You are currently browsing the Shawnogram blog archives for August, 2008.
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shawn (at) phantompower.org
August 28th, 2008
We’ve been living with roadwork and construction nearby for what seems like a year. This video documents some of the work that happened one night. Watch for the road-striping truck.
To see what some of this roadwork has looked like during the day, go here, here or here. Some photos of the construction can be seen here.
Music in this video is by 3rd Man.
Podcast: Download (17.3MB)
August 26th, 2008
One of the many additions to our new aquarium is a blue lobster we’ve named Mr. Schneider. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.) Mr. Schneider is a rather industrious lil’ lobster. He has spent days (literally) creating a home for himself (we don’t actually know his gender) under a large rock. In the video, he is seen moving rocks around to help accommodate his new lair. Watch for cameos by a molly fish (R.I.P.) and a neon tetra.
Music in this video is by AjT.
Podcast: Download (11.3MB)
August 20th, 2008
I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:
A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.
The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo
As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).
(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:
The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.
Podcast: Download (9.9MB)
August 10th, 2008
Like all web 2.0 social networks. Twitter has its fair share of users whose motives may not be on the up-and-up. Here’s some tips on what I do to limit my exposure to these ne’er-do-wels. Or as I like to call ‘em, Twitter scum.
1.) Spambots: Spambots are easily identifiable. They’re usually obvious-looking “fake people” who are trying to push porn sites, get-rick-quick schemes or other nefarious ‘net institutions. The best defense against these bots is to simply block them and move on.
2.) Human spambots: I couldn’t think of a better term for this class of Twitter scum. Unlike spambot accounts, these are Twitter accounts that are owned and operated by real, live humans. Problem is, all these accounts do is spew out endless, auto-generated links to blog sites, Flickr photos, forum posts and anything else that has an RSS feed. If I’m interested in someone’s content, then I’m probably already subscribed to it. If I’m not, using the human spambot approach won’t get me to. I don’t always block these users, but I never follow them.
3.) Numbers runners: Again, I couldn’t think of a better term for this final, and most vile class of Twitter scum. Numbers runners go on massive follow/unfollow campaigns, in the hopes of artificially boosting their follower counts. While there are plenty of valid reasons to follow/unfollow someone on Twitter, there is no good reason for any Twitter user to add hundreds (if not thousands) of followers in a couple of days, and then immediately unfollow 90% of them. Again, this tactic is used by Twitter scum who want to appear to be super-duper awesome, ’cause you know, they have like 10,000 followers but they’re only following 20 of them back. I figured out a way today to track down potential numbers runners. I clicked the “Following” link on the sidebar of my Twitter homepage. That showed me the list of all of the Twitter users I’m following. Any users listed there that didn’t have the “Direct message” and “nudge” links right under their names are users who aren’t following me back. I could then easily go through the list and weed out any who originally chose to follow me but have since unfollowed.
I understand that Twitter is a dynamic service, populated (mostly) by people. And people can and will change their minds. I don’t care if someone chooses to unfollow me. I do find it annoying when Twitter users try to buck the system by becoming numbers runners. To me, Twitter is best as a conversational tool, and I’m not interested in connecting with people who aren’t there for the conversation. I welcome any and all Twitter users to connect with me through the Twitter ID in the sidebar. But if you’re Twitter scum, don’t expect me to follow you back.
August 9th, 2008
I hurt my back earlier this week, and because of that, I’m on drugs. Nothing too severe. Just enough that my ability to concentrate is a bit skewed. Hence, this won’t be a long post.
We went to the California Mid State Fair a couple weeks ago. We walked around a bit and saw the Stone Temple Pilots play on the grandstand. Those pictures are here.
My sister gave us an aquarium she no longer needs (because she replaced it with one that’s big enough to hold small whales). Photos of our new aquarium can be found here.
August 6th, 2008
I have a lot of projects I’d like to get done. And even more that I’d like to start. But first things first, right? The current items on the agenda are:
My hard drives are all very messy. Filled with half-finished videos, random files from the ‘net and who knows what else. I’ve decided that, before I can seriously commit to anything new in the creative department, I’ve got to get this situation under control. The first item to tackle was to find a reliable system for backing up the data I already have. I recently decided to upgrade the Mini to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. That gave me access to Apple’s new Time Machine backup software. I’ve also found a relatively simple way to backup Jen’s computer, thanks in part to the Leopard upgrade. But I’ll be writing more about that in the future. So that takes care of backups. Next up on the list: compression. I’ve started going through all of my videos and making high-quality renders of each one, from the original project files. This’ll allow me to keep a high-quality finished version of the videos and then delete the bulky project files associated with each one. Coincidentally, I’d love to do this with audio projects, as well. But the file sizes are too big. For example, a completed episode of Hyper Nonsense, before mp3 encoding, can yield a file that’s easily 1 GB+ in size. But again, I’ll be writing more about that in the future. So that brings me to the last entry on today’s list: archives. Whenever possible, I’ll be burning archival items to disc. Some things (like those pesky audio files) will just have to live on hard drives until those drives get full. And then they’ll likely have to be sent to the trash. But who knows? I’ve got 750 GB in external storage to burn through. Maybe by the time that happens, Apple will have developed some amazing new archive software. To keep with the Time Machine theme, it’ll be called something like “Transporter” or “iBlack Hole.” Anyway, once I’ve got all of this tedium out of the way, I should be able to focus more time on creative things for this site (and elsewhere). At least until I let it all go again, and have to start over with the backups, compression and archives.