Firehed’s Blog

Of course, by “abuse,” I mean don’t VNC into the machine you’re working from, even to test. Ever pointed a camcorder that’s feeding out to a TV at that same TV? Mirrors facing each other? Yeah, kinda like that, except much more abusive to your bandwidth.

But damn was it easy to set up in OS X. Five seconds worth of guide for my fellow Mac users; I can’t imagine it being a ton more difficult to set up on Windows. Well, maybe not the FTP server, but VNC (non-proprietary remote desktop) is quite easy. If I ever go back to using a Windows computer for personal, day-to-day use, I’ll consider my options - at least until I buy a proper fileserver machine. There’s a new contender (another relatively slow one, by the looks of it; why can’t anything match the hacked-together I’m using now?), but that’s a story for another day.

Anyways, a guide for all the remote access you should need as a normal human ensues below:
(more…)

It’s bound to happen sooner or later, and I should have known better from the start that buying a Digital SLR would be bad for my wallet (even more so than golf). Glass time, and I’m reasonably certain at this point that I’d like to end up with Canon’s f/4L set to compliment my 400D, though by the time I’ve spent nearly three grand on lenses, I may well upgrade the body as well, especially if I decide to pursue my photography habits in a slightly more professional manner.

In any case, the set in question consists of Canon’s 17-40, 24-105, and 70-200 f/4L set, all (of course) with ring-USM focusing and the latter two also sporting Image Stabilization. I’d been considering quite a few other options in the meantime, such as a previously-mentioned 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM and the significantly cheaper 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 USM Mk. II, either of which likely being paired with a nice flash (most likely the 430EX, at least until I could justify the 580EX). But I figure that, always wanting the best as I tend to do, I might as well just save up a bit longer and go straight for the L glass upfront and not have to worry about trying to eBay the outdated lenses.
(more…)

A couple short anec dotes about how treating your customers well is really the right thing to do, contrary to the idiot guest speaker we had a week into classes last year at the so-called best entrepreneurial school in the world. Recognizing companies that are aware of the difference between “consumers” and “customers,” and that they have the latter. So here goes - love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple, and my web hosting company of right now, PowWeb.
(more…)

No, I’m not talking about credit card bills, either. As I mentioned earlier with regards to the iPhone, a lack of established credit can cause some issues. I certainly haven’t done anything to negatively impact my credit (quite the contrary), but just because the debit card has a MasterCard logo doesn’t mean it touches the three credit bureaus.

As it would transpire, this is also causing some problems when applying for a credit card. I can understand them not wanting to hand out some no-limit plastic, but a lack of credit history becomes a flat-out denial for American Express. I’ve had no more luck with PayPal’s Visa, although admittedly, that was for entirely different reasons.

So, if you need to keep up-to-date with paying bills for six months to establish credit, you need to have a credit card to get those bills from, right? But in order to get the card, I need to have established credit. But to establish credit… okay, you get the idea. So with this new-age chicken and the egg problem, where the heck does Darwin come in and set things straight?

Damn banks with their misleading fine print and lousy interest rates.

Well, yeah. 113ºc. My Macbook Pro has always been on the warm side, but this is really taking it to a new level. It doesn’t feel hot enough to cook on, but I certainly wouldn’t doubt the memory controller temp, as it’s really cooking. Worries me a bit with it so close to the battery *touch wood*

Thankfully, my first-gen iPhone doesn’t show any of the issues of my first-gen MBP. Of course, if the thing got that hot in my pocket, you can bet I’d raise hell over it. It’s not perfect (I’m working on putting up a review soon enough), but it’s certainly a nice piece of hardware.

Because I’d like to get typing a bit more on the new iPhone. I can view the docs and spreadsheets fine, but no editing yet. But I can blog from the thing fine, as I’m doing now. Yes, it rocks (and the typo correction works surprisingly well for how poor of a thumb-typist I am). The Internet isn’t perfect but pretty damn good - only issues so far aside from no flash is that the wordpress editor doesn’t scroll properly for the category list, but big deal - I’m blogging from a PHONE!

Of course, it would have been just as true with any other carrier, so I can’t really fault Apple too much. Buying my 8GB iPhone was quite painless, but I’m still waiting for the thing to activate. For the third time. I guess that I haven’t established sufficient credit to earn the privilege to not pay twice as much going month-to-month or leave AT&T a nice $500 security deposit.

Solution: dad. Or, rather, his social. In the meantime, I’m getting some videos converted out of my redigitized collection

And a pre-post update: figures that Verizon doesn’t want to let go of my old number. Whatever, looks like i’llStartOver with the iPhone. All of two people might be missing the number, so big freakin’ deal.