When I was young, and first exposed to the marvel of Much Music, I began keeping a list. This list contained the band and sometimes album or song name of things I’d heard that I wanted to check out in greater detail. It grew and grew over the several years I’d kept it, and while I’d never made an exact count, I estimated that it may have contained as many as 2,000 entries.

Sadly, at some point, the battered blue spiral-bound over-sized notepad which contained this list became lost in time and space, possibly as the result of cleaning my room, or perhaps when I moved back upstairs from my windowless room in the basement. I don’t know exactly when it was lost, just that the next time I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was pretty distraught over it, as it took me a long time to compile and at the time, could not easily be re-researched and compiled. I wrote the stuff down precisely for that reason.

It was probably just as well. I vividly recall crying myself to sleep one night after having made the realisation that I would probably never have the resources in time and money to follow through with my research. After all, at $20 per CD, just to sample the most acclaimed album from each band would have cost in excess of $40,000. Even if I were hunting through pawn shops, that still represented more money than I could ever commit to such a project. That list didn’t include movies either, and when you factor in that many of the groups on the list probably had more than one release worth buying, the cost grows rather quickly. The list was still growing at that time as well. The conclusion I was left with was that I would be constantly playing catch-up.

Then the internet happened. Napster. It was a dream come true. I downloaded a lot of stuff. I started keeping track again (though mostly just on scraps of paper). It was like a second shot at the dream, until the service was shut down by the lawsuits of a few wealthy artists whining about how they were missing out on revenue desperately needed to fund drug habits, psychiatrists, and whores.

Still, the genie was released from the bottle, and has to date proven impossible to put back. Things aren’t as easy as they were then, but looking this stuff up is still fairly trivial, as is keeping a list on my computer. It doesn’t have 2,000 entries or whatever, but factoring in all the bookmarks and everything, might be getting there. Wikipedia helps a lot too.

And that’s one of the many things I’ve been using to occupy my time whilst I’ve been  away from work. I’ve also taken the time to rip many of my old CDs to MP3. I hadn’t realised how many of them were not on my computer until recently. I think that was a result of being storage-limited before. Now I have more space than I know what to do with.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Music at 6:58 PM EDT

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It’s been a while. Four months. Not as long as some people I know, but hardly regular posting.

The rest of October, and all of November was a pretty busy time, between everyone in Meghan’s family with birthdays (myself included), and sorting out issues with this new computer. December with the manic holiday buying (which, admittedly, I did very little of, so it’s a poor excuse - but that’s what this is about - excuses). At least during the holidays we got together with Luke, Chie, James and Jess. That was quite nice.

January was a little slow at work, so I finally got my car in the shop. I’m still rounding up parts to fix it, but it should be ready for spring. Unfortunately, January being slow has also led me to why I’m blogging at 9:24am on a weekday; I’m laid off. Not that it’s all bad. I get some unemployment enjoyment, and a little vacation, which I haven’t really taken in quite some time. Okay, it hasn’t been that long, but it feels like it has. Maybe I’m a wuss and need more off time than people with a real work ethic.

So I plan to take it easy for a few weeks, and hopefully my boss can score me a temporary position as a parts delivery dude, which would suit me just fine. We’ll see; the success or not, of that will determine if there are more forthcoming updates here, I think.

Still no house pics, Other Luke! :p

And now, in case anyone actually wants to know, the tech section

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Posted by Ron as Computers, Fire-in-a-can, Games, Home Sweet Home, Miscellaneous, Work at 11:21 AM EST

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Last night we had a lovely thanksgiving at my house. Both my parents and Meghan’s mum and sister were there, and we stuffed ourselves. Yum.

When we got up this morning, on the kitchen counter was an opened beer that nobody remembers drinking, and also, the jug of OJ tasted funny. Coincidence? I think not. It happened to be a very good beer, too, so it’s a shame that it was wasted like that. La Fin du Monde is not cheap, either.

I know, it’s been a while since I last posted. Shame on me. I have not posted camping photos, nor wedding pics, nor even the house pictures I promised in January. What can I say? I’m a lazy bum. Plus, my computer is in the bedroom, and has a very uncomfortable seating arrangement. Well, it was in the bedroom. I recently got a new system to play with. Built HTPC-style, it outputs to my new TV, so comfort and the computer are once again friends.

Unfortunately, this new box, while cool, quiet, ultra-efficient and good-looking, has some issues. I think it started with an issue between the keyboard and chair, around the time I thought it might be a good idea to order a copy of Vista to go on this box. Since then, nothing but problems. Issue by issue, things are slowly getting sorted out, but it has been less than ideal so far.

Once I get more of the bugs worked out, I will post more, both about that and maybe catching up on my backlog.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Food, Home Sweet Home at 12:57 PM EDT

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I haven’t blogged this month, so before it’s too late, here goes.

I haven’t been up to much of note. Still anxiously awaiting the day that my boss lets me know what’s going on with my future. I’d really really like to be signed up for an apprenticeship; the sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Once I know how secure my job is, I’m sure there are a few things that will get taken care of. I know I have blogged a little list about it before, but now I may have some things to add to said list.

My computer is beginning to give me some trouble. I don’t know if my hard drives are dying, or if WindowsXP is finally taking a shit after nearly 4 years. I’ve been getting some disk errors lately, and chkdsk has been running at startup a lot recently. My gut feeling tells me it might be one of the hard drives. Either way, it might be time to retire this box to light duty.

I think I’ve found my replacement. I’m tempted to go with an ultra-quiet HTPC from Lix Systems, whose specialty is inexpensive Linux-based set-top systems. To start, I’d likely dual-boot Windows and Linux until I become more familiar with the latter, and am sure it does everything I want it to. This would then be hooked up to the new LCD TV/monitor I’d get for the livingroom. Coupled with a wireless keyboard and mouse, it sounds ideal; kick back on the couch to do all this crap instead of sitting at a desk.

Also on my agenda is replacing Meghan’s SVX. It has a negative association for me, as I bought it from SASS, whom I now hate. Plus, it’s not as nice as Alice, my other one. Meghan spotted a very nice-looking WRX wagon at Sudbury Fine Cars, so perhaps we’ll check it out one of these weekends. However, this is a rather large financial commitment, and I have a mortgage to worry about these days too, so it is by no means a certainty.

Well, that’s more or less all there is at the moment. Naturally, if something interesting occurs, I will be sure to write about it here.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Fire-in-a-can, Home Sweet Home, Media, Miscellaneous, Work at 5:54 PM EDT

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I may have finally found another job here in the Sault. Tomorrow I start on a “trial basis” at Reliable Auto. I got the heads up on this from my dad, and he heard from our longtime mechanic who happens to be good friends with the fellow that owns the garage I will be starting at. Goes to show, it’s all who you know. Especially around this town, it seems, since the two years I was down south I had zero difficulty finding work while knowing exactly nobody.

Now, the term “trial basis” strikes dread into my heart, particularly after my experience at SASS in Stratford. This time, I am trying not to put the cart in front of the horse, but I will say that I am trying to be cautiously optimistic.

If this does work out though, I guess I can get on that list of things I want.

• my TV is old and crappy; time for an upgrade. I’m thinking 30-32 inch wide-LCD.
• I have under a gig left on my computer; I need an internal storage drive.
• Dishwasher. I hate doing dishes, and with 4 people around, a lot of dishes need doing.
• finally, I’d like to replace two of my old cars with one newer one, but I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Fire-in-a-can, Home Sweet Home, TV & Movies, Work at 2:39 PM EDT

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That was a rough two weeks. Up until now, I could hardly remember what life was like before the advent of always-on broadband.

Now I don’t have to think about it again for a long time.

So, yeah, back on, but still no new house pics yet. The place is a mess right now. I need a little while to straighten up a bit, then I’ll post all the pics Luke’s server can handle.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Home Sweet Home at 3:31 PM EST

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Two years ago when I left home, I needed a new printer and scanner, since the ones I’d had access to were my mum’s. I didn’t really shop around much; all I knew I was looking for was low price, since I didn’t have a lot to spend.

Canadian Tire had a Lexmark x1185 printer-scanner-copier for cheap, and I had enough Canadian Tire money saved up from buying all my gas there that I could buy it with that. So I did. Bad idea.

It turned out to be *surprise* a piece of shit. I laughingly thought that PSC stood for ‘piece of sodding crap’ because, well, it was. The drivers and mandatory bloatware printing/scanning/photosuite software were a tangled nightmare and far too large for my liking when all I really wanted to do was print documents and scan the occasional article or picture.

Another episode in my printer saga occurred when I bought a router with a USB print server in a vain attempt to get the PSC unhooked from my main system so that Meghan would have an easier time accessing it. Turns out though, that the router didn’t allow two-way communication, so one could print (albeit slowly), but not scan. Boo.

Eventually, even though we didn’t use it all that much, the mechanicals of the tired Lexmark began to wear out. Paper feed was iffy most of the time, and the alignment was going out on the print heads, despite our best attempts to realign them with the software. I put up with the piece of garbage for too long.

Fast forward to now; I knew what I was looking for this time (inexpensive, network support, efficient drivers and software), and back-to-school season seemed a good time to look. Network support in inexpensive printers is not a common feature, which narrowed down choices considerably. I would have liked a laser printer, and greyscale ones with the features I desired were becoming affordable, but we (read: Meghan) needed colour capability, so we eventually settled on the Brother MFC420CN.

Turns out to have been a good choice. The software package is optional, the drivers are small, the network support is basically plug-and-play (and supports all features), and the print quality is excellent so far. I give it my full endorsement, for what its worth.

Posted by Ron as Computers at 10:52 AM EDT

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If you have to be a consumer, might as well do your part and make your opinion about products known. Companies actually pay marketing firms for this information. To entice people to participate, they even offer perks every once in a while.

Meghan often participates in these surveys, not out of the hope of a reward, but rather for the first reason I mentioned, however, perks don’t hurt either. She recently participated in one such survey on hotspex.com, one of the usual sites she receives invitiations from. They have a points program which you can redeem for contest entry ballots, savings coupons, or donate to charity. To encourage you to complete the surveys, particularly the longer ones, they feature a Wheel-of-Fortune-style wheel, rendered in flash, in which you can win stuff. Usually, it’s just bonus points, but they also have an iPod up for grabs.

Meghan hit the jackpot last week; she won the iPod. It’s a 1GB iPod nano, with her name engraved on the back, though they misspelled it. Neat to win, but we never would have bought one otherwise, for several reasons. Firstly, they’re overpriced. Secondly, I have precisely zero interest in itunes. Thirdly, they’ve become disgustingly trendy. Almost as bad as big sunglasses.

So in keeping with the ‘iTunes sucks’ mentality, we looked for options with this thing. The first thing I could think of was eBay, but with an engraving on the back, resale would be much less than retail value. That’s when we found out that you can load non-Apple firmware on these puppies, which unlock their true potential. No more DRM bullshit, no more being locked into using iTunes, no more format restrictions.
We found a couple different firmwares to try, the first of which was iPodlinux. As expected, installation was a little kludgey, but we made it through. We had to disable apple’s annoying utility that blocks non-itunes transfers to the device, but once done, you’re free to make a new ext2 partition and install away. So we got that in there, only to discover that mp3 support (via podzilla), while enabled, was rather primitive. You can do lots of other things with it, and has great skinning support out of the box (the Amiga themes are particularly nice), but primarily, I still wanted to use it as a music player for my 1-hour-each-way commute to and from work every day.

By suggestion from somewhere on the ipodlinux.org website, we decided to try Rockbox instead. A quote from the Rockbox website really says it best. While not as easily made pretty as iPodLinux, its music player works far better, and is easier to transfer songs to.

So, now we have 3 different firmwares to choose from on boot, and 768MB left to store music and other files, which is plenty for my immediate purposes. Did I mention that it plays Doom?

Posted by Ron as Computers, Music at 7:48 PM EDT

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Tonight I did some modification to this site that I’ve wanted to do for a long time now; I’ve added a ‘Recent Comments’ section to the sidebar on the right. Yay me.

This brings up something which had been occuring on the old MT blog: I was getting comment spam again. Not just any old comment spam though. No URLs, since I’d banned them, no displayable email addresses, since I hid them. Just random bot-comments, but something struck me about them. They had all been left in the same post, amusingly enough, entitled ‘Spam,’and they all had the same tone. Pathetic, and full of ennui. Despite the fact that these posts are in fact spam, I decided to leave them. Not sure why exactly.

Posted by Ron as Computers at 1:30 AM EDT

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Thanks to Luke, I’ve upgraded the site to the WordPress blog engine from Moveable Type, which was starting to show its age. This looks to be a much more flexible and attractive system, with the side benefit that it’s even easier to use.

I’m still playing with layout, colours, themes, and all that, but at any rate, it’s much nicer than the old one.

On top of the added eye candy that WP is capable of, some of the themes available are flexible enough that I will be able to show all the content that I originally had in mind for the site without having to learn a whole ton of code. Bonus.

Posted by Ron as Computers at 10:32 PM EDT

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