Gmail blocked at work? Got your own server that isn’t blocked…yet? I found a great php application and library file that allows you to connect into gmail and do pretty much everything you can do in gmail.com. It’s pretty slick! Give it a try.

Filed under: Development, PHP
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I’ve still got my old harddrive hooked up with a Win2K installation on it and a few old games like Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 1942. There aren’t a ton of servers out there to play on like their newer games, so I tried out a few of them and played some single player games. Kinda fun. I really like how the Heuey attack choppers handle — you can do some pretty crazy stuff with them…stuff you can’t remotely do in Battlefield 2.

The only downer is that I have to boot to this harddrive (Win2K) if I want to play these games, as the serial numbers are stored somewhere in the registry and I can’t seem to transfer them over to the new harddrive.

Filed under: Applications, Gaming
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First it was United 93 The Movie…now it’s World Trade Center — The Movie. We saw the preview this past afternoon for the film when we went to go see The Davinci Code.

The trailer — though short — was enough to churn up a number of emotions in me, emotions that I felt on 9/11. The film stars Nicholas Cage as a policeman and the events that led up to, during and after that aweful morning.

I guess it wasn’t enough that Universal Studios had to capitalize off the tragedy that was 9/11 — now Paramount Pictures and Oliver Stone want a piece of the pie. Part of me wants to see the film, knowing that it will evoke emotions in me like Titanic did when I saw that in the theatre…but the Titanic sank generations before I was even born. September 11th, 2001 was not that long ago. Is five years enough time to pass to attempt at making epic movies after recent tragedies? How long before we start seeing films about the war in Iraq (besides Fahrenheit 911)?

I have mixed emotions — I may see the movie despite the issue of capitalizing off tragedy, particularly recent tragedy.

Filed under: Awareness, Culture
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Well with scorching temperatures (for Minnesota standards in mid-spring) of 93° F, we beat the heat with an afternoon matinee and saw The Divinci Code, directed by Ron Howard. Despite the controvercy and the protests from the Church we went anyway and enjoyed the film from an entertainment standpoint. I can see what all the fuss is about — blurring the lines between fiction and truth — but the entertainment industry is always doing that.

So with the “adjustment” of historic truth set aside, it was a good film — not great, but good enough for a matinee. The twists and turns in the plot were enjoyable and reasonably suspenceful and the acting good as ever.

I don’t see what all the fuss is about though, from the general entertainment critics. Some didn’t care for Tom Hank’s hair or didn’t care for how the story moved along, or even that it was too confusing to follow. They must have all fallen asleep or something. It seemed fine to me.

You can tell the film crew paid attention to little details. For example, one of the leading ladies in the film had a knife held to her throat, causing a small wound. That wound, though subtle, actually remained with her to the end of the story.

The ending wasn’t great and kinda left me wishing they would have left it more of a mystery than resolve it. Hollywood seems to have this thing for resolving stories — this one would have been better off with leaving us, the viewers, in “treasure hunt mode” and questioning…”man, so does the holy grail really exist??? And where??” Instead they tidy up the ending and package it with a sugary sweet resolution.

Not a bad film. I won’t own it, but not bad.

Filed under: Christian Subculture, Culture
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Alright, perhaps I don’t have a bad attitude about undergrad degrees — but I have always prided myself in how far I’ve been able to go without a degree and just by learning things on my own without paying a dime of tuition.

Now that I might be settling into a government job doing web design and development, I’m considering finishing what I started sixteen years ago…my degree.

I’m not sure what I want to study — perhaps photography, videography, creative writing or other creative arts — but I do know that I have to be able to do it after normal work hours. I’m considering studying at Metro State University and either attending their College of Arts & Science or their First College, where you can create your own individualized degree.

The downside of trying to get a degree in the evening is that you don’t necessarily have access to the same classes with traditional schools — or so I’m finding when looking at programs.

Anyway, we’ll see what pans out here. It’d be cool if I could get a B.A. in beer brewing! Drink my curiculum.

Filed under: General
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We’ve added a number of new flowers to our backyard garden and also laid down the mulch to help keep things looking nice and moist as well. I’m excited for the number of photo opportunities that this will provide.

See more photos from my garden

Filed under: Photoblography
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Heh…an update on the update.

I tried the Repair tool and that didn’t work…mostly because I didn’t know what to repair. It was hanging for a sec on sptd.sys when I’d boot in safemode, but even when I tried disabling that, it still continued to reboot. So I had to go into the windows installation and select repair installation and am waiting the numerous minutes ahead of me as it goes through adding drivers and devices.

I’m actually at the “installing windows” screen…which is mildly comforting. I just hope that it didn’t lose all my settings, application registrations (especially for some of the games I have on there). I just don’t want to lose anything and have to go through the whole acquiring the activation code again. EA Games is a nightmare to deal with when you have to reactivate a game. There’s just no one there that you can actually talk to online or on the phone.

Filed under: General
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So I am upgrading my desktop’s mobo and processor to an Intel dual core 3.0 GHz processor and have everything all set up find…and when I went to boot, XP refused to get anywhere and left me at the recovery screen, asking me how I wish to boot up…as is, last known configuration, or in safe modes. No matter what I choose, it reboots. If I choose “as is”, I BRIEFLY get a blue screen of death for like a half a second…not long enough to read anything but something to do with the hard disk.

I was extra careful about the install and took all precautions, including wearing the anti-static thing to ground me. The hard drives never suffered any sort of dropping or anything. So I can’t imagine what changed.

So here I am with my XP installation disk, wading through the waters of chkdsk and trying to recover my installation of XP and everything on it. I do NOT want to lose anything. There’s just too much on this PC.

The Microsoft Support Site has been sorta helpful…but that will only be if chkdsk /r actually does the job and fixes the “one or more errors on the volume.”

Argh!!!! Sometimes computers can be so frustrating.

Filed under: General
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I had blogged earlier about how we’ve been trying to go more organic with the consumables that we purchase. We found The Whole Foods Store, a great grocery store on Fairview and Grand Avenue in Saint Paul that is all organic and natural foods, making it easy to shop with good conscience.

I decided to buy some meat this weekend from the Whole Foods Store, including some New York Strip steak and some all natural pork brats and man…though, they were expensive, that has been the best meat that I’ve ever had. The brats were very flavorful, not fatty like most brats and were GINORMOUS. And the steak…man, those cuts were HUGE. You could easily have two meals per cut.

It does cost a bit more to go organic, but with some of the things that I’ve been reading and seeing about how regular food is grown and processed, I’m becoming more and more sold on going all organic.

This afternoon we saw a program on PBS called “California and the American Dream“, particularly the episode entitled “Ripe for Change.” There was the general presentation of both sides of the argument of organic verses regular farming with pesticides and such. A number of chemists from University of California, Berkley, have found some substantial findings of the effects of herbicides on animal life and its long-term affect on humans. They speak with certainty that some of the leading and most widely-used herbicides are perhaps one of the main contributers of cancer in humans.

But even beyond that they also presented a compelling argument that general food production can be done affordably while being both socialogically and environmentally sound.

One organic winemaker in California took a very creative approach to solve the problem of pests. Beyond the creation of a fence to keep wild animals out of the vineyard, the winemaker put up a variety of flowers to attract the GOOD insects to his vineyard and help deter the focus of the fruit as a food source for birds in the area. They also have chickens and roosters walk freely through the vineyard, eating insects and deficating (providing natural fertilizer).

They’ve also taken many steps internally to ensure that they are saving money, recycling and reusing when they can, reducing their own waste and providing a great environment for the Mexican immigrants to become assimilated and on their way to citizenship. The vineyard is doing better than ever and are seeing bumper crops as a result of their efforts. They are fulfilling what you see in the diagram.

Anyway, interesting stuff.

Filed under: Awareness, General
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Well…I generally don’t take those dumb online quizzes, but saw this on someone’s blog and was curious about my own nerd level. Turns out I’m not nearly as nerdy as I thought i might be.

Filed under: Websites
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