Lewies Blog

So I’m about an hour away from having my second blogaversary.  7:44 pm, two years ago, I tried my hand at blogging with my first post.  The first year was great.  I was posting like mad.  I tried my best to get a post in about something every day.  Now things have changed.  Ever since my wife introduced me to SecondLife, I’ve been hooked.

There just seems to be too much time involved with blogging.  SecondLife has a larger value for entertainment.  I’m able to be just as creative there, but in a 3-dimensional space.  Hopefully soon we will get web pages displayed on our prims.  For rite now, I can only blog through my watch over on SLStats.com.

Any how, my mother in-law purchased an XBox 360 live for me today.  I picked up a wireless adapter for it and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I’m still trying to get the thing to connect to my windows media center. When was it that game consoles became computers?

Good news is that Pluto is still a planet. Bad news? We now have a new list of planets to remember for our solar system …

Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Ceres
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Charon
2003 UB313

I can’t believe a ball of ice qualifies as a planet. Seems more like a comet to me. Next thing you know, they’ll be caling our sun a planet.

So I was going to buy a Mac. I’ve been having problems trying to buy one from CompUSA. Mainly, there customer service is just horrible. I think I’ll buy one from the Apple site iteself, but I’m wanting to save up more monies for the more recent upgrades for the MacBook Pro. Until then, I’ll start looking at computers for my wife.

On a side note, I got a message in my inbox from the number 2 show over at podshow. It seems they are looking to upgrade there hardware used in podcasting. They were calling out for help to a number of people asking for advice and sent some links along with it. I checked out all the links and found one to be very informal about upgrading on a low budget. The others were in regards to links for hardware and kits.

Desktop Recording Kit: http://www.mxlmics.com/condenser_mic/condenser_index.html

Under $200 Kit: http://www.jakeludington.com/gadget_envy/20050313_upgrade_your_podcast_for_under_200.html

USB Kit: http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=99

Musician Friend’s Kits: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/rec/navigation?q=podcasting+Production+Kit
Rite now, I have a digital voice recorder. It’s great. It is for a specific need. Podcasting while just waking up - because I need something handy to record my dreams. For everything else that I do with the podcast, I have what most podcasters start with. A headset with a boom mic.

The Under $200 kit is a bit out-dated. However, it was informal enough to actually educate me on the basics of what to look for as well as price range. The only thing I could find was the microphone for about $40 on Amazon.com. As I searched the internet for a lot of the equipment, Musician’s Friend kept popping up. The store is having a sale, so I went ahead and searched for the basic parts that I needed.

I found a nicer looking microphone for $60 (Retail @ $200) that looked more professional. It even comes with its own case and a shockmount. I could care less about the case. I’m not doing any traveling with this setup. The price advertised was $10 more then the price of the original microphone ($40, Retail @ $50) that the article had suggested.

I found a small mixer for $40 (Retail @ $65) that was less then what the article had suggested ($50). The main thing I was after was this “Phantom Power”. It seemed that all mixers had it when I started comparing them against each other. It’s just something that comes standard I guess. I hadn’t heard of it until I read that article.

The Compressor was hard to find. Originally I was looking for the smashup compressor from Alesis. I found one on ebay that still had 5 days of bidding left. Another place had it for $49 but sold out. Two other searches lead me to a prices of around $100 and reviews, but nothing for sale. I went to the source and found out that Alesis didn’t sell the product any longer (or at least, it wasn’t listed). I found something similar called a 3630 Dual-Channel Compressor/Limiter with Gate. It wasn’t portable. Heck, the thing was rack-mountable. I found it on Musicians Friend for $100 (Retail @ $199). I tried to find a few other things to compare it with, but they were just way out of my price range. Well, that’s a hit against the so-called “under $200 kit”.

From there, I found a few accessories that I was going to need. Microphone stand ($7, Retail @ $15), adapters ($2, Retail @ $3), patch cables ($10, Retail @ $19), and a microphone cable ($4, Retail @ $14).  In the end, I only went $25 over budget.  If I paid retail for all of this stuff, I would have spent $519.  At only $225, that is a savings of 57% on recording equipment.  Here is a small summary of what I spent, and the difference in the “Under $200″ Kit.
Microphone: $60  (+10)
Mixer: $40 (-10)
Compressor: $100 (+61)
Accessories: $25 (-20)

So a long time ago, I got an old used Mac G3 off of eBay for under $200. It was great for an intro to the Mac world. I learned how to communicate between windows and mac computers over my network. I was able to remotely see my Mac desktop from my windows PC. I even set it up with SETI to search for aliens. However, there were problems.

First, the OS version that was loaded was a bit old. I couldn’t install Mono so that I could run programs built on the .Net platform. In my real life every day job, I program software and websites using the .Net platform, which mono emulates. I really wanted to be able to create programs that run on both Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms just to be able to understand the basics of how that could be done.

There were many other problems, but the most recent was devestating. For some reason, I can’t get anything to work. It’s weird. With windows, something like this would just result in me reinstalling the operating system. The problem is that I don’t have any disc’s to do this on the Mac G3. It came with no software at all.

So let’s fast forward to today. My computer, is getting old. I just recently got a bonus in my paycheck that puts a new computer rite in reach.

The new Mac’s now run on the Intel Core Duo chips. Not only are these chips cheaper then the old Mac chips, but they are faster, and … you can run Windows on the same machine using something called Boot Camp. The MacBooks have my eye. They are very thin, have most of everything i want built into them. There is the built-in camera, cd burner, wireless network, blue tooth, etc.

I’ve been talking with other people within SecondLife who are Mac users. People say to wait until after the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Steve Jobs is expected to get up and announce a few new gadgets and this could include a new line of MacBooks. In fact, earlier this week, Intel announced its new line of Intel Core 2 Duo Processors. Maybe some new MacBooks will come out with the new processors.

My main beef with Apple is that I can’t install Mac OS X on a intel-based PC. The computer itself has to be from Apple. I’ve heard of rumors where people have successfully installed Mac OS X Tiger on a PC, but they had some tough constraints. One person had to match a motherboard with chips close to the ones found on the Apple computers. Also, each time Apple releases updates and patches, you have to worry that they’ll add something that makes it impossible to use the OS on your PC until a hack is found for the updates.

If Apple just allowed there operating system to run on any PC, I imagine they would get out a few more sales.  I would be one of them, wanting to install it on a few more computers I have along with Boot Camp.
So anyway … I’m just waiting for Monday to see what is announced.

In the middle of my working day, I ran into a problem. I was sort of going blind. Not completely. I could see parts, but it was like a ton of blind spots in my eye that I kept trying to, but just couldn’t see around. It was horrible. It wasn’t just looking at my computer screen, but just everything around me. I remember just looking at the screen and all of this white space on it. My eyes started to hurt and I looked up.

One thing that I did earlier in the weeky was change the resolution of my monitor to be much higher. Lucky for me, I made all my system fonts bigger too. I was able to make out enough parts to make the resolution smaller. I also turned the brightness down to the lowest setting and turned the contrast down a bit as well. Although it was easier on my eyes, I was still having this problem.

So many thoughts went rushing through my head. Maybe I should just go home. How the heck could I drive home? Would anyone be able to pick me up? What if this is perminent? What if this is a look into the near future? How am I going to be able to ever work on a computer again? Is it something I ate? Is it because I’m not eating enough? Is it from stress? Is it my medication? Is it going to get worse?

So many questions arrise with life changing events like these. Lots of coincidences and paranoia just come to light. I remember a co-worker commenting about how an LCD screen would be better on the eyes then the monitor I have. I thought about my posture, and perhaps a protective screen on the monitor.

The good news is that it gradually passed over 15 minutes. It just shocks the heck out of you. I left my monitor settings dark and in a low resolution for the remainder of the day.

For anyone who is interested to listening to my dreams, you can now check them out over on the PodShow+ Network.

http://lewiesdreamyaudio.podshow.com/

Also, anyone in SecondLife can check out my booth over at PodShow Island. There are a few free props from my dreams that you can grab for free.

So the rumors from over a year ago, and the Dead Like Me set appearing on Stargate seemed to have added up.

Dead Like Me appeared on Sci-Fi last night. It was a two hour special of the first episode from the first season. I couldn’t set there an watch it over when I played it on my DVR. I tried, but my mind was on other things. If it was a third season, then I would have been into it. I haven’t looked into any rumors on the internet, but hopefully Sci-Fi will start casting the third season.

I went outside of my house in search of sounds.  I have been working on creating a dunking both within SecondLife to help support a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society.  As a member of Caledon, I am supporting our team in the Relay for Life.  This Friday we have a “Jail your friends or Bail them out” event to help raise some funds to support the cause.

looking_for_sound.mp3

I did one thing very different today.  I canceled a trial before I was billed for the real deal.  Over at Ancestry.com, I signed up for a trial account.  You can either choose to be billed immediately and each additional month for 29.95, or you can go with a 14 day free trial and pay an annual fee of $155.40 ($12.95 / month).

I went with the free trial.  Usually, I forget about trial expirations and such and let accounts expire.  Sometimes, services such as Ancestry.com will bill you immediately after the trial expires.  The extra hoop to jump through with this service is that I was required to call them within specific hours of the day as well in order to opt-out of the service.

Just 2 days to go and I called them up.  I had forgotten about it for most of the past week too.  So in reality, I just saved myself $155.40 in a service I wouldn’t use.

I guess this is one of the small things that I’m doing that is helping me get that financial comfort cushion in the bank.  I could really use that money on something else - like a set of new computers for my wife and I.  I think a lot when I go grocery shopping like this too.  I could get a snack, or put that money towards something else.  Yes, it’s only $5, but another way to think of it is that it is $5 extra in my pocket if I don’t use it.  It’s like rewarding yourself with your own money you don’t use.  Best of all, it’s tax free.

The other day I saw an auction up on SL Exchange to be in an interview for an upcomming newspaper in SecondLife called SL Times. Auctions are something on SL Exchange that I hadn’t tried out yet and I figured, Why not?

I kept getting errors every time I tried to bid. I notified the sites support and they had it fixed the next day. Surprising enough, I was the only one to bid and won for only 1000 L$ (about $3 US).

Tonight, Luke Birdbrain interviewed my avatar, Dedric Mauriac. I was at a loss at first for what exactly I wanted the story to be about. I ended up showing him the variouse things that I make in the game. Some of the ideas behind the things and how they come about. He was drooling over a few items such as the Game Clock, Comment Box, and my Message Board.

I was starting to wonder who won the auction. I handed a game clock to him free and also gave him my open-source voice box that I am working on.