Looking back at qicboy.com
This web site has gone through several transitions. The website itself started back in January 1999. The addition of a blog came in February of 2001. Now it hosts nearly 300 articles. Here are a couple snapshots of the blog over the last few years.
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2004
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2005:
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2006:
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Chabot photo lab
Here are some photos of a couple people I see all the time in the photo lab. Jim Millet is an absolutely extraordinary photographer. He teaches the introductory photo class as well as some of the advanced classes. Angel Tellez is student who I believe specializes in portrait photography.
Glósóli by Sigur Rós
This is a cool video. I think it's the music video glósóli by sigur rós.
shot in iceland in august 2005. the video is directed by icelanders arni & kinski and features a cast of icelandic children
Lake side property
Today started off with a kick. My office now rests on top of exclusive lake side property. Apparently the water heater went to shit and filled my entire area in nealy an inch of water. A picture's worth a thousand words, so here they are.
I've moved my tower into a neighboring cube. I'm commandeering the local hardware (monitor, mouse, keyboard) and am hobbling along nicely. The word on the street is that it'll be another 3 days before I get to move back in. Fortunately, tomorrow is Friday.
Anonymous blogging
Here are a couple of cool links related to blogging. The first is a technical guide to anonymous blogging which is important if, say, you're in a government job and you don't necessarily want your co-workers to know about your personal life. If you wanted to, you could build a whole alt profile on the net with anonymous blogging, a second profile on social networking sites, etc.
Unfortunately, if your website looks like shit then you're unlikely to get very many visitors at all so here's a design guide to help you with the design of your site.
Short films
Here are some links to some interesting videos.
- The first is a clay-mation Brady bunch parody
- The second is a film made by three guys who play the same guitar at the same time
- This one is pretty disturbing and is footage of a guy on an Italian talk show who tries to set himself ablaze
- The last one is of a political statement made with modern graffiti
DDR Supernova
Santa Claus brought me another cool toy: DDR supernova. I can't wait to look like a total fool with this cool toy.
Just like the
Music discovery
The
Music discovery site offers a way to listen to music based on the similarity in the genre.
Face recognition
This website does face recognition and lists the famous people you resemble. Good marketing, too bad its full of crap.
Highschool dreaming
It's hard to remember exactly, I mean I'm older now and my taste in women has changed. I'm pretty sure though that even in highshool, I would have found either one of these two women attractive. In fact, simply the idea of having sex with either one of these women would have been very functional material. So it's kind of mind blowing for me to find out that the fantasies that I would have had in highschool are actually coming to life for someone. It's like they've found the goose that lays the golden eggs! What's even more mind blowing is that the kids living out my fantasies are actually sticking a shiv in the goose once they've gotten a couple of the eggs. I don't want to sound insensitive, I mean I suppose these kids could have been taken advantage of if that's the case, I feel for them, I honestly do. If I was them though, and someone wanted me to admit to sleeping with my teacher while I was in highshool, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves. I mean, are you kidding me? The boy got a blowjob!
This article has pictures of teachers accused or convicted of having sex with their students. There are seven alone from California, mostly from Fresno and Redwood city.
Not for nothing, but if you're reading this article and you're boning one of your students, consider the following. One: if you get caught, they're going to go looking for pictures to print in the newspapers. Two: I do photography.
Carrie McCandless, 29: The former Colorado social-studies teacher, who also happens to be married to the principal, was charged in November 2006 with having had sexual contact with a 17-year-old male student during an overnight school camping trip. The instructor, who also coaches cheerleading, could be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Cameo Patch, 29: Substitute teacher at Tooele High School in Tooele, Utah, arrested for allegedly performing oral sex on a 17-year-old male student. The sexual activity was allegedly consensual, and reportedly took place off school grounds after the pair had exchanged phone numbers in a restaurant. She was sentenced to no jail time, despite comments from the judge that a man would have likely gone to prison.
The snowman
This is a cool Christmas movie. You can also see the original website.
It looks like the site is either down or really congested. I've removed the embeded code because it's causing the browser to crash.
Wallpaper
I've been using the same default wallpaper on my work machine for years. Actually, I can't believe I never changed it. Its difficult though finding a new one. It can't be to busy because I use the desktop a lot and I want the icons to stand in contrast to the image. I don't want to lose what I'm throwing on there. Also, it's work, so I can't have anything that will make people uncomfortable. I can't stand corporate labels on things so it can't have any of that.
This site has some really cool ones. They have one that looks exactly what I had hoped for in one of my photo assignments.
I almost went with the Sleek_and_Sporty.jpg because it was nice and simple but I needed something a little better to look at. I eventually settled on Triple_Blood_Cells.jpg
I really dig the iPod ones and I think I'm going to use that concept to redo one of my websites.
This 
Fifty mistakes
Everyone's different, I wouldn't read these like they were the bible but they're interesting nonetheless.
Fifty mistakes men make when having sex by Rod Phillips.
Fifty mistakes women make when having sex, a rebuttal buy tweakerchick.
Transformers trailer
I've never been a big transformers fan. I've had friends that were transformer addicts but I never had much interest in them aside from playing with the toys when I was a kid. This trailer though puts a much more interesting spin on the idea. The cartoon was pretty soft. The movie though seems much more hardcore. The movie also has a website.
This site is sort of like the scissor sisters site. I've made an elf of
iTunes with multiple computers
I have iTunes installed on my machine at home. When I sync my iPod, I usually use that machine. When I'm at work though, I sometimes want to copy one or two songs onto my iPod. I don't want to reformat it and set my work iTunes as the machine to sync from. The simplest way to be able to do this seems to be to select the "Manually manage music and videos" in the Summary tab of my iPod under iTunes. If I mark the checkbox, I can then drag and drop songs into the music folder. Apple has a page with more detailed instructions.
![The ipod [] is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPod and sync with this iTunes librar? An iPod can be synced with only one iTunes library at a time. Erasing and syncing replaces the contents of this iPod with the contents of this iTunes library.](http://www.qicboy.com/files/2006/12/18/itunesWarn.png)
Marriage 101
In Episode 17 of Sex with Emily, Drs Patrick and Michelle Gannon join the show and share a little about their Marriage 101 class. Here are some interesting points they bring up.
- Couples have four roles: friendship, business (running the house for example), parenting, romantic (being intimate for example).
- If a couple is happy, this happiness only accounts for 15% of their marital satisfaction. If a couple is unhappy, it accounts for 85% of their marital satisfaction.
- The chemicals dopamine and oxytocin, among others are released during sex. [Oxytocin is associated with the bonding emotion. Dopamine is central to the brain's reward system]
- The most common thing that newlyweds need to figure out: time, sex, money.
- The number one argument starter for all couples: money.
- Happy couples have a 5:1 ratio of good to bad in their relationship.
- The following is a list of unhealthy behaviors: criticism, contempt (like rolling one's eyes), defensiveness and stonewalling (like silence treatment).
- Men need 20 minutes to calm down, women need 12.
Devotchka
This band (Devotchka) has a really cool sound. The song We're leaving in particular seems to have a strong mariachi influence but its sung in English.
Verizon's .002 cents
This story, by now famous on the internet, demonstrates the absence of basic math skills by everyone in their support department. The Verizon's reps continue to quote 0.002 cents per kilobyte even though they insist on CHARGING him 0.002 dollars per kilobyte. They can't seem to understand the difference. It's a sad story. I can't believe how patient the guy on the phone was being.
metaWeblog Droplet
This little vbs droplet serves as an example of how to use third party APIs to post to an online blog using XML-RPC. I tested it with pebble. To use it, copy the code below and save it as a vbs file. Change blogsite, username and password to match your needs. Drop some other file onto the vbs file, the script just requires SOMETHING to be dropped on it. You should see a new post posted on December 14, 2006 7:10:00 AM PST.
blogsite = "www.qicboy.com"
username = "secret"
password = "secret"
blogname = "default"
Dim http,fso,fin,xml
Set args = WScript.Arguments
If (args.count <1) then
msgbox "Drop the file you wish to post.",0,"metaWeblog Droplet"
Else
newPost(args(0))
End If
function newPost(ByVal path)
title="Sample title" 'read from file
body ="Sample body" 'read from file
pubDate = "20061214T07:10:00-0800" 'read from file
document = "" &_
"<methodCall>" &_
" <methodName>metaWeblog.newPost</methodName>" &_
" <params>" &_
" <param>" &_
" <value><string>" & blogname &"</string></value>" &_
" </param>" &_
" <param>" &_
" <value><string>" & username & "</string></value>" &_
" </param>" &_
" <param>" &_
" <value><string>" & password & "</string></value>" &_
" </param>" &_
" <param>" &_
" <value>" &_
" <struct>" &_
" <member>" &_
" <name>description</name>" &_
" <value><string>"& body & "</string></value>" &_
" </member>" &_
" <member>" &_
" <name>title</name>" &_
" <value><string>"& title &"</string></value>" &_
" </member>" &_
" <member>" &_
" <name>pubDate</name>" &_
" <value><dateTime.iso8601>" & pubDate & "</dateTime.iso8601></value>" &_
" </member>" &_
" </struct>" &_
" </value>" &_
" </param>" &_
" <param>" &_
" <value><boolean>1</boolean></value>" &_
" </param>" &_
" </params>" &_
"</methodCall>"
Set fso = createObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set fin = fso.OpenTextFile(args.item(0), 1)
set http = createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
Set ie = createObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie.Visible = True
ie.statusText = "Opening page "& site &"..."
http.open "POST", "http://" & blogsite & "/xmlrpc", false
http.send (document)
Set xml = createobject("msxml2.domdocument")
xml.loadxml http.responseText
Set xsl = createobject("msxml2.domdocument")
xsl.load("res://msxml.dll/defaultss.xsl")
ie.Navigate "about:blank"
ie.document.Write "<title>metaWeblog Droplet</title>"
ie.document.Write xml.transformnode(xsl)
ie.statusText = "Done"
newPost = 0
end function
Planet killer
Planetory.org is offering a $50,000 prize for a plan to track Apophis, an asteroid that is planned to pass the earth in a near miss in 2029. While the chances of the asteroid actually hitting the earth are low they are not zero. Also, the effect of the asteroid passing so close to the earth is not fully understood. Scientists are still not certain what the asteroid will eventually hit. It is estimated that an asteroid flies this close to our planet every 1300 years.
Paypal and alternative ShipTo
Paypal has issues. My credit card allows for an alternate shipping address. I called them up, they added the address, and there was no problem. So when I ask for something to be billed to my BillTo address and Shipped to a ShipTo address, the address can be confirmed and there should be any problem. Quite honestly, I buy a good deal online and I almost always ship packages to my work address because there's someone there to receive the package.
When I tried buying a hard drive today, I decided to use Paypal to take advantage of this promotional offer. Paypay, being the shitty service that it is, doesn’t allow me to specify a ShipTo address other than my BillTo address. So when I confirmed the transaction, NewEgg kept rejecting the order because of a mismatch in the ShipTo address. I was on the phone and was transferred from person to person but the bottom line was that nobody had any idea how to fix the problem.
That isn't their only problem. Their toolbar is difficult to navigate, but more importantly, their business model has serious flaws the put consumers at risk. They only insure customers for $1000 and that's only if you use a banking account. From what I hear, if you use a credit card, you're not insured, and you can't dispute the charge since the dispute would be over whether Paypal PAID the recipient. That's what you credit card charge is for after all. You're paying Paypal, and Paypal pays the seller. So if you dispute the charge you're disputing your payment to Paypal, not the payment that goes to the seller.
Womanly arts
Regena Thomashauer AKA Mama Gena lives in Manhattan. She's written books and holds classes teaching that that pleasure is the goal of life and that women are the keepers of it.
Merkeley, Blag and Stephanie
I went back through one of my podcasts to get these links from episode 8 of Sex with Emily.
Video mashup
There's a web called The Trailer Mash that does video mashups of trailers and twists the plot of the movie into something completely different. You have to check out Shining (romantic comedy) and 10 Things I Hate About Commandments (comedy).
Podcasting 101
Podcasting is pretty straight forward. All you need is a web server to store your files, an mp3 files and a RSS file.
We have an instructor at Chabot who records his classes so he can publish them online. When I heard this I nearly fell over backwards. How cools is that! The mp3's are all available on his web site but he doesnt have any way of automatically notifying his students when a new mp3 is available. Podcasting is the perfect solution to this. I've written a simple RSS file to solve this problem. Now you can actually SUBSCRIBE to his podcast.
I'm not actually hosting the mp3s on my site, the RSS file I created points to the mp3s on his site. You can use this as a template and search online for additional tags to add to your own RSS file. I've added minimal information, just enough to be a valid file and populate iTunes with a little information on the podcast. The file breaks down something like this. The top of the file includes a description of the podcast, a link to more information about the podcast and a title for the podcast. Then there are a series of "items". Each item includes a title, a guid (to uniquely identify the item), a link to the mp3 file, and a description of that item.
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<description>Podcast for Chabot College's Photo 50</description>
<link>http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com</link>
<title>Photo 50 at Chabot</title>
<item>
<title>Class 1 lecture</title>
<guid>http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com/Photo50_1/Archive/Photo50_Aug_29_2006.mp3</guid>
<enclosure url="http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com/Photo50_1/Archive/Photo50_Aug_29_2006.mp3" length="10411569" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<description> This is the class lecture for the first day of class.</description>
</item>
...
</channel>
</rss>
To create a link directly to itunes, use the pcast protocol.
<a href="pcast://www.qicboy.com/files/2006/12/11/20061211-1-1.xml">SUBSCRIBE</a>
You can use the online RSS validator to make sure your RSS file is well formed.
iPod nano
I'm bad. For Christmas I received a shiny new iPod nano. I received it yesterday, opened it, loaded it up with my favorite podcast and started listening to it right away. It's so sexy looking that I fell in love with it right away. I might have some issues with the interface, the battery and the memory not being replaceable but as far as being a standard piece of equipment, you'd be hard pressed to find anything more standard.
I have a Rio, I've had it for some years but couldn't resist asking Santa Claus for a new little mp3 player. The fact that I subscribe to podcast using iTunes was a big factor in why I chose to go with an apple mp3 player. If you don't subscribe to any podcasts you can Google them and find out more on what you've been missing.
When you think of blogs you probably think of someone posting their thoughts on an online diary. If you're a bit savvy, you've already discovered that you can add your favorite blogs to your Google or Yahoo or (insert favorite portal) home page. This works through the magic of RSS. RSS is a way for people to make their posts accessible to third party software. Sites like Blogger make rss available as part of their software. Authors don't usually have to worry about it, it happens in the background.
Podcasting is a way to record audio files like mp3's and make them available to programs like iTunes which checks to see if new mp3's have been made available and can download them and synchronize the newly download file with a person's mp3 player, like my ipod. The idea is simliar to subscribing to a blog through your yahoo home page. Instead of using your yahoo page, you use iTunes and instead of subscribing to text posts, you subscribe to audio posts.
If you use blogger, you can add mp3's to your blog and make them accessible to people as podcasts. Even if you don't use blogger, you can still write the RSS file yourself and give people a link so they can subscribe to your podcast. Tomorrow I'll outline how to write your own RSS file so that people can subscribe to your audio files using iTunes.
Mac Ads
This is the line of Mac ads. I think they're absolutely brilliant. The apple website also has them in higher resolution.
Photo.net
One of my favorite sites and regular haunts is Photo.net. They've been around for a while and their discussion forums are a wealth of information for anyone interested in photography. One of my favorite parts of the site is the critique section which rotates through photos and lets you see the best photos submitted over the past three days.
Keep PowerPoint in check
The following instructions will change powerpoint so that it calls the Open action instead of the Show action as its default. That way, when you double-click on a file, powerpoint doesnt go into full screen mode and start the presentation.
- Open a file foler
- Select "Tools | Folder Options... | File Types | PPT | Advanced" to get to the "Edit File Type" dialog
- Select the bold one (Show) action and press the edit button
- Under "Application used to perform action:" remove the '/s' option, this should require three presses of the delete key
- Press ok to exit out of the dialogs.
You might want to make the same change to the PPS extension as well.
NOTE (feel free to ignore): The first time you enter this dialog, you will see three actions: New Print and Show. When you make the change to the Show Action, close the dialogs, and go back into the dialog, there may be two new additional actions. The new list of actions will be New, Open, Print, PrintTo and Show. The first time in the dialog, Show will be in bold, showing representing that it is the default action. After you make the change, Open will be the default action. It is the "/s" in the default action that causes Power