Category Archives: Tech

Windows Vista & the Ventrilo Overlay

Posted by on December 27, 2008 2 comments

I picked up a copy of Warhammer Online this past week, and have been quite enjoying it. Enjoying it enough that I’ve joined a guild. So far they seem to be a pretty decent, if somewhat sarcastic and crass, group of people; I should fit right in. They require the use of Ventrilo for voice chat, which is a pretty reasonable requirement for a guild that’s going to do PvP combat.

There are some quirks with Ventrilo and Vista, however, and I wanted to make mention of them here in the hopes that they might be useful to other people. Note that these tips were only tested with Warhammer Online and they may or may not apply to other games, and while this was done on 64-bit Vista, both Ventrilo and Warhammer Online were the 32-bit versions so they should behave the same on 32-bit Vista. Your mileage may vary.

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Why a PlayStation 3?

Posted by on March 11, 2008 No comments

This weekend I finally decided to throw my vote in to the next-generation console fight when I went and bought a PlayStation 3 (PS3). I picked up a pre-owned 40GB model from a local GameStop along with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Burnout Paradise. I’d been thinking a while over which console interested me most, and which one offered the most compelling games, and here’s what it all boiled down to.

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In Soviet Russia, LiveJournal Blogs on You!

Posted by on December 5, 2007 1 comment

First off, apologies for this post’s title.  It had to be done, though.  On Monday, LiveJournal was sold to a Russian company.  When I first read about it, one eyebrow raised slightly, but I didn’t think much of it.  Then I started noticing comments coming in from my friends and colleagues talking about how they felt about it.

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A Couple of Links

Posted by on November 12, 2007 No comments

I don’t usually just post links, but these are too great to not share.

The Nerd Handbook
This explains so much about me and “my people” that it borders on the uncanny. Everyone who is dating, has ever dated, or is planning on dating a nerd/geek needs to read this.
Installing MySQL on Ubuntu
A sarcastic response to a post by Dan Benjamin about how to install the MySQL database on Mac OS X. It still floors me when Mac people talk about how great it is that you can install software by hand, from source. We got over that years and years ago in the Linux world, FreeBSD’s Ports has been a solid solution for many years as well, and they’re even getting past it in Solaris. Mac OS X has MacPorts and lots of people use it, but there’s still a great deal of software-management-by-hand done in that world.

64-bit Vista with an OEM Activation

Posted by on September 28, 2007 3 comments

I got a new Dell Latitude D630 recently, and I wanted to try using Windows Vista to see if I could get my work done with it. The short story is, I can, and it’s actually pretty nice. But there’s more to it than that.

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My New Phone

Posted by on June 30, 2007 No comments

Like lots of people I got a new phone yesterday. It’s sleek, high-tech, and has lots of cool features. It’s also not an iPhone. No, I got myself a Cingular 3125, running Windows Mobile 5.0. In fact, I don’t even want an iPhone. I’ll tell you why, by way of talking about what I’ve been doing with my phone.

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Live Resizing of RAID5 Arrays in Linux

Posted by on June 8, 2007 1 comment

A friend of mine asked about the benefits of software RAID versus hardware RAID in Linux, and I proceeded to voice my support for the former. It was then brought up that online resizing was one of her concerns, and I set about to figure out how to do just that. These instructions were crafted in a CentOS 5 virtual machine, and come with no warranty or guarantee of any sort; I put them here on the off chance that they might help someone.

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Issue Trackers and Project Management

Posted by on May 20, 2007 1 comment

I’m going to be pushing a software project I’ve been working on out into the open source world sometime in the near future, so I’ve been considering what I want to use to keep track of the software’s development. I initially started by creating a RubyForge project for it, because the tool is written in Ruby and that’s just what you do with Ruby projects, but I’ve also been thinking about Trac and Launchpad.

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Upgraded to WordPress 2.2

Posted by on May 20, 2007 1 comment

Just a quick post to test whether or not my upgrade to WordPress 2.2 was successful.

What I Look for in a (Linux) Server System

Posted by on April 3, 2007 No comments

A coworker of mine and I had discussed my stance on Apple — it hasn’t really changed much since I wrote that, in case you’re wondering — and she asked me for my thoughts on what I look for and expect in a Linux system, so I offered to write them down here. Most of these considerations and observations also apply to other Unix, or even non-Unix systems, too.

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