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Archive for February, 2010

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-28

28 Feb
 
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Prize is coming home

26 Feb

It has been almost exactly one year since I got to see Prize for the first time in 12+ years. Since then, I’ve been out to visit Prize a few times. Last time she even nickered at me.

Last weekend, I met Gena, Prize’s current owner, and her Mom, Rody. (I’ve met Rody several times.) They are great people and have such love for Prize. They met me at the Isis’ and Kasane’s barn to see what it’s like there. Both Gena and Rody were impressed and really liked the barn and the people. I also really like them both.

This is where it turns into a fairy tale (Gena’s words). Gena and Rody are blessing me by giving me Prize. (It is through the generosity of Jon and Chris at the barn that this is even possible.) Prize will most likely arrive this weekend. I know how hard it is giving up Prize. I cried for weeks and never got over feeling guilty about having to sell Prize to pay for back board. (Yay bad post-college financial management! Not.)

I am almost in tears thinking about having Prize back home. The Original Bay Wonder Mare home with the other two Bay Wonder Mares. (How odd is it that since Prize, I have had only owned bay mares with three white socks?)

I know how difficult it is for Gena and Rody and I will do everything I can to take care of this grand old mare. She will have love and lessons with people discovering horses for the first time. And lots of pampering.

 
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Posted in Horses

 

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-21

21 Feb
  • Had an excellent ride yesterday. Soft and light and we finally figure out how to correct dropping the shoulder in corners. #
  • Computer Engineer Barbie coming soon to a toy store near you.. http://digg.com/d31IroD #
  • RT @bookviewcafe: Today's Special from Judith Tarr: – "Widdershins" – read it for free at http://www.bookviewcafe.com #
  • RT @dancinghorse: RT @bookviewcafe On the BVC blog: Judith Tarr's Horseblog – http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/ "How to Groom a Horse" #
  • RT @tweetmeme Minor Nokia N900 Firmware Update 3.2010.02-8.002 Now Available For Download http://bit.ly/9vsRgh #
  • Head is pounding today. Anyone know any good home remedies for sinus/migraine headaches that I can do at work? (No nettie pot or steam.) #
  • New iMac is doing well, so far. Haven't gotten all of my programs installed. Not a significant boost from the old system. #
  • Has anyone played with the Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f/1.4 lens? http://tinyurl.com/y9s3tt2 #
  • Judith Tarr has two novels back in print: Ars Magica and Wind in Cairo. Great stories, well researched, and exquisitely written. #
  • Verizon 'vampire' ad rips off Twilight, sticks it to AT&T.. http://digg.com/d31IwjC #
  • RT @archaeologynews: (Topix) Leg fracture and brain malaria cause King Tut's death? | Heritage Key http://bit.ly/bi0HbR #
  • Today's best CPUs compared… to Pentium 4 3.8GHz.. http://digg.com/d31IyEL #
  • RT @draknet: New blog post: Protecting Your Site’s Content from Plagiarism http://bit.ly/cZrF0o #
  • Strange… Migraine still lingering. (Suggestion yesterday helped, thanks!) Why is the pain less without my glasses? Eye doc time… #
  • Touch web browser mega shootout: Surf's up – GSMArena.com.. http://digg.com/d31J6AG #
  • France leapfrogs past Australia in Big Brother stakes.. http://digg.com/d31J6JY #
  • Shooting Challenge: Blow Out – Shooting challenge – Gizmodo.. http://digg.com/d31J7pB #
  • RT @archaeologynews: Evidence of legendary Roman Golden Bough found: http://bit.ly/cRqHqu  #
  • RT @epwolfhart: Ancient World in London Challenge: Win books by writing history! http://bit.ly/aGVthr  #
  • So pretty last night. I was set to go to the barn, except I had to renew my lease. Of course, that finished just after sunset. #
  • RT @VSmirk: Frankie & Johnny in the Claire de Lune plays Thurs-Sun! http://www.theatreknoxville.com/ #
  • Awesome people (with interesting tweets). Y'all know who you are. #FF @VSmirk, @epwohlfart, @dancinghorse, @amethystdragon, @spicycauldron #
  • 17 year old German author sees no problem with plagiarism and publishes a book that is a "remix" of others' content. http://bit.ly/9N4HOD #
  • Remix? It is still taking another person's work. Plagiarism is a crime. Period. #
  • I've had trouble with people stealing content from my own web site. I've emailed and asked for at least an acknowledgement. #
  • Interesting op-ed piece on the this German author, Helene Hegemann: http://bit.ly/c4Iuqw #
  • As a professional writer, plagiarism is akin to kidnapping. You are taking my creative "children." #
  • How can Hegemann be nominated for a $20k prize in the Leipzig Book Fair when a juror knew of the plagiarism before the nomination? #
  • Okay, I'll quit posting about plagiarism. I'm getting a little too angry about it. #
  • Want to leave so bad. Pretty pretty day. The barn is calling… #
  • I am outta here and off to see my girls! Yay! Barn time! #
  • How Much Camera Gear Does an Olympics Photographer Have.. http://digg.com/d31JMtt #

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Mice of Pompeii

19 Feb

The plaster cast figures from Pompeii are pretty famous. The casts are made by pouring plaster into hollows left in the ash by an item that has decomposed (like bodies, wood, etc.). The resulting figures capture the expressions and last moments of the people who were killed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79CE.

A snippet of a documentary shows the mice from Pompeii captured using the same plaster technique developed by Fiorelli:

On a side note, it’s interesting to read the recounting of the eruption in letters from Pliny the Elder to Tacitus.

 
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Posted in Archaeology

 

New game. Time suck.

16 Feb

I enjoy playing games: pen-and-paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons (yes people still play it), computer RPGs, MMOs, and all that fun stuff. Bioware, a game company, has a good track record producing RPGs (role-playing games). Bioware produced the Baldur’s Gate series a few years back, a well loved RPG.

Bioware recently released a game called Dragon Age: Origins for PC, PS3, and X-Box. I don’t have any of those machines, although I was considering getting a copy of the PC version to use with Cross Over Games (an application that lets you (kinda) run Windows games on OS X). I found a copy of Dragon Age for the Mac (surprise!) this week and it was 20% off. I couldn’t resist. Such a bargain!

The 9 GB download took 1.5 days to complete. Started on Monday and finished Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday afternoon I played for the first time just to get an idea of how it is.

Awesome doesn’t begin to cut it. Great storyline, good character development. Very well done. How else can you spend six hours enthralled in a game and think only two hours have passed?

New interesting feature in this game is the integration of story progress with a social network. As your character proceeds through the storyline, screen shots and quest updates are posted to the character’s profile social.bioware.com.

 
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14

14 Feb

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Lens on ebay

11 Feb

Before I knew of the machine problems today, I had decided to bit on a Voigtlander Nokton SLR II 58mm f1.4 Pentax KA mount lens. Found one on eBay with an excellent price.

Just as well I didn’t win the auction. The funds that would have paid for that lens are computerized…

Kills me though. The lens went for almost half price.

 
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Posted in Photography

 

Severely dead Mac

11 Feb

My poor little Mac died a painful death. What had apparently started weeks ago with random DVD drive openings, ended today with the machine going into an endless boot cycle.

Today was not a good day for this to happen. I was already annoyed from idiots on the drive home and from running errands. I was hungry and had had low grade-cramps all day.

When I first opened the case I smelled burning soldering wire. It’s a metallic, tangy smell. Not like burning, melting plastic, which is what happened when my old Windows PC’s motherboard short circuited and fried the hardware.

A friend came over and we disassembled the system: physically took everything out except the hard drives (which were disconnected). The machine still wouldn’t come up even to see the bios on a screen. Nothing appeared on the monitor because it never even got a signal.

This Mac (really a hackintosh) ran OS X 10.5.8 on a Shuttle SG35 barebones system with 4 GB Corsair RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 gHz processor, DVD-RW, dual 500 GB 8 MB cache drives, a JMicron IDE controller (which can be a world of hurt for a hackintosh), and a 384 MB nVidia 8800 GTS graphics card. Once the kinks were worked out of the system, it ran very well. (I always bought full copies of any software I installed on the Shuttle, including copies of OS X 10.5 and 10.6.)

From November to yesterday, it was almost perfect in fact. (With one blip back in December when it wouldn’t boot.) Aside from the internal and external DVD drives opening and closing some times, everything seemed to be fine. Until this morning when I came in and the machine was offline. It booted once when I got home tonight and that was it. After that, it was an endless boot cycle: power on, CPU fan and power fan came on, and then it would power down and start up again.

My friend and I concluded that the motherboard or one of the chips on it was dead/fried. On top of everything else that I’d gone through today and the hours of frustration spent on the Shuttle, I had had it. I had spent probably close to 100+ hours over the space of 18 months getting the system tweaked so the OS ran smoothly, digital sound out worked, Quartz Extreme graphics engine was enabled, and game window resizing didn’t freeze the system. Oh, and OS X never recognized the virtualization capabilities of the Intel Core 2 Duo, even though the chip supported virtualization. I never could run virtual machines with Parallels 5 (which checks the CPU for virtualization technology). (I might post the list of drivers I used, if anyone is interested.)

I learned a lot about Macs by creating a hackintosh. I feel confident that I could resolve most system problems on a real Mac because of my experience digging into different kernels, plists, drivers, and other internals. Good learning experience for being a tech writer in an IT department.

What I really learned was that I didn’t want to waste my time (and therefore my billable hours) customizing yet another hackintosh system. I wanted something that would work and be reliable. Or “stable” as it were…

So… I’m looking at a shiny new low-range iMac. The main terabyte drive has been reformatted and partitioned. The application/system partition is called “Stable,” the larger working file partition is called “Pasture.” I’m transferring my files right now (300+ GB from my old secondary partition, mostly mail, photos, videos, and writing). While that material slowly copies over via USB2 and 32,000 files download for Guild Wars, I’m going to head off to bed. (I miss the eSATA connection!)

Rest in pieces, poor little Shuttle.

 
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Twitter Updates for 2010-02-09

09 Feb

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Changed Twitter options

09 Feb

I’ve changed the Twitter options for the blog. Instead of posting daily summaries of my Twitter posts, the digest will be posted weekly. I’ve also removed the replies.

 
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