Lewies Blog

My brother is a health nut. Actually, he’s just a vegetarian. I check in on things from time to time about vegetarians, organic food and what not. I came accross an article advising how to be frugal about organic foods. There were some helpful tips to avoid the high priceson being frugal.

One tip that caught my eye was the following:

If you have room to raise your own meat, you can save even more.

I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say that I’m a dirty thinker. I almost died laughing. Anyhow, my brother doesn’t eat meat at all. Last I checked, that was pretty much the definition of a vegetarian.

The article went on with a few other tips. Some were “no-brainers”. Others had me wondering what planet the auther was from. I’m sure my brother already considered most of these tips. Any how, for the rest of my readers, here is a summary of the tips:

• By in bulk
• Buy direct
• Cook from scratch
• Make your own soy milk and tofu
• Grind grain for bread
• Join a co-op
• Buy uncertified food from farmers
• Hunt for coupons on the internet
• Grow your food

Tags: Brother, Health Nut, Vegetarian, Organic Food, Organic, Food, Tips, Frugal, Meat, Dirty Mind

So I was watching a few videos on Kontraband and came accross one called Real Zombies. In the video, Darren Brown sais that he has had the game created to his specifications called Waking Dead. This special game is to make an attempt to cause someone who plays it to go into a catatonic trance.

The game is in a pub and he watches people from a control room. A guy comes up and starts playing. When he gets to a certain area, the video game starts emitting the flashes. After a few attempts, the guy finally goes into the trance.

Darren comes out with the movie cameras and drags the guy out of the pub and onto a stretcher. His two confused friends come along with him, no questions asked. He is carted over to the building accross the street. Spooky green and blue lighting is everywhere. Blood is smeared on glass, and the place is empty.

These guys get to a room where the game left off. They stand the guy up and put a gun in his hand. Then everyone hides in another control room to monitor everything. Zombies come out from everywhere. It is both funny and a little worrying with how this guy reacts. He goes crazy and trys to kill everyone. I think he just had a paint gun.

So in the end, he some how goes back into a catatonic trance. They cart him back to the pub and have everyone stand exactly how they were. The guy looks at his friend after waking up and admits that it is a really good game.

It was convincing, but there were just a few things that didn’t seem rite.

Wouldn’t he realize that the gun wasn’t real? It wasn’t making loud deafening noises, and it didn’t look real. If a catatonic trance allows you to respond to suggestion where substitutes for reality are given, then perhaps that could explain it.

The whole “flashing lights” idea to make someone go into a catatonic trance was weird. The closest thing I have heard is people going into an epileptic seizure with flickering light patterns. Maybe I’m wrong on this, as this is the only thing I’ve heard about with epilepsy. If he was targeting people with epilepsy, that would be just wrong. What if the guy started having muscle spasms? What then?

When the guy wakes up in the bar, he just puts his gun down and laughs with his friends. Maybe Derren whispered a few things in the guys ear to suggest how he should feel. They didn’t show any whispering though.

Tags: Zombies, Scary, Reality, Video Games, Fear, Catatonic Trance, Waking Dead, Arcade, Tricks, Staged Hoax, Darren Brown, Derren Brown

I listen to dance music pretty often. In fact, my favorite XM station is 81 BPM. One song that comes on every now and then is Satisfaction, by Benny Benassi. Angel started describing a song to me that she heard once and I knew rite away that this was that song. As I found it on my iPod, she got excited.

I keep telling her that she has to see the video because she’ll crack up laughing. It looks like a commercial for heavy duty appliances. Anyhow, if she reads this post, then my deed is done.

Tags: Satisfaction, Benny Benassi, Dance, Music, XM Radio, Song, Video, Music Video, iPod, Angel, Link, Advertising

So last night, I got home and made some dinner. After I was done, I went strait to bed. I don’t remember waking up, but apparently I shut off my alarm this morning. I woke up this afternoon a little confused why it was after 12 and shocked that I didn’t make it to work.

Life has just been very tireing lately. Most of the week I have gone into work, come home, sleep, and then wake up for an hour or two. I go back to sleep and wake up in time to leave for work.

I set on my bed, convincing myself that I need to go to work. There are so many reasons why I am needed to be there. All the more reason why I was shocked when I woke up today. The many things going through my head.

I feel almost like a zombie at work. I still get work done, but I just long for the trip back home so I can go back to bed.

The really weird thing is that there is nothing to be depressed about. Maybe I forgot what I was depressed about. It is just really hard to shake off.

Tags: Sleep, Tired, Depression, Work, Reasoning, Zombie, Trip, Bed, Depressed

So it has been a while since I’ve worked on my programmers browser. I went ahead and got all of the different types of fields generated for a web form. These would be things like text fields, check boxes, radio buttons, text areas, image buttons, submit buttons and files.

I’m having some problems with the multi-select fields. They don’t want to show up as being selected for a strange reason. Hopefully I can get that worked out later on.

The next part would be reading these values so that I can send them along with the request method. Soon I will be able to download and post my Sprint PCS pictures to my Flickr account without having to touch a computer.

Tags: Programming, Browser, Fields, Forms, Windows, Web, Troubleshooting, Sprint PCS, Flickr, Pictures, Moblog

A few of you may have noticed that I have added tags to the bottom of many posts. Ever since Technorati started indexing tags, I’ve been really getting with the program and using them everywhere. I have even built my own little tagging utility. Tags are a way of letting technorati know what it is that I’m talking about.

I always wondered what it was that I talked about most. I threw together a little program and started generating a report. Below you will find a cloud of the 150 most used tags on my blog. The larget the tag is, the more I talk about it. You can also navigate through each tag by clicking the letter that it begins with. The tag itself will list all articles that have that tag.

Cloud | $ | . | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | Ã | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

.Net Account Angel API Atom Atom API AtomAPI Auction Audio Birthday Blog blogger blogger.com Blogging Blogware Brother Browser C# Car Cash Cat CD Changes Cheap Chicken Childhood code Comment Computer Cook Data Database Depression Design Diet Dieting Dinner Download Driving Eat eBay Election email Family Finances flash Flickr Food Free Free iPod Friends fun Funny Game Games Goal Google Groceries Happy Holiday Home HTML humor Ideas images Information In-Law iPod LA Weight Loss Layout Lewie Lewis Life link List Love Lunch Mac Mail Manager Maryland Microsoft Milk Mom Money Mother Mother In-law Movie MP3 music Nephew News Niece Night Office Pain Phone Photo Photos Pictures POST President Problem Problems Programming Progress PS2 Questions Quiz Radio Review RPG RSS Screenshot Search Server Service Shopping Sick Sister Sister In-Law Sleep Software Statistics Stress Tags Template Test Testing Thanksgiving Time Tired Troubleshooting TV Upload VA Video Video Game Virginia Vote Walking Wal-Mart WarCraft website Weekend Weight Weight Loss Wife Work Xml

I’m having problems uploading everything through FTP. There are over 6,000 files to upload. I may have to reconsider how I am doing things and use ASP to dynamically generate the pages instead.

Tags: Technorati, Tagging, Blogware, Tags, Cloud, Search, Categories, Report, Report Generation, Navigation

I stumpled upon a website called Internet Frog that had an internet connection speed test. The results appeared to be real-time. I watched as the chart would update itself over 2 minutes and then gave me a summary of my results.

Download: 4,686,424 bps
Upload: 423,768 bps
QOS: 88%
RTT: 68 ms
MaxPause: 47 ms

So what does this all mean? I can’ t (more like don’t want to bother) make sense of what QOS, RTT, or MaxPause is all about. However, I do understand some of those numbers on the chart. It appears that my connection is almost as fast as a T2. I didn’t realize the speed that I had. I always thought of cable modems to be around a T1 or just below it.

As long as I don’t have to watch pictures load slowly, I’m happy.

Tags: Connection, Internet Connection, Internet, Speed Test, T1, T2, Internet Frog, Diagnostics, Speed, Fast, bps, RTT, QOS, MaxPause, Download, Upload

I finished listening to the second half of the Eragon audio book today. I have been listening to it a lot over the weekend hoping to be done in time for the release of Eldest. I saw that Audible now lists Eldest in two volums for the second book. Each volume is split into two files for easier download. Eldest is 23 hours and 33 minutes long. Eragon was about a third less then that. It looks like the same person who read the first book (Gerard Doyle), is also reading the second book as well.

I applied my last book credit for this month to the first volume of Eldest. I have until September 9th before I can download the second volume with my replenished credits. I had run out of audio credits and I don’t want to buy the volume out rite even if it is at half price. I still save about 75% by using book credits instead.

I wonder how long it will be until the final book of the Inheritance trilogy will be completed. I hope that Christopher Paolini doesn’t get writers block. Dragons and Magic really catch my imagination and it thirsts for more.

Movie Rumors

As far as the movie goes for Eragon, I’m starting to see rumors of actors being cast. Ed Speleer has signed on as Eragon. I’ve also heard rumors in other places that Eragon will be played by Garrett Hedlund. Sienna Guillory will play the part as Arya. Other actors will be Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Irons, and John Malkovich.

Tags: Eldest, Eragon, Audio Book, Audible, Inheritance, Trilogy, Dragons, Magic, Imagination, Book, Gerard Dyle, Christopher Paolini, Writers Block, Credit, Ed Speleer, Garrett Hedlund, Sienna Guillory, Arya, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Rumors, Movies

Have you ever walked through life not knowing who you were supposed to be or what you were supposed to be doing? You know that you are good at a few things, but does it really matter? Things continue to tire you out and it makes you wonder what the point of it all is. I’m beginning to feel like a television station at the end of the broadcasting cycle.

Of course, television isn’t much different. It pretty much continues the next day to do everything over again and again yielding the same results, but expecting different ones. Some would say that that is the definition of insanity.

The question I ask myself, is what exactly is it that I am expecting? What more do I want out of life? I continue to think about infinite possibilities to change my life, along with the consequences and the things that prevent me from doing so. In the end, there is no other choice. Worn out, tired and exhausted, I continue to go on with who I am and what I do best.

Maybe I just need a time out. The problem is that no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get one. I do get my vacations, but they are only vacations at home in a period when I am broke and can’t do anything. I long for a vacation away from it all. I hear of everyone else going away to exotic locations or doing really fun things. It just makes me all the more depressed longing for my next vacation week, but realizing that it will only be a long weekend at home.

Tags: Life, Questions, Pondering, Thinking, Soul Searching, Vacation, Television, Broadcasting, Depression, Tired, Burnt Out, Worn Out, Who Am I, Expectations, Possiblities, Consequences, Exhausted

Woke up and started converting a few sorting algorithms from Java to C#. I thought about it and realized there was no reason to do so, so I just deleted the project.

I tried playing a few free games online. Most are just not that great. It isn’t inspiring at all when I want to make one on my own.

Went to get gas for the car, lawn mower, and weed wacker. Got to the pump and reached for cash but didn’t have any. Looked for my card and couldn’t find it. Went back home.

Watched Constantine. Really good movie. I like movies that file the bible under the Science Fiction category. Really cool stuff.

Found my card in my wallet and got gas. Tried to cut the lawn but ran into some problems and stopped.

Watched a few South Park episodes, took a shower, blogged.

The End.

Tags: Sorting Algorithms, Java, C#, Programming, Games, Online, Free, Lawn Mower, Gas, Car, Weed Wacker, Constantine, Movie, Bible, Science Fiction, South Park, Shower, Blogged, Recap