Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
With MacExpo 2009 firing on all cylinders, this was too good not to repost.
I have a MacBook on the top of my shopping list and should be able to pick it up early February. Unless of course they announce the MacBook Wheel and can get that within the first quarter of the year.
Enjoy,
Shane
Well folks, we made it. 2008 was a great year for us but I know it wasn’t so crash hot for a lot of folks.
I’m making some aggressive goals for this year and laying out plans to make them happen.
For the longest time my health has fallen down the priority list and it’s time to make that front and center. It seems like forever since I tore my Achilles tendon and was laid up for 3 months. In fact it was a life time ago. Actually two life times, my kids are now 2 and 1. The Achilles incident, playing basket ball, was over 5 years ago back in 2003.
I’ve always thrown myself into my work and tried to help others. Silly me though I’ve let myself deteriorate while doing so, instead of keeping myself strong and fit so that I can help more.
Time and again I’ve started a new routine and made good progress for a few weeks then been dragged off target by a variety of distractions.
Well there’s to be no more of it.
My main goal is to drop 50 lbs by July 4 2008 with a combination of running, Yoga, lifting weights and eating reasonably. The focus is getting into a routine and maintaining it while all the distractions of life with two young kids, a wife and a young company try to drag me off target.
A subsequent goal will take me to a reasonable BMI by the end of the year and should be a further 20 - 25lbs.
We’ve started a blog to track our progress and the tales of trying to lose weight as a couple. It’s www.dietingcouple.com and while it’s still a little rough I’ve started posting there and will be posting more. I had a thought about creating a miles club, where followers of the blog could log miles they are putting into their miles bank. A little community motivation and maybe a little competition.
I still need to flesh the idea out but would love some feedback on that. I was thinking of throwing together a little program that would keep track and show week by week mileage as a graph for your own motivation and then it could upload the details to the website to compare a top 100 or something like that.
I’m very keen on getting a bodybugg like they have been using on the Biggest Loser. Something that tracks every calorie burned during the day. It still requires you to log your food to keep track of calorie burn, but it does save some time daily on keep track of things.
Something I’ve picked up and good to keep in mind is that one pound is 3500 calories. What this means is that you have to burn an excess of 3500 calories to lose 1 pound of weight. Of course this is a generalization and everyone is a little different metabolically. But it’s a good rule of thumb. It’s good to keep in mind the next time you are looking at a Krispy Kreme which weighs in at 200 cal … FOR ONE.
I have several other goals related to family, business and the like but by taking care of my health now, I’ll have more energy and concentration to make the other goals a reality.
Have a great 2009 and make sure you write those goals down and refer to them as often as you can.
Kind Regards,
Shane
Technorati Tags: Weight Loss,Lose Weight,Dieting Couple,Bodybugg,Goals,Achilles Tendon
I’m hoping to do a lot more video’s heading into 2009. The issue? Our cheapie camera is a little on the dodgy side.
Now if a Flip minoHD happened to land at Orange Sands Headquarters for a solid review and extensive use, that would be a wonderful thing.
The device looks to be a great addition to our arsenal and would come in most handy for the upcoming 4×4 season up here in the Ozark Mountains.
Failing synchronicity and the infinite intelligence doing it’s thing, I’ll have to work a little harder and look to getting one in the new year.
Have a safe and fun New Years.
Shane
My daughter is a precocious 2 year old with an adventurous spirit. She has been traveling the world since she was 3 months old and has seen more places than a lot of people ever will.
She is also very much a 2 year old.
She has been watching Mum and Dad setting up and posting their thoughts and dreams on their blogs and wanted to be included in what goes on. The end result is her very own blog where she posts about her life as she sees it.
It’s not meant to be anything earth shattering but she likes to write and her Mum likes to get her involved.
It is Internet Toddler
I’m sure her brother Ethan will be joining in the fun.
Swing over and check it out, feel free to leave comments or have your kids leave comments ;).
Kind Regards,
Shane
The new Macbook is still calling my name and while Apple doesn’t seem to be doing a lot in the way of post Christmas there are bargains to be found.
The best I’ve seen so far is at Amazon. $100 off on the Macbook 2.4ghz with Free shipping.
$1499 with free shipping
There is a bunch of stuff I’m looking forward to tackling in the new year once my Macbook arrives. High on the list are iphone development, movie editing and writing some new music for the kids.
I look forward to mine arriving and will be doing some articles on the tech, programming and programs around it when it turns up on my doorstep.
I know Macmall has had some good prices, especially on the older models. Has anyone seen better pricing that Amazon?
Kind Regards,
Shane
I found this a while ago on Digg and then lost it. I thought it too good to lose and have re-posted it below.
It is terribly geeky but very clever.
Shane
<djahandarie> we ain’t here to do e-c-e
<djahandarie> we’re here to do c-s-e on the w-e-b
<djahandarie> listen to me spit these rhymes
<djahandarie> while i program lines
<djahandarie> and commit web accessibility crimes
<djahandarie> word, son
<http402> You talk like your big on these I-Net kicks,
<http402> But your shit flows slower than a two-eighty-six.
<http402> I’m tracking down hosts and nmap scans,
<http402> While Code Igniter’s got you wringing your hands.
<http402> Cut the crap rap,
<http402> Or I’ll run ettercap,
<http402> Grab your AIM chat,
<http402> N’ send a PC bitch-slap!
<http402> peace
<djahandarie> you’re talkin bout down hosts and nmap scans
<djahandarie> while i got other plans
<djahandarie> you’re at your new job, but you can’t even do it right
<djahandarie> you just create a plight with your http rewrites
<djahandarie> i’ve been on the web since the age of three
<djahandarie> you just got on directly off the bus from mississippi
<djahandarie> respect yo’ elders, bitch
<http402> You’ve been webbin’ since three, but still ain’t grown up,
<http402> Gotta update your config and send the brain a SIGHUP.
<http402> You say you’re that old? No wonder you’re slow!
<http402> You’re knocking at the door while I run this show!
<http402> Elders my ass, you’re shit’s still in school,
<http402> Hunt and pecking at the keyboard like a spaghetti-damned fool,
<http402> Rim-riffing your hard drive like a tool,
<http402> Face it. I rule.
<djahandarie> i erase my harddrives with magnets (bitch)
<djahandarie> all you can do is troll on the fagnets
<djahandarie> and son, my brain’s wrapped in a nohup
<djahandarie> it wont be hurt by the words you throwup
<djahandarie> dont mind me while i emerge my ownage
<djahandarie> while you’re still over there apt-getting your porridge
<djahandarie> you say i’m still in school
<djahandarie> but the fact is that i know the rule
<djahandarie> cuz you need to go back to grade three
<djahandarie> and you better plea, that they take sucky graduates from c-s-e
<http402> Time to bend over and apply a patch,
<http402> Your brain’s throwing static like a CD with a scratch.
<http402> Your connection got nuked and you’ve met your match.
<http402> You run a single process like a VAX with a batch.
<http402> I’d pass the torch to a real winner
<http402> But it’d just scorch a while-loop spinner
<http402> Caught in a loop that you cant escape,
<http402> I run clock cycles around your words and flows,
<http402> Cuz your rhyme is like a PS fan: it’ blows,
<http402> Your water-cooled lyrics leak and it shows,
<http402> Take your ass back to alt.paid.for.windows.
<djahandarie> Good god, I can’t even respond to that. 
<djahandarie> You win haha
* http402 takes a bow
Being a Dad is time consuming and while I love it, there are times I day dream about being a teenager again. Back then I could sit for hours and just noodle away on my guitar and dream of being a rock star.
Well the rock star thing didn’t happen. I did have a wonderful four years of jumping up on stage at a local blues Jam in Sydney once a week. It was a lot of fun and I made some great mates through that pub.
Being single for most of that time, you don’t get a lot of women at blues joints, I had time to practice and get a little better at playing guitar. While I’ll never be a Steve Vai or Stevie Ray Vaughan, I would like to get a few songs under my fingers to the point that I’ll never forget them. The long layoffs I seem to have as life gets in the way tends to end up with a lot of songs just falling out of my head. The nice thing about the blues jam is that with a quick chat before each song you can fake it enough even if you don’t know it.
So I find myself once again with the urge to learn a few songs and get back into the swing of things. I’ll try to jot down some notes as I go along as I’m sure there are other time poor Dad’s out there that would like to progress in music, while trying to maximize their available time.
This time around I’m focusing on Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joe Satriani. One of the reasons for those three besides that I love their music is that they have a common thread running through them. One that leads from Jimi Hendrix. He was a huge influence to Stevie Ray and continues to be a huge influence on Satch even today.
To aid me in getting the songs down I have a few tools at hand. Back when I had a Mac, I used and loved Garageband. It’s almost enough to get me to buy another Mac, but that has to wait for now. In the mean time I found a great program called Mixcraft that seems almost as good, if not better than Garageband. It runs on Windows of course and lets you lay down loops to play over. You can check out Mixcraft HERE.
There are a bunch of backing tracks available on the internet and what programs like Garageband and Mixcraft let you do is import the track and then record yourself playing along with them. At the start this is quite painful as you find out the bits that aren’t so good. However if you persevere with it, you’ll start to pick out the bits that are good. By getting that positive reinforcement, and I’ll admit sometimes it’s hard to focus on the positive. You’ll get to the stage where you’ll have some stuff to be proud of.
If you get real creative you can cut bits of different solos together like the pro’s do and splice yourself together an awesome solo. Of course I’d never do that and all my stuff is done in one take. 
I can’t stress enough how FUN it is to play with other musicians. The reality is that if you aren’t in school anymore and have one of JOB things, it’s hard to find the time or other musicians to play with. If you have an open mic/ Jam in your area, I highly recommend you make the time to attend. You don’t have to play at first, just check it out and meet a few of the regulars.
Failing finding real life folks to play with having something like Mixcraft to play over and with will enhance your enjoyment of music immensely. Band in a Box is another program that I recommend. It lets you setup in any key you like an setup a chord progression and style of music to play over. It’s a fair bit simpler than Mixcraft and will get you up and running faster. The quality of the sound will depend on your sound card and the midi sound sets that you have.
I’m very much looking forward to carving out some time in my busy schedule to learn some new tracks and revisit some old ones. After all, I need to be able to play to some degree when the kids are old enough to want to learn …. right?
Ciao
Shane
If you are working in Affiliate Marketing, sooner or later you are going to want to set up landing pages or put Affiliate links in your blog posts. The issue with that is that Affiliate links are ugly at best. At worst someone could steal your links and take your commissions. You don’t want that.
If you are making your own pages there are a few ways of hiding links, if you want a quick and easy way to generate code that will hide your links for you and generate non visible friendly links, Try HideALink. It’s a small program I wrote that will generate the html code to hide links in your html.
Oh … did I mention it’s FREE? Got get it.
If you are running Wordpress, the straight html approach doesn’t work so well. There are a few methods around of hiding links using .htacces , folders and other forms of redirects. An eaiser way is to use a wordpress plugin.
I use “link cloaking plugin” which is also free and you can get it from HERE
I hope you find these useful.
Cheers,
Shane
Well I’m in the middle of restoring my 16G iPhone 3G.
If your sync is interupted, say by disconnecting the cable or receiving a call, it’s possible for your ipod index file to be corrupted. What can happen then is that your entire library of media turns into “other” in the storage system.
There are a couple of fixes if you have a jailbroken iPhone, if you are running stock (as I am) there are significantly fewer. The “recommended” fix is to restore your phone through iTunes.
Things seem to be going so well so far and I’ll write further if there are complications.
Since the latest firmware updates, the restore and syncing process is significantly faster and less painful.
I’m hopeful there will be a fix in the next firmware release for this bug, it’s a little annoying.
Cheers,
Shane
I’ve been a big fan of Guitar Hero and Rock Band for quite a while now. I was a little late on the band wagon but leapt in feet first and have all the bits and bobs for our little Wii.
As much as I like the Wii, I think that before I run out and get GHWT or RB2, I’ll be upgrading to a PS3 or XBox 360. At this stage I’m leaning towards the PS3 if only because it gets me a blueray player.
You may well have spotted some cool clips of GHWT around the place including the one with Heidi Klum. What you may not have spotted is the one below, which is the “Directors Cut”.
What’s the difference you ask? Well have a look yourself. I’ll give you a hint though. She loses the shirt.
Who ever says that sex doesn’t sell, should head down the sports bar for Monday night football and watch as the blokes get an eye full of this ad.
Cheers,
Shane
