The complete archive of news updates

• 2008.08.17 - I'm fast becoming a fan of Miracle Fruit, so I've set up a new site dedicated to helping people share information about their own experiences. So take your own flavor trip and head on over to share what you discovered.
• 2008.07.26 - After failing to find the information I needed for a recent project at work, I decided to save other people the pain, and have written what I hope is a good turorial on using the Google Maps API to zoom photographs. As far as I know, this is the first time these techniques have been publicly explained/used with the Maps API, so I hope that someone else will find them useful.
• 2007.10.31 - Well, it's official. I gave notice on Monday, and will be leaving Silicon Mechanics at the end of November. I will start my new job as a Senior Developer at iFLOOR.com a few days later. It's been a great 5 years at SiMech, but the long commute over the last year has taken its toll and I am looking forward to my new short commute to iFLOOR. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't still look to SiMech for all of your server needs -- I'm leaving behind a great team of developers, and SiMech will always be an excellent (and MythTV/FOSS-friendly) source of great server hardware.
• 2007.08.02 - Want to see what the US Pentagon budget would look like if it was a stack of Oreo cookies? Take a look.
• 2007.07.06 - I find myself hiring again at work. Since I know that there are few people around who occasionally read this page, please take a look if you're interested in a new job:
  • LAMP Develper (PHP/MySQL)
  • Web Software QA/Tester
  • Other jobs not in my department
• 2006.12.08 - My friend Wanjiru has finally finished all of the paperwork for her new nonprofit charity, Akili Dada, which has been established to provide scholarships to promising young women in Kenya. If you have a few spare dollars, please share your good fortune with those less fortunate, and spread the word to your friends.
• 2006.08.04 - I just thought I'd let all of you know that you should check out the Sept. issue of Linux Journal. On page 63, you'll find the start of my modeling career, which if that stretched-out photo is any indication, will be quite short. Look for the bright green background.
• 2006.06.23 - Haven't had an update here in awhile, so I thought I'd post something random. I don't really understand the whole "social network" thing, but have apparently been sucked into the one at LinkedIn since it's pretty cool to see all of the different companies/industries that I'm tied to. If you're interested in linking up, just hope on over to my profile.
• 2006.03.22 - I just though of something all of you mythweb/nuvexport fans can do as a contribution that won't cost you a sent. Just head on over to the KDE Bugs site and create an account. Once you're logged in, take a look at my (least) favorite bugs and add your votes to get them fixed (or add a comment or two about how annoying they are).
• 2006.03.08 - I haven't posted in awhile, and have been told that people actually read this... So a big "thank you" to ole_schoola, who liked mythweb and nuvexport so much (and considers brewing to be such a fine art) that he got me the refractometer on my wishlist. You're welcome to a bottle of mead or two whenever you're in the area. :)
• 2005.11.21 - Position filled. Better luck next time (not that any of you applied).
• 2005.09.19 - Are there no low-level PHP programmers in the Seattle area? I need another minion.
• 2005.04.06 - I recently created a new page of bookmarklets to let Firefox mimic Galeon's "smart bookmarks" feature. Quite handy, IMHO.
• 2005.03.09 - Sorry, position filled by another mythtv/linux freak.
• 2005.02.04 - Any MySQL/PHP programmers out there looking for work? I'm hiring an assistant programmer and am looking for resumes.
• 2005.01.11 - A big "Thank You" to Jacob Hochstetler (whoever you are) for the CD. There was no note, but I assume it's in thanks for mythweb and/or nuvexport. W00t! My first real profits from OSS development.
• 2004.11.17 - I just got a raise. A big raise. I want to celebrate, but can't think of how.
• 2004.11.16 - So if you haven't noticed, I've turned on google adsense. I figured that I'd test it out along with my opening of meadbrewer.com. I was browsing through my web stats and realized that I now receive around 2000 unique visitors each month to forevermore.net, and figured that since no one has been sending goodies from my wishlist, it'd be a way to help offset my bandwidth costs. So, if you want to help support me, nuvexport, mythweb (or any of my other projects), please visit a few of the better sponsors (and me know if you see some evil companies you think I should block). And by all means, keep an eye on meadbrewer.com in the next couple of months, as I will be posting recipes and some howto information.
• 2004.08.10 - haha... Just got a phone call from a "grocery-related" survey... It went a little like this:
  "Does anyone in your household consume beef at least once per week?"
  "Nope, no meat whatsoever."
  "Oh.. hmm.. Well, that's the end of the survey."
• 2004.07.30 - So, my sister called me the other day asking about this free tv giveaway that she had heard about. Normally, I'd just dismiss this as a scam (which I did at first), but when engadget started explaining how it works, I figured that I had nothing to lose from this pseudo-pyramid scheme, especially when I discovered a forum (now defunct) dedicated to setting up a "conga line" for users to take advantage of this specific deal. So what the heck, I signed up. And since I know that there are at least a couple of people who read this stuff, feel free to sign up at the forum, too. Then follow the referral link to freeflatscreens, and sign up for something like Blockbuster Online (no payment necessary) or one of the Citi credit card offers (Citi is my preferred credit card, so they come highly recommended).
• 2004.07.23 - Have you ever really looked at your cable bill, and realized how much money you are spending? When I realized that I was paying about $45/month (after tax) for standard analog cable, I felt robbed. After researching a bit, I realized that for the same amount of money, I can get a 4-tv DishNetwork setup. This is all digital, more channels (it even includes Sirius radio), supposedly better quality than digital cable, and even does the same on-demand kind of stuff. For the same amount of money. So I signed up. Then I called comcast to cancel, and they offered me $25/month off of my bill for 16 months if I signed up for a digital package. This is a great deal, so I called and cancelled my Dish order. When I called Comcast back to take the deal, they said I had been misinformed, and that the $25/month deal was only if I wanted to sell my satellite equipment to them (I don't have any, and won't have to buy any -- it's all included with my Dish plan). Screw them. They lied, they won't get my business again, and I'll pass along the word that they're the horrible company that they seem to be, and encourage people to switch to Dish or DirecTV (I only went with Dish because of price, so have no particular loyalty to them). On that note, if anyone is interested in Dish, let me know -- if I refer you, they'll lower my bill. Saving money is always nice.
• 2004.06.23 - I've always disliked wikis, mainly because they seem silly and have a very annoying name. However, they really are a near-perfect solution for writing documentation, and as much as I want not to like them, I have to admit that they really do shine in this area. Aside from cool projects like Wikipedia, Wikimedia also has a really cool cookbook. I found this a few weeks ago, just as I was thinking that it would be cool to have a place to go and type information about ingredients, techniques, etc. It's really empty at the moment, so if you know anything about food or cooking, go over and add an entry or six.
• 2004.06.10 - yay, my Alton Brown book got here, and it's AUTOGRAPHED! $20 book, but I paid under $10 shipped for a "used" copy (and it's not used).
• 2004.06.03 - ok, this isn't really news, but I've been treating this like a blog, anyway, so here I go. A few months ago, a friend of mine turned me onto the ING Direct bank. Basically, it's an online savings account with a 2.1% interest rate (really really high) and no minimum balance. Even better, if you get a referral, they'll give you $25 (and $10 to the referer). So if anyone is interested, drop me a line via my feedback form and I'll generate a referral for you. And yes, they're all FDIC insured and all that - safe company.
• 2004.05.22 - Well, I submitted a bug about my usb burner not being detected, and got a reply. From Alan Cox. It's a known issue with the kernel, which Linux has already fixed, and will hopefully soon be backported to FC2. To hell with anyone who says that RedHat isn't actively involved in Fedora development. My confidence is (partly) restored in the Fedora team.
• 2004.05.21 - Ok, I recently took the plunge and installed fedora core 2. As nice as it is with the new gnome and the new kernel, there are two major annoyances. First the minor one. For some reason, the home and end keys behave strangely in some apps via gnome-terminal (home produces an H character, and end produces an F - this makes them completely useless, and a real annoyance). Secondly, cdrecord, the program used to burn cd's (and now dvd's) is seemingly broken. It doesn't detect my USB dvd burner, which means I'm SOL if I want to burn a dvd. Oh well, off to file another bug report.
• 2004.04.07 - Just a quick rant. I like it when web designers do cool things like use css to change the colors of their form elements so that they match the theme of a website. However, it annoys me to no end when they fail to properly set BOTH the foreground AND background colors. I use a light-on-dark theme, it prevents eye strain, which is a good thing for someone who spends 10-12+ hours daily in front of a computer screen. This means that if a web designer has kindly changed the foreground color of an input tag to black (or some other dark color), I can't see it. Likewise, if the background is set to white. PLEASE remember that not everyone's computer looks the same. Besides, it's bad form to leave your work half finished.
• 2003.11.25 - I moved the MythTV files to a new directory with a better name. I also created an index file for them and provided some descriptive info.
• 2003.10.09 - I got hired! Granted, I've been working for Silicon Mechanics for almost a year now, but it was nice to get the official move from "contract" to "employee". Anyway the new website (90-95% my work) is up, and we've launched our new blade server product (these are just so cool that I had to mention them). So, all is well in my world at the moment.
• 2003.08.03 - For those of you looking for my mythtv-related files, they are located here. If you want the new mythweb, it has now been checked into myth cvs, and you can get it from there.
• 2003.04.11 - Since I had a little extra money from working a bunch of overtime, I decided to treat myself (after treating my wife, of course) and got myself a bamboo saxophone. I first saw one of these things several years ago, and have been looking for one ever since (not very hard, apparently). After browsing around the internet, I finally decided to get the "sax pack" from Erik the flutemaker. So, not only did I get a cool sax, I also got a gorgeous bamboo clarinet. Now if only I could play them well.
• 2002.12.03 - I figured I should post something in the news section so my layoff notice wouldn't be the first thing in the list. Nothing much new has been happening - I love my new job and my short commute, and I think the new ecommerce solution for silicon mechanics is coming along great - hopefully I'll have something we can make live in the next few weeks (I'd insert some raves about php, but it all just sounds the same - needless to say, I'm very impressed with the versatility of the language and am fast becoming as good at it as I am at perl).
• 2002.11.04 - Well, I got laid off from VersusLaw last friday. I'd say some nasty things about the small severance, but I'm not allowed to. I can't really feel too bad about things - I really like the people there, and wish them all the luck (as well as to the other 3 guys who got laid off at the same time I did). Anyway, shortly thereafter, I was lucky enough to get a job offer from Silicon Mechanics, for whom I was already doing some contract work. It's a short stint of 2 months, but it'll at least give me a chance to actually prepare for being unemployed. Plus, I'm hoping that if I get the new web system running soon enough, they'll have plenty of money to keep me employed after that.
• 2002.10.15 - I finally put some photos online for people to glance at. I've also added an affialiates page with some links to related people, etc. I'm sure it'll grow as I remember more people who are online.
• 2002.09.25 - Wow, I've actually released a piece of software. I was even good and wrote documentation for it, and licensed it under the GPL.
• 2002.08.13 - Got back from our honeymoon last Sunday (the 11th), after a wonderful two weeks in sunny (and hot, and humid) Costa Rica. The wedding couldn't have been more perfect (complete with a humming bird flying down the aisle), and the honeymoon was a blast! I should get the honeymoon pics back today, but it'll probably be a couple of days before we can get around to scanning the good ones and finishing up the wedding/honeymoon website (we're still unpacking all of those wonderful gifts).
• 2002.07.19 - We're going live, right now. I just updated the DNS so that all of forevermore.net points to my dsl line. This means that I'll be forced to work on the new design for this site. Then again, I'm getting married next Saturday, and then leaving on my honeymoon for awhile, so you may not see any updates for awhile.
• 2002.06.03 - I'm getting married! Ok, so most of you have known this for the last year and a half (or so).. Anyway, we now have an official wedding website that tells all about how we met, and will eventually have links to things like RSVP, registry, directions to the site, etc.

  So you noticed the big change in the site, right? I realized that I hadn't updated forevermore.net in several years (in the past, I've used it mainly as the testing grounds for work stuff, and so I rarely bothered to alter the interface that everyone else sees). Since I have finally started moving my work stuff onto my personal machines, I thought that I should take the time to give forevermore.net the makeover that it really needed.

  Since I do have a life away from my computer (or I try to), This will take awhile to happen in its entirety, so check back occasionally to see the new things I'm planning to add.