the other page

Passing

2010-08-15T21:48:00.003-04:00

To those who follow Furlan's blog I am sorry to inform you that he passed away on 26 Jul 2010 while waiting for the bus to go to work.

If you wish to send condolences then please send them to me, Monica Janet Primus (his sister) at nicabill@aol.com

Hydrant 001

2010-03-07T09:29:00.001-05:00

Hydrant 001, originally uploaded by flprimus.

Yet another hydrant, a recent re-working.

Leaves And Gutter

2010-02-21T09:19:00.001-05:00

Leaves And Gutter, originally uploaded by flprimus.

This image is my very first 'selective color' image. I always liked the concept and just never got to do one before.

Clock Tower 001

2010-01-18T11:15:00.001-05:00

Clock Tower 001, originally uploaded by flprimus.

A recently uploaded file to Flickr.

Situation 001

2010-01-18T11:14:00.001-05:00

Situation 001, originally uploaded by flprimus.

A recently uploaded file to Flickr.

yet-another-blue-fence

2010-01-17T18:43:00.001-05:00

yet-another-blue-fence, originally uploaded by flprimus.

A current re-working of an older image using the MathMap plug in in the GIMP.

Screenshot

2009-07-02T06:31:00.001-04:00

Screenshot, originally uploaded by flprimus.

This is what my main machine looks like at the moment...

Clear

2009-06-22T19:12:00.002-04:00

I find it difficult to believe that after all these years that I can type 'cls' into a shell and expect it to work when I should have typed 'clear'. Old habits die after a LONG time...

Who I am following on Twitter

2009-06-20T12:08:00.001-04:00

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Yet Another Twitter Mosaic

2009-06-20T12:05:00.001-04:00

Get your twitter mosaic here.

east main street 06-wm

2009-06-20T11:54:00.002-04:00

east main street 06-wm, originally uploaded by flprimus.

This is one of a set of twelve recently uploaded from flickr.

Another Twitter Mosaic

2009-03-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Latest Twitter Mosaic

2009-03-07T06:57:00.001-05:00

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Flowers-003

2009-03-07T06:52:00.002-05:00

Flowers-003, originally uploaded by flprimus.

This and nine other photos were recently uploaded to flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flprimus/

Enjoy!

Flower 3

2009-01-31T11:58:00.002-05:00

Flower 3, originally uploaded by flprimus.

I just added more pictures to my Flickr page.

A Twitter Mosaic

2009-01-29T13:14:00.002-05:00

These are the people following me on Twitter:

Reflection

2009-01-29T10:14:00.001-05:00

Reflection, originally uploaded by flprimus.

I just uploaded more pictures to my Flickr page.

Stairway

2009-01-22T11:08:00.001-05:00

Stairway, originally uploaded by flprimus.

This my first blog posting from my Flickr page. I recently added 6 new pictures to that page.

WTF???

2008-12-30T17:24:00.003-05:00

I just had an email to a company that I do business with rejected because I had this blog listed in my sig line. I have written to SpamHaus asking why this is the case. In addition it cost me $1.40 to call the company when I could have communicated the information needed via email.

I have removed this address from my .signature file pending resolution.

As I said: WTF!!!

update...

2008-11-30T15:53:00.000-05:00

hi.

two in one day after months of neglect:

http://processing.org/

'nuff said!

meme...

2008-11-30T14:57:00.001-05:00

One day, during his sojourn in Ceylon, he came upon a river.
Immediately, he waded into the water and began looking for his bowl.
People on the riverbanks were puzzled and approached him to ask what he was doing.
"Some time ago," he said, "'I lost a begging bowl and now I am trying to find it."
Thinking they might help him, they asked, "Where did you lose your bowl?"

an open-invitation book meme:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

If you read this and you have a blog do consider yourself tagged. ;-P

Following

2008-08-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

I am checking out the new "Following" feature here. I'll add more as time goes by.

New Photos

2008-08-24T09:29:00.003-04:00

Earlier today I walked up to the bakery with my camera in hand. I took about 50 or so pictures along the way. There are now 6 new photos posted on my flickr account.

(Forgotten) Music

2008-08-03T10:11:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I have done any music because I have found myself using my free time to practice my magic. Both pursuits require an inordinate amount of in order to do them properly. I keep getting emails from Cakewalk encouraging me to upgrade my copy of SONAR. Maybe next time as I am still attempting to figure out how to use my present version as I am more apt to bring up ACID to create a tune as I have been using that almost exclusively. I tend to use SONAR to record MIDI tracks with soundfonts or synths and ACID to manipulate loops and samples. First I do need to have some breakfast though...

MySpace...

2008-07-03T20:10:00.004-04:00

On my regular account on MySpace today I got a friend request and when perusing the account of the request found this popup:

I was a bit concerned about this as I was posting from my Linux box. WTF would I need a security update for WINDOWS???

Needless to say I rejected the request as SPAM.

If you get a similar request I do suggest that you report it...

twitter stuff...

2008-04-12T13:24:00.002-04:00

Last night while having dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends we we discussing Twitter and how I came to subscribe to it. I found Twitter in an effort to follow Hugh McLeod's ramblings. I recently joined in order to keep up w/ him. Quite recently he quit using Twitter (http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004480.html)
I will miss his tweets and still keep up w/ his activities on his blog...

2008-04-05T13:40:00.002-04:00

Yes, it's been a while since my last post, oh well...

I recently installed Ubuntu Linux on my new box. Today I needed to rebuild a tool that I use to maintain my website only to have the build process crash because header files which I consider standard and needed didn't happen to be present.

In order to make these available one must invoke:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

I am posting this so that the next time I find myself in this position I can quickly locate the solution. If it helps at least one other person out there it is a good thing... :-P

Twitter

2008-03-04T17:09:00.002-05:00

I joined Twitter today (http://twitter.com/flprimus) only to find out that NOBODY in my list of contacts in GMail has an account. Somehow I find that bit of information a bit strange.

Knowing my history of posting I'll probably post even less than on this blog. Who knows, maybe I'll post more...

;-P

Main Site Update

2008-02-26T17:33:00.005-05:00

I have recently updated my main site (http://flprim.us/) with new material and pages as well as a non-user visible rewrite of the Python back end which creates the pages. Soon I may be moving to a dark background with light text. ;-P

Masthead

2008-02-18T12:32:00.002-05:00

Today I FINALLY fixed the masthead on my main site so that when you click on it the home page is redisplayed. This was suggested to me quite a while ago by someone who left me some comments of which most of which I had subsequently implemented. Taking this step remined me that I need to update the site a bit more frequently than I have done so in the past.

Current (Card) Routine...

2008-01-31T18:48:00.001-05:00

My current (card) routine:

1. Card in the Hand
2. Presto Prediction (Longe)
3. A Betting Proposition
4. Colour Monte (Temple)
5. Modern Monte (Chris Charlton)
6. Twisting The Aces (Vernon)

Comments are welcome. I need attributions for 1 & 3.

More Magic Conversation...

2008-01-31T18:22:00.000-05:00

I need to create a reasonable Chop Cup routine and a Cups And Balls routine.

Just saying...

:-P

Up North

2008-01-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

It was a few years ago and I went up north with my current roommate and his (then) current roommate. We went to the Alpine Slide. I went down it once and decided that I had had enough and gave my tickets to the previous roommate and retired to the bar for some drinks. Subsequently my current roommate joined me after doing the same w/ his tickets. Eventually the former roommate joined us. I took out a deck of cards an repeatedly named the top card of the deck accurately much to the amazement of the former roommate who was getting VERY annoyed at the situation. I laughed. He then got even MORE annoyed when my current roommate started to replicate my behavior, many times.

What he did NOT realize at the time was the time he was wearing mirror shades and the we were just holding the cards up, viewing them in the shades and thus correctly identifying them w/o a problem.

Life can sometimes be that way... :-P

About exposing magic.

2007-11-21T16:24:00.000-05:00

Penn & Teller have regularly exposed stuff right after doing the aforementioned routines (for example, the cups and balls). It REALLY doesn't matter if you know how it's done.

Anyone with an interest wrt 'how it is done' can find out the modus operandi of most anything, there are books available, exposes like the program in question, and, if one is sufficiently clever in the use of search engines there is ample material available on the net.

In my experience I have found that some people who are overly concerned about 'how it is done' that even if they were familiar with the m.o. would be unwilling to take the time and effort which is needed in order to actually produce the effect in question and actually only are looking for a superficial explanation thereof. The thing that I find most amusing is that given any effect there are MANY ways of doing it rather than only one so if you 'understand how it is
done' in one way you might just be deluded enough to imagine that you really understand 'how it is done'.

It does not matter 'how it is done'. it matters in the sense of whether or not it is done well. For example, earlier today I was discussing the expression 'up the sleeve' with a cow-orker and despite me showing him exactly 'how it is done' when I made the coin (repeatedly) disappear AND he knew 'how it was done' he STILL didn't see it.

Relax, it's something to be enjoyed rather than 'figured out' :-P

Ambitious Card Update

2007-09-12T07:17:00.000-04:00

It seems that at least one other person is doing the AC as I described previously. I have not seen it yet though and am still considering working on this angle anyway as it isn't ubiquitous (yet).

Ambitious (Card)

2007-08-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

I recently had an idea about doing an 'ambitious card' routine using a one way forcing deck and a stranger card. The idea was that the spectator selects the stranger card and it repeatedly shows up at the top (as is normal in an ambitious card routine. After all is said and done it is revealed that the selected card is the only unique card in the deck. I have not seen any mention of this in the literature so maybe I have come up with a unique concept here...

Sunday Music

2007-07-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

I just posted another improvised (synthesizer) piece on Soundclick.

It is called "sunday music" and was created using Absynth 4 and Sonar 6 Producer Edition. The only editing that was done was a fade in and fade out and conversion to MP3 for upload to the site.

New Music

2007-06-17T09:59:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I posted two new ambient pieces to my SoundClick site

These are shortened and edited versions as there is a 10 megabyte limit on uploads due to the fact that it is a basic account. In the original recordings one piece was about 16 minutes long and the other was around 40 minutes in length. Both were created using samples and Absynth renderings using Audacity and Sonar 6 Producer Edition as well as Acid Pro 6.

Music (guitar, again)

2007-06-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

Recently I experience not being able to record my guitar in Acid or Sonar under Windows XP (my musicbox). Today I just plugged it in, brought up Acid Pro and was able to record. It was probably POM dependent. :-P

Fedora 7

2007-06-03T07:39:00.000-04:00

My Fedora 7 install, in its inexplicable fashion, went a bit oddly, to be sure.

I bittorrented both the DVD and live CD for my platform under FC6,
burned the live CD and checked it out and immediately had problems with
it recognizing my video card (which was the same one I had been using
all along). No problem, I can deal w/ that later I thought.

Subsequently I got a dialog box asking to figure it out and was able to
get both the video working AND have the X server come up. Idiot glee!
Having both the rescue CD burned and the DVD available I decided to do a
local install. I booted and did the dance w/ the video card &c. The DVD
install starts and all is going fine until it needs an esound package
(at this point I don't recall which one) and I retried several times w/
similar results. I then, in my infinite wisdom (ha!) allowed it to
reboot as I at this point deduced that the media was probably the
problem. I deftly inserted the live CD and brought it up and when all
was settled down just clicked on the Install icon and proceeded in that
fashion which then led to a rather straightforward install.

On the other appendage, I could have just mounted the DVD image as it
WAS sitting on the drive and gone that route I guess and by this point I
just wanted to get the thing loaded.

Everything seems to be working correctly so far and I am adding bits and
pieces that I had initially forgotten about. I still have FC6 set up
and wrote a small shell script to mount it if I feel the need to get
files that somehow got forgotten in the installation.

In addition I am quite happy that I now have a single (Live) CD that I can pass on
to others to try and I do NOT miss having to snag the 6 CD set.

So it goes...

Björk & more

2007-04-24T20:52:00.000-04:00

Today was a Björk & Beat day.

First I found Yet Another Beat related link:

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/guide/hum/english/beats.html

Then I got TWO Björk CDs that I (had ordered and) had never seen before:

"Army of Mixes" and "Drawing Restraint 9"

Later I found some more that I have not obtained yet:

Telegram, Family Tree, Björk's Greatest Hits, Hyperballad/Enjoy (Mixes), and Surrounded.

I also picked up Twin Peaks "Fire Walk With Me", a soundtrack for a movie that I have never seen even though I was a big fan of the TV show and had actually ordered that soundtrack. It was a pleasant mistake and I have (re)ordered the original soundtrack.

All in a day's play...

More music

2007-01-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

Having recently opened a SoundClick account I have been slowly adding new music to it. This morning I added a new piece.

Here is the site:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pageartist.cfm?bandID=623012

Ahem...

2007-01-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

Happy GNU (Y)ear!

I finally uploaded a new tune to MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/acidredux) and SoundClick (http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=623012)

ALS is an improvised version of Auld Lang Syne.

It was created in two takes, the first was the guitar and the second ABSYNTH 4.
It was then exported from Sonar to a WAV file and converted to MP3 & Ogg Vorbis formats. The MP3 version is what got uploaded to MySpace and SoundClick.

Enjoy!

Fedora Core 6

2006-11-19T22:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finally got around to installing Fedora Core 6 on my main machine. So far everything is working just fine. I made a script to mount the previous install so that I can easily copy any needed files to the new install. At the moment I am listening to a very nice jazz station found via Streamtuner from Japan called Oayji Radio which seems to specialize in guitar oriented jazz which suits me fine...

Finally completed (for the moment)

2006-11-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

This morning I finally added the Loop/Samples for ACID Pro and my Soundfonts to the drive. Now I am able to continue making music. Hey, it took less than a week, I should be happy...

On the other appendage today is my birthday and I can get drunk if I want to (celebrate).

BTW, to anyone attending my b'day dinner you need to know that it is about presence, not presents... :-P

Current Status

2006-11-08T18:33:00.000-05:00

ABSYNTH 4 is now operational! Now to load all the loop samples for ACID!

To Be Continued

2006-11-08T07:59:00.000-05:00

I finally got Absynth 3 loaded, registered, and working.

Now the issue is Absynth 4. The program is loaded and I am not able to use it because Native Instruments, in their infinite wisdom, made the installation and use of the program depend upon successful online registration. Unfortunately their servers are 'slashdotted' at the moment and I can ONLY register from the machine on which the software is installed.

I'll continue to attempt to register it when I get home from work this evening.

The switch continues.

2006-11-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

After hours of constant loading rebooting and loading more I gavc up around midnight.

That got me to the state of having the sound card software loaded and the new 320 gig drive set up, AUDACITY and SONAR HS 4XL installed.

I just loaded ACID Music Studio and the upgrade to ACID Pro 6.0 and am presently downloading the most recent update(s) for the aforementioned software.

After that I have to load Native Instruments FM7, ABSYNTH 3, & ABSYNTH 4. I suspect due to the dual nature of the registration and authentication process that it will be here that I hit some problems. I am prepared to be proven wrong with this and perhaps all will go well.

After all of the programs are installed THEN I have to copy all of the sample libraries to my drive. That should prove to be a time consuming process, heh.

I just noticed that by default Windows XP Home does NOT show file extensions, I need to change that after all of the above is handled.

All of this just to make a clean start.

New Windows...

2006-11-06T21:03:00.000-05:00

After months of putting off moving my music creation tools to a newer, faster box with more memory and hard drive space I finally took the plunge today.

I am appalled at how much work it is to set up an XP box from scratch, even with the OS installed there is a lot of work involved. All of my applications have to be reinstalled from scratch and then authenticated via the net. In addition there were something like 66 or so updates from Windows to get the box current.

I am NOT looking forward to the rest of the evening, to be sure...

Acid Update

2006-08-10T11:02:00.000-04:00

Today's upgrade/update of ACID Pro to 6.0b (build 305) seems to have solved the issues (lockups and scratchy audio) that I was experiencing so for the moment I am somewhat pleased.

I am still considering switching my machines around to increase performance.

Acid indigestion

2006-08-03T14:19:00.000-04:00

Recently my main music program no longer can be changed via the dialog. In addition, Audio output is scratchy & distorted. Audio is playing fine elsewhere (including under Ubuntu Linux) Go Figure...

Follow up

2006-06-29T07:31:00.000-04:00

Several days after sending an email inquiring about the actual violation(s) of their TOS I received an email from them regarding how to log into my account. There was no response to my inquiry. Insofar as I had NOT attempted to log in to the account as the content was no longer there I am perplexed as to why they would be sending me such information.

One scenario that springs immediately to mind is that the profile got hijacked and was used to do something that violated their TOS, this was brought to their attention and they deleted the account.

The only information that I really lost in the deletion of the account was my friends list. I am now working on both rebuilding that and creating a way to keep a backup of said list off site.

MySpace Blues

2006-06-24T18:21:00.000-04:00

Today I logged onto my GMail account to find an email from MySpace stating:

========================================================
MySpace has deleted your profile because we received a credible complaint of your violation of the MySpace Terms of Services.
========================================================

This was followed by generic boilerplate about Terms of Service. Nowhere did it state specifically what the reason was and no indication of the 'credible complaint'.

This was for my Primusic site. That site was up less than two months had over 5400 plays of the 4 songs that were posted and over 4100 profile views. I had 66 friends.

I have NO CLUE as to why they did it. All of the content on the page I created. As far as I know all the samples that I used were either bought (mostly from Sony) or created by me. I post no inappropriate visual content. I wrote to them about it and I'd be willing to bet that I don't even get a response...

WTF!

Music Site

2006-05-15T20:07:00.000-04:00

Recently Johnny Lifeson suggested that I put up a band site on MySpace.

A week ago Sunday I finally took the plunge and the URL is:

Acid Redux

Life is good (sometimes).

Green Wallpaper (Spring!)

2006-04-26T07:38:00.000-04:00

Greased Lightbox

2006-04-02T11:43:00.000-04:00

While surfing earlier I came across a nice Greasemonkey script called Greased Lightbox. This script allows you to see pictures against a dark background by merely clicking on them in your Firefox (or Safari or Opera) browser. It has a link at the bottom of the displayed picture to see it as you normally would view it as well.

Something about Silence

2006-03-27T19:52:00.000-05:00

I met a gentleman today who played some very nice piano music.

He informed me that he was a piano teacher. We had a brief discussion about music. I gave him the score to Satie's Vexations which he proceeded to play VERY uptempo which I thought a bit strange as the instructions from the composer indicated that the piece should be played very slowly. He then informed me that music has basically been going downhill since around 1909 when Mahler stopped writing.

Somehow the discussion turned to John Cage at which point he started ranting about a Cage piece called "32 seconds" and how stupid it was. Being somewhat of a Cage fan myself I gathered that he was actually referring to the piece by the name of "4:33", a very famous piece, actually. In fact I subsequently Googled "4:33" and found that most of the results were about the piece in question. I could find no references to a piece called "32 seconds" by Cage.

One of the more interesting versions of this piece is on a two CD set that is a tribute to Cage wherein Frank Zappa does "4:33" as his contribution to the set. The silence is thunderous.

Thinking about it now I bet he doesn't like Charles Ives, Schoenberg. or Stravinsky either. Modern Jazz, especially of recent vintage is probably considered non-music as well. Eno and Terje Rypdal are also unlistenable to him also. I wonder what considerations he has of Zorn, Bjork or Ani DiFranco.

Yet Another Non-obvious Solution

2006-03-25T02:59:00.000-05:00

I recently updated my main machine to Fedora Core 5. Everything seemed to go well including subsequent updates except that while recognizing my Audigy soundcard there was no sound output.

Searching Google got me an answer:

(excerpt from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=427009)

You may need to select the correct Analog/Digital output.
Code:

alsamixer

Move right to "Audigy A" toggle it with the dot "." key.

Now sound works! At the moment I am listening to Brian Eno: Discreet Music.

Fedora Core 5 and KDE

2006-03-22T07:44:00.000-05:00

First screen shot showing current desktop running on Fedora Core 5 with KDE. Yes, the minimalism is intentional.

New and old hardware

2006-03-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

Usually when I move to a new (major) version of Fedora Core I back up everything in /home and any other materials that I might wish to move to the new system, reformat the partition/drive in question, do a fresh install and then move my data etcetera back to /home.

A couple of months ago because my DVD burner didn't seem to be cooperating I just did an upgrade from Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 4. Everything went fine for a while and then one day I booted up after an update only to find that I could not boot the machine. It kept repeating an error message and just would
NOT stop. I had to bring the machine down by powering down.

Over dinner I discussed the situation with my good friend Seamas and came to the conclusion that a good short term solution would be to buy a new drive and replace the current one and deal with the problem later.

Maybe it was the Tequila...

After dinner we went to Staples and picked up a new drive. Upon getting home I removed the old drive, installed the new drive, put in my installation CD(s) for Fedora Core 4 and rebooted. The installation went fine and I was back online in about a half an hour.

Post-install upgrades produced nothing in the way of problems so I 'assumed' the problems that I was experiencing were a function of how I had the last drive configured. I decided to wait to attempt to gather my data from the old drive.

A couple of months pass and I replaced my DVD player with a DVD burner. Now I have a working DVD burner in the box so I thought about recovering stuff from the old drive.

Sunday morning after returning from the bakery and getting a cup of chai I opened up my main box, ripped out the CD burner and installed the old hard drive and then rebooted the machine only to find that due to my inexperience in dealing with hardware I had reversed the boot order of the drives and the old
drive was attempting to boot. I powered down, has some chai and opened up the case, switched the hard drives, closed up the case and rebooted.

The machine booted fine. Now I needed to find out how to be able to actually access the drive. I opened up Firefox and put 'lvm mount' into the search box and invoked Google.

On http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-64964.html I found a message by Jeff Sadowski outlining the steps needed:

=============================================
boot with a disk that has lvm2 tools

#load device module
modprobe dm-mod
#change the volumes that exist to active
vgchange -ay
#mount the logical partition
mkdir -p /mnt/VolGroup00/LogVol00
mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/VolGroup00/LogVol00

=============================================

I dumped the above into a shell script commenting out the mkdir line after the initial run and now I can see the old hard drive contents. The next step will be to dump said contents to DVDs and reformat/repartition the drive in preparation for loading Fedora Core 5 when it gets released.

This time I won't let the system use the entire drive. I will divide the drive into a number of (smaller) partitions so that I can have a partition devoted solely to the /home directory to ease problems of this sort in the future.

Screenshot (again)

2006-03-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

Another screenshot in an ongoing series. This one shows a KDE desktop. In the lower left SuperKaramba Liquid Weather is displayed. On the right GKrellM resides. A Konqueror window is behind the Emacs editor. For some reason the lower disk is marked CD Recorder when it is, in fact, a DVD recorder that I installed last Friday.

Disabling Flash (on an as-needed basis)

2006-03-05T22:58:00.000-05:00

To (temporarily) disable MacroMedia Flash if you are using Firefox just install the flashblock extension.

Now I don't have to have music blasted at me at 3 am if I don't wish to hear it. (Yet another MySpace.com annoyance solved)

Sunday morning coming down (the stairs)

2006-03-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

The doorbell rings. I grab my keys and head down three flights of stairs.

I open the door and the gentleman in the doorway says "I bet you weren't expecting any visitors today." I respond, "Actually none, thank you" and quietly shut the door in his face. I go back upstairs and continue what I was doing when interrupted. No Sale. (Second time in a week) What a sad way to have to spread your religion...

Art

2006-03-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

I am on my way home, heading toward the bus when I am accosted by a well dressed individual attempting to sell me an 'art briefcase' full of supplies for $10. I inform him that it is rather pointless for me to purchase said item as I do most of my art on a computer. No Sale. What a sad way to have to make a living...

MySpace observation(s)

2006-02-27T05:53:00.000-05:00

I still haven't decided which is worse, the incredibly difficult to read low-contrast pages or the music that gets inflicted on you early in the morning before you can scroll down to turn OFF the player.

There is a Greasemonkey script to deal with the former, "Myspace custom style remover" that does a good job of making the pages thus written somewhat readable.

It is too early and I need coffee.

Yet Another Sunday Screen Shot

2006-02-26T05:48:00.000-05:00

A small piece of music.

2006-02-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

Recently I sent an email out to a select group of friends with a link to a small piece of music that I created. It is about 2 minutes long and as an Ogg file is roughly 2 megs in size. I have gotten several emails noting that the recipient cannot play the aforementioned piece.

In order to not have to write further emails with information about dealing with Ogg files under Windows I figured that it would be better to put it here.

Winamp plays Ogg files.
There are, actually, quite a few ways to play Ogg files under Windows (and other operating systems).

Current Desktop

2006-02-11T09:54:00.000-05:00

I have been recently experimenting with KDE and comparing it with GNOME which I have used for many years. This is a screen shot of the way my desktop looks at the moment.

Wallpaper for 05 Feb 2006

2006-02-05T08:43:00.000-05:00

Yet another in a series.

Today's Wallpaper

2006-01-29T19:44:00.000-05:00

Yet another image in an ongoing series.

Revealing

2006-01-29T19:17:00.000-05:00

Reveal is a very nice Firefox extension.

I just installed Reveal and am exploring it. Tabs are displayed as small thumbnails of the page so you can select a tab visually. You can toggle it off and on via your F2 key. It looks like useful eye candy. There is a link on the page for an online guide to it and the first time it is invoked it displays a 5 minute tour.
Sweet.

Latest Wallpaper

2006-01-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

Here is the current wallpaper on my main machine.

Fedora Core 4 is now running on this box.

Note to self: NEVER upgrade, always start with a fresh partition/drive. It is MUCH cleaner when you do that.

More Wallpaper

2006-01-14T23:35:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's just the rain & cold and I have been doing more wallpaper of which this is an example.

Wallpaper

2006-01-13T09:16:00.000-05:00

Having a day off didn't stop me from arising way too early. I created this wallpaper before venturing out to the bakery. It was created in the GIMP.

del.icio.us links

2006-01-12T22:01:00.000-05:00

Today I posted link # 1000 on delicio.us .
That is a lot of links. I bet there are people who have posted WAY more than that.

IE fixed

2006-01-09T03:02:00.000-05:00

Not really fixed, the only way to REALLY fix it is to replace it with another working browser like Firefox, Opera, &c.

The previous visual problem is now fixed.

Dealing with IE

2006-01-08T08:08:00.000-05:00

I have noticed that my flprim.us site does NOT display correctly when viewed with Internet Explorer under Windows. The page displays correctly using Firefox, Opera, Flock, Mozilla under Linux and using Firefox,Opera, and Flock under Windows XP (Pro). I am getting very tired of it not working when viewed with IE, especially since there are still a lot of people surfing with that browser.

Today I will explore possible solutions and deal with it.

WMF WTF!

2006-01-01T20:35:00.000-05:00

Some links about that WMF worm that is going around at the moment:

Microsoft
Sans
Viruslist
Websecurity Labs
Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix

Happy New (Y)ears!

2006-01-01T14:07:00.000-05:00

Did you ever notice that with the enormous amount of music produced on this planet that radio seems to be concerned with only broadcasting an extremely small portion of this aforementioned music. Did you ever consider just WHY this seems to be the case?

A little someting about Coffee

2005-12-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

7 Drinks of Mankind: Coffee

Ooooh, Coffee! And a little music as well.

Cuervo Christmas Cookies

2005-12-18T10:40:00.000-05:00

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
Lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it’s best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK, try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit, Pick the frigging fruit off floor. Mix on the turner.

If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just! pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt, or something.

Check the Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don’t forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

CHERRY MISTMAS

(I recently received the above in an email, I don't know who created it and it seems to me that the 'original' one that I have seen in past years used rum)

The Red and the Mondegreen and other misheard lyrics

2005-12-18T10:25:00.000-05:00

This is a page about lyrics that somehow got scrambled.
Another a page about lyrics that somehow got scrambled.
Yet another a page about lyrics that somehow got scrambled.

OK, I’ll stop now.

More del.icio.us

2005-12-15T08:17:00.000-05:00

I just added a link to my del.icio.us links under the LINKS section.

Autumn Leaves

2005-11-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

I just posted some new photos from yesterday's meandering through the neighborhood. I was stopped by several individuals who seemed to be overly concerned WRT what I was doing. I was taking photographs of leaves and colors and autumn things to add to my online collection on flickr .

Maybe they considered that I was taking pictures of them, then again they just might have been suffering from an attitude problem, who knows, who cares.

Delicious

2005-10-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that I have posted around 700 links on del.icio.us/furlan.

Picture This...

2005-10-16T05:43:00.000-04:00

I posted new pictures to my Flickr site.

Origin of the Novel Species Noodleous doubleous

2005-10-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

A recent discovery attributed to Intelligent Design. Ha! I especially liked the conclusion.

something about a bad job

2005-10-09T21:05:00.000-04:00

i used to work at a place like where you work
a long time ago and one morning 'round 2 AM
some guy walks in and sticks a gun in my face
he left w/ less than $100 (we had a drop in safe)
i was more worried that he would accidentally shoot me
so i pushed the gun aside and handed him the money
he even took the small change
i guess he needed to do his laundry or something...

a few minutes earlier some guy was in the corner
converting someone else, praise jesus! or something
the guy who owned the place came in and told me
to take a 15 min break
i should have quit right then except that i was too traumatized
i quit the next day.
noone should have to work under such conditions...

SPAM this...

2005-10-05T10:40:00.000-04:00

I have been looking at the amount of spam that I get on my various email accounts. My Yahoo! account seems to acquire the most of late. By now I don't even bother to check if there are false positives, if the filter catches it I just assume it is spam and erase it on a semi-regular basis. I refuse to look through several hundred messages daily just to see if something got filtered accidentally.

New Background

2005-10-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

I changed my current background image from a simple background to this image. It will stay up for a while until I find something more to my liking. I shot a LOT of pictures yesterday so I am certain that at least one of them will replace this image in the not so distant future.

New ChucK

2005-09-28T10:25:00.000-04:00

A new ChucK release and I was too tired to explore it last night. Perhaps tonight I'll be able to examine it.

2005-09-25T16:47:00.000-04:00

Let's see if doing this will actually get me to write on a semi-daily basis.

Background

2005-09-25T16:09:00.000-04:00

This picture is my current background image on my main box.

The Best Bread in Connecticut

2005-09-25T15:19:00.000-04:00

The Chabaso Bakery makes the best bread in Connecticut.

Especially the Roasted Garlic Ciabatta!