cygweb

We spent our first two full days here exploring Colonial Williamsburg. It was a unique experience. I knew a little about the area before coming down here, but had never researched the history of the area. I actually liked the fact that we didn't see Bassett Hall until today; its exhibits tell the story of how John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was convinced to finance the restoration of Williamsburg in the 1920s. Going though about two-thirds of the exhibits on the first day without knowing what was original construction and what was rebuilt increased the authenticity for me.

Watching the trade specialists (silversmiths, cobblers, leathermen, etc.) in their native element was very cool. I couldn't really tell which of the staff lived onsite, and as in the 18th century, but most of them would couch their descriptions with some comparisons to modern-day life. I heartily recommend a visit there, and you definitely need two 5- to 6-hour days to get to everything. At 5 years old, Ryan isn't really moved by the area, so I can't say it's great for the little ones.

We stayed in for spaghetti dinner last night, but tonight we visited the Green Leafe Cafe, which was pretty cool. They made me a good fish 'n' chips and I had a nice Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Last night we went out to see Sky High. I knew it would be popcorn, but its plot was more developed than I expected. Definitely worth at least a rental if you want to see a family-friendly "coming of age" superhero movie.

It's supposed to be a hot, clear day tomorrow, so it looks like we're going to go out to Virginia Beach. Later!

We ended up going to Busch Gardens today; our loud upstairs neighbor(s) kept us up a while last night so we couldn't get up as early as we liked to go to the beach. We were at the park at 10am and stayed until a little after 6. It was as nice and clean as their Tampa Bay park (my assessment from last year, where I said I'd like to check out this one ;) ) and the rides we went on were fun. Their new "Curse of DarKastle" ride wasn't worth the 30-minute wait, but that was the only dud for us. Ryan went on his first big roller coaster, The Big Bad Wolf, and he loved it. He went on a lot of bigger rides this trip - just another part of the growing-up process.

OK, maybe we'll get to the beach tomorrow; this week is shaping up to be great weather-wise.

I've tried to post some of my pics to Flickr over the dial-up, but it's been slow going. I'll probably upload the majority after we get back.

Phil might be happy to learn that Busch isn't pulling a Disney and attaching fingerprints to tickets, but they did take pictures of Melissa and I to print on our two-day "bounce" tickets; we're going to Water Country USA later in the week. That was OK with me (like I had a choice.. ;), but I guess the overall goal is the same.

Today we did finally get over to Virginia Beach. We left at about 8:30a and didn't encounter and traffic slowdowns, so we got there in about an hour. We decided to fly blind (save for a brochure for the local aquarium) and were greeted by a convenient and well-signed visitors' center that gave us all the maps and parking info we needed.

I didn't know much about Va Beach beyond the fact that it had a boardwalk, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was a nice, long, continuous run of shoreline with convenient public facilities. We rented an umbrella and chairs and played on the sand and in the water for about 3.5-4 hours before cleaning up a bit and renting and riding a surrey along the boardwalk for a while. We decided not to stay in the area for dinner - we headed back at about 4. It was very clear and hot today, and we all got burned at least a little bit, even trying to cover up with sunscreen.

We'll have to be careful tomorrow at Water Country USA (just around the corner from here) since it's supposed to be another scorcher. I may just keep my t-shirt on!

One of the things about vacationing with a little one is that you're in for the evening relatively early. So, of course, we've kept up with "RockStar: INXS". I really dug Brandon's rendition of "If You Can Only See" last night and was glad he (and Ty) didn't get eliminated tonight. I'm really surprised that the name "Eddie Vedder" wasn't invoked last night after Marty's performance.

Of the nine contestants left, I think the final four should be Jordis, Brandon, Ty, and Mig. I think Mig can (and probably should) win it all.

Not much to report today; it was a hot day and we went to Water Country USA. We got there at 10am (when they were opening) and stayed until about 4. It was packed. Really packed. Isn't-there-some-sort-of-capacity-limit? packed. On two of the group water slides (Aquazoid and Meltdown) we waited a long time for each; on the order of 45 minutes. We all put on the SPF45 today, and I don't think we worsened our existing sunburn. We needed it with all the standing in the sun...

Melissa and I directly contrasted our experience today with when we went to Blizzard Beach on our Disney World trip last September. I suppose the first week of August is different than late September, but we don't remember Blizzard Beach being nearly so busy. Here's a tip for the Water Country USA people - install some misters around the park, or do something to cool the vast tracts of hot concrete! We tried to head around in bare feet, but just couldn't do it. Next time we know to bring the aqua socks (Ryan had his, thankfully); we wore our sandals around and took them off for the rides. Another thing the park could do is install restrooms alongside some of the queueing areas!

We did have fun today, but the long wait times compared with our Busch Gardens trip on Tuesday definitely soured the experience. Perhaps this area could use another water park?

We ate dinner at a close local Mexican restaurant, Tequila Rose. I was hoping we'd get Ryan to try some of the salsa or have a taco, but he had chicken strips. ;) It was some great food, and a good break for us; we don't do Mexican all that often since our local Chi-Chi's closed.

Tomorrow will be a flex day for us. Since the weather has been so clear, we haven't been delayed by rain. I'd like to go see the Jamestown settlement. We'll see! We leave Saturday morning for home.

The drive back up today went much faster than the drive down. We hit the road at about 9:50am and with a 40-minute lunch stop, we got home at about 3:05. The catching up now begins! I'll post about yesterday's visit to Jamestown in a little while.

I posted in my comments on this post that my Sony DSC-P51 camera's CCD went offline. This has apparently happened to a lot of cameras. While taking mine apart to check it out its insides, I found this great reference to what a lot of people have done to fix or try to fix the problem. I tightened all the accessible connections and re-seated the small lithium battery. After doing that, the camera is now working again!

The relief is that there's no solid-state component failure. The downside is that this could easily happen again and I might not be able to fix it...

My camera is 3 years old and certainly out of warranty. However, if Sony is indeed not addressing this problem via free or reduced-rate service, I think it sends the message that their cameras should be expected to break after a few years, even if cared for. I'm a Minidisc fan, but after problems with this camera, my Sony receiver, an old Discman, and an old VCR, I'm finally starting to see a trend. At this point, my next digital camera won't be a Sony.

On Friday we finally went out to breakfast after having eaten in all week. After seeing the density of pancake & waffle houses in the area, I think it can probably be used as a "tourist trap" metric. ;)

After breakfast we hit the Colonial Parkway and headed down to Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Until we hit the fork in the road, I didn't realize there were two separate (and distinct) attractions there:

• Historic Jamestown: The National Park Service's site located on and near the actual location of the actual Jamestown settlement. There are active excavations going on here, and a lot of construction in getting ready for 2007 (the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the settlement).
• Jamestown Settlement: A park run by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, on the James River adjacent to the original settlement site. They've built a replica of the James Fort, which Ryan loved, and replicas of the three ships that brought the settlers over.

Each had its own admission and theme. Just inside the Historic Jamestown park, there was a glasshouse with a live kiln and glass blowers. It was really neat watching them make stuff, and Melissa bought a little green glass pitcher from the place. They also had a kids' program there where they made a little clay cup like the native Americans of the area did.

The actual location of the settlement was neat, even though a good portion of the park consists of replicated foundations built on top of the original foundations. However, the overall presentation was interesting and it made for a good experience -- at least for Melissa and me.

Ryan liked the "live" exhibits of the Jamestown Settlement much more, especially crawling around the replica ships. It was OK, but not as gripping as Colonial Williamsburg for me.

After Jamestown, we went to the Williamsburg Pottery Factory, a huge complex located in Lightfoot, VA. Melissa was interested in seeing their pottery, but we didn't expect all the non-pottery they had. We found a huge collection of various baskets and other wicker-type items, and Melissa ended up buying some baskets and sleighs to use for Manolas gifts this Christmas season. Definitely a recommended stop if you're into that sort of thing.

We headed over to Merchants' Square to find a place to eat dinner and ended up at the Blue Talon Bistro. A little too fancy for Ryan, but our food was great. I had the Pasta With Shrimp entree: a medley of shrimp, spaghetti, tomato, mushrooms, squash, broccoli, carrots, and almonds. It was great.

We checked out this morning and made it back in good time. It was a great week off!

I'm checking out the osCommerce-derived Zen Cart for possible use as Manolas' online engine. My MT/Paypal implementation lacks inventory and intelligent shipping cost management, among other things. Zen Cart could fix that, but it adds a bit of complexity to the mix. One huge benefit is that it's free to try and use if we're happy with it; I would probably donate some time/money to the project if we were to use it full-time.

I wasn't successful in getting my Fragile DVD-A content converted to multichannel FLAC, but I was able to create an image of the disc that lacked CPPM. However, on the computer only PowerDVD 6 plays it flawlessly. That's good enough for now.

The irony of the Great One coaching a hockey team playing in a desert state is funny. Yes, I know he was already affiliated with the Coyotes, but coaching should be his most demanding role with the team yet.

We're recording a second preseason BDFL podcast tomorrow night, starting between 8:30-9pm. If you'd like to be a part of the conversation, Skype me at "aharden". We'd love to have you.

I've been forming some thoughts on music and attention's intersection in my life; I may try to write an extended entry on it soon.

NASA - Steve Robinson: First Podcaster From Space

I don't mean to diminish the importance of STS-114 with this comment: the linked article merely references a downloadable MP3 recording. A key element of podcasting is syndication via RSS enclosures. A quick scan of NASA's RSS feeds doesn't reveal that this was syndicated content. This is the only NASA podcast feed I've found.

I'm just picky, I guess.

Please arrive home safely, Discovery.

29.2MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 63m 59s (Torrent courtesy of Prodigem.)
29.2MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 63m 59s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the second Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I discuss the upcoming BDFL draft, the NFL preseason week 1 buzz, and the Hall Of Fame ceremony & game. Scott goes deep on his memories of Dan Marino and Steve Young. We also try to decide where we're going to go to catch the Sunday Ticket.

We went a little long on this one. Our next show (in two weeks) should be our normal 40-minute podcast.

Please note that my torrents-only podcast RSS feed has changed. Thanks to Prodigem for providing the feed.

Links:

• Play Yahoo! Salary Cap Football with us! Our group info is here.
• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

I can't sleep tonight for some reason, so I'm catching up with my favorite bands. Check out the band-specific Google News feeds I'm adding to the "News" section of my blogroll.

The new King's X single "Alone" is being streamed at Ty's site. It sounds great. Can't wait to pick up the new album "Ogre Tones" on 9/27.

Speaking of 9/27, Mark and I were thinking of going out to Philly that night to see Porcupine Tree. However, the $37.50 ticket price revealed at the presale was a little hard both of us to swallow (we saw them just this past May). Maybe next tour they'll come a little closer (Baltimore? Hershey?) and cheaper.

I'm listening to my first FantasySacs podcast of the season and I have to say that Bill has the second-best fantasy football podcast on the Net. ;) Check him out; his blog is focused on FF and is fantastic for getting the latest info.

I've plugged him before but with the new season coming up I had to share some new linkage.

17.1MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 37m 31s (Torrent courtesy of Prodigem.)
17.1MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 37m 31s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the third Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the first full slate of preseason games and share our predictions about the possible "dark horse" fantasy offenses. We also talk about TO's holdout.

Please note that my torrents-only podcast RSS feed has changed. Thanks to Prodigem for providing the feed.

Links:

• Play Yahoo! Salary Cap Football with us! Our group info is here.
• Pick the upcoming season's games with us in our Yahoo! Pro Football Pick'Em group! Details here.
• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Healthy In Paranoid Times

by Our Lady Peace

Don emerged from his August fog long enough to catch up and let me know that there's a new Our Lady Peace disc coming out in two weeks. It sounds great; a bit more edgy than their last disc, 2002's Gravity, which I dug as well. I'm noticing lusher harmonies on this disc. There's something about Raine's voice and the texture of the songs that just draws me in. They're definitely not straying too far from the familiar OLP sound, but they don't have to.

It comes out on Tuesday, August 30th, on the DualDisc format. Pick it up! Or order it via my convenient Amazon link above! ;)

My server, Ghostrider, is getting a big storage upgrade tonight. I'm replacing a 40GB drive with this 160GB drive that's currently a steal of a deal from Best Buy. Those two rebate forms are going in the mail tomorrow morning! If you're thinking about doing the same thing, buy the drive by tomorrow to qualify for the rebates. The Harrisburg Best Buy had at least 10-12 more of these on the shelf when I picked mine up at about 5PM.

I've mentioned several times the problems I've had with my Sony reveiver. When Tweeter sent me a flyer for this weekend's private sale and had this Pioneer receiver discounted to $199, I had to check it out. I looked at it on Wednesday and liked it. That night I made a last effort to clean up speaker terminals and wiring on the Sony receiver to try and get the center channel working -- to no avail. I purchased the Pioneer receiver yesterday and set it up this morning.

The first thing that scared me was that it was a few inches deeper than the Sony; in an already-constrained entertainment center, that was bad. However, once I made all the connections and moved it back (carefully!) its face was flush with the front of the shelf it's sitting on. That worked fine for me.

Being a Pioneer like my DVD player, I was able to take advantage of the proprietary inter-component link between it and the receiver. I moved it down to a shelf with a door and verified that the receiver passed its remote's signals to it when the door was closed. This helped me create a little more airflow up top, with just the receiver and the Comcast HD box on the exposed shelf. I finally cut a 1" square dowel I had bought for the job into spacers; the HD box sits on top of the reciver via the spacers, creating some breathing room.

Besides giving me a working center channel, this upgrade allowed me to use a line-level connection to my subwoofer and let the receiver handle bass management. The Sony receiver's bass management never worked consistently for me, so I was using its "B" speaker terminals and the crossover on my sub to manage bass. Also, the Sony receiver produced noticable hiss at low volume levels, and only had 30 increments of volume, of which we usually only used the bottom 12. The Pioneer has very low hiss (I will check it out more tomorrow morning when it's quiet again) and starts at 94dB below unity gain and increments every dB. Quite a bit more control.

One thing that pleasantly surprised me about the Pioneer was the quality of its remote. It's the first "learning" remote I've ever had and once I figure it all out it should make a great command center.

I've been tinkering with the new Vicksburg templates in the Movable Type 3.2 beta and I can't wait to use them once I upgrade this site to the gold release. It's sounding like that will happen within a week, since beta 5 has proven to be pretty solid.

Ghostrider had been shutting down in an inexplicable manner every day or two since I'd put the new hard drive in. I finally took the time to install MBM5 on it to check it out and it confirmed what the problem was. The CPU temperature was too high; this is due to the fact that I slowed down the variable-speed case fan when I put the hard drive in. Mistake!

I've shut the server down and will fix this when I get home later today. ICYG and my FTP server will be back up this evening.

Update: Apparently it was more than just that fan - I took off the CPU's heat sink and there was little thermal conductor left between it and the top of the processor. So I cleaned out all the fans and heat sinks and put some thermal paste between the heat sink and the CPU. Things are cooler. I'm assuming there's no permanent damage, since this was really the first sign anything was wrong.

Had a productive and fun overnight trip to Philly for work. Thanks to the vendor reps (who shall remain nameless) who hosted me so kindly. I doubt they're reading this since it definitely isn't a work blog.

Go over to InsideOutMusic.com and check out the video for the King's X single "Alone". (Via Google News Search: King's X.)

MT 3.2 is out. I'll probably upgrade the site this weekend. Same color scheme, new layout, but the familiar stuff shouldn't change a whole lot. I think the buttload 'o' links will go; I'll maintain a more personal blogroll and continue to link to my Bloglines public feeds OPML. I may decide to go back to fixed width, but it should be easy to toggle back to percentage-based flexi-columns.

Scott, Don, and I recorded a great podcast tonight. I'll have it up sometime tomorrow. Don has joined Scott in the ranks of bloggers with forums. Cool!

My Yahoo! FF league auto-drafted yesterday. I got a pretty cool team. My favorites are Farve, McAllister, McGahee, and Chad Johnson. I'll post the whole lineup after I clean up some of the defensive players.

24.7MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 54m 03s (Torrent courtesy of Prodigem.)
24.7MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 54m 03s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the fourth Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott, Don, and I talk about some of last week's preseason games, analyze our Yahoo! FF league teams, and we share our opinions about the best fantasy QB's, RB's and WR's.

Please note that my torrents-only podcast RSS feed has changed. Thanks to Prodigem for providing the feed.

Links:

• Play Yahoo! Salary Cap Football with us! Our group info is here.
• Pick the upcoming season's games with us in our Yahoo! Pro Football Pick'Em group! Details here.
• SportPodcasts.com
• David "Goat Boy" Akers. Listen to the podcast!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Phase one of my upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 is complete. I will tweak templates later. Filezilla did most of the work; I just had to chmod some of the upgrade CGI files. The upgrade process was painless. Thanks to Six Apart for one heck of an update.

In my DT Google News feed, I found a link to the excellent FMQB site; they do music industry news. They had a reference to OLP's recent podcast launch. The OLP site is the first music site I've found with RSS news and podcast feeds that I've subscribed to. Kudos to the band and Sony BMG Canada for supporting us geek fans!

I was just prompted to install v2.1 of the Flickr Uploader. Visually it's not much different, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it supports sets! This is probably the easiest way to use Flickr's photo sets yet.

It turns out that I might have over-reacted to a faulty CPU temperature sensor before. I verified today (while working at the console) that Ghostrider itself wasn't crashing; the UPS it was connected to was. I'd just put batteries in it about a year ago and now this? It's now connected to house current and should be more stable. It's CPU temp was showing in the high 90's (°C) but now it's showing in the high 40's.

Not that it wasn't a good thing to get in there and clean and put some thermal paste in...

I've started getting my content converted over to the new MT 3.2 templates. Check out my test page if you want a preview.

The whole site will end up with the new ("Vicksburg") style, slightly modified. I think it's pretty cool. The fonts may need some work, but we'll see. I'm looking forward to seeing what StyleCatcher can do. One step at a time...

The revamped Cygweb with the new MT 3.2 templates is up. More tweaks to come!

Melissa and I both wanted the Green Day CD; it had been on my wishlist since Phil recommended it. I, of course, wanted the KevMo CD. And Melissa had heard the All-American Rejects on Music Choice, so she got that CD.

Why am I posting this? My wife and I rarely buy CDs together. ;)

29.9MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 65m 22s (Torrent courtesy of Prodigem.)
29.9MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 65m 22s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the fifth Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott, Don, and I talk about last week's preseason games, share our opinions about the best fantasy TE's, DT's and K's, and review some of the latest waiver wire activity. We review the 24 BDFL franchise players (i.e. keepers) and look forward to our draft next Tuesday. The next podcast will be "live" from BDFL headquarters.

Please note that my torrents-only podcast RSS feed has changed. Thanks to Prodigem for providing the feed.

Links:

• Play Yahoo! Salary Cap Football with us! Our group info is here.
• Pick the upcoming season's games with us in our Yahoo! Pro Football Pick'Em group! Details here.
• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.