You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

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We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

I found the following video on Youtube.

It’s been a long belief that yelling, screaming, and sometimes hitting actually do something to make a computer work better. I’m in the belief that the more you know about computers the more true you find the previous sentence. Most people just think that you are nuts or crazy, however watching the video you can now see there is an effect. For those wondering though, if you didn’t save your document and your whole computer crashes, no amount of screaming or brutal violence against the computer is going to bring the information back.

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.

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I’m bored.  Thought I would share.   Have a funny cat video:

Picture from here

Yesterday on the radio they were ranking which was the most important moments in history in which you can remember what you were doing. I found the link to the quiz they were using, which was originally put up by Slate. While I do rememebr some of the events, others seem to go by without notice. I wanted to comment on the moments that happened within my lifetime. At least it will give my future son an idea of what I thought about the events that we consider important in history. This list is not in order of importance, it’s just the descending order in the slate list.

Berlin Wall comes tumbling down – I can’t say I truly remember the actual day the Berlin Wall fell down. It was a vague thing, something that was expected for awhile that was built up over time. I could be wrong on that. The one thing I thought was kind of cool about this was the fact that at Higbee’s you could purchase pieces of the Berlin Wall in a sack. These days that type of action would make me immensely sad, it’s a sign of America’s need to profit off of an event. In retrospect how did we know that they were pieces of the actual wall?

Mount St. Helens Erupts – Though I was four I remember this. I also remember President Carter on TV so I have a good young memory. This was a scary thing to me. I think I had this thought that volcano’s didn’t exist any more, that they were something that was from the time of dinosaurs. That it could happen in real life was very scary to me. I’m sure I watched this at my grandmother’s house on her floor model console TV.

Katrina Hits New Orleans – For Hurrican Katrina Xie and I were at home, we were playing SWG and attempting to get a hold of our friend that lived in New Orleans. We managed a day or so later to get a hold of him and post a picture of his house. It was scary knowing someone that was going through the disaster. We almost went down to help but didn’t. The evacuations and such were keeping people at bay we didn’t know when to go or what to do. We both wish we had gone, but that time has now passed. We are left with what we did do.

Miracle On Ice – Ok this happened while I was alive, but I remember nothing about it.

John Lennon Shot – This is another one of those where I was alive, but I don’t remember it.

Elvis Presley Dies at 42 – I definitely don’t remember this one since I was only one year old.

San Francisco World Series Earthquake – If I had followed sports ever in my life I think I would have paid more attention to this. I do remember the earthquake and wondered if California was going to fall into the Ocean. If this was the proverbial big one. I’m influenced in that thinking because of Superman II.

Princess Diana Dies – I remember this. I also wsan’t sure what the big deal was. I know one of my uncles cried because of this. To many people Diana was the last true royalty. This was probably because she was the modern storybook princess.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident – Once again, I was too young and do not remember this one.

Reagan Shot – We heard about this when I was at school. Since it was a private christian school we all had a prayer session for the president. Reagan was like a god to me back then, the invulnerable most powerful man. This re-affirmed that when he survived, but I was on shaky ground at first. I was young and scared for the life of our president. To this day I still personally think he was one of four greatest presidents of the last one hundred years.

Shuttle Challenger Explodes – I was in school again when this happened. It was a big media event with the first school teacher going up with the shuttle. This was the event that shocked the nation. We got out of school early that day and I do remember being upset. For what seemed to be weeks they showed that footage on the news.

JFK Jr. Dies in a Plane Crash – I’m not sure why this made the list. I remember it, and I was sad in the abstract, but it didn’t really pull at my heart strings. Around the same time I remember John Denver dying – I think the guy that who sang with Kermit the frog being gone affected me more.

Shuttle Columbia Disintegrates on Re-entry – I woke up early that day and was watching TV in the family room in the Oregon house. I was shocked and hurt when I saw this. I started crying. I thought this was the worst disaster that I had witnessed since it would hurt human’s getting back to the stars which I felt was our future. I woke up Xie and told her, she didn’t understand why I was upset. I just was. This event truly affected me.

9/11 Attacks – I was driving to work at Symantec on the beltway and a radio announcer talked about plane hitting the trade center. I’m not sure if the second plane had hit or not at that point. I thought it was some weird joke by the disc jockey’s. It turned out it wasn’t. When I arrived at work ewe were told that if it was too much for us, then we could return home (paid). I went on with my day following events online. I called Griffaw and Xie at home to turn on the TV at home to see what was happening. We kept in contact through out the day via IM. Griffaw didn’t move form that TV for four days watching everything as it unfolded. I’ll leave my own political comments about this time out of this post.

Asian Tsunami – We didn’t watch a lot of news at this time. I was aware of the event and read about it online, but it wasn’t an in your face major thing for me.

Dale Earnhardt Dies at Daytona – Really? I don’t know why this made the list. I don’t know where I was or even if I cared at all. I don’t follow NASCAR so someone dying in a car crash is a risk that I was aware that drivers took.

There is one more I would like to do that isn’t on that list:

Kurt Cobain’s Death – I didn’t watch MTV so I wasn’t immediately informed of Kurt Cobain’s death. At this time period I didn’t even like Nirvana’s music (they are one of my favorites now). I was one of those kids the next day mocking the other kids that were crying. I understand this now though. Some people may disagree but in a way Cobain was a Lennon for our generation. A voice that spoke out and said what we were feeling. Someone who we could identify with. I have never had a living musician that I felt that way about, but I understand why everyone else was upset. Wisdom is granted with age.

If you don’t see all the video links make sure you view this a creeva.com.

My mother loves to gossip.  She loves to spread gossip.  She loves to receive gossip.  If you are familar with the musical “The Music Man” at all she is one of the “Pick A little, Talk A Little Women”

She would go to the community pool under the pretext of watching my sisters swim. If however there was no one to gossip with she would pack up and either take my sisters home, or get someone else to watch them. I’m sure my mother misses the hey day of the beauty parlor where all the women sat around and gossiped. I’m sure in some areas these still exist, but not really in her neck of the woods. Besides she felt superior becuase she had “her” beautician that she went to.

Her beautician always made sure that her hair came out with that blond color that she was born with. All those pictures I’ve posted of her as a toddler on up that have dark hair? Well I guess my mother believes that those are all bad exposures since she swears the blond she has now is her natural color. Ironically it’s because of her and the lies about her hair color that I refuse to ever dye my hair to hide my gray. I’m not going to tell people my hair is a certain way. Granted I’ve dyed my hair black for a costume, I’ve also done purple and blue – heaven help those that thought those colors were natural. I actually have my mother’s native hair color, I’m just not in denial.

My mother would love to gossip. She would spend hours on the phone talking to friends about who was having marriage issues, who was having works issue, who bought something new, and who was stuck with something old. If she didn’t have any friends at a given time she would either try to get me involved (I never had an interest so I’m sure she bored of me) or she would enlist my grandmother (who had the same enthusiasm as I did).

You would think she would like to discuss something of interest, but the most poignant she ever got to real life events was what new Longaberger baskets were coming out or discussions about Dr. Phil and Oprah – it seems to her these are the messiahs of the new world order. Who knew?

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 Here

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One of my former band directors (and current Alumni Director), sent me this video.  I thought I would share.

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I know that I’m a boy and I should have liked high action comics with super heroes and big explosions.  Somehow until I was in my teenage years officially I liked Archie Comics the best.  I’m not going not say that I identified with Archie or anyone else in the comics, I just found them wildly entertaining.  I literally had hundreds of Archie comics (they were dirt cheap at the flea market compared to the action comics that cost 5 times as much).  I had a ton of the digests and “double digests”, though I can say when I see the occasional double digest these days at the super market aisle I am chagrined that it is the size of the old single digest.   What is the single digest a one sheet strip now?   I also can not tell you the last time I saw and actual Archie comic sold in a new comic books rack, though I don’t look that closely these days.

The age old debate that is probably older then Ginger versus Maryanne is Betty or Veronica.  I’m a Betty fan all the way (and Maryanne also).   The down home girl is the one for me in these scenarios.  In 1990 Archie was still still trying to decide between Betty and Veronica in a made for TV movie  Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again that takes place fifteen years after high school.  I can say even though I was fourteen when it came out I was excited and watched it when it came out.  I video taped it and watched it again and again.   This reminds me I need to hunt down a copy of that now.

Enjoy a couple clips from the TV movie:

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I received an interesting work email today.   While I can not share with the contents of said e-mail, what I can say is the person writing it wasn’t familiar with certain technologies enough to write about them authoritatively.  It seems some people don’t “realize” the “effect” that using quotation “marks” can have on your writing when it is “read” by someone else.

Like the Flickr photo from above:

“Quality” accessories you can afford!!

Reads much different then:

Quality accessories you can afford.

You have a wink wink nudge nudge connotation.   I’m sure we would never thought the president was misinformed if he had said we were “looking” for “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.  I can say you can have fun with this though.

A Ford is a “reliable” car.

I’m a “serial killer” and I’m about to “dismember” you.

“I’m” a “moron” with little “pronunciation” experience, but I’m “getting” better at “it”.

Purchase it at Amazon

I know, I’m a little bit behind the times finishing Kingdom Hearts 2 today.   I finished the first one a few years ago, and while I’ve chomped at the bit to play this one, I held off.  I was under the impression that I was going t finish that horrendous GBA card game version (which I bought when it was originally released).   I however couldn’t stand the card game play, to those that enjoy that type of game, more power to you.

Kingdom Hearts 2 was as good as the original one, an engaging and interesting story.  My only issue is that the game is essentially a button masher.   Very little strategy or difficulty on normal, and I’m in the vein that a game shouldn’t be on hard just to have a challenge, so I don’t think I’ll go back any time soon and play it on difficult just to get an elusive challenge.  I didn’t “die” until the world, I my most used summons was chicken little and I only summoned him 4 times, I finished 84% of Jimminy’s Journal, my most used form was Valor which I used 24 times, and I healed my companions 21 times.   The game took me about 36-37 hours, I think this game will go down as one of the classics for me.  This game while a button a masher has some of hte best controls I’ve run across in a video game in a long time.  If you haven’t played I highly recommend it.

Opening Cinematics

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I’m on the video game hunt again.  This time for Ikaruga for either the Gamecube or Dreamcast system.  I want the original packaging – manual is optional but completely preferred.   Until I find it enjoy some Youtube clips:

I have 10 Evernote invites, my crossposting has made it so I’ve jumped through hoops across multiple networks giving out my last bunch.  So here is what you have to do – you have to go to creeva.com and post a comment on this thread there.  The URL is http://creeva.com/2008/06/10/10-evernote-invites-available/

Make sure you include your real e-mail address in the proper field (which is hidden and I won’t share) so I have an address I can send the invite to.  The first 10 people get invites.   You don’t have to leave your e-mail address in the comment body.

Here is a video overview of Evernote:

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Today I read a comment on slashdot that inspired me to write on this subject.  The comment was written on the Secret History of Star Wars article and was given by Omestes and was as follows:

Oh god, the Nerd/Dork/Geek argument. We always went with nerds being unwashed, antisocial geniuses who small vaguely like cheese, and somehow manage to reference Yoda, and differential equations in every utterance. Dorks are just like nerds, but dumber. And geeks are the swashbuckling generalists who get all the chicks (er…) because they have some modicum of social skills, while still knowing their swallows apart.

By your jargon though, there still is a deep relation between nerds and dorks, since both of them are “systems” people. D&D is just another complex system to play with, just like math, code, and circuits. As is, oddly, the various nerd friendly mythologies. Both groups, by your classification, are equally likely to get the chicks… Not very. Neither math nor D&D impress many of the chicks I know.

So where does arguing over the semantics of nerdery put one?

Now this has been written about hundreds of times (if you don’t believe check google), but wanted to stick my two cents into this discussion.   Let’s go over my own defintions:

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Dork: A dork is an invidual that has an interest in something in so far that they are singled out and people believe because of some title given to them they are thought to be an expert.  In all actuality they are no better then a lay person and has the largest social anxieties and problems dealing with others.   They normally think they are smarter then they are, but yet normally lack in depth knowledge to move them up the dork/nerd/geek ladder.

However there is a missing factor to this definition, that is the fact that a dork is more likely to be the one that non dorks/nerds/geeks are most comfortable around.   They are the ones that come off lovable – like when your friends or significant other says “You big dork”.   While in some terms dork is an insult, when you properly it is definitely the least offensive to the general population at large.

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Nerd: Nerds are the individuals that have an interest in things the goes so far that not only do they have to prove tehy are better then everyone on the subject of interest, they also are so intensely interested in there area of focus that social situations really don’t bother them.   It’s a waste of time for them.  They don’t know why you don’t want to dig into replicating a hologram in your microwave with tin foil and baking soda, which they do daily for amusement.

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Geek: Geeks usually can deal with society the best, but completely zone out similar to nerds to nerds, but are normally capable of human relationships, though they took the hologram in the microwave and made a short film out of it to upload to youtube.   They are interested in the obscure and bringing it into fruition.   Normally geeks wear the term geek on themselves with a badge of honor.

Me and my grandparents – Years Ago (Years and Years)

I can say in certain areas I’m all three, but I’m mostly a geek.   I’m normally quite knowledgable in the things I have extreme interest in, and i’m capable of zoning out.  Most of my family considers me a nerd when it comes to social networks (and I really am when it comes to crossposting).  When it comes to certain items and gadgets I’m definetly a dork trying to be a geek.

Wait what am I saying I was a pimp, I don’t know why I’m sticking myself into any of these groups.  You don’t believe me?  Behold Creeva with a mullet (once again many years ago):

So which do you identify with and what is your definitions?

So I was leaving for a smoke break and I had my headphones in, I just listened to a TWIT episode 133 which featured Jonathan Coulton the musician who released the song “Code Monkey” back in 2006. I happened to have it on my N810 and I was just going to get up for a smoke break.   I started the song and reaction hit me, I almost starting singing it out loud – not just out loud, I was going to sing it very loudly.   I caught myself.   I had the feeling where your vocal codes start to open up and your ready to let a sound loose, well I didn’t hear it by I would assume I probably let loose a gurgle out of throat, it may have been too far gone down the pipeline to shut it off completely without leakage.

Now I’m sure Xie is reading this slightly amused, to finish off the picture I on the way out of the building I was doing my little dance type walk.   I’m not a teeny bopper anymore (well compared to most people here I’m sure I seem that way), but a guy in his thirties doing a jerky little head bopping dance while he’s walking out of the office is sure to garner some attention.   So far though no one has said anything.

The best thing I can offer you is to not listen to “Code Monkey” in your office.   I do suggest you check out Jonathan’s site for more of his great music though.   I’ll leave you with the “Code Monkey” WoW music video.

For those curious which wordpress plugin’s I use on creeva.com, I thought I would post my plugin page for you to check out.

Enjoy:

Add Meta Tags	1.6	Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible. Please read the tips and all other info provided at the configuration panel. By George Notaras.
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button	.9.1	Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts using any service and browser. [Settings] By MicroPat.
Admin Big Width	1.0	enlarge your wordpress administration. By XoraX.
Admin Management Xtended	1.0.1	Adds AJAX-driven options to some admin management pages with CMS-known functions like toggling post/page visibility without having to open the edit screens, plus changing page order with drag’n’drop. By Oliver Schlöbe.
AJAXed WordPress	1.19.2	A plugin that incorporates the best AJAX WordPress features and wrap them in a single framework–including such features as inline posts and comments, the ability to paginate posts, submit comments, thread comments, edit comments and posts inline. The Admin panel is under presentation tab. Need Help? Visit the Official AWP support thread or try reading the full documentation. By Aaron Harun.
Akismet	2.1.5	Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One Adsense and YPN	1.62	Inserts Adsense or YPN code in to your blog posts. Ad position can be random or pre-defined. By linewbie.
All in One SEO Pack	1.4.6.8	Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose.
Berri Technorati Reactions on Dashboard	2.0	Shows on the Dashboard the Technorati Reactions of your blog. Widget for the main admin page. By Alberto Varela.
Blog Metrics	1.0	Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget! By Joost de Valk.
Brian’s Threaded Comments	1.5.18	This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form. By Brian Meidell.
Chunk Urls for WordPress	2.0	This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site. By whoo.
Clean Options	Beta 0.9.6	finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table By Mittineague.
Comments number Restore	1.0	Hyper Cache is an extremely aggressive cache for WordPress. By Satollo.
Dashboard: Draft Posts	1.0.2	Displays draft posts on your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard. By Viper007Bond.
Dashboard Editor	1.1	Allows you to customise the dashboard. By Aaron Harun.
Dashboard Widget Manager	1.3.0	Greatly enhances your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard by allowing widget re-ordering and storage of preferences on a per-user basis. By Viper007Bond.
Different Posts Per Page	1.7.1	Show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page. By MaxBlogPress.
DJ EmailPublish	1.5	Publish your article to other blog by email. Visit Options/Email Publish after activation of the plugin. By Der-Johng Sun.
Enforce www. Preference	1.3	Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www. By Mark Jaquith.
Facebook Comments	0.25	Copies comments from your imported Facebook Notes back into your blog entries. Took Thomas Albright’s version (http://thomasalbright.info/index.php/2007/05/27/thomasalbrightinfo-facebook) and then edited by James Low (http://jameslow.com). Made to work with Feedburner feeds by Aaron Harp (http://www.aaronharp.com) By Adam Hill.
Facebook Dashboard Widget	0.9	Display your friends latest status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Make sure you enter your feed details on the options page. By Chris Chrisostomou.
FeedBurner FeedSmith	2.3.1	Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Flickr comment Importer	0.1	Add Flickr comments to your blog posts. Configuration Page By Donncha O Caoimh.
Flickr Manager	2.0.2	Handles uploading, modifying images on Flickr, and insertion into posts. By Trent Gardner.
Flickr Photo Gallery	0.93.2	This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts. Configure… By Silas Partners (Joe Tan).
Fluency Admin	1.1	WordPress 2.5+ only. A rethink of the WordPress admin interface giving it a slightly more modern application-esque feel, inspired by Steve Smith’s Tiger Admin. Firefox, Safari and IE8 only. IE7 soon. By Dean Robinson.
Forgot the Category	0.2.1	Hate forgetting to select a category when you write a new post? I know I do. This plugin won’t let you. By Dan Coulter.
Front Page Excluded Categories	1.1.1	This version uses a comma separated list of *excluded* category ids. By Sean O’Steen.
Genki Youtube Comments	1.2	Insert YouTube comments into your post’s comment By Genkisan.
Google XML Sitemaps	3.0.3.3	This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.
Instant Upgrade	0.2	Upgrade your WordPress-Installation with one simple click (Go to Manage » Instant Upgrade) By Alex Günsche.
LiveJournal Comments	1.0.3	This plugin displayes a number of comments in posts crossposted to LiveJournal. You can see how if works here. By Alexander Bishop.
LiveJournal Crossposter	2.0.5	Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog. Editing or deleting a post will be replicated as well. Original plugin by Evan Broder. By Arseniy Ivanov.
Live Space Sync	1.01	A Live Spaces rpc plug-in By William, priv.
Maintenance Mode	3.2	Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options ? Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.
Meet your commenters	0.9	When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. By Alberto Varela.
MySpace Crossposter	2.0a	A plugin that enables automatic crossposting from WordPress to MySpace. By Roderick Russell.
No Flash Uploader	1.0	Disables the Flash Uploader of 2.5 By Dion Hulse.
NoFollow Free	1.5.5	Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget. By Michele Marcucci.
Official StatCounter Plugin	1.0	Adds the StatCounter tracking code to your blog. After uploading this plugin click ‘Activate’ (to the right) and then afterwards you must visit the options page and enter your StatCounter Project Info to enable logging. By Aodhan Cullen.
Ping.fm Notifier	1.0	A plugin that send a notification to your Ping.fm space after you publish your post. By Creeva.
Plugin Central	1.11	WordPress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
Postie	1.1.1	Signifigantly upgrades the posting by mail features of Word Press (See Quick Readme) By Dirk Elmendorf.
Post Template	2.1.3	A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. When activated, you can check your new template management page and the option page. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale. By Vincent Prat.
Reveal IDs for WP Admin 2.5	0.7.5	Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See Options Page for options and information. By Oliver Schlöbe.
Routes	2.1.6	Adds route-based geographical information to your blog. By Jennifer Hodgdon, Poplar ProductivityWare.
Script Compressor	1.3.1	This plugin compresses javascript files and css files. By Regen.
SEO Friendly Images	1.11	Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well. By Vladimir Prelovac.
SezWho	WP2.1	A plugin that improves community engagement by showing universal web-wide profiles for participants and by empowering the community to rate comments and post. You need a key to use this service. Get your key at SezWho. By SezWho.
SimpleLife	1.2	SimpleLife is a fully configurable simplepie based plugin to produce a lifestream on your wordpress powered blog. Makes use of the excellent SimplePie. Either use the widget or place <?php simplelife(); ?> in a page template. By Kieran Delaney.
Simple Tags	1.5.7	Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.
Social Homes widget	2.2	Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons. Current services include del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Twitter, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Zooomr, Utterz, StumbleUpon, Digg, LiveJournal, MySpace, Jaiku, Pownce, VIRB°, and FriendFeed. By Elie Zananiri.
Twitter Tools	1.2b1	A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Configure your settings here. By Alex King.
Twitter Widget Pro	1.1.4	A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and link parsing, feeds that include friends or just one user, and can even display profile images for the users. Requires PHP5. By Aaron D. Campbell.
VideoWarrior	1.0.3	Yet another plugin to include Videos from Youtube and Google Video By Sixtus.
WordPress.com Stats	1.2.1	Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup	2.1.5	On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage ? Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.
WordPress PDA & iPhone	1.2.1	This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser. By Imthiaz Rafiq.
WordPress Reports	0.87	Generates reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner data By Joe Tan.
WP-PageNavi	2.30	Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-Print	2.30	Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-ServerInfo	1.30	Display your host’s server PHP and MYSQL information (integrated into WordPress Admin Style) on your WordPress dashboard. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-SnapAvatar	1.1	This plugin puts the commentor’s website screenshot where there is no gravatar. By Neacsu Alexandru.
WP-SpamFree	1.8.3	An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By Scott Allen, aka WebGeek.
WP Contact Form III	1.4.1	WP Contact Form III is a simple drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. Go to Options -> ContactForm III to configure. Challenge (antispam) mod by Doug Karr. Original script by Ryan Duff By Kristin K. Wangen.
WP Limit Posts Automatically	0.7	Limit your posts automatically. This way you don’t need the use of the more tag. You can limit posts by letter, word or paragraph and apply it to home, categories, archive and search. By Jens Törnell.
WP Security Scan	2.2.64	Perform security scan of WordPress installation. By Michael Torbert.
WP Super Cache	0.6.4	Very fast caching module for WordPress. Once enabled, you must enable the cache. Based on WP-Cache by Ricardo Galli Granada. By Donncha O Caoimh.
Xanga Cross Post	0.6	Cross post your blog entries to a Xanga account By Joe Tan.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/what-wordpress-plugins-do-i-use/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 15:02:45 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2789

Why is there a cat pictured in this article?  Did he damage the N810?  No, I just didn’t want to use the stock N810 image again.   Moving on.  Last night was more of a bust then a boom for me.    I had some specific goals in mind and I can’t say I really accomplished them.

The first goal I had was to attempt to upload pictures directly to flickr.  Doing some hunting I found the latest revision of maemo-publishr which supports uploading to flickr and to picasa.   I thought great, this is exactly what I need.  They even have a video demo.

I can say that it didn’t work as well as I had hoped.   The applications was extremely slow before i imported pictures from my external memory card and worse after pictures were actually involved.   I gave up on the application after failing to figure out how to intuitively upload (no I didn’t watch the video at that time, I saw it afterwards to share with you).   I know maemo-wordpy can upload to flickr and I am using that, but I want somethign that handles more bulk uploading so the hunt for that continues.

Before I get onto my next bad experience, let’s move onto a good one.   Using my N810 as my lifeline to my online life, I needed it to integrate with my other online lifeline, email.   After going through and reading reviews I knew better then to use the built in e-mail application.   I knew that if I wanted to use IMAP from my gmail account I had a  choice between Modest and Claws Mail.   Xie had tried out Modest on her N810 when it came in, it had caused memory issues and she stopped using it and doesn’t plan on doing IMAP.   I knew because of that Modest was out.

So Claws Mail it was, after a couple configuration I did get Claws up and working.   It is a bit slow, but I knew that going in, especially using IMAP.   At least I can cache my email instead of holding my full 2 GB e-mail archive on my N810.   Sending is fine.  Overall as an e-mail application I’m quite happy with it.   That’s pretty impressive since the only other e-mail applications I’m really happy with is Outlook and the Gmail web interface.

Claws-Mail screenshot from their web site

Now we’re back to one of the issues I wrote about yesterday, pod catching.   I found out that while I couldn’t activate the function menu in Canola that I could manually hold down the function key and hit the key I wanted at the same time (shift works the same way for these poorly written applications).  With this method I could enter in my podcasts feed and download them directly on to my N810 – goodbye slow memory hog gPodder.   At this point I uninstaleld gPodder and decide that Canola was going to be my choice going forward.

I played more with Canola and I wasn’t aware of the kinetic scrolling.  I sat there like a monkey with the stylus trying to scroll and was extremely frustrated.  I finally figured it out.   I exited it and rebooted after a different application seemed to lock up my N810 – I think it was the maemo-publishr previously mentioned.   When I came back Canola started and said loading for like 3 minutes and when it did load no icons were visible and it couldn’t do anything.   I uninstalled Canola and reinstalled Canola, same behavior.   From their repository I saw an installation clean up utility.  I installed that and it did clean it up.  I reinstalled it and it’s working again.   Unfortunately I need to spend 30 minutes again entering in  all of my podcast URL’s, grrrrrrrrrrr.   Benefit is that Canola can automatically scrobble to last.fm with a plugin.   The plugin is a bit over anticipating though, it scrobbled two podcasts that I haven’t listened to yet.   I have a feeling Canola is going to be a love/hate relationship.

Finally I rounded out the night loading Doom on my N810. I was surprised that we don’t need to load wad files for these cross platform ports, and the game controlled a little bit Metroid Prime-ish, but it’s Doom and it works.   Ironically it works better then it did on the 386 25mhz computer that I first played doom on.

So for day 2′s report I leave you with this youtube video someone did of Doom on the N810.

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