No, not the real Opera, I mean the incredible Opera Web Browser. I downloaded Opera 8.5x a couple of days ago to check the CSS ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
support on MikeyP.com, and I haven't stopped using it since.
Several years ago (1997?), I remember downloading an early version of Opera. At the time, I was blown away by how fast it rendered pages. I stopped using it, however, because it was so standards compliant that it didn't render common "broken" pages designed for Netscape and Internet Explorer.
Times have changed. Not only are internet standards more… standard, but Opera is at the forefront of compatibility. Opera simply runs faster and smaller than both Internet Explorer and Firefox, with tons of extensible customization. Seriously, Firefox users, I'm talking to you. 
Opera is changing the way I use the internet. I'm that impressed. I can't wait for version 9, which has integrated BitTorrent and (finally!) support for NTLM Windows Authentication.
BTW, I'm able to switch back and forth between browsers without much hassle thanks to the LinkStash bookmark manager [linkstashbuttonsforoperawin764bit, linkstash]. I just tell it to launch bookmarks in whatever browser I'm using, and I'm off and running. I was bummed to see that there weren't custom LinkStash buttons for Opera, but I quickly discovered how easy it was to add any kind of custom buttons. This web site even makes them for you: The Opera Custom Button & Command Creator.
Here are the button URLs for LinkStash (provide it was installed in C:\Program Files\LinkStash). Opera users can just click the links:
More great Opera info lives at the Opera Wiki
Comcast has a respectable lineup of about 14 or so international channels that broadcast exclusively in various languages. I thought it would be fun to subscribe to the Japanese channel so I could continue learning more of the Japanese language. Comcast's monthly price for that one channel: $25.99! You've got to be kidding me. Maybe I'll study Chinese. The two Mandarin Chinese channels? $21.99 and $12.99 each, per month.
Unlike the movie channels, which are expensive individually, but are bundled in affordable single-price packages, Comcast has no such bundle for their international channels. Instead, they are all sold individually as "International Premium Services A La Carte."
Premium indeed.
In the mean time, Japanese TV channels like Fuji News Network, JAL-TV, and others stream their broadcast over the internet for free. I know what I'll be watching.
My Guitar Rigs [guitarrig2001, guitarrig1992, guitarrig1987]
Here is my first guitar rig. I put together this collection of guitar stuff when I first started playing guitar, around 1986, and had the complete set in 1987. I still have the original amp and guitar, though all of the pedals were stolen several years ago. Over the past couple of years I reacquired them all on eBay, and I'm pretty sure I have the exact models from the same years as my originals.
After playing the rig again 20 years after I first had it, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it sounded. Not bad for a first rig!
Dan helped me pick this Crate G40C out from the used amp pile at Andy's Music. I couldn't afford a full-size amp with 12" speakers, but I wanted something better than the little Gorilla amp I was borrowing. The G40C has just two 8" speakers, but it must be the heaviest little amp ever made. Mine does not have the nice Jensen speakers found in other versions of this amp - instead, it has Crate-branded speakers that are ear-blistering at high volumes, and have almost zero warmth. The dirty channel has the usual Crate distortion, but I preferred using the clean channel as it had extra tone controls. A couple of notable features include a built-in chorus effect. Although it is really noisy, I would normally leave the chorus on with both control knobs set to zero, giving the amp a much needed bass boost. A special "Bright" button makes the sound… brighter. Very handy for crunchy teenage metal. The spring reverb sounds nice.
My beloved red guitar. My parents gave me this Washburn as a birthday gift. I picked it out at Andy's mainly because a) my friend had a Washburn, so figured it was good, and b) the RED color was so damned cool-looking. Even though it honestly isn't the best playing guitar, I still love the way it looks, and think it was a great beginner's guitar. The G-JR-V has a somewhat smaller body than a typical strat-type guitar, and is fairly lightweight, though I'm not sure what kind of wood it is. I replaced the bridge pickup with a very cool Ultrasonic humbucker from West Germany, and the neck pickup with a very delicate-sounding Carvin single-coil. Eventually, I replaced all 3 pickups with Ultrasonics.
My preferred strings were initially D'Addario XL .9-.42, but I wanted more strength on the low end, so I would take the bottom three strings from a .10-.46 set and mix them with the top strings from a .9-.42 set. This combo is so popular these days that it is sold as a custom set by almost all string manufacturers. D'Addario strings were much nicer back then, before they stopped giving them an "acid bath" that they claimed was bad for the environment.
I once sheered off a chunk of the original plastic nut when I was sloppily changing strings, so I upgraded to a nice graphite nut. I also upgraded the bridge saddles to GraphTech saddles because the height-adjustment screws on the original saddles would shred my hand while I was shredding the guitar.
Sadly, this guitar was the subject of several inexperienced experiments on my part, including the saddle upgrade, but also from an attempted Floyd Rose install, a cracked headstock due to a botched tuning peg replacement, worn frets, and dozens of nicks, dents, and bruises from various gigs. It isn't really playable any more, and I'm keeping an eye on eBay to see if I can spot a clone to use for restoration.
The G40C had an effects loop. I made my own custom effects loop box, since I couldn't find an original one from Crate. In the loop, I had several pedals that brought my sound to life. Here they are in order of signal path:
Another gift, the VL-10 pedal was actually made by Boss (Roland) and branded by Ibanez. It is a very precise passive stereo pan/ volume/expression pedal. I used it as a mono volume pedal, mainly as a noise gate, but also for some fun volume swell effects.
While everyone else was buying Tube Screamers, I wanted something with more crunch. The Fat Cat was Ibanez's answer to the Proco Rat. When I reacquired this pedal last year, I plugged it in between the guitar and amp and was shocked to hear it sound thin, brittle, and barky. Then I remembered that I used to put this pedal (counter-intuitively) in the effects loop, and whaddya know, I heard that fat warm crunch that I remember from 20 years ago. What a classic, rare pedal.
The Yamaha EQ pedal was a must to bring out a full tone in the little 8" Crate speakers. I left it on all the time. Although this pedal was the hardest to find when I tried to recreate my old guitar rig, it also turned out to be the cheapest.
This classic pink Boss flanger pedal was only just discontinued by Boss last year. Unlike recent Taiwan versions, mine was originally made in Japan (1984-ish), with the Japanese black label on the back. I can't remember if I bought this used, or if someone gave it to me.
With a top-end frequency response of only 4KHz, you'd think the DOD FX-90 pedal would sound terrible. In reality, it has an awesome vintage delay sound that still can't be replicated correctly by modern digital delays. This pedal is highly sought after - I'm glad I found one in pristine condition.
Leave the gun, take the cannolli.
The Godfather ships today for PS2, Xbox, and Windows XP. I think gamers are going to be very surprised to see a game like this come from EA.
The PS2 and Xbox games are well worth playing on current gen consoles. No need to wait for XBOX360… play it now.
Caught this on http://www.Fark.com
Joe Satriani is letting fans listen to his entire new album Super Colossal on his web site. Even better, Satch introduces each song himself, talking about tech and creative aspects.
Like Charlie Hunter, Satch is yet another musician who seems to really understand how to use the 'net for promoting music. He's got links on his album page to buy the full uncompressed CD from amazon, and buy it compressed online from iTunes.
The Crowd Chant song, a call and response party between Satch's guitar and an actual crowd, is a must-listen.
He also gets my vote for having the coolest album cover of the year. 
See also isthereloveinspace
I hardly ever use my DVD-R drive except when I need to rip some music, install software, or archive some stuff. So imagine my surprise when I popped a disk in the drive this weekend only to see… nothing. I opened the "My Computer" folder on WinXP and the drive wasn't even there. Looking at the Device Drivers list in the system panel, I noticed that the DVD drive had a little exclamation point graphic, along with the following error:
Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)
A quick Google of the error message took me to the Microsoft Knowledge Base, which had instructions for a simple fix. The fix involves deleting two entries in the Windows Registry. Simple enough, but I wondered how those errant registry entries could have gotten there in the first place.
Then I fired up Apple's iTunes this evening, and got this error dialog:
It reads: The registry settings used by the iTunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall iTunes.
Uhhh, no thanks Apple, I'm quite tired of installing a new version of iTunes every freakin' week. Looks like it's time to check out Anapod Explorer again…
My Guitar Rigs [guitarrig2001, guitarrig1992, guitarrig1987]
I've had three main guitar rigs since I started playing guitar as a teenager. Here is my rig circa 1991-1992, when I was the rhythm guitarist in the seminal Hayward band, Mystic Rage. I no longer have any of this rig - I sold the lot to StickyC several years ago.
I bought the cab from another guitarist in the practice studio. I think I paid $100 for it. I soon blew up all of the speakers by using a high-powered PA amp instead of a proper guitar head. (Did you know that guitar speakers can make a psychedelic blue smoke?) My replacement speaker set was a Frankenstein combo of two Eminence speakers gifted to me from my band mates, one 70W Celestion I bought from a catalog, and one "mystery speaker" I found at a used music equipment store in Berkeley. The Crate logo fell off at a gig somewhere, so I replaced it with a logo from a Heineken store display. Everyone always asked where I got a Heineken speaker cab. Of course, someone eventually stole the Heineken logo.
I likely bought the Crate G600 used from Weenboy. At 60W, it just barely played loud enough along side Pete's drums. A solid-state head, it was extremely durable and… beverage-proof. The dirty channel was pretty nice, but I preferred the clean channel with the excellent Presence control and spring reverb.
The TwinTube was an overlooked jewel of a rack preamp that I used in the effects loop of the G600's clean channel. Not only did it have two 12AX7 tubes, it also had some really versatile effects tweaking. In particular, you could set two graphical EQs, one before the distortion, and one after. You could also set two compressors, again before and after distortion. Those settings were key in getting a huge Metallica-ish tone out of some low-budget equipment. Two things started to bother me with the TwinTube: 1) I spent too much time tweaking and programming the thing instead of playing my guitar, and 2) It was missing some high end. It was only rated up to 16Khz, and I'm sure it dropped of a little before that. At the time, I felt the missing high-end caused a lack of "crispiness" and clarity, though after playing metal for all those years, hearing anything at all above 16Khz is a rare treat.
I bought a few other components for this rig that I ended up never using.
I thought the DSP-256XL would add the high-end clarity I was looking for in the TwinTube, but instead, it sounded a bit dark. I'm pretty sure I could have corrected that, but programming the thing took hours, so I gave up.
The MicroCab was sold as a speaker simulator that you could use for recording at low volumes without a microphone. I never got serious about recording, and thus never used this rack.
Not sure how many times this Ibanez EX changed hands between StickyC and Don before I got a hold of it. Call it a lack of patience, but I could never get this guitar to stay in tune with that blasted Floyd Rose. I've never had a guitar with a Floyd since. I did put a sweet DiMarzio FRED pickup in this, but alas, never played the thing. The flight case was very nice.
Last year, I had a heckuva time getting my Linux box to serve music to an OmniFi DMS-1 via UPnP [musicstorage4, musicstorage6, musicstorage1, musicstorage2, musicstorage-solved3, musicstorage3, musicstorage-solved1, musicstorage8, musicstorage-solved2, musicstorage5, musicstorage7]. Since then, there has been a lot of progress with UPnP in the open source community. There are now several open source UPnP media servers available, including uShare, GMediaServer, and MediaTomb.
I've been running the same Linux config since 1999, which makes compiling new software more difficult each year. Of all the UPnP servers I tried, only uShare would compile and run, and only after a little coaxing. Fortunately, uShare is a simple and elegant UPnP server, which is exactly what I was looking for.
uShare requires libupnp, which needs a little installation help. Once libupnp was installed, I was able to untar the uShare source and run ./configure without errors.
However, during compilation, I got some errors with the log_verbose function. It turned out to be some typos in the header file trace.h which were easily fixed. Here is a corrected trace.h file: trace.h
After building and running uShare, I added the UPnP multicast route as spec'd by the UPnP docs (route add -net 239.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 eth0), fired up the OmniFi, and it found the uShare server immediately! MP3 files played perfectly, but WMA files wouldn't. Turns out there is another typo, this time in mime.c: line 88 reads "http-get:*:audio/audio/x-ms-wma:*", but it should read "http-get:*:audio/x-ms-wma:*".
Finally, thanks to the uShare project over at GeexBox.com, I have a simple UPnP Media Server running on my Linux box. I still can't play WMA Lossless files on the OmniFi, but I might try my hand at realtime UPnP transcoding next…
Most Linux UPnP media servers require the libupnp library. However, the install script for libupnp is incomplete and not well documented, so here are some more complete install steps.
Although libupnp-1.3.1 was just released, I couldn't get it to compile, so I use the older libupnp-1.2.1a version. First, untar and compile the source:
tar -xzvf libupnp-1.2.1a.tar.gz
cd libupnp-1.2.1a/upnp
make
Second, become root and run the install script:
cd libupnp-1.2.1a/upnp
make install
Finally, while still root, copy the following support libraries and header files, then run ldconfig:
cp ../ixml/inc/ixml.h /usr/include/upnp/.
cp ../threadutil/inc/ithread.h /usr/include/upnp/.
cp ../ixml/bin/libixml.so /usr/lib/.
cp ../threadutil/bin/libthreadutil.so /usr/lib/.
ldconfig
It is cold and hailing tonight, with a forecast of possible snow. Sounds like time for a cocktail!
Here's my take on a drink called Fireside Rum:
Don't use a thin wine glass - the drink will be too hot to handle. A coffee mug will work just fine as an alternative.
Here are some instructions for checking the signal strength on the Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes] and how to reset it. I can't remember where I found these instructions, so I apologize to the original author. If you know the source (avsforum? HDTV-SFBay-Users?), please let me know and I'll give proper credit.
WARNING: Don't follow these instructions unless you know what you are doing! You might ruin your DVR, which will probably make Comcast very upset! If you botch things up, it ain't my fault. These codes might not even work on your DVR model!!!
Check the SNR on diagnostic screen 4. It should say good or at least fair. If it says fair or poor it may freeze and pixel occasionally. Check this by:
If the SNR is poor you have a weak signal and a tech would need to fix it. If it is fair the signal may be borderline and only freeze occasionally.
WARNING: Doing this will ERASE all programs from your DVR, and cause your DVR to loose all guide information until it's reloaded (24 hours or so) This process basically resets the hard-drive. You have been warned.
Ok with that said turn your TV and DVR on.
Your DVR will now reset and begin to download… If you see the letters 'DL' this means you are in a VOD area and you won't be able to watch tv for about 20-30 Minutes.
I had a Comcast DVR flake out on me (bad hard drive), and tried a reset. It didn't fix the DVR, and actually seemed to confuse it even more. If you are a Comcast customer, and have trouble with your DVR, I highly recommend calling customer service to exchange the unit. The newer models are general more stable and have quieter hard drives.
Wow. Joe up and decided to sail his boat Music across the pacific ocean, from Panama to The Marquesas Islands ... solo. Man, what an adventure.
He's reporting via YOTREPS, and you can see a plot of his progress overlayed on a Google satellite map here: http://pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=wda5825.
Livin' the dream.
Charlie Hunter's rockin' new album Copperopolis came out a few weeks ago. We saw him perform the new stuff at his annual x-mas gig at Yoshi's, and it's a fun departure from his recent jazzy albums.
Hunter has a long history of offering free downloads of his live performances, and now he's selling DRM -free versions of his recent albums on his web site . Even better, he's got the pricing model just about right: Around 10 bucks for the album in MP3 or AAC format, and around 13 bucks for the album encoded in the lossless FLAC format.
Although I wish the MP3 version was a little cheaper, you've got to commend an artist for doing everything so right:
(Some online music services also get it - take a peek at AllOfMP3.com and eMusic.com)
Many people are opting for a smartphone instead of a PDA these days, but for me, a PDA is still an essential tool. Most smartphones and PDAs handle calendar and contact management, but these devices can be much more useful with additional software. Here is a list of PDA applications that I consider essential on any smartphone or PDA.
The key requirements for a PDA spreadsheet are good Excel formula compatibility and seamless synchronization with Excel files on a host PC. I used TinySheet for years until it became yet another app abandoned by Iambic Software. Now I use Sheet-To-Go version 8 (included in Documents-To-Go 8), which is a huge improvement over the 4.0 version I used years ago.
A full-fledged word processor isn't really needed on a PDA, but the ability to sync, read, and do minor edits to a Word document is essential. WordSmith is my word processor of choice, only because I've been using it for years without any problems. Word-To-Go version 8 is just as good.
A major reason to have a PDA is to replace a pocket pen-and-paper notepad. Generic memo pad software is no match for a good journaling or note-taking app like DayNotez from Natara Software. DayNotez is a fantastic app with easy note categorization and search filtering that finally allowed me to stop carrying a traditional Moleskine notebook everywhere.
Like generic memo pad software, generic To-Do list software is too basic. I use two different list management apps: SplashShopper and Bonsai. SplashShopper is not only the best shopping list app for PalmOS, it also acts as an excellent generic database for cataloging lists of all kinds (wine collection, software, etc.). Bonsai is the ultimate software for task management. It allows you to manage multiple to-do lists, and even acts as a project management and outlining tool. Both SplashShopper and Bonsai have full-fledged companion apps for Windows that sync with the handheld versions.
Since so many web sites and work computers have different password requirements, I have a million passwords to track. I keep them all listed in SplashID, a secure and convenient locker for all of my passwords, as well as frequent flyer numbers and software reg codes. Also includes a companion app for Windows.
An alarm clock with multiple alarm presets, a multiple time zone display, and support for .wav and .mid sound files is extremely handy. Sony used to bundle the excellent and aptly named World Clock with their Clie handhelds. These days, I use ClockDeluxe from Deluxeware.
All of the software I use is made for PalmOS handhelds and synchronizes with Windows XP (Natara just released a Windows Mobile version of DayNotez, SplashID is available for several mobile platforms, and both SplashID and SplashShopper now have Mac OS X companion apps). I'm willing to use other platforms, as long as I can be sure to have all of the essential apps listed above.
I would have been a bit frustrated if I had gone through the hassle of setting up the clumsy Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes] to record Battlestar Galactica on the Universal HD channel. As soon as the Olympics ended, Comcast ditched the Universal HD channel immediately. No word on whether it will return. I'd rather have a true HD SciFi Channel anyway.
Besides, they put back the INHD2 channel, which carries a very important HD broadcast: Hockey
I've been trying various brands of running and hiking socks. Without a doubt, the Smartwool socks I purchased at REI are the best. A wool+synthetic blend, Smartwools come in bunches of different sizes, shapes, and thicknesses, all of which are stay plenty comfortable and dry. No more blisters for me!
