Author Archives: J.D. H.

3.1GHz Quad Core System on the Cheap: $200

The need for cheap speed! Yesterday I read a nice little article over at Anandtech about unlocking the extra two cores in AMD Phenom II X2 555 CPUs. This lets you take a  dual core CPU and turn it into a quad core CPU*. *The extra two cores aren’t guaranteed to unlock and be 100% reliable, but it’s easy to stress test and see if your particular CPU can handle it. Reading other people’s experiences it looks like the success

Alternatives to Drywall

We’re planning on turning my office into the baby’s room. That means a couple things: #1 I need to find a new place to work, and #2 we need to redo the room to be more appropriate for a baby. Samantha already has a plan for #2, we’re putting in new carpeting and we’re going to paint the existing wood paneling. UPDATE: here’s the result of the painting over the wood-paneling 🙂 My new office is still up in the

Alienware M11x Netbook Specs

Photo of ports and basic features (scroll down for full specs) Updated: 2010.Feb.2nd with SIM card info and revised port list. Full specifications: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual Core – SU4100 1.3Ghz 2MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB [base model] Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor – SU7300 – 1.3Ghz 3MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB [upgrade] Chipset: Mobile Intel® GS45 Express Chipset Memory: DDR3 1066 MHz SODIMMs – 2Gb min and 8Gb max (thus 2 SODIMM slots) Hard

R.I.P. Sun Microsystems

You will be missed, but not forgotten. Sun is no more. They completed their merger with Oracle. I have fond memories of Sun. They were always trying something different. Sometimes with great success, other times with failure, and often with something in between. When I was in college (1999-2003) studying CS and CIS, I liked Sun because they were pioneering with Java. Which at the time seemed to hold great promise as a “write once, run anywhere” language that might

Question: starting P90X workout (and/or 30 day shred)

P90X Question by D.D. Well, I decided that I’ve sat on my butt too long and need to get healthier. I think it’s that I’m turning 30 in a couple of weeks 😛 Anyways, I ordered P90X from beachbody.com yesterday. A friend is wanting someone to do it with him – I don’t think he finished the first week by himself. I know you’ve mentioned it a couple of times on here and was wondering what you thought of the

Roundup of ISAPI rewrite filters for IIS

Here is a roundup of ISAPI rewrite filters for IIS, they let the webserver take a human friendly request like http://www.jdhodges.com/photos/1002 and rewrite it to a url that a dynamic scripting engine (such as ASP) can understands like http://www.jdhodges.com/photos.asp?photoID=1002 This benefits users who now have a legible URL and especially search engines like Google which are much more likely to index a page which appears to be static than a dynamic looking URL string: Reasons your site may not be

Simplicity and Photography. It’s not about the gadgets.

Two links to Ken Rockwell’s site, both of these articles resonant with me. Regarding the first article, as a somewhat gadget obsessed dude that also like photography I can empathize. I know that some of my best photographs were with relatively ancient cameras; and some of my worst photos have been with the “latest and greatest”. The second article is similar to the first one,  except going into a bit more of what really makes for good photography. Article #1

Hawaii after a month

We’ve been in Hawaii just over a month. It’s been a wonderful time so far and here’s a short categorical summary of my thoughts so far: Weather Definitely one of the highlights. In Kona we had one day of rain, the rest was sunshine.  Temperatures were in the low to mid 80s during the day and mid 60s at night. Now we’re on the Hilo side and we expect more rain but similar temps. So far we actually like the

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