Recently I have been toying with the idea of buying a color printer. Epson and HP make some fine printers that offer superior quality to any traditional printing methods. I’m pretty picky about my images, and thought that this would be the cheapest way to share prints of my favorite images with friends and family….
Category: Computing
Faster is Better
I finally took the plunge and leased a managed server in a very cool co-location facility a few blocks from work. They had an incredible offer I could not pass up. What does this mean to you? Enhanced performance from thedude.com! Faster downloads! More, better, faster! Woo-hoo! Stay tuned for progress reports.
No More Excuses
You now have no reason not to use the world’s best web browser. Opera is now free. Install it. Learn how to use it. Rejoice. While you’re at it, be sure to install the latest version of Google Earth. It’s amazingly cool and also free. You’ll need it to get the most out of this…
Size Doesn’t Matter…
What matters is how BIG it is. There are many great things to say about this new configuration. I still have a vertically oriented monitor for browsing and working on portrait-oriented documents. (That’s just about everything, right?) In addition, I now have a huge, brilliant canvas for displaying and editing images. I briefly considered a…
Quiet Computer Case on Steriods
I hate to admit it, but really do want this thing. It’s sooo geeky – so beautiful! I’ve been lusting after it half the day. What makes it so appealing – aside from its thick, throbbing manliness – is that it’s a completely silent PC case. The case contains exactly zero fans and works with…
Such a Waste
My server spends at least 90% of it’s cycles scanning for spam and e-mail viruses. That’s right. My estimate is that less than 10% of the computer’s resources are spent delivering legitimate e-mail or serving up the web site you’re reading now. Or this site. Or this one. Or any of these. Everyone who runs…
Fun With “Transparent” Backgrounds
I really wish I could take credit for thinking of this first. Instead, I drew inspiration from this Flickr gallery. Some of the “backgrounds” on the Flickr site look a bit too good to be true, but these are real! The only adjustment was to the hue. I like this effect so much, I can’t…
Radio Paradise
Finally! An Internet radio station we can both tolerate. Radio Paradise has a real live DJ, which seems to make a huge difference over machine-generated ramdom playlists. User supported, no ads, everything from Emmylou Harris to King Crimson. Tune in now!
Most Excellent Firefox Plugin
Have you ever wished you could download every link on a web page with a single mouse click? Well now you can!
Google’s Gorgeous Maps
Google seems to have done it again. This time, it’s their mapping software. Mapquest, Yahoo maps and their ilk will certainly see a serious challenge from Google’s beautiful maps. (Unfortunately, this fabulous technology does not seem to work in my beloved Opera. Use Firefox instead.) UPDATE: I tried Google maps again today with Opera –…
It’s Here!
Four days ahead of schedule. Those very clever folks at Apple know how to make my day. The best thing though, has been Kelly’s reaction. She totally loves it! The funny thing is that the things she loves the most are all things she could have done on her PC for the last 2 years….
I Finally Did It
I couldn’t help myself. I simply could not pass up the chance to finally own a Mac. I’m waiting patiently for delivery – purported to be on January 24th. Review to follow.
Firefox Good, Opera Better
With all of the hoopla about Firefox out there, I thought I’d weigh in with my 2 cents worth. First of all, if you are STILL using Internet Explorer, please, please download a copy of Firefox and give it a test drive for at least a week. I’d recommend you install a few extensions as…
Tough Week for a Geek
Man, what a week! In the course of two days, my main server’s hard drive crashed, and a machine I maintain in Santa Rosa also exhibited symptoms of a disk crash. It turns out that thte disk in the server in Santa Rosa had not crashed, and I had backups and redundancy in a few…
Still not Running Opera or Firefox?
Seems like it’s well past the time to dump Internet Explorer.
21 Years Ago = Computing Stone Age
Check out this ad from August, 1981. Notice that the 5 megabyte version is just $2898.00 – an unbeatable value!
The Mighty Affymetrix UNIX Team
That’s Nick, Hugh, Gopinath, Karl, thedude and Juwei. Not pictured: Jason, Stefan.
thedude in His Element
I told you I’d have some fun with this lens…
TechTV Discovers the Virtual Playa
Andrew’s masterpiece will be featured on an upcoming TechTV spot. The TechTV folks interviewed Andrew for almost two hours this afternoon in his loft. They pulled Barbara and Ursula into the action, too. Here Barbara shares her thoughts about Virtual Barbara seen on the screen to her right. Yes, that’s Virtual Barbara sitting on a…
RedHat Certification
I did it!
Spamassassin RULES!
My mail server receives a lot of spam. My best guess is that on a given day, 70 – 90% of all mail received by my server is spam. In an attempt to reduce the amount of spam my users must sort through, I have been using spamassassin to filter spam on my mail server…
An Almost Perfect Opera
I have been evaluating Opera and I am coming to the conclusion that it’s the world’s best browser. The program looks and feels identical on Windows and on Linux. It’s very fast. It’s e-mail integration is sweet – Opera replaces both Mozilla and my usual mail client – and you already know how much I…