I’ve recently been listening to the promo mini-cd for Depeche Mode’s new single from Sounds of the Universe, “Wrong“, and while I wasn’t sure about it at first, it’s come to grow on me. I don’t find that surprising, since the last few albums have done the same (Ultra, Exciter, Playing the Angel).
Sounds of the Universe album cover
The current track list appears to be:
1. In Chains
2. Hole To Feed
3. Wrong
4. Fragile Tension
5. Little Soul
6. In Sympathy
7. Peace
8. Come Back
9. Spacewalker
10. Perfect
11. Miles Away/The Truth Is
12. Jezebel
13. Corrupt
Since I haven’t listened to any of the other songs, I don’t have much to work with here 
. Go pre-order your copy of Sounds Of The Universe
now!
I spent some time tonight looking at Google AdSense and trying to incorporate it into the site. I’ve decided that while the site is the plain white, it’s probably not a good idea to try to ad Google ads, since it just makes the site look even busier than it currently does.
screenshot of the plain white site
I figured I’d post a picture of how the site looks right this minute so anyone reading this in the future has a reference point. I’ve decided I need to come up with a good color scheme, possibly using Adobe Kuler, or maybe I’ll just roll over to Lowe’s and get some paint swatches .
I’m thinking of going with a blue/tan scheme. Anyone have input on that?
Now that I’ve gotten into watching Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen on hulu.com, I needed a way to log into my HTPC (Home Theater PC). Keeping a USB keyboard hanging around the living room was a no-no in my wife’s book, as we were slowly de-cluttering the room, and that was definitely contributing to the clutter. My original idea was to get a regular wireless keyboard and keep it on the end table. So I began to do a little research and ended up stumbling upon the Logitech diNovo Mini™ keyboard. I found that it had pretty good reviews, and liked the cover which would keep the dust from accumulating in all the keys (as well as dog hair, of which we have plenty of no matter how much we vacuum). I figured it would be about about half-size of a regular keyboard, and while it was expensive, I was willing to give it a shot since it came with it’s own rechargeable battery and claimed a long life (and had the lid!).
When I received the box, I was pretty surprised Read More »
I’ve been trying to get 4 monitors up and running on my main system now for a while. I’ve got an XPS 420 that I got a killer deal on some time ago. It’s a Quad-core 2.4 Ghz (using BSEL hack it can be 3 Ghz), and I jammed it with 8Gb of ram, so of course I am stuck running Vista 64 bit. Ultimate to be exact. Well, I won’t lie to you and say its been all love and kisses between me and Vista; truth be told I’d have much preferred to stay on XP. I actually LIKE XP.
Anyway, back to my original topic. So, my main video card is in the PCI-E slot, so I am left with either upgrading to a PCI-E card that supports 4 monitors , yuck and $$$, or to get a legacy PCI card that supports an additional 2 monitors. That is the path I chose to take, so I hopped over to Ebay to acquire a card. Wow, Radeon 7000 for $25 bucks? DEAL. I get it delivered, get it installed, and then…oops, forgot I was running 64 bit. No 64 bit driver for old-ass legacy cards like that. Back to the drawing board.
Head back over to Ebay, and find 2 Nvidia FX5200 256MB for $50. DEAL. Pay for them and wait the WEEK it takes for them to get here from Oklahoma (I’m in Texas, so why so SLOW?). Finally install the card tonight. Guess what? First message I get is “At least one display adapter on the system has been disabled because its driver is not compatible with the driver for the VGA adapter”. WTF does that mean? A few minutes research and I find an article on the Microsoft site here that explains the problem. A quick summary is that in vista, you have to use video cards from the same vendor, because they share the graphics stack. In XP, it was FINE to run with cards from different vendors…but no, in their infinite wisdom (they say for stability, so I assume they had too many bugs to ship it like XP), they have moved us BACKWARDS in features from a previous release. So now I have to go buy yet another video card. SHEESH.
I’ll post a follow up once I get the new one from NewEgg. Its a PCI version of the same card I already have running in my PCI-E slot, so it should be very simple to get working. Somehow, I find I have a serious lack of confidence in that.
I’ve decided that I’ve dabbled in this web world for long enough without jumping in. In order to remedy this, without making any serious decision about where I’d like this to go, I present Phil’s Comments. Here I will comment on things I see, do, hear to think about in my daily travails. Expect to see rants, raves, endorsements, condemnations and other various forms of entertainment as I see fit.
I’m also learning about SEO, Google Analytics, sitemaps, twitter, AddThis, WordPress and other associated technologies as I go. I expect to add Amazon ads and Google Adsense as I push forward.
