Thursday, January 20, 2011
Just a quick word
It's late again. Earlier today Microsoft decided to make a OneNote iPhone app! I've never been much for all the different note taking apps reviewed on Gizmodo or Lifehacker, mostly because I don't take notes, but OneNote has a bit of a special place in my heart from back in the day I bought my first laptop for school and religiously used the Office '03 flavor for everything I could. My new found interest in this one has perked curiosity in all the other note taking apps people have been squealing over (Evernote and Simplenote specifically). I'll have to give them all a shot and jot down my thoughts another time. As for now, I'm still enjoying my new Moleskine notebook Anna gave me for Christmas... so soft, smooth and classy!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
More Addiction
The time is 1:33 a.m. and I’m considering googling “tech’s anonymous” to see if there’s some kind of group I can go to in order to overcome my addictions to reading about all these fun gadgets that are coming out. Each morning I wake up and the first thing I do is check my phone for the 3 am daily email I receive from Newegg.com about their Shell Shocker deals. At work today I spent the bulk of my working hours watching the tech support remotely install ECR Vault on the server and workstations and the rest of the day playing with the scanner (which is amazingly fast) and receiving the official training from the technician. A quick word about the process, with our officejet all-in-one it would take about 2 minutes to scan and assign each sheet of paper in a patients file, with a touch of training my coworker ripped through about 200 insurance claims and attached them to the corresponding patient files in about an hour and a half. It took her longer to go through the stack of papers taking out the staples than it did scanning and archiving them.
Another little ditty about my adventures through silicon-land… last night I spent almost 5 hours on the phone with my dad giving tech support to him. After a little bit I logged in to his computer and tested out the fantastic LogMeIn program. Remote assistance at its finest! Many failed attempts with the default Windows Remote Assistance tool through Windows Messenger had me a little flustered so I finally caved in and signed up for this service I’ve seen mentioned here and there in all my tech pr0n I’ve been reading. Highly recommended. The LogMeIn Free edition in conjunction with Dropbox gives amazing functionality to anybody trying to help somebody out (and please, if you’re reading this and thinking about doing the Dropbox thing, use my link and we’ll both get an extra bit of free online space in our accounts).
It’s late, I’m tired.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The next weekly post.
Anna hasn't been feeling well. She's been on her ped's rotation and probably picked some little bug up from one of the kids which has left her with headaches and a sore throat. Today was suppose to be spent in the peds ER but she decided to call in sick so it isn't spread to the rest of the world. I feel bad for my little wifey, she's a sniffley mess.
Sushi has come and gone three times this month so far. Once at our neighborhood favorite place Ichiban, once at a higher class place for one of our friends birthday parties called Hachi's Kitchen, and lastly we used a Restaurant.com coupon at a place called Blue Fin Sushi. Hachi's gets the award for the tastiest and classiest place, Blue Fin would be the most cost effective place if you're buying a couple rolls individually but Ichiban still remains my all time favorite with their awesome taste and the all you can eat option. Lucky for me it's just a block from where we live!
Work has been chugging along. Last week I spent a few 12 hour days getting the office computers updated with the latest software so we can begin going paperless. We will be one of the first established Chicago optometry offices to change from a paper files system to paperless EMR (electronic medical records). Last week Officemate was installed on our newly built server. One of the challenges with converting an office like ours (established over 15 years ago) is scanning all the paper files into the server. All should be set up this coming week using ECR Vault which I'll be teaching co-workers about so they can do all the gruntwork of getting things scanned.
The rest of the family videos came this week as well. There was a bit of a scare when the box was opened because one of the videos got crunched during shipping (thanks UPS), however, the video that broke was the Safety First video from my dad around the 2002 Olympics and there's plenty of backups. None of the other videos have backups (which is why I'm doing this). I've only started on one of the videos but I've found a few jems I've posted to Facebook and one to Youtube.
Sushi has come and gone three times this month so far. Once at our neighborhood favorite place Ichiban, once at a higher class place for one of our friends birthday parties called Hachi's Kitchen, and lastly we used a Restaurant.com coupon at a place called Blue Fin Sushi. Hachi's gets the award for the tastiest and classiest place, Blue Fin would be the most cost effective place if you're buying a couple rolls individually but Ichiban still remains my all time favorite with their awesome taste and the all you can eat option. Lucky for me it's just a block from where we live!
Work has been chugging along. Last week I spent a few 12 hour days getting the office computers updated with the latest software so we can begin going paperless. We will be one of the first established Chicago optometry offices to change from a paper files system to paperless EMR (electronic medical records). Last week Officemate was installed on our newly built server. One of the challenges with converting an office like ours (established over 15 years ago) is scanning all the paper files into the server. All should be set up this coming week using ECR Vault which I'll be teaching co-workers about so they can do all the gruntwork of getting things scanned.
The rest of the family videos came this week as well. There was a bit of a scare when the box was opened because one of the videos got crunched during shipping (thanks UPS), however, the video that broke was the Safety First video from my dad around the 2002 Olympics and there's plenty of backups. None of the other videos have backups (which is why I'm doing this). I've only started on one of the videos but I've found a few jems I've posted to Facebook and one to Youtube.
Friday, January 7, 2011
New Years Resolution
Anna gave me a small Moleskin notebook to write things down in, I think I'll use it to jot notes about what I want to blog while I'm out and about... then I'll write at least once a week about it. Well, that's the plan
Just a small post
Geeking ahead
I'm in the middle of playing with my computer... overclocking my Intel Core i5 750, trying to get the voltage right so I can get a stable OC (at 4.0 GHz), so I'm going to keep the post small.
Recently I built a server and tonight I finally got the software and everything working properly. It's going to take a while to get use to the new setup. It's a huge step towards getting our office to go completely paperless! Bring on the Electronic Medical Records! We'll be the first optometrists office that I know of to get rid of the paper charts!
In other news, I've also been having fun overclocking. If anybody is googling the problem with 3DMark 11 having problems when it gets to the physics test, the solution is to close 3DMark and when you reopen it, right click and "run as administrator" and that should fix the problem. I believe the problem is coming when the program doesn't have access to view the hardware specifications of the computer but it never brings up that windows UAC popup that asks for administrative controls to make changes/view the computers files. That solution worked for me (it's also the reason why the program works when you uncheck the box to scan for computer hardware in the settings tab). I still get some pretty sad readings from 3DMark 11, I'm only running it on a Radeon 5750, one of the lower end DX11 cards. 3DMark Vantage gives me fair results, but it just isn't built for any kind of real performance with tessellation or any of the other DX11 eye candy.
The lovin'
The biggest news recently is that Anna and I have finally gone on our (much deserved) honeymoon! We're only 2.5 years late, and we did have to travel in 2 separate vehicles again (different flights down, same flight back home) which doesn't even compare to the previous honeymoon we had (moving ourselves, driving across the country at 45 mph in two separate cars).
Aside from the hiccup in flight plans, everything else went off without a hitch! We both arrived at the Miami airport on the Tuesday before Christmas and cabbed it down to South Beach where our hotel was. We stayed at the Astor Hotel which I highly recommend (if you like great music playing right outside your window each evening and birds chirping in the courtyard each morning). We ended up spending huge amounts of our time laying out on South Beach (two short blocks away) or bumming around the streets looking for little shops to wander around. Fatburger was just across the street which was a great help to attaining my goal of hardened arteries at a young age, but my favorite little shop was the small French bakery right across the street from the hotel.
I do want to keep writing, however, I am very distractable and Anna is calling for me... I must go!
Edit: Also, I really need to tell y'all about that video project I was working on throughout 2010 for my parents. I put all our home videos to DVD, it only took about 200 man hours, some sweat and a few tears (usually tears of laughter when I saw myself or other siblings doing something ridiculously awesome). December was an intense month getting that put together. I also used Lightscribe DVDs to burn titles and screenshots as labels for each one.
I'm in the middle of playing with my computer... overclocking my Intel Core i5 750, trying to get the voltage right so I can get a stable OC (at 4.0 GHz), so I'm going to keep the post small.
Recently I built a server and tonight I finally got the software and everything working properly. It's going to take a while to get use to the new setup. It's a huge step towards getting our office to go completely paperless! Bring on the Electronic Medical Records! We'll be the first optometrists office that I know of to get rid of the paper charts!
In other news, I've also been having fun overclocking. If anybody is googling the problem with 3DMark 11 having problems when it gets to the physics test, the solution is to close 3DMark and when you reopen it, right click and "run as administrator" and that should fix the problem. I believe the problem is coming when the program doesn't have access to view the hardware specifications of the computer but it never brings up that windows UAC popup that asks for administrative controls to make changes/view the computers files. That solution worked for me (it's also the reason why the program works when you uncheck the box to scan for computer hardware in the settings tab). I still get some pretty sad readings from 3DMark 11, I'm only running it on a Radeon 5750, one of the lower end DX11 cards. 3DMark Vantage gives me fair results, but it just isn't built for any kind of real performance with tessellation or any of the other DX11 eye candy.
The lovin'
The biggest news recently is that Anna and I have finally gone on our (much deserved) honeymoon! We're only 2.5 years late, and we did have to travel in 2 separate vehicles again (different flights down, same flight back home) which doesn't even compare to the previous honeymoon we had (moving ourselves, driving across the country at 45 mph in two separate cars).
Aside from the hiccup in flight plans, everything else went off without a hitch! We both arrived at the Miami airport on the Tuesday before Christmas and cabbed it down to South Beach where our hotel was. We stayed at the Astor Hotel which I highly recommend (if you like great music playing right outside your window each evening and birds chirping in the courtyard each morning). We ended up spending huge amounts of our time laying out on South Beach (two short blocks away) or bumming around the streets looking for little shops to wander around. Fatburger was just across the street which was a great help to attaining my goal of hardened arteries at a young age, but my favorite little shop was the small French bakery right across the street from the hotel.
I do want to keep writing, however, I am very distractable and Anna is calling for me... I must go!
Edit: Also, I really need to tell y'all about that video project I was working on throughout 2010 for my parents. I put all our home videos to DVD, it only took about 200 man hours, some sweat and a few tears (usually tears of laughter when I saw myself or other siblings doing something ridiculously awesome). December was an intense month getting that put together. I also used Lightscribe DVDs to burn titles and screenshots as labels for each one.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Another test…
I’m doing much better at going to bed early (for the last two days at least) but I did get a small distraction tonight when I saw the Windows Live Writer in my start menu… had to try it out.
In other developments, if anybody cares to search for Adobe Creative Suite 2 (Adobe CS2) in search of installation tips for Windows 7 (x64) I was able to finagle my way into installing the programs without having to install them through the virtual machine. It must be a completely clean install, get rid of any traces of an Adobe Creative Suite product because when you insert the first of the installation cd’s it must ask which folder to install the programs to. By default Win7 will assign it to the Program Files (x86) folder but I think the Adobe program doesn’t view the parenthesis as valid characters for a destination folder, so it wont install, the next thought was to install it in the regular Program Files folder, but that either doesn’t work or it will install but when you open the program it crashes each time you try to enter a product key. Create a new folder! I suggest naming it “Adobe” and having it as a first level folder under whichever drive you decide to install the programs on. All subsequent Adobe 32 bit programs should automatically chose that as the default installation folder, 64 bit programs will go to the regular Program Files folder as they should.
The only problem I’ve run into so far is that the Acrobat 7.0 print driver (print to .pdf) doesn’t function properly (when trying to print from other applications/web browsers to .pdf) but that was easily remedied by installing the free application doPDF 7. I’ll admit, I’m an extremely light CS user so there may be a whole realm of other things that don’t work, but this is the only one I’ve run across that doesn’t want to cooperate.
Good luck, have a good night. I’m going to crawl into my new bed sheets next to my little wife.
Late.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
My recent business...
I'm still plugging and chugging away at this thing called life. Chicago is getting to that short point in the year where the weather is bearable and Anna is happy because it's her favorite season. The leaves are turning colors and the wind doesn't quite feel so humid anymore. In the mornings the ground is slightly moist from the dew signaling the imminent close of longboarding season (moisture, leaves and road grime don't fare well with $100 skate bearings). I should be getting ready to pull out the visqueen to insulate the windows from the upcoming bitter cold winter. I've managed to keep staying up late with my crazy ventures on my computer, the various projects I'll give a few details.
I've run in to a few hiccups with the "big project" I've been working on, but things will work out. It's just required me redoing the entire project (another 50 to 60 base hours) plus an additional 1/2 to 1 hour each section (22 total) to overcome the little hiccups that are happening due to my cheap software and hardware limitations. In researching my options to make this project a little simpler for myself I came across some of my dream setups. While checking out these pricey gizmos I was able to give myself a few more distractions to fill the deficit in ADD.
The first project (distraction from the main project) was found while researching software options. I love Adobe software, that stuff is like cocaine to me (or what I would imagine cocaine being like). It began while looking at the academic pricing schedule, the software looked great but was all pretty expensive (almost $1000 for most single programs without the student discount, around two or three hundred with the discounts) so I decided I'd struggle some more with my cheap software and just put in the extra man hours to manually correct the audio problems. I noticed one program was completely free for students, Adobe Flash Builder 4, used for building applications for computers, phones and websites. I've always been interested in how to build these applications and have thought of uses for my own little apps so I applied using my DePaul .edu email address for the free software. About a week later I was accepted and given a free license to learn and use it! I haven't really done anything with it other than take a small look at the interface, but it's a great tool for when I decide to dig deeper.
A short time later I received an email from the Adobe Student program reminding me about my "last chance to enter a submission to the Slamdance/Adobe Re-Cut Competition." I didn't hear about it before, but I have some interest in video editing, and I consider myself a software whore, so I checked it out. The competition includes downloading a video composed of a bunch of different scenes (with 2 or 3 takes each) of an independent movie which will be shown at the Slamdance Movie Festival in Park City, cutting up the takes into one smooth flowing scene (a chase scene, but according to the rules of the contest I can't really tell you much about it without risking my disqualification), burning it to DVD and mailing it in. The winner gets his "re-cut" put into the final movie along with a paid trip to the festival (in UT, I would get to see my family and mountains again!) and a huge package of Adobe software (Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, about $1,700 worth). All the Finalists get the CS5 package and tickets (but not airfare and hotel to the show) while every participant in the show gets a license for Adobe Premier Pro CS5 (the main software program for the video editing, which I've been doing a lot of, which would really simplify my life).
I entered the contest, downloaded the trial software and cut together a little bit of magic to submit. If I'm lucky I'll be a finalist and get to bask in the glory of the whole suite of software getting to use the video editing for my main project, but more importantly I'd get Photoshop (which I'm in love with). As it is, I did send in a submission so I will get the video editing anyway. If the stars align and the winds are just right and I won, I'd get a trip to Utah for the film festival, hotel, software and the ability to chill with my family for a while (squee!) which is something I've only been able to do twice in the last 2 years and probably wont get to do again for another long time. Do I hear "ski trip" if I win? I would absolutely love to see my family sometime soon.
I'm not just a software geek, I like hardware too. I've really been eyeballing THIS little treasure for all my project needs too. Works flawlessly with the software and it would complete the necessary components to streamline all my efforts into one seamless flow of productivity.
Enough with the geek talk. This video really makes me happy
Adobe Eyeballs from Seagulls Fly on Vimeo.
It's getting late, I've been busy with some photo shoots lately and I've got a hair show tomorrow, another fashion show next weekend and a Halloween show on the 30th. They should keep me occupied for a while.
To all my imaginary friends reading this, thanks. Have a great October!
I've run in to a few hiccups with the "big project" I've been working on, but things will work out. It's just required me redoing the entire project (another 50 to 60 base hours) plus an additional 1/2 to 1 hour each section (22 total) to overcome the little hiccups that are happening due to my cheap software and hardware limitations. In researching my options to make this project a little simpler for myself I came across some of my dream setups. While checking out these pricey gizmos I was able to give myself a few more distractions to fill the deficit in ADD.
The first project (distraction from the main project) was found while researching software options. I love Adobe software, that stuff is like cocaine to me (or what I would imagine cocaine being like). It began while looking at the academic pricing schedule, the software looked great but was all pretty expensive (almost $1000 for most single programs without the student discount, around two or three hundred with the discounts) so I decided I'd struggle some more with my cheap software and just put in the extra man hours to manually correct the audio problems. I noticed one program was completely free for students, Adobe Flash Builder 4, used for building applications for computers, phones and websites. I've always been interested in how to build these applications and have thought of uses for my own little apps so I applied using my DePaul .edu email address for the free software. About a week later I was accepted and given a free license to learn and use it! I haven't really done anything with it other than take a small look at the interface, but it's a great tool for when I decide to dig deeper.
A short time later I received an email from the Adobe Student program reminding me about my "last chance to enter a submission to the Slamdance/Adobe Re-Cut Competition." I didn't hear about it before, but I have some interest in video editing, and I consider myself a software whore, so I checked it out. The competition includes downloading a video composed of a bunch of different scenes (with 2 or 3 takes each) of an independent movie which will be shown at the Slamdance Movie Festival in Park City, cutting up the takes into one smooth flowing scene (a chase scene, but according to the rules of the contest I can't really tell you much about it without risking my disqualification), burning it to DVD and mailing it in. The winner gets his "re-cut" put into the final movie along with a paid trip to the festival (in UT, I would get to see my family and mountains again!) and a huge package of Adobe software (Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, about $1,700 worth). All the Finalists get the CS5 package and tickets (but not airfare and hotel to the show) while every participant in the show gets a license for Adobe Premier Pro CS5 (the main software program for the video editing, which I've been doing a lot of, which would really simplify my life).
I entered the contest, downloaded the trial software and cut together a little bit of magic to submit. If I'm lucky I'll be a finalist and get to bask in the glory of the whole suite of software getting to use the video editing for my main project, but more importantly I'd get Photoshop (which I'm in love with). As it is, I did send in a submission so I will get the video editing anyway. If the stars align and the winds are just right and I won, I'd get a trip to Utah for the film festival, hotel, software and the ability to chill with my family for a while (squee!) which is something I've only been able to do twice in the last 2 years and probably wont get to do again for another long time. Do I hear "ski trip" if I win? I would absolutely love to see my family sometime soon.
I'm not just a software geek, I like hardware too. I've really been eyeballing THIS little treasure for all my project needs too. Works flawlessly with the software and it would complete the necessary components to streamline all my efforts into one seamless flow of productivity.
Enough with the geek talk. This video really makes me happy
Adobe Eyeballs from Seagulls Fly on Vimeo.
It's getting late, I've been busy with some photo shoots lately and I've got a hair show tomorrow, another fashion show next weekend and a Halloween show on the 30th. They should keep me occupied for a while.
To all my imaginary friends reading this, thanks. Have a great October!
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