at some point in 2004 i decided to actually make myself a website.  created a template and embraced CSS and used a not so friendly template version of wordpress.  once i got everything working and wordpress all settled.. i never finished.

the other night i made my kitten her very own blog. decided to go ahead and give AdSense a holler, i had never bothered before because about 3 of you actually come to my website (hi guys..). however part of AdSense policy is they don’t give accounts to unfinished websites. I’m going to be putting AdSense on sachi’s website, and figured might as well put one on mine, i figure after 3-4 years of you guys reading my blog i might make enough to finally make a $100.00 check and cash in!

i have now completely updated all the content on my website. updated my theme and made some fixes (but i did this a week or two ago), added a contact form, links (while that’s still unfinished at least i started it), a brief gallery(ill link my crappy gallery some other way), my resume, and a simple home page.

holy shit guys, i finished my website. finally.  now its time to redesign it!! haha.

thats right, colour! i spelled it all proper like, impressed? well you should be, not with me, but with the website for COLOURlovers.

Last year during webby’s i ran across this website that was basically a niche social network that was based around creating colors and color palettes.  i have used sites like wellstyled’s color scheme generator, colors on the web, colorschemer, webcolorschemes, and kuler, just to name a few, but none of them have appealed to me as much as COLOURlovers has.

the usability of the site is not as intuitive as i would like and it takes a bit of getting use to to figure out how to successfully navigate through the site, but i find myself enjoying the experience.  its not only just a tool to help you create colors its an entire network of individuals all passionate about color and all its facets; from linking visual inspirations, or in written form, to naming your palettes and colours alike, its a whole new way of social contribution.

the sheer volume of colors and palettes being created is quite impressive, i myself have joined in the fray in hopes to share my color concepts and to inspire as i am being inspired.

come join me! its my favorite new addiction as i spend hours just thinking of color arrangements and being lost in ones created by others.

a while ago photobucket teamed up with a company/product called meez.  meez are essentially 3d photo avatars you can custom design and animate.  i made one a long time ago but almost forgot about it until got an email notice reminding me and inviting me to “come and use it again” now in beta.

simpsons… meez.. i even have a weemee for skype. maybe i’ll upload that next.

Okay yah so — i suck at this blog thing apparently.  Every time i come up with something i want to blog about i never do it.  I really need to discipline myself to take out a few minutes just to do it.  birthday resolution. anyway..

everyone has been posting simpsonized versions of themselves around lately and i’ve even played with the tool myself, but after my friend Nina made one of herself and Chad and put it on her blog, the likeness was so great to see i decided to copy and do the same so i could share with her.

easiest way to share.. is to post here. this is joel and i as simpsons.

so that’s it, you try it and share

so two time a charm right? if you remember, about a year and a half ago i did a reinstall on my laptop. i had backed everything off the main partition to my second “storage” partition. and through years of evolution and progress of human intellectual development, i promptly

• Reformatted the ENTIRE HARD DRIVE
• RESIZED both partitions
• did a full and complete install

And of course, its only after i log back in and go “okay lets copy my backup over….” i realize exactly what I did.

Lucky me, Joel had asked me a few weeks prior if i had any NTFS recovery tools because his other friend needed it. I fished up
Bitmart Restorer200 Professional.

It saved my ass. It completely recovered the entire hard drive. It recovered the main partition and the backup partition with all of my files intact. It had everything.

Yesterday, in the morning, i was copying over a massive amount of files over to my Micro Vault Pro usb drive. I walked away not really thinking about it. When i was in the kitchen i thought to myself, “you know thats probably a bad idea.. theres no heat sink.. it probably doesn’t handle having over a gig of files transfered to it.”

As i’m clicking “cancel” to end the transfer because i can FEEL the heat being generated on the drive, explorer stops responding.. then i get this wonderful error “File path too deep” and the drive just crashes.

The hardware itself was fine. However the file system completely corrupted and nuked itself. After attempts to even mount the drive in linux i came to the ultimate and sad conclusion that i had lost all my work… A HA! But I remembered restorer2k!!

I loaded this sucker up again and tada! it restored all the content of my micro drive.

If you *EVER* need to recover files you have lost.. this tool really does work. Aah how precarious my life seems as so much of the things i need are comprised of 1’s and 0’s. Its a good thing i can recover it.. I cant say the same about a lot of the other bullshit!

today, technology is cool

okay so not really, but it does make my life so much easier when i move from place to place. previously in my blog i introduced all of you to a small utility i recently purchased, mobile net switch. it has proved to be quiet useful and im extremely happy with the product this far.

while in the office i can easily log into the domain, auto map the necessary drives i want access to while here, auto change my smtp server, make any necessary host file changes, run any scripts i really want to, change almost every single internet setting..

i never realized just how useful this utility was until i actually started using it. it has definitely made my mobile computing life so much easier than i had ever expected.

now when i go to joels, work, or home; with a single click all the appropriate network settings are modified and everything works smoothly.

i love my crt. i have a sony 21″ atm and its a wonderful monitor. however, after we had moved from marina del rey, i think the movers “dropped” my monitor or something. i never had problems till our new place. the colors aren’t as vibrant, and the clarity has dulled. the monitor itself is still a great monitor but it wasn’t what it once was.

admittedly, anytime i look at colors or movies or even video games, i realize how many colors and depths i lose on an LCD. but alas. sony no longer produces 21″ aside form their very high end one that costs $1500.00. Ive looked at other CRT’s but none have matched the image quality that I had with my Sony. Ive looked on ebay for used monitors and they only seem to be selling the lower end models and or refurbs.

Yesterday, Bryan showed me a really great deal. Dell was running a special and i had a coupon code for an additional $75.00 off. After talking to a few friends and doing my own reading, i decided to take the plunge and get the Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1-inch FPLCD.

This monitor has been available since 2003. And to this day it is still considered one of the best lcd monitors in its class. Though with time, it suffers only in the contrast ratio and brightness area vs new models. Though none of those models match in native resolution or price. It’s listed price is $749.00. They usually have daily sales, but yesterday i got it for $534.91

I’m pretty excited. It has been a long time since i bought myself a new “toy”. Ive been looking at the ones in the office and at Bryan’s and I think I’m going to be pretty happy with the purchase.