My old host stunk, so I left them. I’m now on a new host. I decided to upgraded to a new version of Wordpress, and some of my plugins aren’t playing nice. Until I get time to reconfigure my theme, I will use this theme.

Tons of people search the web for PayPal codes, but they pass right over the easy-to-find PayPal rebate. From now until March 31st, buy anything online at a place that accepts PayPal that costs more than $30 - and you will get a $15 rebate from PayPal. [yes, even eBay is included] This Rebate, however, is not instant. (Is anything at PayPal that involves you getting money instant?) They will drop the $15 rebate in your account by May 8th they claim.

It’s pretty easy. Just go to the above website and register your PayPal email with them (it’s a PayPal site, don’t worry) and then you are eligible for the rebate. That’s all you have to do.

Now that Lost is back on the air, you might want to stock up on some Dharama Initialive Rations. For some of us, that’s as easy as walking outside every once in a while and picking them up off a pallet that drops from the sky. For others, it can involve a little craftwork.

Fortunately, you can download a Dharma Initiative PDF label that will help you make your own rations out of store-bought materials. I can’t think of a better use of time than this.

It’s that time of year again

Survivor is about to kick off a new season. Mark Burnett appears to have his mind fixated on this “Have’s versus have-nots” theme that he is using on The Apprentice: LA, and now the same theme will carry over to Survivor.

To be honest, I couldn’t be more bored of a show than Survivor. Sure, I’ll watch it - but I sincerely hope they change something about that immunity idol. Yul and Becky were about as exciting as wheat bread and unsalted crackers. Thanks to that idol, they were on way too long.

Gameplay aside, it’s time to make two predictions for this season…

1. Based on Pictures Alone, predict the winner.

Go to http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor14 and look at that flash thing - or you can save yourself time and go to the un-official survivor site at http://www.survivor.com/ and they have them all posted on one page. Come back here, and in the comments, predict who you think will win in the comments.

2. Based on Pictures Alone, predict who has the personality closest to your own.

This is the interesting one. Sure, nobody who is entirely sane will volunteer to leave their job and go live on an island for a month or so with other crazy people for an insignificant chance to win a lot of money. If you are reading this blog, it’s obvious that nobody on Survivor is exactly like you - but of all of the ‘castaways’ there is probably one who has a personality closest to your own.

Maybe it’s only one aspect of their personality, so you can qualify it:

For instance, lets pretend your name is Pace and you see the picture of Boo and think he has the same intellectual prowess as you. You could say in the comments “For personality, I think Boo and I think alike. I don’t think he has the same moral constraints as me, but I think he’s just as smart.”

This last category will make for some interesting viewing as, inevitably, we will pick people who we think have “personalities closest to our own” that end up to be total loons.

On eBay right now, there is an iMac G5 that 10 people have bid up to $37,000. The same seller also has another one that 5 people have bid up to $27,000.

From now on, whenever I sell computer equipment, I’ll be sure to list it in both the:
Collectibles > Arcade, Jukeboxes & Pinball > Pinball > Paper, Manuals
section, and also the:
Dolls & Bears > Dolls > Barbie Contemporary (1973-Now) > Pets & Animals

To clarify, I did ask the seller:

What specifically about this iMac makes it a paper pinball manual or a contemporary barbie pet?

The seller has not yet responded. I’ll be sure to let you know when he does.

If you’ve walked by some of the Apple stores and seen the cool snowflakes running on their screens - then run home to turn that one on your Mac… you might have been mad to find out you didn’t have it!

Here’s where to get it: http://www.alittlebitofnothingleft.net/snowfall/ - Enjoy!

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This is not meant as a comprehensive set of hardware recommendations for MythTV. There are many other sites you can easily google to find that kind of information. This is soley focused on building a MythTV box on-the-cheap using Black Friday sales.

Introduction to MythTV

MythTV is a free open-source DVR package. In addition to the basic features such as pausing and rewinging live TV, MythTV does things that other more expensive DVR systems either don’t to or don’t do well. Here are some things MythTV can do for you:

• Pause Live TV
• Rewind Live TV
• Picture-in-Picture*
• Watch a show while recording another*
• Automatically skip commercials
• Back up your recorded TV onto DVD’s
• Enable any computer on your network to watch live TV
• Enable any computer on your network to watch recorded TV
• Listen to music
• View slideshows of your digital photos
• Browse the web
• Play vintage NES and other games
• Rip DVD’s to your hard drive for safe backup and later viewing
• Re-encode your LiveTV recordings to go on your iPod
• Let you schedule your recordings from a web interface
• Record HDTV signals
• Tons of other stuff

* depends on your tuner. you need two tuners to do things that involve two channels, or an HD input source for HD stuff

Building a MythTV Box using Black Friday Sales

The basic MythTV setup I’m going to recommend is one where you have a backend and a frontend on the same machine. There are other ways of setting up a backend, but this way is an easy way to get started.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know, the weather is starting to get colder and sandal days seem a thing of the past, but maybe if you start on a pair of these now they will be finished by spring.

Sock monkeys are one thing when they are creatively made from a pair of socks and represent a toy of some sort. When you start to create hats that look like a sock trying to be a monkey, that’s where I would draw the line.