Category Archives: Uncategorized

7 Things Meme

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I got tagged with this by Cat2260
First, here are the rules:

  • Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  • Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.
  1. My decision to study Meteorology was a very quick one. Probably in less than a week. When I looked up schools Plymouth was really the first one that I got in a Google search. I visited and it seemed pretty good. It was the only school I applied too.
  2. I was declined a job my first year by my current boss 😛
  3. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right career decision. But I just keep finding new ways to employ my skills to the field.
  4. I hate waste. It is my biggest pet peeve. I mean any kind of waste including food, gas, energy, and money. The only thing that makes it worse is the people that not only waste, but they don't realize how fortunate they are and that there are many people out there who are not as luck as they are.
  5. Though I love Mac OS and I have been using it for pretty much all my life, I love building computers and working with the hardware. Which you can do with Macs to a certain extent. But I wish that Apple would make their computers a little more like PCs as far as hardware is concerned. Also, sometimes Apple does things that confuse or just plain irritate me.
  6. I have zero tolerance for people that annoy me. Usually I'll try to get to know someone before I form an opinion of them. But once I get to the point where someone is bothering me, the relationship is pretty much over. I don't deal with drama.
  7. I never use 2 spaces after a period. Despite the number of people who have told me otherwise. With modern non-fixed width fonts it is just not needed. I don't care. It's like a waste of energy to me. I have not and will not ever put 2 spaces after a period.

I have no idea who to tag on this thing that have not already been tagged. Let's make this fun, the first 7 people to comment are tagged 😛

Using a MySQL Database

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The website that I have been working on for my web programming class has been using text files in order to store all of it's data. For this week's lab we had to convert everything to a MySQL database. In order to make this as simple as possible I moved the site on to turing. It should act just like the old one but trust me, it is a lot sweeter 🙂 Check it out here: http://turing.cs.plymouth.edu/~mpbedard/webprog/using_mysql/

Even More CSS fun!

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For this assignment we had to use a yahoo css template to make our website even prettier. This would have been easier if the template actually validated. But it's all good now. The only problem is that the tag that I used to make the iPhone CSS work is not recognized by the validator. But I'm leaving it in there since this is how Apple tells you to do it. Check it out and let me know what you think! http://oz.plymouth.edu/~mpbedard/webprog/css_action2/index.html

The Art of the Iced Coffee

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Having worked all through high school at a very popular coffee establishment, which shall remain nameless, I have honed my iced coffee making skill to well exceed the standards of the establishment. Many of my customers were very satisfied and some even asked that I specifically made their regular cup for them. Their was no real secret to making it other than melting the sugar with hot coffee before adding the milk, ice and warm coffee. Of course I can't take full credit for this technique. It was taught to me by my sister who had also worked at the same store for years before I had. But the real trick is to keep the coffee moving. Swirl the hot coffee and sugar in the cup as much as you can before adding the other ingredients.

But being away from home at school as forced me to have to find other places to get good coffee. Not really a problem for me thankfully because I'm really not picky about I drink. I found a great little shop down town, the Cafe Monte Alto. Very good coffee with a totally different flavor than the arabica beans I'm used to. But they had their own trick to making iced coffee that I never would have thought of. Making the ice cubes out of coffee! This very simple trick makes for a very tasty and full flavored cup all the way to the end. Even hours later when traditional water cubes would have melted and badly diluted the cup.

Don't take my word for it, try it out yourself! Brew a pot and let it sit (not on a warmer!) until it comes down to room temperature. Then pour it into ice cube trays. Use them in your next cup and I'm certain you will love it. 🙂

Sweet new face for XP

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After test driving Vista on my trusty Latitude C640 for a couple days, I got a little attached to the dark color scheme that I had setup. When I booted back up into XP, olive didn't look so appealing anymore. Then today, I stumbled across this site:Royale Noir: secret XP theme uncovered I don't even remember how I found it or what I was looking for in the first place. But needless to say, this theme looks really sweet. It even matches with the black theme in Office 2007 very well. Check it out! (click for full-sized)
Mini Shot, Click for full-sized

SSH across all of PSU and beyond!

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I've been working on some projects that require running perl script from a UNIX command shell. This is pretty easy when I'm working in my apartment on my mac, but otherwise I'm stuck with having to ssh into one of the other servers on campus. Often times they are preoccupied with other people's projects and they run slow because of it. What's my solution? Pump ssh through a different port so that I can log on to my G4 from anywhere, on campus or off. I also wanted the ability to have the server function normally. ie: listen on port 22 as well as 5900.

Here's how to do it with Mac OS 10.4.8:

1. Either sudo -s to switch to root or sudo all of the commands in the following steps.
2. Edit /etc/services to include the following: (I put this right under the existing ssh port)
ssh2 5900/udp
ssh2 5900/tcp

3. Duplicate /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist using the following command:
cp /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

4. Edit the new ssh2.plist file changing the SockServiceName lines to read:
<key>SockServiceName</key>
<string>ssh2</string>

5. Also change the Label string:
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.openssh.sshd2</string>

6. Reboot your computer and you're all done!