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I am an enginerd: I excel at awkward.
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Andrew Ferguson dot NET

I am an enginerd: I excel at awkward.
  • Photography
    • Photos on Flickr
  • WordPress Plugins
    • Countdown Timer
    • Dunstan-style Error Page
    • Blockquote Cite
  • Colophon
    • About AFdN
    • History
    • Some Rights Reserved
    • Contact
    • Dereference Request
  • Archives

Search Results for: explor

Google Web Accelerator

  • May 4, 2005December 11, 2010
  • Seen, Heard, Said, Technology's Infestation of my Life

Saw this on my Slashdot RSS feed, downloaded it and I’ve already saved 6.5 seconds….and I’m on my colleges connection. Interesting.

From slashdot.org:

Lukey Boy writes “Google has released a free web accelerator product for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. According to their information page the software uses Google servers as a proxy for web content, delivering the pages to your system more rapidly and compressing them beforehand.”

I think the most unique aspect of this is that it’s geared towards DSL users and not dial-up users. I also wonder if this will help me view pages that have been Farked or Slashdotted.

Here’s the direct link to Google’s Web Accelerator.

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End of the Year Summary

  • December 31, 2004September 10, 2005
  • AFdN Updates

This will probably be the last post of 2004, so I figured that I would just give out a bunch of stats on where AFdN is and where it’s going. First off, there where at least 5804 unique vistors for 2004. With 12918 visits, that comes out to 2.22 visits per unique visitor. All in all, 97,889 pages were server up (7.57 pages/visit) with 576,346 hits (44.61 hits/visit). That amounts to 22.76 gigabytes of bandwidth (1,847.45 KB/visit). There was also an additional 6.64 GB of bandwidth consumed by traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes. The best month in terms of bandwidth was January with 4.37 GB (due probably to some videos I put up). The worst month was October with a mere 694.95 MB (AFdN was offline for about a week while I as messing with the new static IP address). The top robot was MSNBot. The top worm was part of the Nima family of worms (which didn’t cause any ill effects because I use Apache, a non-Microsoft product). The average visit was 468 seconds. The most requested file type was jpg files with 19.8% of the hit requests and 13.6% of the bandwidth.Microsoft Windows XP was the most used operating system with 57.2% and 62.2% of vistors used Internet Explorer 6.0. Google sent 54.7% of the traffic from search engines. http://seablogs.hellbent.org sent 8% of visitors from external pages. "prom pictures" accounted for 5.8% of all keyphrase searches.

So, thanks for making this year such a great year. I’m sure I’ve added at least a gig of content since the begining of the year (mostly pictures, 2720 just in the gallery). I wish everyone a prosperous New Year. Look for my first ever New Years letter coming to AFdN within the next week or so!

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2005 Predictions

  • December 27, 2004January 25, 2007
  • Technology's Infestation of my Life

Sorry, for the picture. I did a Google Image search for new year and that’s one of the pictures that came up. I thought it was sort of funny, in an odd sort of way….welcome to my world, I guess. Anyways, the following are my top 10 technology related predictions for 2005:

  1. Apple will come out with their own version of the Tablet PC. It will be called iWrite or iNote or iScribble or iSomethingLikeThat.
  2. Microsoft will begin to launch a whole slew of consumer based products for the Xbox, starting with Microsoft Word. The goal will be to build a computer and OS that is completely virus free by securing software at the processor level.
  3. The RIAA will announce that they are going to begin to phase out CD’s. They will replace them with a combination DVD/CD that offer consumer much better quality at half the price.
  4. The MPAA will announce that they are officially adopting the Blu-Ray format.
  5. Firefox will overtake Internet Explorer as the most used browser.
  6. In response to Firefox becoming the leading browser, Microsoft will drop more features of Windows Longhorn just so they can RTM on time. This will frustrate millions of tech users, including me.
  7. AOL will finally go bankrupt and disappear forever as dial-up finally dies and dissappears forever as well. People will look back and wonder why they yearned for the “You’ve Got Mail” voice. Some tech nut will just happen to analye the YGM audio and find that it contains a sumliminal message that urges users to keep using AOL.
  8. Cingular/ATT will buy out Sprint/Nextel. Facing fierce compeition, Verizon will merge with Cingular/ATT/Sprint/Nextel. New company will be called Springtelon. Unfortunatly, slogan will still be, “Can you hear me now? Good.”
  9. Realizing their giant flop in the console wars with the GameCube, Nintendo will announce that they will only be producing handheld gaming units. Sony can be heard gulping, while Bill grins an evil smile.
  10. WiFi Cellphone VoIP technology will be created.
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Firefox

  • October 3, 2004September 10, 2005
  • AFdN Updates, Technology's Infestation of my Life
Firefox

I usually would not write about web site technical information in the blog section. But I also need to gripe about it as well. AFdN is now designed for and recomends Firefox. Firefox is the main “competition” to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. However, Firefox, unlike Internet Explorer, actually follows the rules of the W3. The W3, or World Wide Web Consortium, is responsible for standardizing web site protocols, such as HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, and the likes. There are numerous problems with IE, including the fact that it doesn’t support PNG 24-bit Alpha Transparency Images. IE is also much more lenient with egregious coding. This can be a good thing, however, it also lulls developers like me into a false sense of completeness. Anyways, this all goes to say that I now use Firefox and so should you.

Get Firefox! title=

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Supersize Me

  • September 23, 2004August 22, 2005
  • The Events that are: My Life

I just watched one of the most disturbing movies ever. For those of you who haven’t heard about Supersize Me, it’s a documentry about this guy who eats at McDonald’s for 30 days straight: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He has 3 simple rules:

  1. No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)
  2. No supersizing unless offered
  3. No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once

During the eating episodes, Morgan, the star of the film, goes around the country talking with people about their eating habits. “The film [also] explores the horror of school lunch programs, declining health and physical education classes, food addictions and the extreme measures people take to lose weight and regain their health.” (supersizeme.com) If you haven’t seen the film already, you need to see it now. It really does provide a very real and critical look at what our nation is becoming.

  • Each day, 1 in 4 Americans visits a fast food restaurant
  • In 1972, we spent 3 billion a year on fast food – today we spend more than 110 billion
  • McDonald’s feeds more than 46 million people a day – more than the entire population of Spain
  • French fries are the most eaten vegetable in America
  • You would have to walk for seven hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fry and Big Mac
  • In the U.S., we eat more than 1,000,000 animals an hour
  • 60 % of all Americans are either overweight or obese
  • One in every three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime
  • Left unabated, obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in America
  • Obesity has been linked to: Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Respiratory Problems, Endometrial, Breast, Prostate and Colon Cancers, Dyslipidemia, steatohepatitis, insulin resistance, breathlessness, Asthma, Hyperuricaemia, reproductive hormone abnormalities, polycystic ovarian syndrome, impaired fertility and lower back pain
  • The average child sees 10,000 TV advertisements per year
  • Only seven items on McDonald’s entire menu contain no sugar
  • Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald – he was fired for being too fat
  • McDonald’s distributes more toys per year than Toys-R-Us
  • Diabetes will cut 17-27 years off your life
  • McDonald’s: “Any processing our foods undergo make them more dangerous than unprocessed foods”
  • The World Health Organization has declared obesity a global epidemic
  • Eating fast food may be dangerous to your health
  • McDonald’s calls people who eat a lot of their food “Heavy Users”
  • McDonald’s operates more than 30,000 restaurants in more then 100 countries on 6 continents
  • Before most children can speak they can recognize McDonald’s
  • Surgeon General David Satcher: “Fast food is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic”
  • Most nutritionists recommend not eating fast food more than once a month
  • 40% of American meals are eaten outside the home
  • McDonald’s represents 43% of total U.S. fast food market
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Windows XP SP2 and a Pop Up Test

  • September 14, 2004September 10, 2005
  • Technology's Infestation of my Life
Windows XP SP2 and a Pop Up Test

I found a really cool site to test your programs ability to block popup ads. I tried it running nothing but Windows XP Professional with SP2 installed and Internet Explorer 6. For those of you who don’t know, SP2 includes a new IE protocols to protect your system. One of these new protocols is to automatically block popups. SP2 passed with flying colors. It blocked all the conventional popups and all the advanced popups AND it also allowed all the good popups (windows that open when you click on something on purpose). Anyways, I was very impressed. Way to go Microsoft.

Link of the Day: http://www.popupcheck.com

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Mines moon mission may be NASA’s next

  • July 20, 2004December 21, 2005
  • Mines, Seen, Heard, Said

From the Rocky Mountain News:

By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
July 19, 2004

A Colorado School of Mines proposal to collect rocks from the far side of the moon was selected Friday as one of two finalists for a $700 million NASA mission.

The proposed Moonrise mission would send twin robotic spacecraft to execute the first lunar landings since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

Both craft would land in the 1,500-mile-wide South Pole-Aitken Basin. Robotic arms would scrape about 5 pounds of rock and soil into return capsules, which then would head back to Earth.

In January, President Bush outlined a plan to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2015. Robotic missions would pave the way for the manned lunar landings.

“Our mission is consistent with the president’s new vision for exploration,” said Colorado School of Mines geologist Michael Duke, who heads the Moonrise team.

“I think it fits,” he said Friday. “I think we will benefit from the fact that the country’s space program will be focused on the moon for the next few years.”

The South Pole-Aitken Basin soil and rock would be “clearly different from anything we’ve sampled before,” Duke said.

In February, seven proposals were submitted for the next mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program of unmanned solar system exploration flights.

The other finalist announced Friday is Juno, a Jupiter orbiter that would study the giant planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field. The Juno team is headed by Scott Bolton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“It was a very tough decision, but we’re excited at the prospect of the discoveries either of them could make,” said NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler.

Each of the New Frontiers finalists will receive up to $1.2 million to complete a detailed “implementation feasibility study” in the next seven months. In May 2005, a winner will be named. The selected mission must be ready for launch by June 30, 2010. Costs will be capped at $700 million.

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The End is Nigh…at least the End of the Beginning is Nigh

  • June 8, 2004June 13, 2012
  • SAAS

Just about four hours to go until we start our Graduation Festivities. I call them festivities because a SAAS graduation is really nothing like your fathers graduation…or anyone else’s graduation for that matter. First off, this year we are graduating some 73 students. I believe one student will not be walking, but that was on his/her own accord, not for disciplinary reasons. You might be thinking, “Cool, this should, like, what, hour? Hour and half, tops??” He he he. Not so fast. Our graduation lasts an astounding 4.5 hours. Yes folks, you won’t get out of my graduation until tomorrow. The event starts at 7pm sharp (or so they say). The first half is really a presentation by various students and faculty, myself included (more on that later). Then we have a 15 minute intermission before the actual graduating begins. For that, each student comes up individually and seats in the “hot seat” for ~100 seconds while Jean Orvis, Head of School, “roasts” them. But it is truly going to be a blast. I already have pictures a few video clips from yesterdays and todays rehearsal. Pr acting for our graduation really gets one to thinking something along the lines of F**k! I’m graduating…F**k, F**k, F**k, F**k, F**k. Oh F**k. Sorry for the explicits, but this really is a worrisome time. We leave and go off, not knowing what’s going to happen next. I really hate that. I do. F**k. So back to what I’m doing. As a cautionary warning, the following information contains spoilers for the actual graduation and should not be read if you are actually attending graduation…which you are…right?? So after quite a bit of mum, I will finally tell you what I’m doing. I’m giving a speech. It’s a great speech if I do say so myself and I put quite a lot of time, thought, and hard work into it…to make it just right. The speech literally seems to say, I am Andrew, Hear me talk! Anyways, here’s my speech if you want to read it. The “//” mean short pause. Underlines indicates that I should punch the word. Italics indicates quotes. Everything else are just notes to myself that would take too long to explain.

Friends, Romans, countrymen,

// lend me your ears; // famous words uttered by Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I came to Seattle Academy not knowing any Shakespeare save // “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Over the past four years, I have indulged myself in English Romanticism, American History and Government, various forms of art, including (film, clay,) (musical theater,) and (vocal classes.) I have gained an immense amount of knowledge in (chemistry, biology,) (calculus, physics,) and, of course, (life lessons.)

For the past several months, I have been pondering what my last act as a senior at Seattle Academy would be. Originally I had considered singing a reprise from Vocal Revue II, Frank Sinatra’s My Kind Of Town. I also considered creating a film or perhaps just crafting a piece of artwork for the lobby display. But I had already done these things. // I wanted this final moment to reflect a core attribute that Seattle Academy has given me. (pause)

Seattle Academy is place for experimentation; a place to try things that one might not otherwise venture to try. I have never given a speech before, nor have I talked in front of this many people. // This is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

This speech is my finial assignment. There are no requirements, there is no grade. It is just me and you. (pause)

When I came to Seattle Academy four years ago, I had no history. Before coming here I had never attended the same school for more than two years. Between 1st and 8th grade I attended seven different schools. This may sound like an astonishing number, and it is, // but the simple fact of the mater is that all those schools did not have the flexibility, care, and initiative that Seattle Academy has.

Because of my varied past, I rarely had the chance to actually make long term friendships. Four years is certainly a long time, and I now have many life long friends.

However, calling you all “friends” does not do justice to the love and understanding you have given me. (pause) Over the past years, you have not been just my friends, peers, or teachers: you have been my family. And there really is no way to say goodbye to family.

The best I can do is share with you a key philosophy that I have learned over the years:

It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. *We are explorers.* We explore our lives, day by day. And we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here. Not to conquer you with weapons or ideas, but to co-exist and learn.

My friends, my colleagues…my family; when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, leaving his homeland and invading Italy, he declared: alea jacta est. The die is cast.

Caesar used the phrase as a metaphor to express the fact that he had crossed the river, and there was no going back. In many ways, our futures are the same. However, it is also important to note that This is not the end. // It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Live long and prosper.

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My universe has become slightly smaller

  • April 13, 2004December 21, 2005
  • SAAS, The Events that are: My Life

I was watching Star Trek: DS9 and there was an excellent quote that defines parts of my life philisophy very accuratly: It is the Unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives, day by day. And we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here. Not to conquer you with weapons or with ideas, but to co-exist and learn. -Benjamin Sisko, “Emissary Part II”

My galaxy has become smaller today as I have a date to Prom. Yes, that’s right, Andrew is going to Prom. More details to come later, perhaps. For now, I’m going to have them keep them encoded to prevent certain groups of individuals from misusing the information in an attempt to prank me and capture it on video.

Passcode Charlie-Alpha:
—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>

qANQR1DDDQQDAwKtUe83kUehJGDJjSy7Ux0iF5RpVCQF1fBh2Z7nIhjjhm17L63T
5DxZbVI+BjOISgYLnwkDTuRRsQuxyi8hWJbjh3xtvIRD1qheP3eflTHj6h0tzUc8
C/npyrRVo+Eb4b2BJLUS7dNzs8qySSDNAwtBUlGp4L6qWFmnuJ1UcboHy9OG/r3f
Tt/NJAv74b2eWJku8aridNKYJQ==
=UWEZ
—–END PGP MESSAGE—–

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Andrew Ferguson

A 30-something electrical engineer. I am for God, against the status quo, an enginerd. Lutheran (LCMS). I excel at awkward and problem solving. Seattle native, former expat in 🇬🇧. Married to @fergiepants. We have a dog. And a child. And another child. This is the story of me: My hopes, my dreams, my aspirations. My trials and tribulations. My life.

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All content by Andrew Ferguson unless otherwise noted, with some restrictions on its use. For anyone who cares, this weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer and/or school. It is solely my opinion, sorry. If you've reached this point, I'll assume you have time to kill, trying reading a random blog post.