Author Archives: Brian

*&^%$#@ cable modem!

My cable modem has been going up and down like a yo-yo lately – I need to call Time-Warner about it and see what the hell is going on. Because of this, this site also has been going up and down since it’s hosted on a linux box in my closet. I think I’m going to have to cave in and buy some hosting. Either that or move over to some free service like Blogger which I do NOT want to do. I’m hooked on WordPress and don’t want to give up the control I have. Anyone know of a host cheaper than $5/month for 20GB of space and 50GB of bandwidth?

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BackPack – online lists, notes, and reminders

Here’s another super-handy site I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned yet – BackPack. It’s a free service that lets you make reminders, notes, lists, etc. I use it all the time. It’s nice to have a quick, easy place to make notes for myself that I have access to wherever I am. When I’m at work and I think of a blog topic, I hit my “MVP blog topics”page and add it to my list. When I get home, I check the list and blog. The interface is really slick too – it uses AJAX, which is all the rage nowadays.

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Rag Doll Kung Fu (PC Game)

I saw this while logging into Steam today…
Rag Doll Kung Fu has been picked up by Valve to be delivered via Steam. It’s a fighting game played with string puppets. The promo video looks really cool. Looks complicated to control, but the author assures us it isn’t (naturally). Take a look at the video of gameplay. It’s good to see there is still some innovative game developers out there.

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Pixel bites toilet paper

Fair warning…..this post will diverge a bit from my usual geek/tech posts……

Why the hell does my cat, Pixel, like to bite toilet paper? If we leave any of our bathroom doors open, she goes in and gnaws on the toilet paper on the roll – she just puts lots of holes in it but doesn’t actually eat it. The worst part is she doesn’t destroy it, she makes it look like it’s still usable since it’s still intact, but when you try to unroll it, it sticks to itself where she has punctured it and when you do get the paper off it has big cat-mouth-sized holes in it. If the roll was full I usually have to remove half off it to get past where here teeth penetrated. If the roll was half or less, it goes in the trash.

Damn cat. Oh yeah, she chews wires too. As an example, the power cord on our cordless phone in the living room is about a foot long now since I have had to splice it so many times since she chewed it. She stopped doing that when I coated all the wires I could find with Tabasco.

Pixel’s cute though. Here are some pics of her as a kitten – see how she got her name? She’s following the mouse cursor around the screen. Anyone else have cats or dogs with geeky names?


(click for the full photo set)
My cat Pixel

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Neutron – automatic time-syncing

All-purpose utility applications that slice and dice and do 100 different things are cool, but sometimes you want an app that does one thing and one thing well. This app falls into the latter category. Neutron synchronizes your system clock with the atomic clock automatically. Just put a link to it in your startup folder and Neutron will sync up your time automatically every time you reboot and will exit automatically after the syncing is done. It’s freeware and the download is only 6kb. Robin has some other good freeware in his software section too – check it out.

Neutron homepage

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