The Sunday, Err... Monday Update

So I missed the weekly Sunday Update yesterday. Sue me.

I missed it for a very good reason, though: I have been insanely busy these last two weeks. My 2012 goals are in full-swing now, thanks in no small part to the ten days of fantastic weather that put us well into the 80's. Let me review everything going on in my life right now:

• Recipe Library 2.0 - The major update to my recipe manager. Due to launch at the end of summer. I have barely started this project.

• ReallyAveragePhotography.com - A small side photography business. I hope to be able to capture decent photos for those willing to part with a little cash. Nothing too formal, but this involves a shooting process, a website, optimizing my camera gear, and beefing up my photo storage. Lots of on-going work here.

• New Desktop / Server - My main desktop machine is being upgraded as I build an entirely new web and media server for my private and public use. Unfortunately the new motherboard for my desktop machine was bad, so I currently have two and a half computers splayed across my apartment while I wait for a replacement board. Once the web server is up and running, though, I get the major task of installing Windows, SVN, creating photo storage, and porting all my websites to a Windows environment.

• Time Tracker - This was the major surprise of this past weekend. I have been struggling to efficiently keep track of my time at work, so Friday night I began writing a small web-based solution that bloomed into a working product as of Sunday night. I am testing this time tracker all week at work, and in the next two weeks I plan to polish it into a 1.0 product and make it publicly available.

• Meltdown: A Survivor's Story - Believe it or not, I am still slowly writing, especially as I push towards launching this summer's biggest (and most-secretive) project. "Meltdown" has been a story about survival in a burned world since 1998. Most of my original story has been thrown out in favor of a new narrative that I am piecing together a bit at a time. June cannot come soon enough.

• Everything else: In addition to the regular projects above, I am also balancing a crazy load at work (I am making some inroads to staying busy at work), exercising like crazy (daily biking, walking, or hiking), trying to finish my taxes, writing several technical posts for future publication, and studying for several Microsoft certification tests. To be blunt, I am fucking-crazy busy.

And that is how I like it. B3 out.

The Sunday Update: Biking Is Back

This year's "Summer of Biking" kicked off unofficially this weekend and I could not be happier about the results.

While the official kick-off to my regular biking schedule is in two weeks, two days of fantastic summer-like weather allowed me to put 31.6 miles on my bike this weekend.

Saturday was off to a rough start. My bike came out of storage this week but suffered from some mechanical problems which I addressed with the help of YouTube. After the necessary repairs, I set out on my first ride, which took me along my favorite route from 2011: through downtown Perrysburg, over the Maumee River, through Side Cut Metropark, down River Road, over U.S. 24, and out to Fallen Timbers Mall. Fourteen miles in total, round trip. I ended the ride just as I did many others last year: at O-Deer Diner in downtown Perrysburg. For me, yesterday was a huge reminder of just how awesome 2011 was.

I ended the day with a second, shorter bike ride in Bowling Green and ultimately ended the night with video games and the entire second season of "The Walking Dead." Oh yeah, fantastic show. Enough said.

Today started with more biking, a relatively-short 12-mile jaunt through Side Cut again. All told, I pushed enough miles this weekend to get me on the right track to a healthy, prosperous 2012.

B3 out.

The Monster Is Coming

Well I was not expecting this: two new computers are coming into my life. It is like the birth of twins when you were expecting (and budgeting) for one child.

At the beginning of this year I decided to dump my aging Ubuntu web server and go all-in for a proper Windows-based web server. I certainly want to continue learning Linux to include in my toolbox of skills, but I feel like I would develop and deploy application and websites faster in a Windows environment.

There is no way I could install Windows on my current server box, however, so I decided to build a new server. After looking at my options and weighing the cost, an obvious upgrade path presented itself: buy new parts for my desktop computer and use the leftover pieces to build a decent web server. So instead of just getting a new web server, I'm getting a kick-ass desktop machine and a very competent web server.

My usual upgrade path for my computer is to alternate upgrades to my GPU and CPU/mobo/memory every other year. Because I upgraded my graphics card last year, this was supposed to be an "off" year. Truth be told, my current desktop machine is extremely capable. With a Core 2 Duo at 3.2 GHz and 6MB of L3 cache and a Radeon 6870, I have been able to play any game I throw at it without a hint of trouble. I am blowing this out of the water, however, with an Intel Core i7 2600K, a 3.4 GHz, 8-thread overclocking monster paired with a high-end Gigabyte motherboard and 16GB (!!!) of total system memory. As far as I am concerned, my upgrade process will be broken for at least two to three years as I enjoy having a top-end desktop system.

The parts are rolling in for this project in March. In the first week of April I will be building all these machines and by the end of May I hope to have my new web server operating in place of my current Ubuntu server. My new web server should be capable enough to handle Windows 7 and one Ubuntu virtual machine for hosting my legacy PHP applications until I can get them ported to a Windows environment.

All told, I am looking forward to a very good year technologically as I make these upgrades. For a tech-head like me, this is a very, very good year.

B3 out.

The Sunday Update: The Big Warm Up

So I am pretty sure that spring is here. I know we still have about a week and a half until the calendar says so, but today has been so nice it really does not make a difference.

The big upcoming event this week: my return to biking. I took advantage of today's weather to clean and tweak my bike for the 2012 riding season. This week will be so nice, in fact, that I should be able to ride my bike to work every day.

Last year I dove into my "Summer of Biking" season around late April. This year I will be firing off the season at the end of March. Summer of Biking this year will be about more than biking. Along with a whole-foods-based diet and lots of hiking, I plan to spend as much time as possible outside. While I still want to do well at my job, learn new skills in my free time, and pursue a small photography side business, I intend to rigidly schedule these tasks such that I spend most of my free time on my bike or on foot. By the end of the biking season I expect more than 90% of my normal daily commute will be without my car. Given that gas is once again near $4 a gallon, I think this goal will help me financially as well.

B3 out.

The Sunday Update: The Search for a New Media Player

With all the haste of a 56kbps modem and hours of a busy phone line, I downloaded my first dozen or so MP3 files from a website illicitly hawking artists such as Smash Mouth, Alanis Morissette, and Meredith Brooks. Brooks' "Bitch" is the first MP3 that I ever downloaded - in 1998. This was the beginning of my own personal music revolution.

Now in 2012 I have thousands of songs that I replicate on an iPod, iPad, my phone, and in the cloud (Amazon, Google). From anywhere I travel for my day-to-day routine, I can have my roughly 25 gigabytes of music available for my listening pleasure.

Back in 1998, after downloading "Bitch," I was distraught to find out that I could not play the MP3 file. Windows 98 and its version of Windows Media Player were not equipped for this new kind of media file. Enter Winamp.

A Yahoo or AltaVista search (this is pre-Google, does anyone remember those days?) for "MP3 player" almost certainly turned up Winamp in the top-three results, and thus an era began.

I have been with Winamp since 1998. I played with dozens of plug-ins and visualizers over the years, upgraded to Winamp 2, survived the awful Winamp 3, and eventually grew to love Winamp 5.1 - easily the last great version of the player. Winamp 5.1 is a fine music player, but its age is apparent on Windows 7 and it is barely usable on Windows 8. It is time for me to retire my media player of choice for the last fifteen years and find something new.

So what can replace the super-awesome Winamp?

iTunes is out. While it has a few features that I enjoy (Genius is nice and the integrated store is a fantastic mess), it runs poorly and is overkill for my music-only needs.

Songbird is a potential solution. The open-source music player apes the iTunes music management model and focuses on a music-only experience. Plug-ins make it extensible and a built-in web browser make certain kinds of music queries to the web super fast.

Amazon MP3 Cloud Player is currently my main music player, simply because all of my songs are in the cloud and readily available. Unfortunately this is not a robust desktop solution since I cannot rip/burn CDs, manage portable devices, or have my music available offline. Integration with my phone is a huge plus, however, so I can be reasonably mobile as long as I have a solid 3G connection.

Google Music is under-baked and saddled with Google's increasingly-shitty Terms of Service. I feel like I lose control of my own music when I use Google Music's web player, and I don't intend to stay with the product.

Winamp 5.5+ is no longer the sexy, independent, developer-driven product that it once was, and feels just as bloated as iTunes. Up-sells to a premium version, video integration, and a cluttered interface with direct links to the big ol' evil music industry make the latest versions of this player make Winamp 3 look good (and that is saying a lot).

So what do I want in my ideal music player? A basic media library, smart playlists, global keys support, CD ripping/burning, mobile device management, and a slim, lean executable that doesn't bloat up my computer. In other words, I want Winamp 5.1 again. Hopefully I can find a viable replacement for this incredible music player sometime before Windows 8 hits.

B3 out.