DipCast

This is my last post at DipCast...

2009-01-09T23:20:00.003-05:00

This will be the last post here at DipCast.

I'll be posting solely on DavidJohnMead from now on, though I'll leave these posts live as long as possible.

Please change your feed readers and bookmarks accordingly.

Be seeing you.

Goodbye 2008

2008-12-31T16:21:00.001-05:00

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, have a Happy New Year!

I know the economy is a little shaky but...

2008-09-29T23:07:00.001-04:00

Picture the scene - 10am on a Sunday morning and the phone rings. Its someone from the bank we have an auto loan with. After some of the usual ID verification malarkey we get down to business - when are we planning on paying?

We check online with our bank whilst they are on the phone - Did we miss a payment? No. Are we late? No.

In fact it's not due until Tuesday (remember its Sunday) and its scheduled to clear Monday. So why are they phoning? Just to ask and check if we plan on paying on the same day, with the same amount through the same method that we have for over a year.

This is also the same bank that we had the lease, for the same car, through for 5 years. Never missing or late with any of those payments.

Surely things are this bad that my payment is going to keep them afloat.

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The newest arrival in the Mead household...

2008-09-06T01:49:00.001-04:00

I came home Thursday and there it was. A nice dull-brown cardboard box sitting on the table. Within lay my first-ever self-bought laptop.

I have always used the ones from my work, but when I started at my new job I felt this was the chance to have my own. I consulted Tom (oracle of laptops) and wanted something as similar as I could get to the Dell Latitude D820 I had at Optiem. He fired me across some recommendations and I settled on the Acer Extensa 5620Z.

This laptop comes with 4 USB ports, S-Video and one for our digital video camera. The 3GB of RAM and 160GB HD is nice, though I'm not a fan of the pre-partitioning 70/70.

It's pretty light weight, has a built in web cam and Vista installed (which I'm giving a week to see if I need to go back to XP).

It has been a little tedious installing everything (couldn't deactivate my Fireworks CS4 beforehand) but so far everything is going well. The screen is good, camera is working, and my fingers are getting used to the new keyboard.

So I'm now loading it up with Flock, Evernote, Open Office, VLC media player, Miro and a lot other fave apps. Only problem so far has been iTunes not seeing the music on the external drive without importing it all again. Glenn pointed me to an article that might help so I'll check that.

Technorati tags: acer, laptop, vista

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Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer

2008-07-19T01:45:00.001-04:00

Delia Derbyshire was the person that actually played the original Dr Who theme and now they've found recordings of other music she made whilst at the BBC. This includes a dance track 20 years ahead of it's time! What better person to interview about this than Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.Can't wait until more of her recordings are made public.Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browserhttp://flock.com

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The Dark Knight TV spot...

2008-06-25T16:23:00.001-04:00

This spot gives a sense of what Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker will be. I'm really looking forward to this coming out and seeing how Nolan's decision to use little or no CGI where possible pays off.

Embedded Video

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What my son will never see...

2008-06-17T23:28:00.002-04:00

We’ve just taken ownership of Julie’s “new car”. It’s a 2005 Saturn and one thing we noticed was there was no cigarette lighter. Something I had taken for granted in every car I’ve really been in, even though I don’t smoke.

This got me thinking - what items would my son, now 4 years old, never experience in his day-to-day life that I took for granted.

So I started this list. Anyone have anything else?

car cigarette lighters

audio tapes

video tapes

rotary phones (and possibly land lines too)

TV static (all TV’s are due to go digital in 2009)

longwave radio

Unparalleled service

2008-05-07T00:01:00.001-04:00

This morning Julie gave me a call. When pulling out from our drive she noticed there was shattered glass in the road. I called the Willowick Service Department and by 9.05am there was someone sweeping it up.

No questions. No attitude. Just service.

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Being eco-friendly and "going green"

2008-04-19T08:12:00.001-04:00

We’ve been thinking about “doing our bit” for the environment and this year is when we’ve started.

We went out and got some tote bins to separate the recycling, located the local drop-off point and got going. It’s a pretty simple habit to get into and I was really surprised how much plastic and cardboard we threw away! I'm now only putting out two small binliners for collection on garbage day-this opposed to the two bins plus extra bags I had to haul out every Monday night.

I was also lucky enough to get a beta invite to Edenbee, a social network solely focussed on the environment. You can see how my carbon footprint is doing and look at the goals I have set.

A problem I’ve run into is no one seems to know what to do with all the recyclable plastics marked with anything but a 1 or 2. I’ve contacted the collection company, the State and left a voicemail for the City but nothing. They all think it should go somewhere but just don't know where. If I find out I'll post here.

More soon.

Technorati tags: green, recycle, eco-friendly

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39 Today...

2008-02-04T22:10:00.001-05:00

39 years old today. I had a great dinner cooked for me around the in-laws yesterday. Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings along with a couple of Guinness's.great gift

Julie surprised me tonight with a whole lemon pound cake from Starbucks. I LOVE THIS and always try and get a slice when popping in for a drink.

Now I have to practice self-restraint :-)

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Without the Internet would this exist?

2008-01-25T14:39:00.001-05:00

Julie sent me a link today (she's good like that) for a site where you can pay Palestinians to spray paint your message on the wall dividing them in the West Bank and they'll send you 3 photos of it.

It is romantic (her email title), noble, slightly scary and exactly the thing that I love the internet for.

Check out sendamessage.nl for more details.

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First earthquake of '08...

2008-01-08T23:36:00.001-05:00

So first the fridge light burns out, then the toaster breaks and finally (I hope) we survive the first earthquake this year in Lake County. Oh did I mention it's January 8th and 70 degrees.

Bring it on 2008 - I'm ready for you.

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Welcome 2008...

2008-01-04T09:38:00.001-05:00

Already 2008 and still no personal rocket-packs. What's up with that!

So those few readers from last year know that I tried to do one post a day and failed miserably. This year no such promise.

Christmas was very good and we got to see Josh's excitement after discovering the left-over cookies from Santa and our big present was a Sony video camera (thanks Linda & Jim).

Julie & I went to see Juno which was excellent - very funny. I managed to get my curry fix in very early this year by going for lunch at Cafe Tandoor and getting the Chicken Jhalfrazie.

Down side, looks like our fridge/freezer is on the blink. Of course the year's warranty run out a couple of months ago. Go figure.

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Video of my CSS presentation...

2007-12-13T13:06:00.001-05:00

Here it is. Video of my "short" presentation for CWSA at Tri-C. I was one of a few presenters and it was great time BS-ing with other developers.

David Mead presents CSS Tips & Tricks from Cleveland Web Standards on Vimeo.

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No one rocks an accordian like Yann Tiersen!

2007-11-25T23:37:00.001-05:00

Embedded Video

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Cloverfield trailer 2...

2007-11-19T14:09:00.001-05:00

So J.J.Abrams has the film he's producing (Cloverfield) putting the internet in a tizzy again with the release of a second trailer. If you saw Beowulf over the weekend you got to see it in the cinema - If not you can see a good, clean copy at Empire Online.

Good places to follow the online buzz are 1-18-08 Project Cloverfield and CHUD.com.

This is the first "must-see" for me in '08.

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Coffee Drinks Illustrated...

2007-11-14T17:48:00.001-05:00

If you head over to Lokesh Dhakar's blog he has done some great illustrations for various coffee drinks that you can get.

Found via Simplebits.

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New music...

2007-11-10T01:57:00.001-05:00

I dropped $9.95 on eMusic and have grabbed three great electronic/ambient albums so far:

Vast by Saul Stokes
Body Electric by Vir Unis & Steve Roach
The Euphoria Of Disobedience by O Yuki Conjugate

I highly recommend these. The above links are for Amazon.

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My first voice-over...

2007-11-06T17:26:00.001-05:00

Working for an interactive marketing agency has it's perks. One of which was my chance to lend my vocal talents as the announcer for a series of videos we're producing for May The Best Win.

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Learn a new word and give free rice...

2007-11-05T14:01:00.001-05:00

Julie sent me a link to Free Rice. It's a great little site that donates 10 grains of rice for every word you match the meaning to.

Give it a go.

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The Summer of Superman...

2007-10-23T16:03:00.001-04:00

I was passed this article by a co-worker a couple of weeks ago. I've only now gotten around to reading it.

It outlines a plan for Cleveland celebrating the fact that Superman's creators came from here. I personally don't see that as ever happening but I definitely think it's a great idea. We had a little fervor around Harvey Pekar but nothing so far about Siegel and Shuster.

I mean, some of Spiderman 3 was filmed here and Howard The Duck was set here, so why not Superman? Are the Cleveland bigwigs more Marvel than DC now?

C'mon Cleveland - Don't keep harping on about The Christmans Story. Let's make The Man of Steel welcome in this old steel town.

Technorati tags: cleveland, ohio, superman, 2008, celebration

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Bladerunner - The Final Cut

2007-06-21T12:41:00.001-04:00

Embedded Video

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New Coen Brothers movie...

2007-06-15T14:59:00.001-04:00

First trailer for "No Country for Old Men", the latest Coen Brothers film, is now out.

Think more "Blood Simple" than "O' Brother".

Can't wait.

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Grilling the "catch of the day"!

2007-05-03T22:08:00.000-04:00

My friend and colleague, Ben went on a fishing trip recently and was nice enough to share the spoils with us co-workers. Having three days of vacation booked this week and the weather taking a turn for the better I decided to, for the first time, cook fish on our grill.

Not a major milestone for many but, seeing as I've never attempted it and the Walleye turned out rather great, I thought share the recipe. First off I've never eaten Walleye (or heard of it) until I'd arrived in the USA. So a little Internet searching by Julie turned up quite a few cooking tips for this fish but all were along the same lines of frying, beer and batter. Not that I'm adverse to any of those, but it was sunny and I had a hankering to grill. A little more digging found this Blackened Walleye recipe from "rivereye" (scroll down the page).

I substituted Chili Powder for the Cayenne Pepper and the result was a white fish fillet with a nice kick. Even my son tried some, though he made his lips tingle.

Clean up was a bit labor intensive but I'm definitely going to try some more fish on the grill this Summer.

I'm moderating a Web Association panel!

2007-04-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

To build on the points I spoke about in January's Web Association panel about the "state of the web" (mainly microformats) I have been asked to moderate (another first) an after-hours panel discussion about Emerging Web Technologies. Though the event has now sold out (gulp) I have yet to finalize all my questions.

I'm really looking forward to this as the panel has some interesting people on it and, glancing over the attendee list, I am hoping for some good q&a from the audience.

Hopefully I'll have some photos to put up after the panel.