Category: Geek Love

  • Podcasts I’m Listening to in 2014

    I’ve both added and dropped some podcasts since last time around. Ever since I started using Doggcatcher on my cellphone I’ve been able to listen to more podcasts because, even without the pitch distortion my sandisk had, it plays the content a lot faster. Where I’m listing the same podcast as last year I may…

  • Exploring btrfs for backups Part 1

    Recently I once again came across an article about the benefits of the btrfs Linux file system. Last time I’d come across it, it was still in alpha or beta, and I also didn’t understand why I would want to use it. However, the most I’ve learned about the fragility of our modern storage systems,…

  • Websites and Lost Culture

    I had something of an obsession with preserving history. It’s why I am constantly using photography to document my life. (And was doing so back when we had to use expensive film) A few months ago I wrote about how emulation can help us preserve our culture when it comes to video games. We’re in…

  • Podcasts I’m Listening to 2013

    I’ve cut back a lot because I have less time to listen to podcasts. Here are the ones I have now:   Video Games Giant Bombcast – This is a HILARIOUS podcast that is mostly about video games.  I say it’s mostly about video games because these guys often will go off on random tangents…

  • When Twitter is Awesome

    The thing I like the most about Twitter is the ability to interact with creatives in real time.  In the past you had to write a letter to a writer, artist, musician, etc and hope that, maybe, they’d actually read it and that, maybe, they’d feel compelled to reply with something more than boilerplate.  I…

  • Trying out VMWare Player after nearly a decade

    Nearly a year ago I did a comparison of Virtualbox and Red Hat’s virt-manager.  Although I was pretty happy with virt-manager, I’ve had to continue using Virtualbox because so far virt-manager isn’t able to do a bridged ethernet connection without having to ditch NetworkManager and/or do some weird stuff.  I’d given up on VMWare a…

  • December 2012 Games Report

    Saint’s Row the Third (14 hrs):  I got a lot of video games for my birthday and Christmas (mostly on Steam).  So I wanted to finish up the last narrative game I had started before playing those games.  I played a few missions in Saint’s Row The Third.  As I had surmised before, the loose…

  • How Best to Rip and Manage Your Own (legally purchased) DVDs to create your own Netflix Instant

    I had two reasons for starting this project: 1) my wife and I like to collect Disney movies from our youth.  These movies are most likely to be watched by kids and kids are likely to damage DVDs.  I’ve heard lots of anecdotes on the net from parents who are on their fourth purchase of…

  • What I’ve Been Up To Comics-Wise

    Dan and I started a website called Comic POW! Where each week we go over the best comics of that week.  It’s been going for approximately 3 months and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.  The main feature is posted every Friday, but we occasionally have content on other days.  I’ve also started writing…

  • Oracle’s Virtualbox vs Red Hat’s Virtual Machine Manager

    I’ve been using Virtualbox for a long time to run virtual machines when I want to check out other distros before I install them on one of my computers or to review them.  It’s MOSTLY open source, although some of the key parts like USB 2.0 are free to use, but not open source.  So…

  • A New Copyright Exception Should Be Considered

    In the past week I’ve listened to the most recent episodes of The Commandline Podcast and The Giant Bombcast. The former was a discussion of those who willingly violate copyright law as a comparison to those who violated the Volstead Act and 18th Amendment to the US constitution both of which made it illegal to…

  • Incredulity and Learning in Las Vegas

    It’s my second time in Vegas and I definitely think that the best way to first experience Vegas is arriving at night, as I did this time.  The city really looks wrong and ugly during the day.  Like a bar where they need to keep the lights dim so you’re 100% sure what that person…

  • Replacing the File/Print Server

    A few years ago I heard about the Fit-PC. It was a computer that was the size of a stack of two or three CD jewel cases running Ubuntu. This was pretty cool, but, most importantly, it only used 15 watts of electricity when under highest load. At first I entertained using it to replace…

  • Automatically Posting your Top 3 Artists from Last.fm onto Twitter (with Python!)

    I wrote this code a while back because a website that does the same thing seemed to miss my posts every other week.  So I figured I’d write my own in python to do the same thing to me.  Then I just put it into a cron job to automatically run it every Sunday.  I’m…

  • Getting my new Sandisk Sansa Fuze to work with gPodder

    So, a while back I caved and got an iPod shuffle.  While it worked well at first, over the last year it has been a constant pain in my butt.  All I want to do is use gPodder to get my podcasts and listen to them on the way to work and at the gym.…