A Blue Star

Fellow 1: “Now my grandfather, he knew the exact day of the year that he was going to die. It was the right year too. Not only that, but he knew what time he would die that day, and he was right about that too.”

Fellow 2: “Wow, that’s Incredible. How did he know all of that?”

Fellow 1: “The judge told him.”

The other day I was looking at a USB cell charger from ThinkGeek.
A battery that charges while it is connected to my USB port.
But I found most took to long to charge or they where expensive.

I found project started by Stefan Vorkoetter that shows up to create a fast charger for NiMH/NiCd Cells USB Powered Charger for Two AA NiMH/NiCd Cells

The project looks pretty simple and I plan on trying it out this weekend.

An interesting look at beat boxing and cooking
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/v/S7GGkKpBR-g

Some of my favorite house hunting websites in vancouver

When responding to any online classified ad, it’s always a good idea to provide lots of information about your self. During peek house hunting times such as September some ads can get upwards of 50+ responses a day, a potential renter can get overwhelmed. So make it easy for them to select you over the next guy. Clean well formatted response with your contact information.

• housingmaps.com - Google maps with Craigslist ads
• vancouver.craigslist.org - Rooms for rent
• vancouver.kijiji.ca - Rooms for rent
• vancouver.craigslist.org - Houses for rent
• vancouver.kijiji.ca - Houses for rent
• vancouver.renting.canada.com - Rooms and Houses for rent
• AMSRentsLine.com - Rooms and Houses for rent
• Renting.ca - Rooms and Houses for rent

If you don’t fine a house on time, you might want to consider putting your stuff in storage and try http://www.couchsurfing.com/ for a while.

CouchSurfing.com helps you make connections worldwide. You can use the network to meet people and then go and surf other members’ couches! When you surf a couch, you are a guest at someone’s house. They will provide you with some sort of accommodation, a penthouse apartment or maybe a back yard to pitch your tent in. Stays can be as short as a cup of coffee, a night or two, or even a few months or more. When you offer your couch, you have complete control of who visits. The possibilities are endless and completely up to you.

A small personal list of what to do in vancouver

• Treetops Adventure - Treetops Adventure is the newest of Capilano Suspension Bridge’s attractions and the first venue of its kind in North America, offering a squirrel’s eye view of a thriving coastal forest. Visitors venture from one magnificent Douglas fir tree to another on a series of elevated suspension bridges, some reaching as high as 100 feet (30m) above the forest floor. Guided nature tours and the Kids’ Rainforest Explorer program are some of the activities that enhance this unique rainforest encounter. Recognized for extraordinary innovation with national and provincial tourism and engineering awards, a walk on Treetops Adventure has emerged as one of Vancouver’s quintessential activities.
• Stanley Park, Vancouver’s first park, is an evergreen oasis of 400 hectares (1,000 acres) close to the heart of Vancouver’s downtown core. Its natural west coast atmosphere offering a back drop of majestic cedar, hemlock and fir trees embraces visitors and transports them to an environment rich in tranquility.
• Queen elizabeth park The top of this beautifully maintained 52 hectare (130 acre) park is the highest point in the city, at 167m (505 ft) above sea level. From the lookouts, visitors have a 360 degree view of the Vancouver skyline. The park receives nearly 6 million visitors a year who marvel at its superior standard of garden plantings.
• Vancouver Aquarium [Beluga Cam]
• Granville Island [1]
• The Grouse Grind
• Wreck beach, Jericho Beach (Webcam), Kitsilano Beach, Spanish Banks.
• See a movie in Tinseltown
• Go have breakfast at The Elbow Room on Davie street, about 2 blocks east of Granville. GREAT food, and the waiters will HECKLE you, they are halarious, and it is great fun.
• La Casa Gelato Venables Street, a few blocks west of Clark Drive, (they have a billion flavors of ice cream, like, Corn, Beer, Tequila, Pistachio, Rice, Wasabi, Curry, Balsamic Vinigrette… and all the traditional favorites!)
• Goto Chinatown and Little India.
• Science World on a day you are feeling fun and silly, you should make a point of checking out their OMNIMAX theatre. CRAZY FUN.
• Explore Commercial Drive. Thoroughly
• A hookah in The Persian Tea House on Davie and Granville.
• Open Mic’s and and local/indie music
• Zen Garden in China town.
• Anime shops in China town.
• Farmer’s Market at Trout Lake Park
• Little India (40th and Oak area)
• lynn canyon suspension bridge (free) Swiming too
• sunset from the top of capitol hill
• comedy at the granville island theatre
• Tower Beach as the sun rises
• chinatown in the summer. They have the midnight market. All kindsa food and insanity till midnight on weekends. SO RAD! Happens in richmond too
• Bons on Broadway is a wicked little place on Tuesdays. They have their $3 breakfast, and $2 pints of beer! After about 6pm it cleans out to young people all in for the beer special
• And The Blarney Stone has actually been taken over by new owners, as of last week. They fired the whole staff ( some of which have been working there for 10 years ) and have plans to re-vamp the whole place into a “nicer” pub that is open during the day as well. It’s not going to be the same
• If you’re looking for good pub’s with Pool tables check out the Cambie or The Bourbon. They always have good people in it, and it’s always a load of fun where you are guarenteed to meet new people.
• Squamish chieftain
• Lighthouse Park [1]
• VanDusen Botanical Garden

Days of the year

• Bard on the Beach
• Festival of Lights
• Festival of The Dead and Parade of Lost Souls on the Drive just before Halloween.
• Illuminaries, the latern festival at Trout Lake Park, in May I believe.
• christmas/halloween train at Stanley Park

This February, Lionsgate Entertainment celebrates the 25th anniversary of a true classic, The Last Unicorn, featuring an all-star cast of voice talent and songs performed by the band America. Starring the voices of Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby), Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars) and Academy Award¡¦nominees Angela Lansbury (TV’s “Murder, She Wrote”) and Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski), The Last Unicorn: 25th Anniversary Edition DVD tells the tale of a unicorn who sets out on an extraordinary quest to find her lost brothers and sisters. Based on the novel by Hugo-Award winning fantasy author, Peter S. Beagle, this long-awaited special edition DVD is available for the first time in the United States in a widescreen version. It brings the film to life in its highest quality ever, with digitally remastered audio and video, and new foil-printed slipcase packaging (not shown in the photo above).

THIS DVD EDITION IS APPROVED BY PETER S. BEAGLE. MORE THAN HALF THE PURCHASE PRICE GOES TO SUPPORT HIM AND HIS WORKS. (Note: if you buy it elsewhere, he still isn’t getting anything at all. See www.conlanpress.com/youcanhelp for more information.)

ALL PURCHASED COPIES WILL BE AUTOGRAPHED IN THREE PLACES: THE DVD, THE DVD COVER, AND THE DVD SLIPCASE.

A really interesting YouTube video where Greg Pattillo beatbox a flute to the inspector gadget theme, he even has a MySpace where you can listen to a few of his other songs.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/pattillostyle

A tray made of silicone that can be used to make Lego shaped ice cubes.
And it only costs 7.99.
I found this nifty little item on freshfodder.wordpress.com
You can buy your own Lego Ice cub tray from Lego’s online store

Imagain creating a entire town or city or castle out of an unlimted supply of lego ice cube blocks, you could even use food colering to color the blocks any color you want. That would be an interesting project. I will post pictures if I ever get around to it.

Wiki artical on Ice_sculpture

If you’re a Network Professional you’ll certainly know how messy network can be! Cables all around the room, old computer material from the ice age all around the floor, connection cables without any designation tag and also other unusual things.

Source: how-messy-is-your-network

How to check your MAC address of your network cards
1) Open a command prompt (Windows Start button-> Run -> Type “cmd” )
2) Type “ipconfig /all”

Your MAC address are defined as “Physical Address” and should be a 6x 2 HEX charter string.
For example: ‘00-03-0D-12-00-00′
It should look something simlare to this.

Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : XXXXXXX
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . .: SiS 900-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-03-0D-12-00-00
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.106
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, April 25, 2007 9:34:31 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:34:31 AM
Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 802.11g MiniPCI Wireless Network Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-76-CA-00-00


Whenever I have to go searching for a driver and the company’s web page is down or no longer supports this driver, I post the driver here so people that come after me might have a easier time finding it.
I hate searching for drivers.

Y-105 USB to RS 232 Converter (DB9) Drivers