Took a little time today to upgrade the blog to the new WordPress 2. I wonder if my spam problems will improve at all…
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More Orb
Along with my site move, I took time today to package up my Ambient Orb Service code along with a brief explanation of how to write custom data providers. Hopefully someone else will find my code as useful as I have found it, as demonstrated by the Clear Sky OrbProvider I have been using for a few months now.
Source is available too!
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www.ejinnovations.com
I finally took some time today to really start the move to a Plone powered website. The old www.ejinnovations.com is no more.
Ideally I’d like to learn a little python so I can pull my blog posts from WordPress and have them displayed in Plone. We’ll see if I get around to it.
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Busy Day(s)
Ana and I have taken this week off, something we’ve wanted to do in the past but never gotten around to. Well, so far it has been move-move-move. Yesterday it was going to several stores to cash in some of our gift certificates, followed by an evening dinner with our highschool physics teacher Mrs. Langford and her husband Dr. Langford. We had a very pleasant evening, and ended up talking with them until we left around 10:30pm.
Today it was running all over town getting me an eye exam and new glasses.
I now have 2 new pairs of glasses – one regular, one Rx sunglasses – and a third pair ordered for playing recquetball (also Rx). It had been a few years since my last eye exam and my prescription only changed a little bit, but I can see noticably better now. Who’da thought!
Tonight (in probably 15 minutes) we’re heading over to Ana’s family’s for yet another holiday party. It’ll be fine I’m sure, but we’re just a little worn out.
That’s it from the Johnson household…
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Mouse and Keyboard
I now have a new mouse and keyboard, and they are awesome! The keyboard is the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and it’s definitely the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s unique for several reasons: the comfortable curve in addition to the “natural” style of keyboard; great key action; comfortable, padded wrist wrest built-in; and reverse tilt. This one is for home, but I know I’m going to end up getting on for work too.
The mouse is the Wireless Optical Mouse 5000. There’s not a whole lot interesting with the mouse, other than it’s a lot smoother than my previous first generation optical mouse. When I picked it up today, I really wasn’t expecting a better feel, but I sure was wrong.
If you’re in the need, these two products are definitely worth the money. Particularly the keyboard.
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Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone! Ana and I hope that you all have a great holiday season, and may your travels be safe.
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TiVo
My parents recently gave me their Tivo since they were switching to Insight’s DVR. I’m already using Insight’s as well (dual HD tuner) so I don’t need the Tivo for its recording capabilities. Instead, I have installed Galleon and now have mp3s, among other things, in my family room.
The introduction of yet another device into the entertainment center finally forced me to spend some time really configuring the remote I purchased a few years ago. We now have everything driven from the one remote, with macro buttons to quickly do things like watch a dvd, watch cable, and listen to music.
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Oops!
A couple days ago, in an effort to clean out some of the comment spam my blog has been experiencing I deleted quite a few comments and accidently took a few legitamate ones with them. Sorry Scott, I know at least one of yours was accidently wiped out.
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Holidays
Following David’s lead, Happy Holidays everyone.
We have also been able to get our house decorated.
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Hard drive update
The tape drive I purchased back in 2001 finally came in handy today. I was able to restore my important data (code, documents, etc) from 10 days ago (would have been more recent if I had seen the drive acting flaky a week earlier) and photos from a bit further back. Luckily I have many of the missing photos still on the hard drives of my laptop and desktop machines. So, all in all, I really only lost a lot of music I spent a few days ripping. Whew, what a relief.
At the time I purchased the tape drive, it was around $300 and I questioned the necessity of the device – that was a pretty expensive purchase for me at the time, being a student and all. Today, without it, I would have been willing to pay a LOT more than $300 to get my photos and data back.
Over the next few weeks I plan on getting a better backup solution in place. I was extremely lucky this time, as I became lazy and my backup machine offline for a few months. It was less than a couple weeks ago that I started getting it back online and performing backups. I NEVER want to experience that aweful feeling ever again.
The Johnson Blog 