A Quad-Core Computer for $130

The other day I was checking out one of my favorite tech blogs, ! ComeAtMeBro-Daily tech news, and came across a post that I just had to share. I don't want to jack the content so I'm just going to post a pic and the link. You should definitely go check it out though. I can easily think of over 9,000 DIY projects I could do with one of these things.

Quad-Core Computer for $130!

To check out the article either click on the photos or this link to go straight to the blog.

High Tech Camping

So if you've really read this blog at all you'll know that I'm big into survival, camping, and the outdoors in general. The other day I was reading a tech article on PCMag.com and noticed an article in the sidebar called Equipment for High Tech Camping. So, considering my love for both the techy and the primitive, I obviously had to check it out. I was expecting the usual solar chargers, GPS units, etc. and those were indeed included. However, there were some really neat, useful products that I hadn't seen before.


TentLEDs

The TentLEDs are such a no-brainer that I am really shocked that someone hasn't mass-marketed them before. I know I personally trip over the tie ropes on my tent at least once a trip. When you're stumbling around in the dark half asleep, you're going to eventually catch your foot on one of them if you're not careful. The TentLEDs would definitely make it less likely to happen.



Brunton's Flip-n-Drip Coffee Maker

I'm a big fan of what we call "Cowboy Coffee". I have a campfire coffee pot and we normally drink boiled coffee when we're camping or hunting. That may change now that I've found this little guy. It just looks so damn convenient. You just pour water it in the lower chamber and throw that in the fire. While it is heating up you put coffee in the middle chamber and screw it all back together. Once the water is hot just put the whole thing together, flip it over and let it drip. Pretty flippin' sweet.



The Cave by Heimplanet

There is no way to describe this other than awesome. Ok, maybe convenient works too. It is a tent that uses "air beams" instead of tent poles. You just unroll the whole thing, hook up a hand pump, and in no time you have your tent aired up and ready to go. I can see where there would be times when it wouldn't be "enough" of a tent. Long trips, high winds, etc. But for your day to day trips, this seems like it would be pretty cool. Easy to pack as well. You just pop the air valves and roll the whole thing up and stuff it in the bag. Pretty damn nifty.


Have you guys come across any cool high tech camping gear lately?


Backorder Blues

As mentioned in my previous post, I recently ordered a computer to replace one here at the office that shat itself. I thought all was well... I got an order confirmation, a shipping notification, and have even been tracking the shipment in anticipation of its arrival.

I get to the office this morning and am greeted by this message (Bold/Italics indicates my edits):

Hi You Poor Bastard,

On checking your order from Friday … I note that the above part shows a back order status because God hates you … I am checking into this and will get back to you with an update or I'll just let you sit there and stare at your monitor helplessly while waiting for an update that will never come … 

Messenger of Satan

So, yeah... Later today I will have a big box of parts with nothing to connect them to. I hope you're all having a better day than I am.

Fantasy Football Season is almost here!

I am a complete Fantasy Football addict. I am not ashamed of this in any way. I wish my life were like a season of The League. Sadly, my friends suck and aren't into Fantasy Football. And they're just not as cool as the folks on The League so it wouldn't work out either way.



Yahoo! Sports - Fantasy Football



I normally play over at Yahoo and just join random open leagues but this year I am also going to try to get a league together at work. A few of the guys here are into football and have expressed interest in joining a league so we'll see how it goes. If nothing else it will give us all something to do once the Fantasy Fishing league is over.

Bassmaster Fantasy Fishing

Yes, there is a Fantasy Fishing league. Seriously. I couldn't make that shit up. Several of the guys, along with myself, have a Fantasy Fishing league here at the office. It provides endless hours of smack-talking and we even do a little plaque/trophy for the winner. Yeah, we get bored.

Anyway, June 1st is when sign-ups are open for Yahoo Fantasy Football. I'm so effin' ready. If anyone is interested in joining a league, holler.

Graphic Design-Related Humor

Being a graphic designer can be an awesome job. It can also be incredibly stressful, thankless, mind-numbing, migraine-inducing... Well, you get the picture.

Sometimes we just have to do things to amuse ourselves.

1and1 Hosting + Magento = Epic Fail

Ok, so I decided to go with Magento for my little project. I am confident that I made the right decision. However, I am in no way confident that I made the correct decision about my hosting company. I have a hosting package with 1and1 Hosting that I use for random testing, FTP, email, and random other geeky goodness. So far, for the small tasks I have thrown at it, it has been a solid host. However, after spending several hours trying to install Magento and dealing with several failed connections, corrupted files, and random other annoyances, I am ready to throw in the towel with 1and1.

Please understand, I do not in any way claim to be an expert when it comes to web-design, coding, or computers in general. However, I have over 15 years experience in the field and would describe myself as "capable." I have worked for companies where I was entirety of the IT Department and I have worked for companies where I was but a cog in the wheel. My experience covers the gamut of computer related specialties. Competent at all, Master of nothing; I suppose.

The first issue, which should have been a key indication as to their level of support, is that fact that they are still using PHP4 as their default. PHP5 is available if you simply place a line of code into your htaccess file. No biggie. Got that sorted. FINALLY got Magento installed after setting up the database and squaring away all of the pre-reqs. Did a couple security updates and... CRITICAL MASSIVE UBER FAIL.

Ok, maybe not that bad. But it seemed that every time I made a simple change in code I would run into problems. I admitted that it might have been me so I did another fresh install and did things by the book. I made no code changes myself and simply went with the bare stock files. Still had problems. So, I conned a friend into setting me up with some space on one of his GoDaddy accounts. Uploaded Magento, got everything running, and went at the code. Not a single problem. Everything ran extra smooth.

So, boys and girls, daddy is switching hosting companies and starting over.

Moral of the story? Fuck 1and1 Hosting.

Stay tuned.

New Project: First step... E-commerce.

Ok, so I have had a project idea in the back of my mind for several years and am finally going to tentatively takes a step closer to putting that project into motion. I won't reveal too much at the moment but I do want to get some opinions about one aspect of it. This project will involve the retail sale of several products on a website. While I am fairly experienced with most web-design aspects, e-commerce is not something I have spent a lot of time on. I am looking for a cart system for my website and have it narrowed down to two:

 

or

The reason I have it narrowed down to these two is fairly simple. I want an open source cart. Not only is it much cheaper but they are much more customizable. I know they can sometimes be buggy simply due to the open source nature of things but I am starting small so I don't really see it being a problem.

I have researched these two quite a bit and just from the specs I am leaning a bit more towards Magento. However, I was hoping to get some feedback from those of you who have actually used one or both of these. Just to give you a better idea of what it will be used for I am looking at starting with 8 standard products. There will be only two options; color and size. I haven't decided on a payment gateway yet but I will most likely go with Authorize.net, Quickbooks, or maybe even PayPal. If you guys have any experience with these carts I would really appreciate some comments about them. Any input would be appreciated.

Sassafras Tea. Mmmmmmmm.....

So yesterday my buddy from over at Saturday Sports Blog and I were hiking through some of his family's land when we came across a stand of Sassafras trees. I am absolutely addicted to fresh Sassafras tea so we pulled, dug, and cut some Sassafras root to take home. This morning I washed the roots and sat them out to dry. Once they were dry I put a few in a pot of water to boil and made some Sassafras Tea. If you've never had, or even heard of, Sassafras Tea you are really missing out. It is a very light, flavorful tea that is great either iced or hot. Sassafras trees can be found in most areas of the lower 48 but is most prominent in the southern states.

Sassafras was banned from commercial sale in 1960 because researchers found that extreme doses of an ingredient found in Sassafras, called safrole, caused liver cancer in rats. These findings were very controversial for several reasons. The main reason being that it would take MASSIVE amounts of Sassafras being consumed to cause any negative effects. However, if you're concerned, please do the research before you try to make yourself any Sassafras tea.

If you'd like try some, here is the process from harvest to the glass:

1. Find a Sassafras tree.

2. Dig up some roots. Take them home and wash them really well then throw three to five roots about 4" long in a pot of boiling water. I normally do about a gallon of water for this amount of root.

3. Let the roots come to a rolling boil and sustain that boil for 30 minutes. Then remove the pot from the heat, cover it, and let it sit for 3 to 4 hours. The water will have turned a medium pink to a darker red color. Carefully pull the roots from the tea and strain the tea to get any small particles out.

4. Enjoy! If you like your tea strong you can drink it straight. Or you can dilute it with water like you would normal iced tea. I prefer mine diluted, with a bit of sugar, on ice. Just experiment with the variation that works best for you. You can also adjust the recipe to find the strength that you like. Just add more root to make it stronger or leave some out to make it weaker.

Or, you could just buy some commercial Sassafras Tea. The commercial teas use a safrole-free Sassafras flavoring to skirt by the safrole ban, so it won't be as tasty as the real thing, but it is better than nothing!

Linux Vs. Windows 7

The other day I blogged about Linux and the comments seemed to be about 50/50 between Linux and Windows users. Several comments mentioned Windows 7. I admit to having little experience with 7 so I was interested in doing some research. During this research I came across a really good article over on TuxRadar comparing Linux and Windows 7. It was posted a year ago so obviously more recent updates to both could have changed things a bit, but I think it is still relevant. Obviously it is written by Linux users so keep that bias in mind as I did.

You can read the article here:

 http://www.tuxradar.com/content/linux-vs-windows-7

***UPDATE***

One thing I forgot to mention... The version of Windows 7 used in the tests was a Pre-Official Release version so keep that in mind as well.

Yes, I'm a Linux Geek.

I know there are probably several hardcore Linux geeks that read my blog so I have to give them a shoutout. I'm not as intense into Linux as some of my friends but I do enjoy playing around with it and have for years. A good friend got me started on Slackware many, many years ago and for a while it was a bit of an obsession. I still prefer Slack over any other distro just because it is what I learned on and I have a bit of sentimental attachment to it. I do run several other distros though. SuSe, Ubuntu, and DSL being some of my other favorites.

Linux Geeks, let yourselves be known! What distros are you running at the moment?

Dave Canturbury's Pathfinder Concepts Video

One of my readers, Sadistic, commented on the last post about wanting to make a 3 day trek through the Canadian Rockies with very little equipment. I wanted to post this video in response to that comment. I am a firm believer that a person should be as prepared as possible whenever venturing into the wilderness. Dave Canterbury, of Discovery Channel's Dual Survival, is a great resource for anyone looking for survival information. He has some great video on YouTube. Here is one of my favorites. It is basically a "primer" of the concepts he teaches at his Pathfinder School. I hope you enjoy it.

The Pathfinder School

Ok, so this isn't what you would normally find on a "geek/tech/whatever" blog, but survival and preparedness is something that I have been passionate about for a long time. As a geek I tend to obsess about things and survival is one of those things I rabidly obsess over.

Some of you may have seen a television show called Dual Survival on the Discovery Channel recently that stars a man named Dave Canterbury. Dave owns and operates a survival school called The Pathfinder School. His school is based out of Ohio but he does survival classes all over the country. I would highly recommend checking out his website. There is a lot of great information there.

http://www.wildernessoutfittersarchery.com/

ESPN Fantasy Football... Hack?

So one of my addictions this time of year is Fantasy Football. I'm not as hardcore about it as some. I control four teams; two on Yahoo and two on ESPN. These are just friendly leagues. We play for bragging/shit-talking rights. So while doing a bit of tech reading I came across an article on The Register about an apparent "hack" for ESPN Fantasy Football.

Apparently, by making some minor changes to the URL string, you can edit your opponent's roster, drop and add players, and generally run amok with their team. Someone is getting JaMarcus Russell as their starting QB this weekend!

Read the full story here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/22/espn_fantasy_football_cheating/

My Addiction.... Geocaching!

Ok, so it doesn't get much geekier than Geocaching. If you're not familiar with Geocaching it is, according to geocaching.com, "...a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online."


I have been geocaching off and on for several years but just got serious about it around a year and a half ago. A good friend of mine and I discovered our mutual love for geocaching quite by accident and it was an adventure from that point on. We immediately set out on a months-long geocaching quest.


One of the easiest ways to get started in geocaching is by using the iPhone Geocaching app. Obviously you need an iPhone to do this but there are geocaching apps for most smartphones out now. With the iPhone Geocaching app you can browse geocaches based on your current GPS location. There is no need to logon to the website to find caches. They are all right there in the palm of your hand!


I will be covering a lot of geocaching information on here in the coming weeks and months. It is, by far, one of my favorite hobbies and is something I am very passionate about. It is a good way to get people out and about and enjoying the outdoors. Especially us geeks that are more prone to sit in front of a computer all day!


So go to geocaching.com, get a GPS device or get a geocaching app for your phone and go have some fun!