ghostwheel: musings by Lon Farenwald

CPOSC 2009

Lon — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:01:11 +0000

We are mere weeks away from Central PA’s premier tech event! CPOSC, the Central PA Open Source Conference, is happening this month on Saturday, Oct 17th at the beautiful and state-of-the-art Harrisburg University campus.

Tickets are still available, so register now to take part in this fantastic event!

I’ll see you there!

Trent interview

Lon — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:58:51 +0000

Cool interview with Trent Reznor here. Talks about the joke that is the recording industry. This particular bit cracked me up:

When is Closure coming out on DVD?
Never!
What?!
You can ask Universal, because they’re idiots, and they’re afraid to put it out.
People are dying for that.
Yes, but … there is a silver lining.
I’m listening.
A couple of years ago around this time of year, somebody must have broken into my personal files and uploaded onto a torrent site the entire DVD of Closure.
Oh darn.
Yeah, I don’t know who could have done that.

On Vegetarianism

Lon — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:09:47 +0000

A couple Sundays ago (March 30th) I started a little vegetarianism experiment. This was mostly inspired by a post by Mark on his blog, and also a follow-up conversation with Mark at lunch. This is the portion that triggered my experiment:

By fasting from particular foods, I become more conscious of the food I do eat. How much am I eating? Why am I eating? In the same way, I can limit my indulgence in TV and I start asking “Why am I watching this? How much have I watched?’

So, I’m a fan of meat. I have no moral objections to the wholesale slaughter of cows, chickens, etc. I think meat is a necessary part of a great meal. But I also think my diet could use a little more rounding (what? a bag of beef jerky isn’t a meal?) So, here is my experiment:

Go vegetarian for 2 weeks (minimum)
Dairy and fish are okay (I’m not that crazy)

That’s it. Pretty simple. So, I’m a week and a half into it and I thought I’d share some observations:

I haven’t had a huge craving for meat, unless it’s thrown in my face (ads for a delicious looking cheeseburger, people eating tasty chicken wings at a restaurant)
Meat-substitute products (Morningstar crumbles, burgers, etc) are surprisingly tasty, but more expensive than their meat-original counterparts
One can be a vegetarian and have a lousy diet. Pizza, chips, cookies—lots of junk food falls under that vegetarian umbrella.
I’ve been eating better not because I’ve gone vegetarian, but because I’ve been overall more conscious of the food I’m eating/preparing. This goes along with what Mark said in his post. The corollary: A diet that includes meat is quite healthy, given the correct balance and well-reasoned choices are maintained.
All the good sandwiches need meat. Walk into a deli for a sandwich and your vegetarian choices are tuna salad or what amounts to a tossed salad between bread slices. I did the tuna a couple days, the other option doesn’t appeal to me.
Eggs without bacon or sausage? Not the same.
I’ve been forced to expand my culinary repertoire. When cooking, it’s so easy to fall into a rut of the same tried and true dishes. Most of my go-to meals, I’ve found, feature some type of meat. Some of those I’ve converted using the faux-meat choice (tacos with the Morningstar crumbles for instance) but generally I’ve been hitting the cookbooks and trying some new stuff. I hope to document some of those on the Great Taste Coaster blog.

That’s it for now. I’ll have more updates as the experiment continues.

20 Scifi novels that will change your life?

Lon — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:49:37 +0000

Ran across this list of “The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life.” The list skews to the more recent spectrum of scifi, I think I’ve read about half of the list. Life changing may be pushing it too far, but of those books I’ve read that are on the list I’d agree that they are excellent choices. Certainly a good starting point for people who are looking for new scifi to read.

Unasked-for Advice from Scalzi

Lon — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:16:12 +0000

John Scalzi, over on his blog, wrote some advice to writers about managing their money. I think a good deal of that advice makes sense for non-writers as well, so I’m linking to it. You never know when you could pick up some nugget of wisdom that changes your life!

Self-referencial food blog post

Lon — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:46:52 +0000

One of these days I will actually blog more often than the current quarterly or semi-annual schedule. But in the meantime, check out a new group blog I’m involved in called… well, we still need a good name. Call it Random Food Blog for now. We’re going to post recipes, share adventures in dining, and various other food-related topics.

Oh, and if you can think of a catchy name for the blog let me know.

Shelfari

Lon — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:10:29 +0000

I stumbled a across a website called Shelfari, which may be of interest to the book lovers among you. It’s site, similar to LibraryThing et al, where you can share which books you’ve read/bought with others. Of course it’s got all sorts of social Web2.0 goodness like tagging and building a friends list. One handy feature is that it can import data from Delicious Library (and others) so that you don’t have to build a collection from scratch using this service, if you’ve already started cataloging with other software.

You can check out my Shelfari profile here. I imported a few from Delicious Library and added some I could think of just off the top of my head. Once I get a new Mac with a built-in camera I want to go to town with DL, which can scan the barcodes and lookup using the camera, and get my collection logged and online.

Whiffle

Lon — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:22:55 +0000

The are few things more satisfying than the crack of bat on baseball. The sturdy plastic of the Whiffle (not your cheap imitation) variety bat & ball makes a surprisingly good substitute.

Social web two oh so overloaded

Lon — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:36:28 +0000

So now Pownce has entered the fray among services like Twitter and Jaiku. Yet another social medium to keep tabs and share with your friends. And then there’s more full-featured services like Facebook, Vox or Virb–I won’t mention the M-word. All have the pros and cons.

They’re social, so you want to keep up with your friends or feel like part of a community. But how do you pick just one? You may have friends partial to one or the other, how do you choose? You might end up trying to update with multiple sites. Which then leads to the overload mentioned in the title. Then you realize you should just stick to email.

This is just like competing IM networks. So I guess we need multi-protocol clients to tackle this problem, like Adium/Trillian/gaim/etc did for IM.

Macbook vs Macbook Pro

Lon — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:54:45 +0000

What with Leopard being delayed until October and my trusty Powerbook turning 3-years-old this month, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to delay my next Mac laptop purchase any more. So now I really need to decide between a Macbook, or a Macbook Pro. I’ve configured two roughly equivalent systems: The Macbook comes in at $1,643 and the Macbook Pro at $2,174. They share the following features:

120GB drive
2GB RAM
4MB L2 cache and 667MHz FSB
USB, GigE, Wifi, Firewire, Bluetooth yada yada

So what does the extra $531 of the MBP give me?

.16 extra GHz (2.16 vs 2.0)
2.1 inches of screen (15.4″ vs 13.3″)
272,000 extra pixels (1440×900 vs 1280×800 screen resolution)
ATI Radeon X1600 3D Accel. (vs the MB’s integrated Intel gfx)
Illuminated keyboard
Firewire 800
Expresscard/34 expansion

So, is that worth the $531? The biggies for me are the screen size and 3D accel. A 15″ Powerbook G4 is what I have currently so the MBP would be the same machine but with much more ass kicking. On the other hand, the 13″ MB is smaller and more portable. And even though the screen size is smaller, 1280 x 800 is the same screen resolution I’m used to with my current Powerbook.

So I’m torn. Spend the half-grand and get the uber-laptop, or try to go with something more portable and still a heck of a lot more machine than my G4? Help me decide!