These are my links for October 29th:

• Aperture: Avoid doing Time Machine backups or restores during Aperture sessions –

These are my links for October 25th:

• Gary Voth Photography: The Forgotten Lens –
• Intro to Photography Course –

These are my links for October 24th:

• SaveTube – Save YouTube Videos – A nifty website that lets you extract the video for a download from YouTube

I admit it. I’ve been neglecting things here at the Minnesota Geek. Why you might ask? The answer is simple: I’ve been captivated by the community at Flickr. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was participating in the 365 days group, a group where you take a self portrait every day for 365 days. I’ve found it to be *much* harder than I thought it would be. I’m at day 33 and I’m already running out of ideas. Only 330 or so days to go. UGH! We’ll see if I make it. To catch me at Flickr you can check out these links:

My Flickr Photostream

My set of photos from 365 days.

The twenty “most interesting” photos I have posted to Flickr, according to Flickr.

Catch you next time!

–Pete

These are my links for October 18th:

• Xserve, Xserve RAID: Apple Drive Module (ADM) compatibility –

These are my links for October 11th:

• Apple Portables: How to disconnect the MagSafe power adapter –
• Apple Portables: Reducing cable strain on your MagSafe power adapter –

These are my links for October 2nd:

• Really Cool Software that Education folks might like –

These are my links for September 27th:

• Getting Started with awk –
• What does “> /dev/null 2>&1″ mean? at Xaprb –
• dooce: That Lovely Glow Effect – A nice tip about adding a soft glow to pictures

These are my links for September 20th:

• Mac OS X Server: AppleShare performance tuning for client and server –

These are my links for September 17th:

• Mac OS X Server 10.4 or later: Removing old updates from Software Update Server –

Day 1: Basking in the Glow, originally uploaded by pmarkham.

I have to admit that I’ve become absolutely captivated by Flickr, the photo sharing website. I’ve really enjoyed posting photos there and seeing what people say and seeing what photos of mine are the most popular. I’ve also loved looking at the millions of photos on the site and seeing some incredible examples of photography.

One of the features of Flickr is groups, which is just a way for Flickr members to get together with each other and share photos of the same theme. There are groups to fit every occassion. Recently, I ran across a group called 365 Days, which I’ve found fascinating. The idea here is simple. You are to post one self portrait each day for one year. The rules are also simple. At least some part of you has to be in the picture and you have to be the one that triggered the camera to take the picture. Simple rules. The results are absolutely fascinating. After looking at hundreds of photos from the group last night, I decided to take the challenge and join the 365 Days group. I’ve already posted my Day 1 and Day 2 photos. I’m willing to bet the objects in the photos (besides me!), won’t be a big surprise to anyone who knows me well. 🙂

Now the hard part — keeping this up. I hope you’ll consider following along, and if I miss a day, I hope you’ll prod me into continuing. I’m looking forward to a good reason to take a photo every single day. I’m also looking forward to having some pictures of me to share with people. Since I’m the guy in the family that likes to take photos, I’m actually in very few of them.

–Pete

It has been a challenging week. On Tuesday, while on-site with a customer, the hard drive of my laptop ceased to function properly, rendering my machine unbootable. I wasn’t too worried at the time, because the SMART data still came back normal, so I thought it was probably just a software issue. When I got home, I discovered that my machine’s drive was in worse shape than I had originally hoped. It appears that a large section of the drive’s platter is littered with bad sectors. What does this mean for me? Fortunately, not a major crisis, as I had a relatively recent backup — about a week old. The stuff that wasn’t backed up, I’ve been able to coax from the hard drive of my ailing machine after spending LOTS of time working on it.

Now the next step is to get the drive replaced. What a pain!

So — have you backed up your computers lately?

–Pete

These are my links for September 14th:

• Shortcuts – Learning Curve – A nice list of keyboard shortcuts for Mac OS X

These are my links for September 9th:

• Memoires – Daily Journal Application For OS X – Cool app to try

I really should rename this feature, Lyrics of Whenever I Feel Like, since it has been a LONG time since I’ve posted any here. Oh well. Here’s some for you to think about though. There is a contemporary Christian group called Go Fish that my wife and I enjoy. One of my favorite songs from them is a little tune called “That’s What Amazes Me”. I think the title explains it pretty well. After having our 3 year-old niece visit us last weekend and reading about my pal Brian finally bring home his adopted son from Guatemala, this particular verse struck home for me:

Little fingers curled round mine
A perfect heart right in time
Brand new eyes look all around
As tiny ears hear every sound
And like the artist creates his masterpiece from nothing
So this child came to be
From the love of two
Came a whole new entitiy
And that’s what amazes me

It is amazing, isn’t it? It is so amazing it is hard to wrap your brain around it. Anyway — go download the song. I think you’ll like the other verses too. You can get it here.

–Pete

Over Labor Day weekend, I finally had a chance to go and visit the I-35W Bridge Collapse in person. It was a bit overwhelming to see the magnitude of the damage. I’ve driven over that bridge hundreds of times in my life. Now, even a month later, it is a pile of rubble. It is hard to fathom the violence of the collapse or even envision driving across it while that was happening. It was so sad that people were killed and injured in this accident, but it is absolutely amazing the toll was so small in number, given the magnitude of the damage.

–Pete

I’ve been reading a new blog lately called Zen Habits and ran across a delightful post about remembering to look at/experience life’s simple pleasures. The author writes:

A little trick I like to use to make my days much more pleasant is to find little, simple pleasures and sprinkle them throughout my day. They’re not big things, but they each simple pleasure can translate to a great day if you use them right.

The post ends with a list of 75 things that Leo, the author, regards as simple pleasures in his life. He had some great ones that I would agree are also simple pleasures for me. There are, however, a bunch that aren’t on his list that would be on mine.

So — here’s some to add, in no particular order:

• * Taking pictures with my camera
• * My wife’s chicken & noodle hot dish. YUM!
• * Climbing into bed after we just changed the sheets
• * Being greeted when I arrive home by three frantically wagging dog tails
• * Coming home to a clean house
• * The sound of waves lapping on a shoreline
• * The warm sun on my face on a cool autumn day
• A walk through the woods to enjoy the fall colors
• Getting up, turning off my alarm, and going back to sleep
• Sleeping in on a Saturday
• Making significant forward progress on a home improvement project
• Getting an email from a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
• Getting a phone call from a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
• Sending an email to a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
• Making a phone call to a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
• Watching my wife interact with all of our animals
• Playing with a new technology toy
• Listening to the sound of a radial engined airplane
• Watching airplanes — especially if I can get to an airport
• Walking the dogs and listening to my wife talk about her day at work
• Getting so engrossed in a good book that I lose track of time
• Sitting along the shoreline of Lake Superior and experiencing the lake with all of my senses
• Watching good people who are good parents interact with the children
• Having a niece or nephew grab your hand, smile, and ask you to come with them to play
• Paying off an outstanding debt
• Looking at a really good picture on Flickr
• Getting a comment on my blog or on a photo on Flickr
• Reading a book, a good magazine, or even an interesting newspaper article while sipping coffee in the morning
• Listening to the sound of fresh snow crunching beneath your feet
• Really listening to the words of a song that tell some kind of story
• Rubbing my dogs ears while they wag their tails and try to lick my face

That’s a nice start. I’ll try to add some more as I think of them. What about you? What are the simple things in your life?

–Pete

These are my links for September 4th:

• AFP548 – Kerberos Part 3 – Kerberos On Member Servers – Another excellent Kerberos Article.
• Crash with MacIntel & Word 2004 – An interesting article about Intel based Macs crashing when trying to save certain Microsoft Word 2004 documents.

This photo breaks the rules a little bit for the Photo of the Week category. I’m only supposed to be posting photos I took with my Nikon D40x, but since this is my website and these are my rules, I’m going to break them a little. This photo is currently one of my most popular photos on Flickr. I think it is pretty easy to see why. I took it with a point and shoot camera.

Want to see more of my photos? Be sure to visit my Flickr site.

–Pete

I’m a few weeks behind in the photo of the week department here at the Minnesota Geek. This shot I took at the world famous Air Venture 2007, the little airshow that my friends at the Experimental Aircraft Association put on every year. I attended with a friend this year and spent the better part of two days wondering the grounds and soaking up all things aviation. I also took a huge amount of photos, but I really liked this photo as it really gives a picture of what this show is all about. You’ve got tons of people, some cool airplanes on the ground (that’s a C-17 Globemaster), some cool airplanes in the air, and blue skies. What could be better for an aviation enthusiast, huh?

Don’t want to wait for the next round of “Photo of the Week”? Check out my Flickr site. I’ve been having loads of fun uploading my photos there. At last count, there were over 190 posted to Flickr.

–Pete