Archive for the 'General' Category

QRCode and other site updates

Heh. So no mater how much I try to keep on top of this site, I can’t seem to find something to write about on a daily basis. Heck, even my automated del.icio.us posts don’t happen on a daily basis, which means I’m not even finding fun sites to bookmark or articles to read on a daily basis.

I have been playing around with QRCodes this morning. They’re 2-dimensional barcodes that are apparently really big in Japan these days. I installed a reader on my phone (which is stupid, and can’t properly decode images that I take pictures of unless they’re 1024×768 and saved to the phone memory instead of to my sd card), and installed a plugin on the site to auto-generate the images. They look like this:

QRCode for this post

And hopefully that image actually linked properly; WordPress isn’t showing it in the preview, so who knows?

I don’t know if these things will continue being cool, or if it’s a flash-in-the-pan sort of thing. But it was easy to set up, so I’m not going to complain.

Yay, vacation!

So I’m on vacation this week. Despite Heather’s urgings, I never really had any concrete plans for this week; my entire purpose for this vacation was to (a) use up my remaining vacation time from last year before it expired at the end of June, and (b) to not have to go to work for a week.
Which, aside from my wedding and honeymoon, is what 90% of my vacations have been like since I started living somewhere other than my parents’ house. I don’t really need to go to another city (or state, country, etc) to have a good time: I’ve been working full-time since I was sixteen; just not having to be somewhere between certain hours, not having specific tasks that are expected to be completed by me, is enough. I like sleeping late (although I haven’t been able to do that yet this week, but it’s still just Monday), I like deciding what to do for myself for the entire day, not just fror the time period between 7 to 10 at night (between the end of dinner and bed time). If I want to sleep late, have an early lunch, and then work on my ren faire outfit from noon until 6 or 7 in the evening (something I may very well do tomorrow), I can. Not having to wake up before 7 AM, not having to be in the office until 5:00, not having to scrape through my email to track down people violating our company’s network TOS: that in and of itself is a vacation.
Now, truth be told, I’m not averse to going other places and having fun somewhere that isn’t my usual stomping ground. Far from it: I’ve been to two other continents, and close to 25% of the states in this country. I just have to kinda build up to it. To steal a (para)phrase from one of my favorite webcomic artists, I’m like a starving man, and having too much vacation too fast would result in me dying from the shock. Now, I don’t think there’s a product called “intravenous vacation”, so I’ll just have to take it slowly, work up from “not go to work for a week” right now, to eventually “go to Hawaii and relax on the beach for 2 weeks.”
More about the ren faire costume later this week, if I remember.

Coffee, mermaids, and boobs

The Starbucks logo on their new cups
It seems Starbucks has slightly un-Bowdlerized their logo, at least on their new cups. A turn for the better, or just temporary until the religious right notices and starts their newest letter-writing campaign?

Update: Looks like it’s actually their original mermaid logo from back in the 70s, just with longer hair draping from the shoulders, to hide the nipples. ‘Cause nipples are evil, ya know.

Post more often, eh? Well, here’s a three-fer.

I decided yesterday that I needed more delineation between work and home, so I set up an additional user on my iBook. Now, when I’m at work, I can log in as “pleonard”, and when I’m at home, I can log in as “devlogic”.

The trouble is, there’s a lot of files that I think I need access to in both accounts. And sorting through everything is kind of a pain in the neck.

It’s only been a day or so (and I’ve got a cold, so I’m actually moving more slowly than usual), but I think that by and large I’ve got most of it sorted out. I still have to wade through the “Documents” folder, as well as my local source code repository (I should really set up a SVN repository for that).

I found out how to share an iTunes library between both accounts (because I do listen to music at work, and don’t want to limit myself to only what fits on my new iPod touch). I took those directions one step further, though, and chgrp’d the whole directory to “staff” (since both accounts are administrator accounts, that should work), and chmod’d the whole mess g+w as well, so that I can update tags and add new stuff from both accounts.

All of the old iPhoto library moved across to the new username, and I copied all of the ssh settings, because I don’t want to keep track of two separate private keys. My old terminal custom settings decided not to agree with what I wanted, but I decided that the “Pro” profile looked better anyway, so that was a pretty easy adaptation to make.

Ecto moved entirely over to the “home” account, since I shouldn’t be blogging while I’m at work anyway, and since NetNewsWire syncs with NewsGator online, it was really easy to get that working on both accounts as well.

Adium was a bit of a decision to make, because having it in two places means I’ll have two different accounts to sort through if I ever want to search through my message logs. I went ahead & copied everything I had as of Friday into both the “home” and “work” accounts, and I think I’ll just deal with the disparity. That, and the fact that I don’t really chat that much when I’m at home (at least, I haven’t for a good long while). I did delete my work-related IM accounts from the “home” Adium’s settings, though; no sense in tempting myself.

I’m not, however, looking forward to getting my calendar working properly. I think I’ll start by looking for a caldav solution; that way I can just sync both accounts (and the multiple calendars on each) via the calendar server, so updates from either end should show up on both calendars.

Hopefully, when I finally have enough to buy a new MacBook, I’ll have gotten used to this, and will be able to transition well enough without too much hassle. So far, I’m really liking it. I don’t use my bluetooth devices at home (they’re locked in my desk at work when I’m not there), and SynergyKM, while cool, isn’t much use when I don’t actually sit at my workstation. That, and switching between its profiles was tedious, because I’d frequently forget and then start wondering why it wasn’t working.

In other news, I have a beard again. It’s not out of some desire to have one, just more that I’ve been too lazy (or otherwise occupied) to shave. I’m trying to decide if I want to keep it around. I’m pretty sure Heather doesn’t like it, but I remember liking the way the beard made my face look back before I shaved it off a few years ago. Plus there’s the fact that I’m (still) overweight, and the beard draws attention away from my developing double-chin. Oh, well.

I made Pad Thai on Thursday evening. It turned out very good, although the soup that I made to go with it ended up nigh-inedible. Saltier than those liquorices that are on my desk at the office, and not really what I was going for at all. I’ll have to keep looking, because I know I can find a good recipe for a coconut curry soup that doesn’t taste like ass. Anyway, the Pad Thai was very good, although I think next time I’ll just take a few extra minutes to make each portion separately, rather than both at once. It took a little too long to make two servings at once, and the noodles turned out mushier than I like. They were also clumping together pretty badly. But with some (i.e., a lot) extra paprika, it was pretty close to some of the restaurant pad thais that I’ve had in the past. Definitely more flavorful than what I get at Java Noodles, but a lot of work. I think the more often I make it, the more seasoned my wok will get, though, so that’s a big argument in its favor. But fish sauce is both expensive and pretty horrid-smelling, so I may try to find another ingredient to take its place. I’ve got enough tamarind paste to last me until next year, though; one block of tamarind pulp makes a LOT of paste; I filled up a full quart mason jar, and that’s after I pulled half of a cup out to make the pad thai sauce. No pictures of anything, unfortunately. But that’s a good thing; I neglected to clean the kitchen before I started cooking, so it looked like a restaurant supply store had collided with a compost heap by the time I was done. It took 2 loads in the dishwasher plus about an hour of hand-washing before things looked reasonable again.

Too much time on my hands

links for 2008-03-25

links for 2008-03-24