the tinyblog

I'm very careful to put all of my data on a different physical drive than my Operating System, so if I need to blow it all out (as sometimes happens when you're running windows) I have a way to put everything that's important to me in one place and leave it untouched when I have to do the dirty work.

I just got a copy of XP and was exited to give it a whirl on my system. I entered setup and the first thing I did was take a deep breath and...format my data drive. The one critical moment where it's most important to make sure you're deleting the right partition. It took a little while for me to figure it out. That everything that is stored on my computer that's important to me was gone. Five years of photos, music, invoices, writing, original photoshop files, original templates for much of the print work that I do for our business, old difficult to find classic games and emulators, the original comps for every website I've ever done, installation media for hundreds of installed programs...and probably a bunch of things that I just haven't thought of yet. Oh christ, the fonts, the fonts....oh the humanity.

Luckliy, the bulk of the work and writing I do gets stored online, and the most precious of things are all in email attachments, the tinyblog, and on Robotic Cat Communications' servers. Plus, I put about 80% of the music and about 90% of the photos on Rzan's portable hard drive...so some of it will get recovered. I'll need a few days or weeks to let it all really sink in.

Whew. Non-attachment. I just hope I didn't screw anyone else. Now just to log onto all my servers and type:
mv -r * > /dev/null
Then my non-attachment to data will be complete. Well, no it won't.

Mourn with me people, mourn for my lost data.

Posted by tiny daniel at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some of you may have read my story about me trying to talk my favorite Seattle pizza joint into letting me do their website. I wanted to do their website, even offered to do it for free just to be able to have online access to the list of pizza toppings. But they weren't sure if they were going to be able to stay in the building they were in, so they said no.

Well, suddenly, out of the blue, I get this Email:

Hello there, this is -G-Dino's son George from Santorini Pizza, I just stumbled across your website...thanks for calling me good looking...very nice! Just wanted to let you that we are here to stay, I got married, and am ready for a website, something simple. I am not looking for you do it for free though. If you are still interested in creating a website for us call or e-mail me. Thanks again for the write up, we got a new sign! I always hated the old one. Oh and sorry about the people yelling the word motherfucker all the time, they were probably my uncles (no affiliation to the professionals who work at the restaurant.)

So something good did happen, and I got to do the website and get paid for it. It's pretty cool...some tricky CSS that works well in all the browsers I've tested, and it's exactly what they wanted. I present to you, Santorini Pizza & Pasta

Posted by tiny daniel at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I think I've got a good system down, but the real question is:
Is it more work to dump all my clean clothes from the hamper on my bed to rifle through them in the morning and dump them back into the hamper when I go to bed than it is to fold them and put them away? How do wrinkles factor? I wonder if I'll ever know.

Also, I'm very fascinated by the amazing:
Kerry Haters for Kerry
and the amazing and amazingly URL'ed:
John Kerry is a Douchebag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway (dot com).

I didn't realize there was such a movement. Ahh the Internet...how it brings folks together.

Posted by tiny daniel at 3:16 AM | Permalink

Splif is brought to you by the by the makers of Buddafinger Bars and advertised by the DEA's excellent Microgram Bulletins (otherwise known as "where not to hide your drugs")

Remember...choosy agents choose splif.

via MetaFilter via BoingBoing

Posted by tiny daniel at 11:37 PM | Permalink

Ubuntu is very cool, even for non-geeks. Ubuntu Linux is also cool...but pretty much only for geeks.

Other linux distros that are cool include:

- Gentoo, which has a reputation for being super easy to use and almost dummy proof, but requires a lot of time and bandwidth to install and keep updated.

- Mandrakelinux, a well supported distro with good package management.

- Also, for the very paranoid, there's Tinfoil Hat Linux.

- And, it's not Linux, but here at Roboticat we use FreeBSD, which has the very cool package management of the ports tree (although Gentoo's version seems pretty darn cool too.) The BSD operating systems are a lot like Linux, in that they are UNIX-like systems that run on a PC, and have a bloody huge user community. Plus a little devil for a mascot.

I guess grun-tu-molani is pretty cool too.

(P.S. The first person to post the correct meaning of grun-tu-molani and it's correct source in the comments gets a special prize in the mail.)

Posted by tiny daniel at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

During the vice-presidential debates yesterday, he recommended that people visit factcheck.com. I'm sure he was kicking himself since factcheck.com was in fact an Anti-Bush site.

A small anti-bush site. So when the owner of factcheck.com got about 40,000 hits that night, he redirected the domain to georgesoros.com (I personally would have redirected to the latest installment of Get Your War On.

But that's not why I'm thanking him. I'm actually thanking him for where he MEANT to direct people, which is factcheck.ORG, a site I had never heard of before, but which is quite excellent. It's a political fact checking site run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and they appear comitted to the highest level of journalistic integrity.

It's interesting to see that there's quite a few distortions on both sides of the partisan fence, but I'm quite glad that a site like this exists. It seems to be credible enough to be a non-partisan coda of truth. I think my man Bill in particular will find this a good resource. It seems it's pretty popular these days as well, so you may have to try several times to get the pages to load. I'd like to take this opportunity to point to a few articles I thought were important:

• (Most recently:) Getting it wrong about combat pay, Halliburton, and FactCheck.org
• Swift Boat Veterans Anti-Kerry Ad: "He Betrayed Us" With 1971 Anti-War Testimony
• Bush and Kerry both pepper their standard political speeches with misleading claims.

I think it should be the duty of every American voter to keep abreast of this site. It's that worthwhile. These articles should be picked up by dailies all over the world...this is fascinating stuff...sort of like the snopes.com of the political world!

Posted by tiny daniel at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)