The weather interjected a little entertainment into my workday last saturday. The wedding I was shooting had an outdoor ceremony and a huge storm was moving by just to the north. It was decided to try things outside and watch everybody scurry like ants if the rain started. With storm clouds a mile away the winds picked up to veil popping speeds just as the ceremony started. Just a few steps out of the door the bride lost her veil, the wind carrying it two stories up until it was caught on a window ledge. Luckily I was able to snag the veil as it blew towards the lake. The bride didn’t let any of it faze her, and marched off to get married: wind, lightning and all.

Since my MacBook decided to die on me for the second time in 6 months, progress on nearly every project I have going has come to a halt. I’m in the process of launching a web design company (or was . . .), which leads to a HUGE list of things to get in order. Business plan, prototyping server, portfolio, registering the business as an actual company (apparently important), tax id# (more important), . . . the list goes on.

I bought a mac mini to serve as a second (backup?) workstation. My macbook won’t be back in action for another two weeks (new hard drives are expensive) and I won’t get my data from the busted drive for at least a month (gonna have to save 20,000 pennies or so for that). So the mac mini is the main production machine for now. It’s all set up, the main apps I need are all in place (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, TextWrangler, Fetch).

With that done, I’m back to where I started, time to knock out the next to-do: development server. I installed Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04 on an old Dell that was gifted to me by good friend Carlos (though I haven’t heard from him in weeks, did he go back to Mexico?). Running at 2.4 ghz P4 with a mere 256mb of RAM (also gifted from Carlos I think), the server is running great. There is a decent learning curve when it comes to setting up a LAMP server (Linux Apache Mail Php), but nothing ubuntuforums.org couldn’t help me with.

I’m using webmin to administrate the machine. E-box is gaining popularity, and is the only solution listed in the ubuntu docs (they even took webmin out of the repository), but I’ve used webmin before so I used that. I’ll try e-box on a virtual machine so I can compare and see which one I like better.

More to come . . .

With the macbook out of commission I needed a new mac to work on.  While I love my linux machines, none of them can run photoshop, flash or dreamweaver.  I suppose I could buy windows versions of each and try running them through WINE, but I’d rather just work on a mac.  The only other mac I have is a legacy G4, 800mhz I think.  So I put in an order for a mac mini.  The cheapest mac mini has more than enough power to run Adobe CS3, and the nicer desktops start at $2700. 

I’m keeping track of all the steps I’m taking to set the machine up.  I haven’t paid attention to how much time I spend setting up a machine so it will be interesting to see how much time I really spend (waste?).

Round 1

First order of business is to get all of the main applications I use installed.

Adobe CS3 Web (photoshop, dreamweaver, flash, illustrator, fireworks, acrobat)

Lightroom

TextWrangler

Burn

Firefox

VLC

ffmpeg

Chicken of the VNC

Systematic Disorder is back from an early summer sabbatical.  What started as a work related hiatus turned into a real vacation when my MacBook decided to die for the second time in 6 months.  Mechanical failure somewhere inside the piece of shit hard drives apple uses and all my data gone.  When this happened 6 months ago I swore I was going to have an iron clad backup system . . .

We’ll see how much drivesavers wants to fix it all.

1 Kiss You Off Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah

2 Laura Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah

3 More Human Than Human White Zombie Astro Creep 2000

4 Electric Head White Zombie Astro Creep 2000

5 The Sanity Assassin Bauhaus Crackle

Yesterday’s post looked at the link between food and cancer through a fairly small window. I don’t really have an opposite view to expound upon, but rather another side of the issue (through another small window). It has long been thought that higher consumption of red meat increases the risk of colo-rectal cancer. Turns out that food cooked the way I like it increases the risk of cancer simply because of the way I like to cook it.

I always cook at high heat. Especially meat. Stir frying is a forgiving art that allows the cook to get away with almost any pick of ingredients. Cut it all up small, put the big stuff in first (go by water content), and cook it as hot as you can. It always comes out good. Same thing for the grill, cook steaks and chicken on high heat and let the center come up to temperature off the grill. The crispy texture is great, and the quickly sealed outer layer keeps in moisture (in beef). The great taste comes from the fond that forms at high heat.

Now studies are concluding that this charred meat, the fond of which we are all so enamored (thought I was gonna say fond?), contains several carcinogenic chemicals. The tumor promoting kind, as the poor lab rats found out. Maybe they were eating grilled red meat up until the tumors. Probably direct injection of the chemicals in question instead, controlled experiments never seem to be in the rats favor.

Having evolved to eat meat, I don’t plan to lay off the stuff or even slow down. I’ve kept meat to less than a fifth of my diet for a couple of years, mostly due to an addiction to various green vegetables if they are prepared right. Wok fried string beans with some XO sauce is probably the best among them. Next time the grill comes out for dinner, throw something new on there. Potatos, eggplant, squash (3 kinds atleast), asparagus, corn and bell peppers all grill up great. So do over a hundred other vegetables. Just put the corn (soaked) and potatoes on early.

1 Laura Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah

2 Take Your Mama Scissor Sisters Scissor Sisters

3 Return To Oz Scissor Sisters Scissor Scisters

4 Yoo Hoo Imperial Teen Jawbreaker Soundtrack

5 Jesus Christ Superstar Laibach Jesus Christ Superstar

Yahtzee never gets old. Prepare to laugh your ass off.

Since launching systematic disorder I have been attention whoring through digg.com to draw some traffic to the site. I have never had a very successful digg submission (15 or so diggs on Amazon Recommends Killing Yourself is the best), seeing how sepultura and the like get thousands of diggs on some of theirs.

None of my submissions from this site have gotten any diggs, but neither do most of my other submissions. I added the digg button script to the pages, so it’s easier to digg a post here. I doubt anything will get dugg, but who knows? 3 diggs would be a new record.

Some of us don’t like to have out picture taken. Some of us happen to be in a bad mood (or in pain) when a picture of us is taken. Just remember, either way, you look like a dick if your the only one not smiling.

Being a photographer you would think I’d know better. That’s what you get for thinking.