http://www.davewolf.net Nonsense Ramblings of a Mad-Man Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:50:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Mildred Natalie Stinaff, my great aunt, was born in Akron, Ohio in 1912. People referred to her as Millie. She was the daughter of Charles and Lillie May Stinaff. She had two brothers, Charles Lloyd Stinaff and Girdwood Stinaff, my grandfather. As she grew into a ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/09/03/mildred-stinaff-aviator-pioneer/ Let's see… After building up my Google PageRank for over two years to where a search for "Dave Wolf" would appear on Google's first page and as the first or second link on that page, just something as simple as enabling of the comment system in Coppermine, some Open Source ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/08/31/coppermine-gallery-comment-system-of-death/ It's become clear that without titling and commenting my photographs, individually (something which I simply don't have the time to do — It's amazing I do as much as I do on this site as it is…), that a lot of the wider, Internet public, was not able to view ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/08/12/if-you-cant-beat-em-flickr/ Since I've been messing around with my photos as of late and actually posted to the site, I hopped out of lazy mode and decided to post the pictures I took while visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park last March. And, with the pics, I have to also and ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/08/06/rocky-mountain-park-high/ Nothing beats not working, like really not working, heading North to escape the deadly heat of Savannah in the summer, and heading out to hopefully catch some walleye on Lake Erie — even though it was pretty much the end of walleye "season." The day started early for me ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/07/31/lake-erie-summer-goodness/ I noticed recently when testing browsing my site with Mozilla Firefox (v1.5-2.x.x.1) that the pop up window that embedded my WMV videos (yeah, I should probably find a better, more cross compatible video codec) linked and presented using Marcus' WordPress VideoPop Plugin would no longer display Microsoft MediaPlayer's controls (pause, ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/05/20/videopop-a-video-plugin-for-wordpress/ I've been a little slack on doing anything with the web site in the past half year or so. So, I figured this weekend that I could escape my real duty — doing our taxes — and play around with something I've been meaning to do for some time ... http://www.davewolf.net/2007/04/14/paris-the-city-of-a-thousand-pics/ … that is the question — between me and the wife. I had this idea to paint the foyer a darker color - you know, to help separate it from the rest of the bigger room it's attached to. The foyer, if you can even call it that, ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/11/20/to-paint-or-not-to-paint/ In late June of 2006, my wife and I visited my family in Northeast, Ohio. This gave us an opportunity to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's, Fallingwater. I have been a huge admirer of Wright's for many years and had made plan after plan to visit the house; I ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/11/12/fallingwater-bear-run-pennsylvania/ 60 Minutes has been on the air since 1968, a year before I was born. In the 38 years since then it has become known as the nation's preeminent investigative television program and the "news magazine" to which all others attempt to live up to — but don't. ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/11/09/60-minutes-an-american-institution/ The year was 1996. Location — 3 miles off Harbour Island in the Bahamas. It was a clear day, the sun was shining, the seas were calm, we had a boat, some beer, all the dive gear you could want, and the hangover from the night before was ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/06/27/the-cienfuegos-a-bahamian-adventure/ I'll keep it short and sweet… The W² Software dudes have been hard at work addressing people's problems, adding functionality, and just plain making Random Playlist Creator with Genres a whole bunch better than it was before. An app barely alive… We rebuilt it… We had the ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/06/14/random-playlist-creator-new-release/ If anyone out there is interested in cheap, reliable web hosting check out DreamHost. I’ve been using DreamHost since March of 2005, and I can tell ya, I haven’t been disappointed! They're based out of California, in the good 'ole USA. They’re very responsive to tech support ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/04/27/dreamhost-your-own-web/ A co-worker of mine turned me onto Pandora.com a couple of weeks ago. I have to say, this music service is pretty damn impressive! I'm not a big fan of having to have a browser window open to listen to music on the 'pute (which you have to ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/04/24/pandoracom-the-music-genome-project/ Okay, gonna bust out some geekness on ya! I've been using this "application" for over a year, but since RSS feeds are becoming so prevelant across the Internet, I figured it was about time to inform those out there that might not know what to do with them (and ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/04/07/pluck-finally-do-something-with-those-rss-feeds/ Back in '99, I accidentally caught Eddie Izzard's, 'Dressed to Kill' on HBO. I had the TV on while I was cleaning or doing some such nonsense when I started listening to the dialog. After a couple of minutes of crackin' up, I had to sit down and ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/03/27/eddie-izzard-intelligent-comedy-at-its-finest/ I've boasted enough to all the folks around the office, so I thought it was about time to lay it out to everyone… Bob Schieffer is one cool cat and one great news anchor. After the whole 24 years I started going to "sleep" watching Dan "Not the Man" ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/03/21/bob-schieffer-cbss-best-anchor-since-cronkite/ UPDATE: I had to update this post today (3/27)… A few days after my inital post, irony reared its ugly head. It seems that the organization that I asked you to give so much of yourself to has now been implicated in what could be wide spread theft ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/03/20/katrina-your-help-is-still-needed/ I figured I had to turn out a nice Valentine's gift for Meg this year. I didn't want to go out and spend a bunch of cake on some material, piece of pointlessness. So, I decided a month before V-Day that I would make something for her. ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/02/17/megs-2006-valentine/ Well, it took a while, but if you search for "Dave Wolf," I finally seemed to get "The Blog" (Man, do I hate that word. In fact, I'm going to have to stop using it, I think. . .) to turn up on the first page of most all ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/02/17/site-search-ranking/ Just wanted to drop a quick post about WinAmp, SHOUTcast, and a great Internet radio radio station I found back in the day. Firstly, if you listen to MP3's on your PC, you must use WinAmp. There's no better decoder/player out there. It's lightweight, feature packed, efficient, and ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/02/09/dont-forget-the-shoutcast/ Now that the gallery is back up and running correctly, I finally added the pictures Meg and I took while in England. Yeah, it took over a month, but it seems everything has been takin' longer to accomplish since the new year. We got a few nice ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/02/02/england-pics-are-up/ I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade to the latest version of Coppermine, the PHP, mySQL based photo gallery software I use in conjunction with the rest of the site. Was there any good reason to? Was anything broke? Did I need all of ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/02/02/photo-gallery-meltdown/ Just happened by Microsoft's new map, driving direction, satellite, close-up geographical image deal, website, thingy today. They're really trying to compete and one up 'Google Earth' — which has been out for a while now and is pretty damn impressive in its own right. Got to say that ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/01/27/microsofts-windows-live-local-beta/ … well, my !#$% — and they did! Just when you think it's winter and don't need to worry about the ants for a while, you end up getting stung ten times all over the legs and, well, another areas that shouldn't EVER have ants around 'em! I ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/01/27/fire-ants-can-bite-my/ If you haven't by now heard of Wikipedia.org by now or, at least, checked it out, it's about high time you did. I have never found something on the Internet to be so useful, practical, and relational than that of Wikipedia. Well, Internet Movie Database comes in somewhere ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/01/19/wikipedia-your-resource-to-the-world/ So, I go up to the in-laws place for Christmas, having a good time — someone asked me about my photos and wanted to see some. I told them I had a bunch out on this web site. So, I go over the computer, sit down, type in my ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/01/18/merry-hacking-christmas/ Okay, add Savannah Water & Sewer to the hate list — they're just another company that goes out of their way to shows who cares least. I call last Friday to get some answers to some billing related shit, you know. Okay… it is 4:50 and they close ... http://www.davewolf.net/2006/01/17/savannah-water-sewer-hate-em/ It's been some time since I heard any decent music… you know, music other than this processed, copied crap that gets cranked out for the baggy-pants wearing, juvenile delinquent types. (Probably gonna piss a few peeps off with that one. Oh, well… I enjoy the heat.) Fortunately however, the past ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/09/20/new-tunes-to-dig-on/ Feeling sensitive and creative, I decided to try my hand at writing a plug-in for WordPress. I wrote a small, simple plug-in to parse Slashdot's RSS feed and return the top headlines. You can specify the number of headlines to return and whether or not to return the ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/30/wordpress-plug-in-slashdotorg-headlines/ This is an entry built on irony and coincidence. I must have seen something yesterday morning that triggered me to strike up a conversation with a work associate of mine about those big posters made up of thousands of tiny pictures — the ones that kind of remind me ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/25/photomosaic-mania/ The saga continues on the Home Depot, hardwood floor gig. But, now we're getting somewhere… This arrived in my Inbox the other day: Dear Mr. Wolf, Thank you for your e-mail of August 10th. We have added your latest comments to the information you previously provided to us. At the same ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/22/home-depot-is-shit-mon-part-deux/ Only one hour left and the Kid officially becomes thirty-six. Nutty. . . Feels like I was just a kid a few years ago. If years start going by any quicker though, at seventy they'll seem like days! Whoooa, boy. And, does this mean I have to grow ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/20/one-hour-till-36-years-of-age/ Is it just me, or are people generally disorganized and cruising' through life with a complete lack of any common sense?! You know, I try hard, really hard, to give people the benefit of the doubt, but they never seem to fail to surprise me. Or, should I ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/18/come-here-common-sense-come-here-boy/ A work associate and myself have started a small shareware venture — W² Software. . . Well, not really a venture, but a webpage with some software we created and a donate button. (Get it, donate button. . . meaning, send us cash! ) The software was mainly ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/16/shareware-in-the-house-w-software/ Home Depot is the most disorganized, worthless, waste of a company I have ever seen. I've given them the benefit of the doubt over the years — even though they have screwed me on several occasions. But, now. . . I've had it. I've been screwed for ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/16/home-depot-is-shit-mon/ Okay, it's official. I was diagnosed with 'Site Deficit Disorder'. The symptoms are apparent; just look at the number of postings that are present on this site since I created it. Maybe it's because I think blogs are a bit 'gay'. I don't know. Either ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/08/16/site-deficit-disorder/ Took a trip with Meg this last weekend — up to Charleston. My Mom had hooked us up with a nice weekend in Charleston as a Christmas gift last year. Went and saw 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' at the local IMAX. Nice! I wish that ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/07/24/road-trip-charleston/ Okay, for those of you in the video world, there is an open source application that, if found, will become the backbone of all your video processing. That app is, AviSynth. I found this app many years ago and shelved it. It did what I needed back ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/05/18/avisynth-a-king-of-apps/ You want to get some laughs yet learn an immense amount of sometimes practical information? Well then, The Straight Dope is for you. The basic gist is, people write in with these questions — questions ranging from the semi normal to the absolute bizarre. Then, Cecil Adams, ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/22/the-straight-dope/ I found a great plug-in today — MyNetFlix; it doesn't really do much, but what it does do is pretty cool. Plus, it'll work well in the 'Movies' page I am working on for my blog. It is a plug-in capable of listing your current queue at NetFlix. ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/19/mynetflix-plug-in-for-wordpress/ Okay, whoever you may be. . . I guess I never really explained my intentions for the "gallery." I went with this involved, comprehensive, feature rich gallery to try and have all you wonderful people give me some feedback on the shots that I posted up there. ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/18/the-deal-with-the-gallery/ Well, a day after I posted the 'Popular Science' item below, I received a message from them. The subject was 'Popular Science - Seeking Permission. At first I thought that I was going to get some heat (the usual for me) for posting an old magazine cover of ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/18/popular-science-fame/ A few months ago I finally caught Penn and Teller's new show — well, really not that new — on Showtime, Bullshit. And, let me tell you, this has got to be one of the best shows on the air right now. The shows basic premise is ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/14/best-show-on-tv/ I should really get a job at Popular Science. I push this magazine on people as if it were the Bible or something. My dad had a subscription to this magazine since the early 70's; I can remember it since I was a wee little shortie. I ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/13/a-must-have-magazine/ Ever since Google started to offer users a GMail e-mail account, which includes storage space of 2000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/13/use-your-extra-gmail-bytes/ You ever want to see what it was like to see the earth from space. . . I mean, actually space itself?! No? Well try it anyway. It's pretty sweet. Google bought this company with plans to tie it into their ever growing collection ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/13/the-eye-in-the-sky/ This company makes parachutes for airplanes. Not like the ones for people, a much bigger/stronger version for the plane itself. As a last resort in an emergency sitiation you can deploy the chute and float down to safety. Umm, did someone just hear something coming from the engines? Check ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/13/who-needs-the-backpack-thing/ So, what ever happened to customer service?!? Does it not exist? Well, let me help ya out here. IT DOESN'T! There is no adjective to describe how deeply my hatred goes when it comes to having to deal with both service and good oriented establishments ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/04/04/customer-service/ Well, welcome to the new site. It's amazing — as Igor, my Russian co-worker would say. And, it actually is amazaing; I've learned more about HTML, PHP, XHTML, CSS, etc. in the past four days than I learned over the past 4 years! And, let me tell ... http://www.davewolf.net/2005/03/31/welcome-to-the-new-site/