of RAM because it's bloated to the point it's little more than a dead animal with built-up gas inside.. go a head and poke around in there.. you'll puke.)

I swear this to be ture before God and all humanity: the day that Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and hired Tim Patterson is the day I can clearly define as the beginning of a long and horrible saga of making computers less useful than they could be.

Want to know why computers can't do crap? Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, they make a fine suite of office software, clearly the leader in the field when you really examine applications side-by-side with their competition. But operating systems? They have NEVER made a decent OS. The best chance they had one making a good one was OS/2. Microsoft knew it was superior and it would not allow them to monopolize the PC market so they stopped development and released the absolte crapfest that began with Windows 3.0 and went to ME.

NT? Don't get me started. Ripping the multitasking guts of VAX MVS does not a great operating system make. XP? Crap. Vista? Worse. WHY IN GOD'S HOLY NAME DO WE STILL HAVE A REGISTRY?!?!? WHY?

People. You have options. Better options. OS X and Ubumtu alone make more sense than this. Have 'mission critical applications' that only run on M$? Start searching for a solution now.

Garbage OSes loaded onto cheap-ass computers is not a wonderful solution.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SETTLE FOR THIS!

Good times

I've been having a hell of a lot of fun with my new camera and now that I've got my UV filter, tripod and remote I can now try some longer exposure night shots. I live in practically a perfect place for that kind of thing with a man-made river complete with small waterfalls running through the middle of the complex but there is a problem.

Apparently management does not really care for people taking pictures. Really. The security folks (nice people, by the way) stopped me last night and told me I had to have a special contractor's badge if I wanted to take pictures and they are dispensed on a by-project basis and only for short times.

Well I think that stinks to high heavens though I can understand the policy. They don't want someone coming in and doing a MAXIM shoot on the grass in front of the Lucky Strike tower. Ok, I get that. At the same time I think there should be a permission for a wanna-be photographer to snap some pics.

I could, on one hand, get in and ask for permission. But I'd likely be denied by policy. Then I could not longer (lie lie lie) claim ignorance. On the other hand I could just keep taking pictures.. that is until a security guard warns me who has warned me in the past. So I'm not exactly sure what to do.

I'll probably have to venture out beyond the comfort of American Tobacco and go out into Durham proper.

I can't believe

I can't believe it's already the second week of July.

ouch

I'm bleeding.

Rest in Peace, Darius Xavier Poteat

This is Darius Xavier Poteat. I didn't know Darius that well, not past a "hey, what's up?" or a wave hello. He always seemed quick with a smile and seemed to have an immediate and positive effect on those around him. Yet, inside, it appears Darius was a troubled man. Darius ended his life yesterday and I'm sad that I didn't get to know him better and now I'll not have the chance to do so.

Darius, you will be missed, by your family, the people you worked with as well as people who didn't even know you that well. People like me. I wish I could have done something for you.

Goodbye, Darius. Godspeed.

Cool Star Wars ads

These are my two favorites of the bunch: