Monthly Archives: June 2007

Google Desktop

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Finally… one of my favorite applications has been ported over to “teh” linux. (Now we just need iTunes, Counter Strike, and some (by ‘some’ i mean ANY) video editing applcation). Digress: Google released Google desktop for Linux. I’ve used Google Desktop for awhile – both at home and at work. Let me tell you something – if you haven’t used desktop search in some capacity yet in your life, then you are seriously missing out. Instead of trying to remember which folder under “My Documents” you might have put your resume; or where that video of “3rd Strike – No light” is currently residing; just pop open the desktop search and type “eric vanbergen resume” (obviously inserting your own name); “3rd strike”; or whateve else you want to find on your computer.

Without failure, the result is exactly what you are looking for. I have used a couple different search tools (including Beagle). They all do a pretty good job… Hell, even Micrsoft’s Desktop Search is phenominal, but… I do like Google’s better. In my opinion, its the best desktop search tool out there. It indexes files, word docs, pdf’s, media files (id3, even.. i think), your email, your gmail, your web history… etc.

The linux version is Beta – and with Google’s track record it will probably be Beta till about the year 2047. I’m not complaining though, Google’s beta software is better than 99% of other software in the world today. Hopefully they decide to add the sidebar with the next linux version though. I don’t see it in this initial release, and that is one killer part of the Google Desktop.

At any rate: Check out some screenies of Google Destkop running in Linux

Of other note – We now have two pets. 1 gato named “Kitt” that has been with us for 3 years, and now we’ve added “Kali” (prn: calley) the Scottish Terrier. So far, all is well. She’s a good dog and seems to get along with our cat very well. A few screenshots of “teh” dog are available as well.

Online Selling

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About a year ago, i purchased www.thesciontc.com. Originally I had fully intended to make that into a Scion enthusiasts website and online community. I made a weak attempt, and really just didn’t have the time or energy to put into it. So, my motivation and the site began to lack and eventually just sat static. Fast forward to last week. I was approached by somebody interested in purchasing the domain. My initial thought was ‘nope’ – thats too good of a domain name to let go. I even put some time back into the site and upgraded the forums. But, after a couple days the idea of selling seemed to get better and better. We settled on a good price, and my paypal account balance confirmed that the sale was for real.

I was kind of intimidated to tell the truth… I had never sold a website before and really didn’t know how to do it. Turns out it’s really not that hard. The buyer initiates a change of registrar, and you give the buyer the site’s authorization code and unlock the domain from your own registrar. A couple clicks and that was the end of it. BRB thesciontc.com. I hope your new owner treats you better than I did.

To go along with selling things in and around the online arena, I’ve finally decided to sell some things on eBay… I’ve been a member of eBay since the year 2000, but I’ve never bought anything or sold anything on ebay. In fact, i have no idea why i am a member – Or, why I can still remember a password that i created 7 years ago and haven’t used since. Regardless, the task of listing an item for auction is another new venture for me. It was easy enough to do – and I had two bids within a half hour on my first auction. Thus, I decided to post another auction.

So far, I am just lightening up on video games by selling all of my final fantasy games:
Auction 1 – Final Fantasy Playstation Lot
Auction 2 – Final Fantasy GBA/DS Lot

Both of those “Lots” are pretty impressive collections of Final fantasy games – And i’ve already played through the vast majority of them and as such will never do so again. Also it turns out a couple of those titles are pretty rare, so I have pretty high hopes for these two auctions of mine.

I’m feeling “entrepreneurial” from an online perspective and brainstorming a bunch of online ideas. We’ll see what happens in the long run here.

The New P4P

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After probably 6 hours or so of additional work, and maybe 9 total hours – the new theme for P4P has been completely integrated and tweaked to full vanberge customization.

I’m actually very happy with the current look and feel of my website. The Gallery and Google search integration turned out much better this time than it did with my last theme. These two things were my major hurdles, so i’m glad to have them out of the way. I’m still not completely sold on how the Google search results look, but Google doesn’t allow a great deal of customization with that so i think i can live with it. Plus I was able to ditch Google’s ugly html-only search form and mesh the functionality into the default wordpress search form.

I also implemented some other minor tweaks… i widened the site by 100 pixels overall, i increased the font size, added some slight color/border/image tweaks and cleaned up some alignments. All in all, i know way more about css/html than I ever wanted to.

Hopefully Google doesn’t mind that I totally hacked up their search scripts and removed the capability to do a web search from my site. The search form used to have a radio button to search the Web, or p4p.. user had to pick between the two. Now the user CAN’T pick – the search only searches p4p. 😛

If anyone notices any bad/ugly/wrong things with other browsers please let me know… but the site should be pretty uniform regardless of browser.

The Sopranos Series Finale

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I liked it.

I’ve watched every episode to date of this mobster drama – and i’ve been consistently happy with the show. The Sopranos is a consistent show – and it’s probably the 2nd best television show of all time. Shows like “24” have steep up/down times. High apexes of fantastic thrilling drama are fought by immediate downslopes of boredom and wrongdoing from a production standpoint. 24 is the greatest show ever, and its the worst thing on TV the next episode.

The Sopranos is not that way. It is consistently a fantastic show and never veers far from that mark.

Enough background.

Let me begin by saying that ANY way this series ended would have failed to meet expectations. It’s just impossible to conclude a series of this magnitude in a way that won’t disappoint somebody.

With that said, I like the series finale. I enjoyed this series finale and I enjoyed the way that concluded the series. I enjoyed everything about it. The setting, the feel, the anticipation, even the song. In my opinion, the series finale was a fantastic showing. I just signed offline because Vanbergs told me he purchased a bicycle.

In detail, here’s why I liked the series finale. Tony has been depressed and dealt with depression in his family for the entirety of the show. He fought with his wife, he dealt with problems his son had, and he dealt with all that in his role as ‘boss’ as well. It is not debatable: Tony Soprano had a dark life.

****Spoiliers****
The ending of the series did a fantastic job of bringing everything to a happier and optimistic end for Tony. The song, the entrance of his family members, with these things the viewers get a sense of happiness where all the bad and shitty things with the characters’ lives are behind them. Tony Soprano is a happy man at the end of the series. He’s getting along with his wife, the issues with his son are resolved, and he’s free to have this meal with his family without having to worry about his mob stresses now that Phil Leotardo had been taken care of.

Although the cinematography creates suspense for the viewer, there is care free bliss amongst the Soprano Family as they sit and enjoy their last meal together. Tony is the happiest he had ever been in the entire series at the moment he dies. His last vision is his daughter Meadow running into the restaurant. Just for a split second, the whole family is together. The last image Tony sees, the last thing he experiences is his entire family together. He hadn’t experienced that for a very long time – if at all in the entire series.

It was definitely his last moment. Even though it is not shown, Tony Soprano was murdered. There is absolutely nothing else that 5 solid seconds of black silence can signify. The music stops abruptly, and the series is concluded. (BTW: Journey was a fantastic choice). I’m actually glad that it ended the way it did… If they would have shown Tony getting killed, I am sure that I would have physically wept and possibly spun into a sobbing fetal position.

The Series finale did a fantastic job of doing all this without coming off as rushed or cheesy.

In my opinion, congratulations David Chase and HBO for a phenominal series, start to finish.

Look and Feel

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I have obviously updated the look and feel of p4p. I found this theme a few weeks ago and really liked it, but did not want to venture into all the ‘tweaking’ to take all my content and put it into this theme.

The theme I had been using was heavily customized in many different ways – so finally i got the motivation to start that process with this one.

As it stands, most of my content should show up and be fine. I still have a couple big things to take on… Gallery integration, and then using the Google powered search.

Alas – One step at a time.