Monday, November 9th, 2009Monday, November 9th, 2009

Genius Tasers Himself

This kid might not be the brightest human to ever walk the face of the planet, but his unintentional comic relief if priceless. :)


Saturday, October 31st, 2009Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Scubacraft

So I think I decided what I want for Christmas... A Scubacraft (I saw it in Wired magazine).

It's basically a boat that you can hit a button, and it will go underwater (up to 100 feet). It would be pretty awesome to go scuba diving and instead of leaving your boat at the surface, just take it under water with you when you get to the dive site. :) It's not pressurized, so it's not a submarine (you would still need scuba gear of course).

It also has an onboard computer that controls your ascent and descent so you don't go to quickly and give yourself the bends.

I love you, Santa!

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Google Ups AJAX Search API To 8 Pages

It seems Google has quietly raised it's limitations on how deep you can look into search results for the AJAX Search API. It's always been 4 pages (8 results per page), so you could only see the first 32 results.

All of a sudden it was changes to 8 pages (still 8 results per page), so now you can look at the first 64 results. This is quite handy.

Thanks Google, you're swell!

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

iPhoto ‘09 Faces Spinning Forever

Someone I know uses iPhoto, but the Faces part of it wasn't working. New pictures wouldn't get scanned for faces and the spinning icon next to the Faces label on the navigation bar would just spin forever (and apparently it's always been stuck like that).

I Googled the issue, and came up with hundreds of people having the same problem, but no one seemed to figure out a solution.

After a lot of digging and poking around, I think I found the solution. She imported large folders into iPhoto from her old photo management application, and she had some movies in her photo folders. So this is how I fixed it...

  • Quit iPhoto first.

  • Then get into the guts of your iPhoto Library (right-click the iPhoto Library file in your Pictures folder and do "Show Package Contents").
  • Go to the Originals folder in there and get your movies out of there.
  • Delete the face.db and face_blob.db files.
  • Load iPhoto up and it will start scanning all your faces and with any luck actually get through them all and be kosher going forward.
  • Warning... this will delete all your face tags you had previously (so don't do it if you tagged a bunch of people manually and don't want to lose that).

Random Email #37

I haven't posted a random email in awhile, so here's a new one...

Hello,

I am Mr Mark Jo----, I will like to make reservation for 6 people that will be coming for vacation in your area on the 20th November to 30th November 2009.

If you have vacancy for the specified period, give me the total cost for the whole period of 10 nights, with either 6 single rooms or 3 double rooms for 6 guests.

Number of Persons: 6
Mr & Mrs Alb----{37 and 33yrs}
Mr & Mrs Ben----{40 and 36yrs}
Mr & Mrs Ari----{44 and 38yrs}
Arrival date: 20th November 2009
Departure date : 30th November 2009.
Number of days: 10 days
Number of Guest: 6,

Confirm availability and get back to me with your rates and total cost and if you will accept major credit card for your payment and convert the total price to British Pounds or Euro.

Thank you and looking forward to hear from you soon.

Regards,
Mark

I'm open to suggestions on how much I should charge these guys to stay at my home... let me know.

Monday, October 5th, 2009Monday, October 5th, 2009

The Best News Show Ever

So I'd like to put together a newscast... I want this guy to be my weatherman, and the guy from the previous blog entry needs to be my field reporter.


Saturday, September 26th, 2009Saturday, September 26th, 2009

Reporter Turns Ghetto

The more you watch this, the funnier it gets... watch it ten times. hahaha


Monday, September 14th, 2009Monday, September 14th, 2009

Random Quotes

So I found a draft post for this blog from about 3 years ago that I forgot to post (oops). Better late than never, right? :)

Kerry
arguing with another girl about how I found a plane ticket for cheaper:

"He's a programmer, how can you expect me to compete with that??"

{name withheld (because he's a bitch)}
"My wiener is so small you would need an electron scanning microscope to see it."

Bobby (talking about his Blackberry Pearl)
"i slept w./ my phone last night

made amelia sleep on floor

she was pissed

but who cares - can I use her as a Bluetooth modem??? turns out, i can - but slow as hell"

Saturday, September 12th, 2009Saturday, September 12th, 2009

San Diego Chargers vs. Oakland Raiders

The first Monday Night Football of the season, and it's the Chargers vs. the Raiders. lol

The Chargers play the Raiders twice a year (being in the same division and all), and the Raiders haven't won since 2002. So uh... yeah... If you are a Raiders fan, good luck on Monday. :)

Edit...OMG, the Chargers almost lost... that was too close.

Sunday, August 30th, 2009Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Philip Garrido’s Blog

So the fruitloop that kidnapped an 11 year old girl, held her captive in his backyard shed for 18 years while she bore 2 of his children has a blog.

http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/

So here's the deal... Google is really good at determining relevancy of a webpage and what a webpage is about. Maybe they should modify their algorithms a bit to detect crazy people automatically.

Quotes from his blog..."...the Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world."

"THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF MIND CONTROL

These areas are off limits and a danger to anyone believing they can experience this type of freedom. It belongs to God for the direct application of His Word."

"THIS ALL BEGAN BY GOD REMOVING A PROBLEM FROM MY SHOULDERS THAT BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST BELIEVE IS NOT POSSIBLE TO REMOVE. SINCE THEN MY LIFE HAS SEEN MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS ALLOWING ME TO STAND HERE TODAY A FREE MAN."

Monday, August 24th, 2009Monday, August 24th, 2009

Facebook Is Hard To Use

Proof that you should have to take some sort of IQ test before having a Facebook account.


Friday, August 14th, 2009Friday, August 14th, 2009

MySpace Traffic

I know Alexa data isn't terribly accurate, but for sites under an Alexa rating of 500 *and* within the same market, it's pretty accurate as far as relative traffic to sites you are comparing. That being said, how long do you think before they sell it or shut it down?

Their traffic is almost cut in half from a year ago (and still dropping)...

Friday, July 31st, 2009Friday, July 31st, 2009

Red Bull Cola

Here's some wise words for you based on an experience I had last night. If it's 2am and you are getting ready to go to bed, maybe don't drink two Red Bull cola drinks.

Someone was telling me about them the other day and I was like, "gee, okay... I guess I'll try it to see what it's like."

Also, for the record, it's not very good. Tastes like they just mixed Red Bull and Coke 50/50.

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

How To Get Twitter Followers

Well actually, I'm not exactly sure how because I have Twitter followers since I don't have a Twitter account, but apparently I have have a couple Twitter accounts...

http://twitter.com/digitalpoint/ - 1,127 followers
http://twitter.com/shawnhogan/ - 63 followers

Stupid, but funny. lol

Monday, July 27th, 2009Monday, July 27th, 2009

I’m An Uncle

Hey look, my sister had a baby... I'm an uncle. :)

Friday, July 24th, 2009Friday, July 24th, 2009

vBulletin 3.8.3 Upgrade…

Okay, gonna go ahead and upgrade the Digital Point Forums to vBulletin 3.8.3... Since so many of you are freaks and are on it 24/7, I made this post to keep you up to date on what's going on (I'll update it periodically throughout the process). You can also use this blog post as the new temporary forum for all your discussion needs while I do the upgrade. hah

  • 3:26 am - Reading and posting seems to work... I suppose that's good enough for now (still working on the other stuff, but don't need to force everyone off to do it).
  • 3:24 am - Skimming over various areas of the forum to see if things (mostly) work. I could let you guys in before the templates are fully updated possibly.
  • 3:22 am - New moderator permissions set
  • 3:17 am - Static CSS files located on single server in web cluster and spread around properly (I hate this about vBulletin BTW... gimme a hook location to do it please!)
  • 3:09 am - Core upgrade done.
  • 3:07 am - Recoded some of the upgrade scripts so they aren't making that change to the reputation table. Will deal with issue this later instead.
  • 3:00 am - Stupid reputation table was altered in 3.8.0 to not allow negative userids so it can accommodate 4 billion users instead of "only" 2 billion. Stupid. I used negative userids internally for some stuff. /thinking what to do about this...
  • 2:55 am - First problem... reputation table alterations not going well. Going digging in raw database...
  • 2:50 am - Running "ALTER TABLE pmtext" on DB servers. That's a big one... going to get another beer.
  • 2:49 am - Up to version 3.8.0 alpha 1
  • 2:43 am - It's almost 3am. If you are a cute girl reading this, please post your picture in the comments, k thanks.
  • 2:41 am - I forgot we have to go through all versions to get to the newest... lol... going through 3.7.0 beta 4 at the moment.
  • 2:40 am - Userlist rebuilding
  • 2:36 am - Watching DB servers alter thread table for tagging support... (this is really boring)
  • 2:34 am - Watching DB servers alter thread table for prefix support... /bored
  • 2:30 am - New PHP files in place and synced across web server cluster
  • 2:29 am - DB backup done
  • 2:27 am - Thinking I might not have enough beer for this...
  • 2:25 am - DB backup still running (it's huge... many, many, many gigs)
  • 2:18 am - Got beer and craisens
  • 2:17 am - Backing up DB
  • 2:13 am - Making this post

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Sony Blu-Ray BDP-CX7000ES 400 Disc Changer

So I've been waiting for this thing for awhile now, and it looks like Sony is finally going to be releasing it (even $400 cheaper than previously rumored). Yum, yum...

400 discs, serial control, Ethernet port for pulling meta data via Internet, etc... looks nice to me.

Press ReleaseSONY ORGANIZES YOUR ENTERTAINMENT COLLECTION

WITH NEW 400-DISC BLU-RAY DISC/DVD MEGACHANGER

Company Expands Blu-ray Disc Player Options with Three New Models
NEW YORK, July 23, 2009 – Looking to help consumers simplify and manage their living room entertainment experience, Sony today announced the new BDP-CX960 and the "Elevated Standard" (ES) BDP-CX7000ES 400-disc Blu-ray Disc™ MegaChangers.

The company also announced the BDP-S1000ES single disc ES player expanding the Sony's Blu-ray Disc line to 13 models offering a broad set of performance and features.

The Blu-ray Disc MegaChanger models store and play 400 Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, and CDs, allowing consumers to relocate their disc library to a convenient, easy-to-access location.

They also feature the ability to download information from Gracenote's MusicID® and VideoID™ products to organize movies and music. When a disc is inserted into the device, Gracenote technology automatically downloads information across an existing Internet broadband service and saves title, director, some cast information, release year, and genre information for most titles, allowing users to easily navigate the library intuitively through the player's xross media bar™ menu system.

"Think about all those great movie and music discs in your collection," said Chris Fawcett, vice president for Sony Electronics' home audio and video business. "Wouldn't it be great to instantly play those movies or CDs -- definitely gives a new meaning to the notion of a movie marathon!"

BDP-CX7000ES and BDP-CX960

Leading the MegaChanger line up is the BDP-CX7000ES which outputs full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema™. Designed to integrate with third-party automation control systems, the model features an RS232 connection and IR-in and is built to high-quality ES standards.

It offers exceptional audio quality with 7.1 channel analog output and superior video incorporating Sony's HD Reality Enhancer and Super Bit Mapping technologies. The HD Reality Enhancer technology continually analyzes the original source bit by bit, sharpening edges and reproducing detail, while reducing the effects of film grain. Super Bit Mapping delivers smoother color gradation realizing true 14-bit equivalent color tone from 8-bit sources.

The model also upscales standard definition DVDs to 1080p through Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology when connected to a 1080p display via HDMI.

Precision Cinema HD Upscale uses advanced conversion and processing to detect image changes at the pixel level, rather than the level of whole scan lines. Additionally, separate algorithms are used to process the moving and still parts of an image, resulting in sharp backgrounds with moving objects that are free from motion artifacts.

Complementing the BDP-CX7000ES, is the new BDP-CX960. This 400-disc MegaChanger also delivers full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output and Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology.

Both the BDP-CX7000ES and BDP-CX960 feature an Ethernet port for connectivity to a local home broadband network to download metadata from Gracenote, software updates and to access BD-Live™ content. There is also an external port for local storage so users can add their USB flash storage device to support BD-Live content.

The models support 7.1 channel Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus, DTS®-HD High Resolution Audio, and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding as well as bit-stream output via HDMI. It is compatible with an array of video formats, including BD-ROM/R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD-+ Video/R/RW, CD/R/RW, and MP3/JPEG on BD/DVD/CD recordable media and supports x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology. The BDP-CX7000ES also supports Deep Color via HDMI (v1.3).

The BDP-CX7000ES is available this August for about $1,900, while the BDP-CX960 will be available this fall for about $800.
BDP-S1000ES

The single-disc BDP-S1000ES Blu-ray Disc player bolsters the ES line adding built-in Wi-Fi® (802.11N/G/B/A) capability for easy BD-Live access. The model offers full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema™ and upscales standard definition DVDs to 1080p through Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology.

The model can easily connect to the Internet through an existing wireless home network to download and stream BD-Live content from select titles including additional scenes, short subjects, trailers, interactive games, and more. It also enables easy firmware updates to assist in keeping your player up-to-date with the latest Blu-ray Disc media and features.

While compatible with most wireless routers, the BDP-S1000ES also supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, for a quick and easy connection to enabled wireless routers. Additionally, the player is Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) ready, allowing it to connect to other DLNA compliant devices to watch digital photos on your TV.

The model also incorporates Sony's HD Reality Enhancer, Super Bit Mapping, and Precision Drive HD technology.

It supports Deep Color video output and x.v.Color technology. The player is compatible with an array of video formats, including BD-ROM/R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD-+ Video/R/RW, CD/R/RW, and MP3/JPEG on BD/DVD/CD recordable media.

The model also is compatible with advanced audio codecs including 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS -HD Master Audio, and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio decoding and bit-stream output, as well as analog 7.1 channel output.

The BDP-S1000ES is available this August for about $700.

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Models et al

I gotta say, iMovie HD is really nice for hacking together quick videos with pretty decent quality. I threw together this video for a friend real quick for her company. Oh darn, I get to look at girls in bikinis while editing video. Sad day for me. :(

The original video I output was full 1920x1080 high def, but here's the YouTube version...


Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Override CSS

So I found myself wanting to override a few items in a sitewide CSS file, but only for a single page... Rather than make entire new CSS elements, I figured there had to be a way to override the CSS file with a <style> clause within the page itself...

Sure enough, I finally figured it out... !important...

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.overrideme div.overridemetoo {
  overflow: hidden !important;
  display: none !important;
}
-->
</style>

!important can go at the end of any style attribute and it will override anything that isn't "important".

Sunday, July 19th, 2009Sunday, July 19th, 2009

I’m Getting Married!

...well at least I assume so. I can't imagine he would turn me down.

Dave, you have a Shawn Hogan category on your blog... marry me? <3 We can frolic in a sea of code and whatnot.

http://www.dellanave.com/blog/

If I have a pool party in San Diego, will you come? :)

Saturday, July 18th, 2009Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Spam Blocker Works!

Okay, so I decided not to blog for 2+ years to see if the spam blocker thing I made would work, and sure enough it did... After 2+ years, not a single spam comment got through... I'd say that was pretty good, eh?

On a better note, I have 2 years of life to write about now... stay tuned... :)

Spider Bottlecap Nearly Killed Me

...so as I'm going through the {cough, cough} 2+ years of comments I never got around to moderating on this blog, I came across one that is freaking me out.

http://www.shawnhogan.com/2006/11/vampire-bite.html#comment-33317

Dr. Finch seems to think I have some gnarley spider bite that needs immediate doctor attention and my life is in danger.

I think he missed this part about this post... lol

Quote"Okay, okay... it was from me trying to open a beer bottle with my bare hands last night at poker."

Thank God is all I have to say... if it were otherwise, I might be the first person to die from not moderating their blog comments fast enough.

Friday, July 17th, 2009Friday, July 17th, 2009

Rebooting…

/sbin/reboot -q

Monday, May 7th, 2007Monday, May 7th, 2007

I’m 1,000,000,000 Seconds Old

I just now turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old. Happy birthday to me!!!!

UpdateOkay, for everyone asking how I know... 1 line of PHP code will tell you how many seconds old you are:
<?php
	echo time() - strtotime ('Sept 1, 1975 10:17:00 PST');
?>

Plug in your birthday (not mine) obviously...

Friday, April 27th, 2007Friday, April 27th, 2007

World’s Smallest House

How about a 96 square foot house? :)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2007/04/27/carollloyd.DTL

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Maybe No Less Spam?

The comment spam on my blog here was getting to the point of just being silly... around 4,000 spam comments per day (breaks down to about one every 15 seconds 24/7).

I decided to try and do something about it so I don't have to weed through them manually (the time consumption on this task is one of the biggest reasons I don't post as often as I used to).

So let's see how it works... if you see me posting more often, then you know it worked. ;)

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Padres On Track For All Sorts Of Records

The San Diego Padres won their season opener against San Fransisco 7-0. Let's just put that in perspective for a moment. That puts the Padres on track to go 162-0 (undefeated the entire season, which no team has ever come remotely close to doing). It also puts them on track to outscore opponents 1,134-0. The Yankees last year went 97-65 last year, and outscored opponents 930-767 for the season.

Craziness I say...

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007

My Face Is So Popular It’s Red

I don't recall how I came across this image, but I was rather surprised to see it randomly (considering it's me)...

Some sort of heat map where people look at an image, and decide what's the most interesting part of it by clicking somewhere on it...

So people thought my face was interesting I guess... either that or they knew their click would register a red dot and were just trying to cover my face up. :)

The original image was taken from this blog (over here).

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

iRack

This is one of the funniest skits I've seen on MadTV in awhile...


Saturday, March 17th, 2007Saturday, March 17th, 2007

AdSense Account Going To Be Closed Because I Didn’t Invest In Magnetic Power

People crack me up sometimes... Some dude from Iran figured out how to make infinite free energy, and all he needs from me is $1,000/month or else he will close my AdSense account... :)

From qeo.50000@yahoo.com:
This is a warning and if you don’t pay attention to it you will suffer from bad turns.
All your income is through Google Adsense and if you do not cooperate with us we will stop this income source.
We would like you to pay us the total amount of USD 1000 each month.
This small amount could be considered as nothing compared to your earnings from Adsense.
If you do not pay this amount we will have to close your account by the help of special robots & spaming & ...
I am not happy to do this but I have to as there is no way out of it and I trust if you were me you would also have to do the same.
I am an inventor and I have recently innovated a new design which will be accepted by scientific societies only if I can present a model in advance; and making the model takes money. They will register my new design only after they have checked all aspects of the same.
My theory is changing the power into energy. If I succeed many big problems will be solved.
All my design specification could be viewed in the following web log:
http://magnetic-machine.blogspot.com/
The magnets will be bought in installments and the amount you pay is to be paid monthly for the same.
After the registration of my design, the entire amount which I received from you will be paid back.
If you collaborate with me, you have helped to the science.
And if not, I will have to close your Google Adsense account.
I seek your help for the sake of the Science and if you are not prepared to collaborate I will have to close your Google Adsense account

Waiting for your reply…..

From me:
Bahahahahahahahahaahaha! Feel free to close my AdSense account.
From qeo.50000@yahoo.com:
i spam your adsense code to 100.000.000 email address
you earn 1000000 click from yahoo mail and Google close your account
plz wait until closing...!

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Ghost Riding The Whip

Bahahahahahaha... stupid dumb ass. :) man, that fire hydrant goes flying. :)


Thursday, March 8th, 2007Thursday, March 8th, 2007

So How Close Can Google Maps Really Get?

Want to see some crazy stuff? In some areas of the world, you can zoom in to an absurd level. Pretty close to being able to actually identify an individual.

Let's take this scene for example... some people in Africa with their herd of camels and cows, gathered around a well. I mean come on... you can see footprints, and some dude who must have known his picture was being taken, because he's looking right at the camera. :)

Almost looks fake huh? Well you can see it for yourself here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f...m=1&iwloc=addr

So like maybe Google could use some of their satellites and computing power to find Osama bin Laden and collect whatever huge reward there is for him... just a suggestion for anyone listening...

Thursday, March 1st, 2007Thursday, March 1st, 2007

1,251 Reasons To Not Have A Blog

One reason I haven't been writing on my blog is that I just haven't had the free time to sit around and look for cool/interesting things all day (ahhh... the good old days when I had nothing to do... hah)

I've been trying to keep up with comment moderation on the blog (doing it once every few days), but check this screenshot out of what I just finished.

That was about an hour of my life wasted with comment spam moderation... fun!!! :)

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Wait What? She Wore A Diaper??

So there was that astronaut chick a couple days ago that tried to murder and kidnap someone, and I guess I missed this part the other day, but it makes the whole thing a whole lot funnier. :)

...the sordid detail that Nowak drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando wearing a diaper so that she didn't have to stop for bathroom breaks.

Verizon Pisses Off Engineer

This is what happens when you piss off a customer who happens to be an engineer. :)