Adventures in PC Upgrades
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Yesterday I had to help a friend set up a PC he bought on eBay after work. It ended up taking from 6:00pm until midnight to get him set up. As I was driving home, I realized that I hadn't posted to the blog all day long. I resolved to do better today. When I work up this morning, I had some kind of flue like virus. So much for posting early and often today.

Back to the tale of the PC upgrade. It was advertised as having one hard drive but actually came with two. The primary hard drive was 10GB and the secondary was 20GB. First, I installed Win2K on the primary drive, got it hooked up to his router, installed all the critical Windows updates, installed Norton Antivirus, and formatted the secondary drive. Then I shut the system down and swapped out the secondary drive with the drive out of his old system. I copied all the files off of his old drive into a folder on the primary. Then, I swapped the old drive with the new secondary again and installed the CD burner out of his old machine in the second CD slot of his new box.

I installed Open Office on his machine. I had to install the Java Runtime for all the features of Open Office to work. I downloaded and installed printer drivers for his Lexmark Z11. His printer was having problems with its paper transport mechanism so every thing was printing 3 times slightly offset each time. It gave it a kind of blurry effect.

By this time it was getting late. I called it a night and came home. I was glad to help a friend but I was tired, hungry and beginning not to feel real well. I found a Checkers open and was able to grab a burger to take care of my hunger. I managed to get home safely. Then I slept for 12 hours straight. Well, I did get up and take the dog out around 8:00am but I went back to bed immediately.

As for the fun link of the day, I've got two, one for yesterday, one for today. Yesterday's link is to spongemonkey. Today's link is to boohbah. Enjoy.

Sunday Night Ramblings
I am writing more than I have in a long time, maybe more than I ever have. I am blogging several places now. My Live Journal, Extremely Random Jottings, is a personal diary. I have not posted there regularly in the past but I intend to post there at least weekly from now on. I am also working on the treatment for Appalachian Quest, my independent film. I started a new blog at blogspot.com to get familiar with the blogger software. I might or might not post there with any kind of regularity. I also have a blog at jroller.com which I intend to post details about my jMusic project.

I've got to get to bed pretty soon. I've let my sleep cycle shift too much. I have been going to bed around midnight and getting up around 9:00am. This would be a lovely schedule if I didn't have to be to work by around 9:00am. This results in my not getting as much sleep as I'd like. I never got the hang of dealing with sleep deprivation.

The fun link for the day is a Flash Animation Episode of Doctor Who from the BBC. Enjoy.

A Case of Video Gamer Thumbs
I just spent several hours copying my phonebook out of my old cell phone into my new one. My thumbs are so sore. Next time I think I'll spring for the data cable so that I can sync the data in my phone with my PC and move it automatically. The good thing about having to do it manually is that I had to go through and choose which numbers to transfer. I was kind of surprised that I moved almost all of them.

My new phone is a Motorola 120e. It only adds a few feature over my old phone, a Motorola 120c. The new phone has more phonebook entries, 5 games, and a datebook. The user programmable ring tones are a little more flexible and it has GPS support. I have it set to 911 only. The last thing I need is my phone trying to sell me things based on where I am. I can't image why anyone would turn the blasted feature on.

I realize I forgot the fun link yesterday. I'll make up for it with two today. The first one is a web version of Shisen Sho, an addictive variation of Mah Jong. The second is a quiz to see if you can tell programming language designers from serial killers. Enjoy!

New SciFi Show
The SciFi channel premiered a new show tonight. It's called Code Name: Eternity and has a lot of potential, both good and bad. The two co-stars are both attractive and pretty good actors. The script is pretty stiff but there was a lot of exposition to do and only an hour to do it in. I sincerely hope the writing improves.

I have to agree with one of the comments on the SciFi.com Code Name: Eternity bulletin board. The premise is getting kind of hackneyed. It's also a little more violent than I like, but I can deal with that.

MacLust
Today I found two more reasons to buy me a used G4 tower to run Panther on. The first is garageband and the second is the Elgato EyeHome (the other Elgato products are pretty cool too). I said two more reasons because I already had a slew of others. Now I just have to wait for my wallet to recover from Christmas.

It's getting nasty out so I guess I better cut this installment short. The fun link today is another time waster. Check StupidVideos. Hillarious.

Ready when you are, C.B.
I have decided to write, produce and direct an independent film. The urge to do that harkens back to my first major in college, Cinema and Photography. Back then, it was relatively expensive to make a film. The cost of film stock alone was bad but add in rental of professional cameras, processing, rental of editing equipment, printing, etc. and you got into the big bucks in a hurry. Consequently, you needed some kind of significant financial backing to mount a production that was longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

In the intervening years we have entered the digital era. Now you can buy a good DV camera, a well appointed computer and requisite software and make movies until your blue in the face all for less than the cost of a professional grade 16mm movie camera. This changes the economics of independant film making considerably. Now we can make films with the same ease that we mount community theater productions. The opportunities for self expression are truly amazing.

I'll discuss details of the movie project as they develop. I expect to be in preproduction (writing, planning, casting, scouting locations, etc.) for a year or two. In the mean time, I expect technology to keep getting better and better. Who knows, by the time we finish this project, there may be distribution channels established such that productions of this sort can get as wide a distribution as a Hollywood movie. Naw! What was I thinking? Hollywood would never allow that. They'll lobby and get a law passed against it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Here's my obligatory fun link for today. Enjoy!

Literature, Liberty, Politics
I finished reading William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties again this morning. I originally thought that I hadn't read it yet but I recognized it as I got several chapters into it. The good thing was that I had forgotten enough of the details that it was still a fun read. I also noticed that my perspective on the technology described in the book had changed due to the phenomenal growth of the internet. I also was more aware of what an incredibly talented writer Gibson is. His prose is so evocative.

I think I first realized how poetic his prose was when I read Pattern Recognition earlier this year. Here was a book that had finally broken out from the cyber-punk genre into the mainstream of contemporary American fiction. In retrospect, I now realize that All Tomorrow's Parties had already crossed that line but I hadn't realized it at the time since it was the third installment in the Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties epic cyber-punk trilogy.

In all these novels, Gibson prods us to think about the social issues arising from the abstract construct that is the internet. The internet, a medium in which you can be many places at once, challenges contemporary mores. What are the foundations of our ethics? How are they expressed in this bizare place?

Another recent commentator of note on these topics is Paul Graham. His recent essay What You Can't Say reflects upon some of these same ethical considerations. I highly recommend reading what he has to say.

I believe we must think about these issues and discuss them and, most important of all, defend our right to discuss them in public forums or we will soon find that our only choice is to think, say, and do what Big Brother dictates, or else be branded a criminal for our "deviant practices".

Oh, and for fun, go have a look at the Bush in 30 Seconds contest. There are a lot of interesting comments on the current political situation there.

This Time, I Mean It
I've been playing around with blogging for quite a while now. My first blog, Experiment 13031, was thanks to Dave Winer's EditThisPage site. I always thought that blogging was a good way to practice writing as well as share neat tidbits that I come across on the web. The problem has always been keeping up with posting. My LiveJournal sometimes goes for months without a post.

Well, it's a new year and I'm going to try again. I'm going to try to post something here every day. Of course, if I'm somewhere that I don't have net access I may miss a day, but for me, that is a pretty rare occurrence.

I also intend to put something cool in every post. So, here's a cool cat to play with.