An Ode To A Server Room

Server room, server how have you been?
It’s been a long time much longer than it should seem.

After a long hiatus we are back together.
If only the master of the door never had to take leave…ever.

How I’ve missed your ability to provide dual monitor support;
With the LCD monitor with who I’ve built good rapport.

Your network cable long, blue, winding and unobtrusive.
Unlike the other: short, intermittent, trip-inducing and obstructive.

The hum of the servers, that seek your refuge, buzz in the air,
As I happily work away on my humble little chair

A chair that swivels, pivots and whose height can vary,
As opposed to the fixed stiff one that didn’t leave me merry

So here’s to a new year with lots of work and documentation to be done,
Despite spending new year’s eve and day with your competition on Ground level one.

Do not be jealous for the front desk is good,
Easy to access and accommodates more food.

But alas I will return in due time I shall,
For more work to be done with the Server Room, my Pal

Ok I don’t know if that makes me sad or just that weird or both.

So here’s to a new year:
</2007><2008>
Courtesy of Reddit.com

Portal: The Flash Version

Based on Valve’s Portal, Portal: The Flash Version brings it all up in 2d!
Portal: The Flash Version includes over 40 challenging, portals thinking levels, and everything’s included, in 2d – energy balls, cubes, turrets and even the famous crusher from the trailer. The game also includes a console to mess around with after finishing the game, or just being frustrated by thinking with portals!

This game is pretty fun. It shall go in my flash games stash along with Desktop Tower Defense.

N.B. Save the game to your computer (right click > “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…”)

P.S. Thanks to Nick for the game =D

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Removing Vocals from a Song

Can I remove the vocals from a recording to make a Karaoke track?

This is possible only for certain stereo tracks. When the vocals are exactly the same on both stereo channels, you can remove them by “subtracting” one channel from the other. This works for many studio recordings, where the vocal track is mixed exactly in the center.

To do this in Audacity:

  1. Import your stereo file into Audacity.
  2. Open the track menu (click the arrow next to the track title), and choose “Split Stereo Track.”
  3. Select the lower track (the right channel) by clicking it in the area around the mute/solo buttons.
  4. Choose “Invert” from the Effects menu.
  5. Using the track menus, change each track to “Mono.”

Youtube tutorial

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Still Alive

While listening to The Linux Action Show! Episode 67 (MP3 page | OGG page) I was wondering what the heck Bryan was doing at the end… until “Still Alive” (lyrics and chords!) started playing. Loved the song and first heard about it from Windows Weekly (I think it was episode 40): it’s played at the end credits of the game Portal sung by Ellen McLain (in-game voice of GLaDOS and the turrets). This song comes from the same genius who brought us “Code Monkey” – Jonathan Coulton. Check out his songs here. Loved the Half-Life reference: “Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mesa. That was a joke, ha ha, fat chance”. And when the song mentions about doing science the only thing I could think of was this from XKCD:
I'm going to try Science

Windows
+ Netcast/Podcast (Windows Weekly/Linux Action Show)
+ Linux
+ Games (Portal/Half-Life)
+ Music (Jonathan Coulton / Code Monkey / Still Alive)
+ Comics (XKCD)
= One great combination blog post

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I want this…

baby vac

Assembly:

  1. Insert the evacuator (A) into the collecting cylinder (B)

  2. Turn on your household vacuum cleaner between 800Watt and 1500Watt

  3. Insert the vacuum cleaner adapter (C) into the attachment hose on the vacuum

  4. Place your child in a sitting/upright position on your lap and hold him/her safely

  5. Put the evacuator (A) into his/her one nostril and leave the suction on until the mucus goes into the evacuator

  6. Repeat the process with your child other nostril

  7. When you finished with the process take away the Baby Vac from the child’s head

Though I am a bit weary of plugging it into a household vacuum cleaner =|

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My Night Life

my night life
Well thats my room [starting from the left: UPS – green and orange, keyboard – green, speaker – green, mouse – blue (Razer Diamondback Plasma), power extension – red, laptop – blue x 3 and green (though it’s supposed to be blue, green, nothing, green)]. Was having pretty bad coughing bouts, the type where you almost puke =S Then after taking this picture and having read Photography Video Tutorial: Light Speed Escalator (Digg it!) in the afternoon I decided to try get fancy and actually do something. So 189 photos later I still didn’t get what I wanted so I will have to resort to GIMP-ing it (as opposed to Photoshopping: free-of-charge FLOSS rocks).

I was trying to do a spiral kind of thing but didn’t work out. Only really happy with the following 2 photos:
 

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A reason to dislike GTK applications

Bug 135056 – Alt-Tab doesn’t work during drag-and-drop (nor does workspace switch, etc.)

See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390312 for gtk side of this problem. GTK grabs keyboard at the moment but that can be fixed. QT applications do not grab keyboard on DND right now if you need to test it without newest patched GTK.

I just find it the ultimate annoyance after being used to it for so long. So for those would be Linux users be wary of Gnome and other GTK based applications

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