dtm-blog

Glossy vs Matte

2010-08-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

About a month or two ago I paid a visit to the friendly local electronics retailer, Best Buy. I was in the market for a computer monitor. I had briefly looked before at other places, Costco, Office Depot, Fry's among others. My last monitor was purchased in 2006 and was starting to make an annoying humming noise when on. It was a good ol' monitor and I'll probably still use it for the xbox or something, but it needed to be replaced as the primary monitor.

However, after seeing the great selection of about 10-15 monitors that Best Buy had available, I suddenly realized something. All the monitors were practically identical. Sure, the sizes and features varied here and there but the specs didn't vary that much (720p or 1080p?). Not only that, but they all looked THE SAME. Glossy screen with glossy black casing. It's as if they guy in charge of making every computer monitor suddenly thought, "Well, pretty much EVERY hdtv available for purchase has a glossy screen and glossy black casing, so why don't we just make all computer monitors look like that too?"

I had, in the past, always thought that this "glossy screen revolution" was just a trend that would eventually go away. I loved how the first LCD monitors came in matte, getting rid of the glare suffered over the years with CRT monitors. Sure, I'd heard time and time again that a glossy screen allows for "more vibrant colors", but for the longest time I was convinced this was more of a media buzz phrase to trick people into buying crappy glossy screens. That is, until recently.

I ended up buying a fairly nice Dell monitor, matte screen. It sits on my desk right next to my mac laptop, which has a glossy screen. Let me tell you, the difference is quite noticeable. I'm taking back everything I thought about glossy screens. They actually do look far superior. Most notable are black, and any of the dark shades of all the colors. Sure, they are inconvenient in many circumstances, especially on laptops. Nevertheless, once you get the thing in a suitable location that doesn't produce horrible glare, it shines.

There is a slight possibility that this mac laptop's glossy screen looks a lot better because it also happens to be LED backlit. Not sure if any companies make LED backlit matte screens, but I would be interested to see one and how it compared to the glossy version. In the meantime, I highly recommend a glossy screen for any monitor purchase.

Addition by Subtraction

2010-04-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Over the past decade hard drive sizes have increased and their prices have dropped. All this storage capability allowed my music and photo collection size to skyrocket. As far as space was concerned, I never felt the need to delete anything. However, this lead to a huge clutter of content that became quite unusable for most intents and purposes.

With photos, you may have taken a couple shots for each scene just to ensure you get a good quality version from the set. What good is the final archive of the album if the high quality takes are hidden in the clutter of photos that didn't turn out as good? If you feel a permanent delete is too harsh, then at least put the "extras" in a subfolder or hidden location, don't let them suck the life out of the beauty of the album as a whole.

I thought to call this "pruning" your photo albums, and apparently someone else did also:
http://lifehacker.com/396758/prune-your-photo-collection-with-picasas-stars

His approach is nice. Focus on highlighting the good pictures and you'll find that the less "contributible" photos will bleed out in the end, and you can proceed to move/hide/delete them.

This starring system also works wonders with a music collection. If you have iTunes or and iPod, you can star your songs as you listen. For large music collections this is a MUST! Imagine putting your collection on shuffle and liking EVERY song that comes on. This is possible if you star your songs and create playlists based on those songs.

Copeland

2010-03-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

Went to the Copeland concert in SLC with Adam & Kilee. It was a great show, lots of energy especially at the end. It kills me that they are breaking up. They are such a great band, one of my favorites.

Twitting

2010-03-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

The other day it hit me. Ever since the "Twitter Revolution" many companies, people, musicians, bands and organizations have Twitter accounts. Almost EVERYTHING has a Twitter these days, and most are used simply as if it were an RSS feed of a news section of a website (some are linked just that way, in fact). I think this is great. I remember a couple of years ago trying to gather up all the RSS feeds I could, so that I could stay up to date on all the things I like, but a bunch of the sites I wished I could follow didn't have any feeds. Most people don't know or care what an RSS or ATOM feed is, but they surely know what a Twitter is and because of that I think it has become easier for the masses to embrace this idea of posting updates on the internet.

It's as if Twitter has forced the internet world to put all of their RSS feeds in one place, and any company/thing/person that thought they didn't need or want one, now realizes the power of having one. No need to wait for a dumb commercial on TV, or an ad in the magazine or on the radio. If it's happening right now, or any time close to right now, just search for it on Twitter and it will come up.

MAC VS PC

2010-02-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

This post is specifically directed toward laptops, not desktops. Who buys a desktop anymore these days anways? (actually I probably will again one day, but the reason for that is outside the scope of this post)

I remember back in the day when I loved to dog on Macs because they were so incredibly goofy looking. I collected images such as these:

These were the Macs before the internet really came to fruition. Back in this day, YouTube did not exist, USB thumb drives were still rare and the iPod was just coming out. The Mac computers still used the PowerPC platform and had not yet switched to Intel. Compatibility was difficult. No one had wireless networks. How did you get files from one computer to another? Burning a CD? Copying them on an Iomega 100MB ZIP drive? Umm, yeah. Even when you could transfer files between a Mac and PC, you couldn't open files on each side of the fence as easy as you can now. Back then, in my mind it just didn't make much sense to get Mac. However the next couple of years would change everything.

The next couple of years were the PINNACLE of Windows XP getting hit by all kinds of virus, spyware and trojan you could imagine. Anti-Virus companies cashed in during these years, and it became semi-mandatory to have some sort of protection on your PC. Later service packs even added built-in features to XP to combat this malware infestation. However, things have gotten much better these days. If you are a seasoned computer user (such as myself :P ) then you don't run into these problems much at all anymore. Good enough to only stay in the PC world? Nope, keep reading.

In 2006 Apple announce the switch to the Intel platform. The iPod was picking up speed. The products on both sides of the field were becoming much more compatible. It was around this time that I started giving Macs a second chance.

Fast forward to this day. If you are going to buy a Mac or PC (laptop in the case of the post), please let me clarify a few points with which many people stumble. I used to think there was no way I could switch to a Mac. The menus and layouts were so different, and I was so used to using my PC. I couldn't imagine that all my useful programs on the PC had equivalents in the Mac world. Eventually I realized that they, for the most part, do. It just requires somewhat of a learning curve.

Yes, Macs are more expensive. They cannot be upgraded very easily. There isn't much of a variety. However, I'm going to show you why none of that matters in the laptop world. (most ideas carry over to the desktop world, but again that is out of the scope of this post)

You don't need to upgrade a Mac laptop, in most all cases. It was designed and tested to perform at a more than acceptable level with its current hardware. PC's usually need upgrading because you bought the incredibly cheap version of the product, only to later realize how much the cheap version blows and that you need to upgrade it. Macs aren't just for cool hippies anymore. "Dude! I heard Macs are good for video editing!" Yes, perhaps they are, but being a cool hippie wanting to edit videos should not be the reason for getting a Mac. Same goes for the recent trend of "I'm a PC" contenders. It is not enough to say a PC is better just because you hate cool hippies and don't need to edit video.

In the past few years Apple has added many PRACTICAL and USEFUL features to their MacBooks that simply CANNOT be done on any PC laptop. Let me explain just a few:

Touchpad - I remember a couple of years ago when, if you had a PC laptop, I thought it was mandatory to have a mouse. Why? Because the touchpad on all PC laptops sucked so bad. If you've ever used a touchpad on a Macbook, you'll know why I've changed my stance on having a mouse. Double finger touch to scroll? This feature is so simple yet SO INCREDIBLY INTUITIVE that I don't know why the PC world has not tried to imitate it. (perhaps some have, been it really needs widespread adoption) Double finger scrolling is just the beginning of the multi-touch world on a Mac touchpad. Once again a very practical and useful feature. The PC laptop cannot do that.

Lighted Keyboard - This is a feature found in both the Mac and Pc world. I mention it because it such an underrated feature. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I wished my keyboard was lighted. If you have a PC laptop, I can almost guarantee you that at some point in time, you have turned up the brightness of your screen in an attempt to see the keyboard in a dark lit room. If you're going to get a PC laptop, please do yourself a favor and get one with a lighted keyboard. Also, it should be noted that the Mac OS has access to this hardware, and can therefore not only turn it off but can *dim* its brightness level to save battery. Once again a very practical and useful feature. The PC laptop cannot do that.

LCD Backlight - The LCD monitor brightness level can be controlled by Mac OS. If the user has become idle the OS can tell the monitor to dim its brightness level. This saves a great portion of the battery charge. PC's cannot do this. The OS also can dim the brightness level based upon brightness of the room you are in (probably using some kind of photocell). This way you're eyes aren't destroyed by a super bright screen in a low lit room. Once again a very practical and useful feature. The PC laptop cannot do that.

This post could go on quite awhile about stuff like this, but in the interest of yours and my own time I'm keeping it short. Don't get me wrong, I use both platforms. They both have advantages and disadvantages. If you are more comfortable with using one or the other, fine. However, you should at least take into consideration valid and merit-able points from each side.

Oh gosh, my abandoned blog

2010-01-26T19:19:00.000-08:00

The other day good old Adam Olsen mentioned on a group email strand how the blogging scene between friends has been collecting a lot of dust in the past year or so. This is my attempt at coming back.

I decided that since I don't update often enough, instead of having separate blogs for music,hacking, etc. I will now turn them back into one blog, this one. Hopefully that will increase my participation, and yours?

The main dtmland.info site has also but been updated to reflect this.

Updates Complete

2009-09-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed the site's awesome new layout. I moved some things around, cleaned some things up and added a few new little tidbits. I am still working on getting the "search" capability back in, hopefully within the week. If you have been subscribed to my feeds you may have seen some chaos in the past little while (like the previous post mentions) but all that should be over now.

In addition to the new goodies, I would also like to somewhat "restate the objective" of the blog. I found myself wanting to post many items on the blog that were simply "quotes" of someone else's content. I realized that essentially all I was doing was sharing items---and the overhead of having to create a unique blog post for each "shared item" was redundant. Granted, on occasion I like to create my own posts--which I still plan to do. So from now on, the blog posts themselves will all be only "my original creations" and all quotes or "shared items" will show up in their appropriate section. There is even a separate feed for these shared items if you wish to subscribe to them.

I hope this setup isn't too confusing. I believe it will allow me to more quickly get stuff up, and make the site more visually pleasing and easier to understand.

So there you have it. Welcome to DanTheManLand. Enjoy your stay.

Under Construction

2009-09-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry for any errors you may encounter with my sites/feeds in the next couple of days. I am upgrading some things under the hood, and eventually some things above the hood.

Thanks for your patience

Into the dark and dreary world

2009-08-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

The summer is coming to an end along with another chapter of my life. I've spent the past 5 years here in Provo getting my degree and, to be honest, have gotten used to the way things have been. All of that is about to change.

While I haven't yet found a full-time "dream job", I have secured a place of living for the next while. That should give me a little more time to find employment. It is a house here in Provo being rented by a friend (and two other guys) from the ward last year.

My on campus employment in the Chemistry department will only last for two more weeks. So I'm sort of scrambling to find something for work soon. It's hard not to become discouraged with the economy the way it is (and the fact that I'll have to start paying back student loans pretty soon). Nevertheless, I am quite optimistic about the next couple of months and the things that can be accomplished. I'm a single, broke college grad with my entire life ahead of me. The current soundtrack for my life is summed up in the song "Just Wait" by my recent favorite, The Reign of Kindo. These lyrics especially:

One more day and it's all the same.
Time is a poison and it's coursing through my veins.
Got somewhere to be and I'll be darned if i know when.
The bank is broke and my well is dry.
There's something wrong here that refuses to be set right.
I keep pushing forward but the scenery won't change.

All the days that I live, the best is yet to come if I just wait for it.
But time will find a way to run your patience thin.
Praying for some promise that this life can't make,
with my youngest years at stake.

Orderville Canyon - Zion National Park

2009-06-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

This past weekened I headed down with old roommates and friends to Zion National Park. It was a great trip I must say. We hiked Orderville canyon. The hike itself was ~12 miles long. At the very end it meets up with the narrows. There were several fun obstacles we had to overcome, one of them required jumping into "above your head" water. Overall it was a good hike, though a little long. No one got hurt thankfully. See the following link for a detailed view of the hike:

http://www.dtmland.info/everytrail

Also enjoy this nice picasa album:

--
_Daniel R Nelson_
www.dtmland.info
--

TiVo no more

2009-05-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

I've finally decided to cancel my TiVo service. The price just didn't justify the product anymore. I paid about 13 dollars a month for it, and now that I have canceled, I can't think of why I didn't do this earlier.

I must admit I had a partial curiosity about how much functionality would be disabled. Turns out you can only:

-Pause/forward/rewind Live TV
-Watch previously recorded shows

AND THAT'S IT.

They disable any recording at all--Even manual recording. Douche. When I found this out, my opinion of them dropped dramatically. Basically, after three years of faithfully paying the TiVo company 13 dollars a month (do the math, it adds up) the only thing I'm left with is a brick that can't do jack crap.

Thanks a lot TiVo. You've not only lost a customer, but created an enemy. I will discourage anyone I know from purchasing any of your products from now on. I know that you are in the business to have people sign up for your subscriptions, but bricking peoples machines will always create customer disatissfaction in the end.

That is why today I give TiVo a big thumbs down:

--
_Daniel R Nelson_
www.dtmland.info
--

Juneau, Alaska

2009-05-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

The entirety of last week Reed, my roommate, trekked us (my roommates - Justin,Ricks,Mike,Eliot) around the wonderful landscapes of Alaska. We had many great adventures on our trip.

(make sure to click the links below to see amazing trail information along with pictures!)

We started out by doing a hike up to Peterson Lake. The hike up was pretty hard for me. There was still a fair amount of snow on the ground. We would not have been able to do the hike without the snow shoes that Reed supplied us with. There was bridge that had about four feet of snow piled on it. It had no handrails, and I almost fell in. Reed helped me by carrying my pack across the second time. We got a little detoured, and by the time we got to the lake I was dead tired. I couldn't move, Justin went to the cabin and came back for me pack. Nice! At the top the lake was frozen over for the most part, so we stayed inside the cabin most of the day anyways. The cabin did have a heater though! It was great! The hike down was not too bad. We spent Saturday and Sunday evening at Peterson Lake.

Monday afternoon went back to Reed's house, had lunch, and re-supplied for our next adventure, Camping Cove. We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night here. It was amazing! Some of us hiked in, while Reed and I rode the boat right up to the cabin. We saw sea lions, bald eagles, marmosets and even some whales at one point! We did a day hike to a lake and a separate beach. We even went crabbing with the boat, caught some crab, boiled them up and ate them! It was delicious! The cabin was nice and roomy, definitely a place I would like to return to. Thursday morning we packed up and hiked out. It was a relatively easy hike, mostly along the beach.

That night we stayed at Reeds house, woke up the next morning and hiked the Mendenhall Glacier. It was absolutely amazing! We were able to get right up on the glacier itself. We explored a small ice cave and even drank some glacier water! So refreshing! It was a short hike, so we returned to Reeds house for lunch, showered, and headed downtown.

We rode the Juneau tram (thanks to Reed's dad) and caught some amazing views. We walked through some shops, and later drove by Sarah Palin's mansion. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the governor herself. We ended the day by stopping to purchase smoked salmon. And later went out with Reed's parents to Bullwinkle's pizza parlor.

I had a great time, and am thankful that Reed gave us this great opportunity. He and his family made a wonderful trip for us. Reed's mom makes great snicker doodles, if you're ever in Juneau make sure to request those!

--
_Daniel R Nelson_
www.dtmland.info
--

a blustery day

2009-04-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday April 16th started out very early in the morning. For some reason the weather decided to start snowing a lot. I wasn't tired, so I took a stroll around campus. It was a heavy and sticky snow, and many trees were being weighed down (as can be seen in some of the pictures). I even saw a deer and attempted to track him in the snow.

Later in the day I went to lunch with friends from work and ate some sushi.

CSR Lunch

The day ended at at brick oven with my roommates, and sister and her husband. I got this cool balloon hat:

Out of order

2009-03-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's right, no more than a day ago I pressed the power button on my laptop and it didn't turn on. A little surprised, I thought, "No, can't be broken. I'll figure this out."
About ten minutes later I was completely convinced that my laptop was dead. No coming back. It's up in computer heaven now.
For some reason it didn't surprise me that this has happened though. A few months ago the ethernet randomly broke, which isn't common at all and is a sign of worse things to come. Now the worst has come. Not really completely sure what happened, but I think the power supply died. The point is, it's gone and it's not coming back.
I rented a laptop from the office of OIT on campus, it's going to have to do for the remainder of the school year.
I'd like to be in the market for a new laptop, but right now I'm a broke college student, and the little money I do have has to go to other things of higher priority first. Once I look into getting a new one, I'll post some details on it.

dtm is BACK, also.

2009-03-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

So I just happened to notice my friend mike posted on his blog saying how it has been awhile since he last posted. Well, that's pretty much what I'm about to post on as well, kind of ironic. I guess bright minds think alike.

Anyways, down to the nitty gritty. I've spent the last couple of months working a website aptly named, www.dtmland.info

I created this site with a few intentions. First off, I will be graduating soon and I wanted to make a sort of online resume, or presence, if you will. Even with the economy the way it is, I hope to get a job sometime soon related to this degree I've spent so much time and money on the past few years.

Second, during the time I created my initial blog, danthemanland, I kept coming up with ideas for other stuff I wanted to put online. However, many of these things just didn't fit into the scope of the blog itself. You will notice two new blogs, one for music and the other for hacking. I've already posted quite a bit on them so go check them out. Everything else on the website is simply a collaboration of all the interactive online social and media services available. This website puts all my stuff in one place.

The main dtmland blog will now focus on most things related to travel, rambling, and journaling of my life. I'll try to keep it as exciting as possible. I apoligize that my last few previous posts were just photo uploads from my phone. I got really excited when I found out I could do that, and I will probably do it again sometime.

It's not perfect yet but I will continue to make improvments and add new sections. So, I guess you could call this danthemanland v1.5 Go check it out now!!!!

www.dtmland.info

Stay tuned for some good posts

2009-01-11T17:16:00.001-08:00

The Prophet

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2008-12-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

Chillin at six flags

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2008-11-16T18:26:00.001-08:00

Devotional

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technical difficulties

2008-11-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

So I've been messing around with my site a lot, trying to get some things to work, and have broken a few things in the process. If you were subscribed to the site feed you may have not gotten the last couple of posts, I apologize for this irresponsible hacking. But don't worry, I'll have some good stuff soon.

dtm

copeland

2008-11-03T20:49:00.001-08:00

copeland

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kirby got yanked

2008-09-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

So I was up in Sandy earlier tonight and on my way back I noticed that the DearElder.com billboard had changed. That billboard has been the same ever since I can remember, so the change must have been very recent. Anyways, instead of seeing Kirby Heybornes mug dressed up in the missionary suit, it was a dotted outline person. The new advertisement was asking us to go to the website and pick a new face for DearElder. Here are the old and the new versions:

So I sat and thought to myself, I'll bet they did that because of the fact that a couple of months back or so Kirby appeared in a Miller Light Beer commercial. He has gotten a lot of criticism ever since he did it. It seems as though everyone is abandoning him. While I can understand arguments on both sides of the fence about the whole thing, my point here isn't to argue that. I just wanted to point out this little change in freeway scenery that us Wasatch Frontens' have to look at every time we drive up and down the valley.

The Beer Commercial on YouTube:

Maybe now they'll put up the other guy from the Best Two Years. Or maybe one of those sisters from saved by angels or whatever that other billboard is in spanish fork.

Speaking of mormon actors, I've seen the investigator dude from the Best Two Years buying grocery's at the Macy's in Provo, my old roomates roomate was the blond haired jock dude from Napoleon Dynamite and a few weeks back the main character from Saints and Soldiers sang a song in the sacrament meeting i was at.

skullcandy

2008-09-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

So my ipod headphones died on me about a month or so back and I've been meaning to buy some new ones-but just hadn't gotten to it, until this past weekend. While at the local BestBuy I decided to try out a pair of skullcandy headphones.

They are the in-ear type of headphones, with the little jelly plastic things on the end. Priced at a mere $20 dollars, i got my monies worth. They actually work quite well. I had been wearing them here and there during the weekend....but the real test came on monday when I went to study in the Clyde building lounge. They passed the test with flying colors. If you've ever been in the clyde lounge you know there are usually always a lot of people studying there. Well I had just sat down to start studying and was putting my headphones on when some super loud douche sat down next to me because his buddies were one table over from mine. I was pretty upset because I like my peace and quiet when studying. However, my anger left when I put my new headphones on and pressed the play button on the ipod. All the blabbing was instantly and greatly muffled by my music. Not just any music though, but a very peaceful quiet like orchestra soundtrack song, even this masked the loud annoyance of the dude sitting next to me. (so you can imagine how well "regular" "loud" music would block noise out)

While I'm sure the brand doesn't matter to much, as long as you get a pair of in-ear headphones I guarantee you'll be satisfied, I sure am. Downsides are sometimes while walking they can come loose from the ear, and also they work so well sometimes you can't hear most anything around you, so be careful wearing them. Although, if your goal is to avoid anyone trying to say hi to you, then these are the way to go.

sharing your life

2008-09-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

School started this past week here at BYU, and just as Justin's post mentions, summer has officially ended. Looking back at the last four months has made me think a lot about life. More specifically, I have lately been comparing in my mind this summer with the summer of 2007.

If you didn't know, I spent last summer attending the BYU Hawaii campus and enjoying the greatness of paradise that Hawaii has to offer. I was there 3 months to be exact. I meet up with an old highschool buddy (Kevin) about half way through (mid june) and had a blast the remaining time there. I was, however, living by myself before that point. Sure, i made some friends and all via classes and church when I first arrived, but for the most part I was still by myself, alone in paradise.

I spent the summer of 2008 here in Provo working on campus. Similar to last summer, I've spent the past few months going on many adventures and far away places. Although, one main difference is that I spent much of this time with friends and family, and I must admit it has been a great summer, one of the best.

It was my life long dream to go to the jungles of Hawaii, but I found that even something so great as this wasn't that great without people to share it with. The summer of 2008 has taught me that life is best shared, with friends and family.

Just some of the adventures I had this summer:

So much for blog jokes

2008-08-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Anyways my previous post was supposed to be a joke, making fun of Adam and Becky's blog and how when they were in New York they posted a million posts about every restaurant they went to. Apparently no one picked up on it, i guess dtm isn't as funny as he thinks.

This was the post:

http://adamandbecky.blogspot.com/2008/06/serendipity.html

This was of course done with no harmful intentions in mind, I think Adam and Becky's blog is great. I'll just go ahead and not try to be funny from now on. (even though I still laugh at it)

A little fishy

2008-07-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

If you've got a salt tooth and $5+ bucks to spare, and you're in New York, then you best head on over to the Pier 17 Mall

The restaurant was charming and their fish and chips were excellent. And that is coming from a guy who doesn't like cheap dirty fast food fish at all. In fact, I normally avoid the whole salt water animal thing and get a hamburger or hotdog with ketchup. But I really liked their Forbidden Pirate Delight. (Thanks Turner!)

As for the french fries, I'm not sure. It didn't do too much for either of us. If we go again I'm trying what Justin had. It looked way good!

Three Amigos no more

2008-07-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday morning at 7:30 Mike woke Justin and I up so we could say goodbye one last time, and that was it, Mike, gone forever. He got in that car and drove out of our lives.

I can't help but remember all the times I've spent with the Mikester, the good and the bad. I remember staying up all night working on a project in the clyde building. I remember trying to make him laugh while he was giving the lesson in priesthood. I remember when he first got his new camera I always thought it was funny to take pictures of him taking pictures.

Mike was a great roomate, hopefully our paths will cross again one day. (hint hint - job - mike?)

Some good things just can't last forever. But this little slideshow should help it last a little longer. Just a few little gems I found when going through photo albums:

the price of being a man

2008-06-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

My two roommates and I recently started growing mustaches in preparation for a horseback trip in New Mexico at the end of June. While this is the second time for myself, they happen to be mustache virgins. Their constant remindings of how people "give them the look" without saying anything are merely reminiscent of my manly undertaking about two years ago at the square. Nevertheless, with this renewing endeavor I couldn't help but become aware (with agreement from them) of the following downsides:

1) Unless you are over thirty years old, growing a mustache now-a-days not only isn't in style, but most people will consider your decision socially unacceptable.

2) It puts like 5 years on you.

3) If you already have a girlfriend/wife you can usually grow a mustache. If you already have a mustache you can't get a girlfriend let alone get married.

4) There a two kinds of people, those that look at it and comment, and those that look at it, don't comment, and probably think you're some crazy guy. (bums usually have mustaches)

5) Chicks are instinctively attracted to mustaches, requiring you to have to fight them off literally.

In conclusion, despite bearing the cross of the one week mustache, the end result after about a month is something beautiful---and having a mustache is probably the manliest thing a man can do, and it totally rocks. Just think of all the great guys that had them:

tribute to a roomate-in-law

2008-05-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This post is simply a dedication to the original Blogger among us, Adam, whom we all love and cherish.

After months of following up on Adam and Becky's blog, I noticed something that seemed kind of funny to me. Adam seems to have this habit of bulging his eyes when he takes pictures. The ones that fall under this category seem to mostly be hand held shots, and it seems like the closer the camera gets to his face the wider his eyes get. Hehe. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Normal Adam Facial Pose:

Wide-Eye Adam Facial Pose:

mini portable data center

2008-05-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

After years of messing with hords of cable mess and big bulky computer cases, I finally decided to clean up. This combined with the fact that a few months ago one of my hard drives crashed and I lost some pictures, I realized that I needed to get a solution and get it quick. After hearing about a few companies building "portable data centers" in shipping containers, I thought I might apply the same idea to a much smaller scale that a poor college student can afford.

One of sun mircosystems portable data centers:

Initial Project Scope:

-Large enough to contain all equipment, but small enough to be "portable" (fit in the trunk of a sedan?)
-One "box" with only two cables coming out, Power and Ethernet
-Uninterrupted power
-Physically Secure (can be locked)

With these specifications in mind, I ended up buying a toolbox with wheels from lowes hardware store. It looks something like this:
I picked up two small used UPS units at the byu computer surplus sale, and an old laptop from my new roomate (i still have to pay him). I installed the latest ubuntu distro, and plugged in my 750gig and 500gig hard drives. I had some trouble with rsync not liking the ntfs partitions that my hard drives had, so I had to re-format them to ext3. I added a nice crontab to have the data synced from one drive to another each night.

I had looked into a program called FlyBack, which is bascially a python written GUI that is designed similar to Time Machine for leopard. It was nice and slick, but didn't allow the freedom that comes from writing your own stuff to cron, so I didn't use it.

My crontab:
0 3 * * * rsync -a -r --delete /media/usb0/data/ /media/usb1/data

(i had to install a package called "usbmount" for the usb drives to auto-mount upon booting)

After getting all the logistics working I put all the pieces inside the toolbox, cutting a few necessary holes in the back. One problem I ran into was overheating. The hard drives were getting pretty warm. I fixed this by temporarily moving the hot drive into the lower well ventilated section. I might have to add some fans at some point.

All in all it turned out very well. It does the job, and does it well. I'd like to add more hard drives for increased snapshot redundency. For the most part this thing was a hackjob, and requires computer nerd skills to get working. If you have enough money, and you already own a Mac with Leopard installed, I would recommend getting the product "Time Capsule". It's really the best thing since sliced bread, and so easy even a caveman can use it.
Whatever you end up getting, you should get something. Because if you aren't backing up your data now then chances are you WILL lose it. Buy an external hard drive, burn dvds, do whatever it takes. Just make sure you have more than one copy, in more than one place. That way if your house burns down or your hard drive crashes you don't lose all those pictures, mp3s, or whatever ones and zeros you hold precious.

a little survey...

2008-04-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

I setup a little survey. Please voice your opinion! It won't show up if you're using google reader or some other sort of reading thing, so you must actually go to the blog site to vote:

http://dtmland.blogspot.com

It ends in two weeks, and I'm not sure what blogger will do with it after that but I'll try and post the results at that time. Thanks!

happy birthday me

2008-04-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

Well I had a nice little b-day. My sister Angie brought over this totally amazing cake for me:
Jurassic Park is the coolest movie in the whole world

We went to pizza factory and had to wait forever, we almost left twice but the waitress would show up right as we were about to get up.

using itunes to semi-solve multiple genre angst

2008-04-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been bored enough to try and organize your music library by cleaning up the "genre" fields, you may have at some point wished you could assign multiple genre's to a song. Sometimes you want a song to show up under "rock" and "alternative", etc. I'm not sure why the mp3 gods didn't implement this as a standard with the newest version of the mp3 tag. I've done my fair share of googling to try and find a solution. However, while messing around with playlists in itunes I stumbled upon a way to remedy one's desire for multiple genres.

If you click on file, you should see an option that says "new smart playlist". There are many powerful options available, probably the most important being the "live updating" option. This means that any changes you make to your library, whether you're importing new songs, changing tag information, or deleting songs, the playlist will automatically stay up to date for you, obviously. Clicking the plus or minus button allows you to add/remove rules.
Granted, in order to get multiple genres working you're going to have to do a little back-end work before you can actually use smart playlists to emulate mutiple genres. The method I use is this: If you want a song to contain mutiple genres, you could for example make this the genre of a song:

Rock Alternative Grunge

Each desired genre separated by a space. This will look kind of sloppy if you ever view you're library by genre, but once you've tagged all your music with whatever genre you want you can then create a smart playlist such as this:

As shown, this smart playlist will look at the genre of all songs and if they contain the word "Alternative" then they will be in this playlist. At this point you will have a playlist that is a perfect representation of all songs "Alternative". Now you just need to repeat this pattern for all genres you would like to have, and all of your genres can be accessed through these playlists. (you would no longer go to the genre section when wanting to search by genre) But trust me, it can be time consuming.

Pros:
-"solves" mutiple genre problem
-keeps playlist up-to-date
-unlocks the true power of your music library
-totally rocks

Cons:
-time consuming to set up
-ONLY native to itunes (if you take your music library to any other program then you lose this wonderness)
-depending on how meticulous you are, it can make browsing your music by genre a pain

Honey Pot Notes

2008-03-17T13:56:00.001-07:00

Our Relief Society recently made me very happy by bringing back the honey pot notes. Many good times have been had with the honey pot. I can't help but remember the classics that j26 and j15 shelved out. Notes to Jen Coultren that were from Brett asking her favorite temple; notes to Trevor telling him how much Dan's belly liked his pizza. And of course, none other than the classics that the Bennion came up with. I commend you Eliot, you were my honey pot inspiration.

Maybe it's just me...

2008-03-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like whenever I go to the library in hope of meeting some hot chicks, a bunch of dudes always end up sitting around me. Do I really repel the ladies that much? My usual tactic is to sit down in an area where there are a bunch of open tables, hoping that a pretty girl will come sit down on a nearby table. But today it was pretty bad, and last time it was HORRIBLE. Dudes as far as the eye could see on the first floor education section. Ugh.

Only one of these guys was here when I sat down.

So my question is, Where are all the girls at? Turns out that both of the times this happened was during or close to devotional time, is that where they are?

Some random dude sitting at my table happens to be one of my pet peeves, especially if there are tables with girls on them that they could have sit on. I mean, If I was a dude coming into a room full of no open tables, I would NOT pick one that another dude was already sitting on, I would pick one with a chick on it.
Maybe I'm just weird. But if you read this and you are a dude, and you don't already, please do us all the favor of not punking us by being that random dude.

Oh and happy 311 day!

Huge Posts

2008-03-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

After getting done with my Hawaii post I realized that I should have broken it up into smaller posts or something like that. Big long posts just aren't the way to go. They take forever to make, they take forever to read. Sometimes less is more right? I'll try to keep my entries much more manageable from now on. Ugh, dtm is such a blogging newb...

the ULTIMATE Hawaii vacation guide

2008-02-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

Just a quick little guide of the four main islands of Hawaii. I've listed five events per island, the fifth being something I actually didn't get to do but plan on doing when I go back. If you plan on going, you might consider these activities:

View Larger Map
View in Google Earth

Oahu

1-The Polynesian Cultural Center/Temple
Hawaii's #1 paid attraction. As the big guy once put it, "the PCC is like the Disneyland of Hawaii". Plan on arriving about noon and spending the entire day there. You can purchase a tour package that includes a "guide" that will take you around to each unique village -> Tonga, Somoa, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Marquesas.
http://www.polynesia.com/

2-Pearl Harbor
One of those things you just have to see in Hawaii. Make sure and check the website for details.
http://www.nps.gov/usar/

3-North Shore
For great beaches make sure and stop by Waimea Bay, Sunset beach, or Turtle Bay. Sharks cove is great for snorkling (summer time). Matsumotos for snow cones-don't go to the other wanna-be snow cone stands! The Waimea Valley hike is a nice paved trail to waimea falls. If you're there during the winter months then you won't be the only one. Surfing is huge during the winter and you'll likely get to see some bone crunching waves! (especially at the pipeline)

4-Kualoa Ranch
If you're up for some adventure this is a good place for it. They have horse rides, four wheeler rides, Bus/Hummer Movie tours and even a jungle cruise!
http://www.kualoa.com/

5-Hanauma Bay
While I haven't actually been here myself, it is probably the most popular snorkeling spot on the island. It costs like five bucks or something. Be sure and bring your own gear. I think its about a five minute walk down a hill from the parking lot.

The Big Island
1-Kona Airport
Besides the fact that it's entirely outside, when landing in this airport you get to see something you don't see very often. The entire runway sits on a lava bed! (very far from the live volcano, so it's safe...)

2-Hamakua Coast
Unless you plan on doing some hiking, the most you'll get of this place is a nice view from a lookout spot. But if you're already driving around the island it is a must see! Parts of Indiana Jones 4 is filmed somewhere near here!

3-the South Point
Also kind of a drive to get to here, but heck, everything is a long drive on the big island. Besides, this is a very scenic drive full of green rolling grassy knolls, windmills, and at the end cliff jumping in the bluest water i've ever seen in my life! Also down the road past the cliff jumping is the green sand beach! Probably the coolest sand of all.

4-Black Sand Beach
Probably the second coolest sand. This black sand beach frequently has turtles chillin there. The sand is a much finer grain than that found on the Maui black sand beach.

5-the Volcano
So, it turns out that the big hump in the middle of the island is not where live lava can be seen. It's down closer to the ocean near a road called the "Chain of Craters". I was able to drive on most of the road but the best part was closed when I was there. (they said there had been earthquakes or something). If it's not closed you should be able to drive right up to where the lava overtook the road.
http://www.nps.gov/havo/

Maui
1-Haleakala Volcano Sunrise
One of the most spectacular views you'll ever see in your entire lifetime!!!! Make sure and bring some kind of coat, pants, and maybe even a blanket because not only is it friggin cold but it is WINDY. There are public bathrooms at the top and a visitor center. Many tour companies offer packages where they drive you up there and ride bikes and stuff, but I say just drive up there yourself with your own rent-a-car. During normal day hours you'll probably have to pay a fee like most national parks, but if you go early enough you might beat the toll booth attendants!

2-the Road to Hana
The longest drive on the entire planet. It's cool on the way there but on the way back all you want to do is just get back and skip all the winding roads. But no seriously it's totally worth it. You get to see some sweet waterfalls and when you get to Hana you must see the red sand beach!

3-Iao Needle
About 20 minutes up the mountain from the main city, this place offers a nice paved trail up to a lookout where you can see the Iao Needle mountain thing. Pretty cool, theres a river where you can play in the water.

4-Lahaina Park Banyan Tree
Someone had this great idea to graft a bunch of banyan trees together into one big single tree, and the result is this huge thing. Right inside the main park area of the city, this is worth taking some pictures with and if you're daring enough you can try and climb it.

5-the sister Islands
You can pay some guy with a boat to take you to other islands, Lanai or Molokai, or even a crater in the middle of the ocean that's supposedly good for scuba diving. The prices I saw looked pretty fair.

Kauai
1-the Blue Hole
The wettest spot on earth! Once you get here there's really not much to do other than wander around the marshy jungle or hike up the river, but the view here is amazing, you are literally surrounded by waterfalls off in the distance. Also the majority of the adventure is getting here, probably one of the best jungle drives in ALL of Hawaii. Most of Jurassic Park was filmed here.

2-Waimea Canyon
Takes a while to get here, but no doubt something you have to visit if you're on this island. There really isn't anything else like it in the world except the grand canyon itself. You can also drive past the canyon lookout to go get a small view of the na pali coast.

3-Wailua River
The biggest river on the island, this puppy has one huge waterfall. You can rent some kayaks from a little place and have a jungle river adventure.

4-Tree Tunnel Drive
This used to be much more spectacular before the 92 hurricane destroyed most of it. Nevertheless it is still cool, and it's also the portal to the south side of the island with many sites like a blow hole and botanical garden and a nice beach side drive.

5-Na Pali Coast
Like I said, I didn't get to experience this place. There is a hiking trail for the adventurous, a helicopter ride for the airsick, and a boat ride for the seasick. I want to do all of those things. This place is one of the seven wonders of the world, so, kind of a big deal.

Well there you have it! Accomplishing all the activities listed for an island is cake if you already plan on making one of your activities being the "circle island drive".
For inter-island travel, the round trip price averages 40-60$ Any of the following can be used:

If you for some reason you end up on Oahu for an extended period of time there is a website made by a BYUH grad that contains a plethora of activities and details about them. Check it out:
http://www.merman.us/cgi-bin/activities

poddin at church

2008-02-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

Besides playing solitaire or sonic the hedgehog, here's another reason to pod at church. (I'm in a d&c class right now so I use it there) I would call this version 0.9 D&C text for the ipod. Unfortunately most ipods have a 4kb file size limit on the text files they can read, therefore you'll notice the sections split up in a very strange manner. At some points it will split in the middle of a verse. Eventually I would like to clean that up for future versions.

But, here's the link:

http://www.et.byu.edu/~danelson/D&C%20final.zip

First extract the folder inside this zipfile. Make sure and enable your ipod for disk use in itunes and then go in explorer/finder and put the d&c folder in the "notes" folder on the ipod.

If you feel so inclined to do your own ipod text notes work, this is the website I used:

http://www.ambience.sk/ipod-ebook-creator/ipod-book-notes-text-conversion.php

the new dew

2008-02-10T21:37:00.000-08:00

I couldn't help but be overjoyed when I walked into the gas station and saw a new, larger sized mountain dew sitting on the shelf. Without a doubt, the best soft drink in my book. I actually had a dream of mountain dew the same night of DNO winter 2008. If you were at our apartment before we left you might remember us busting open a box of dews and saying how great it tasted, and that Trevor said it "has a much smoother taste to it lately". In my dream I was drinking a can and I looked at the label and it said "new, smoother taste". But when I woke up I went and checked a can and it didn't actually say that...

Staying Informed

2008-02-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those days where something happens in the world and you're the last one to know about it? I used to have days like that, but not since I started using google reader.
Do you ever find yourself wanting to read daily news/updates on multiple websites? There were times when I had so many news websites I wanted to read that it was too much to keep track of.

If you don't already use google reader, I'll give you a few reasons why you should:

All your news in one place - instead of loading ten different websites to read, you just load one that displays all your news chronologically

Never miss a post - even if the internets were out of your reach yesterday, google reader will still keep the posts until you've read them (although this can lead to a large list of unread items)

Searchable news - anything, from the title to body of the post can be easily searched with a familiar google search bar. so if you want to look up that old post from a month ago you can!

Not only news - almost all websites these days support some type of feed. Church news, BYU news, ESPN news, Peoples blogs, you tube postings, facebook updates, picasa album posts and so much more!!! (maybe even cougar board, but i'm not sure I'll have to check for you justin...) There will usually be a link that says something like "subscribe" or something to that effect. If you can find a link on the website you want to subscribe to google reader has a search feature when you click on "add subscription" on the main page.

So there it is. Google Reader is the best way to stay up to date on pretty much anything. But before you jump right in let me give you a few tips:

use tags! -helps you organize your sites into groups so if you wanted to only read sports stuff for example, you can just click on the sports tag (its similar to the function of labels in gmail)

show updated - it makes it easier to see what you haven't read if it only shows the updated posts. once you have read a post it will disappear but can easily be found again by searching or by switching to the show all option

mouse or keyboard? - at first i would only use the scroll wheel on the mouse to move through the entries, but then I discovered the keyboard shortcuts "spacebar" and "J" which will allow you to cycle through the entries much quicker and aren't as loud as the mouse wheel can be.

Welcome

2008-02-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

Thank you for visiting my new blog. I'll try and keep my postings as awesome as possible, but some normal ones might slip through. Basically this blog has no theme, just life in general.