So, I was typing into Firefox’s search bar, when this came up…
That's the right answer...?! And it already said it for me?
Lo and behold, this even works at the main Google site.
Even Google's set to do this by default at the homepage!
Awesome.
Wow– Google Suggestion Figures Answers, Now!
March 7th, 2010Liquor Review: Lurgashall Mead – Vintage 2009
March 5th, 2010I’ve been enjoying Mead lately, so I bought some more mead. This one is from “Lurgashall”. From their special reserve. Apparently they’re a UK Brand.. ooh!
Also to note: 500ML I got for $25. Kinda pricey.. but hopefully delicious.
I also got the vinegary smell as I had mentioned before. I poured it.
Smells of delicious honey. I poured it out and tasted it. The first taste is QUITE a punch! It’s strong, yet has a bit of a sharp bite. The tingling taste behind it reminds me of the B. Nektar Meadery’s Orange Blossom mead. In the mouth, it tastes like honey, but it also has the pow of honey’s sweetness.
The first taste really surprises, and then the slight acidity/bite remains while you taste the smoothness and sweetness of the honey. Swallowing it rewards me with an intense taste of honey.
To be honest, this is probably the best mead I’ve ever had.. it’s a bit expensive for my tastes, but it’s absolutely delicious. It’s smooth with a bit of bite, and is quite flavorful. I don’t know if it means it’s dry for it to taste acidic yet a bit sweet, but I feel like it’s the best way to describe it.
What I’d do with this mead is buy it frequently to share with friends or to drink by myself. I could probably drink it for days on end without being tired of it. It’s spectacular.
Liquor Review: Green River Ambrosia – Chamomile
March 4th, 2010The nicest thing about Green River Ambrosia is that they are a meadery located in MA that uses local MA honey/bees. Awesome! That means I’m supporting local foods!
I recently heard about them, and how they have a variety of flavors. I was eager to get a chance to try their mead! I bought a few from a winery in Somerville.
Today, we’re reviewing Chamomile Mead.
When first opening the bottle, you can get a slight scent of the typical vinegary-smell I suppose you get when substances ferment.
UP close, however, the wine smells QUITE like liquid honey. What a pleasant surprise!
It has a crisp bite at the beginning and end (with teh liquor), and you can taste the honey punch in the middle that mellows it out. I think you can also taste honey and chamomile on the back of your tongue as you swallow.
I think I can taste a bit of fruit, too. :>
The temperature of the wine got warmer as time passed. I had a bite of a delicious-type of apple in between a few tastes.
The mood I got in was a happy high of liquor. Kinda happy and definitely tipsy.
Summation? Buy it. It’s worth having every once in awhile because its taste is memorable. However, it’s still quite sweet and may warrant a taste per month, or for a special dessert. (For me? Whenever I want. 
Screw dessert!)
Liquor Review: B. Nektar Meadery – Vanilla Cinnamon Mead
March 1st, 2010You may remember the last review of B. Nektar Meadery’s Orange Blossom Mead. I had positive things to say about it– it wasn’t too sweet, and it wasn’t too non-honeylike.
I have mixed feelings about Vanilla Cinnamon. The bottle says ‘award winning’, and it had an award-winning taste… but a few things disappointed me. I could taste the vanilla more than the honey. I could taste the cinnamon, which was nice.
It was quite powerful in sweetness, btw. So much that I found it hard to continue enjoying the bottle after getting halfway through. However, I think that sharing it with friends would result in a better enjoyment of this mead.
I wish the honey taste was a bit stronger, and that there was less of a ‘hollow’ kind of sweetness in how it hit the mouth. It’s hard to explain this sweetness. It felt like a thick sweetness versus a sharp sweetness. (EG: Some sweet things have a clear bite in the mouth. It didn’t feel like it had this clear bite.)
Overall, I’d probably buy it again, but not for anything less than a friend and I to share.
Liquor Review: B. Nektar Meadery – Orange Blossom Mead
February 27th, 2010You may have seen the last post I wrote about the first taste of mead from this meadery. Luckily, Orange Blossom Mead was QUITE satisfying when it comes to mead.
There was a bit of a citrusy bite in how it sat in your stomach and how it went down. It tasted a bit bitter and citrusy as well in the mouth. Honey definitely backed up the strength of this wine.
This mead made me feel a bit tipsy and light-hearted. I miss another Mead I’ve had, but this is a great one to introduce people to Mead. It’s not the best, but it’s worth it.
Liquor Review: B. Nektar Meadery – Wildberry Pyment
February 22nd, 2010Back in January, I had my first taste of (good) mead. All I previously tasted in the past was nothing better than vodka + honey. This was a far cry from truly good mead.
What’s mead? Mead is a honey liquor. The best mead I tasted went down like honey water that got me drunk. (Sweetness varied upon the mead itself.) Some mead is made by bees who only ate from one kind of flowering plant. This affects the taste of the honey and the resulting mead.
Today, we’re going to be talking about B. Nektar Meadery’s Wildberry Pyment. Here’s the disappointing prefix: the bottle calls it “grape honey wine”.
Here’s my brief discussion:
This mead is not golden yellow. It’s a grape/wine-y purple. It has only a bare hint of ‘honey’ taste. The grape and ‘natural wildberry flavor added’ are both obvious.
I’ve felt that various liquors can affect your mood– some can lift it, and some can make it low. This liquor made me feel sad. Not only was the honey taste disappointing, but I genuinely felt low while drinking it.
In my opinion, stay away from the Wildberry Pyment. It’s not mead to me at all.
Soon, I’ll be reviewing the other flavors I’ve purchased.
You may not be slacking off as badly as you think. (Procrastination)
February 6th, 2010Sprint Hero plan VS Droid Eris
January 26th, 2010I took a look at the Sprint Hero, and finally got one.
Problems:
- It has its slow moments. Sometimes, I type so fast that the keyboard can’t keep up, even when the phone is doing nothing.
- Some applications you download can stay on constantly, draining the battery, even if you aren’t using them. (EG: See the UStream application. Great in theory, bad in practice?)
- It has its slow moments more frequently than you’d desire. Sometimes, I hit the phone-hangup button to stop the sleep display on the phone, and I have to wait at least half a second for it to show up. This can be a problem when it doesn’t show up for seconds, and then you hit the same button just to make sure it’s working. If you dot hat, when the phone DOES come back, the display will light up–and then immediately disappear because you DID hit the ‘turn off display’ button twice.
I think it’s worth my investment, however, and I’ll let you know how pleased I am by the end of the… ack. Two year contract :p
$80 per month is affordable, however. I’ve had this for at least a week, and have only used 24 minutes out of 450… Either I don’t call landlines enough, or I picked an amazing plan for my phone.
Be back later– I plan to make an intellectual post on How to discipline yourself, what habits to create to get yourself discipline, and what has inspired this need for it with me.
Wacom Tablet – Shaky, Shaking, Wobbly, Jittery, Jitters, Parkinsons, the mouse cursor shakes.
December 20th, 2009If you’re ANYTHING like me, you are FRUSTRATED (to say the least) if your cursor shakes when using the Wacom Tablet pen.
So, I decided that it’d be best if I had an extensive index of EVERYTHING I’ve tried to do to get mine to work.
My Symptoms:
WACOM INTUOUS 3
While hovering the pen above the tablet pad, the cursor shakes WILDLY. While hovering the pen just above the surface (and resting my hand on the pad), my hand does not shake but the cursor does.
The same happens for the Wacom Mouse.
Placing my pen right at the surface causes the tablet pen to do anything from waver about once per second to five times per second.
The biggest symptom: drawing a diagonal line creates an obviously wavy line. (This is different from a naturally curvy line that would be created from your hand movement.)
This has happened between two different PCs, so I am the definition of frustrated.
My Comparison Device:
I have a Compaq Presario R3000 running Windows XP and the not-necessarily Newest Wacom drivers. It doesn’t wobble, and MAN can you tell the difference in drawing.
The Best Solution
NO SOLUTION YET. Well, isn’t THAT nice? 
Read my attempts below.
Attempted Solutions
Installing New Drivers, & Rebooting
Didn’t help. Even worse– if I Stop the Wacom tablet service, my tablet still shakes. It just takes more for windows to recognize the slight movement. That is to say, windows jumps the distance.
IF I stop the Tablet service entirely, I can’t use my Wacom at all. Strange.
Rubbing your hand on the drawing pad / really Polishing It
I have a Nintendo DS screen-wiping pad. I’m using it to wipe the pad.
- Wiped only the drawing surface: no success.
- Wiped it with my hand for 15 seconds: no success.
- Giving it a really good clean throughout it all (lifting the pad surface): no success.
Stopping Vista’s tablet PC service
My old PC was XP, and it also shook. I expect this to not fix the problem.
(just tried it): Didn’t fix the problem.
What happened: I couldn’t move my cursor with the the tablet at all.
Adjusting the Hertz rate of your monitor(s)
This happened between two different monitors (EG: Two different computers, my old and new one.) Tried it. Didn’t work.
Moving tablet-related input devices away from the tablet
Where my tablet pen is: On the desk, about 8 inches away. Where my tablet mouse is: About a foot away. Symptoms persist.
Moving the tablet mouse 4/5 yards away, to a bed. Symptoms persist.
Moving a mouse or such away from the tablet
Microsoft Intellimouse, plugged into a USB port. Current distance away: 4 inches. Moving it to where the tablet mouse in the previous solution was (about 8 inches to a foot away). Symptoms persist.
Testing for the same symptoms from the Wacom wireless mouse device
Wacom Mouse also shakes, in pen or mouse mode.
Unplugging any other mouse input devices
Unplugging my mouse didn’t do anything.
Moving your tablet further away from a Wireless Router
Wacom tablet is about a yard away. Moved it to two to three yards. Still had a problem. Moved the full length of the cord to an area with no technical devices nearby. Problem still not solved.
Moving the tablet cable away from the pC, excluding where it plugs into the USB port.
Still has a problem.
Moving your tablet to be beneath , or on-level with your tower PC.
Mouse seemed to shake MORE.
Moving the tablet straight up to the ceiling didn’t fix the problem, either.
Moving speakers or monitors further away from the tablet
See the above steps where I move away from the computer setup and still had the problem.
Waiting a duration between trying any of the above solutions.
Swapping to my mediary/control device immediately produced a pleasurable, error-free drawing experience, so it doesn’t need time to ‘cool down’ or be de-radio-waved.
Changing the Wacom Intuous recognition / standard drawing mode
Slightly changed the shake, but not enough to improve drawing.
Pen Nib is too short
Installed new pen nib, still had the problem.
Rotate a screw inside the Wacom pen
Did as instructed (removed rubber and pen buttons), didn’t see a screw in the Intuous 3.
Trying another tablet pen.
Bought another when my last pen broke. No change/no fix.
Trying another USB Socket
Tried another socket, no success.
Shake the tablet
Shook it, tapped it. Didn’t hear anything rattle.
Check for general radio interference
(Use a ’straight edge’ to test for radio interference)
Shakes differently in both directions. Obviously it’s not some missed sensor that causes a line to be warped.
Radio interference?
Walking around with the control device to see where it shakes the most, if it shakes on the control device
While testing, my laptop (control device) had no shaking. I tried a variety of methods by walking around with it. I tested the drawing in a drawing program, and had no wavy lines. That’s the crucial test to me– to draw a diagonal line.
After the above, I realized the proof was complete that this was a software/driver problem with something I had installed.
Enabling/disabling certain drivers
I read this how-to on how to see hidden devices.
In the order, here is what I removed:
- EVERYTHING under “Mice and other pointing devices” that was not a highlighted icon. (This INCLUDES “Wacom Mouse”.). I remembered to ‘delete driver software’ on Wacom Mouse : No fix.
- EVERYTHING not-installed under Universal Serial Bus Controllers. No fix.
- THe same under “Storage Volumes.” No fix.
- Other items under “Other Devices”. No fix.
- EVERYTHING not-installed under “Monitors.” I had 2 not-in-use copies of one of monitors. Decided to reboot just in case those drivers would fix. (EG: My old ‘TV Card’.) Reboot didn’t fix it.
- Everything under “Keyboards” That wasn’t plugged in. Also: a strange entry that said a keyboard was plugged into USB. (there was none such keyboard.): No Fix.
- Removed entries from Disk Drives and DVD/CD-Rom Drives. No Fix.
- Human-Interface Devices – I noticed something funny. There was “Wacom HID Digitizer” and “Wacom HID Pen”. Neither were listed as active, even though my tablet was plugged in. a HID-Compliant Device entry and an USB Human Interface Device were disabled when the tablet was removed. What I did here continued below.
My Device Manager reported that the Wacom Digitizer and Pen weren’t in use.
- I unplugged my tablet, and then uninstalled every single device that was listed as not-in-use, EXCLUDING the Wacom entries.
- Re-plugged in tablet.
- Device re-showed up as “HID Compliant Device”… but neither Wacom entry was lit up.
- Uninstalled Wacom Tablet Software, and looked at the listing. I have 3 “USB H[IDs]“, and the Wacom Digitizer and Wacom pen entries. My Mouse is properly listed, so the remaining 3 USB HIDs have to be my printer, my camera (?), and my USB Bluetooth dongle. However, when I remove the bluetooth dongle, I get only the mouse and a USB HID. Apparently the USB HID was the Webcam. My Bluetooth dongle adds two entries. Rebooted.
- Looked at the list. Wacom entries remained. I uninstalled everything that was a default setting, including “Virtual Keyboard”, and Wacom’s settings. I DID Leave “Virtual Media Keys”, my PC’s mouse, and my PC’s webcam USB HID entry.
- Downloaded the Wacom software, and then reinstalled it (WITHOUT ATTACHING THE USB DEVICE). During the installation, Wacom HID Digitizer, Wacom HID Pen, and Wacom Virtual Hid Driver were installed.
- When I plugged in the Tablet, it showed up again as “HID-Compliant Device.”
- Still shook madly.
- Under the “Mice and other POinting Devices”, Wacom Mouse had a ! next to it. “Could not load the device driver for this hardware.” Told Windows to look for a solution (properties of the Wacom Mouse item), but I didn’t learn anything.
Began nuking services and processes to see what would get it working.
I even have the shaking tablet in Safe Mode… After a variety of disabled startup items and ended processes, I gave up.
Incredible Linux server Vulnerability – Fork Bombs and protecting yourself against them!
November 24th, 2009I only recently learned about Fork bombs. The idea is that a user who can successfully log onto your server will run a simple program that will tell the server to run more simple programs– these programs may do nothing malicious by themselves, but when they keep creating more and more kids, your server’s resources will dwindle until the server has nothing remaining to operate with.
This VERY IMPORTANT POST about limiting user’s process/RAM Limits will help you guarantee that users will find it hard, if not impossible, to abuse the system with a fork bomb.