knorby’s personal blog
Posted by knorby on November 26, 2008 under internet, personal | 
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I had the great privilege of being the first buyer of today’s woot shirt (called the “first sucker” on woot). It took me all from the time they posted it for me to see it and then buy it. It is just that awesome. You can see the honer on the shirt’s discussion page. Woot!
Posted by knorby on November 15, 2008 under Apple, archos, gadgets, media, mp3, personal, rants | Be the First to Comment
Recently, my 20gb archos bit the dust (not from a hard drive issue; actually a cracked LCD screen), and all I have wanted since is a decent MP3 player. As far as I can tell, what I consider good is no longer produced. I have a few simple requirements:
For the most part, Archos has served me well on these points, but they have moved towards making any hard drive mp3 player huge with crazy video options and their portable ones small flash based things, like any other manufacturer. Ogg, etc support would also be nice, but I would be willing to live with just the first two. Battery life is also a factor, but my definition of usability takes precident. I think I have found one or tow from extensive searching. I don’t care about video; I just want music. These used to be made, so what happened? This is simple! Why can’t some weird Chinese compnay do this?
Posted by knorby on November 9, 2008 under personal, video | Be the First to Comment
I recently bought a Playstation 3 Eye, which has been pretty fun to play around with (I recently bought a 65″ LCD TV, which I should really write about as well). There are a few games for it that are pretty similar to “do stuff with motion” exhibits at museums and fairs, and there is also a basic capture and edit feature, with a few features such as time lapse, etc… The camera itself is pretty decent considering it is about the size and price of a cheap webcam, but is much better, especially the microphone. I had some fun with the time lapse feature after I got it. I was eating my lunch at the time:
My friend Megan and I repeated the same sort of thing here, but with ribs this time:
Both are better when you can set the video the repeat, but I enjoy both still.
Posted by knorby on August 20, 2008 under TV, personal | Be the First to Comment
I ended up going with “Jack bag” as a result of my quest for the right bag, which I have been pretty happy with. It has its problems, but it is pretty nice. As I knew, it is not a laptop bag, which means I am always nevous when I carry around my laptop, as it is just a canvas bag. I have been thinking of getting a protective shell, much like most macbook owners have, but I haven’t bothered yet.
After starting season 2 of Dexter (amazing show) though, I am starting to have regrets. He has this really sweet laptop bag, which just looks awesome. All things considered, it isn’t what I was looking for, but it is still tempting. I did some searching, and the bag is the Oakley S.I. Laptop Bag. It is $180, which is absurd in my book for a bag, but it definitely looks strong and incredibly badass.
Posted by knorby on August 5, 2008 under Chicago, personal | Be the First to Comment
Last night, the block my apartment is on lost power. It was during a pretty harsh thunderstorm, so I didn’t think much of it until I realized that our power lines are underground. My neighborhood in Oak Ridge has above ground lines with lots of trees, so I am used to the power going out during storms. The storm last night was also one of the harshest I have seen in Chicago; the Ryerson weather station reported a high wind of 56mph around midnight and around 2 inches of rainfall in an hour. Anyway, the power was incredibly screwed up for the rest of the night. We unplugged everything after I saw the TV sort of flicker on (it was off before) when lightening struck really close by. Hopefully are surge protectors didn’t get the full 1.21 gigawatts of power. For a while, we got an extremely low amount of power; enough for some lights to barely glow. It was strange. At some point, a firetruck came by, which one of my roommates and I watched from the porch while clearing the drain, so we could watch a whirlpool form (entertainment options for a bunch of computer geeks is severly limited sometimes without power); A cop watched us and pulled off as soon as we went inside, which was pretty funny. As far as I know, the power is still out; hopefully we will get it back soon. We heard some strange, almost explosion-like sounds throughout the night, so hopefully the damage is not that bad.
The other side of the street wasn’t affected, but all of the streetlights and even the university police boxes were all off and all of the buildings next to ours were off, which made for about the darkest I have ever seen Chicago. I am used to being able to see around, even if all of the lights are off. There is so much background light, that it is easy to forget it is even there. It made for an interesting evening.
Posted by knorby on July 29, 2008 under personal | 2 Comments to Read
I have been lugging around a backpack for a while, and, while is is nice when I have a lot of stuff, I would really like something better for when I just want to carry around my laptop and a book or two. Really, I am looking for a nice messenger bag. Since about every other person I know has one, and they really seem pretty nice. I am looking for something that is around 15×11x4+ inches (that seems standard) and something that I can carry my laptop around in safely. Any ideas? I want to get something cheap ideally, so the army surplus ones look pretty nice. A few of the “paratrooper” style like this one or this one (I found both from a number of sites for about the same price, including on amazon). I am not a 24 fan, but apparently these bags or variants are called “jack sacks” as Jack Bauer uses one. I generally like the look of these bags, and I like the feel of military canvas too, but I just don’t want to get my laptop messed up. I currently have a Swiss army backpack, with a special padded compartment for a laptop, which is nice, but I am guessing excessive. Anyone have any advice on that one? The main other bag that appeals to me is one from Manhattan Portage that looks like their normal bag, but has a padded laptop slot, but it is pricey, at least by my standards. Right now I am leaning towards the military-style. Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts?
Posted by knorby on July 17, 2008 under humor, personal | Read the First Comment
I just got a new cell phone (it is on my facebook profile if don’t have it already and you know me), so I have been dealing with wrong numbers. I can ignore those and let my voicemail deal with them, but what sucks are wrong number texts. I think texting is utterly stupid, but it is definitely right sometimes, but most of the time I don’t understand why someone has to use what has to be the most expensive form of communication (in terms of data size/price) in existence today when e-mail would be more appropriate and cheaper. Anyway, I can live with texts from people I know, but what I hate is when it is from someone with the wrong number. I have been getting a stream of incoherent texts recently, which I feel need documenting. I will obscure no details for reasons that will become obvious:
July 7 – 773-699-6104: Alrite ppl this is k. ken etc… delete my old number n replace it wt this 1
July 12 – 773-699-6104: Watz good
July 17 – 773-699-6104: New muzik dropic soon my pg so b on the look out this weekend
July 17 – me: you have the wrong number. please stop texting me
July 17 – 773-699-6104: Nigga shut up (it’s an exact quotation; sorry if you are horribly offended)
Will I continue to receive texts out of some combination of some ill-conceived form of spit and ineptitude? I guess I will have to find out. I honestly don’t get why I should get a nasty response for a reasonable request. Anyone know of something I can do if I still get texts? I don’t have a texting plan, so I am not so fond of paying for these.
Posted by knorby on June 6, 2008 under ACM, Chicago, GSoC, OpenBSD, blogs, coding, globus, google, personal, uchicago | Read the First Comment
It’s true! Borja wrote up a summary of the GSoC lightening talk event, including pictures. If you don’t know what I look like, I am in both the GSoC student one and the ACM officer one. I really wish I got a haircut before this thing….
Borja linked to our website, which hopefully won’t get too much traffic. It is currently at 359 days of uptime, and I have shooting for a year of uptime before upgrading to the latest and greatest version of OpenBSD.
