nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Broken Laptop (Unable To Login)

December 27, 2005

Problem with my laptop fixed.

First I had to edit the userinit line per KB Q249321 using the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, then I logged in, got a blank screen, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, fired up Task Manager, used that to launch regedt32, followed 223188 to change the boot volume back to C:, rebooted, and all was good.

The problem was caused by C: somehow changing to E: (WTF?). Yeah, I’ve got no idea how, but the problem is solved.

The error which was received is as follows:

Your system has no paging file or the paging file is too small.

This was received on my Windows XP SP2 laptop after logging into the machine with any username, then the machine would slowly return to the login screen. If one tried to log in via safe mode, they would immediately be returned to the login window.

Well, hopefully this will help someone somewhere down the line…

computersmoved from livejournal

Whee! (Canon EOS 20D)

December 23, 2005


Tired: Nikon 5005 · Wired: Canon EOS 20D
(Click for more… And please forgive me…)

Actually, that’s not completely accurate. The Nikon 5005 would simply be outmoded, although I will definitely be hanging on to it. I’m supposed to be getting some film processing equipment soon, so I may use it to play with B&W, even though the lens is kinda crap.

But, yeah. It finally got here… Yay! Now to get a better understanding of it. Last night when I took the photos which were mentioned in the post titled New Camera I made a number of mistakes, least of which was specifying the image’s size as 640×480 instead of the actual 640×427. Whoops… I also left the ISO waaaaaay too high (1600) which with the low light in the kitchen all conspires for a nicely (and unnecessarily) noisy image. I may try to re-shoot it again tonight. If anything, I could use the practice. I must say, the 5Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro lens seems really nice thus far. My only complaint about it is my not realizing how narrow (comparitively) a 50mm macro lens is, and it made taking this photo of the Bell’s Wheat Two, Sparkling Ale, and Wheat Six a bit tight. It seems like it’ll be *great* for real macro work, though. And I can always use the 17-85 for these kinds of photos.

I only briefly played with the Canon EF-S 17-85MM f4-5.6 IS USM zoom lens last night, but it too seems pretty great.

Oh, one other thing… I have to strongly recommend picking up a remote shutter release. I’ve wanted one for a few years, but they were prohibitively expensive for lots of Nikon gear. It seems that on the EOS series of cameras Canon just uses a simple three pin interface. One is ground, the other is a half-press of the shutter, and the other is a full press. If one could get the connector themselves it would be trivial to make a shutter release, but I instead grabbed an ADIDT M1 off of eBay. It was only for US$14.25 shipped (as opposed to ~US$50 for the Canon RS-80N3). The cable doesn’t lock into the connector the way the Canon one does, and it does feel a bit cheap, but it also works.

Oh, one last thing? B&H seems to be a pretty good place to order camera stuff from. The order went smoothly, I had no problem changing the order when I needed to, and everything shipped promptly. My only complaint was that everything shipped in a giant box which barely fit in my car. It was packed quite well, though.

There was also an interesting bit of fraud check which B&H pulled when I called to change my order. I was transfered to someone who’s job it was to “confirm my order” who went over everything with me, then asked me some questions about data available in various public resources to see if I was who I said I was, if the phone number on my order matched the one on ‘record’, etc. It was interesting, and clearly understandable seeing that cameras are one of the items most commonly ordered with stolen credit cards.

Anyway, yeah. Can you tell I’m bored here today? I’m the only person at work from my group, and the only person within 100′ of my current location. That should make taking a decent lunch all right, though. I think I’ll run over to Camera Mart Inc. and look into picking up a grey card so that I can get the white balance dead on when I’m in someplace weird. I want one of Digital Gray Cards because they are plastic and the whole slab of plastic is appropriately colored, but I don’t have time to wait for it right now.

Yep, I’ll stop babbling about cameras now.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournal

Walk with me down the trails again…

December 20, 2005


Click for more…

I don’t know if any of you can help me, but I’ve got an old bow of my Grandpa’s here and I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is. I know it is a Fred Bear-brand bow and I think that it was made in the early 1940s. Beyond that, I’m kinda at a loss.

I posted to a Michigan Bowhunter forum hoping that someone there can help me, so I guess we’ll see. If you click the link above or this one (photo gallery retired) you can see the pictures I grabbed of it.

If you can help, I’d really appreciate it. He (my Grandpa) asked me to see if I can find out about how much it is worth, and I’m also curious how rare it is, etc. The wood on it appears to be in great shape, with the only damage on it being to the finish itself. And all that damage looks quite old.

familyfound thingsmoved from livejournal

Lazychili for Work! (chili sin carne)

December 13, 2005

Well, there’s the ingredients for the pot of lazychili (yes, modifications are quite allowed) that I made for the potluck thing at work tomorrow. I hope people like it… It’s pretty damn spicy.

One thing I learned is that the cactus should be cut up before putting it in the chili. Towards the end of the cooking I realized that it would be too stringy, so I stirred as many pieces of cactus (as possible) to the top, pulled them out with a fork, then chopped them and put them back in. Oh, and cactus has a texture somewhere between a nicely cooked green bean and perfectly cooked bamboo shoots. And it comes soaking in a thick vinegar sauce with herbs and onions and a pepper. I pulled out the pepper and onion before dumping it in the pot, though, as I didn’t want those large pieces swimming around in there.

The only ingredients used above and beyond what you see above are a bit of cocoa powder (maybe 1 tbsp), some salt, and a large pinch of black pepper. Oh, and love. (No, not that kind of love. Sicko.)

I should probably note that the bottle of beer is my Rochefort 10 Clone (photo gallery retired) which, unfortunately, never carbonated. It’s very malty and alcoholic, though, and it goes really well in food. So I guess it’ll be relegated to the duty of a nice, malty, cooking beer. Oh well…

Anyway, that’s the lazychili. And here is a photo of the lazychili in the pot, just as it was starting to boil.

UPDATE: I should probably mention that the shotglasses each contain one shot of this tequila. From the chili kit I only used the powder, along with another 2 tbsp or so of some leftover McCormick chili powder I had. Oh, and the chipoltes were chopped up pretty finely. And the obscured Bush’s can contains white kidney beans.

foodmoved from livejournalwork

Inwood Hiking Trails in Snow

December 11, 2005


The path leading from points ‘E’ to ‘F’ in the Inwood Hiking Trails
(Click for more…)

As I tend to do lately, I headed out to the Inwood Hiking Trails yesterday to go wandering around. I haven’t really been hiking in the snow before, but I figured that a not-too-cold day after a nice snowfall would be a good time to wander around one of my favorite local hiking places.

Well, despite almost falling through some ice and ending up with frozen solid pant legs afterwards, it really was a nice walk. It turned out that everyone else who had been there since last week’s big snowfall had turned back after only going a few hundred feet into the park. That meant that all of the trails were covered with nothing more than animal tracks and nice, fresh, powdery snow. At one point I even came across both foot and wing prints from where a bird had landed and what appears to be signs of a small animal being dropped in the snow then running away. Perhaps from a bird or something?

The only part that had me somewhat worried was this pathway which, in the snow, seems innocent enough. However, if one looks at it in the summer time it’s pretty obvious that there is a bunch of marsh and other wet badness which one would not want to accidently fall in. (Although comparing the two pictures, I wonder if they are the same walkway, or similar ones.)

Anyway, it was a really nice time wandering through the woods. The only problem is that my calves, knees, and hips are horribly sore. I’ve realized that walking through 4″ – 6″ snow for a few hours, including up and down a number of relatively steep hills requires one to walk differently. And that walking differently puts a rather unique load on one’s body.

Oh and I also scanned in all four ‘pages’ of the flyer which is distributed near the entrance to the Inwood Hiking Trails: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

Based on the map of Inwood Hiking Trails I walked about 3.4 miles in the snow. Figuring in little bits of back tracking, wandering a short ways down other trails and other meandering, I’d figure I probably did a total of 3.5 miles, by the end of which I was far more tired than if I had done seven miles on dry ground. Wow.

moved from livejournaloutdoorsweather

Let’s do the time warp again…

December 9, 2005

Okay, so from last night around the time I got home until today just after I got home, I captured 2762 individual frames in an attempt to make a stop motion video of last night’s snow storm. One frame was captured every ~30 seconds, then those were all squished into a video running at 30 frames per second, making each second of cover 15 minutes.

The video is available here if you would like to see it:

08 – 09 December 2005 Snow Storm Timelapse (~12MB, H.264, 640 x 480 @ 30fps)

I apologize about the screen in the window, but it is non-trivial to remove it. Also, it appears the window is much dirtier than I thought, but I was having a hard time telling that last night, so I just ended up shooting through the dirty window. Ah well, at least it’s kinda nifty.

I’m sure there will be plenty of other snow storms this year. Next time I really want to have a camera that can be controlled by Apple’s Image Capture and have each photo taken automatically downloaded to the local machine. Now that could make for some nifty time lapse video.

making thingsmoved from livejournalweather

Tonight’s photos…

December 9, 2005


Greasy, greasy three cheese bread from Hungry Howie’s.

Anyone want to see photos of a BTX machine? This Dell Dimension E310 (photo gallery retired) is the first BTX machine I have ever worked with, and I have to say that I rather like the layout. It allows the machine to be cooled very quietly.

Second, here are two photos of portions of tonight’s dinner:
· A bottle of Hennepin partially poured into the glass from which I drank it.
· Hungry Howie’s Three Cheese Bread with cajun seasoning on it. (Yes, it was really greasy.) The Hennepin is really nice, but the three cheese bread is (and should be) simply a food of desperation. Yes, that’s what is pictured above.

Also, when I stopped by Red Wagon Wine Shoppe yesterday at lunch I picked up a bottle of both Dogfish Head’s Pangaea and World Wide Stout, and Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier (Marzen). A photo of those three beers can be seen here: Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier (Marzen), Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout, and Dogfish Head’s Pangaea

Finally, I also got some photos of last night’s dinner. The first part was Trader Joe’s Roasted Vegetable Enchiladas: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4. These are kinda iffy, and I’m not sure if I’d buy them again.

The second part was Trader Jose’s (Joe’s) Wild Mushroom Quesadilla. They are $2.99 each, seem to store well in the fridge, and taste quite nice. I have to highly recommend these.

beerfoodmoved from livejournal