Wow, these are some really amazing photographs of Danish starlings. I'm always blown away by the tight formations of the local flocks here in Sonoma.

Click here

I recently installed HyperLites LED brake lights on my BMW R1150RS. I feel that any way I can become more conspicuous out there, the better, and one of my greatest fears is not being noticed by a car coming up behind me, particularly if I'm slowing or stopped.

To install GhostPCL on FreeBSD, first install ghostscript. I don't run X on my server so I used ghostscript-afpl-nox11 found in /usr/ports/print/

Next get GhostPCL, and save the bz2 file in /usr/local/src. For this article, I'm using GhostPCL 1.41, and FreeBSD 5.3.

Compiling GhostPCL on FreeBSD requires some changes to get it to go. Two of the errors you might see are as follows:

I hate the term 'blog'. I have hated it since the very first time I heard it. It's a nothing term, a weblog is, taken literally, a journal on a website. That's it. By that definition, I've been blogging for years in one form or another.

But, the actual use of the term has morphed to refer to a very specific type of website. One driven by software that provides a framework for 'entries', as well as a method of easily posting entries, generally requiring little or no technical skill. At this I have scoffed. Real Men don't blog, they edit HTML. Better, they generate XML. Blogs are for emo kids, dammit. Right?

Dana turned me on to Amy's blog a few months ago during her recent pregnancy (Amalah's, not Dana's), and I really enjoy her writing. This is an excellent, thrilling, tear-jerking two-part journal of her experience delivering Noah.

We were off.

And we were already hopelessly disorganized. What to do with the dog? Leave food down for the cat! Tape a key to the front door for the contractor! On second thought, maybe scratch that last one. And pack the snacks! All the books said to bring snacks! Send email! Tell boss I won't be working tomorrow! Update the Internet!

I've recently been given some slides to scan, pictures from when Dana was a kid. After trying out the transparency adapter on my trusty Epson Perfection 1650, I realized that for these particular images I wanted more quality than the Epson could provide. It's an excellent scanner, but the slide/film part is a weakness.

So I purchased a Nikon Coolscan IV film scanner at the ol' flea market. The description was terse, simply saying that it was in good condition. Due the brief text and poor title wording, I gather that not many people saw this particular auction, because no one else bid and I got a smokin deal on the thing.

Desert Solitaire. There are precious few books that I can honestly say have changed me, that have affected me in such a fundmental way as to have tangible effects on my being, my thought processes, even years later. Conversations with God? Perhaps. Twain's Roughing It? You bet. But how different would I be today, as a person, had my father not given me that well-thumbed paperback copy of Desert Solitaire in my early teens.

When good promo gimmicks go bad

Anyone that has worked in IT long enough to get on a few mailing lists has undoubtedly received a few gimmicky promotional items from prospective vendors. I'm sure other industries have their share, but the tech industry seems quite prone to this crap.

Most of it is basically useless...

Bug from an unknown software company promoting code debugging tools. Watches over my office door.