So, while making my usual rounds around the internet, today, I found this. It is Wuala, and it's a very neat concept. Wuala is a peer-to-peer file sharing utility, but with permissions and restrictions on shared files. In fact, you can share some files with only yourself if you want to. What's the point? You can use it for storage. The presentation is much like a hard drive and a social networking site combined. It is a drag-and-drop interface with users, groups, files, and pretty icons. It is very user friendly and easy to figure out. When you upload a file to your Wuala, pieces of your file are sent to a bunch of different computers on the Wuala network. So that when you want to retreive your file, you can simply access it from your Wuala drive, or download it from the Wuala site with a /[username] appended to the URL. You can control who can access your files and you can keep them private if you want. The amount of storage you get on their network is porprotional to the amount of drive space on your computer you donate to the network. It is a 10:1 ratio for storage. Everyone gets a free 1 gigabyte without having to contribute anything. If you want 5 gigabytes of storage, you will need to allocate 40 additional gigabytes of your hard drive to their network. One possible conscern is that not only will your files be located on other people's computers, but other people's content will be located on YOUR computer. Encryption makes it impossible to view the contents of these shared file pieces (in theory). Still, I don't plan on storing any critical documents there, but it is a NEAT idea in my opinion. I added a "Files" link on my website that links to my public Wuala share. I don't have much there yet, but I'm playing with it!

I got my instrument rating today! I've worked long; I've worked hard, and I finally have it. I did my checkflight today and I've got my temporary form until I get my new certificate in the mail! I'm pretty tired now, I'll try to write more on this later. Thanks to all my friends who have encouraged me! It has been worth it!

Hey everyone! I just thought I'd share my before and after diet pictures! I'm 35 lbs lighter at right. I learned some incredibly interesting things about diet and nutrition in the process! Like that my metabolism is 2163 calories a day (at last calculation), and I burn 490 calories for every 30 minutes of rigorous exercise.

Yes, that IS an F-16 cockpit!

The original plan was to build it out of spare parts from my garage plus a graphics card from Best Buy. But my motherboard wouldn't support my card, so I needed a new one. My hard drive was too small, so I needed to upgrade. Then I found out my power supply had the wrong connector for my hard drive (and it was an inadiquate rating for my graphics card), and I ended up buiding a completely new system! ( Read more... )

Do you hear that chittering? That's my friend, Dolphinboy. Check out his LiveJournal page. I spent a few days on this. I would guess 10 or 12 hours total. This is currently the best character reference for myself. Here I am with my usual attire, standing next to my good friend. It's amazing how well you can get to know a guy who you've never met. I have an affinity for the dolphins, and he is about as dolphin as they come!

Well, the other day I had a hard drive crash. *sigh* I've have four hard drives crash over the years, three of which I know for a fact were Seagate drives. Luckily I have a spare laptop hard drive in my garage. And I'll say this for Gateway: They make it EASY to swap out a laptop hard drive. Two little screws on the underside of my laptop, and the drive just slides right out. Imagine my lack of surprise when I discovered that my Gateway's hard drive is Seagate. I'm stuck on a 30 gig drive until I can get a real replacement. ( Read more... )