OSX86 on my laptop

So, where have I been the last 2 days? Pretty much trying to get my laptop to work 24/7, or nearly that. A waste of a day really, but oh well. I had some relaxing time comming my way IMO anyway.


above, you can see that in fact the fruits of my labor are... fruitful. I can now boot OSX (with wireless support!) or windows XP media center edition - which i think is pretty sweet.


Not much else going on - my brain is pretty fried thanks to stair-ing at my computer for the past 2 days straight. Tonight i'm going over to hang out with Dan and his girlfriend/andrew/nick/mark/somebody else. should be a good time, i hope.

I'll take pics :)

Oh! Went to the Three Muskateers show last night in the Rosza - I was not terribly impressed.

belize

trip to belize is booked. the may 12-22.

excited, and sort of nervous. staying in the jungle for a few days, which will be pretty fun. its supposed to be pretty awesome, or so i hear. anyway though, we're doing this "black hole" thing though, which i'm not so much looking forward too. i'm very afraid of heights. like very very. when lindsay and i were painting houses i'm sort of ashamed to admit that she'd crawl on up the ladders to pain windows, i would shake so bad the i couldnt paint at all... anyway, one of these things:

The first 10 feet provides the adrenaline, the next 200 feet provides an unforgettable experience and sights to behold, the last 100 feet takes you down through the rainforest canopy.

Apparently its scary or something. I dont know - i guess we'll see.

And now, after a long week (or 2 or 3), i'm going to actually go to bed early tonight - but not before watching an episode of macgyver ;)

peace love and seashells
kev

tax returns

got my tax returns - 168 dollars - putting it into an account for a trip this summer, or for a return trip to europe.

i'm also selling a camera lens, and a BCD. And, hopefully i'll make a little extra from winter carnival (i damn well better, considering i spent the bulk of the thing in an office or taking pictures instead of having fun with my friends :()

woot for saving. woot for money.

p.s. though i still have a phone bill that i'm giong to have to pay like 70 bucks a month for :( - i'm so pissed!

connect n

So, here is our game. Martin is responsible for the GUI, i'm responsible for the graphic images (which i'll admit arnt spectacular). Its going pretty well i'd say, i think it looks good.

I'm going to change around a lot of stuff, but you get the idea. It will be networkable btw, WAN style :)

why a blog?

so, lindsay always gives me shit about having a blog. jeff (my ol' CS3141 buddy) just asked me the same.

I guess i dont really know why. I mean, xanga, live journal, and facebook to a large extent have serve (in very large part) as a way to show off, or brag, or fish for compliments, etc. everybody likes getting compliments, regardless if you admit it or not (sometimes not in all situations), and xanga/livejournal/myspace "comments" are indeed a way to achieve that goal. I suppose its the same for blogspot i suppose (where this blog is currently at). Obviously in the worse case, using xanga/livejournal/myspace simply for this is probably somewhat weak/shallow/insertproperwordhere.

HOWEVER, i like to think that my xanga was used mainly to share my experiences with other people. I'll admit that i more than once posted a photo that i was particularly proud of hoping for positive feedback. obviously. but in general, my xanga switched from being a personal diary to a place to share photos to a place to say something to somebody to a place to be emo. Which is why I switched here.

Now, when I post photos they will be here for ever. All of my photos before were hosted by myself, and occasionally when my web webspace was limited i'd delete older content. here, I can post photos and 10 years later they'll still be here. Which, while possibly not so fantastic now, will be hella (ke ke ke) cool 10 years from now, looking back.

I do like to think that people read my blog however. See, its complicated: I switched to this blog so that photos would last for ME personally, however when I originally post photos it is for the sake of the visitors to this blog, so they can see whats happening, etc. Again though, it will be me that benifits 10 years from now.

And now i'll make a real blog entrance :)

studios and macgyver

so i miss taking photos i enjoy looking at. i enjoy looking at photos of people, in general. interesting photos of people.

i've had a studio setup, not top of the line, but u know, 300$+ for 3 semi decent strobes.. but that just isnt for me. even though the recycle times is decent (time between flashes), it still is not what I like. HOWEVER, next time i'm home for an extended period of time i think i'm going to set up a little mini ghetto cheap studio in my garage - basically, take a bunch of florest garage lighting fixtures from home depot, mount them in a circle on some scrap wood, and ta da! bright light!anyway, we'll see.


so its 3, i'm going to bed. i havnt been to bed before three all week. thats because i've been busy running from project ot class to tests to review, to work to more work to more studying. then i come home at 12 AM, havnt eaten, eat shitty food. then i want to relax for a few minutes instead of just going to bed to do it all over again. so i watch an episode of macgyver. I shouldnt complain, i'm sure the reason i feel so busy is i just dont use my time perfectly efficiently. oh well.


in other news, i HAVE taken showers, but its been like 3 weeks since i've washed my hair. its starting to look like the black from CSI LA's hair. I'm gonna run with this until i cant run with it anymore.


night all. morning all others.

time for another (less interesting) blog for the blogosphere - which includes talk of MacGyver

I'm at work currently. Hi Dave. Hi peter. Hi Richard. Hi Amie. Hi matt. Hi john. Hi Kasia. Hi self.
works going OK. Waiting for photosizes can get a bit oldish sometimes, however i brought some schoolwork, as well as an episode of macgyver.

Which brings me to something I feel very passionate about: MacGyver.

It's hard for me to explain how I feel about this show, because no doubt anybody who has tried to watch an episode here or there has found that the show is old, bad acting by most of the extras, cheesy lines, etc. Hell, its from the 80s, and the 80s suck.

BUT, I say to you non-believers of MacGyver's awesomeness: persevere. Watch a few more shows. Because what I think you'll find (as I myself did) is that the show is quality. Here are the main reasons

Most importantly, each episode is almost completely independent, and each story has a completely different theme/element. For instance, today I watched an episode of MacGyver where he worked with a police force to catch a serial killer. Yesterday I watched an episode where he ran people through this wilderness survival camp, and found drug smugglers in the wilderness. The day previous, MacGyver raced cars. Then there's an episode where he solves a ghost type problem (or whatever). Once he got stranded with Omish folks and had to save a child caught in a mine. And the list goes on.

Each episode has a different cast, only MacGyver and his sidekick (the head of the phoenix organization) are really noticeable from episode to episode. Because of these things, each episode is a fresh experience - you never know what's going to happen.

If you can forgive the somewhat bad acting (which I'm getting better and better at - it can be done, even if you're a sinicle bastard like myself) and 80's hairstyles/clothing/video quality, its a great show. ALSO: DONT BE DISAPPOINTED WHEN YOU SEE HIS GADGETS HE INVENTS AREN'T ALWAYS AS COOL AS YOU REMEMBER THEM BEING!!! When I was a kid I thought the stuff he thought up was fucking incredible. Now, sometimes I think "meh" or "that's not really possible, physics stops that from having any affect". Ol' MacGyver still manages to impress me with his wit every once in a while though.

Give it the ol' 1 2 watch-a-ru (Ru!)

ALSO: MacGyver recently was seen helping protect baby seals. Seriously, what a guy:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/03/07/macgyver050307.html







MacGyver is a bad ass - seen here with his classic Swiss army (assumed) knife.














What a hottie! (for all of the female blog readers (which there are probably very few of))











A bit of fan art - though he looks rather feminine in his fan art rendition. Oh well. We (I) still love him.

sometimes i'm a bit wasteful

so last night i get home from programming late - for all of you keeping up with my wonderful blog, u probably read this below. what did i do? well, i attempted to install a media center front end on my laptop. my server (downstairs) sort of died (sort of - possible hard drive integrity issue, or it might just be a ide cable problem, i dont really know and dont have time to find out right now) so i'm going to use my new remote on my laptop for now.

For those of you who dont know what i'm talking about when I say HTPC (home theater PC), in my case i'm simply talking about a nice, simple, remote controlable interface to play music, movies, or pictures on. here are some screen shots from MediaPortal (which is an open source project - pretty nice actually, though i'm having problems with it):








This is just the main menu - nice large buttons, sex-e layout. its made so you can easily control the computer with a remote, from your chair, bed, living room couch, etc.












this particular application can automatically interface with IMDB.com provide movie reviews/ratings from withint hte media center. a nice little feature :).










Here is an example of the picture function - you can have the program automatically scroll through pictures and play random songs, etc. sort of a nice ambiance thing.








Of course there are a lot more features, but 1. i doubt anybody reading this really cares and 2. if you care, you can check out www.mediaportal.com (or www.meedio.com). Anyway, I think because of some driver problems i'm having trouble with the user interface with mediaportal (its unusably slow). I'm going to try and install new drivers and see if that fixes my problems. If not, i'm left with 2 real options:

1. use meedio - i hate this program, terrible UI, terrible customization, and no "out of the box" support for my remote (more on this later).
2. install a new operating systems, reformat, etc, etc - Windows Media Center Edition. This option is looking more and more like its going to happen - the problem is, that I currently own a 100% legit version of windows XP pro which is nice to have - it makes getting updates from microsoft very easy. If I install Media Center Edition I'll have to install my copy from jaurez, mexico - which means dealing with getting updates, etc, etc. Still, Media Center Edition (MCE) has a very nice UI (user interface) and it works very well in general. Plus there are a TON of great plugins/extra features you can install, that actually work.


Onto my remote: I purchased this thing on ebay for around 30 bucks. It was my "big purchase" for the month... I think it was a good investment. It makes watching TV shows/Movies from a couch/tv/etc very easy. Here is the remote:


You'll notice there are about 1000 buttons on the remote - i personally dont like this fact, because although it gives you lots of options, its somewhat difficult to control the remote from under the covers/pitch black (the buttons are not backlit). Still, its a nice remote - you can control the mouse with the little nub (the round button near the top) and the control has left/right/middle mouse buttons. pretty handy in case you need to click something at anytime.



Although most people will find this boring, the reciever (picture left) is the primary reason i bought this remote (besides the fact that it was relativly cheap ;)) - it is RF based (radio frequency) as aposed to IR (infra red) which means you dont need direct line of sight to use the remote. In other words I can be under my covers in my bed with the remote and still change channels - i can even be down the hall or in the bathroom and pause/play/turn up/down the music playing on my computer. It even works from downstairs. which I think is pretty sweet, and deffinetly a nice feature. No more having to "aim" the controller at anything.



Ok, so thats that. I ended up watching 2 episodes of MacGyver last night, which mean I didnt get as much sleep as I could/should have. I've been studying most of today (besides right now when writing this) and plan on going back to studying now.

OH! one last thing (ok, 2). First, i've given up writing in all lowercase. although i enjoy how it looks, its to much of a pain - so i'll just capitalize some stuff, leave other stuff lower case. like this. Or this. Etc. The other thing:

http://shoelessblog.com is now forwarded to this blog, along with http://oktocry.com . if anybody plans on keeping up/checking the blog regularly, it might be easier to remember then kevinam.blogspot.com - certainly a hell of a lot easier to type. The idea behind oktocry has not worked out yet, so i'll just use it for my blog :) (it is giong to be a place for people to send pictures of themselves crying (basically) along with a description of what it was making them sad. Might sound stupid, but it would/will be great - just have to find people who desire to share a personal side of them with the public. something like www.postsecret.com. in order to keep things a bit "secret" and a bit "private", i'd only include pictures of the eyes, not the entire fair/hair/etc. Just the eyes.). I've actually gotten a few random people who have sent me pictures/a paragraph already - if you ever feel like contributing, send a photo/headshot + short paragraph to submit@oktocry.com - once i have a decent number of participants, i'll put up the actual webpage - if you feel more comfortable, you can crop the picture however you want it so you cant tell who you are, and send it from an annonomous email address - i'll never post any names, email addresses, etc.


email me at kevin@shoelessblog.com

and finally done!

finished up my program around 12 - i'm very happy to be done with it. in the end, it turns out to not be too terribly difficult, mainly just hard because of all the time i spent distracted doing other stuff :(.

i don't know if my days are truly more stressful, or if i'm just getting older, or out of shape, or not eating properly, but it really seems like i appreciate my sleep more and more every day. what's more, i get more and morn worn out. either way, i'm going to bed :).


not much exciting happening - thinking/hoping to take a 1 or 2 weeks trip out east with lindz this summer, pretty excited about the prospect. mainly just camping, hiking, seeing new york (ny), possibly visiting ian in ithaca along the way. its definitely going to happen, its just a question of when.

my trip to Belize has been schedule now. it doesn't look like i'll get a chance to backpack around however, as we are going from the 12-22, and for now i'm going to assume i start work on the 29th - i want to get home and have some time to get ready for work (again, assuming i get the research spot at Hope).

another trip i'm really looking forward to: right before school starts, kev, nick and i (and hopefully lindz and who knows who else) are hopefully going to backpack across isle royal. nick and kev did it last year by themselves, but hopefully i'll be able to go this year. it sounds like a pretty incredible time. i know they have lots of stories from last year - memorable no doubt.


that's about it. night all. <3

scott lindz and i. that is scotts boomarang. which he killed a man with later that day.

ian and i at the world record thing

scotts cake. inside joke i guess. actually, not really - lindsay was just talking about how it was a poor way to say a girl was attractive by saying "i'd hit it" to scott/ian/me/etc. i dont remember where the penis came about. oh well.

u know? ;)

lots of us at the world record thing

staci and bret at the world record thing

everybody looks at the wonderful cake.

scott gets his happy birthday cake and seems happy/supprised

a hot photo of my girl

nick and i are the world record thing

scott looks plenty silly by himself

lindsay and i look silly together

potentially emo.

ian drinks coffee, jack looks sort of bored, lindsay looks sort of oddly at ian or me or somebody

the sushi

scott (almost?) blows out the candles

everybody sits around waiting for food. which was pretty good. though i dont think i ate much/any.

World Record

Just figured I'd post photos (finally) from the world record stuff up here durring carnival... One of my fine Lode photographers took these (thanks peter), as Lindsay, Ian, Scott, Paul, Nick, Jack, Derik, Staci, Bret, Grant, and I were out throwing stuff. it was a good time. the worlds largest snow ball was 6'7" which doesnt seem that big, but it had to be rolled - apparently its very difficult to roll a 6' ball of snow. the snow angles/snow ball fight record was around 3000 or so participants. it was a pretty cool experience, and its nice to be able to say/think that i'll be in the guiness book of world records when the next edition comes out :).

tonight..

tonight was sort of meh. very meh. working on a program, couldnt concentrate. would have started earlier but i ended up runnign around like "a chicken with its head cut off" from photo assignment to photo assignment from 5-10 basically. then i was too tired to really concentrate. so i'm behind. which sucks. i'm going to be spending my entire day tomorow programming.

see photos below for some random photos from tonights assignments. meh.

<3

Chinese Performances

These photos are from the "performances" from the chinese spring festival performances. Turns out most of the "performances" where power point presentations. Which, though somewhat interesting, actually weren't. Not to mention, TERRIBLE photo conditions.


a woman sings some music



some people talk about what is going to happen next. exciting


a girl acts.

Level 2 Dee concert

had to take photos at the Dee stadium - i had never been to the venue, but it was actually pretty nice. There was a skate park, pretty good size, you could watch people doing jumps and stuff during the concert - sort of cool i think. concert was ok, though i was in a hurry/stressed so i didnt really stay for long/enjoy the music. oh well.


some kids watch some people play some music


a guy plays some music


the skatepark you could watch durring the concert


the band (one of)

Dinner photos :)

some food in some food things


people serve dinner


more people eating more food

work and school

well work has been taking up a lot of time this weekend. last night i shot a concert (pics below) which was ok. actually, the music was pretty good, and although i am not anti-religion, the band was centered on religion and talked a lot about "being loved by christ", etc. in general, even that wouldnt be a problem, but the guy how was talking seemed like he was strugling to speak and trying to sound really influential or something. i dont know, it sort of turned me off to the show i guess. i left about halfway through. again, still talented artists, it was overall a positve experience.


today i woke up to go take photos of a winter baja race. nick (roomate) played a big roll in the whole thing, made signs, flyers, helped out in the shop a lot, etc. good guy. anyway, there are a few pictures below (of nick and some of the cars). you wouldnt believe (unless you live up here and went outside today) how cold it is - something like 0 degrees, -19 with the windchill - and trust me, the wind was very much blowing.

when i was getting ready to leave, i had to walk 10 minutes back to my car. i get there, cold as hell, to find my car with a dead battery. i of course left the lights on. so, no biggie, right? no. turns out my hood was frozen shut. i spent 20 minutes trying to pry open my hood. my hands hurt like shit, at the same time i'm sweating in my coat. some guy ended up comming over with a screw driver and he pulled on the latch while i pried, we opened it. another guy came over with jumper cables (who the hell has my jumper cables btw?) and we got my car going. i was very thankful, as i was truly near tears. stressful day didnt need a dead car in the middle of nowhere to deal with.


now i'm late for work again. plus i have to run to the labs for the rest of my night. meh.

edit: on the positive side of things, this is the third time i've gone through the drive through and this guy has given me a free pop. those of you who have ever gone through a fast food line with me ordering probably know i tend to talk to the people a lot, and a while ago i got in this conversation (nothing too serious, maybe just kidding/joking) with this dude. you all probably find me annoying, but appreantly he appreciated the livly banter. anyway, it makes me feel good thinking that somebody somehow knows when i come through (no cameras that i can see) and gives me a free pop - even though its not a big deal. still a nice gesture. thank you mr. taco bell man.

he sings, he plays the guitar, he plays the keyboard, he praises the lord!

2 main guitarists of the band. they were from california btw.

the lead singer from "something like sailas" sings. a song.

and just in case u havnt seen enough of the 2 main guys...

another picture. of the main guy.

"something like sailas" starts off their set - I wasnt a huge fan, but they were pretty decent - some good sounds, never seen postal service type effects done live so that was interesting

nick smiles - mr baja himself