Ramblings, v.2

And yet, it’s awesome. Cause moving means I’ll have a job again. Here’s my schedule:

1. Now till Tuesday Apr 14: PACK. Lord Jesus do we need to pack.
2. Wednesday: Pick up rental truck & car trailer, load up valuables/electronics/immediate-need stuff
3. Thursday: Me and Kona leave in rental truck; Melinda stays back to supervise movers packing efforts
4. Friday: Movers load everything left into their truck & leave. Melinda & her mom head to Appleton to do stuff, and I’ll finally arrive in Jacksonville
5. Saturday: I’ll unload the rental truck & my car, confirm the storage unit, and probably sleep a ton
6. Sunday: Melinda will climb on a plane in Milwaukee and fly down to Jax
7. Monday: First day of my new job

Jesus.

In other news, I think I’ve figured out a good app to write for OSX and the iPhone. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait for iPhone development – I’ll need Core Data, which isn’t available until iPhone OS 3.0 comes out in June (hopefully). Ok, ok, I won’t *need* Core Data, but I’m too damn lazy to re-write Core Data stuff when all I need to do is wait a little bit.

ross mindless prattling iPhone, jacksonville, jax, moving, osx

Me and 20-odd others just got shit-canned at SPI today. Fine. You just fired both your software guy AND your hardware guy. Your only computer support is your CIO. Good freakin’ luck.

In other news, I was already planning on giving notice – I accepted a position with the Jacksonville, FL Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday. Melinda, Kona, and I will be moving down there in the next few weeks once my start date has been set. We’ll miss all our friends, but good riddance Wisconsin.

ross rant-o-matic

Ever heard of MacHeist? If you own a Mac (and use OSX on it…creepy people who use windows on a mac), it’d be very penny-wise to become familiar with them. Yesterday, I picked up free copies of DEVONthink, Fresh, and Overflow. It’s also how I got 1Password. I could also get HyperSpace, and I think I’ll grab that in a bit.

I’m gonna dig into Overflow here for a bit – I’m also using Fresh, but I don’t know for how long.

I’ve tried all kinds of application launchers in OSX, and the only third-party solution I’ve liked is Quicksilver. Google it, it’s amazing. If you know what you want, Quicksilver is the quickest way to get it. If you don’t know what you want, you’re stuck digging through your Applications folder. Unless you have Overflow. By default, Overflow sits in your Dock. (For the record, I just typed “taskbar” by mistake. I hate Windows.) My problem is that I have almost too much in my dock already. I’ve also run the hack that makes hidden apps’ dock icons turn slightly transparent. When Overflow isn’t active, it’s technically hidden, so the icon fades. Yarr. So, up to the menu bar it goes, thanks to a built-in option. I also attached Option-Space as a show/hide hotkey (also a built-in option). Then I set about customizing its application lists.

By default, Overflow comes with two groups – Dock Applications and Dock Items. My “Dock Items” section was empty – probably because I only keep applications in my dock. The first group I added is called “Always On” – apps that are always running due to their inherent usefulness but don’t start automatically on boot for whatever reason (Quicksilver, Firefox, Mail, iCal, iTunes, Twitteriffic, Fresh, Address Book, and Skitch). After playing with Overflow a bit, I realized that I was an inadvertent genius in that each group name has an “Open All Items” option in its context menu. So, on boot, once Overflow comes up (auto-start, another built-in option), invoke, right-click on the “Always On” group name, and hit Open All Items. Wait a minute or so for everything to get going, and I’m set. Genius.

I then made groups for the various iLife apps, office apps (both iWork and M$ Office), “Geek” (0xED, BBEdit, Calculator+, iStumbler, Nocturne, RAIDar – for my NAS, Terminal, and WireShark), Developer (most major apps in the /Developer folder when you install Xcode), and Administration (AppZapper, Activity Monitor, Disk Inventory X, Keychain Access, Network Utility, Remote Desktop, System Preferences, System Profiler, Server Admin, and Workgroup Admin). I then realized that I had other apps that I wanted to run that didn’t really fall into those categories. That spawned the “Mostly On” group – 1Password, Cyberduck, Google Earth, Journler, VLC, and a few others. Once I got everything set up (took about 10 minutes to go through all my apps), I removed most apps from my dock – I’m now down to Finder, Dashboard, Quicksilver (it likes to die in Leopard…leaving it in the dock means it’s just a click away from relaunch), Time Machine, System Preferences, and Terminal. With the Recent Apps and Recent Downloads stacks and the Trash, I’m down to 9 items. Handy.

In other news, I’m flying down to Jacksonville, FL next Wednesday night through Saturday. Watch my tweets. I’ll probably forget, but you never know.

ross mindless prattling application launcher, macheist, osx, quicksilver, travel, twitter

Via Moonbattery.

ross humor fail, hypocrite, liberals, politics

Via Moonbattery & Gary Larson.

ross humor fail, hypocrite, politics

Ok, this is kinda cool. The app description said I’d be able to attach pictures too, but I don’t see that option. More investigation required. Later though – I’m tired.

Edit: after clicking “done” you get the options for media.

ross site stuff iPhone, wordpress

So I found this article, where the first paragraph saying (cause the rest is just fluff):

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

Ok, no biggie. But then there’s this great article (which is only great in the context of the above quote) where Obama was quoted:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times [...]“

Riiiiiight.

Look, I get it that most politicians are hypocrites. But this… Obama was supposed to bring “change” and “new ideas” to our government. Instead, he’s bringing the same old idea of hypocrisy (…and socialism, but that’s not the purpose of this post).

In minor site news, I’m going to be keeping track of my hatred for our current president by both tagging all posts regarding him with “hypocrite” and naming posts specifically about him “The Great Hypocrite“.

ross rant-o-matic hussein, hypocrite, politics, rant

I hate to say it, but I think there’s a sick and twisted part of me that’s beginning to like Obama.

Go ahead and clean the poop out of your pants now…or rather not, as I don’t think this post is going to get any better.

A guy that I work with, a friend of mine, is what I’d call a “dirty, dirty liberal”. Actually, he’s pretty clean cut, but that’s about the only work-safe adjective structure I can put in front of the word “liberal” in that context. (And, if he’s reading this, he’s a real nice guy, and while I disagree with his political views almost entirely, he’s very well educated and I enjoy working with him.) Anyway, he said that Obama is getting more flack from Pelosi and other super-leftists than the conservatives. Pelosi called for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts immediately upon Obama’s swearing-in, and Obama has said “Now WAAAaaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAaaaAAAAaaiiiiittt a minute!” (Sorry, had a show with the band last night and have had Shout running through my head.) Ok, cool. Leave the tax cuts and piss off liberals.

Obama also picked a pro-life, Prop 8 supporter to give the inauguration invocation. Bitchin.

Obama supports warrantless wiretapping. While I don’t like the idea of being spied upon, if even one terrorist attack is foiled because the right people’s phones got tapped quicker than would have been possible if a warrant was required, so be it. Big-brother the hell outta this country, as long as you keep my ass alive.

Finally, and the reason for this post, is a posting at one of my friend’s blogs that Obama authorized a missile strike on two small villages in Pakistan suspected of housing terrorist cells. So, wait, Obama, savior of tree-hugging, whitey-hating, peace-loving liberals said “kill!”?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here trying to explain why I’ve decided to have his love-child [shiver]. I still think he’s the lyingest lying liar who’s ever lied a lie (2nd quote in comment). And he’s a hypocrite. After banging the anti-lobbyist drum for nearly his entire campaign, he appointed one anyway. Don’t forget that whole tax-cut/hike floating limit…first it was $250k, then $200k, then $150k – soon it’ll be $10k and we’ll all be screwed.

Saying “Obama” following “president” makes my stomach churn. While he may be a dirty, dirty liberal, he’s pissing off other liberals. I won’t go as far as invoking “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but Mr. Obama is making me smile at an alarming rate.

ross mindless prattling hussein, hypocrite, liberals, politics

I made one of these: CMoy Pocket Amplifier. I didn’t take any pictures of the progress except the one I twitpic’ed. I have since fitted it in a cut-down cookie tin with a pair of 9V batteries. Lemmie tell you what: this little sucker is freakin amazing. One, it can get DAMN loud. On a true, unamplified line-out, I can put the dial around 2 outta 10 before my ears threaten to bleed. Unfortunately, my pre-iPhone universal dock’s line out turns into an amplified headphone out, so I’m getting a doubly-amped signal (I think) running through the headphone amp, but it still sounds AMAZING. Bass hits are definitely fuller & deeper (awwww yeah). On a few live albums I have (Stephen Lynch’s Superhero comes to mind), I can actually hear the back-wall echo from the theater, and when audience members talk, I could swear it’s actually people physically behind me talking. For about $50 in parts, it’s SO worth it.

That all said, I’m going to make version 2. Here are my goals:

• Bigger power supply capacitors for even better bass handling
• Slightly bigger case so I have more room to work during assembly and possible storage for extra cables, etc
• Make battery power an option, maybe, where primary power is via wall wart
• Two complete implementations of this (for left & right channel, but using pots that do two separate lines each)

Yeah, awesome. I really want to get started on it, but first I’m going to tackle converting a computer ATX power supply into a bench supply with banana plugs and everything. Before even that, I need to wait for my shipments from Electronic Goldmine (piles of random components) and Adafruit (diy Atmel programmer kit) to show up. At this point, I’m looking at least a month between now and starting on headphone amp v2. We’ll see. I still need to set up a solid station to do the soldering with power & lights, which means I need to break out my electrical tools again and move outlets around. Fun!

ross sweet action CMoy Pocket Amplifier, iPhone, roooosss-Lectric, soldering

I’ve removed the reCAPTCHA plugin. I’ll see how many spam comments get into the system today. If I get a ton more, I’ll reactivate it while looking for other options. There are a few other plugin solutions I could try, but I need a control in this experiment, and that will be today.

ross site stuff plugin, reCAPTCHA, spam