just found this cool app via the TUAW Flickr photo pool. Nocture is a schweet little app (from the makers of one of my other favorite apps, Quicksilver) that can change your monitor settings so it looks like the classic green screen CRTs or, how I’m using it now, to make it more night vision friendly. Shades of red and orange don’t mess with your night vision as much as most colors. So, I told Nocturne to use a shade of red. It also inverts the images (black->white white->black) so it gets even darker.
     I’m using it as I type. So far I really like it. Check it out, and download Quicksilver too, it’s sooo useful.

     Now for the less geeky bit. Dad got tickets for my trip up to Solarfest. I leave on the Monday before (the 9th), and fly back down here the 18th (wednesday after SF). So come find me, I’ll be in the rush of crowds, most likely taking pictures or something for Haley’s mom

–Nate

I’m gonna clean up my server a little bit. Hopefully I don’t delete anything that’s required for the site to function properly.

I think most divisions of the site are either going to be run off wordpress or some sort of wiki depending on the needs of the pages. I’ll link to them on the sidebar when their ready.

All of that whilst I’m watching Battlestar Galactica. All the geeks watch it, so I figure I better get in the game. It’s pretty cool, CGI effects like Firefly(only the best Sci-Fi ever) and huge references to greek mythology.

Oh, and my plan for when I’m in college is for posts pertaining to it to have it’s own blog. And I’m still considering the whole front page is techie rest is personal bit.

–Nate

A template i’ve wanted to do for a long while now, based on a theme from the CSS Zen Garden.

Now if only it would be happier…I’ll deal with it when I can find some time. Until then, live with pages that freak out like anything besides the homepage….
Added 12:00 AM: Or view the source code….
Added 12:02 AM: God that old theme was hideous…
November 16th 6:45 PM: It’s beautiful now (I hope throughout the entire site)!

this is hysterical. Just….read it!

April 8, New Haven CT
joint concert with Elm City Girls Choir
First Presbyterian Church, 7:30
April 9, Philadelphia, PA
Summit Presbyterian Church, 6757 Green St.,
7:00, (215) 248-3762
April 10, Takoma Park, MD
Seekers Church, 276 Carroll St NW, across from Metro Red Line Takoma Station, (202) 546-2228, www.fsgw.org
April 11, Fort Ashby, WV
Trinity United Methodist Church, 7:00, (304)
298-3836
April 12, Elkins, WV
Randolph County Community Arts Center, 2 Park St,
7:00, (304) 637-2355
April 13, Charlottesville, VA
to be announced
April 14, Durham, NC
Friends Meeting House, 404 Alexander Ave., 8:00,
(919) 308-9497 / www.trianglefolk.org
April 15, Asheville, NC
Warren Wilson College
April 16, Asheville, NC
Haywood St Methodist Church, 297 Haywood St. (off
Patton Ave), Downtown Asheville, 7:00,
April 17, Kernersville, NC
First Baptist Church, 401 Oakhurst, 7:00, (336)
993-2577
April 18, Bon Air, VA
St Michael’s Episcopal Church, 8706 Quaker Lane,
7:30, (804) 272-0992 or (804) 272-9376
April 19, Coatesville, PA
Coatesville Cultural Society, 143 E. Lincoln
Highway, 7:30, 610-384-1790
April 20, New York City, NY
Broadway Presbyterian Church, 114th and Broadway,
8:00, (212) 663-2737
April 21, Morristown, NJ
Minstrel Coffeehouse, Unitarian Fellowship, 21
Normandy Heights Rd., 8:30, (973) 335-9489, www.folkproject.org
April 22, Hamilton, NY
Hamilton College Chapel, 7:30, (315) 859-0701
April 23, Rutland, VT
Grace Congregational Church, 4:30, (802) 775-4301

Friday they come down here, and some of them will be staying at my house.

have the macbook again, hehe. Soo much fun. The cool part is running windows inside of mac.

Ok, so that’s not windows, it’s linux. But, windows does work. And nicely at that, too. If your wondering what program that is, it’s at parallels.com. They have it for Windows and Linux, too.

(click on a picture to make it larger[in a new window])

The first thing we actually did was to install mac os x, but i didn’t take pictures of that because it’s boring and predictable. This is a picture of the macbook formatting the hard drive.

It was really cool because before this screen it was smushed up in the corner and there was a bunch of text in the middle…

A cool angle proving that this is indeed a mac and it is indeed running the installer for windows *shudders.* The directions on the internet that we followed were a little messed up in a spot, but nothing a bit of forum surfing didn’t fix. I mean, XP wasn’t even meant to run on this kinda thing, because of certain technical difficulties (EFI) that prevented it. But it was hacked, more on this later

The install process for XP. The normal stuff the PR people try to sell you windows with. After it finished it crashed, which was in the instructions. This part pretty much proves it’s just a big hack to get it working. Maybe the companies could work together to make it work better, I know i’d like to carry around one machine with all the operating systems on it….

The first boot of Windows on the mac….

….and the mac booted up fully into windows. The video is a little sketcy, and there doesn’t seem to be audio, but again, it’s a big hack. It looks very promising though, and if i had more energy i’d be more rotund in my explanations of the pictures, but i’m not in a writing mood. Maybe later

Got a new Intel mac and want to try this? I hate you. The site is onmac.net

Update (3/18): more pictures avalible here.

looking to buy it, used or new, for less than like $180

Send me a line if you find one, and thanks

New features include a dropdown menu at the top that allows you to make the background be black instead of bright white for you late night readers or just don’t like bright colors.

All-in-all, if your running the right browser, it looks great. The top logo is transparent, revealing a glowing keyboard, and on the left is a macbook pro turned sideways

I’ve got something else planned, don’t know if i’ll do it…..You’ll just have to find out

This is INSANE. It even has the “baseball” wireless signal sign, and it works. The whole outfit is made out of multiple programs used in harmony to create the OS X experince.

The people are even crazy enough to make their site act like OS X. It boots up and everything. It’s really incredible the detail they have. I commend them on the huge effort it must’ve taken to get this up and running. Good Job!

In other news for the mac’s among us, i’m being distracted by the next thing i’m gonna talk about: tickr for flickr. Search for tags in flickr and they scroll wherever you want them till they run out. It’s amazingly awesome.

Finally, i’d like to get your opinion on something: should i make a separate blog just for my geek stuff, and try to keep this blog more generally general? I’d appreciate any feedback on that matter, the comments or email will be fine.

And how can you live without tabs?

I’m in a ranting type mood so i’m just gonna let it fly. Windows Windows Windows. Royal pain in the bud. OK listen: in order to use windows you must become a security expert. Sound fun? I’d hope not. The fact is the only reason Microsoft got a leg up was the price of the machines and advertising. XP Professional, the ONLY windows that you should get if you want to do anything, is $400 alone. That’s more than most people bought there precious machines for. The companies are getting discounts from MS for including it on the machine. It’s annoying, it’s pissing me off. And the question is “what operating system should i use?” Well thats where it becomes difficult, because in order to get a mac you have to buy new hardware and if you try linux you have to instantly become a complete tech geek to get it running well. So, by default, Windows wins out always. That’s one of the biggest things that pisses me off. I can only hope that Apple will release OS X for any intel machine, and that costs $129 and theres no pro people you get a full OS for that.
Suggestions for stuff to install on the crappiest OS alive:
— MS Antispyware: Microsoft bought one of the best antispywares out there, and were smart enough to make it free forever. Still in beta, but stable enough. You MUST have antispyware in this day in age, and one that’s actively searching
— AVG Antivirus: FREE Antivirus; if you think that your norton 2000 that you haven’t resubscribed to get the latest virus definitions is keeping you safe it’s not; this is free forever
— Firefox: The only internet browser you should use day to day; it’s less powerful than IE which is a good thing because then you don’t get those “cool mouse pointers” that are spyware. Plus firefox is way better than IE to begin with (like tabs!)
— A router: This is a physical thing you buy. Routers make you safe cause no one can see your machine (with a benefit of sharing your internet connection). Don’t think your safe with the cheaper option of a switch or hub, a router is the only thing that will help you
— Theres a new thing coming out called the D-Link SecurePort. it goes in between your internet and your router or computer and has antivirus, antispyware, pop up blocker, everything. The box is 100 bucks, the yearly fee is 80
The only reason to keep internet explorer (IE) is for Windows Update. Run Windows Update RELIGIOUSLY. These are the only ways to save your machine. Is all this really that hard compared to a couple days of reinstalling everything and hoping you backed everything up (you do back up don’t you?)

Now, the wonderful world of Apple.

Apple’s got intel inside now, and there 3x better than previous models. These things will also run windows, which means you can have one machine that runs mac and windows.

This honestly makes me very happy, i would be estatic if I could actually afford to buy one. These things FLY. It’s worth the money. And for the geeks among us its got dual cores. So by the end of the year all macs will be intel and we’ll have the next version of OS X.
< -- My dream

So what about MS? Where will they be? They MAY release Vista, which by the way isn’t worth the money. DON’T BUY IT. It’s worthless. It’s OS X, and sad