Binary Tuberculosis

So I tossed up some pics from my recent trip to New England, plus the pictures of the Williamsburg trip, and a few odds & ends in the 2007 folder. Oh yeah, got videos up there too. You get bored, you check em out, you don’t like em, you go to hell.

As always, check the photos section.

Busy weekend, but yesterday was fun-busy. Went down to JRF’s place, wanted to hang out with him before he left for his cruise next week. MBG couldn’t join us, which was great, we both hate that bastard anyway, he’s living it up in Atlanta.

Finally got to play some Wii, what a nice system, I gotta pick one up once I get some friends, I’m sure it’ll be more fun then. Not all of us have the luxury of friends…or good hygiene…or no suicidal tendencies, lucky punks.

Of course we went to the traditional food joint we ALWAYS go to, some Mongolian restaurant (I should really learn its name) and then topped it off with some Coldstone Creamery. Thanks to JRF, the chick that works there now thinks JRF and I are a couple. Ended the evening with some Blu-ray movie action, I can’t effin’ wait until there is a winner in the completely idiotic HD-DVD vs Blu-ray war, those things look so much nicer than regular DVDs.

And oh yeah…Assault Heroes co-op action is amazing on XBox Live and we still hate MBG. Took a couple pics, will put them up when I get bored or MBG wants to feel more jealous.

Um, you’re still gonna visit me at my new place, right MBG?

Just drove by a gas station, Fas Mart, and the F from the sign had fallen off.

Funny of the week. Couldn’t stop laughing.

I think I’m getting wicked old. A couple days ago I hopped into the shower and after a couple seconds I thought to myself (while blinking furiously)…”What’s wrong with my eyes? It’s getting blurrier”.

A few hundred milliseconds later I realize I still had my glasses on.

I’m watching the most amazing show right now. I was watching The Science Channel earlier today and got a little clip of “watch this show” during a commercial break for the Travel Channel’s new show, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. TiVo-ed it right away, it looked awesome.

This episode is focusing on Asia and I gotta tell you, I need to visit Japan (they eat 1/3 of the seafood consumed per year) and Bangkok (grubs and chicken, a million different types). Show isn’t done yet, but it’s going on my season pass.

Andrew Zimmern is a chef so he can actually appreciate all the food and even describe why people eat it and why it’s a delicacy or unusual and he doesn’t seem to poke fun at the people or the dishes, which I half-expected since…well…he’s American. He sure does eat tons of different food, best job in the world, but he’s only gonna get fatter. Just as well, never trust a thin chef! That’s my new motto, I think I just made it up, I hope it didn’t stay in subconscious from reading it somewhere 10 years ago.

Anybody want to go all over Asia with me sometime this year or next? or at least Japan?

By the way, I wanna be a cow from Kobe that gets slaughtered for its meat, man, those things get pampered, at least until they come to your plate…for $200 a steak! And I want to eat bats, turtles (best soup ever), and wash it all down with some lizard sake.

Now I’m gonna go Google for some spirulina supplements in the US, I’ve got my money on Chinatown, probably not GNC. Actually, I wanna try the spirulina chili paste and drinks, but I doubt they’ll be as fresh in this hemisphere.

Took some time this weekend and converted my old (oooold, haven’t touched it for years) Family Tree Maker family tree file to GEDCOM format. Why? Bringing the family tree to the Internet, that is why.

Installed PhpGedView on my web server, updated many a names and relationships, then sent out some accounts to some family folk so they could have access to the tree.

The most amazing part of all this is that now I can make changes from anywhere in the world. No more buying a program, installing it, keeping it updated, etc. Now it’s all free with multiple user capability. I’m the admin and the limited accounts have capabilities from either read-only to full access. I’ve given them editing capability with final change authorization going through me (don’t want people changing things stupidly or deleting whole subtrees when they get bored).

Best part is that now I don’t have to keep bugging people to give me their info, they can update it all themselves, or at least check it for inconsistencies. Think I’ll donate some $$ to the PhpGedView developers, they have the one of the most active projects on SourceForge (for June ‘06 it was #1), plus gotta support open source software. Gonna test drive it for a few weeks, see how things shape up with it though, but right now it’s thumbs up.

I registered my PSTN (my new voip landline number) with an ENUM directory tonight (e164.org). How does this affect any of you? Well, if you try to call me via a VoIP provider that supports ENUM lookups (e.g. VoXaLot), then your calls to me will be free and quality/latency will be the utmost since it will be a true point-to-point call via the Internet.

Not all VSPs (Voice Service Providers) offer this, but I’m sure they will in the future, just to have better quality and lower prices for the company AND the user. Not all will though, I’m looking at you Vonage and Comcast Digital Voice, close-minded VoIP providers.

To better explain ENUM lookup, think of it as a phone call placed within the same network. For instance, if you and your buddy are both using the same VoIP client (e.g. Google Talk, Yahoo! Voice, or Vonage), then you can talk with them for free since the data travels directly to the other person on the same network. Now if you want to make a call from Yahoo! Voice to Vonage, well that’s going to cost $$. Why? Because the data has to travel through old fashioned means, the plain old telephone service (POTS).

With ENUM, Yahoo! could just look up the phone number in a directory, find the information it needs (where to send the call, to whom, etc), then connect the call via the Internet, which is cheaper than going over the POTS system. Of course that example had some technical flaws (Yahoo! doesn’t use UDP for its SIP and Vonage blocks non-Vonage access to its servers because they’re greedy), but in theory it works.

I just realized that I should have used cell phones as an example, mobile-to-mobile within cell companies, same network.

There are many other alternatives to using Comcast Digital Voice or Vonage or any other proprietary VSP and almost all the others allow true access to their servers, as true VoIP access should be, but companies like to restrict its customers to get that extra penny (e.g. Microsoft, RIAA, Sony…and many many others).