Stone Temple Pilots Kingston Nov 21 2009

The Stp show last night was amazing. Prob one of the best shows I have seen in a while. Our seats where really good (Hard to tell from that cell phone image), but other than one drunk dude who keep shaking the boards we where all leaning on everyone/thing was cool. I am trying to remember for the life of me all the songs they played, but they didnt have a bad one in the set list… Although I also can’t think of a bad song they have. Crash Karma opened for them, and it was not to bad. Kinda sad the biggest applause for them was when they played a Tea Party song, but I guess that is to be expected since they have one EP out right now and only getting one song with radio play.

The first this I did was look into what features I really wanted in my new shredder.

1. A few sheets are a time (3 to 5 min)
2. Auto and Reverse (should be standard on all them)
3. Ability to do CD’s
4. Ability to do Credit Cards.

Staples and paper clips I dont really care about since I can just rip the corner off a pack of paper pretty easy.

After looking at the weekly flyers and online a fair amount I ended up getting a Staples Mailmate Shredder Item Number 649935 for $68.72.

It has the following features:

* Features: Shreds 10 folded paper sheets, CDs/DVDs, credit cards, staples & small paper clips
* Heavy Duty Cross-cut: 51-100 uses per day
* Finish: Stainless Steel/Black
* Light weight, pull-out bin and rubberized handle make emptying easy
* Throat Width: 6″ (152.4mm)
* Shred Size: 0.2″ x 1″ (4mm x 25mm)
* Basket Capacity: 1.5 Gallons (5.5L)
* Overheat & Power LEDs
* Overload Protection with Auto Reverse Feature
* Digital Control Switches
* Auto Off Feature: powers down after 30 minutes
* Non-skid rubber feet
* Shred Speed: 5.6 ft/min. (1.7 m/min.)
* Dimensions: 10.2″L X 11.8″W 11″H
* Weight: 15.2 lbs

It sounded like it had everything I wanted out of a shredder, but this was not to be the case. After getting it home I shredder for a few min and then waited a bit and did some more. In no time the unit powered off (the over heat light did not come on). Looking in the manual it said if this happened to leave it for 25 min and then plug it back in and try again. Not a single light would come on….

Back to Staples the next day with my broken shredder.. I didn’t really want to spend much more on a shredder, but also was not feeling the love of this model and didn’t want to get the same kind again. After looking over the remaining options I went with a Staples D-Shape Diamond-Cut Shredder Item Number 703283 for $99.21. So I paid the difference and left with my new shredder with the following specs:

* Features: Medium-duty ultraquiet shredder with up to 50 uses per day
* Basket interlock switching (machine shuts off when shredder basket door is opened)
* Separate slot to shred CDs/DVDs
* Reverse/forward button with red “attention” and “bin full” LEDs
* Overheat/overload protection
* Nonskid rubber feet
* 12-sheet capacity
* 9″ throat size
* 1/5″ x 1-19/50” shred size
* 6-gallon basket capacity
* 1-year manufacturer’s limited warranty, 7-year on cutters (details with product)12-sheet capacity.

So far it seems like a way better unit and I hope it will last for more than the MailMate did.

I don’t think I mention the new phones that I picked up a little while back. I was looking for something small, cordless, stylish, and had a answering machine built into it. What I ended up finding was the Phillips DECT 225. Its actually turned out to be a nice set of phones. One thing I would like to see added to a system with the base station is a central address book. Each hand set can have an address book, but they are stored on the handsets. I really would like it to saved on the base station and be avail to any registered handset attached to that base station.

It has some pretty kick ass built in ring tones and I have been using the one that sounds a lot like the original Ninja Gaiden music from the NES.

Enter geany..

On first look at geany you can tell that this thing is made to be light weight, but still has a little more going on that I like in most cases. It looks like a lighter version of most IDEs I have tried. Your main coding window is on the right side and includes line numbers which are always handy and supports multiple open files via tabs (even my toaster has tabs now). It is important to note that you can drag the tabs around and reorder them on the fly.

To the left of the tabs is the “symbols tab”, which right now some people might wonder what that is and I will cover later. Next to the symbols tab in the same frame we have the pages tab… This seems pretty redundant with the other tabs to the right, unless you have a mass of tabs open and want a quicker way to get around. At the bottom of all this we have some other standard IDE type options. Of these I tend to only use the terminal (yep its a terminal), and the scribble pad. The scribble pad allows you to take down quick notes and is not project or page specific. It will also save this on exit and reopen of the IDE. I did some digging around and it just stores this in the config file for geany (~/.geany/geany.conf).

Geany supports a large amount of file types and provides syntax highlighting for each. This is handy if you happen to work in more than one language but don’t want to have to change IDEs depending on what you are working on.

The main reason I tried out geany in the first place was the support of code folding.

As you can see above the code folding works as expected and really helps clean up some messy complex code.

Another interesting little feature to geany is the ability to add what I call “markers” to your work (I didn’t look what they call them). If you click to the right of a line number it will mark that line. This is handy for working in long files. I use to just put comments in my code for this and still would if I plan to come back to it later. For quick changes this comes in handy and will let you jump around the page quicker. It will not save these when you close the file.

Now what about that little symbols window I almost closed to get out of my way when I started this thing up… It actually turns out to come in useful after all. :) It can be used to locate variables, functions, classes, and more in a page quick. Click what you want and it will jump to that section of the page. If that section is folded it will unfold the needed section for you.

These are just some highlights that I found while playing around with geany, and is by no means everything great about it. It supports a fair amount of auto completion that in most cases would bother me, but has not the past few days of using it. In all geany is a nice IDE with a light feel, and tends to stay out of your way when you are working, but brings some quick little tools to your finger tips.

Well the other day I decided to break out of the gnome desktop and use something close but not.. I tested out xfce4 to see what I thought of the latest version they had to offer. Trying it before and not being a fan I was not expecting much.. Well Xfce4 version 4.3.99.1 almost has me sold. It is clean and stays out of my way in a gnome like fashion, but at the same time seems more pulled together than gnome. Sure it has less “stuff” on a install, but you can add pretty much anything you need and even use a gnome applet dock for the pannel. It feels very much like the perfect mix of minimal and a full blow desktop enviroment (gnome).

Right now it is just installed on my work computer, but I think it will finding a home on my home computer also.

Thankfully we made it to our sites and back in one piece with the car in the same shape as when we left (I leave that up to you to decide if that is a good thing of not). One last thing.. Do you think the team that designed this car actually brag about it? Like walking down the street with some friends and they see one roll by “I designed that car!”.

The movie starts off getting right down to meat of things with a nice mass killing. :) Although the rest of the movie is pretty low key on the gore and blood it has more of a thriller feel to it. The focus of the people keeps changing though out the movie, so it keeps a fresh feel going. I can’t see this being anyone all time fav. movie, but it is well worth a rent if you like thriller/horror movies.

Alright… I know the people in this can’t truly hate all the games they are commenting on, but if they do.. they suck! Joust amounts to mashing a single key so you can land on someone else.. pssshh! then why can I prob still kick there ass at it if they know the trick to it. :)

Its a good read that makes any avid game player pissed (which is prob why they did it). Anyway read it remeber it, remeber the faces, and dont trust any reviews from them or any one that has to do with thejadegamer.net.

For me it has always been the levels that are more possible in life that I have come to like best. This game with a few exceptions has some great levels that are just that. I know the chances of finding skate parks done up this much or schools with that many great stairs and ramps woudl be a rare find, but it is atleast possible. Althought the game was released in 1999 it has some great bands that predate it like Dead Kennedys, Goldfinger, The Vandals, and Primus. No Tony Hawk game is complete with out Tony’s friends and it has your standard line up of some great names. It also has a custom character system that in its time was on par with most other custom character system in games.

The game play is objective driven (read that as no story mode), knock over 5 barrels, beat the sick highscore, etc. Do enough of the objectives and you unlock a new level with some of the same objectives and some new ones. The only other variation to the game play is the competition level in which you have to skate against other skaters to rack up the most points and get a medal.

After playing all the others in the series this game has lost some of its fun for me, but will always be one of those games that I know ate up a large chunk of my life.

One thing about this game that is a little of a let down for me is the story line. It plays out like a very bad american port of a anime tv show. There isn’t anything in the story line that has created much interest for me so far but that doesn’t hurt the game at all. The game play is pretty soild, fun, and frustrating at times. The controls also help make up for what seems like a bad story line. Controlling with the stylus or standard controls both work extremely well. I find myself using the stylus more for at home sessions and the standard controls when playing away from home (not sure why, but i tend to not use the stylus when out?).