My Cubicle

Trip halfway around the world.

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 05:40:15 -0600

Well I just returned from a trip to China. I had to go for work, but was able to take a day (Sunday) and get out to see some sights. I went to TEDA, China. TEDA, Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area was created 20 years ago with the approval of the Chinese central government. TEDA is about an hour from Tianjin, the third largest city in China and one of the largest industrial ones. I got to see part of the Great Wall and Tianjin.

The Great Wall at Tianjin is also called the Huangyaguan Great Wall and runs on the ridge of mountains to the north of Ji County, Tianjin. It was initially built in Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577) and later renovated and lengthened in Sui Dynasty (581-618) and again during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The ancient Great Wall of this section had a length of 42 kilometers (about 26 miles), but it suffered extensive damage throughout its long history. In 1987, it was repaired and began to receive tourists. This section is the longest restored section of the Great Wall with a length of 3052 meters (about 3337 yards).

I spent a total of 12 days out of town. After three days of lost luggage, spending 14 hours in luggage tracking, I finally could get down to business. Why does luggage take over three days to get from Chicago to Beijing? Especially when it had some equipment and parts needed to work, and some of which I dare not attempt to bring on the plane. Some of the excursion pictures are here. Overall the trip was good, but it was great to get back to the US.

Extended Weekend

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:45:28 -0600

Well it's a holiday weekend. I know all of the nuts are going to be out and about, so, I'm not. I don't have any plans for the holiday, but I'll probably mess around the house - nothing too definite. On a side note, I've updated my blog three entries in less than a month, all because someone complained about me not updating it, and I think my assumption is correct that few if none check it out. Oh well.

Last one down . . .

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:17:05 -0600

Well, I finally finished the last class required for my Comp. Sci. degree. It didn't quite take me a year, 1 week shy. I took the last test for my independent study music class Wednesday, so now begins the arduous process of getting it transferred to the illustrious University of Georgia (Note the sarcasm?). Something I'm not looking forward to. Why do things like this require so much frustration? But once that's done they can mail me the piece of paper and it'll join the other one on the top shelf of the closet.

New Entry

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:46:13 -0600

Well someone said . . .

"Well, why haven't you updated your blog???? I can't believe you are so far behind.... :) What have you been doing??? "

What's bad is that I had just seen this person 3 days earlier. Well my response was that nobody read my blog but that didn't mean they were a nobody. So, I may or may not update this. Stay tuned.....

Trip to Prague

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:33:22 -0600

What a way to end a year by a trip to Prague, Czech Republic. I went there to record a choral competition. The sound recorded was pretty good. I'm anxious to hear the audio post-processing. On to the good stuff, here are some pictures.

Trip to Itay

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 08:49:00 -0600

Well, I finally have gotten over jet lag and am now in the Eastern Time Zone. I went to Italy to record the church sanctuary choir as they performed in a choral competition. They performed well.

We left Tuesday around 3:00 p.m. After a 9.5 hours of planes, we arrived in Milan Italy around 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. Our hotel was REALLY nice, 4 star hotel which was in between Bardolino and the lakeside village of Cisano. We had the open ceremony later that evening and then crash back at the hotel after being up for over 24 hours.

Thursday we ventured to Venice. We left the hotel and traveled by motorcoach (don't call it a bus) to the ferry over to Venice. There we recorded a concert at Santa Maria della Pieta church. From there we were able to tour Venice on our own. We saw St. Mark's Basilica and the Rialto Bridge and wandered through the shopping district. I did notice that the canals have a certain distinctive aroma, I only occasionally noticed it and even then only on small, stagnant canals.

Friday was the day of the competition where the choir performed at the Teatro Nuovo in Verona. Following the performance, we skipped over to the church of St. Tomaso where we laid down two more recording tracks. We were able to enjoy time on our own in the city. We saw the Arena di Verona and Juliette's balcony.

Saturday was also spent in Verona as we attended the closing ceremonies at teh Teatro Filarmonico. The evening friendship concert was cancelled due to the pope's passing.

We left Verona at 3:00 a.m. and headed to Milan to fly towards the west. 10.5 hours later, Atlanta, and 3 days later my body said I was back on Eastern Standard Time.

The trip was really enjoyable, a short trip, but long. The sites over there were amazing, the US doesn't have anything to compare. The history of some of the places, wow.

Here are the pictures ITALY2005 |->Venice |->Verona |->Teatro Filarmonico

Trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 08:17:05 -0600

Well I just got things organized from my trip out to Jackson Hole. It purely a pleasure trip. Pictures can be found here.

	We went snowmobiling to Granite Hot Springs and grilled lunch.
	The next day we snowmobiled into the Gros Ventre. We saw alot of wildlife and ate lunch at a lodge.
	I spent the next day skiing at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. (And I didn't break anything).
	The following day we went dog sledding. I was even able to drive the team. That was an experience. Our two lead dogs have finished the Iditarod twice. The guy that runs it has completed it before and runs it regularly.
	Then we took a sleigh ride out at Mill Iron Creek Ranch. We had steak for dinner and it was a steak.
	We were supposed to fly out Saturday but all flights were cancelled due to the snow storm that was coming in. So we spend some more days there (darn).
	Sunday's flights were also cancelled so I went skiing again at Snow King. It is just a couple of blocks from the main town square and people will go there to ski on their lunch break. Not a bad way to spend it. Monday we went to the National Wildlife Art Museum We took a sleigh ride out into the National Elk Refuge. There were about 2500 elk down from the high country and as more snow falls that number will increase. Finall on Tuesday, our flight left.

Get Mozilla Calendar to Update php iCalendar

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:10:57 -0600

Recently I have been working with an online calendar. However I ran into a problem, how to synchronize it with a desktop calendar. For this I used Mozilla's Sunbird calendar. I wanted it to sync with php iCalendar (site currently down). I currently have the file stored here. And the web hosting has ftp capabilities. Installation of the calendar only required extracting the archive
tar -xvzf phpicalendar-1.1.gz This creates a folder called phpicalendar-1.1 I moved this folder into a web accessible directory and renamed it calendar to make it easier to navigate to. Most of the defaults in the config file (config.inc.php) are sufficient except verify the following setting
auth_method = 'ftp'

Click on the image for a larger view.

In the Mozilla Sunbird click on File => New Calendar File
In the dialog box that appears (shown at left) enter a name for the calendar and the remote server url like this
ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@ftp.path.to.the.ics.file
And check the box to Automatically publish changes

Then Sunbird will download the calendar from the server and you can make changes and they will automatically be reflected on the web calendar.

More GMail Invites

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 06:43:13 -0600

Here are some gmail invites. FCFS. ~~Invite #1~~ Taken ~~Invite #2~~ Taken ~~Invite #3~~ Taken ~~Invite #4~~ Taken ~~Invite #5~~ Taken ~~Invite #6~~ Taken ======================================= Update 10-19-04: And some more ~~Invite 7~~ Taken ~~Invite 8~~ Taken ~~Invite 9~~ Taken ~~Invite 10~~ Taken ~~Invite 11~~ Taken ~~Invite 12~~ Taken If you use one, e-mail me. Stephen

Torrential Tuesday

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 13:53:03 -0600

Well Hurricane Frances is upon us. It's raining, raining, and raining. It's been raining all night and all day today. They're predicting 5-7 inches of rain. But atleast it's not a real heavy rain, just steady. ================================== UPDATE: 09-09-04 Well according to my "official" rain guage in the back yard, we had over 6 inches of rain over two days.

New Semester

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 17:25:18 -0600

Well a new semester has started up in full swing. A pain as usual. I'm SO sick and tired of this place. But anyway, classes aren't going to be much fun. Could be, but doesn't look like it. On a side note, I've had to revert back to M$ Windows for ease of inter-compatibility. I'm just not sure what will happen for my Computer Graphics class with having to program in X or OpenGL.

Sysadmin Day

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:16:35 -0600

System Administrator Appreciation Day - A special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning.

Just some amusing items to keep you entertained. And remember, gifts on sysadmin day are always welcome.

Sys Admin Day (2002) Song by Wes Borg - Do you know what "PC Load Letter" means?
Advice to Employees the Proper Use of the System Administrator's Valuable Time
The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH)
	http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/index.html
The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) Archive
	http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html
Tina's Computer Geek Humor & Jokes
	http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/computer.html
Why You Can't Find Your System Administrator
	http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/sysadmin.html
A Week in the Life of a System Administrator
	http://www.avdf.com/jan98/hum_h003.html
101 Things You Do Not Want Your System Administrator To Say
	http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/computing/101things.html
Tech Tales - The funniest tech support stories on the Internet
	http://www.techtales.com

New GMail account

Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:11:54 -0600

Well I just got an invite for a gmail account. So I'm excited Well maybe not that happy, but interested to check it out. If I get some invites to share, I'll look at the comments and pick someone to invite. While you're waiting, check out the comic at userfriendly.org.

UPDATE: (06-30-04) Here is the link to my first invite. If it is still available, take it.
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7ec5b50508-4a831fd0c9
And please leave me a comment if you get it.

Long awaited update . . .

Thu, 10 Jun 2004 06:47:37 -0600

Well, it's been awhile since I added an update. But since then, I've been really busy. I finished up Spring semester better off than I expected. I survived Senior Engineering Design and received an 'A'. I have to take summer classes since I have to take a course in the Fall that is only offered in the fall, but requires a class that I don't have as a prerequisite. I went ahead and got my PE out of the way, I took golf. It was really strenuous and hard (note the sarcasm). Other than school and work, not much time is left for other things. I'm working 40 hour weeks with 10 hours of classes. It makes for some really long days. But, "you gotta do, what you gotta do". Hopefully, the next update will not be as distant from this one.

Music Server

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 10:45:31 -0600

Well, I worked on a server yesterday, it's an old P-II 266 MHz. It's my new music server. It will be attached to my stereo and stream MP3's from my main machine. It has Snowcrash as web based control. So I can control it from any computer on the network. It also has a Matrix Orbital LCD to display song title, artist, EQ. Visualizations, etc. LCDC controls the output to the LCD and at some point I'll add buttons on the front of the player to control songs which LCDC handles nicely. I'll post pictures soon. Update: =============================================== Here are some pictures of the unit.