Monthly Archives: June 2007

Site redesign

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I did a minor site hack on inanis.net tonight. Since noone visits the site, noone will notice, but basically it is a minor css/html hack to use float:left/float:right/clear:both type layout control instead of css relative positioning. It makes for a smaller style sheet file and somewhat cleaner code.

I also managed to get the BlogEngine.net software properly integrated into the site’s styling. That was a fargin pain in the arse and quite a bit harder to do than the old Presstopia software, but the new software has so many more features it was a no-brainer decision.

All the old google indexes to the old blog now point to nowhere since I completely deleted the old blog, but since noone comes here, I’m sure it will be fine until google does it’s re-index.

About to change my blog software.

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I am about to change my blog software from Presstopia to BlogEngine.net. Lets see how well this goes…

UPDATE:
Apparently, the conversion process went well, because it’s converted and the system is up and running. Now, I just have to hack the crap out of the template to make sure the blog integrates into the entire website properly…


UPDATE 2:
BlogEngine.net has some weirdness issues with my hosting provider. All should be ironed out, for now, but I am sure little issues will pop up from time to time.

Salsa Fresca Recipe

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Here you go, my famous “Salsa Fresca” recipe. This isn’t for all of you, though, its for me so I can friggin remember it later.

Ingredients:

  • 4 Ripe Slicing Tomatoes (You can substitute 6 Roma tomatoes, if you fancy)
  • 1/4 Red Onion
  • 8 Cilantro Sprigs
  • 3 FRESH Garlic Cloves
  • Juice of 1 FRESH Lime
  • 1/4 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 1 Teaspoon Salt
  • 1/2 Teaspoon fresh ground pepper
  • Tabasco to Taste

Procedure:

  • Rough chop the onion, garlic and cilantro. Be sure to get the lower stems off the cilantro.
  • Throw them into a food processor and pulse until they are fine bits.
  • Rough chop the tomatoes. Scoop out the seeds and pulp-stuph.
  • Put tomatoes, lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and tabasco on top of the other ingredients.
  • Pulse 3-5 short bursts, until mix is nicely chopped, but not pureed.
  • Throw in to bowl and serve with favorite chips. YAY.

Smart and Stupid

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One of my technicians was having a problem with a CD-ROM drive. Any optical drive he attached would not work in Windows, and the Device Manager gave an error like “Error 31: Cannot load the drivers for this device.”

I had seen the problem before and knew it was related to UpperFilters and LowerFilters in the registry, but I, in a stupid moment, couldn’t remember that detail, so I couldn’t find the registry entry.

My technician, however, was really smart and was able to find a fix for the problem on his own, about an hour later. The moment he said UpperFilters, the fix came rushing back into my brain.

Beware of the Upper and LowerFilters issue. Some CD/DVD writer software and even some malware plug themselves in there, and can cause you headaches if the filter driver file becomes lost or corrupt.

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article

Star Trek: Enterprise . . . it really was cool.

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I was watching ST:Enterprise last night, and got to see some of the gems of the series, Episodes 93-96. Season 4 was really good, in whole, actually.

The problem with Enterprise, is that it never found the nich that I believe would have been the best for it. What Enterpise did in seasons 1-3 was stupid. Season 1 was all about the Suliban and their time traveling crap. Season 2 was just a bunch of disconnected stories, kinda like TNG and TOS. Season 3 was the whole Xindi crap, in an effort to do the season long story arc like DS9, except it failed miserably.

Then season 4. The best of the seasons. Season 4 did what Enterprise should have done from the beginning, it examined the start of the Federation, Star Fleet, and all the cool history and backstory stuff you were expecting from episode 1 but didn’t get. Unfortunately, they got the formula right about 3 years too late.

Oh well. Its still good stuph. Now, if 2008 would only get here so we can watch some Battlestar Galactica and see some Star Trek XI….