Jason's Life Blog

Switching to tumblr

2011-04-07T16:41:00.002-04:00

I am switching to my new tumblr. So I probably won't use this Blogger site anymore. Hopefully the very few people who follow me will continue to follow me over there.

Gonna go play with the tumblbeasts now. TTFN!

http://jasoco.tumblr.com/

On Mac OS X Lion and Internet Fame

2011-03-29T00:04:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I posted a video to YouTube showing off the features in the upcoming Mac OS X Lion.

A couple days later I posted a second one. It has so far not received quite as many views as the first.

A few days later, the first one was featured on MacRumors which pushed its view count to a whopping 120,000 views in only a few hours. I was impressed. But unfortunately I decided to use music in the videos, only to break the boredom, but either way, in the first video YouTube detected the song incorrectly, but it detected it nonetheless. So it became flagged in certain countries. Namely Germany.

This prompted a bunch of comments about my music choice, the inability to view in certain places, one user even called me an idiot.

To make up for it, I posted a third video without music featuring both parts 1 and 2 in one video because my account is enabled for longer videos. The third video is 26 minutes long. It has even less views than the first.

And now my first video has been posted on Edible Apple. Another Apple related blog. Also, OS X Daily featured it as well.

The first video now has 135,000 views and growing. And it's still up. Everyone seems surprised Apple hasn't taken it down yet, but I think Apple really doesn't care. There are dozens of videos on YouTube of Lion, none as in-depth as mine, and they're still up. Apple knows people know about Lion. Screenshots are everywhere. Reviews are everywhere. They probably just want people to know about it. In the olden days, Apple would take this stuff down as soon as they found it. Now, I think they'd rather just get the word out.

A few weeks ago, my two most viewed YouTube videos were a video of William Shatner singing "It Hasn't Happened Yet" and a clip from the movie "UHF" starring Weird Al and Michael Richards. And neither of them have nearly as many views combined. Even my Google Cr-48 videos didn't become this popular.

The lesson I take away from all this is next time either use public domain music or don't use music at all.

Here is part 2:

Dear Hard Drive Companies...

2010-11-09T01:53:00.000-05:00

I need a 1.5TB hard drive for my 2010 13" MacBook Pro. This is important. Please release one that I can install in my laptop.

Thank you.

Seriously, they exist. There's one you can buy right now for $250 that comes in a portable USB 3.0 case. I don't need a useless USB 3.0 case. I just need the bare HD! Toshiba and apparently Western Digital have them announced and both have said "end of this year", but neither has released a final date yet!

As soon as I can but one, and I will pay whatever they want, I can die happy. Carrying my entire DVD collection with me will be amazing.

Though I'd prefer 2TB, 1.5 will suffice.

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

2010-05-27T23:46:00.000-04:00

Useless comment posted that no one will read anyway telling people to watch the video.

Moby - Wait For Me

2010-05-01T16:36:00.000-04:00

Good video. Watch it. Inspirational.

This Blog Sucks!

2010-03-12T21:58:00.005-05:00

Okay, well maybe not. But it has become stagnant. Maybe I should post more often. Post about anything and whatever. I dunno.

So how about if I just post my current project...

http://love2d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1399

It is a 3D model viewer. I hope to be able to use it for real games some day. It uses the same methods as many other 3D viewers created for strictly 2D environments. It's no Quake engine, but it is pretty fast. Maybe one day it'll play Star Fox. Or a clone thereof.

Löve is a 2D programming environment for Mac, Windows and Linux that allows you to easily program your own games using a language called Lua. Lua is simple to program and Löve is really really REALLY fast.

My real project however is something I'm not ready to reveal to the world. An adventure game engine in the style of Zelda complete with scripting.

And when I'm not programming these, I'm at work or I am hanging with my girlfriend Kati.

Weird Al Takes Grammar Very Seriously

2009-10-16T15:45:00.011-04:00

There's not much to say except that Al Yankovic takes correct grammar very seriously. And I don't care if the previous sentence was badly worded. Nor the one before this one or this one as well.

I love how he has his wife drive him around to find street signs to correct.

A shopping trip to the grocery store turns up another poorly worded sign to fix.

I hope he keeps going with these.

Life Lessons: Always Keep a Backup and Always Buy AppleCare

2009-08-18T15:48:00.020-04:00

In 2002 I learned my lesson about backing up your hard drive when the drive in my iMac DV+ decided to die a year after it replaced the previous one that died. The day it died I ran to the store and bought the best FireWire HD I could get for the price, (A 60GB LaCie SilverKeeper in the huge silver and blue case) ran home and immediately cloned the entire contents (Which back then was not even 15GB) just in time for it to die. I learned that day to always keep a backup.

Since then I have lost many HD's, but no data at all because I keep exact bootable clones of my data. Sure, it may be considered overkill to keep two exact clones and a Time Machine backup, but why take chances? I have 400 Gigabytes of data to protect.

In 2002 I bought a new iMac. One of the first generation "sunflower" G4 iMacs. This time I bought AppleCare. That Mac still works good enough to this day. Even though it is currently sitting on a shelf. It lasted the longest of any of my Macs despite being driven into the ground by me and my brother when I let him use it to replace his dead Compaq Presario. I figured AppleCare (A 3-year extended warranty) didn't matter and didn't bother with it again.

In 2005 I bought a Mac mini for use as my main machine to replace the iMac G4. It cost me $500 plus $1000 for the Apple Cinema Display. (The then current price) The most I spent so far. I didn't bother with AppleCare so I didn't get it. Since it was a first generation G4 mini it only had a 4200RPM HD which was painfully slow, so I used my FireWire HD as my boot drive to get some speed. After I replaced the mini, I discovered the FireWire port had stopped working. This wasn't a big deal as I now have no FireWire devices that even work so as long as the USB works I'm fine.

And now, in 2007 I bought the computer I am currently using. A shiny new MacBook. She's a beauty. But I didn't get AppleCare once again...

Last June, in 2008, on the last day of my 1 year warranty, I had the keyboard replaced. The infamous "CrackBook" incident in which the topcase (The keyboard and trackpad all in one) cracks along the palmrest area. This was a cosmetic problem covered under warranty. Less than a year later it is happening again. But now I have no warranty. So I just placed Scotch tape over the edge to keep it falling off and chipping so it doesn't look like crap.

A few days ago I noticed a horrible grinding noise, louder than my Xbox 360, and realized it was the fan spinning at a super high rate. It would go on and off, for a while I would tap the computer to get it to stop. But it eventually stopped responding to that.

I posted about it on a forum and was told that it might be the fan going and that it would cost an arm and a leg to ship it to them and have them replace it. I decided against that idea. I don't like shipping things if I can avoid it.

A few weeks of grinding went by and the other day the grinding goes away. I launch a fan speed and CPU temperature gauge and notice it is now running at 2000~ RPM and the temperature is climbing towards the 80's Celsius. Suddenly the computer is shutting off with no warning. Usually when it hits a high processor usage. I quickly realize it might be a safety feature built-in to protect the computer from overheating. It happened about 4 times in the last week, and last night I got a Kernel Panic. Something you don't see unless there is something terribly wrong. This morning in bed it was running extremely hot. Literally burning to the touch.

I went to the MacOutfitters and asked the guy what he thought. He said if it was the fan, it would be pretty cheap, but chances are it might be more than the fan. The cost to look into it would be $75.

I decided to think about it. I'm thinking more along the lines of saving up for a 13" MacBook Pro with AppleCare this time.

I went to Kmart and bought a Targus "Chill Mat" to help keep it cool-ish for now until I can afford the new computer. The new aluminum MacBook's are soooo nice.

Let this be a lesson to all of you. Always buy a backup hard drive, always keep your data safe. And always buy an extended warranty.

"Weird Al" Yankovic delivers again! This time with a little bit of Charles Nelson Reilly

2009-08-04T03:44:00.005-04:00

Get it while it's still embeddable.. or click this link to watch it on YouTube.

Edit: Yeah, they move fast. After being taken down by JibJab, it has returned unembeddable. So watch it on YouTube. It's awesome.

Virus scams do not work if you aren't using Windows...

2009-07-29T18:13:00.006-04:00

Don't use zShare. Someone hosted a file there and when I went to download the file, I got a silly little alert message in my browser that said:

"Warning!!! Your computer contains various types of vulnerabilities and threats.

Your system requires immediate anti viruses scan! Personal Antivirus can perform fast and free virus and malicious software scan of your computer."

Now, first things first. I am a Mac user. My computer cannot be infected by viruses like this. But look at the number of so-called viruses it found. 527 trojans found on my Mac's non-existent C: and D: drives. Not to mention in my My Documents and Shared Documents folders, both of which do not exist either.

Take note of the Firefox "download file" messages. All 5 of them. There were three, but two more popped op later. All downloading the same .EXE file. I should have downloaded one and put it on a guinea pig PC to see what it did. I'm very curious now.

Now obviously, this page is aimed at the poor stupid Windows user who doesn't know better. You know, your grandparents who wouldn't know what a virus is and will click anything that they are told to.

So the creators of this scam designed their page to look like an Explorer window. Note the blue XP style, implying that they assume the user will still be using XP and that they have never changed their default Luna theme.

Also note the "popup" inside the page, that says "Windows Security Alert". The one that looks like a separate XP window, but is really a page element that can be dragged around thus fooling the user into thinking it is legit because, hey, "we assume all Windows users are stupid so of course they'll fall for this!"

As I closed all the download windows and closed the tab I got a second message:

"The page at safe-online-scanner.com says:
Harmful and malicious software detected. These programs may damage your computer and steal your private information. Online Security Scanner requires Personal Antivirus components to repair your computer. Please click OK to download and install Personal Antivirus tool"

This dialog only had an OK button, but it never downloaded anything. Sadly. Nice try. Obviously trying to once more snag the user into downloading and installing, either willfully or secretly (Thanks, Windows!) their "software" so they can infect your computer even more.

This isn't the first time I've come upon a scam like this, but it is the most elaborate one I've seen. Kudos to the designer for creating a convincing scam. But jeers to the idiot who can't check the users Operating System beforehand so they can see that their scam will not work at all. No matter how hard they try.

In closing, this cheered me up. I love it when someone elses plan to harm me falls apart. But I feel bad for all the people who might have fallen for it, and this is an "ad" on a somewhat popular site! Do the site owners not screen their advertisers first? Scam, Spyware, malicious virus software, whatever, this ad crosses lines and dots i's and all sorts of stuff.

Unfortunately, the EXE it downloaded is incompatible with Darwine. So I cannot run it on my Mac just to see what it does. So I need a guinea pig. I want to get an old PC with XP, connect it to the internet, and see how long it takes to become fully infected.

Just like the good folks over at XKCD.

Doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?

2009-07-28T18:05:00.003-04:00

America soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty. The cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here Mother Nature wins.

You got Whatchamacallit in my Thingamajig!

2009-07-21T02:37:00.002-04:00

Screenshot for Thursday, July 15th, 2009

2009-07-15T15:08:00.002-04:00

See previous screenshot for details.

Twilight fans are so rabid...

2009-07-15T12:29:00.006-04:00

I probably shouldn't post this because now I am getting Twilight ads on my administration page, but I couldn't resist...

Troll Slayer

Snow Leopard Preview: Exposé - New Features and Enhancements

2009-06-27T16:57:00.001-04:00

My second in the Snow Leopard series. I take a look at the new Exposé. This feature was removed from the initial WWDC builds but reimplemented in the latest seed update.

For information on the rest of the stuff on screen:
http://jstereo.blogspot.com/2009/06/screenshot-for-thursday-june-18th-2009.html

Snow Leopard Preview: Stacks - Grid View Enhancements

2009-06-19T20:26:00.004-04:00

The first in what will probably be a series unless Apple protests. Snow Leopard WWDC Preview features and fixes. This first one is Dock Stacks Grid View.

For information on the rest of the stuff on screen:
http://jstereo.blogspot.com/2009/06/screenshot-for-thursday-june-18th-2009.html

Screenshot for Thursday, June 18th, 2009

2009-06-18T23:22:00.005-04:00

A combination of BowTie and GeekTool plus an explosion of color.

The weather and the background for my "Sidebar" are GeekTool. (The Weather script can be found in many places on the internet. Just use Google for GeekTool Weather.)

The rest, time, date, calendar, photo of Zooey Deschanel and song playing are a custom Bowtie Bowlet I made myself. It's proprietary. I built it myself custom.

The photo changes every 30 seconds between an assortment of specially picked photos.

The font used is from www.dafont.com and is called "EraserDust" and "Eraser" (One is all caps and has slightly different numbers but doesn't have the Degrees symbol or some other special entities.)

The desktop picture is from InterfaceLift: Smell of Holland
It is one of a hundred or so photos taken from IL. Alas, not all of them are as colorful as this one.

The video is "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest "Craigslist". It's a style parody of The Doors.
See it here.

The music video for the song playing in iTunes can be seen here.

"Craigslist", the new "leaked" single from "Weird Al" Yankovic, and this "title" has way too many "quotation marks"

2009-06-16T02:09:00.006-04:00

"Weird Al" Yankovic is at it again. He's working on a new album and is leaking songs as he goes. The latest is called "Craigslist" and is an homage to "The Doors" complete with Ray Manzarek on keyboards.

Check it out. This is official.

No word yet on the release of the album. But for now this'll do.

A review of an unnecessary mediocre new search engine from Microsoft

2009-06-01T02:40:00.008-04:00

Alternate title: "Bing: Could it be any more unnecessary?" but then only Friends fans would get it.

So... Microsoft couldn't buy Google. In their quest to own the entire world, they're trying the next best thing. Yet ANOTHER search engine. (Didn't they try this a few times this decade?)

BING!

Bing. As in, and get this, "BING is not Google".

And well, it is not. Let's start with our review, shall we?

The first thing I did (After searching for Google on Bing and Bing on Google which gave me a taste of what I was in for.) was try and feed my inflated ego by searching for my username on various internet forums and web sites...

"Jasoco"

First, some regular old web searching...

On Google, I get a lot of results for my own activity on the internet. My Flickr, my YouTube, my Last.fm, a lot of pages I have been to. [VIEW]

On Bing, I get "Did you mean 'Jasco'?" Bing DEFAULTS to showing you results for what it THOUGHT you meant. Instead of showing you results for WHAT YOU SEARCHED FOR. Let me repeat that in a shorter way. It assumes you meant something else and makes you take an extra step to see what you meant. Wait.. that was actually longer. Still. [VIEW]

Now, it is basically adding in these other results. My results for Jasoco are still there.... but they don't show up until the 8th page. I had to go to page 8 to find myself.

On Google, it shows you two alternates for "Jasco", and then all the results for what I typed, "Jasoco". Bing assumes I meant "Jasco" and goes in that direction. On the "Web" search page, it shows a link to search for just "Jasoco", but only on that page...

Now let's take a look at Video search.

On Google, clicking the Video link and searching for Jasoco, I get all the videos I put on YouTube. As well as some photos from Flickr. (Which seems odd, but remember Flickr can take video too so I can see it.) All my own videos. [VIEW]

Bing shows me, yet again, ONLY VIDEOS PERTAINING TO "JASCO". Now, to be fair, page 2 does have three videos relating to me. The first being one I commented on, another being the one I posted for GeekPub and lastly my "William Shatner - It Hasn't Happened Yet" video. I don't know where the rest are. Oh.. look.. there's ONE MORE on the last page.. which is page 8. Yeah, it only goes to page 8. [VIEW]

Next, this is the worst... Image Search.

Searching for Jasoco on Google Images gives me a lot of images related to me. Images from pages I might have commented on, images I posted, images from my Flickr and posts on NeoGAF. [VIEW]

But on Bing? *sigh* What the hell is "Jasco"? It's a company that makes scrubs for hospital workers! Also, the name of someones dog that died four years ago apparently. May he rest in peace. I had to scroll a looong time to get to the first photo I recognized. A photo of Gregory House as Gordon Freeman that was on my site that no longer exists. A little further and I find another picture. But then nothing more. And I went all the way to the end! Nothing from my Flickr! At all! [VIEW]

Pretty much every result on Google is for me. And on Bing? Pretty much nothing at all.

Bing failed the best test. The "Google Yourself Test". Or should I call it the "Bing Yourself Test"?

No. No, I shouldn't.

A little more fair chance..

Now I'll be more fair. Let's do the "Search for something more common test". So I searched for the first thing I could think of. MacBook.

Image results were different, but contained pretty much the same stuff. The same gold plating came up on both, Google had it first, Bing had a picture of a bloody MacBook missing a screen.

Web Search was pretty identical.

But Video was where it all fell apart. Google showed videos about MacBooks. Bing showed.. I don't know what Bing showed.

Shopping on both proved identical.

Next I tested Maps. Now obviously, Google uses Google Maps.. what does Bing use? Why Microsoft Virtual Earth of course. Both are pretty much in sync now anyway so there's no winner. I did search for MacBook on Maps though and for some reason Google started me off with a map of Spain while Bing did show me Philadelphia and a store in Philly. Still.

Bing is trying too hard to kill Google by being too much like Google. But not enough where it counts.

My final verdict?

Now, I know. It's a Beta. But do we really want a new search engine that does the same thing as one that already works perfectly? There is no need for Bing! The only Bing the world needs is Chandler. Could he be any more needed?

Geeks are Epic

2009-05-27T21:19:00.006-04:00

If you are a geek of any sort, and you like movies, or TV shows or video games, you probably know who The Angry ~~Nintendo~~ Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic are. And if you are any sort of follower of them at all, then you will know about their ongoing battle. And if you thought their battle was over...

...you were wrong.

Behold. The most epic thing ever put on the internet!

Simply genius. Pure amazing genius. How the hell they were able to round everyone up at the same time and fly them all into Chicago to film this is amazing in and of itself.

If you don't know who these people are, you need to get some education. Start here:
Nostalgia Critic
Nostalgia Chick
Angry Video Game Nerd
The Spoony Experiment
There's more, but there's so many in that video, I don't even know who they all are! So this is a good place to start.

Once you are done enjoying that, sit back for something.. a little different...

The real question is "What would Gene Roddenberry think?"

2009-05-09T15:11:00.003-04:00

Saw "Star Trek" last night. And I must say I was impressed.

I went in totally spoiler-free. Having only seen early teasers, one trailer and photos. Nothing was spoiled for me, and I was glad. Because I didn't know how it was going to be.

Minor spoilers ahead.. Nothing major.

I will say it was strange though. But a great reboot. And the best part is that they didn't press the reset button. You know, when a show or movie f**ks around with time travel, screws up the timeline, then decides to somehow fix everything at the end. Remember the two-part epic Voyager episode "Year Of Hell"? At the end, Janeway rams her ship into the timeship, thus reverting (somehow) the entire timeline to the point before the year started. With the crew being completely oblivious to what they had just gone through. Because the writers didn't want to have to deal with the aftermath of a partially destroyed Voyager being on life support for the next few episodes.

The new movie did not go this route. They left things how they are. Whatever happened in this timeline has become cannon for the franchise from this point on. I can't type much more without giving away a lot of the best stuff. So I recommend you spend the $10 for a ticket and see for yourself.

Totally recommended.

Star Trek has been saved!

Can't say the same about that other "Star" series. You know the one I mean. And it's not BSG.

Let the flames commense!

My first day on Blogger...

2009-05-05T13:23:00.000-04:00

For about 10 years now I'd been paying for my own web site. But after a decade I've realized that I am not getting any traffic at all through my own means. So I decided to save some money by switching to free alternatives.

So here it is. A BlogSpot blog for my blog. TinyPic for image hosting. Flickr for photo hosting. YouTube for videos. FaceBook for social interaction. My life is spread out all over the internet.

Maybe I'll get more visitors on Blogger. Let's hope.

Now to go explore my customization options.