Full Frontal Nerdity

Aug18

Whoa it's hot!

Matt O Cornucopia

Dunno where to file this one, but the heatwave came in with a vengeance yesterday. By the time I realized it, it was late in the afternoon, so we didn't turn on the air. But if we had, we'd have realized that the air broke sometime in the last month that it's been off. So... no AC today. At least it's supposed to cool down tomorrow? We'll see how that goes - they were saying the weekend wasn't going to get out of the 70s this morning, so we can hope.

Anyway, besides the heat, the only things of note are Casey's mom's visit that's been nice, and the fact that I'm now back to work on MWS stuff. Also, I need to get a Yellow Fever shot - i wonder how I do that. I should also get some pictures taken for visas and such tomorrow. And pick up the plexi tray for the 4-shell road case. and get a haircut. errands abound.

Aug14

Football is almost here!

Matt O Sports

Oh man. The elation and the depression are almost on us. Lots of eating out in the mornings, beers before noon and hoping to beat whatever bullshit team we're losing to that week. I didn't see the entire game last night, but I liked what I saw, mostly. Except that Kolb looks like Pacey.

Happy Saturday!

Aug09

Miss me?

Matt O Cornucopia

Women Hello again! I'm making not updating a habit, it turns out. Maybe the cold summer makes me bad at updating. Here's some stuff.

New Pictures from the Roast Afterparty
Saw Drew, April, Emily & Mom in San Diego as Drew & April looked for a new apartment.
Helped Steve pack his apartment and prep to leave SD. Sad.
Rode my bike all over yesterday
Been working on the BRANDED website/concept quite a bit
Bootie was awesome - I'm thinkin' of taking a model there next time to shoot some awesome-color shots.
I'm still learning about my camera - the curve is steep.

What else? Nothing that I can think of. I'll probably come back later.

UPDATE: I'm also making a series of little changes to the site. More pictures, and links to other stuff I'm working on, in case anyone's interested. I'm even putting things in the footer, for god's sake. This is getting intense.

Jul07

First Prince and now Time Magazine?

Matt O Musings

So by now, you've probably read that Prince thinks that the internet "is over". Thanks, genius. Whatever.

But today I saw a piece on Techdirt pointing out that Time Magazine is publishing only excerpts of its articles online anymore. Maybe Prince called them and explained to them that the internet was over? I dunno. But the idea of getting Time articles only on an iPad or in print is pretty fucking stupid. I'm especially sad because I grew up with Time Magazine in the house and it's one of those things that I wish I could continue to like and use in my adult life. But if Time thinks that I'm going to continue to support deforestation, poisoning the environment through ink bleed and related detritus, truck shipping of trees, pulp, materials and finished magazines, it's not the kind of magazine that I want to be a part of. That's to say nothing about the support for Jobs' absurdist self-fellating power trip.

So Time Magazine goes with Chevy in the pile of stuff I grew up with and would dearly love to continue to support, but who fucked up badly enough to push someone who wanted to support them away. I can only imagine if you're only neutral (or, god forbid, a Ford/Newsweek guy) how unappealing this move is to you.

Anyway, rant over. I wonder if they're going to recind the Computer's Man of the Year award now. Or the time they awarded it to bloggers (2006?). Fucking Time.

Aug11

apt-get install ubuntu

Matt O Tech

I'm not quite ready to ditch Win7 (but I'd like to!) on my main computer yet, but I've been having really good luck with Ubuntu, both as the only installation on my laptop and as a VM on my workstation. I've had to work with the virtualization more and more recently due to some website testing, and I just leave it up a lot otherwise because I like seeing it over there.

I'm using Ubunto 10.04, and I love Gnome, I love apt-get installing things (SO EASY!) and I love the built-in feel that this version has with a lot of the base installs. Chat app? Built in. Standard, useful desktop stuff installed? Absolutely. And having a desktop within a desktop is especially weird - when I use the Desktop Cube effect from Compiz in the VM it almost blows my mind.

I'm using AWN as a dock, which I like a lot, but it does come with a simple problem or two - I don't know where to find icons for installed programs that I want to put in my dock. I'm told I really should try Docky, but what it'll do that AWN doesn't is a mystery. Maybe when I run up against a shortfall in AWN I'll try it.

And I'm definitely using only Ubuntu on whatever my "real" laptop becomes this fall - it'll be time to get something then (a t410s, maybe?), and Ubuntu will be the only OS on there for sure.

That's it for the geeky linux love for now.

Jul23

Hello

Matt O Musings

This is one of those times when two weeks have gone by, almost identical, day-by-day and every day, I think, "I'll post something in the morning..." and every day, well... you know. Now it's gotten so long that I'm afraid to post because it'll take SO LONG.

Well, not this time. I'm just here to say hi, to tell you to enjoy your weekend and to warn you that I might even post a picture or two soon. I shot two people over the past two days for BRANDED. Yay me. I've redone the site a little, too, and developed a logo that'll have to stick, at least for the time being.

I'll be back. Happy Friday, though.

Jul07

New Camera and Wine.Woot recognition

Matt O News

comment The other day, I made the comments shortlist on Wine.Woot.

I know that this is pretty much just a "most recent decent comments" section, but still - I'd like to crow about it anyway.

Of course, I bought the wine and I've been to the vineyard more than the rest of the wooters combined (maybe), so it's not that impressive, but still, I like that I made it on there. The wine was on a great special - $20/bottle for a bottle that they usually charge $45 for, so that's nice. And it'll be good to have some excellent pinot to drink on hand.

In other big news, I bought the new Canon T2i - the first SLR that really made me want to replace my aging XTi. So far, the biggest difference (and I've only shot test shots), is the low-light performance. It's amazing what a difference ISO6400 makes when you're used to shooting at a max of ISO1600. Couple that with the fact that I'm soon going to get a lens that I'm buying specifically because it's going to give me similar results to the lens on Dad's Yashica, and you end up with a happy Matt.

Once I've taken my first real set of pictures, I'll post some up here, of course, but they'll have to be shrunken some, because 18MP is a shitload of megapixels.

Additionally, the T2i shoots FullHD video, so this is going to be the camera for my brownie projects in the forseeable future, which is awesome. I've been through too many tape-based minicams that all suck ass and break after no time at all, so it's time to upgrade to something in a product family I trust (I still love my XTi and am keeping it to shoot random crap with). I can't wait to have my first FullHD brownie project to post. Fun times.

Okay, the full (huge) wine.woot thing is after the break.

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