Category: General

Blogging DanielTharp.com General
December 9, 2010

Polished Turds and Reinvented Wheels

I did a pretty major reskin of the blog, in anticipation of some upcoming projects. I liked the previous theme, don’t get me wrong, but it was difficult to work with and had some nasty bugs of it’s own. This one is simple and quite a pleasure to use so far.

One thing I’ve come to accept is for the past 7 years I’ve been blogging, it’s been largely an emotional outlet. I have Twitter that serves admirably in that regard, and it’s taken away from the amount of other writing I do. I’m hoping I can keep motivated through 2011 and stick to the weekly schedule of Music Mondays, Wildcard Wednesdays (photography, gaming, rambling), and Fragrant Fridays. The latter will be crossposted on Il Mondo di Odore, a blog run by several high-profile Basenoters and some good friends. I’ve never been a contributor to a blog that wasn’t my own, so I’m quite excited about that.

The site is more secure than ever, I’m seeing the occasional 500 error I can’t pin down, but a refresh always seems to clear it up. I have four days to finish my final group project for Professional Writing and then I suspect I’ll start trying to get a feel for the self-set schedule and how much work and design I want to do. Stay tuned.… (More) “Polished Turds and Reinvented Wheels”

Blogging General Life Work
August 31, 2010

Remembering August

Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

This month has been the best, busiest and most life-changing month I’ve ever experienced. Let me bring you up to speed.

Back in early August, Diana and I moved in together, which involved moving out of our respective cities and into a new town. We knew where we wanted to be, but even now as I sit here, looking out the window to see the sunset casting the Sandia Mountains red, it’s hard to believe that the hard work and determination paid off and we’re really here: Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The drive out here was an experience in itself, the first day was a long drive much like any other I’ve been on. The second, however, took us through the wind farms and hills of Western Oklahoma, the stark, desolate panhandle of Texas, devoid of life save for Amarillo, which seems to pop up from nothing and leaves you back on God’s definition of the flatlands just as quickly. After Texas was two hundred miles of New Mexico, and it included the most breathtaking driving of my life, through canyons and overlooking mesas and mountain ridges in the distance that evoked a thought I’d never had before, the thought that the landscape of where you call home could truly make you happy or sad, and maybe people are happier out here just because they get little flashes of the truly awesome in their day-to-day life. The fact that Diana and I still find breathtaking new views seemingly every week is confirmation in itself that we picked the right home, and in many ways I feel like I was always meant to end up here.

After moving quickly came work, four days after moving to a town where we knew nobody and had nary … (More) “Remembering August”

General Nerd Stuff
June 28, 2010

How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)

How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)

This post is going to be formatted a bit differently than previous entries, the good chunk of people that read this are going to be from search engines and not my serial readers. Norton 2010 was about the highest rated paid antivirus on the market, but within a few hours I got irritated with the pop-up notifications that Norton is performing an idle scan in the background. I was even more irritated when I found that there was no real way to disable the pop-ups. It doesn’t do it while I’m doing something else but it is something else I have to close every time I come back to my computer after a time, and having moved from the totally silent Kaspersky AV 2008 I’m not cool with not being able to go totally silent. Silent Mode can be used, but then idle scans are disabled entirely and you have to turn it back on every day. The happy medium is Quiet Mode, which performs scans and only alerts you during actually important things. This is limited by default to a set number of instances, like disc burning. However, you can specify that Quiet Mode remain active while certain programs are running. This is the means we will use to put Norton in Quiet Mode for as long as we like.

Right click the Norton icon in your system tray and select Open Norton Anti Virus (or Open Norton Internet Security).

Under the Computer section, hit Settings.

Click the tab for Miscellaneous Settings.

Under Silent Mode Settings, click Configure next to User-Specified Programs.

Click Add.

Navigate to C:\Windows and double-click explorer.exe.

Click OK. You’re done!

Simple enough, and as far as I can tell it’s working … (More) “How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)”

Fragrance General Nerd Stuff
August 25, 2008

No Cooler Required

Chris: Hey, look, Dad! They have 12-packs of kidneys!

Peter: Yeah, but you got to buy the cooler, too. That’s how they get you.

So I realized today that I’ve been sitting on the opportunity to get a free domain name through my host and have gone about three months without actually taking advantage of it. What sucks is I have a few projects I’m thinking about, but nothing I would call domain name worthy at the moment. I don’t really need one for fragrance because I have nothing to really contribute aside from reviews which I’d just as soon do on here. Speaking of, I’ve got about a dozen mini-reviews coming over the next week or so as I experiment with my niche samples, these in particular:

MPG – Santal Noble
Tauer – L’Air du desert marocain
Montale – Black Aoud
Monocle x CdG: Scent One – Hinoki
Amouage – Jubilation XXV
By Kilian – Cruel Intentions
By Kilian – A Taste of Heaven
By Kilian – Straight to Heaven
L’Artisan – Tea For Two
L’Artisan – Mechant Loup
CdG Series 3: Incense – Kyoto
Montale – Attar
Cereus – No. 7

The ones in bold have already been sampled and I’m gonna try and review all of them before bed tonight. If anyone has ideas for a new domain let me know. ;\… (More) “No Cooler Required”

General
August 6, 2008

To Do List – 6 August 2008

  • More cologne reviews.  Get off your ass and write one at least every other day.  You have 30 bottles, can you be done in 2 months?  Deadline so set.
  • Start writing the Project: Wardrive article/miniseries.  Time’s not a huge issue here, nothing’s gonna happen for another 6 weeks in the project but there will be quite a bit of research and mapping prior to kickoff.  At least get the intro post ready, there will be a video to go along with it.
  • More posting in general.  You should be embarassed.
  • Laundry
  • Cold Fusion
  • $$$
… (More) “To Do List – 6 August 2008”
General
July 7, 2008

The End Of An Error (not you, GWB)

Today, 7/7 represents a milestone day for me.  A day that I’ve promised myself to stop being…a fatass.  I’m giving myself 8 weeks, to the end of August, to drop from an overweight 150 to an intermediate goal of 135.  With the benefits of a nice scale comes the ability to track other things like Body Fat, Muscle Mass, and more.  I’m counting calories, limiting myself to 1800 daily, and I’m trying to decide the best balance of carbs, protein, and fat for me and my lifestyle.

So, here goes nothing.

Today (Next Target 7/13) (Final Goal 8/31)
Weight: 149.4 lbs (147.5 lbs) (134.2 lbs)
Body Fat Percentage: 17.8% (17.4%) (14.6%)
Muscle Mass Percentage: 44.7% (45.0%) (47.1%)… (More) “The End Of An Error (not you, GWB)”

General
June 10, 2008

Ah hell…

I couldn’t get away from it for too long, I’m GMing on a certain private WoW server again. If that’s your kind of thing holler at me on AIM and I can give you some more information.… (More) “Ah hell…”