Categories
Technology & Gadgets

Notepad2 text editor

Wahoo, I found Notepad2. It contains the only two features I really use ALL the time in a text editor: syntax highlighting and UNIX (grep) style regular expressions search and replace.

For those who don’t know about regular expressions search and replace, it allows you to do wacky stuff like swap words, change case, and to pinpoint replacements on a source file, using bits and pieces of what you were “finding” in the “replacement”. Just don’t tell anyone you know how to use it, as it really opens up your ability to process huge input files with ease to do, well, anything.

Categories
Technology & Gadgets

Best freeware

Discovered a few I like and didn’t know about:

From Live Slick. The comments actually pointed me to a program I really like Notepad2.

Categories
Technology & Gadgets

Awesome error pages

Smashing Magazine has this selection of error pages… I’ll implement one of these shortly…..

Categories
Technology & Gadgets

Linux Slug: VOIP & Weather Station

I wanted a silent weather server to run wviewweather on, to go with my new Davis Vantage Pro 2.

Temperature

In view of the latest problems Vonage has been having (they are involved with litigation with Nortel, Sprint, Verizon and SunRocket), I decided to go somewhat farther afield to seek out an alternate solution.

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To serve as both servers, I bought ($79 eBay) a tiny Cisco NSLU2 (known to the hacking community as the SLUG), a tiny little linux server (designed just to share USB HDDs), along with a 4 GB USB memory stick ($34 CompUSA). I’ll post details and instructions when I get it all working.

Categories
Personal

Woodpecker

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Categories
Personal

Giant bug

Cassie found this giant beetle outside on our porch. I threw a quarter next to it for comparison.

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Categories
Technology & Gadgets

1986 computer vs. 2007 computer

Check out this comparison on several fronts…. 1986 wins many tests!

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Categories
Technology & Gadgets

HD Homerun

Now this is cool….

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I may have to get one for my new computer. This is a network-only ATSC tuner.

Categories
Technology & Gadgets

Building a supercomputer

OK, not really, I got put in charge of maps for the BMFPD, and took it as an excuse to buy a new computer. Here’s some details and my screwups.

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First, I went around all the computer retailers, online and brick-and-mortar, to see if I good buy what I wanted in a built-to-order or off-the-shelf computer. I couldn’t.

The criteria were:

  • Silent. I live at 7400′, so fan runs faster up here. A silent computer at sealevel isn’t silent at my house!
  • Fast.
  • Diskless or small hard drive (HDDs come cheap).
  • Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS connect for on-the-fly encoding of game audio.
  • Serial port, just because. (Maybe a new weather station in my future?)
  • Fanless video card.
Categories
Personal

Windstorm in the mountains

Got the nastiest windstorm (gallery here) come through and sit on us all night on June 6. Up at Carter Lake, the top winds clocked were 101 MPH, but I think we might have beaten that wind speed (120 MPH from the top of Lee Hill).

At midnight, we saw that our arch over the stairway was gone, and the BBQ and deck chairs had collapsed the railing. The hot tub cover had been ripped off, and I had to go find it. We brought everything in. I slept with earplugs.

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