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July 30, 2006

Our wedding photos

Amanda and I received our wedding photos this past week. We have gone through them all and picked out the ones that we like best, putting them up on the photo gallery here on my site. Take a look and see, and let me know what you think.

Amanda and I exchanging wedding vows.

There's quite a few photos in the gallery ... 2 pages containing 20 different images. I have quite a few favorites in this collection. The one that is on the top of my list is this one. I think this is one of the cutest damn pictures I have ever seen in my life.

There's an interesting story with this picture. When Amanda and I saw it for the first time, we laughed our asses off. The kid in the picture is the son of Amanda's best friend, Jenny. His name is Nolan, and he was being a bit of a turd throughout the day. The preacher, seeing how bad he was being, told Steven to hold on to his shoulders tight and to NOT let him go. If you look close enough in the image, you can see the veins in Steven's hands because he's holding Nolan's shoulders so tight.

The look on Nolan's face is priceless.

And, a bit of trivia ... this photo is a first for Amanda and I, and the reason why it is special isn't just because it's a wedding photo. You see, Amanda and I have been together seven years. This is the first professional photo that we've ever had taken together. We've had a few generic photos taken over the years, but nothing that is of high enough quality that we can print it on a large enough scale so that it can be framed and hung on the wall.

In addition to the wedding photos, I've had the opportunity to finally upload a lot of the images I've been meaning to in the past, but lacked the time to do. You can now find photos of our Niagra Falls visit, Christmas from 2004 and 2005 and more. Just stop by the gallery and take a look.

Posted by ed at 10:51 PM | Comments (2)

July 22, 2006

Parodies

I've posted before about the funny/crazy things that I've come across on YouTube. Well, I hit another one today that I had to share.

"Hi, I'm representing Windows. Hi, I'm representing Mac OS".

We've all seen the PC/Mac adds available on television. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a spoof that was just absolutely hilarious. This is only one example of a spoofs available, but I just love this particular one.

"ooooOOOooOoooaaaaahhhhhh"

"You like that, eh?"

"ooooOOOoooOh ... midgets?"

"Yes, midgets!"

"aaaAAAAaaaaHhhooooOOOoOOO..."

~out...

Posted by ed at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2006

The real deal is coming!

I'm totally syked ...

At the beginning of this month, I posted about my love of Team Fortress. The game is one of my all time favorites, and it is a total classic. Today, I received some of the greatest gaming news that I've heard since the day that Half-Life 2 was announced.

Team Fortress 2 is coming out with the release of Half-Life, Episode Two!!

The official image released by Valve on SteamPowered.com.

Not much else is known about this new Team Fortress other than it has a cartoonish look about it. The only thing that has been released thus far is the image (seen above) with a cast of characters. Valve promises to release a video of TF2 next week.

The really interesting thing about this release is that it is in no way similar to what Valve originally promised Team Fortress 2 to be. Originally designed as a "squad-based military action game" that "will include many elements of a typical strategy game". In other words, the original plan for TF2 was to be more realistic and militaristic than it's predicessor.

The original military and realistic concept for Team Fortress 2.

I've read that there have been mixed reviews of this new Team Fortress. Some people are really digging the idea of the cartoonish look and feel while others were hoping for something more realistic in the way of what Counter Strike: Source is. Personally, I like the idea of this new TF2. The way that I look at it, if I really really want something more along the lines of a Counter Strike based game, I still have the option of playing Fortress Forever once it is officially released.

PC gaming has gotten very interesting lately.

Update: Valve released the video that they promised. After watching it several times, I find that I'm digging my all time favorite class: The Sniper. I like the "Dirty Harry" slash outlaw renegade cowboy look that he has going on. He really does look like a bad ass.

Don't mess with the sniper, man.

~out...

Posted by ed at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2006

Port that Evolution

On my Linux machines at home and at work, I use Evolution for my e-mail client. It has everything that I need: mail, calendar, task management, contact list, etc. Evolution is an open source version of Microsoft's Outlook. It can even connect to an Exchange server to send/receive e-mails.

But the one problem that I have had with Evolution is that it only ran on Linux and other *nix operating systems that can run the Gnome window manager. Because of its Gnome dependancies, it has been extremely difficult porting Evolution to other operating systems. Needless to say, I've been wanting a Windows version of Evolution for a long time ... and thankfully my prayers have not gone unanswered.

Behold: Evolution for Windows ... in all of its alpha goodness.

The guys at Novell have heard the need for porting Evolution to other operating systems. They have been working on a port for both Windows and Mac OS X. Tonight, I downloaded and installed an alpha version of Evolution for Windows. I installed it on my laptop, and sure enough it works. Yeah, it's a bit slow and has bugs ... but hell, it's an alpha version for cryin' out loud. Given some time, I'm sure I'll be using Evolution full time on my Windows laptop.

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2006

The Vader Sessions

Every once in a while, someone will post something on YouTube that is just frickin brilliant. Thanks to Fark, I came across one of these today: The Vader Sessions. The concept is simple.

Take one "Star Wars: A New Hope", capture 9 minutes and 26 seconds worth of scenes containing the Darth Vader character, collect vocal clips of James Earl Jones from other movies he has done, mix well ... and there you have it. A funny collection of cut scenes that will absolutely make you laugh your ass off.

Some of my favorite parts:

- Vander is going to hunt the rebels that are attacking the Death Star. His line to the Imperial Fighter Pilots in black? "I'd like to maintain the current level of black representation on the committee, so lets go for a stroll." Classic.

- The Millenium Falcon has been captured, and Vader is going to inspect it. In the background you hear "Goooo the disssstanceee" and Vader breaks out into a speach about baseball.

- Leia has just been captured on her ship, and the storm troopers are bringing her to Vader. She begins to explain that the imperial senate wouldn't stand for his actions, he cuts her off and says "I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp!" She responds by saying that she has no clue what he's talking about. Man, this is comedy.

- Vader is speaking to the generals sitting at the round table. He says "Hey, ya'll mad at me right? But there's one thing you outta know, and that is, I love all of ya'll." The correspondence between Vader and the rest of the crew is just great.

Anyhow, if you haven't left my site to see this yet, go do it now.

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:40 AM | Comments (1)

July 10, 2006

Google rawks my world

So I'm a Linux user. Big deal. As the years pass, more and more people are beginning to adopt Linux and make it their own. I've personally been responsible for converting several users over to the open source OS over the past 7 or 8 years. As it continues to grow and newer versions are released, more and more people show interest and the user base grows.

But the biggest hurdles are always the limitations of software. Getting Windows software to work in Linux can be a bit of a chore, even when using Wine. This is where Google steps in. Instead of re-writing their Google Earth and Google Picasa products specifically for Linux, they have worked with Codeweavers, the company that sponsors the Wine project, to specifically port their products using Wine. The result is quite remarkable.

I've had the Linux beta of Picasa 2 installed since its release a few months ago. I've been using it to manage all of my images on my home desktop. Tonight I was inclined to install Google Earth purely for the fact that I hadn't tried it yet. Below is the result of that installation...

Google Earth running on my Suse 10.1 desktop.
Click the image for a larger screenshot.

What I really love about Google is the fact that they're here to innovate, which it seems that a lot of software companies have forgotten to do these days. The best part of their project with Codeweavers ... all of the coding that they've paid for has been open sourced and turned right back into the Wine project. Talk about giving back to the community.

Keep up the good work, Google.

Update: I just noticed that for some reason that Google Earth didn't create a menu entry for Gnome. If you'd like a menu entry, you can download this file (right click and select "Save Link As" in Firefox). Once you have saved this file to your machine, copy it into your /usr/share/applications directory as root. This will put a shortcut to Google Earth under the following menu directory: Applications > Graphics > Viewer.

Please note that this file assumes that you have installed Google Earth as root using the default settings, which installs Google Earth in the /usr/local/google-earth directory on your computer.

~out...

Posted by ed at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2006

A night at the drive-in

It's not very often that I go out to the movies. It's even more rare that I go to a drive-in movie. Amanda and I did just that last night, going with some friends to see Pirates 2 and the Adam Sandler movie, Click.

Originally, we were going to see a double header of the movie Cars and Pirates 2 at a drive-in located in the southern Indiana area of Georgetown. We left very early and arrived about 45 minutes before the movies were to start. As we arrived at the main gate, the cars were slowing down but not pulling into the lot. I was in the front passenger side seat, which allowed me to hang my head out the window to see what was going on. Just a few feet in front of us, there were guys with road flares waving traffic on. When we got to the guys directing traffic away from the gate, we asked what was going on.

"We're full," he said to our disbelief. We drove on by and sure enough, the place looked like a can of sardines. Cars were packed in as tight as they could get for as far as one could see. We pulled into a park next door to think through our strategy for the evening. We decided that we wanted to see if the drive-in at Kenwood was open, so we headed back towards Louisville and see what was showing there.

Upon arrival, we discovered that there was a double feature of Pirates 2 and Click. We were a little worried about being able to get into the Kenwood drive-in as well, as there were a considerable amount of cars lined up by the time we had arrived. Not to mention that it was very close to sunset by this time, as we had to drive all the way from southern Indiana back into Louisville. We did manage to get into the drive-in and even found a semi-decent location to park towards the back right section of the lot.

After finding our spot, we unpacked the portable seats, food and drinks and proceeded to make ourselves comfortable. From this point, we only had a few minutes till sunset and the beginning of the movie. What was really interesting was that after the movie had begun, there were a lot of people still driving around still trying to find the "best" area that they could. Although at this point in time, it was pretty pointless to to to find a "best" spot.

After the first movie ended, we were surprised how many people packed up and left. This created many new parking spots that were previously unavailable. People were starting their cars and moving up to be closer to the movie screen. We stayed put, finding that we really did have a decent location and were able to watch the movie with minimal issue.

There was only one problem that I did have with our location. Just to the right side of the screen, there was a really bright light that was distracting. Thankfully the light didn't come on until after the first movie was done. Sometime after the second had begun, the light came on and was an annoyance. I really do wish that Kenwood would put up some kind of wall around the screen so that these kinds of distractions wouldn't occur. Other than that, I really have nothing bad to say about our experience out.

We didn't get home until about 3:30AM last night, and almost as soon as our heads hit the pillows we were out. I woke up this morning feeling wore out, and somewhat regretting staying out so late. I am glad, however, that we stayed to watch the Click movie, as it was pretty funny throughout most of the feature. It did get a little depressing at one point, to which Amanda later confessed tearing up a bit because it was so sad. The general point that the movie was trying to make was made on me, however ... live each day to the fullest extent and make sure that you put your family first.

Amen to that.

~out...

Posted by ed at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2006

A few updates ...

I updated my Web site tonight. I finally got tired of the grey background with the blue logo bar at the top. So tonight I decided to go back to a blue theme. I was inspired by the new look of Neowin.net, and thus took their color pallet and made it my own. I updated the logo header (removing the cartoon picture of me) and put some interesting noise behind the logo itself.

In other news, Amanda and I took a mini-honeymoon down to Gatlinburg, TN. During our trip, we decided to go to the top of the Smokies and have a look around. While we were there, we had a nice couple take our picture with the mountains behind us.

The husband and wife team at the top of the mountain.

The mountains were beautiful, but we really didn't have a lot of time to spend up there. As a matter of fact, we really didn't have a lot of time to spend at Gatlinburg at all. We were really rushed to take in the sites that we could and before we knew it, we were out of there. We've decided that once I really have some time to take off, we're going to be going back and spend longer than 2 days in the city. Maybe we can take some time in the mountains as well. I would really like to hit some of the parks around the area.

~out...

Posted by ed at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2006

Team Fortress ... It's A Classic

I love Team Fortress Classic. It has been one of my favorite online games to play for many years, first as a Quake mod then when Valve released it as a supported mod for their original Half-Life video game.

Tonight, while being bored, I began wondering if Valve has made any recent announcements regarding the status of TFC or the vaporware that is TF2. Nothing from Valve, but instead I came across this:

Fortress Forever - A Team Fortress Mod for Half-Life 2

I spent some time going over the media images that this group has released and I must admit, I'm impressed. The original TF was in a lot of ways ground breaking, but TFC is what really brought it out to the masses. This mod seems to catch that same "ooh" and "aah" feeling that I felt when I first saw TF and TFC so many years ago.

Cheers to the FF team ... I've been waiting on something like this for a very long time.

~out...

Posted by ed at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)