One Dull Life

Toungue Point Job Corps

2008-11-11T10:01:00.000-08:00

Wow.....I have been here at TPJCC for nearly a month and a half. It's quite interesting, it also gets stressfull though due to the fact that the majority of the people attending this school are immature and tend to act like they're in highschool. (especially Seamanship for some reason)
I have had a bit more excitement here mostly due to the fact that I don't have easy access to a computer. But that also makes it harder to do work. If I had a computer of my own to use then I would be able to finish assignments while I am not in class. I would be able to finish school here so much faster.

Well anyways. So much for that.

TPJCC is a few miles outside of Astoria and is located on a small peninsula on the edge of the columbia river also very close to the ocean. But not close enough to smell the sea. I've been in town a few times and it is quite interesting. It is nearly always raining or at least misting and quite often is windy. It is my dream town. Now I just need to move to Seattle.......my dream city. Well anyways I'm in class atm so I'll take off now but heres a link to some photos of the campus. (even though the photos and stuff is quite old it'll give you enough info. XD)

http://tonguepoint.jobcorps.gov/

Nikolaus K.

Ah yeah..............a few minutes later

2008-06-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

I also found a cool new music player that has replaced winamp for me but is still in the alpha stage. Not exactly very fast. Not exactly very intuitive.........but very very cool. It is made by the makers of Firefox and is only on version 0.6 so it's not too far along but good enough for a moderately tech savvy person to use it. So here it is.

Songbird

Play Music. Play the Web.

Songbird is a highly customizable alternative to traditional desktop media players. Point 6 is our public alpha release.

Personalize Your Player

Choose from hundreds of useful add-ons that enhance Songbird. For example, MediaFlow is a community contributed add-on that allows you to visually take a spin through your music collection. Try it out, or build one of your own, and make Songbird your media player!

Discover Music

Subscribe to music blogs, get notified of new tracks, and experience rich integration with sites like The Hype Machine. Stream or download directly to your library. Never miss a beat, start playing the web.

Sync Your Device

Manually transfer or sync media to your device. We support a variety of iPods and MTP Devices.

Community Powered

Just like Firefox, Songbird is community powered, open source, cross platform, and built on the Mozilla stack. There are several ways to help make Songbird better. Check out the Songbird Developer Center where you can find information about the project—how to hack on it, connect with the team, submit code, and create your own add-ons.

Wooo....talk about neglect....

2008-06-26T22:59:00.001-07:00

...especially after my flurry of posts before. But I have found another rather usefull (free) program to use. X3

Well here it is.

Tray It

Release candidate for Version 4 of TrayIt! is finally out. It has an improved graphical interface and usability and also supports a lot of new features like window grouping, and support for SDI-type application like MS Excel or PowerPoint.
TrayIt! is now available in Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Turkish . Please note, that I can not take responsibility and verify quality and content of the translated files and would appreciate your feedback.
There is also no documentation yet, if someone would volunteer to help, I would really appreciate it!.

The version is currently stable from the functional prospective, but I still expect some cosmetic issues to be reported and fixed in the next couple of weeks. Please visit the TrayIt! FORUM to provide a feedback and and error reports.

Introduction

TrayIt! allows to save precious Taskbar space for minimized windows. For each application which applies TrayIt! it creates a small icon in the System Tray. (System Tray area is located near the Clock). When application's window is minimized this icon represents the application on the Taskbar instead of the regular "minimized rectangle".

It is particularly useful for background tasks you typically keep running on your PC all day long like your favorite E-mail client, Real Player, etc..

Using TrayIt!

TrayIt! runs on Windows 95/98/Me, NT/2000/XP and does not require any installation.
Simply create a new folder and place TrayIt!.exe and TrayIt!.dll there. When started, TrayIt! will show a dialog box with a short explanation how to use it. You may choose to load TrayIt! on system startup by selecting "Option" and checking "Load TrayIt! on StartUp" box.

You can temporarily put any window in the system tray by keeping down the button when minimizing the window.

To always keep window in the system tray when minimized, click with the RIGHT mouse button on the corresponding icon created in the tray in the previous step and check "Place in System Tray" in the popup menu.

Clicking with the right mouse button on the minimize icon will bring TrayIt! context menu for this window. Just check "Place in System Tray" in the popup menu to make window always go to the tray.

Please note that context menu will work only for the standard minimize icon and will not pop-up if the program use skins like MS Media player.

Major application Options

You can customize TrayIt! behavior by selecting the following options from the "Edit/Options" menu:

- Load TrayIt! on StartUp - creates a shortcut to the TrayIt! application in the user's Startup folder

- Single click action - when turned off you need to double-ckick on icon in the System Tray to activate an application.

- Group similar tray icons for each application - TryIt will group similar windows displaying only one icon in the tray to access the group.

- Minimize when in Foreground, activate when in Background - whith this option turned on, Clicking on the System Tray icon will minimize associated window when only if it is in already in the foreground and put in the foreground otherwise.

Major options for the window profile:

- Match pattern with the window title when creating a System Tray icon - when this option is activated you can specify a pattern that TrayIt will mach with an application window.
TrayIt! looks for a substring in a window title that matches a pattern. TrayIt! applies patterns from left to right and stops when first match is found. Patterns are not case sensitive. Use '|' to separate patterns, '*' and '?' wildcards are allowed in the pattern specification. '^' as a first symbol inverts meaning of the pattern.
Example: My Computer|Control Panel added to the explorer specification will create a System Tray icon only this two folders.

- Minimize on start - TrayIt! will minimize the selected window on start. The effect of this option is very similar to selecting "Run:Minimized" for the application shortcut. Please use it when the latest doesn't work correctly.

- Handle SDI-type applications like MS Excel, PowerPoint or MS Project TrayIt! will correctly handle applications that have only one application window but create multiple tabs in the taskbar areacorrectly.

If you start TrayIt! manually and would like to suppress the startup dialog box, just create a shortcut and run TrayIt! using /H switch.

TrayIt! is absolutely FREE and if you know of a good site, please feel free to upload TrayIt!

LIABILITY DISCLAIMER -- READ BEFORE INSTALLING TRAYIT!

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESSED, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING AND WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR HIS COMPANY BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER LOSS) , WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SOFTWARE.

Copyright © 1996-2005 Computer Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.

ScribeFire

2008-05-20T17:12:00.001-07:00

I haven't been searching for programs or have much of anything interesting to say about my personal life.......but just recently (5 mins ago) I found a plug-in for Firefox called ScribeFire. Now it's not that interesting of a plug-in but it's useful (considering I'm using it to post this) and much more convenient than loading your blog page, navigating to a new post and then posting. With ScribeFire you just have to push F8 and then start typing. Once your done click the button "Publish to "Your Blog" and your done. Cool isn't it?! XD

Description:

Post to your blog without ever leaving Firefox

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

...a lot of bloggers swear by it.

Michael Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch.com

5.1 Surround sound on computer systems

2008-05-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well lately I've been having problems getting surround sound outta' my system since Vista no longer has 5.1 support. So I searched for a good long while. I eventually found a system wide filter that switches all sound to 5.1 surround sound...........and also still sound very good. It's called Matrix Mixer. It is an Open Source program hosted on Sourceforge. I have been using it for 3 days now and it works and sounds very good. Theres a little bit of clipping but not enough to be too noticeable. I really recomend it. If you can come up with something better, that is also Open Source then please by all means share. I beg you. XD

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Description:

Matrix Mixer

MatixMixer is a DirectShow audio processing filter. Main purpose is mixing audio streams in any way. One of the applications is upmix stereo streams to multichannel (useful to watch stereo movies on 5.1 audio systems).

Fios

2008-05-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say this time. Just that I'm still drooling over Verizon's (Fiber Optic) Fios Internet service. I mean, just look at it!!!!! Where do you get such speed at such low prices. Even two years after hearing about it I'm still greatly amazed.

Waiting

2008-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Having to wait for things to get done is a big problem with me (Mainly 'cause I automate so many of my tasks.....but it still takes forever.......at least now I don't get carpal tunnel lol). So generally I read, study, watch videos, but mostly I surf for interesting and user friendly programs. These programs (and other things from the net) range from little things like TweakUI to Ubuntu.

Although I started typing this post about 3 days ago.......today I'm going over to my sisters house to do a scrapbook thing for my grandparents 50th? anniversary. We received invitations from them for it a while ago......although I haven't really even looked at them. I've been told it'll be in Seattle and at some steakhouse. This is all well and good; but I'm not really looking forward to that. I'm more looking forward to getting into Job Corps. I just wish that Job Corps would stop leading me around by the nose. I'm getting tired of getting told I'm so close to getting in and then hitting this massive hill that makes it so I can't make any progress for 5 months.

Oh wells enough about me for now.

Lately I've been looking into Virtual Desktop Software (like in linux) for windows (for free). Well.....I'd say I found something. A little program called VirtuaWin. It is an open source program (meaning it's for free) hosted on the sourceforge servers (meaning it's quite safe to use.....most the time). I have scanned it for viruses with AVG 8.0 Pro and it shows no signs of containing anything bad. I have been using it for about 1 day now and the only problem that I encountered was understanding the meaning of the settings of the hotkeys. Once I got that down pat (through a little trial and error) it became an extremely usefull and fun program to have in your inventory of cool little programs. Also due to the way they set this program up it's quite annoying to use with 4 desktops, because they organize the desktops in a square shape instead of side by side (horizontally like Ubuntu/Linux has). So I ended up just switching to 2 wide 1 deep format. Makes much easier......then you don't have to set so many hotkeys for it.

Anyways I hope you like the program. It works very well for me. If anybody is watching then let me know if theres any better ones out there that are open source. I'd be happy to write a review on it. Alright goodbye for now. XD

4/Ubuntu (aka: Linux/one large headache for Windows users)

2008-04-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

When they said said that Ubuntu/Linux wasn't a Windows clone, I didn't know that they meant it was an absolute pain in the ass to run anything except simple pre-installed programs on it.

They brag that is has over 15,000 programs for it (closer to 24,000 from what I've seen) but nearly every single one is useless for what I need to do.....and I can't use any programs I have installed on Windows Vista. Ubuntu is quite fun to use if your only a basic user or a programmer/tech head. It will play your music, movies and pictures in a picture viewer but when I tried to get a program to mount ".daa" files (which requires poweriso).........I found out that poweriso has a version of it for linux/ubuntu but in the end couldn't figure out how to install it even after looking through all the ubuntu forums of explanatory guides to installing programs on linux/ubuntu.

Now after all that searching I looked through synaptic (the ubuntu program search program) and couldn't find one there either. So I'm at this point where I'll just mess with Ubuntu when I feel the need for a change. I'll probably eventually figure out how to install what I need but for now I prefer to let my headache go away first.

P.S. WHY THE F*CK ARE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT VISTA INCOMPATABILITY WITH DRIVERS AND PROGRAMS WHEN THERE IS ONE THAT WON'T LET YOU INSTALL 90% OF THE FREEWARE PROGRAMS OUT THERE!!!!!...............Jesus.......stop complaining you retards.............think of how lucky you are that you have windows vista and not Linux/Ubuntu. You have it insanely easy.

Sorry about my ranting. I'll sign out now......laters everyone. (notices that still noone has visited yet lol)

3/ More Technical Brilliance (aka LocalCooling)

2008-04-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

I have just found a very cool program that reduces my computer power consumption from 191 watts to 78 watts. Now isn't that cool?

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Local Cooling 2.0

PC power consumption: does it really matter?

More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we aren’t using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent, in energy terms, to the gas consumption of one car. Learn more about PC power consumption...

LocalCooling is a 100% FREE power management tool, from Uniblue Research Labs, that allows users to optimize their energy savings in minutes and as a result reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What does LocalCooling do?

Download the 100% FREE LocalCooling application and to automatically optimize your PC’s power consumption by using a more effective power save mode. You will be able to see your savings in real-time translated to more environmental terms such as how many trees and gallons of oil you have saved.

LocalCooling will:

Cut your energy bills
Reduce the amount of greenhouse gas CO2 emissions as a
result of your reduced PC power consumption
Give you full control over your power mode settings
Improve your overall efficiency and computing experience
Show you, in detail, how much you have saved since installing the software

Learn more about how LocalCooling will help you save energy!

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Another very cool program that is a simple windows screensaver.

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WhitSoft Power Dimmer

Power Dimmer

Power Dimmer is a Windows screen saver application that, once activated, will gradually dim your screen, fading it from full brightness to a final brightness level that you set. While the screen is dimmed, you can still see all of your windows, as well as any on-screen activity. Move the mouse or press a key and your screen will be restored to full brightness. To install this screen saver, download and unzip the file to your Windows folder and then select WhitSoft Power Dimmer from the list of screen savers in your Display Options control panel. This program requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

2nd Post / Technical Brilliance

2008-04-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Well I'm just posting again (a few minutes later) to let you know some cool programs and tech stuff. I highly doubt the normal computer user would find this stuff easily so for your sakes (sees that no one is watching) I'm letting you in on a few awesome programs. This time (expect this to be a regular occurrence) I'm showing you a few cool IM programs that are favorites of mine.

Descriptions:

1st is:

Trillian 3.1.9.0
This is a multi-instant messaging program that will allow you to connect to the AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Myspace and many other IM programs all in one little program.

Trillian is reccomended for intermediate to advanced computer users. It is somewhat complicated to set up for the average user but once you set it up it is quite easy to use.
I would also use trillian right now but I am a graphics buff so I tend to like prettier stuff (even if it is skinnable it is quite the ugly rat. For now I will be waiting for Trillian Astra to come out till I start using it religiously.

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Trillian™ is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides capabilities not possible with original network clients, while supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification, direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings.

Trillian provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes (set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundreds of emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and systray notifications.
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2nd is

Pidgin 2.4.1
This IM program is similar to Trillian but has several major differences. The first is the fact that it is very user friendly, even a begginer could use this program very easily. The second is that the program unskinnable. The third is that it very few options (but I can live with that). Last but not least the 4th is the fact that it has almost zero plugins for it, reducing it's capability greatly.

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Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. Looking for Pidgin for OS X? Try Adium!

Pidgin integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1's system tray, as well as Windows' own system tray. This allows you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be open at all times.

Pidgin is under constant development, and releases are usually frequent. The latest news regarding Pidgin can be found on the news page.

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3rd and last is

Meebo

The major defining difference between the above to multi-messengers is that this one is run in a web browser window. This is very fun to use and interactive but is very inconvenient because it is run in a browser window. For when the need arises to shut down the web browser due to it using up too much speed for what your doing at the time, you are no longer connected to your IM networks.

In the end it might be visually compelling and very nice to play with, but it's just that. A toy. It is not something I would use very often due to browser limitations. Otherwise for avid web surfers I reccomend this service to you. for it will be very handy.

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Meebo is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you're at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to www.meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!

Meebo launched in September 2005 and received funding from Sequoia Capital in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in January 2007. Today, our 29+ million users exchange over 150 million instant messages daily. We (the Meebo team) are just a fun bunch of people trying to bring IM to the Web!

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Well thats it for my...........hmmm.....software reviews I geuss. I hope you find me and my rantings useful. X3

First Post

2008-04-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Waaaahhhhh.........I am so in foreign territory. This is so wierd. But anyways I'll start.

Recently (well for more than three years) I've been trying to get into Job Corps. It has just been one trial after the next. Right now the obstacle to get past is where the state has a bill in my name, when it belongs to my father. So....I have gone to court to get that changed. All I'm waiting for is a letter for when the court date is then hopefully this will all be over and I can get on with my life.

Okay enough of the court talk for now.....on to bigger and better things. When I get to Job Corps I will be going for either culinary arts or long distance trucking education and then when I get enough money go to college I'll go to college for something like being an IT Proffesional. I can't really be sure 'cause I always have doubts but I've gotta' try at least.

Well to talk about other things.

My sister Mishael just had a baby boy named Kenson. He is very cute and very small. I'm too 100% in agreement with the name. In other words I think it's a bit silly. But I'm sure it will grow on me.

I don't talk about much and probably won't update very often. (expect 1 or 2 updates a month) For now this is goodbye.