The 15750 Hz “Noise” from my TV is driving me NUTS!
January 27, 2007 by Jason · 10 Comments
Can anyone else hear the 15750 Hz tone generated by most TVs? My girlfriend was telling me I was crazy and that the sound didn't exist until my Uncle Chuck explained that the sound does exist while we were back in Illinois for my Grandmother's birthday & Christmas.
I've got two TVs in my apartment (a 15-ish-year-old 20" GE and a 3-year-old 36" Toshiba) and I can hear both if they are on no matter where I am in the apartment (2 BR/2 BA, separate kitchen & dining room; it's not a small place), even if the doors are closed.
I'm almost ready to go out and spend $3000 on a nice 1080p LCD screen so that I can sit in the living room in peace because even turning the volume way up (with 500W of Klipsch power behind it) doesn't drown it out... Heh, the only good news is that all of the big-box retail stores are getting rid of their CRT screens (or at least tossing them in the back corner of the store) so if I do break down and decide to go shopping, at least I won't get a headache at the same time.
We Have Drop Shadows!
Alright then! We've got drop shadows! The designer of this K2 skin put out a new version that includes drop shadows around the post area. The three skin images are still bugged though. Every single one is a JPEG and they're all way larger than they need to be. I slimmed them down from 65KB to 4.5KB (using Paint.NET and pngcrush), putting the front page of this site under 80KB, including HTML, images, CSS, and JavaScript.
Next up to bat, fixing the problem with the right edge of italic text being cut off if it hits the edge of the content column. If anyone knows how to fix that, let me know.
Happy New Year 2007!
January 1, 2007 by Jason · Leave a Comment
I hope everyone had a good time last night celebrating (or sleeping, if you didn't stay awake). I'm just going to toss out a quick post to say Happy New Year to everyone. Here it goes...
Happy New Year!
Back from Vacation
December 27, 2006 by Jason · 4 Comments
Well, my week-long vacation back to Illinois has ended. All in all, it was a pretty good time. We got rained on the first day or so but after that the weather started to look up (although some snow would have been nice). I got to get out of my normal routine and spend some time with relatives (specifically, my grandmother and two uncles) that I haven't seen in a few years.
While we were there, Dot (my girlfriend) and I spent two days in Chicago and managed to see the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum (including "Sue" the largest, most complete, and best preserved T-Rex found thus far), and the Adler Planetarium. We also took an evening look from the John Hancock Observatory and saw the Blue Man Group perform. We had tickets to the Museum of Science & Industry but ran out of time before we could use them (no problem though, we had the "City Pass" package and even with not using those tickets, we still came out ahead of buying everything separately). We capped off the second evening with a nice dinner at Cafe Spiaggia. While the portions were a bit small (for the prices), the food was excellent and I have NEVER had service as good as what I received while we were there. I would recommend it to anyone who is in the area. I guess that just goes to show that EVERYONE needs a Zagat Survey guide if they're in an area that they're not familiar with.
P.S. - Oh, and I changed the style of the site again. I found a new theme for K2 called "SkyBlack" and then tweaked it a bit to fit in 1024x768 instead of 800x600. I've still got to find a better header (because that "skyblue" text is annoying) but other than that, I'm pretty happy. Expect more updates soon.
OEM Operating System Install & Driver Disk Troubles…
December 11, 2006 by Jason · 2 Comments
Ok, for those of you that build your own systems, this really doesn't apply. However, for those of you that have pre-built OEM systems lying around (like I have at work), listen up because this advice is going to save you hours of wasted effort... DON'T LOSE YOUR WINDOWS OEM INSTALL CD AND DRIVER DISK!
Earlier today I spent almost 4 hours reinstalling a Gateway E-2100 system. The entire process was one giant comedy of errors. I started out by installing Windows XP Home because that is what all of the Gateway systems we have are running. As it turns out, that assumption was not a good one to make. It seems that this particular Gateway box is the ONLY Windows XP Professional system we have (aside from my notebook). In any case, there went 30 minutes...
Once learning that the only Windows XP Professional CD I had was for my Dell notebook (Latitude D820), I figured, "how badly could it go?". That, again, was a bad assumption to make. After spending 40 minutes installing Windows (again) I was greeted with a first boot at 640x480 in 4-bit color. Now, there probably aren't many people who remember 4-bit color, but yes, 20 years ago, 16 colors was all you got. Unfortunately, Windows XP was never meant to be viewed at this level and that made fixing the issue all that more difficult.
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The site’s new look
December 7, 2006 by Jason · Leave a Comment
So, I was flipping through MaximumPC while I was eating lunch and I saw that they had mentioned the K2 theme engine as a must-have. I decided to pick it up and install it. For now, it looks almost identical to the default theme I was using but I'll customize it a bit down the road. I'll say one thing for sure though, it does load faster than the default skin did and it is a lot easier to use.
Some notable improvements include the "type and wait" livesearch box (give it a try, just type something and then wait a couple seconds) and live comments with AJAX (no page refreshes).
AdSense below the menu
November 20, 2006 by Jason · 2 Comments
I'd like to get it out now that I'm not here to make money from this blog. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to tell you not to click the ads that are below the menu, I can always use extra money, but the $3 that this site is going to make each month isn't going to change my life. I have a theory on sites with and without AdSense but I want to give it a couple days before I post about it (hint: grab the RSS fees so that you know when I update).
As to the "Get Firefox" banner, I love FireFox. Aside from Opera (which is SO good that it can't be used with most people's sites, at least not yet), it's the best browser out there. I was never big on Google spying on what I'm doing, but I recently started using the Google Toolbar. I have to say, I really do find it useful. If you aren't currently using FireFox, please use the button on the right to download it. The package has both FireFox and the Google Toolbar so you'll get both in one shot.
My new blog
November 19, 2006 by Jason · 2 Comments
To be perfectly honest, I kind of looked down on blogs until this past week. There are two things about them that I simply didn't get.
First, why would anyone think that it was a good idea to put their personal thoughts up on the internet? I mean, what if you had a bad day at work, blasted your employer when you got home, and then ended up getting fired the next day because someone at work read your blog (or worse, it got indexed by Google and all anyone had to do was search for your name)? Sure, you might have gotten a load off your chest by letting it out, but how's that going to help when you're living in a box on the corner a week later because you don't have any income?
Second, why would anyone want to read what other people are thinking? I certainly don't care about what random people are thinking. In fact, most of the time, I don't particularly care about what the people I do know are thinking.
That all really changed this past week when I was on a business trip in Las Vegas for PubCon 2006. While there, I met a ton of interesting people, 99% of which run a blog to post news about their personal lives and their businesses. On top of that, every single person I talked to said that, as a whole, positive things had happened to them since they started their blog. In fact, it hadn't been for a blog, I wouldn't have ended up at a lounge with the guys from LinkWorth and had an outstanding time at what essentially stated out as a business meeting that I assumed would be a boring hour or two before we hit the casinos for more Blackjack and Craps.
In any case, I guess I'm a convert. Hopefully now I'll figure out what all the fuss is.