Arizona Voters: A .pdf (70MB) version of the giant tree-wasting booklet published by the Citizens Clean Election Commission that you may have received in the mail–the one with little blurbs/statements on all the candidates–can be found here. Other currently relevant publications from the AZ CCDC can be found here. General elections are just around the corner, [...]
Author Archive
South Korea Travel Tips For United States Travelers
July 14th, 2010
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Interesting tidbits on Seoul for United States travelers: The food is generally awesome, though the beef sucks and is more expensive. If you decide to try American-style fast food, expect variations customized to the locale. (For example, the McDonalds I tried had “Bulgogi Burgers” as the #1 combo item. Interesting to try, but still McDonalds.) [...]
The $1K CD/DVD/LightScribe Replicator: The DIY Guide To Manufacturing Your Own Discs For Less Than $1 Each
June 28th, 2010
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I’ve slowly updated components of The $1K Home Studio over the last few years, but have never had a low-cost, DIY solution for disc replication. After playing with external CD burners and evaluating various proprietary hardware options such as the Aleratec auto-flip burner , MicroBoard tower replicators amongst many others, I decided that the current [...]
Book Review of DIY U: : Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education
June 22nd, 2010
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Question: If I complete my general physics and mathematics studies using freely available MIT OpenCourseWare content on my own time, computer science study on campus at ASU Polytechnic, and general education requirements at UoP, all for a degree program at Berkeley, what’s wrong with that? After all, as long as I can demonstrate the competancies [...]
3D OSX Applications With Ruby-Processing Screencast
May 17th, 2010
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A two-part screencast series demonstating two different 3D ruby-processing applications. A slide presentation from 2009 created for the Phoenix Ruby Group is also attached as bonus material. Enjoy! Part 1: Starfield Demo of a 3D starfield simulation written in pure Ruby, running on the JRuby runtime as a nicely packaged .app program for Mac OS [...]
Free Copy Of Portal With New Mac Steam Client
May 12th, 2010
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Got a Mac? Like games? Great news! Value’s “Steam” software finally launched for Mac, allowing you to purchase some great gaming titles on your OS X machine. When a game is available on multiple platforms, a purchased license appear to be portable as well. And as a launch promotion, Value is giving away free copies [...]
Mini-Review: Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and the Government Bailout Will Make Things Worse
March 31st, 2010
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Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr. My rating: 5 of 5 stars Meltdown is a evidence-based, academically credible, and brutally honest analysis of the causes and effects of economic depression faced in the United States since [...]
MacPort MySQL “Can’t find file: ‘./mysql/host.frm’” Error
March 31st, 2010
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I recently set up a new Mac OS X Snow Leopard laptop for software development purposes. After going through my usual MacPorts installation and installed MySQL using the following steps sudo install mysql5-server sudo cp /opt/local/var/macports/software/mysql5/5.1.44_0/opt/local/share/mysql5/mysql/my-medium.cnf /opt/local/etc/mysql5/my.cnf sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db5 sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist A few days past, and one day I notice [...]
Getting iTunes To Convert/Export/Bounce To Other File Formats
March 21st, 2010
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You’d think iTunes 9 would have a menu option to convert selected, non-DRM’d files to .MP3, .AAC and such. It doesn’t, but there’s a quick–if not silly–workaround to get iTunes to covert your tracks to a supported format. Mac instruction for iTunes v9 Open Preferences -> General -> Import Settings. Change the “Import Using option [...]
Get Your Kindle’s PID In 10 Seconds
February 16th, 2010
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Rather than struggling with a bunch of old command-line scripts to calculate the Personal ID (PID) of your shiny new Amazon Kindle, I’ve released a super-freakin’-easy webapp to do it for you in a matter of seconds. No joke. Simply visit http://kindletools.prestonlee.com, follow the instructions, and be sure to gift me a short novel to [...]
