Staticfree Blog

I finally have a cell phone. It took Cingular bloody forever to actually get me going with all the services i signed up for, but all's well now (if you for some reason desire my cell phone number, contact me). I'm quite impressed at how incredibly independent of any physicality I'm becoming: Cell phone for communicating with work and family, laptop for doing work away-from-home, and a backpack for the rest :-) I'm finding home as simply being a useful place to shower, store food/clothes, do laundry, find a comfy seat, and sleep; nearly all of which (save showering and sleeping for any extended periods of time) I can ( and do ) do on RIT's campus.

Maybe i should try living on RIT's campus, using the facilities there to survive for a few days - just as a proof of concept. I know where i can find showers and there're lockers into which i could toss some clothes. Or perhaps i can just leave it at knowing that, if suddenly my house was destroyed, with a bit of work I'd have a place i could crash for a bit.

I'm presently trying to train my computer to use my cell phone's text-messaging system if it needs to tell me something important. This is a bit of a challenging task, as my computers generally don't have anything particularly interesting to tell me. Maybe i can program it to pretend something's wrong so i can race to the rescue in my secret, invisible batmobile.

I was bored. Some time ago, I had the notion that it'd be nifty to see if I could use CSS's Real World™ length-units to measure things using the screen. "But how", you ask, "does one measure Real World™ objects with a computer screen?" "With a ruler", I proclaim! Yes, the entire thing's coded in JavaScript (using DOM, none the less), CSS and HTML. Most likely it'll only work in Mozilla though (and of course, Netscape 6.2+, Galeon, and any other browsers that use Mozilla's Gecko engine). Sad to say, they're the only graphical browsers that really support the standards well.

Today marks the official *"OFFICIAL" rubber stamp* start of fall as it moves towards winter. At least in the eyes of Geekhaus, anyhow. As most members of Geekhaus are not religious (certainly not any Major World Religion™ anyhow) we celebrate the onset of the colder months with a few ceremonies: the cider crock and the placement of the weather-shielding.

Apple cider is best either hard and hot non-exclusive-or mulled and hot. As such, Geekhaus has determined the best way to ward off the cold is to keep a constant supply of hot, mulled apple cider. It's a wonderful thing to have and makes your house smell like fall.

Never-ending Hot, Mulled Cider

• 1 Crock Pot
• An empty tea bag or tea ball
• 2 Gallons of apple cider (cheap, store brand is just fine)
• Mulling spices: Cinnamon, Cloves, Orange Peel, Nutmeg, Anise Seed, Allspice, anything else that sounds tasty

Fill the crock pot with the cider and heat up for an hour or two on high. Add the spices to taste. Use the tea ball for any non-ground spices. I recommend lots of cinnamon, a decent amount of orange peel and nutmeg, and only a small amount of the remaining spices. Especially try not too add too many cloves - they can easily cause the entire pot to become too bitter.

Reduce the pot to low and leave it running while you're at home. The spices should seep into the cider over time and a good amount of the water will evaporate. All this will increase intensity of the cider's flavour making a very tasty, hearty beverage after a few days.

As for weather-shielding, Ryan and I have been putting up shrink film window insulation over all of Geekhaus' downstairs windows. Basicly, it's shrink-wrap for your windows. So far it's working fairly well, albeit it's a bit of a pain to get it sticking to our old, disintegrating window frames. This is the first year we've used it, so we don't know how effective it is yet. Hopefully it'll work as an insulator and not just stop the drafts.

Spiced-apple air, a warm house, good music, and a small computer occupying my lap - the only things missing from this perfect scene is a fiery hearth, my wonderful Carolyn, and a cozy blanket.

I've just discovered a nifty feature over at weather underground: an image gallery. There're some rather tasty photos there.

Yet another dark moment in my life is underway: I'm looking to get a cell phone. The usefulness of one, especially as I'm away from home so very often, has far outweighed both the cost and my laziness. Just like every other highly-popular device out there, one really should do research on what you get before you get it - there's way too much rubbish to otherwise.

At Java Wally's (heh, that's Andrew, John and me on the front page!) today, I saw someone with a remarkably small laptop. One could really describe it as an organizer on steroids (perhaps it was. It looked like the person who had it was running WinXP, though). Amber noticed as well and mentioned that laptop sizes are like cars, but inversely so: the smaller they are, the more the owner's trying to compensate for. If that's the case, then iPAQ and Zaurus users must really be unendowed. I personally think it's not how small it is, but how much the size deviates from a standard laptop. I've seen some really big ones which have just as much compensation power as leetle ones.

Maybe it's not size afterall; The more I look at modern computers (laptops and otherwise), the more I'm inclined to believe that the true measure is the number of blue LEDs on the computer. Compaqs, Sony's and HP's have a very large number of the LEDs, arguably to make up for the rather pathetic nature of the machine they're on. Toshiba laptops seem to have a high count of superfluous blue-photon-emitting regions. Toshiba is currently being sued due to very poor design on the heat-dissapation front - the bloody things'll burn you! It must be the lights - just think of all the neon underlights on ricers. I can't wait to see someone who does a casemod so that they have a whole matrix of dancing blue LEDs on the front... that's the kind of compensation you can't buy in stores.

Today, I wear colors. In fact, I shall continue the rest of the week in celebration of national support-your- favorite-GLBTs-week.Or national coming-out week, whatever you preffer.

This weekend will be a wonderful trip to Umass Amherst with Faboo to visit Carolyn, Sarah, and company. We'll be going to King Richard's Faire where we'll [hopefully] be meeting up with bludroses and her new beau. We shall see :-)