Box of Tricks: “Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect, lives in a tiny apartment, but thanks to accordion-like wall units, he can create at least 24 different room configurations.”

This type of innovation is extremely refreshing to see.

(Via Unclutterer.)

Church, we would do very very well to heed this message:

I’m consolidating my tech and selling some older stuff off, therefore e-baying my iMac G5. It’s a great machine, but the siren call of the Macbook Pro was too great for me to resist.

I’m selling this puppy with a lot of extras. It’d be a great school machine, and even makes a formidable design/development machine still. Happy bidding!

(update this sold for a pretty good price. Thanks to all the bidders!)

.

I’m looking to unload a DLP projector that I purchased as sort of a failed business move. It’s only been used twice (to my knowledge). Once to watch the Superbowl, and once to watch Kingdom of Heaven. It works like a charm, I just don’t need it, and want it out of my house. I have all the original packaging and cables. I also have a screen and ceiling mount (see below).

It’s an HP VP6320, check out the specs and reviews at projectorcentral.com, and here’s the product info at HP.

I’m also offering the screen and ceiling mount I bought to go with it. Both new-in-box. The screen is an EliteSCREENS M136UWS1 136″ Manual Projection Screen,the ceiling mount is a Peerless PRS-UNV Ceiling Projector Mount. I got all this at NewEgg.com, hence the links back there for specs.

I’d part with it all for around $800 OBO, I’ll even ship it to you if need be.

MTV’s Web site is sweet. They just released a fast, clean, HTML+CSS site, a wonderful change from their Flash based behemoth, which really was a technical wonder, but really hard to use. I am totally digging the new version. Mad props to my favorite designer/dev, Dan Cedarholm, for leading the team into the new millennium. Read Dan’s writeup here, and read MTV Labs’ writeup here.

Now, if only they could get their TV content to be just as sweet…

Purevolume, then Virb, now MTV… hey, MySpace, you paying attention? Anyone? Anyone? Didn’t think so…

The Godbit Project did a kind review of rockisu.com

The first thing that grabs your attention when visiting the site is the texture. I love the way the look of ruggedness intermixes with the clean lines. The two conflict yet compliment each other, for a sort of modernly urban feel. The next thing that catches your eye is the photography, reinforcing the notion that this Iowa State University ministry is about reaching out to real people.

I mean like now. As in, call your tech guy, or get out a DVD-R, or whatever you do, and back up your files.

Fortunately, I backed my business finances (quickbooks file) off of Nancy’s laptop where she keeps them the DAY before we went into the hospital (after the last time we modified them). The DAY we got back from the hospital, the hard drive fried. No warning, no decline in performance, just one moment it decided to not boot and made a bunch of weird noises. We lost everything except that file. E-mail, personal finance records from the month of July (fortunately, we have stuff from halfway through June still) all gone. I’m fairly certain I lost a few apps that I hadn’t put anywhere else.

I think it was a warning shot for my friends and family, back your stuff up, at least your important stuff, TODAY.

Last year I picked up a bike at a garage sale for $15. It’s a bit too short for me, and the tires are always a little low on air (it’s a cheap target brand bike), but it’s a lot of fun to ride. I’ve been riding it around a bit more here and there, and would love to use it for all my short range travelling needs, but it’s just a bit hard to pedal (due to size, and slightly deflated tires.) So I started dreaming…

.

The Trek SU100. MSRP: $419.00

A great value. Great bike (according to reviews). Similar to the Giant I owned for 7 weeks before it got stolen, thought that was more of a mountain bike. It’s just a bit out of my price range right now (my price range for bicycles currently being $0).

If anyone knows of a great used bike place, or happens to have a chance to pick one of these up for free (or is just feeling incredibly generous…) let me know :)

Getting in shape, saving money on fuel, and SINGLE HANDEDLY STOPPING GLOBAL WARMING! What more can you ask for? :)

I have just upgraded the MovableType software that NotOurHome lives on. This means changes in many possible things, not the least of which is the way things look when you log in. I’m not sure the extent of the changes, or if everything still works, so if you run into any problems, let me know.

Along with this change comes 2 things:

1. A whole slough of much better looking styles to choose from.
2. I’m going to solicit another round of donations (which I haven’t done in years!). If you could pitch in $5-$10 (or more) bucks, that would really really help Russ and I keep things up and running. The easiest way to do this would be to hand me or Russ cash. The second easiest way would be to donate through paypal with this handy button:

With each donation, I will install a new style of your choosing for you.

Enjoy!

I’m exhausted. The last several weeks have been many late nights and packed schedules doing many different things; mostly working. I have several sites that have gone live or are going live soon over the last several weeks.

In the midst of all of this, I have decided to be a little selfish and give THIS SITE a long over-due makeover. The design is complete, the new WordPress theme is created, all I need to do is click a button. Why haven’t I done this yet? I’m waiting until May 1. I will be participating in May 1 Reboot this year.

Monday at high noon (Central time) you can all see the beautiful new creation. Until then, you can see a small preview/teaser here.

If I may toot my own horn for a moment (toot toot!), Godbit, a site I contribute to from (rare) time to time was recently inducted into the 9rules network*.  There was even a nice write-up about Godbit on their blog by 9rules’s man, Shawn Anthony.

If the Christian faith ever needed a handful of post-modern, technological prophets, it is now, and Godbit is chock full of them (Andy Knight, Cody Lindley, David Hemphill, Jeremy Flint, Justin Thorp, Matt Heerema, Nathan Logan, Nathan Smith, Ray Williams, Robert Evans, Rob Soulé, Ryan Hargrave, Ryan Heneise, Tim Bednar, Yannick Lyn Fatt, and their many readers).

Thanks guys.

*for the unitiated, 9rules is a fairly high-profile network of blogs/web sites that consistently produce high quality content.  From their about page:

The 9rules Network is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics. We started 9rules to give passionate writers more exposure and to help readers find great blogs on their favorite subjects. It’s difficult to find sites worth returning to, so 9rules brings together the very best of the independent web all under one roof.

Gmail has recently added a “Web clips” section to their Webmail (or is that a function of me having google desktop installed?). It usually provides mildly interesting related links associated with your e-mail.

This was hillarious though. As seen while purging my spam folder.

mmmm. Spam

[tags]Webmail, email, spam, google, gmail[/tags]

I just got back from Philadelphia where I had the great fortune of attending An Event Apart 2005. (A Web design conference put on by THE guys…)

I posted about it on my Web Design blog.

• Post 1
• Post 2
• Post 3

Here are my photos from the trip:

From the Wall Street Journal

A New Gold Standard for PCs – WALTER S. MOSSBERG and KATHERINE BOEHRET

“To put it simply: No desktop offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard or Sony or Gateway can match the new iMac G5′s combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software, stability and security. From setup to performing the most intense tasks, it’s a pleasure to use. And, contrary to common misconceptions, this Mac is competitively priced, when compared with comparably equipped midrange Windows PCs; and it handles all common Windows files, as well as the Internet and email, with aplomb.”

Some of you know that the reason I learned to play guitar was because I am an avid air guitarist, which caused no end of frustration to my girlfriend (now wife) back in the day. “You don’t know how to play guitar! Stop that air guitaring, it’s annoying!”

Well, I wasn’t about to give up air guitaring, so I learned to play guitar, thus ending her reasoning for being frustrated. (I later found out that the air guitaring is annoying, regardless of one’s ability to play.)

Well, today I read an article that gives me hope for the future.

Aspiring rock gods can at last create their own guitar solos – without ever having to pick up a real instrument, thanks to a group of Finnish computer science students. The Virtual Air Guitar project, developed at the Helsinki University of Technology, adds genuine electric guitar sounds to the passionately played air guitar.

Thank you Helsinki. What will you think of next??

[tags]Music, Technology, Guitar[/tags]

Of course, mere weeks after I purchase one, Apple updates their iMac line… bah.

The salt in the wound is that they now come with iSight and Mighty Mouse STANDARD, both of which I purchased separately.

Makes me proud to be a Mac user… and by proud I mean.. really confused.

iBook sale erupts in chaos, stampede

Got Web Hosting?

Dreamhost is a sweet hosting company. And they have an amazing deal on until the end of this month.

For $10/month ($8 if you pay two years in advance) I get the following:

*2.4gig storage (increases weekly by 20mb) *120gig Monthly bandwidth (increases weekly by 1gig) *E-mail *1 free domain registrations *up to 3 domains per account

For you geeks: *unlimited mysql databases (with phpMySQLAdmin) *1 click installs of: wordpress, phpBB, MediaWiki, osCommerce, Advanced Poll *1 click MySQL dbase setup *jabber IM *streaming (various media types)

And all sorts of other stuff.

Plus, a sweet rewards/referal program :)

If you need hosting, go with these guys.

This entry has been moved to my test blog.

Ironically, I took my laptop in to the shop the day before my “anniversary”

It’s still there :(

Matt: I’ll tell you a little tale about your computer. The replacement hard drive was installed late on Friday by one of our technicians, after which he started diagnostics just before he took off for the day. A while later, as I was closing things down prior to my leaving, I discovered that the diagnostics had frozen some thirteen minutes into the first pass. I performed a few troubleshooting steps that pointed to possible problems with memory (but not definitively). In the midst of my testing, it started working again. As it was well past 5:00, I left it for this week. Unfortunately, we have not been able to get the system to act up this morning, either. The bottom line is that it appears that the bad sector issue with the hard drive may not have been the primary problem with your computer, and we are still in the process of trying to pin down the cause of the freeze-ups. AIT Computer Service