Hmm, there is a cover charge, I'm going alone, and I don't have a fake ID (unfortunately). Dressing nice, but if my chances are slim-to-none I don't even want to attempt it/risk looking like a fool.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:26 PM on June 7, 2008

cosmic osmo: Also, my NY State ID has "UNDER 21" written on it in huge red letters.

emelenjr: Good idea - I have a (good!) camera but it's the kind that's compact and small, not the type I'd expect a reporter/photog. to have.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:09 PM on June 7, 2008

nanojath - it's not :p .
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:21 PM on June 7, 2008

Ahem - another idea. I have in my possesion a (legit) ID card from a major newspaper here ('cause I work there). Might (dressing nice and) pretending I write/photograph for the paper, work?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:27 PM on June 7, 2008

alicetiara - I don't. I just don't know who to get them from. MefiMails welcome.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:35 PM on June 7, 2008

Thanks for all the tips, guys, the event was tonight and I ended up not going, due to all the dire warnings.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:36 PM on June 7, 2008

A communist Party? What a capital idea!

You should play a game of Mao (no yard required).
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 5:42 PM on May 8, 2008

Ma.gnolia.com is a excellent alternative to del.icio.us, and it will even import all your old del.icio.us bookmarks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:51 AM on February 2, 2008

chrominance: it looks to be exactly the same. :(

Good idea, oblio_one, except my receiver looks like it won't snap back together, if I snap it open. I'll try calling Logitech, but how would go about finding the right person? Ask for Engineering, or what?

rdr: Yeah, but I take my laptop off my desk a lot, for example, almost every day for work. I've been considering getting a hub for my desk at home, but I'd still have to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:06 PM on December 18, 2007

Eeek, I'll be perusing these lists forever! In the meantime, why don't you get yourself an account at criticker.com, rate some movies, and take a look at their automatically-calculated recommendations? They're helpful often.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 1:21 PM on December 17, 2007

This Periodic Table of Visualization Methods might be helpful.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:19 AM on December 7, 2007

Wait, so if one could store information in DNA...and transfer it across generations...would this finally allow...IP Over Penis? IPOP?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:31 AM on November 28, 2007

Ubuntu sounds like it may be a good fit for you, but there are some caveats, namely, hardware support. You haven't mentioned the model of your laptop, but some of the newer wireless chipsets may or may not be supported under Ubuntu.

Otherwise, Ubuntu is perfect for all the tasks you describe, and even web browsing if you're using the laptop at a desktop with a wired Ethernet connection. Ubuntu includes and excellent media player, and the OpenOffice.org office suite.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:19 AM on November 26, 2007

To clarify, all our nodes are just numbered sequentially, for easy reference. They are all identical anyway, and we don't really address them individually.

But keep the names coming, we are looking at all of these. I guess we need a team name too (this is for a competition, and yes, I'll thank Mefi)
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:29 PM on October 30, 2007

Update, everybody: we chose "Strangelove" as in "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned..." etc etc. I've marked best answer to those whose names we seriously considered. Thanks, everybody!
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:45 PM on November 6, 2007

limon: From what I can tell, conky can't monitor remote hosts - we need that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:33 AM on October 22, 2007

zap rowsdower: This is actually for kinda-public display, so it needs to look good. Unfortunately, that kinda rules out Tk.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:51 PM on October 22, 2007

Aah, yes, glTail.rb. We looked at that, but it seems to be more of a toy, and we don't really have log files. We'd like to monitor CPU usage first, and then custom scriptable things next. Basically, bar graphs and plot graphs.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 12:13 PM on October 24, 2007

Thirding here. *wince*
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:58 PM on September 13, 2007

Seconding Drupal. It is very simple to start out with, and the default install will cover 100% of the things you outlined here, and probably most of your other concerns.

Let me know if you need any help doing anythign advanced with Drupal, I build Drupal sites for a living. It's quite a powerful system.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 9:28 AM on August 14, 2007

Wait, the Zsa in Zsa Zsa Gabor is a 'slushy J' sound? Isn't it Z/S sound?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:01 PM on July 31, 2007

Cool Papa Bell may be correct. Until the 2007 edition, the A.P. stylebook suggested "woman" instead of "female". I would assume lots of reporters and such would refer to the A.P. book.

(Not a self link, I just remember seeing it)
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:41 PM on July 23, 2007

There was also a movie adaptation of the book, with some clear shots of the billboard. Can't find any stills, though.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 6:43 PM on July 15, 2007

Grr, WCityMike, I was hoping to do that!

Anyway, yeah, a headset is probably your cheapest/easiest bet. Make sure you get one without the power-saving feature. So it doesn't turn itself off after 15 minutes, you see.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:45 PM on June 28, 2007

A good simple solution might be tiddlywiki.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 5:44 PM on June 21, 2007

I've seen the "go away, live in isolation for a bit, and come back enlightened" pattern in a bunch of places.

Excuse my briefness, but you may want to examine the Native American Spiritual Quests and Thoreau as someone else mentioned.

Also, I believe there was quite a substantial bit in Robert Pirsig's "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" about this - experiencing Quality in a higher/purer way, and whatnot. That book,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:08 PM on June 14, 2007

Yep, that's it. My links worked fine in preview, there was supposed to be a second link to Wikipedia's page on the recording. Thanks, dr. fresh.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 1:16 PM on May 16, 2007

Hmm, I cam across this link today. Maybe it'll be helpful?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:15 PM on May 8, 2007

kindall: As in understand it, the local environment is being closed up and packaged.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:27 PM on May 8, 2007

Ok, so yes, the 'close' part is a bit misleading. A mathematical closure is the smallest set that is closed under a given operation. A set is closed under an operation is if the result of that operation on members of the set is also always a member of the set.

For example, integers are closed under addition. Any integer plus any other integer will always be an integer.

In Computer Science, it's referring to packaging up the local environment,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:44 PM on May 8, 2007

kindall: fair enough. My explanation makes sense to me, but I was never lauded as one who explains things well, although I like to think so.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 9:15 PM on May 8, 2007

ruby
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 11:48 PM on April 12, 2007

Huh. That works nicely. Thanks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 5:25 PM on April 8, 2007

niles: I did see that, and thanks for the hackaday link. There are two downsides to this solution: (1) It takes up an additional usb hub (my laptop has BT built in) and (2) all the Linux drivers I've found require patches to to the kernel. (translation: the drivers are a pain to install and keep up-to-date). Thanks anyway!

ASM I actually saw it on Lifehacker, and yes, I was planning to write a small script to do lots of things - except not on a Mac.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 9:45 PM on March 20, 2007

ranglin: Yep, I ended up doing this. There was a cheap bluetooth headset on Woot.com today, I'll
see how far I can get with it.

As for what to make the computer do, I'm not sure I want mine to talk to me, but I plan to have it start the screensaver, lock, set the IM away message, pause movies/music, and write to a log file, at least.

Thanks for the tips, all!
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 9:35 PM on March 21, 2007

In my experience, Joomla is a pain to use, and requires a significant learning curve. If WPMU doesn't do everything you want, I recommend Drupal. It's free, and has lots of themes and modules, like EE.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2007

Would the iMacros Firefox extension be useful?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:50 AM on February 8, 2007 marked best answer

How about Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, or maybe Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. Perhaps not hard hard SF, but both are excellent.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 2:33 PM on February 1, 2007

You can tunnel over SSH, as some others have suggested, but that requires a server to tunnel to. I'm behind a university firewall, at 99% of the time, people use the internal DC++ network, but SSH tunneling is used for BitTorrent. BT also has a protocol encryption option that has been reported to work.

If you don't have an SSH server to tunnel too, some people offer SSH shell accounts, and a subset of those have the correct settings to make SSH tunneling work and don't... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:32 PM on December 13, 2006

How about "Cats In The Cradle & The Silver Spoon" by Guns N' Roses?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:50 PM on December 12, 2006

Ok, I guess I'll reveal my super secret planned features. Comments appreciated:

I plan to use subdomains, with a choosable or randomly generated keyword. So something like 'askmefi.domain.com'.

I also planned to add statistics, that would show volume of clicks, but not source IP or anything like that.

I planned to have a preview feature, like tinyurl, yes, that would show you the link, and then redirect in 10 seconds or... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 4:50 AM on November 29, 2006

ardgedee: I think subdomains look nicer. I do realize that a lot people use completion and I don't want to make it hard for them. But, typing in 'mydomain' into the address bar could potentially show all URLs visited through this service - not very useful if it become popular. :)

So, I'll offer subdomains by default, but someone could choose to do a path only instead. Subdomains would also give the user a chance to add some custom paths on the end.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:09 AM on November 29, 2006

Is a PDA necessary? I imagine smaller tablet with Windows Tablet Edition could do this.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 8:59 PM on November 27, 2006

Looking at your pictures, I think you could pull off John Lennon too. Just so you know...
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:42 PM on November 16, 2006

otherworldyglow: It's 2), because when you look someone up on FaceSpaceter, they don't know that you looked them up. Since the poster knows he was facebooked, it's 2.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:30 PM on November 16, 2006

No, no, it's 6.

The event is (presumably) in the future. You're in the present. By pushing it, you are moving the event away from you. You can push it back, that is, push it away, and move it to 6. Likewise, and somewhat confusingly, pushing it forward, that is, forward in time, also gets you to 6. The issue is that the direction modifier changes meanings depending on which one you pick.

If you want to move the meeting... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 3:07 PM on November 16, 2006

Wow. Chilling.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 9:19 PM on November 9, 2006

I've also heard that just visiting http://astalavista.box.sk in IE is a good way to permanently cripple a Windows install. You can use the search engine to find cracks/keygens to run also. Try pirating Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Flash.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 10:42 PM on October 24, 2006

As Iridic guessed already this is indeed for a World of Warcraft guild. This is for the Horde side, so names like Shield of the Kingdom or White Knights are off. (Horde full of trolls, orcs, and undead)

The reason I didn't mention it at first is because I didn't want the name to be influenced by elements from the game, but I realize now a context is useful to have.

So far I see a number of good names: Nevermore, Order of the Lynx, and The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:14 PM on October 7, 2006

Check out Remember The Milk.

It support multiple todo lists for various projects, as well as tags. it can send reminders by IM, SMS, or email. It has an additional interface that is easy to use from any web-enabled cellphone or PDA.

GTD is implementable because you can tag taks with anything, then use their very complete search system to build "smart lists".

It also, of course, supports scheduled and reccuring... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bkudria at 7:09 PM on October 7, 2006 marked best answer