I have been reliving life as an 8th grader in 1990-1991 again the last few days by playing my once/once again favorite game: Super Mario 3. I picked up Super Mario 3 for the Wii via the Virtual games and have been loving every second of my game play. It is amazing how much I remembered (secret areas, etc) and I just checked out a site that lists some goodies that I had forgotten about (coin ship, warp from world 1, etc). I always had fond memories of this game – and spent a lot of late nights with friends playing this – and even 18 years later – I find this game incredibly fun. Gotta love playing these classics on a huge TV 
Archive for May, 2008
All posts written in May, 2008.
May
28
2008
Back to Eighth Grade…
May
22
2008
Weekend Changes
I always wondered at what age do people start doing things around the house on the weekends, clean windows, get concerned about weeds in the yard, and start remodeling projects. For me: age 31. The last few weeks A and I have been busy around the house getting our yard in order, I have been touching up paint, planning landscaping, and cleaning windows. Our hall bathroom is under construction, and I plan to spend the long weekend outside painting and start really landscaping. Wow. I guess gone are the days where I played Grand Theft Auto III all weekend and did a lot of nothing and here are the days when the thought of dandelions in my yard drive me insane! Welcome to adulthood
May
19
2008
Find Out When New Wii Games Are Released
Ever since I got the Wii, I have been watching to see what old games would be released for the Virtual Console and I finally decided to check out to see if Nintendo had a feed for all new game releases. Sure enough, they have a RSS feed and it lists all new game releases. (This way I can stay on top of the RC Pro Am release…whenever that might be). The feed also includes news as well – but at least I can passively get the release dates and some general news instead of searching for it.
If you own a Wii, check out the feed so you can stay on top of everything: http://www.nintendo.com/feed
May
14
2008
Undelete Something With SVN
Ever delete something with svn (svn del) and then realize you needed it again? You can get it back by using: svn copy -r HEAD filenameyoudeleted.extension filenameyoudeleted.extension
- svn copy is the command to get a working copy back
- -r is short for revision. I used HEAD which will give you the latest in repository. You can specify a revision number, revision right before you committed, etc (check out svn help copy)
- filename is what you deleted, then where it goes. I usually do something like this within the folder the file was located so you do not see any paths, but if your file was in /www/files/ you would need to specify the file path to /www/files/filnameyoudeleted.extension /www/files/filnameyoudeleted.extension
Working with SVN is a lifesaver – and this tip is gold.
May
13
2008
Jappler Recommends: Vonange
I use Vonage for my home phone, and used to use it as my business phone but decided to go with a ATT with my business line since I thought I wanted to keep a traditional phone line in the house. After my last ATT bill, their hideous ATT business web site (where you are forced to use IE 7 and they use an untrusted SSL certificate) I have had enough. Vonage for all lines as of July. Why? Vonage is fantastic.
I like Vonage becasuse:
- They have a great, easy to use web site which works with any browser
- When I get a voicemail – I can get an audio file of the voicemail in my email notification that I have a voicemail
- The billing includes unlimited and is always $24.99 a month (for crappier services at ATT I pay over $100 a month)
- I can keep my same phone number
- When the electricity is out and/or my internet connection is down Vonage routes all incoming calls to my cell phone.
If you have been considering making the switch for a traditional land line to something else – I would definitely recommend Vonage.
May
12
2008
Working Out With the Wii
Over the weekend I was showing a friend my Wii and all the games we have and we decided to focus on boxing. My initial response to boxing was that is was kind of lame, but after the computer player got more difficult – each game became more and more of a workout. At the end (10 games or so each) – we were both exhausted and sweating. This is a great way to do some exercise. I now need another “nunchuck controller” so we can do two player boxing instead of one player vs. the computer. PS – that is my “Mii” in the picture. I am looking forward to Wii Fit as well to get into better shape!
May
08
2008
Using !important With CSS
I am not a “quick fix” or “work around” type of person. When a CSS debugging project comes my way I look first at fixing the problem systemically vs. applying the quick fix. Recently though I was brought into a project with an insane amount of CSS and conflicting styles all over the place. Since I did not have ample time to fix the issues systemically (this was a super stat job) I was forced to use something that would take precedence over the problematic styles already in place to quickly fix the issues.
If you have worked with CSS before I am sure you have seen “!important” used but probably were not really sure what it was. I ended up using a “fixes.css” style sheet which was called in after all the other style sheets and then using “!important” with the styles I needed to correct (override). This was very helpful and if you ever run into a similar situation or have a certain style that you cannot seem to figure out why something is not showing up (“I set this to have a margin-bottom:20px; but there is no margin at all”) try putting in the !important (margin-bottom:20px !important;) and see if that helps.
More information on !important: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/cascade.html#cascading-order
May
07
2008
Music and My Life
I listen to music almost all day, everyday. Yesterday I grabbed the latest NIN album from: http://theslip.nin.com and it made me think about how the music stage is really evolving.
I realize there have been several recent changes that have really made everyone look at music and music distribution differently – but this was a big eye opener for me. I spent a good part of my life in music stores 60 miles away from my house (because that was the closest) while my mother was clothes shopping in the mall. I spent Saturday or Sunday afternoons leafing through CD after CD trying to figure out which one I was going to buy and then listen to on my Sony Discman on the hour ride home while my mother listened to her “oldies” on the radio.
I spent my college years doing the same thing, but this time I could walk to the record stores and I also had the option of looking at used CDs as well. Within the first six weeks of my stay at Penn State, I shelled out over $700 to buy all the NIN imports I could get my hands on.
I spent a lot of money on stereo equipment, speakers, and made sure my car had a great sound system because I love to listen to my music.
In the past ten years how I listen to, manage, and get new music has drastically changed. I cannot tell you the last time I was in a music store or what the last “physical” CD I bought. Most artists I listen to are not known to most because their music comes to me not through the radio, but through podcasts of their latest shows or featured on someone else’s podcasts. All my music purchases are through the iTunes music store (of course) and the most of my purchases are based on something I have heard on a podcast. Even though I have bookshelves full of CDs, I listen to my music through my computers, networked TiVOs or my iPhone. I do not even own a “CD player” besides the one in my car.
How does this all tie into the latest NIN album? The point I am trying to make is that almost all the music I listen to, enjoy, and think is the best stuff out there, is free (and legal) and from the internet…and the artists are pushing it like that. I think of telling my son when he gets older about how I had to drive 60 miles to buy the latest NIN album and it seems so antiquated when I downloaded the lastest one in a matter of minutes from my desk. I am very curious to see where this goes and if other artists will join Radiohead and NIN. This is a perfect example of when free is good and good is free.
May
05
2008
HOWTO Change the SVN Editor
Because I always forget…to change the text editor that svn uses with the commit messages, just type in this command (if you use bash):
export SVN_EDITOR=vi
*Substitute vi for your editor of choice.
**Personally, I once was a pico/nano fan, then I moved to emacs, and now I am a vi person.
May
02
2008
Jappler Recommends: Lightview Plus WordPress Plugin
I recently switched from using a gallery WordPress plugin called fGallery to something that is more elegant and updated: NextGen Gallery During this transition, I found a really cool lightbox-ish plugin called Lightview Plus which is more polished than your typical lightbox plugin.
Example:
You do not have to add in extra code to get the images to show up in the lightview – it automatically takes care of everything for you.
