Blog - Page 75

Today Penelope and I walked a few blocks to the Civic Center to hit the YMCA and meet with our trainers to get set up on the FitLinxx system. Fitlinxx keeps track of your workout routine and lets you track your progress online. All the weight machines and most of the cardio machines are linked up to the network. It is pretty high tech and is included with the membership fee. I am going to be working out at least 3 days a week and doing 30 minutes of cardio and my sets of resistance training. Fun stuff!

Looks like some woman named Amanda doesn't quite understand the whole humor thing and was totally offended by Sean's minpin page where he talks about how minpins eat cars and people. Then to top it all off she posted this on an unrelated post on his blog: "what a total moron!!! I'm glad you had a good laugh you also gave all my friends one with your stupidity!!! Have fun pissing people off!!!!" classic!

So I read this article over on Robert Daeley's blog about making your desktop more sensible, toned down and work oriented. I am taking some of his advice about hiding notifications / the dock and toning down the color scheme on my desktop as well as trying out quicksilver [quicksilver totally rocks!]. I don't really like the idea of one huge text file for a number of reasons and as I am currently converting my CMS system slacker to be object oriented I am going to expand the features I already have to be my PIM, task manager, goal watcher, notes, etc all trackable with RSS feeds and editable with XML-RPC. It will include a backup dumping utility that will create encrypted text files that I can put in various places. I have written most all of the code for this in the last few years and I am looking forward to objectifying it! I am even considering upgrading to PHP5 to make use of the expanded object functionality.

I have been using a 1Ghz titanium powerbook (2nd or 3rd gen) for the past couple of years for my "desktop" at home and about 6 months ago the screen went on the fritz. The system is still covered by an Apple Care warranty so I am sending it in for repair. While I am without my laptop I have a loaner system... Dual G4 866Mhz. It is pretty cool except for the fact that I can't use my Verizon EVDO card with it, although I did by a PCI to PCMCIA adapter that doesn't work. Right now I am borrowing one of the many open wireless signals in my building. At first I was just browsing normally and it was quite slow, thinking it was my ssh tunnel and proxy server I checked my settings and low and behold I wasn't using my proxy/ tunnel... oops! I turned it on and it is actually much faster now. Go figure.

I am currently buying old books on ebay that (mostly) are in the public domain. These books are about Los Angeles. Thisshould be interesting. They come with maps... the mashup possibilities get ever cooler!

Penelope and I joined the best gym in Downtown LA today, the YMCA. The place is really amazing, with a pool, a full wood floored basketball court, tons of cardio machines, tons of weight machines, free classes, racquetball courts, a padded track, sauna and steam rooms, and a great view. It is only 3 blocks away from out loft and compared to the other gyms in downtown it is very affordable and has better hours. We worked out for a short 30 minutes today, starting on the elliptical machines, then moving on to the stair machines with the actual moving staircase and then spent 15 minutes running around the padded track and then sprinting the last lap. Next time (tomorrow) we will do strength training after our 30 minutes of cardio.

After the workout we headed over to the Downtown Farmers market on 5th street between Flower and Olive (I think). The market was packed with people from both the neighborhood and the local businesses. The stands sold everything from clothing to the usual staples of organic veggies and fresh baked goods. We ran in to Gary Leonard, the Downtown LA News photographer, who I had previously met at the Is California Governable talk. The market is really quite expansive and puts the Silverlake Farmers Market to shame.

On our way back we stopped for lunch at Saisai, the sushi bar located in the Biltmore Hotel and we each tried one of the lunch specials which had hearty portions, delicious fresh fish and beautifully presentations. I look forward to going back for dinner some time in the future. Penelope and I are considering having our wedding and reception there

LA Times (via KTLA) has an interesting History of the Skid Row in Downtown LA that goes all the way back to the late 1800s.

UPDATE

Looks like Dan Garzila has a different take on Central City East is really all about. I'm not surprised that LAT got their facts wrong.

I just logged on to the google talk jabber server:

• talk.google.com
• login: [email protected]
• password: yourpassword

I am using Apple iChat. Say hello if you log on too: eekyou [at] gmail [d0t] com. More details can be found here. [thanks for the tip sean

UPDATE

Google just sent a message to me on my iChat Jabber session saying that they have updated their page. There is no Mac client but they give directions on connecting from a mac/linux.

UPDATE 2

My friend set up jabber and his iChat crashed and then killed all his preferences. It seems to keep crashing on him. It is sort of working. Eventually we got both text and Audio chat working in iChat even though the chart on google says voice chat doesn't work.

UPDATE 3

Well Sean seems to have gotten it working too, but when I tried to reply to his message he disappeared and now I am seeing "Jabber Error" popups when I try and talk to him... can you say buggy!

I will no longer be writing for the LAist group blog. It has been fun and I have enjoyed writing the articles I have written for the site. I want to thank Jason Toney for giving me the chance to write for the site and wish him and the rest of the folks on LAist the best of luck in their adventures. Here is a link to the articles I wrote.

LABlogs has been changing their site up in the last few weeks and it looks like they are going to add the ability for people from the community to post.