david giesberg dot com

Classic Alice Cooper, I remember playing that back when I was a DJ at WRPI, that was good times. I’ve been puttering around this week, just hanging out before my summer co-op starts on Monday. Of course, I have had lots of time to find cool links for you:

• Archana’s Blog
  I am writing this from Austin Java where I just helped my friend Archana get all set up on WordPress. She is another student at UT, and is involved in UTweet and Texas Ventures, check out her blog!
• Migas in the Morning Homesick Texan
  The Homesick Texan has a cool post about one of my favorite “Texan” dishes, Migas. I’ve been eating a lot of them recently; usually when I make them, I just do onions in the pan first, then add eggs and let them cook for a second before adding salsa and then tortilla chips (the best come from El Milagro). I serve the whole thing in warm tortillas as a breakfast taco.
• Blackboard Hearts Facebook Geek Stew
  Alan has got a story about the course management suite Blackboard creating a Facebook application that will sync up with the Blackboard installation at your school to send notifications from Blackboard to Facebook, as well as some sort of roster functionality. UT has not updated Blackboard to version 8, but that is supposed to take place next week; stay tuned for an update when I test the Facebook application then.

  For the first time in a really long time, I felt a twinge of excitement that was associated with Blackboard

• Workin’ at the Internet Cafe - Laptop Dilemma Alt Text
  Funny pondering about what to do at a coffee shop when you have your laptop and you need to get up and go to the bathroom - do you leave your computer unsupervised?

  It’s not that I think the guy next to me is going to steal my laptop — he’s already got one, and his is generally nicer — it’s just that I don’t think he’s going to do a damn thing if a desperate-looking hood and/or thug walks right up and grabs my iBook.

Have a great weekend folks and don’t forget to tell your friends about davidgiesberg dot com!

Do you know my website? That’s right, it’s davidgiesberg.com. Want to find me on Facebook? Easy. Go to davidgiesberg.com/facebook. Twitter? davidgiesberg.com/twitter LinkedIn? You guessed it, davidgiesberg.com/linkedin

All of those URLs will redirect you to my public URL for any of those services, I also have it set up for LinkedIn and my tumblr (which is inactive right now). You can do it too, as long as your webhost will allow you to use .htaccess files (which I believe that most basic hosts should be able to do, correct me if I am wrong).

Here’s how to do it:

1. Create a file called htaccess (Windows won’t let you do .htaccess, so we can add that on later) in your text editor of choice
2. In that text file, add a new line for each redirection that you want to do, written out like this:
   Redirect /SERVICENAME http://EXAMPLE.COM/ME
3. Upload that file to your webhost (at the root of your domain, if you want to do it the way I did) once you are all done (don’t overwrite anything that is there, instead download the file that is there and add the stuff you just wrote to the bottom)
4. Add the period at the beginning so the filename is .htaccess
5. Test it out!

Here is what I added to the .htaccess file at the site’s root:
Redirect /facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=17500899
Redirect /linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgiesberg
Redirect /twitter http://twitter.com/davidgiesberg
Redirect /tumblr http://davidgiesberg.tumblr.com

Now you don’t have to remember any site’s weird URLs, you just have standardized easy-to-remember addresses. These can be great for business cards (electronic or hard copy) or email signatures and a good way to use your personal domain.

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released not too long ago and while I thought there were some good updates in there, I thought it was a bit of a lackluster update. Following some experimentation with Kubuntu and Kubuntu KDE4 Remix, I managed to trash some packages and was having little problems with it, so I decided to install Hardy from scratch (the previous installation was a dist-upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy).

Much to my surprise, after fiddling with the proprietary drivers app and enabling the ATI acccelerated graphics driver, I was able to successfully turn on Visual Effects (Normal and Extra) and they work like champs. In Feisty and Gutsy, I was never able to get the effects to work with my Mobile Radeon 7500 in my Thinkpad T42.

Those visual effects bring Ubuntu up to date with the 3D accelerated desktop in Vista and OS X, additionally, Adobe AIR appears to be taking advantage of that acceleration; I’m seeing transparency and fade-in/out effects with Twhirl on the Linux AIR alpha. It’s kind of sad when you think about it, but I think that this really gives my (almost 4 year-old) laptop some more legs. You wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but being able to add that modern style of interface enhancements really adds something to the user experience.

I’ve seen similar sorts of issues with upgrading Ubuntu in the past, not entirely sure why it does that, which is a shame, given how well Ubuntu handles upgrades like that.

With all of the cool stuff on the web, it can be really easy to spend a lot of time just wandering (but we have known that since the web came about). Being that I am on vacation this week, I am particularly susceptible to that, before I start my summer co-op next week.

With this in mind, I decided to experiment with RescueTime as a way to watch over my own shoulder. Basically, RescueTime is a little program that runs on your computer recording where you spend your time on your computer (active webpages and applications), and periodically uploads that data so I can view it online. I think that it will give me a good way to see in black and white, where my time is going when I am on the computer. In a way, it is a lot like Quicken for me, which is a way to see in no uncertain terms, exactly where my money is going.

I have the program running right now and I can say that it does feel a bit like someone is watching over my shoulder (thus I am writing a blog post, instead of engaging in my latest addiction). Hopefully, I will have some interesting stuff to share as the experiment goes on.

Disclaimer: I am one of those heathen omnivores, but I went to Mother’s with my vegetarian girlfriend.

Long story short, I enjoyed everything I had at Mother’s except for the entree.

Good:
The tortilla chips weren’t greasy and the salsa was fresh and tasty, nothing too fancy, but solid starters. For dessert we split some sort of chocolate almond torte - very good and rich. It took some work to cut into though, like it wasn’t entirely defrosted or something…

Not as good:
For my dinner, I had Momma’s Quiche which was very well presented, especially with the good fruits on the side. The quiche itself however, was not very impressive, I didn’t think it was served very warm and it wasn’t terribly flavorful.

I did try the cream of mushroom soup and thought that was pretty good, it tasted very fresh. The veggie burger was… a veggie burger and we’ll leave it at that.

All that said, the service was pretty good, the atmosphere was very nice and chilled out, and the prices were reasonable. I’d like to come back again to try more of their dishes, my hope (and impression) is that I just picked the wrong dish.

3 Stars

This was review was originally posted on yelp.com