Backstage Tour of The Lab with Leo Laporte

Leo has posted a backstage tour of the studio in Vancouver where his new show "The Lab with Leo Laporte" will be taped.

Shameless plugs

I'm going to give out a few shameless plugs in response the masses (as in 17) of e-mail I've been getting lately. This will become a Q&A, but Blogger isn't fancy like WordPress, and I'm too lazy to convert everything over the WordPress (And yes, I've tried the converter. It doesn't work very well.) Ahem. So here it is: Q: Do you really use Linux? What distro? What Desktop Environment? etc... A: Yes, I use Linux. I am an extremely happy user of Kubuntu, which means I also use KDE. Q: What's your Mantra? A: My Mantra is "Just say no to Microsoft (and Microsoft, and Sony, etc.)" Q: Do you obsess over anything? A: I obsess over potatoes, and anything Linux, Kubuntu, or KDE related. Q: What kind of computer do you use? A: The computer I'm using currently is one that I custom built. The Basic Specs include:

• AMD Athlon X2
• ATI All-In-Wonder 2006
• ASUSTeK M2N4-SLI Mobo
• Seagate Barracuda 200GB Serving as my Home and Media Directories
• Western Digital Caviar 400GB Hard Drive Serving as my everything else drive
• Dual DVD Burners
• Translucent Blue Case with UV Blue Cold-Cathode Lighting

Q: Do you have a life? A: No, I don't :-) Actually, I do have a live, as hard as it is to believe. I do a lot of Lighting and Sound work for my High School Drama Club. We are getting a new theater soon, along with new equipment. One of my current pet peeves about the new theater is that it will not have a catwalk that allows us access to cove lighting. But that is a rant for another day. Q: What are your favorite programs? A: I use to have this all on my sidebar, but the list became too big, so I took it out. I've update this list and decided to add it here. Commence Pixelbuttons! Q: How can I link to you? A: Thanks, I appreciate it! Use one of the following buttons and corresponding HTML Code:

80x15

<a href="http://dankeenan.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/5917/electricpotato80x15ke9.png" alt="Electric Potato" /></a>

Use the following code on your blog:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="250" height="300" align="middle"><param name="movie" value="http://downloads.thespringbox.com/web/wrapper.php?file=RSS Reader.sbw" /><param name="flashvars" value="param=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FDanKeenan&memberId=thespringbox" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed allowScriptAccess="always" src="http://downloads.thespringbox.com/web/wrapper.php?file=RSS Reader.sbw" flashvars="param=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FDanKeenan&memberId=thespringbox" quality="high" wmode="transparent" width="250" height="300" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>

Now I know why windows is so bloated...

I was feeling kind of board during my mid-winter vacation from school, so I was hacking around windows. I many of the files that are part of windows, I found bitmaps for old versions of XP, pre SP1. I even found files in the default screensaver that still said Windows codename Whistler. Microsoft could learn a lot from my grandmother. Paint also has toolbars and icons from old versions: Minesweeper also has icons from older versions (I rotated the strip clockwise to save space): Explorer also has a few oldies (Some of them may be rotated as well): Hack through the executables in your own system using the XN Resource Editor.

From the Panasony department of things...

I found this in one of those Magic Claw machines at a Friendly's. I apologize for the bad photo quality, I didn't have a camera so I took it with my cell phone.

Drupal 5.0

Drupal 5.0 has been released today! Go and check it out at http://drupal.org/drupal-5.0! Check out the new features. Lullabot also has a good video that demonstrates many of the new features at http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/video_new_features_for_drupal_5. Also look at the site on Drupal 5.0 on http://drupal.org/drupal-5.0.

GIF Animation (And an ethical issue on the side)

In a computer graphics class, one of the projects we were required to do was a GIF animation. This raised a slightly thorny issue as GIF Animations go against everything I have ever learned as a web designer. I started with a Circle Moving around the screen: I then made the circle a ball and made it bounce: For the final project, I used the 4 variants of Ubuntu Linux to make myself feel better about doing a GIF animation in the first place:

Drupal 5.0 RC2

Drupal 5.0 RC2 came out yesterday. I encourage you to install it to your webserver if you have one and try it out! Get it from The Drupal 5.0 RC2 Website.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

I'm creating this post using my brand new Nintendo Wii. For some reason, the Opera Browser for Wii won't enter text into compose view, but works fine in Edit HTML View. It can deal with the AJAXy GMail fine, though. However, I am using a beta-equivilant version of the browser. Overall, the experience is extremely good, but I should stop typing or my hand will get a cramp from using the Wii-mote too much.

New home for Math Drupal

I have moved Math Drupal over to mathdrupal.wordpress.com. There you will find the Development Blog, as well as new releases and bug fixes. Check it out!

Blogger Beta

I have switched to the new Blogger beta!!!! If something goes wacky with the RSS feeds, I expect it. I've hear of stranger things. The Worst that can probobly happen is all of the posts get re sent through the feed. Leave me a note in the comments if there's another problem.

Math Drupal

Math Drupal has MathML support using the ASCIIMathML JavaScript library.

• .tar.bz2 (Good for UNIX/LINUX/*BSD)
• .zip (Good for Windows or Mac OS X)

I'm working on creating a live demo of this.

Math Drupal

I plan on creating a custom distribution of Drupal that has built in support for MathML. I will distribute the package in a later post.