So in true Gilmore style*, I started keeping a pro/con list of my iPod touch. Well, maybe not that as much as a list of gripes of things this thing can’t do that even my old Dell Axim pocket Pc could do. But then I started finding solutions to them one by one. I haven’t come up with something for everything (the lack of any text formatting options, including in this WordPress app for one), but I’ve found enough to satisfy me… For now!

Continue reading iPod Gripes – Now With Solutions! →

So, I have joined the ‘dark side,’ as Bill says. I am writing this on a brand new iPod Touch… My first ever Apple purchase. Well, actually it’s a birthday present, so we can say Amanda bought it, and she doesn’t know any better.

Anyway, I’m still in the debating stages of whether I want to keep it, switch to Verizon and a droid handset next month, or stick with my aging pocket pc a little while longer. I think Verizon’s out of the question for now (Sorry, Verizon family members), since the insane amount of $$$ it would cost to switch and get a data plan seems wasteful for as little as I’d use it. I don’t travel much away from home, work, or church, all of which have just fine Internet, as well as most of my family’s houses. Family gatherings in Webster City might be painful, but maybe I’ll *gasp!* actually spend some time with family!

I think, however, that I’ve used it too much to give it up. I started a list of gripes I had with it… Things that even my old pocket pc could do, but through apps, Google, and my own programmer’s prowess I seem to be knocking those out one by one. I was going to document them here, but I’ve rambled on too long already. If anything, this free WordPress app means I might actually start blogging again… More for my own journalosity (gotta add that to Benwords… ‘journalism’ seems wrong in this context, though probably not) than for anyone to actually read it. I know there are maybe two or three of you, and I appreciate that!

Anyway, I have another three weeks, so let’s get some more apps! (I’ve only tried about 150!)

Hey, you can actually write posts on this website!  It seems like we’ve forgotten how to do that.  Might have to get around to updating some things.  In the mean time, I’ve finally updated the rest of our 2007 pictures and some 2008 pictures from Jan-Feb.  Also, I’ve been playing a bit with geo-tagging.  One some of our albums (try the Honeymoon or Living Spaces), you can click on ‘View Album on a Map’ (or something similar).  I haven’t tagged too many things, but it might be crazy to tag everything.  Still, a fun feature to play around with.

Mozy seems to be a pretty awesome online backup service. I can’t say it’s the best because I haven’t tried any others, but it seems very easy and secure (and free!). You only get 2GB of space (2.25 if you use my referral code: ‘CMNX55’!), but for the data that really requires backing up, that should be decent. Plus the program is a dummy-proof auto-backup software that continually monitors your files and updates changes. It’s all secure too, with 448-bit Blowfish encryption (that’s good) that happens on your computer even before you transfer it over the 128-bit secure SSL layer. (Yes, nerds, that’s redundant, but it’s for people who don’t know what SSL means!)

I especailly loved their descriptions of alternatives to their service (my comments in [brackets]):

• Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law’s office. [Or, in my case, it was my mother-in-law’s home safe]
• Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
• Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn’t burn down. [I have several of these, but really want fire insurance. Sorry.. fire-proof safes aren’t always all that fireproof…]
• Do nothing and don’t worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating “I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place.”) [< -- Awesome!]
• Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend’s server over his DSL line. [I consider myself a nerd and would STILL not really like this option]

A couple other alternatives I thought up were:

• Use your huge gmail/yahoo/hotmail account storage limits as online backups – this is fine, but then you have to manage everything yourself or get some kind of patched-together program that might do it automatically for you
• Use your web-hosting’s ginormous disk space – This was actually going to be my first option, and I’ll still use it for the really big stuff (though Mozy has a $5/month option with unlimited storage that is pretty cool)

All in all, it seems like a great service. And the user-interface of the program you install is so easy that a computer-inept person can figure it out, and a computer ept person can configure and tweak it to do just what you want.

Give it a try, it’s pretty awesome.

Heh, so while browsing around my site at lunch, I noticed there seemed to be some things missing from the Archives listing on the side of my site. Actually a whole year was gone. Turns out the function to populate that list was taking an input of “maximum number of months displayed” or some other mumbo jumbo. I guess I have more than 24 months of history… ‘course that makes sense since it goes back to 2002. I increased it to 50… no actually, I can get rid of it and display unlimited months. Nice. Okay, now Im rambling in a blog post, so I’d better finish it up and study some ActiveX.

This has to be something like the 5th or 6th post with that title, or at least that theme. I know I haven’t updated lately. It’s like I’ve been busy being married or with my new job or something. Seriously, I haven’t really had so much time to sit down at a computer lately. I finally got the den cleared out a bit and have a computer with two monitors up and running (woo hoo!). This post is more of a check to see if this site still works. I know Russ was doing some upgrades and whatnot; it seems like I need to bug him about giving the web server access to edit files. Anyway, as always (when I make these haven’t-posted-in-awhile posts), I’ll try to update on more of life’s events soon.

Well, once again the webserver has moved. It’s not housed at my good friend Russ’s place. We got wordpress, gallery, and mail all up and running, so I went ahead and did the switch. Mail was a little shaky this morning, but I think everything’s coming through just fine now. Let me know if anything’s missing or if anything’s broken on the site, but it should look about the same as before. Gallery was upgraded to a new version so it got a neat little facelift. Otherwise… happy surfing!

Oooh… I’ll get to turn my computer off tonight! Hooray!

Sooooo. Since everything else on my site is changing around, I thought I’d take a look at the new version of the gallery software I’m running. Gallery2 can be found at http://digimuzik.com/gallery2/ . I guess at first glance I don’t like it, but that’s just because it’s so bright. It’s also a little busy. But these are mainly configuration things. Anyway, I know that there aren’t that many people that look at my site, let alone view the galleries, but if you do happen to read this, would you mind dropping a comment to this post on which you prefer?

Gallery1
Gallery2

Once upon a time, ( actually a couple of months ago), I made a post about replacing my motherboard on my laptop. I thought that was cool just by itself… But since then, my useful warranty has replaced 4 different parts! This doesn’t necessarily mean that Dell parts are junk… it just means that I have found legitimate reasons to replace hardware in this laptop. Story of my warranty follows…

Continue reading Warranties are useful… part two! →

So I woke up with a fresh mind and after an hour or two of tweaking code here and there and looking for a theme I kindof liked, I think I have my site running the way I wanted. I was able to hack the admin functions so I can now go directly to creating a new post (yay!), and I now have the “Schedule,” “Some More Favorites,” and my “Page” page all set up to use the new template. I also figured out how to get my yearly/monthly calendar to work with the new version… now just to see if I can get today’s date to blink like it did before.

Other fun stuff I found (having nothing to do with the upgrade) was the random-gallery image feature of my gallery. I don’t know for sure how much I like it… I have some strange pictures in my gallery, but for now it’s kindof neat over there on the right sidebar.