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All posts for the month January, 2008

Gibb Droll is playing with the WMD’s

Posted by stevet on January 31, 2008
Posted in: Random Rants.

So last Saturday night I got the opportunity to see a fantastic guitarist as he joined up with Keller Williams and the WMD’s. I first caught Gibb Droll back during college at a small local haunt in Blacksburg, VA. He just brought the place down with his wicked riffs. Back then he had his own band, the Gibb Droll Band and had some great musicians playing with him. My buddy AT got permission to record the concert from the sound board and a bunch of CDs were made from that. I still enjoy listening to that set.

Periodically I would check out his tour schedule and vowed if he ever made it to Austin I would go see him. I, of course, missed a solo show at the Parish about a year ago. I checked the schedule two weeks late. Earlier this year I saw he would be playing lead guitar for the WMDs at La Zona Rosa. I made sure my day was clear.

The WMD’s are a kind of bluegrass jam band. The bassist played with String Cheese and the drummer with Trey Anastasio among others. I suppose I should not have been surprised. Very interesting, but not what I was expecting. The show was *long*. Like 4 hours long. They went on just after 8 and the first intermission was near 10. We left when it was getting close to midnight and they were still playing. It was a lot of fun and I did enjoy myself. Even though Austin is non-smoking town there was plenty of, errrr, “smoke” in the air. I went to see Gibb Droll and not the rest of the band. Gibb was on- really on; The band was also on- there are some great musicians The band was having a blast and the crowd was hopping.

If you get the chance to see them I highly recommend it. Be prepared for a long, jam band kind of show and go with it. You should have a great time.

—

Roof is done on the house. It looked pretty good this morning. I have not had a chance to check out the back side of my roof yet- but it rained this morning and no leaks that I saw.

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Super Bowl is Sunday and then my 28 day sabbatical begins. I’m really looking forward to it.

The Power of Community (and other random stuff)

Posted by stevet on January 29, 2008
Posted in: Random Rants.

A while back Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, asked his readers to submit random lyrics that could be strung together to see if a pop-culture song could just appear from basically noise. Well it can. A song was created, the band RIVO DREI put it to music, and Jem8472 put it into a video.

Check it out here:

Seems like good social science there.

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Went bowling last night for the first time in years. Bowled four games: 102, 106, 108, 122. Not bad. I did get a turkey in the 4th game, then promptly pooched the next two balls.

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They delivered the shingles for my new roof this morning. The roofers may very well be up there now doing their thing. I’m getting the fancy architectural shingles because it only cost $300 more total. They look better and should add value to the house.

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My new corner desk is near complete. I’ll take some photos and do a post about the construction and cost when it in place. It is going to work really well for me.

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Running took a small break. Sunday I spent 13 hours installing TVs and didn’t get the chance to go run. Monday I was so sore from the work on Sunday I could not fathom running. I’m going to try and get out this afternoon.

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Work beckons. It is going to be a really busy week. Thanks for reading.

Check out this goal!

Posted by stevet on January 18, 2008
Posted in: Random Rants.

I have not watched a lot of hockey this year, mainly because it is only on Versus and I prefer my hockey live…

However, I caught this on Headline News and later on SportsCenter this morning. This is Rick Nash of the Columbus Blue Jackets absolutely schooling two defenders and the goalie to break a tie with 21 seconds left in the game. Amazing.

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Went running at lunch today. It was 38 degrees when I got back to the house. Yeah, it was a bit chilly. I just got some lined workout pants and a fleece jersey so I was not that uncomfortable, but still. The stats on the sidebar have been updated, and the plugin is now version 0.2 since I have fixed a few shortcomings. Get it here if you want.

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Have a great weekend!

New WordPress Plugin: wp-running-record

Posted by stevet on January 14, 2008
Posted in: Geek Out.

One of the my yearly goals is to run 700 miles in 2008. I have a Garmin Forerunner 301 to keep track of times, routes, distance of individual workouts, lap times, and thinks like that. I also built a Google Spreadsheet with a block for every day of the year that sums up my results. The export of that can be found here. I wanted something that would remind me every day that I need to go run. Since I hit the front page of my blog every morning to check stats and see if any of my 4 readers posted a comment (they never do), I figured putting it on the front page was the way to go.

My first method was just editing the template and putting the values in. P.I.T.A. to do every day. No fun.

The next step was to invest some time in a WordPress plugin. I am fairly adept at PHP and WP makes a pretty easy system to put new plugins into your site. I’m happy to say version 0.1 is complete. You can download it at my WordPress download page– yes, there is only one for now. Here is a happy screen shot from this morning:

WP Running Record

How does it work? It is pretty simple. When you activate the plugin, it creates a table in the database and defaults it with zeroed out data. When you use the plugin admin page located under the Options tab you can update you goal and progress. The new data is saved in the database.

To display this data to your end users, you need to call a function from within your template. My theme has a left_sidebar.php that I wanted to locate the box in. I created the box and populated the data with this code:

<h3>2008 Running</h3>
<ul>
<center>
<?php running_record(); ?>
</center>
</ul>

That is it! Pretty simple huh?

This is still a version 0.1, so it has some quirks. The “Miles Remaining” area on the data entry page looks like a form, and even though it is not edit-able it does not auto update. There is no uninstall feature yet (the database does not get cleaned up if you de-activate the plugin). I’m not sure I like located the console under the Options section. Minor gripes for sure, but it works pretty darn well for what it was intended to do.

Want to use it? Feel free! Enjoy!

Let me know if you have any suggestions. I might spend some more time polishing the plugin. Once I get it pretty nice I might even submit it to the main WordPress plugin repository site.

PuTTY Colour Schemes

Posted by stevet on January 10, 2008
Posted in: Geek Out.

I have been looking for a good PuTTY colour scheme (yes I used the spelling of ‘color’ they use in the program) for awhile. Years in fact.

This is the default PuTTY colors. Anyone who uses it knows this one:

PuTTY Default

Today with some GoogleFu I found two that I like. One is pretty simple to implement. This one I am calling Lime Sherbet, mainly because it looks like lime sherbet. I got the instructions from Michael Crowley at Mt. Holyoke College. This is his putty setup page. This is what it looks like for me:

PuTTY Lime Sherbet

To do this, you need to set or verify 6 settings in PuTTY listed here with R/G/B numbers:

  • Default Forground: 0/0/0
  • Default Bold Forground: 0/0/255
  • Default Background: 206/255/221
  • Default Bold Background: 255/0/0
  • Cursor Text: 0/0/0
  • Cursor Colour: 0/255/0

The 2nd Option I found is a bit more advanced. It is called Desert color scheme, which is similar to a vim color scheme. I found instructions on the vim.org website: Tip #1291. It is a bit more advanced in that you override the ANSI colors. Have a look:

[Edit: This color scheme is known as “Zenburn“, and I still like using it]

PuTTY Desert

I did not use the registry file, so here are the colors listed manually:

  • Default Foreground: 255/255/255
  • Default Background: 51/51/51
  • ANSI Black: 77/77/77
  • ANSI Green: 152/251/152
  • ANSI Yellow: 240/230/140
  • ANSI Blue: 205/133/63
  • ANSI Blue Bold 135/206/235
  • ANSI Magenta: 255/222/173 or 205/92/92
  • ANSI Cyan: 255/160/160
  • ANSI Cyan Bold: 255/215/0
  • ANSI White: 245/222/179

I am going to use both for awhile and see if I like either. I still might make some tweaks, but they are both better than the default- at least for me.

Anyone have any schemes they are particularly happy with?

2008 Year Long Goals

Posted by stevet on January 2, 2008
Posted in: Random Rants. Tagged: .

Inspired by several other bloggers I am going to put my heart on my sleeve (so to speak) and list out a few life goals for 2008. Only a couple are poker related, and the rest will likely bore you. Feel free to skip this entry and catch my next boring brain dump in a few days 🙂

  • Run 700+ (currently down to 696+) miles in 2008. That ends up being about 3.5 miles 4 times a week for 50 weeks. It should be pretty doable and it will be very easy to keep track of. I am going to use Google Docs and a HTML export to do this. I also have the sidebar to remind me. Hopefully, I will be able to keep it up to date.
  • Pay off my Truck. I am on target to have the Tundra paid off next October or November. This will free up a bunch of extra cash and allow me to be a lot more financially flexible. I don’t want to get all willy-nilly with my cash at the end though so:
  • Fix my budget. It isn’t a wreck, but it needs some work. I have some thoughts about how to do this effectively. I’ll post a follow up if I get things to be cleaner and more efficient.
  • Finally get my garage into some sort of order. It is better now that I redid my workbench and added some shelving, but it is still chaos in there. I want to be able to work on a bunch of projects without having to jump over a hose or my lawn mower. This should only take me a weekend or two, but…
  • Fix my damn lawn. It looks like crap. I won’t be able to do too much over the winter, but hopefully this spring I can get it into shape.
  • Poker: I am actually going to set a goal to increase my bankroll by $500 this year. It is a fairly modest goal but I don’t expect to have a lot of time to dedicate to it (based on 2007). This counts both live (Vegas and home games) and on-line play. Hopefully I will smash it.
  • Poker: Actually host a home game or two or several this year. I have a pretty nice table that I built that has been used two or three times. It is time to bust out the chips and sling some cash.

Have a great New Year everyone. May 2008 be a thousand times better than 2007 for all.