homebrew project idea....

so i've been tossing around the idea of developing an automated irrigation system...of course i mean a computer monitored and automated irrigation system...eventually i would like to integrate wireless access maybe even a motion sensor that triggers a "pop-up" to scare off unwanted vistors...i don't know...i'm still brainstorming ideas...

one of my first questions is to figure out what all needs to go into the hardware end of this project...i mean do i go out to radio shack and buy a square of copper and cut it to small pieces connect them to a bread board and design the circuitry myself or do i try and find commodity hardware and hack it together...i have a feeling i will go the "hack it together route"...as i am not in the mood to work in an ee masters degree at the moment....

one suggestion a buddy of mine came up with was to use X10 hardware as it is very general in nature...good place to start, but as he said...those damn pop-up ads are annoying...so i start here with X10 research and hopefully will find something more usable...

chatter

it's the last day of my "recovery" and dylan has not stopped chattering for over a year...i don't know if it's all four-year-olds or just him (i suspect the former), but from the minute his eyes open in the morning until they close again when his head hits the pillow he is constantly chattering...it's hilarious...sometimes annoying...but mostly it's hilarious

i love listening to him talk to his mom...i love watching him play and talk to his toys...could be a raptor carrying the blue ranger into the battle to defeat mezagod or a triceratops charging a giant lizard...it's brings back memories of star wars action figures and hot wheels crash derbys when i was a kid...

...and that's just dylan...rylie is only 14 months old...just starting to walk...and is already trying to get into everything...she also chatters...not quite as incesantly as dylan....she gets so excited when she does something new...she has the most beautiful smile...ok...that's enough of the gushing...

take two...

so it's 12:55 -0600 GMT and i'm sitting here watching "gastineau girls" on cable...yea, i'm bored and there's nothing on tv...this past thrusday i had to have my vasectomy redone...and this is the reason i'm stuck in my recliner watching g-girls...at least i have a (semi) stable internet connection...

i've successfully spent the last three days with my ass planted in this damn chair...watching mindless tv...updating my del.icio.us tags and adding more..."researching" diy projects...playing splinter cell...searching for cool new mp3's...and finding a cool new accessory for my ipod....

my wife has been incredible!!! she's been doing everything around the house...cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids...it's been a nice break and she deserves the message she's getting and more

well at least after a little surfing i settled on meet the barkers ... at least it's funnier than g-girls...

the view out our living room windows is fantastic...i get to watch the squirrels fight with the blue jays over peanuts and bird seed...there are a couple of baby blue jays...both male from the looks of it...and they have definitely found their lungs...the pigeons are seeming to hold their own againsts the jays and squirrels as well...luckily for the smaller birds (warblers, wrens, chickadees, titmice, etc) we've got two feeders with cages around them...we have the coolest house and yard ever!!!

paddle fever

so we bought a new kayak last weekend at rei...and it is the coolest thing EVER! last weekend we took out maiden voyage on lake austin near where we live...it was fun, but too much motorboat traffic...lots of waves...too concerned about being run over by other boaters...still it was worth it...the other side of the lake from where we put in was a cool inlet with a waterfall...

today we went to town lake and put in at auditorium shores...not a bad place to put in, but i think the put in by austin high school will be a better place to launch from...we got to see where the bats live under the congress ave bridge...we found the inlet that leads to zilker park and barton creek...it was tons of fun...much better than lake austin...no motor boat traffic at all...

Using Google to Find mp3's

I was reading some blogs the other day and stumbled across a post on Taking Advantage Of Technology - How To Find MP3's with Google. So I read it and tried it. If you're looking for a napster/morpheus type engine, forget it. If you're looking for those hard-to-find mp3's, you're in for some work. But in the end, it's worth the effort because you are bound to learn how to use Google more efficeintly and possibly find some new artists that you were not aware of before.

happy searching!

damn funny stuff

so i know i'm a bit late on this one...but this is the funniest damn blog i've seen in a long time!!!

my new toy...my zaurus

I finally did it, I purchased a Sharp Zaurus SL - 5500 a couple of weeks ago and have not been able to put it down since it arrived at my doorstep! I had been researching Linux based PDAs for quite some time and discovered that the Sharp Zaurus models were the best on the market and easiest to use straight out of the box (a.k.a no twisted OS removal/re-install hack required). My Zaurus came with the Linux kernel version 2.4.8 for the ARM processor. Sharp labeled this version 2.3.7 of the ROM image. The only problem I had was connecting to my Windows XP laptop using TCP/IP over USB networking. More of a problem with my "instructions??!! we don't need to stinkin' instructions!!!" attitude. Once I removed all the Zaurus PC software and USB drivers a couple of times and actually followed the instructions, all was beautiful in the land of Zaurus.

I purchased my Zaurus on Amazon's Electronics website. I absolutely LOVE the New & Used section Amazon offers. The dealer I used packshipandsell2 had an estimated delivery date of 7 - 14 business days. The acutal turn around time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 business days. And even though I purchased a "used" model, it was actually new and came in the original box with all manuals and accessories. If you are going to purchase a Zaurus I highly recommend Amazon and packshipandsell2.

Now I am not your standard business or end user type, I am a Linux Admin and Oracle DBA. AND I have this uncontrollable desire to figure out how stuff works. Hence, my reason for purchasing the Zaurus. Leading up to the time I slapped down my CC# on Amazon I did quite a bit of research to determine just what I and how badly I could screw up my new PDA. I found that the Zaurus is the darling of the embedded linux home/garage tinkerers. If you google on the Zaurus an incredible amount of hits come back, however the one that immediately caught my attention was the Open Zaurus Project. This project aims to replace the original Sharp Embeddix ROM image with a custom Linux kernel. I have read pretty much all the documentation available on their site (and several others) about how to install the OZ/Opie image, but I have not moved to it yet. The main reason is that I still need to purchase a CF card. And here in lies my quandry, I want a WiFi card and a CF card but can realistically only afford to purchase one at a time. So which to purchase first...

First, let's start with why I am considering not going with the CF card first. Initially I wanted to hack up my new Zaurus and drop on OpenZaurus (a.k.a. OZ) from the get go, but I changed my mind. To get a feel for the upgrade / ROM flash process, I upgraded to version 3 of the Sharp ROM image. This was fairly straight forward and I did not have to perform the twisted yoga move of hitting the C and D keys while pressing the "Full Reset" button in the lower right hand area of the battery compartment. From all my research, this manuver seems to be the most challenging part of the whole process. I do still plan on migrating to the OZ version soon though. The main reason I opted for v3 was I wanted to get a feel for my new Z before screwing it up. Secondly, with a dial-up connection at the house (I've got 2 kids...so no comment on the dial-up, it's free) I wouldn't be able to quickly google a problem and/or download a patch or new ipkg. What I have done in the interim is to download all the ipkg's I'm interested in to my laptop and burn them off to CD as a backup measure. One of the nicest aspects of going to v3, is that it does not install all the Hancom Mobile apps and all the games (it does install its version of solitare) that eat up storage space. So this leaves you with approximately 27M of free space to play with.

Now why am I considering going with a WiFi card first? Hmmmmm, maybe because it's PHRIKKEN COOL!!! Using the builtin Intel WiFi card in my Centrino laptop and my trusty Windows version of NetStumbler, I have located four hotspots/access points in range of my house. Unfortunately, all the cool WiFi tools work best on Linux. Do you see where I'm going with this??? So in the end it I am going to purchase either the Netgear MA701 802.11b CF card, the Linksys WCF11, or the Linksys WCF12 cards. I am actually leaning towards the Netgear card after reading the customer reviews and researching compatablity with various WiFi tools.

ma nouvelle souris

I'm on a never ending quest to rid myself of as many wires as possible so I went out and bought the Logitech MediaPlay Cordless Mouse. Even though it's only been one day since I purchased it and installed the software, I'm pretty please with it and it's extras so far. One thing that it does that is mildly annoying is the mouse pointer will occasionally jump to the top or side of the screen if you lift it up from the work surface.

I was initially going to purchase the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse, but decided to go with the MediaPlay mouse because I listen to music pretty much 24x7 while I'm working on my computer. I have a buddy who's got the V500 and has been very happy with it. Either way, that's one less cord I have to condend with!!

some of my favorite things...

For some time now I've been keeping a journal. Handwritten even. It originally started as a career journal. A place for me to keep an ongoing record of my career goals and how things have actally come together. Recently I was re-reading and updating my journal and came across several entries that I thought would be easier to keep up with if I put them online.

• GIUSEPPE TORELLI (1658-1709)Concerto in D Major for Trumpet


• Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox : How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean


• Infinity (1996)


• Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 - 1337)


• Euclid (ca. 325-ca. 270 BC)


• John Conway's Game of Life

It is believed by most that time passes; it stays where it is. This idea of passing may be called time, but it is an incorrect idea, for since one sees it as passing, one cannot understand that it just stays where it is.



-Zen Master Kigen Dogen

some cool morpheus searches

so i was chillin out...dinkin' with my iPod [...damn i love my iPod...] tryin out the iPod Firmware Hack...which is very cool by the way...when i got side tracked in morpheus lookin first for tsunami vids then for U2 remixes [...this returned an uber-cool "where the streets have no name (johnny vicious mix)" mp3...] this lead to searches for european house, etc...

...anyways...so i wouldn't forget what my search strings were i decided to post 'em to my blog so i would have them readily available...so without further adieu, the search strings:

• paris mix


• jeanpaul de paris


• dimitri from paris


• danger mouse & jemini