A scratchpad of key punching ideas
Boy am I behind in my updating my beer log. I should be on Day 23, but I’m playing catch-up in logging my findings. Sunday, I’m getting ready for my daughters 3rd birthday party and I bought the Costco Shiner 
melody of beers. In it was their Shiner Kosmos, an American Pale Lager.
Trying to install Pydev for Eclipse somehow got me into a funky state with some corrupt jar files and I kept receiving the error below:
Error
Tue Sep 18 19:27:38 CDT 2012
Unable to read repository at file:/C:/Users/Mark/dev/eclipse/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.repository/cache/content564205554.jar.
I simply went into the “Available Software Sites” preference, highlighted Pydev and Pydev Extensions, then I selected Reload and voilà. The problem went away. I guess using somehow the proxy on my internet sharing phone went gefunkt.
The countdown starts. 
27 days till lift off to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival. I figured that a worthy goal is to try a beer that I have never had before each day for the next 27 days. So hear it goes, day 27, I’m enjoying a St. Bernardus Abt 12. (more…)
The story goes something like this… Back in March of 2012 I decided to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my Lenovo X220 tablet. I was mortified at what was on my computer. The interface was buggy and I was lost at how to navigate smoothly. I quickly removed it by reinstalling windows 7.
Today I decided to make use of my MSDN subscription and downloaded Windows 8 Enterprise…
Sometimes when you are busy trying to keep things glued together, one might loose sight of what technologies could make your situation better. We often hear of great things, but shy away from having to learn a new system or piece of software since there is already enough in front of you to get a grip with.
So with all this free time, it is no surprise to me that my jaw dropped as I went through some of my bookmarks highlighting MariaDB, XtraDB and Galera. For those that are not familiar with MariaDB I’ll sum it up with this:
MariaDB is a binary drop in replacement of the same MySQL version
http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql/
But there is more… (more…)
Just keeping tabs on what my firmware versions are for various bits on my windows phone:
| Before | After | |
| OS Version | 7.10.7720.68 | SAME |
| Firmware revision number | 2250.21.51003.531 | SAME |
| Hardware revision number | 0002 | SAME |
| Radio software version | 5.71.09.02a_22.51.50.21U | 5.65.09.25a_22.45.50.21U |
| Radio hardware version | A.12.0.D4 | SAME |
| Bootloader version | 5.10.2250.0(132968) | 3.1.2250.0(119314) |
| Chip SOC version | 2.2.5.0 | SAME |
Taking care of a 2 year old and feeding my wife has got me back in the groove for cooking up a storm. Today, while I cooked ruby trout (which Isabel loved)
I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone: I cooked some tasty brown rice to use as a side dish for the rest of the week.
(more…)
Every where you look, swordfish here in Hawaii is like the salmon of the Northwest, but better. It’s quite inexpensive and abundant. Back home in Austin, I couldn’t resist and make a dish. (more…)
Steiner Ranch Fire in the distance, about 9 miles away.
Coming back to Austin from our trip to Hawaii, I was getting concerned by all the mentions of fires in the Central Texas area. In particular the Steiner Ranch fire (where my brother use to live and is about 9 miles away) There is also the the fire at Pedernales Bend, about 30 miles away.
Hearing all these places on the radio, I was wondering what spots did I maybe miss hearing on the air. That made me do a little searching on the internet and looking for texas fire tracking sites. Here are two sites that I thought were very useful.
Texas Forest Service – They have alot of maps and links. The coolest info is the Google Earth view that allows you zoom on and since GE can get live refreshes of data without leaving the map, it was even cooler.
Perdenales Fire in the distance, about 30 miles away.
WunderMap Interactive Radar – The fire view shows the spots, with less graphics and shows the smoke plume/drift. Very nice for folks who are sensitive to air quality. This is updated as well.
I’m hanging out at Texenza Coffee on 360 and took these photos from my windows phone.
After our crazy morning with Isabel falling we still managed to have some fun. This goes to show how beautiful and resilient those little ones are.
We went to visit a local coffee plantation called Hilo Coffee Mill. Great little place. Folks were real nice. It started to drizzle rain a bit when we showed up. We got onto the last tour of where they roast and package the beans.
Here are a couple of facts:
