I found a reasonable priced gym down here in Baltimore. I am going to give it a try, I figure at this time I am not doing anything after work on Tuesday and Thursday, so I could go down there for 1 to 2 hours and see if I can get something going.
Well I am angry. I decided I was going to setup to get broadcast TV, I go to get the converter, well a HDTV (small one, open box) was only $20 more, so I get it. The TV is fine but I go to hook up the antenna that the apartment building ran, only to find that when Verizon installed the internet they cut the cable (I guess they think that will force me to buy their TV, well news is I will not buy their TV) I will be calling to complain tomorrow, they cut it, I feel they have to fix it for free, and I will not be buying their TV service, the only way they will get me to use their TV service is if they can match the price of the over the air TV for the life time of the contract (and I doubt they will give away free TV)
A few days ago I installed steam just to see if I could get it installed under slackware, well here a few days later I finished the 19th level of Portal.
Yep I have xeye running
I was a bit board today while I was doing laundry so I thought I try installing steam on Slackware. It was surprisingly to easy to do. And the results (well see the screen capture below)
I ended up at a MicorCenter today. As I was browsing around, I thought about looking at video cards. before today I had 3 monitors but could only use 2 of them as my graphics card would not let me use 3 ports at the same time. I found a nice card for 130, that can handle up to 4 monitors (some day in the future I might get a 4th you never know)
Here is a screen shot of my desktop now, mind you the first monitor ends right at the start of the green box at the bottom of the screen, and the 3rd monitor starts at the end of the blue box at the top of the screen, it is nice to have so much room.
Holy Week MusicAs Holy week is coming up next week here are some Holy Week Hymns as played by me on my tin whistle
also if you go to http://www.mikeoconnor.net/music you will find some other “music” I have done on the tin whistle.
A important listen all should listen to.
Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason Stand to Reason
* Duration 27:12, Published 4/8/14 6:04:43 PM
* Episode Download Link (11 MB): http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/issuesetc.org/podcast/15070408144.mp3
* Show Notes: http://issuesetc.org/2014/04/08/4-the-resignation-of-mozilla-ceo-for-his-support-of-californias-prop-8-greg-koukl-4814/
* Podcast Feed: Issues, Etc. (http://www.issuesetc.org/podcast/podcast.xml)
I been starting to play around with Gopher on the internet. The problem I was having is I did not have any local clients, took me a few days to find a CLI one. I really don’t like the GUI one, it seems to have some problems, but since I did have some trouble with finding the clients, I thought I would include in this post the client software I found, just to help any one else that might want to try to get on gopher.
I been playing with how FVWM is display on my computer as of late, mainly 2 new options in the config file one is to change the windows dressing around the open windows, and the other to force all windows to have dressings (this one is not shown in the Screen shoot, but it mainly for eclipse, so when I pull a tab out into its own window I can still resize it)
Right now my current backup of my data is as follows.
My desktop computer and my laptop computer both have btsync (http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/downloads) my main document files, this also replicate to a in home server (I also btsync my music folder to the in home server too) I then have a Virtual computer that I get though Digital Ocean (https://www.digitalocean.com/) I use this also for my SVN server for my personal projects) that also gets the btsync of my main data directory.
The next step on my backup system is I use cron to do backing up of my main data directory, I have a script that is kicked off that will make a tgz of my main data directory and places it in ~/backups/backup.tgz then at 1am on Sunday I have crontab scp the Sunday backup (the one that would have been taken only an hour earlier) to my Digital Ocean server.
I am probably one of the few, but I miss the old non-web internet. What is the non-web internet you might ask, that would be irc, usenet, etc. There are several protocols that existed on the internet, and were used and even existed before http (the web).
This longer for the older internet (mind you I am not saying the new internet that we have is bad, I enjoy it a lot, I am just saying I miss the older stuff too) I have started playing with a service out there over at sdf.org it is a unix shell access system. They have a local community going that you can talk with in real time (ala irc) using the com command and they have a text based BBS system going (bboards) It kind of fun to be connection to remote shell accounts instead of just consuming web pages.
So now I have my personal cloud computer out on the internet that I pay for at Digital Ocean (Digital Ocean that I use for a svn server, and backup of my user data. I play on using it for some tomcat work later on in time. I have access to a true time share system over at sdf.org there are people there chatting on the roof all the time (I finally found an active chat area that you don’t have to access via the web) if you join up there look for me, my login is mpop. I been going though the old IRC servers not finding much life around there.
Been having fun with those so far, next I just have this urge to see if I can pull together a gopher client and explore there a bit, just to see if there is anything still on that area.
Also who remembers AIM for instant messenger, no I am not saying you should have been on aol, but almost every one had AIM at a time, that was after ICQ. I wonder if SMS has truly killed IM or have people just forgotten of IM.
Another thing I have worked on was instead of continuing to read email off a web interface. I have moved to a command line type email client, the email will still be stored on the gmail servers and my email of mpop@mikeoconnor.net will still work, but I am using older technology that still works, to pull in my email over imap to read it, then stmp (authenticated) to send it so for no one will see a change in how I read my email except for me.
I am setting up my computing setup to look and feel old school for the most part, while at the same time enjoying some of the latest tech, the best of both worlds. Come join me in a lark in the jungles of the internet that still exists and many don’t try and there we will find ourselfs and have fun doing it, and find things that the non-geeks could only imagine.
From time to time it happens, I will site down to the computer, and for a moment, I will feel the love I first felt in 97 when I first installed Linux on my first computer. Fort tonight that was working on my private cloud server (Linux based) after that, I started pocking around a service called sdf.org (basically it is a Unix server out there that they give you access for free)
So tonight started with me doing some securing of my home computer, my laptop computer, and my cloud server. Setting them all up with ssh to reject any password logins and only accept shared key logins (RSA encryption) after doing that I headed over the the sdf.org site made an account there and added my public key on their system so I can login via encryption there too. I always forget how fun Unix/Linux is. I am sure many of my readers will not even understand the love for a command line access to a computer, but the power is nice. And on the sdf.org system they have a system wide chat system called com, now that is worth the free cost to get in just to chat there.
Next things on my Tech diet is to do an update to the Issues Etc app for Android, so it can list prior shows and let the user select them and listen to them)
On Feb 6, 2003 I first registered my domain, and started useing mpop at mikeoconnor.net as my email. it has been thought 5 ISPs changes. One of the nice things of registering a domain and keeping it for years. The only contact info I have had for longer is my cell phone which I first got in 1999, And thanks to the cell phone number portability law in 2003 I was able to escape from sprint as a provider and moved it to t-mobile and have been happy with them ever since.
This blog was started back in 2004, so next year it will be going for 10 years also.
Question, I need advice from any other android programmers. I am getting reports from HTC users that they get no audio. I can not get audio out of it. I did some research and found that many audio apps on the google play store get negative reviews from HTC users because they get no audio from the app (not just mine) more research found that HTC does not include all the needed codecs. So has any other android app programmers found a work around to the HTC problem? As for now I have decied I can not spend to much more time on it (thanks to Dan Berquest for the advice there)
Also if it not fixable for HTC (this is what I have done now to save the app from any more negative reviews from HTC users) I have listed all HTC devices as not supported so google play will not let HTC users download the app (so they can not leave a review)
any advice from any other android program would be great on the audio issue. And thoughts on the second part.
I have completed the next version of the Issues Etc App for Android, and would like some Beta Testers to test out the new features. The new features are:
Find a church, this will map out the churches on the Issues Etc 300 that are within a 100 miles of your location. It will also let you call the church or send it to your navigation app on your cell phone.
I have added a new setting screen, right now all it does is lets you change the volume of the media play back, future settings that will be added to the app will be set on this screen.
To Help out with this please email me at m.p.oconnor@gmail.com
So far this year we have gotten some great JRPGs Persona 3 ReloadedShin Megami Tensei V: VengeanceLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth And there are still more coming, coming on the 5th of July the one I am most hyped for The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak and latter this year we are getting Metaphor:[…]
Today I weighed myself and came in at 130 pounds. When I started I set a goal of 125 pounds. So only 5 more pounds to go. I am a long way from where I started, I started at 300 pounds on March 31, 2022, it been about 15 months since I started this diet.[…]
With summer coming buy, and me still on my diet, I came up with a snack, I have always enjoyed popsicals, so what I am doing now, is I am taking those water enhancers that say they have 0 calories and use that as the flavor for my popsicals, and I have some popsical makers.[…]
For my friends I did a video to show my friends how I have my apartment setup, because I did some changes to the living room and the bedroom. Here is the video
Posting a new updated before and after picture. First one was taken in 2021, the second picture Just this last weekend.
March 31, 2022 was the day I hit 300 pounds and decided to loss weight, today I weigh in at 135 pounds. To date I have lost 165 pounds. My goal still remains 125 pounds, so I only have 10 more pounds to go. I feel so much better, later on I will post a[…]
Today I did some meal preping for this week. Cooking both in slow cookers. First dish, is a ham and veggie soup contianing Ham Potatos Celery Spinish Carrots Onions Veggie Stock With the amount of stuff and what I put in it, the whole slow cooker has about 1200 cals in it, this should make[…]
Today I did my daily steping on the scale this morning, it read 140 now. So since I started my diet last March, I have lost a total of 160 pounds, and only 15 more pounds to go, till I can start working on keeping the weight off. But I been feeling a lot better[…]
Today, when I did my morning weight in my scale read 143 pounds, so to date I have lost 157 pounds. And now I have only 18 more pounds to go.
In the past I have used a 4G T-Mobile hotspot, that was costing me about 50 a month for 10GB of data. But for that same 50 I could get T-Mobiles home internet. So I cancled the hotspot line and added the Home Internet for my backup internet. First they say there is no data[…]
