The Brain of Shawn

There’s a few interesting moments in my last video. It turns out, I’m a dork. Who knew!

Another 2 weeks went by, and you probably didn’t even miss the Gadget Guy video, but it’s that time of the every other week again. This time, I look at Wubi. It’s so fun to say. Woooobi doobie doo…

Oh, and what do you think of the widescreen instead of standard 4×3? Also, we’re using blip.tv now, which has much nicer video quality… Do you agree?

Vacation day. Weeeee!!!!!!

This company is run by friends from Houston — and it’s actually a very useful, simple photo sharing site. iPhone isn’t required.

Natuba is a new photo sharing site that targets iPhone users with an emphasis on mobile uploading.

read more | digg story

Another immigrant article from the Linux Journal site — but again, I think this is worth discussion if you’re a Linux person. If you’re looking for discussion, I’d go either to the Linux Journal site to comment, or to the Digg link. Happy Monday!

When I demonstrate software for Linux Journal, I tend to use Ubuntu as my operating system. The reason is simply because Ubuntu is extremely popular, but it begs the question, should the Linux community standardize on a single distribution?

read more | digg story

You know those people that live and die by their paper planner? When they lose it, life almost ceases to go on, and they run in circles like a bee with a pollen allergy?

I’m not one of those people.

You know those people that have a crackberry/palm pilot/iPhone strapped to their side, and if their batteries die, they do too?

I’m not one of those people either.

As it turns out, I’ve been trying to get organized for close to a decade now. For some reason, I can never quite get it when it comes to scheduling things. It’d be nice to claim I’m too creative for schedules, but not only would it be a lie — it would also just be a nice artsy fartsy excuse for my failure. I don’t want to be one of those people.

Now that I have 2 awesome jobs, scheduling is critical. You see, I also have an awesome family that deserves my time. (What did they do to deserve that you ask? Well, they fed me, now they’re stuck with me) My current attempt at organization is Google Calendar:

The advantage is that I can access it from any computer, and “syncing” is not required. I’ve tried the syncing game, and it always burns me. When I get a phone next month with a data plan, I should be able to access my calendar anywhere. This pleases me…

How do you stay organized?

Put the gun down, I was talking about video cameras… I put up a short article about the Penguicon over at Linux Journal, and the video is painful to my ego. I really should consider investing in something with better audio recording ability, and better low-light performance.

Or maybe I could get an implant into my eyeball that digitizes everything I see in real time… I could call it Shawncam, and get shawncam.com or something. I could put a patch over my camera eye for those “private moments” that I don’t want y’all to see. (Like picking my nose in the mirror. What were you thinking?)

It’s too bad we’re spending our incentive money on a new fridge…

This time of year, I take lots of drugs. Allergy drugs, headache drugs, asthma drugs — lots and lots of medicines to stave off my genetically prescribed death. Lately, I’ve had lots of headaches, and so we had to purchase a new bottle of pain medicine. The problem is that these new pills are candy coated to make it more pleasant to swallow.

But they’re really tasty.

I’ve really never had a problem swallowing medicine. I can usually take a handful of chalky, pointy, enormous pills and get ‘em down sans water. When you make the pills tasty, however, I end up flirting with the amount of time I can enjoy the sweet goodness before the candy coating is gone. My inner monologue usually goes like this:

“Mmmm… that’s yummy… Is that cherry? No, maybe just sweet. I think the red makes me assume cherry. It’s so tasty. I can’t quite put my finger on the flav— GAAAHHHHH!!! Burnt rubber! OMG, I’m gonna puke!~!!!”

And then I try to wash down the horrid flavor with coffee, toothpaste, or even attempt to rub the foul taste off with a dirty sock. It’s downright rancid, and I’m sure that’s the reason the tasty coating is there in the first place.

See? This is what it’s like to be me. Aren’t you glad you just get to read about it?

I wrote this for Linux Journal — but it’s something that I’m pretty passionate about, so I’m reposting here:

There are two kinds of Linux people in the world, those that will help people fix their Windows spyware problems, and those that will not. I land squarely in the former camp, and I think that it’s important for us all to consider doing the same.

read more | digg story

Many of you know that we have a Silky Terrier named Tux. He’s cute. He’s affectionate. He’s travel sized.

He’s also not housebroken.

I don’t require too many things from our pets, but proper bathroom habits ranks near the top of the list. In fact, there remains a distinct possibility that Tux, awesome namesake or not, won’t remain a member of the Powers’ household. He has until the end of summer.

Thankfully, last night, he made it through the night without desecrating our home. This pleased me greatly. It was actually 2 nights in a row, so I see some hope.

Go Tux Go! (but like, go outsite and stuff)