I FINALLY got around to getting these pictures off of the card and uploaded to the gallery. Not much as for editing and cleaning up, but they are there. It was a great time and I look forward to possibly joining in on the next one.
Here's the link to the gallery:
The Gallery
December 2007 Archives
Made by Art.Lebedev
They may dissappear on the tree.
Found at: http://gizmodo.com/336683/artlebedev-camouflage-christmas-ornaments-may-disappear-on-your-tree
Smithers posted an interesting tidbit on his blog:
Rate of absorption of alcohol depends on several factors. It is quickest, for example, when alcohol is drunk on an empty stomach and the concentration of alcohol is 20-30%. Thus, sherry, with an alcohol concentration of about 20% increases the levels of alcohol in blood more rapidly than beer (3-8%), while spirits (40%) delay gastric emptying and inhibit absorption. Drinks aerated with carbon dioxide—for example, whisky and soda, and champagne—get into the system quicker.
http://smithersmpls.com/2007/12/21/holiday-tip/
Rate of absorption of alcohol depends on several factors. It is quickest, for example, when alcohol is drunk on an empty stomach and the concentration of alcohol is 20-30%. Thus, sherry, with an alcohol concentration of about 20% increases the levels of alcohol in blood more rapidly than beer (3-8%), while spirits (40%) delay gastric emptying and inhibit absorption. Drinks aerated with carbon dioxide—for example, whisky and soda, and champagne—get into the system quicker.
http://smithersmpls.com/2007/12/21/holiday-tip/
This is kind of an funny... a week or so ago I came across the Mission Cycles site and Flickr gallery by way ofone of the cycling blogs I read, probably bikesnobNYMission Cycles custom builds sweet bikes in very limited "batches". The buyer can customize all of the components and the colors. My next fixie is going to have to be one of these!. Anyways, one of the bikes I was drooling over at that time was the one in the picture below. At the time the name meant nothing to me until today. I was looking around for a solution to easily make full posts from my Centro andone article I read contained a link to Joi Ito's site. Lo and behold in all of it's glory was the very same bike that I had been drooling over. It's amazing how small that internet really can be!
The link to Joi's post
Continue reading Joi Ito's Web: My new bike.
I came across this site called Radio Blog Club today and it lookedpretty cool. If all works properly the link below should have a player enable to listen to a song streamed from< /br>their site.
My favorite beer store here in Virginia Beach is Grape and Gourmet! Once a week one of the owners sends out a e-newsletter letting everyone know what they are offering up at their tastings. These emails are always entertaining and full of Debbie's wit and wisdom.... some of this wisdom is being shared here with Debbie's holiday eating tips from this weeks email. The store does also sell wine and an awesome selection of gifts and glassware, They even have Amber's favorite glasses made by Eisch. Who wants to go there for that stuff. Beer is where it's at! I have "printed" and saved the full newsletter here for anyone that's interested, otherwise read on for the holiday eating tips.
Eating Tips for the
Holidays.
1. Avoid carrot sticks.
Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the
Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go
next door, where they're serving rum balls.
2. Drink as much eggnog as you
can and quickly. You can't find it any other time of year but now. So
drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if
you're going to turn into an
'eggnog-aholic' or something. It's
a treat. Enjoy it! Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you
think.
3. If something comes with
gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not
stand-alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it
with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.
4. As for mashed potatoes,
always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim,
pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic
transmission.
5. Do not have a snack before
going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of
going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for
free. Lots of it. Helloooooo?
6. Under no circumstances should
you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you
have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need
after circling the buffet tablewhile carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that
vat of eggnog.
7. If you come across something
really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and
size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as
you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a
beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never
going to see them again.
8. Same for pies. Apple,
pumpkin and mincemeat - have a slice of each. Or, if you don't like mincemeat,
have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three.When else do you get to
have more than one dessert – Labor Day?
9. Did someone mention
fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories,
but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some
standards.
10. One final tip: If you don't
feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't
been paying attention. Reread tips: Start over, but hurry, January is just
around the corner. Remember: "Life should not be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body.
But rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in hand, body thoroughly used up,
totally worn out and screaming
'WOO-HOO what a
ride!"
p.s. - My favorite quote by Miss
Piggy .... "Never eat more than you can lift"!
I came across this somewhere on the net: http://texasamstaff.com/secret/ It's an open directory listing of 100's of recipes that mimic many of the chain restaurant foods. Check it out! Another similar listing can be found here: Top Secret Recipes on the Web
Posted from my centro. This application doesn't support pics but heck it works for mo'bloggin. Gees I am an official nerd now!
Now edited from the computer.... it works... but it's kind of slow.
Vagablog is a simple to use app that will post to even an MT4 blog.... text only though :(
Now edited from the computer.... it works... but it's kind of slow.
Vagablog is a simple to use app that will post to even an MT4 blog.... text only though :(
Gilbert found a link to a funny "Roadie Slang" dictionary here. Check it out it's funny.
http://keirinracer.blogspot.com/2007/12/roadie-dictionary.html
http://keirinracer.blogspot.com/2007/12/roadie-dictionary.html
Last night we celebrated Matt and Gilbert's Birthdays by going to Senor Fox and drinking margaritas. Ok, so we do that every Tuesday anyways. This time was different though.... there was an extra margarita for the cheap date Gilbert, a camera, and goofy hats. A few more photos can be found on my Flickr page.
Continue reading The Party!.
I use a LOT of keyboard shortcuts when I am working on a computer. One of the most common ones in Windows is Shift + End to highlight a string of text. I have had much frustration trying working with OSX is the different keyboard shortcuts.
A long list of keyboard shortcuts in OSX.
http://rixstep.com/2/20040510,00.shtml
A long list of keyboard shortcuts in OSX.
http://rixstep.com/2/20040510,00.shtml
I came across a great new add-on for Firefox today.... Personas. It allows "on the fly" theming of Firefox. Very cool and now I dont have to look at the same boring them all the time!
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/personas-for-firefox/
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/personas-for-firefox/
Know we know the truth!
A cool race and great people! This "scavenger hunt" was a lot of fun and had such an underground feel to it and I didnt even ride it! It was interesting seeing a bunch of cyclists semi-late in the evening on a Friday night to ride city streets. Even more interesting was the lack of spandex riding and winter gear and helmets!! I think I might have to do this one the next time!! I am wearing a helmet though!!! Cyclochris has a recap on his site too. Wes has some video of the race that he took from his run through downtown Norfolk.
*** My pictures should be up in the next day or so. ***
*** My pictures should be up in the next day or so. ***
See track bikes are cool... even the worthless sack of crap aka Kanye West acquired one!!!
I came across the image here: http://razorapple.com/2007/12/13/kanye-west-track-bike/
I came across the image here: http://razorapple.com/2007/12/13/kanye-west-track-bike/
Sprint sucks! Their website sucks and albiet polite the customer service is a pain in the butt as well!! The call center for customer service is out sourced to, by the sounds of it, India. Now there isnt anything wrong with India or people from India, but why should I have to talk to someone in India about getting service for an American phone on an American phone plan, for service in America? So the thing that started it all.... I wanted to add an HTC Mogul to the Sprint plan that we already have. That option isn't available online and the special price for the Mogul is only available online. So the solution was to get a "temporary plan" then activate the phone on to our existing plan when it comes in. Now I can see what would happen.... I would have that temporary plan set up by "Jack" in the call center in India on a 2 year contract. When the phone came in I would get it activated on our plan and then the first bill with the new phone on it would come in with that "temporary plan" on it. A call to customer service in India would yield a conversation with someone named "Bob" who would get it removed. The next month that plan would still be on there.
Oh well, that iPhone and AT&T service is looking better and better!
http://www.sprint.com/index_c.html
Oh well, that iPhone and AT&T service is looking better and better!
http://www.sprint.com/index_c.html
Tomorrow is the second installment of Track (and Single Speed) Bike Saturday on the Fat Frogs group rides. It's fun and is a good way to get some road time on the Single Speeds. The pace is going to be somewhere between A++ and A. Most of the group tends to ride at a somewhat sedate pace of around 20ish.... but there are some good sprints in the normal spots on the loop.
Fixed Gear bikes rock!
Fixed Gear bikes rock!
CylcoChris has posted some information about the Alley Cat Race in Norfolk.
We'll be there, well sort of..... We are going to go out and get some pics and see what it's all about this first time before actually racing one! Hopefully someone will come along and see this post but we need to figure out a place to eat.... the Tap House is a favorite but is a little smoky. Any recommendations of a place near the start to eat dinner and drink some real beer?
http://cyclochris.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/kitty-race/
We'll be there, well sort of..... We are going to go out and get some pics and see what it's all about this first time before actually racing one! Hopefully someone will come along and see this post but we need to figure out a place to eat.... the Tap House is a favorite but is a little smoky. Any recommendations of a place near the start to eat dinner and drink some real beer?
http://cyclochris.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/kitty-race/
A couple of cool things for Pandora.....
Instructions to open Pandora in Winamp:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/listen-to-pandora-in-winamp.html
URL to open Pandora in the smaller size in a browser:
http://www.pandora.com?cmd=mini
Instructions to open Pandora in Winamp:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/listen-to-pandora-in-winamp.html
URL to open Pandora in the smaller size in a browser:
http://www.pandora.com?cmd=mini
Congratulations to Team Tri-Power for their win for bes Division II team! You all have a great bunch of racers and deserve the award!!!
There sure are a lot of area cyclists that also like to blog. Today I came across Cyclochris's site by way of Liz's site. I truly look forward to putting faces to a lot of these names come next season.
Chris had a good post about commuting and riding in the Norfolk area and a great map of some "bike safe" roads in Norfolk. I wish I could have seen that map before doing the the couple of rides through Norfolk I've done in the past. This is a link to the map on his site.
Liz's site had a great idea, creating a new holiday called Cyclo on December 23rd. Heck let's take it further and create a whole new religion.... we can celebrate those special times of year for all of us cyclists:
The start of longer days and having the time to get daylight rides in after work.
Increasing temperatures that allow us to breathe without burning lungs and riding without ten layers of clothes.
The beginning of race season.
The closing of the race season.
And on that really special day Cyclo we can all exchange awesome cycling gifts. My wishlist for that holiday this year is very short.... all I want is a new Felt B12. Is that too much to ask? :)
The closing of the race season.
And on that really special day Cyclo we can all exchange awesome cycling gifts. My wishlist for that holiday this year is very short.... all I want is a new Felt B12. Is that too much to ask? :)
Continue reading And yet another 757 bike blogger....
It was nice, I got off work early, got some stuff done around the house, and still had enough time to get in some riding. Even nicer was the weather, short sleeves and shorts for a night ride in December!!!
The rides started with a loop with Gilbert. We rode a nice steady pace and chatted most of the trip. I forgot how nice it is to ride and not pushing so hard that you can' talk! We got back from that loop and Dan (The Animal) was ready to go out for a loop, so out I headed for another trip through beautiful and dark Pungo. It was a nice ride. We, mostly Dan, chatted for a good part of the ride. He had a much easier time on this ride than I. He's also a lot faster than my slow Cat 5 pace. It was great, not too much wind, perfect temps... then we hit the right turn off of Charity Neck and the wind picked up. It slammed us like a freight train, thanks to Dan for "carrying" my worn out but back threw that. I dont know if it was the fact that I am not in "race" shape or that I had already done 20 miles, but I just didnt have much speed and power left in me when that wind hit us. Oh well, theres the rest of the winter to continue the training.
A pilontonline.com photo story about the weather here:
http://hamptonroads.com/2007/12/photos%3A-another-warm-december-day
The rides started with a loop with Gilbert. We rode a nice steady pace and chatted most of the trip. I forgot how nice it is to ride and not pushing so hard that you can' talk! We got back from that loop and Dan (The Animal) was ready to go out for a loop, so out I headed for another trip through beautiful and dark Pungo. It was a nice ride. We, mostly Dan, chatted for a good part of the ride. He had a much easier time on this ride than I. He's also a lot faster than my slow Cat 5 pace. It was great, not too much wind, perfect temps... then we hit the right turn off of Charity Neck and the wind picked up. It slammed us like a freight train, thanks to Dan for "carrying" my worn out but back threw that. I dont know if it was the fact that I am not in "race" shape or that I had already done 20 miles, but I just didnt have much speed and power left in me when that wind hit us. Oh well, theres the rest of the winter to continue the training.
A pilontonline.com photo story about the weather here:
http://hamptonroads.com/2007/12/photos%3A-another-warm-december-day
I came across this great article on some lesser known features of Ubuntu and other Linux distros. One of my favorites is the AWN dock. The calendar idea was great too, now if I could only get our archaic accounting software at work to function on a Linux computer I would be happy as can be!
http://richbradshaw.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/featuresyoudidntknowinubuntulinux/
Add "&emi=ATVPDKIKX0DER" to the end of a search result URL to display only Amazon.com and none of it's affiliate stores.
Found at: Probargainhunter.com
Continue reading Amazon shopping tips: Search only Amazon.com not affiliates.
Thesixtyone.com is a cool site that is great for discovering new artists and music.... and I am all about finding new stuff because the crap that's played on the radio is all crap.
Check it out.... Lorelei Carlson is an artist that I came across on the site.
Check it out.... Lorelei Carlson is an artist that I came across on the site.
Continue reading Like Digg for music....
Firefox add-ons that is. The image below is linked to an screen capture of my add-ons menu from Firefox. It shows the add-ons or extensions that I use and a brief description of each.
The extensions in my list and many, many more can be found on the Firefox Add-Ons Page
Continue reading These are a few of my favorite things....
A very cool online service called hulu.com offers content on demand. Right now it’s in beta testing and the site sent gave me the ability to log in and check it out today. From what I have seen it’s a great service and the couple of minutes of video I watched came in clear without lag. At full screen the video was not all that great quality, but hey, it’s free and it’s available anywhere you want to watch it.
Check out the site and sign up for the beta testing….. hulu
http://www.hulu.com/videos/views/thumbs/all/episode/all/all/today/1
Continue reading hulu: Internet TV.
Over the last couple of weeks my spare time has been gobbled up by performing site updates. I have been trying to learn a new version of a site publishing platform called Movable Type as well as a photo gallery package called Gallery2. Once I feel confident enough to support these packages completely it will be a complete redesign for my work web site Gibson Equipment.
Both the gallery and main site have a lot of features that the older versions didn’t have. Some of the biggest changes….. on the main site there is a “tag cloud” that will make it easier to find post from the past, the site search works a lot better, and publishing a post is a LOT easier for me now. The biggest changes can be found in the gallery though! It is completely re-vamped! The theme doesn’t integrate as nicely with the theme of the main site, but I will work on that in the near future. The search feature actually works on the site now, the galleries have been reorganized to make the easier to navigate, there's a slide show feature, and the coolest is the shopping cart. We normally upload copies of the original photographs that we shoot, they files are large but allow printing of images up to and sometimes even larger than an 8x10. With the shopping cart function a photo can be added to
the shopping cart and print ordered from a couple of different online print services. 
I ordered some prints of the photograph to the left today from Shutterfly. In addition to the gallery upgrades there have been several galleries added that weren't in the old version.
Anyways, check out the main page and the photo galleries. Spend some time trying out the new features and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think about the updates.
Continue reading More site updates!.
Every once in a while you come across something that makes you chuckle…..
With the recent upgrade to Leopard I lost the icons for network shares on my desktop. A search on Google yielded an article at Macosxhints. Simply drag the desired share from a finder window on to the dock in the right side near the trash can. I set it up on my iMac and it works pretty well. There is a slight lag in the first time you try to access the stack the first time after a re-start, but after that it works nicely. I really like OSX but there is surely something to be said for the simplicity of the networking feature that are built in to the Windows operating systems. It’s just a LOT easier to navigate a network and do things there than it is on OSX, especially for a network newbie. Things are gradually getting easier for me to work the more I get to understand OSX’s ways. For my wife, Amber, there are still a lot of issues, like trying to easily access our network storage shares to move her pictures. I installed Leopard on her computer and hopefully the improved networking features with that will make things easier for her. A comment from a user on the article atMacosxhints also mentioned a way to show the mounted shares on your desktop by going to Preferences in Finder and enabling “Connected Shares” to show on the desktop.
An interesting article on creating “stacks” for network shares on the Mac OSX dock.
The Article
Sometimes you just have to think simple! As you read this keep in mind that I am a recent windows convert and I am still struggling with learning a new OS and how it works. So, last night I was battling to figure out why my couldnt access files I thought were shared on my iMac. After much frustration last night I threw in the towel and went to bed. This morning I get up… a quick hunt on google turned up an article at tidbits.com on file sharing in osx leopard. Wow, it’s simple go to the sharing option in system preferences and set it up under folder sharing. What could be simpler? Here’s the article…. Tidbits.com
A cool tray with a bunch of different colors. The Rocky Mounts trays look pretty cool…. I might just have to get a couple of these.
ORS Racks Direct
Continue reading Rocky Mounts Bike Racks.
The folks at TUAW put up a link to an excellent article at Bagelturf.com on how to speed up Apple's Aperture program.
The complete article is here.
TUAW's Article
The complete article is here.
TUAW's Article
Continue reading 32 ways to speed up Aperture - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
After much digging and some frustrations in trying to get a header to display consistently across all pages in an MT4 install I found the simple fix. Go to the header module template and remove the section of code from the customized header than is surrounded by the “MTif=main” snipped of code. Once removed all the pages were consistent.
Ok so I was perusing our new image Gallery2 powered photo galleries and seeing how everything works. One of the features Gallery2 has that works a lot better than our old photo gallery is searching. A quick entry of "devon" in the search box yielded this:
It looks like Pacifist is another gotta have it app for a mac:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6812
It loads packages from the install DVDs for OSX to allow the install of individual packages, pretty sweet!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6812
It loads packages from the install DVDs for OSX to allow the install of individual packages, pretty sweet!
