Home of DJ and technophile Jonathan Puddle (aka J Puddy)
Archive for November, 2005
Heart of the City
56 years ago
It’s Christmastime friends, and as we all know there are a good number of people in this city who won’t be feeling the good times roll. If there’s anything I like about Christmas, it’s feeling the good times roll.
So, to assist these poor, hungry and generally unloved people, my good friend DJ Shagz is involved in a fundraiser. I believe this is his second fundraiser recently, the last was to raise money for Breast Cancer Research. (I find it funny that people sometimes raise money for Breast Cancer. Breast Cancer doesn’t need our money… it needs to be gotten rid of.)
Anyway… I highly recomend you drop by the Victory Cafe (581 Markham) on Saturday December 3rd for a night of good music, good dancing, and an opportunity to donate money and non-perishable food. DJ Shagz will be spinning (you heard him at Freshwind, and 2 Zeo parties. Jon Long likes him more than me.) plus DJs Dynamite Chris, Circe and special guest Travino all the way from sunny Ottawa.
Go here for the website, and go to the Victory Cafe to make a difference in someone’s life.
Hands-on with the Xbox 360
06 years ago
I visit EB Games last night and took an Xbox 360 for a spin.
First impressions:
- It’s big! From the promo material I thought it would be smaller than it is, but it’s not much smaller than the original Xbox. It’s not a big deal, I was just surprised.
- It’s shiny and sexy looking. Who wouldn’t want one adorning their living room?
Games
I only played King Kong, but it was sweet. I have King Kong on my desktop PC, so I had already played the levels, but it’s better on the 360 than on my PC. Running on the LCD HDTV they had, it was honestly like looking through a portal and watching a real Kong fight a real T-Rex. No joke, it’s disgusting.
Controllers
Very very similar to the original. Which is good, cause that was my biggest concern. The only major difference is the black and white buttons have been removed, and button have been placed on the front of the controller, above the triggers (which have been moved a little lower). Other than that, the Start and Select buttons have been moved but that’s no biggie.
Overall, I’m quite excited. I’m not planning on getting one until next Summer when the price has dropped, and I’ll probably get a used one to boot.
Looking forward to:
Dead or Alive 4 (Spartan 458 what! what!)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Halo 3
Halo Screens
16 years ago
I just grabbed some sweet images from the Bungie site:
The top one is a screen cap of Dead or Alive 4, due out for Xbox 360. Team Ninja and Bungie got together and added a female Spartan as a bonus character to DOA 4. What makes her female, I don’t know. The other two are just random coolness.
Restrospective Perspective
06 years ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
I just downloaded Free Download Manager. I downloaded it using my current download manager, Download Accelerator Plus, which I have been loyal to for many years ever since I stopped using Getright back in the 90′s. (Hehe, that sounds funny.)
I wonder how DAP feels – if it knows that I just used it to download it’s replacement. Given that knowledge, I wonder if it would have behaved differently: downloaded faster, used less advertising. Who knows? Truth be told I just wanted a smaller footprint.
On a vaguely similar note (which is actually what this post is about) my wife and I had a discussion about what it would have been like to see Jesus. Specifically, given the knowledge that this man was in the process of saving your sins and changing mankind’s relationship with God forever, what would it have been like to have seen him with your own two eyes? We came up with a few interesting thoughts.
Firstly, what if you could travel back in time with the knowledge you have now and see Jesus – see it all playing out. If Jesus saw you, what would he say? What would the Son of God say to someone travelling through time, possibly the only person who really understood what He was about to do? Would Jesus feel a sense of kinship in your shared knowledge, or would he rebuke you saying that there’s plenty you need to focus on in your time period so leave the time traveling out?
Given the possibility that no one else understood, I have to ask, did anyone alive at the time really understand Christ’s mission? The disciples didn’t seem to, for the most part. John the Baptist maybe? If John the Baptist did, then he was truly gifted with focus because he continued on his God appointed task, and didn’t follow after Jesus the whole time. I’m pretty sure if I knew what was about to go down I’d follow Jesus like UV rays follow the fair-skinned.
If someone alive at that point did understand, what a rush that would be. Imagine having been born, say 20 years before Jesus, growing up in a world where there didn’t seem to be any quick way to be forgiven, and God was a distant and possibly volatile Great-grandfather, rather than a Daddy. Imagine hearing about Jesus, understanding the Scriptures and seeing crystal clear what he was here for and what meant for the human race. What a trip that’d be!
Send the pain below
36 years ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
Website all back to normal. I tried installing Frontpage Server Extensions last week, and had difficulty. To the uninitiated, FSE are some files that Microsoft Frontpage uses to interact with your web server. Once installed, you can edit your website live using Frontpage, just like editing a Word document. However, the server extensions can screw with a bunch of files. Specifically, your .htaccess files which control who gets to see what when they type in a web address.
So, I had to make a questionaire for my wife. She’s taking a course at Uni where her and a group of others need to poll a large group of students regarding their views of the student colleges at York University. She figured the best way would be to do something online, so I got to work. My boss set me up with Frontpage and away I went. Last week, as I said, I installed the FSE, but I couldn’t get them to install in the subdomain where I wanted to store Maija’s research stuff. After a supposedly fruitless call to my server’s tech support, I left it for a week. I thought it was fruitless because I was never contacted about the problem, when I was told that I was. However, they did resolve the problem, as I learned tonight.
So, to get things working I uninstalled the server extension’s that I had done so far, and reinstalled them. This was when my site went all bust. It took a bit to figure out that the .htaccess files were the culprits. Once I figured that out, I returned them to their old state. That fixed my site, but stopped Frontpage from working. So, a little more playing and I finally had them both working.
Now my wife has a finished survey that dumps into a spreadsheet, I have a working-like-normal website and more knowledge and experience than before. Everybody wins!
Fixing it
06 years ago
Update: Fixed it. I think what happened was that I uninstalled Frontpage Server Extension, which I was told not to do. That’s the part that hurt the website. So I reinstalled them, and then changed one of my access files. Now it all works again, sept I can’t use the Server Extensions. Oh well… I don’t really need them anymore anyway.
(old)
I just installed Frontpage Server Extension and destroyed most of my site. If anyone knows anything about FSE or WordPress or both an e-mail or phone call would be appreciated.
Hard trancer
16 years ago
I started planning a new mix today. It’ll be a darker edgier hard trance mix. I’m thrilled about it. I’m listening to John 00 Fleming, Yoji Biomenahika, a little Paul van Dyk.
Currently in the mix:
Astrix – Monster (remix)
Yoji Biomehanika – Hardstyle Disco
Marco V – Red Blue Purple
Rank 1 – Beats at Rank 1 dot com
I’m thinking it will take me a month or so to put this in the can. I don’t own all the tracks yet.
Return of the King
26 years ago
Proudly and boldy I return to the fray of Halo 2 on Xbox Live. My sexcellent wife picked up a demo for the PC version of Peter Jackson’s King Kong (review to come), and a 2 month subscription to Xbox Live. Let’s see if I can regain all my former glory in a mere two months… with an internet connection one third the man it used to be.
To follow along, click here.
Life, and death
66 years ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Personal
Currently I am more happy and more alive than I have ever been my entire life. I feel now like life has been an unopened flower: a rather attractive unopened flower, with but a few thorns, it’s potential still unknown.
And now it seems the flower has blossomed into a beautiful rose. It’s petals are still slowly pushing further outward, and it’s getting more beautiful and more fragrant as the hours go by. Or days and weeks in my case. Tomorrow will mark 2 months of being married to the most beautiful woman in the world.
Life, is amazing.
This weekend Maija and I visited her grandparents in Kingston. Maija’s grandparents speak Finnish, and a little English. That is to say, they used to speak fluent English but as the years have advanced on them, they are slowly but steadily forgetting their English. Which is fine… except that it does make communication a little difficult at times.
I felt just like Ibn in The Thirteenth Warrior, thrown in with a bunch of Vikings, desperately trying to understand their language.
Maija’s grandfather is 86. He hasn’t got many years left as his health is not the best. It was really… thought provoking… to see pictures of them at their wedding, and not recognise either of them. It made me think a lot about life, the progression of life, and then the wee hours before death. I really wonder if I shall grow old and grey – or better yet, bald – or if the Good Lord will return before that happens. I have always thought he wouldn’t come back in my life time, but the thought of myself dieing and leaving Maija behind, or visa versa, really affected my thoughts on Christ’s return. I still think he’ll come later, but I’m really beginning to hope he comes sooner.
In any case, I stumbled across something on my cousin’s blog today. I recomend you read it (her blog), she’s very cool. Her dad left a comment recently with a quote from his father (my grandfather). I never met him, as he died when my own father was eleven. Being the only grandparent currently dead, he’s always been a source of intrigue to me. My grandmother dispelled some of his mystery when she wrote a book of memoirs based on their letters to each other during World War 2. Anyway, here’s what my uncle had to say:
“He was in hospital after his massive heart attack that was to kill him just a few days later. He was in a lot of pain and feeling quite down, what he said [to me, which I have never forgotten] was this. “Son, it is like I am in dense fog, I can’t see anything at all especially what’s ahead of me, but all I know is this, my hand is tightly held by Jesus and he stands way above this fog, he knows whats ahead of me and is guiding me there and that is good enough for me.” Two days later he was with Jesus for eternity.”
It just about brings tears to my eyes. I’m really, really looking forward to meeting him – but I think I can wait another 65 years or so.
Spun to zero
26 years ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Personal
Sorry, work and personal life has been rather busy of late, so I haven’t had much time to devote here. But rest assured, pretty much everything I currently have imagined for this site is in place, so regular posts should be coming very shortly. In addition, my lovely wife Maija may begin to post here also.
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