Cpgeek.org

New personal NAS / Home Server!

I recently (through work) found a great deal on a sweet NAS array (a Thecus N7700 Pro loaded with hard drives) but being the hacker I am, I didn’t stop there. Read More >>

Updates!

I know, it’s been forever since I’ve posted here and I know I’ve made unmet promises of regular posting, but alas, real life, a new job, family, etc. has kept me from publishing.

Fun things I’ve been up to include:

A new job!: I no longer work Technology Sales at the university bookstore!  I moved on up to a real IT Consultant position with a modest pay increase doing stuff with cool things and cool people that make me much happier.

Moving: I’ve moved in with my girlfriend and children and her sister and her sister’s young one.  A small house with 3 adults and 3 children under 10 is a very busy place.

New car!: When i got the new job, I needed to be able to get there, so after doing lots of research, I picked myself up a brand new 2014 Subaru Impreza Hatchback!  Lots of room for hauling gear, high safety marks, fun to drive… loving it.  Of course the other side of that coin is the newfound income from my aforementioned new employment quickly went directly into car payments, so i’m just slightly better off now than I was before financially, but hey, I’ve got a new ride, I’m doing what I like now with sweet new equipment and people who are totally rad!

Amateur (Ham) Radio: I’ve decided to step up and seriously take a close look at getting my amateur radio license so i can play with radio, meet some new nerd contacts, and get my feet wet.  I’ve been listening (totally legal so long as i don’t transmit) to the local 2 meter band around here for a while, finding repeaters, learning what i can, and it seems like fun.  I just ordered one of those infamous RTL-SDR dongles for use with gnu radio and SDR# which seems like it’ll be pretty fun. (hopefully I’ll be posting a short configuration tutorial and review when that comes in)

Project Gazelle: I’m still in the planning stages, but I’m hoping to use What.CD’s Gazelle Project to set up a sweet torrent tracker for amateur video sharing.  Unfortunately, because there are so many great features and they’ve made it extremely extensible, it’s become an extremely unruly beast (really big and complex) so wrapping my brain around it all before i get started is proving to be a bit of a nuisance.

NAS home server: (I’m going to do a full post about this next so I’ll just leave this here for a bit of a teaser)

New notebook: post to come soon… perhaps tonight…

FUIs meet reality – the need for a unified usable and good looking interface.

Today’s interfaces are floundering. We now have more hardware than we know what to do with, and on top of that hardware we run applications with user interfaces straight out of the early 90’s. innovation is stagnant.

In our entertainment we see amazing looking user interfaces that work very well for the application we see them doing, but we don’t typically see anything of the sort in the real world. we’re stuck with an outdated “desktop” style interfaces that more and more defy their original intention, that they be easy to use. Read More >>

growing pains

You’ll notice lots of changes over the next little bit. I think I’ve finally got this web server business up and running and working good… now it’s time to concentrate on the content.

I did bring over all of the ancient content I wrote for my drupal blog at cpgeek.org waaay back in the day (few years ago). but I will be changing up both the design, layout, and functionality of this site slowly over the next few months to actually, you know, make it look nice and do things.

for now, the blog functionality seems to be working properly, so things should be pretty decent there. feel free to make comments on anything you see here… I’ll be replying now and then. suggestions are *very* welcome.

Nerdcore Hip-hop: an Introduction

Nerdcore Hip-hop: an Introduction
C/O Midnight Giggler

Nerdcore Hip-hop: Making it ok to use cleverness, large words, and technical jargon with flow to talk about life.

All of these tracks are awesome, and there’s so much more… Please note that this is by absolutely no means a complete list of good nerdcore hip-hop songs, simply a selection to get you started on your way toward exploration. artists and songs are in no particular order, please feel free to slide around and find something you like.

Read More >>