My Blog Is Back…

And you’re gonna be in trouble. Hey nah. Hey nah. My blog is back.

 
 

Let me start off by giving a few apologies. I’m sorry I took such a long hiatus from blogging. Hell, from writing in general. Life took some strange and unusual twists and when things get hectic a lot of times I put items on the back burner. Blogging for me was easy to step away from. No one rides me to make sure I’m writing each day. Plus I’m not all that interesting. But here I am ready to rejoin the rank and file of the blogosphere. My typing fingers are stretched and neatly manicured.

Also let me apologize for the blog itself. Obviously it needs a little TLC and I am working on that diligently. For those of you who actually read what I write (all three of you) and have kept up, you will notice I’m no longer at my former fancy domain. I’ve temporarily moved back to a WordPress hosted blog. That’s fine and dandy for the time being. And I promise if I get a fourth reader I will convert back to self hosting. 
 
For you non geeky types ignore everything I just said. It’s fairly obvious if you look back through my old updates that there are a boat load of missing posts. That’s on me. I suppose I should have backed up all those moving, award-winning posts I made on the old site so I could have them here. But in a drunken stupor (that lasted about two years) I failed to do so. So now you are missing a big chunk of my life… That is if you are so inclined to stalk me. If it’s that big a concern just call. I have nothing, or at least very little, to hide. 
So in summation – here I am…again. Prepare yourselves for a veritable onslaught of HiTech Redneckery. Hide yo kids and hide yo wife, because Im blogging about erebody out here. 

 
 
 

New Skin

Sweet skins for your electronic devices!

I found a really cool site the other day I want to tell everyone about  – GelaSkins. They sell artist-designed removable skins for laptops, cellphones (iPhones and RAZR’s), iPods, Sony PSP’s, Nintendo DS’s and more. While these things can get a little pricey, they quality and look are awesome. Again, these are artist designed. You want ‘Starry, Starry Night’ to cover your laptop? Done.

They have a ton of modern art from up and coming artists in several mediums – modern, digital, even tattoo artist. They also have some of the classics for you to choose from – Monet, M.C. Escher, Munch and Van Gogh. This is a really sweet way to spruce up an otherwise visually boring device. I’m trying to decide on what to get for my new laptop I just ordered.

Since I mentioned my new laptop (which I got from TigerDirect), let me give everyone who’s not an uber-geek like me a tip. Go to the two big Internet dealers for computer parts, Tiger Direct and NewEgg, and take a look around. These are great technology companies that buy and sell in bulk so you can get GREAT prices. Plus, in most states there’s no tax. (I feel obligated to point out that when filling out your state taxes they DO ask you to list all Internet purchases so you can be taxed on them at that point. Just covering my bases here.)

My new laptop - I am SO stoked!

I got my laptop, a Gateway M-1625 for less than $500. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium  with an AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 2.0GHz processor, 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, and a 250GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive. For the geeks out there it also boasts an 8X multi-format dual layer DVDRW with DVD-RAM and Labelflash™ drive, WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display, 802.11g wireless LAN, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 5-in-1 memory card reader, three USB 2.0 ports, and a HDMI connector.

Why so cheap? It’s a refurbished computer. That means that it is still under warranty and the internal workings of the CPU are fine. Someone simply mailed it back due to a cosmetic flaw. That knocked $250 off of the retail price. There are bargains out there. Tiger Direct sells Gateway’s refurbs, Dell sells there own at the Dell Outlet, and Compaq and HP are on NewEgg and Tiger Direct. Take a look around the sites, there are a ton of good deals to be had. We all need them in a timed where our dollar gets less and less.

So give me a shout and let me know if you find any great deals or if you can help me decide which GelaSkin to get!

I’m a Twit…terer

What Are You Doing?

Let’s continue with our discussion about Web 2.0 sites. Hopefully someone found our last site – Picasa – to be useful and/or helpful. The service I’m going to talk about today is Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that ask What Are You Doing?  “What the hell is micro-blogging,” you ask? Micro-Blogging is essentially a miniature blog. You can write little updates about whatever you want and send them out to people who choose to “follow” you. “Following” allows you to see whenever the people you select have posted updates. Of course, people who follow you will see your updates.

That's Twitteriffic!

You can really get some cool implementation into various technologies to keep up with updates as well. You can set all the people you follow or just particular folks to send updates to your cell phone. In fact, you can write and post your own updates via cell phone if you’re so inclined. I have a Twitter application for the iPhone called Twiterrific and one called Twinkle that are both great. No iPhone? You can download one of my favorites called TwitterFox. It’s an addon for Mozilla Firefox that will show updates as people post them in your Firefox Window. OF course, for all the holdouts out there who are still using Internet Explorer, there are a quite a few desktop application for software – there’s a nice list here. Sociagami seems like a really nice one, although I have no personal experience with it. I like the idea of getting all MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter updates in the same place. I might give it a go tonight!

Twitter is not without it’s problems and critics – at times it can be less than perfect. Check out this blog post from Dom Ramsey to hear his take on why Twitter sucks – or just google Twitter Sucks The service essentially grew more quickly than anticipated and at times is unable to bear the weight of all its users. This results in an annoying message about overcapacity or some such garbage. Honestly, it’s hard to tell if Twitter is working diligently to fix this problem – but it IS a free service. So I keep my complaints to a minimum.

This is what the mian page of Twitter looks like

So why use it? I actually was thinking about a friend of mine when I decided to write this post. He’s deployed for 6 months and is away from his family – while nothing can replace a phone call, this is something he could use so his wife and kids could see little updates about what he’s doing. “At the market with a few friends,” “Recording a video to send you,” etc, etc. It’s also a cool way to send neat links to web pages, pictures or whatever you want or find interesting to friends, family and whoever follows you. The key to Twitter is getting more and more people you know to use it – the fun just grows exponentially! Twitter is a service I can’t imagine trying to live without. Give it a chance and I think you’ll feel the same way.