Gmail recently introduced “canned responses” to their labs. This new feature allows you to have pre-defined e-mail responses ready to go. Instead of spending time replying to all the inquires that you get on your business e-mail for example, you can select from predefined responses.

Check out some more information at gmail’s blog. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-canned-responses.html

other stuff you may like...

• Gmail spam filter failing me. (6)
• wining and dining in Napa (2)
• Trailer for Spore, the next videogame to play (3)
• The new milk jugs, saving the environment (0)
• The Hotel that floats, around the world in 10 days (0)
• The Firefox Addon reviews - StumbleUpon (0)
• Spore coming out soon! - Interview with Will Wright (0)
• Search a bunch of files in a directory at once (0)
• Non-compete agreements are illegal. (0)
• More WRC goodness. (0)

other stuff you may like...

• Head to the

The cutoff date for voter registrations is approaching fast. If you live in California, the latest time to get your registration form in is Oct 20th! that’s in less than 2 days if you think about mailing time.

If you haven’t done so yet, please register to vote. Don’t let any more time go by, and please get out there and vote.

This is how many days are left…

Get out and vote!

other stuff you may like...

• Head to the

I thought the same thing about Cloverfield, but I was disappointed when I got to watch it. Fortunately I only paid $2.99, I downloaded it onto my ps3. Having the chance to pause it, turn it up or down and doing all this at the comfort of my couch was a bonus, but it didn’t make up for the bad aspects of the movie. That camera shaking was ridiculous so I’m lucky I didn’t pay the full theater price to watch it.

Quarantine in the other hand was worth watching on the big screen. The fright fest begins about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie. Once it starts, the suspense and thrills don’t stop until the credits start rolling. The cast is good, and they play their roles well.

Sometimes I think I’m a bit of a freak about certain details at the movies, like the sounds not matching the scene, or simple bloopers. I’m also weird about could-that-truly-happen scenarios, I analyze them and try to imagine if they would be possible in the given situation. I’m happy to say that I didn’t find either one of those problems with this movie, and maybe that means that they weren’t there. Maybe it means that the movie was so engrossing that I didn’t notice them; either way is a thumbs up for me.

When I bring up issues of Cloverfield vs Quarantine, I’m only doing it so because thematically they’re similar. They’re both about a terrible and frightening situation, apocalyptic to some degree and truly horrifying. They share the style of the movie, both movies are shot from the point of view of the cameraman as the events unfold. They both are supposed to have the feeling of a home movie, or a movie reel that hasn’t yet made it to the cutting floor.

In the case of Cloverfield, the camera guy is an amateur, just “a guy at a party” that shoots the whole thing with a small consumer style camcorder. Quarantine in the other hand, is shot by a more professional cameraman and he’s using what appears to be a professional camera. Unfortunately both movies use some of the cheap tricks I hate about these kind of movies. Dark scenes, out of focus shots and a ridiculous and unrealistic amount of camera shake. Enough with the shaky camera!

The cameras shake a lot, remember Blair Witch Project? I think they nailed it on the whole camera shaking technique. In general though, the overuse of the shaking is really frustrating, this is extremely notable in Cloverfield; some people report getting nausea after or during the movie. Quarantine is not as bad with the shaking, but they instead use a lot of dark scenes and out of focus shots. I understand that this is something that might really happen in a disaster, but I still think that its a cheap way to scare us and keep us guessing what’s around the next corner; without ever really showing you of course. But seriously, we get it, the cameraman gets the crap scared out of him and he misses a shot, or shakes the camera uncontrollably as the beast runs past him. That’s fine, and expected of course, but its really obvious and rather insulting to the audience if you do this each time something actually happens. Both movies’ events unfold in a period of less than a day, and the camera guys are always around some sort of major action –duh… there wouldn’t be a movie without these unlucky characters right? Fine, but wouldn’t you think that in the period of 10+ hours they would get a steady shot at least a few times?

Anyway, that’s enough about that rant, I really did like Quarantine and I recommend that you catch it while is in theaters. I would not have said this about Cloverfield, and definintely don’t bother with Lakeview Terrace; I saw that a couple weeks ago, also not worth $10.00. If you do go see Quarantine, you might get a glimpse at a new movie starring Megan Fox; The Unborn I think its called, and that looks like it could scare the pants out of everyone. here’s the trailer… doesn’t the girl look a lot like Megan Fox? Her name is actually Odette Yustman and coincidentally she was in Cloverfield. Another really hot girl in The Unborn is Meagan Good.

Here’s the trailer to The Unborn in case you’re curious.

other stuff you may like...

• Tick two more off the list (0)
• Starbucks cheese (4)
• Microsoft Parody (2)
• Iron Mans Suit Defies Physics — Mostly (2)
• I finished the first one! The end of faith. (0)
• Great review about Wall-E. (2)
• go watch transformers. now. (16)
• getting more out of each book (2)
• Follow up: Bank of America new ATM (18)
• Consider the dual monitor setup (0)

other stuff you may like...

• Recent changes in Muy Chingon (4)
• links for 2008-10-15 (0)
• links for 2008-10-09 (0)

other stuff you may like...

• Recent changes in Muy Chingon (4)
• Prosper.com first looks (1)
• Prosper Update (1)
• Prosper follow up (0)
• Prosper Days 2008 (0)
• links for 2008-10-16 (0)
• links for 2008-10-09 (0)
• Getting ready for Prosper Days (4)

When I went to add them I noticed that the compost felt a little too wet. Since it was time to clean up the patio anyway, I knew I would have dry material to add this should soak up the excess water.

I gave the whole thing a good mix, then I dumped the contents of the bag into the compost and randomly just tossed them around with some of the existing material. I then cleaned up the patio using the vacuum/mulcher.

The model I have is great, I think it was around $50.00 new. It claims to serve three purposes, leaf blower, vacuum, and mulcher. I think its misleading because you can’t vacuum without mulching, so really its either a leaf blower or a mulcher with a vacuum. Its not like you could use this as a dry shop vac for example. It takes me about one minute to cover the whole patio.

When I’m done, I am left with a bag full of broken down leaves and the occasional twig here and there, perfect “brown” materials for the compost.

Here’s what it looks like after I added the leaves, not very exciting huh?

Then that was it for that time. After reading more about composting, and the different methods and techniques I think I’m going to start turning it every two to three days. The majority of the advice I read (I take it with a grain of salt anyway) say something to the effect that the more you turn it the better.

other stuff you may like...

• My small compost project (0)

other stuff you may like...

• Whoa! these recuts are awesome, check out Shining (0)
• Very interesting globalization video (0)
• Uhm excuse me, there’s a worm in my food. (3)
• time to move out (1)
• Tick two more off the list (0)
• This is just Bizarre (1)
• The Year of Living Biblically completed (5)
• The Jesus shot, Tiger Wood walks on water. (2)
• The Firefox Addon reviews - StumbleUpon (0)
• TED Videos (2)

other stuff you may like...

• The iPhone will be here soon. June 29. (0)
• Search a bunch of files in a directory at once (0)

other stuff you may like...

• Head to the

When I lived in Mexico, my Mother always tried to keep me involved in interesting projects, whether it was through local cultural events, or by enrolling me in “oddball schools” as I call them. It was a good thing as far as I am concerned. Maybe I’ll go into that another time. One of the schools that I attended, I think it was 5th - 6th or 7th grade, was a “green” school. At the time, it was the only one of its kind in the country.

The school was green, in the sense that its focus was to teach about sustainable living, conservation, and other ecology topics. As a growing kid, it was amazing. We got to raise farm animals, tend horses & work animals. We grew plants throughout the year and ate the edible ones to “complete” the project. We also tried to get the community involved in maintaining our environment. One time we spent a few weekends painting a mural all around a sports park, our section was about 30 meters! The mural depicted a scene that moved you across major ecosystems, and our section connected to other schools’ sections and eventually made its way around the whole park. Besides all these activities, there was of course all the regular academics like math, history, science, art, and English.

I’ve searched the web for information about this school, but I can’t find any. We used to call it the “ecological school” and frankly, I remember this name and not the real name. About 4 years ago, when I went to visit Puerto Vallarta, I rented a scooter and drove to where the school was; it was gone. The Principal’s house was literally across the street, but nobody answered the door when I knocked. Immediately to the side of the school, was a large ranch-style home, one of my favorite teachers and his family, including friends of mine used to live there; they were gone as well. The idea of  “la escuela ecologica” doesn’t seem to have caught on. They were definitely ahead of their time, I imagine that they would be successful now; especially with all the media attention to the global climate issues.

As a student there, one of the coolest projects I got to work on was our compost. The Principal, and founder of the school had a lot of land in her property. We took one section where an old pool used to be and made it into a massive compost. As we grow up, I think we remember things to be bigger than they really were… but if I think about it and try to remember it carefully I’d say that it was about 20-25 feet by 10-15 feet wide, and about 3 feet deep. Yeah, that’s huge. But remember we had a small farm area, so we could  use the output of this compost.

We fed this behemoth by bringing our leftovers everyday.  For the first term, it was part of our homework to bring something to add. All and every grades had to participate, once the compost got underway the addition of new material became subject of extra-credit. Maintenance of the compost was similar, but it was limited to the “upper” grades  like 5th and up. I suppose that shoveling dirt and rotting food may not be a suitable task for 1st graders. After a year or so, only a few students remained constantly involved with the compost. The rest of the school simply used it as a tool to educate. The few of us that stayed involved with the compost, would go out there and the three or four of us would flip the stuff, with shovels. It would still take us a good hour or so to flip it all, then we would water it if it needed to.

I think I really enjoyed this project because it brought theoretical concepts down to our level. Before this, we just knew about these kind of things because someone told us, or because we read a book, or had to draw a little picture as homework. This made all that tangible, real. We understood what happens when food breaks down. We learned that after the compost was in processing mode, if you let it sit for a week or more, it would get hot, like pretty damn hot actually. We learned of gases, bacteria, ph levels, and other related science topics.

For years I’ve been wanting to create a compost. A few weeks ago I finally got around to doing it. During a trip to Lowes, to buy some stuff I realized that the fertilizer and potting soil that were in my cart were simply not worth the $20+ that I had just paid. I was going to return them… but…I went home with the bag of fertilizer and potting soil because I needed them right away. Got home and used the fertilizer and potting soil… but as soon as I finished using them I took the little that was left over and started my compost.

It was quite simple and easy to do, and after a few weeks I’m finally seeing some of the stuff I’ve been adding begin to “disappear”. This is the first time I do this since I was 14, and I live in a small place so I wanted to keep it relatively small. Here are a few more details about the new compost!

I first thought about buying a compost tumbler, and all the tools and stuff to be “on top of it” but then I realized that I had all the stuff I really needed already in the house somewhere.

I used a medium sized container that I had in the garage. It had old paint & tiling supplies that I reorganized, gave away or resold on craigslist. The container is made of clear plastic, so it won’t leak, and I can see through it which is very helpful.  It also has lid that I can put on and lock in place to move the container around.

I took a fat drill bit and made three holes on the lid so it could stay on always and still allow for oxygen to get to the compost.  I keep it in the back patio in a corner, it gets some sun throughout the day, but I wish it got more. I chose to keep it back there because of convenience; there is a hose close by so I can add water as needed. My back patio has a large tree that sheds leaves like crazy, so it makes it easy for me to collect them and add some to the compost to keep moisture levels at bay.

There are things I won’t add, for example meat leftovers, cooked eggs, greasy or oily leftovers, bones, butter. Some of the undesirable items can make the compost take longer to break down, some other items will break down quickly but can add some strong odors. Here’s a more specific list of the stuff I’ve actually added:

• crushed egg shells
• veggetable ends and butts, (carrots, broccolli, bellpeppers, garlic & onion skins, herbs)
• veggetable peels ( potatoes, carrots, ginger)
• lettuce, spinach & other greens
• leftover rice and other grains and beans
• leftover or old bread (not if it’s cheesy)
• nut shells (peanuts mostly)
• dry leaves

It took me about 30 minutes to set it all up.

• find the container
• clear the crap in it — I ended up using some of this for my office painting project, the rest went away on Craigslist in less than 20 min.
• Hose it down
• Drill 3 holes on the lid
• Dump the leftover fertilizer and soil into it
• Tell my significant other about the compost, and the freezer bag.

Since I set it up, I spend about 5 minutes each week working on it. When I work on it, it means I check the freezer for my “add to compost” bag, and add it to the compost.  I also check the moisture level and make sure there aren’t any other obvious problems with the compost, like a bad smell, or bugs. The lid helps with bugs, and if there was any smell then it would help for that as well but so far, it just smells like earth.

Oh yeah, the freezer bag is a bag that comes out of the freezer whenever we cook and in it go all the leftovers I mentioned above. So even if we only make a sandwich and only got maybe a small piece of a lettuce leaf, it simply goes in the bag. After a week or so we usually have about a pound of this stuff. A used produce bag, or a gallon sized ziploc bag do the trick nicely.

Every couple of weeks I use a gardening hand shovel to mix all the stuff and flip it to make sure all of it is getting some oxygen, and all the stuff gets to rotate throughout the different layers.

Overall, a compost is pretty cool I think. It helps us keep less waste out of the trash system and ultimately out of landfills. Also, I don’t want to pay $20 or so each time I need fertilizer –which is about 2 or 3 times a year, sometimes more… especially when all this “trash” is great fertilizer. I will be using the compost material to top off my plants around the house, in the house, in the atrium and near our entrance. I have a growing collection of plants, and I hope to keep these healthy and growing indefinitely and this should help.

I’ve been thinking about adding a spout to the container, to collect what people refer to as compost juice. Not sure if I want to add this complexity to it yet, so far 5 minutes each 7-10 days is great, and I don’t want leaks. Anyway, that’s about it for now.

other stuff you may like...

• Composting away my greens (0)
• The new milk jugs, saving the environment (0)
• Rolling your own (8)

other stuff you may like...

• Head to the

other stuff you may like...

• Recent changes in Muy Chingon (4)
• links for 2008-10-16 (0)
• links for 2008-10-15 (0)

After you have that installed, you can simply do:

$: sudo port install postgresql83

or do this:

$: sudo port search postgres

to get a list of what other versions and options you have available. I needed this to be able to run commands using pgsql directly from my main work system. Different options would be required if you want to run the server part of it.

This is what my install output looked like:

$: sudo port install postgresql83
—> Fetching bison
—> Attempting to fetch bison-2.3.tar.bz2 from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison
—> Verifying checksum(s) for bison
—> Extracting bison
—> Configuring bison
—> Building bison with target all
—> Staging bison into destroot
—> Installing bison 2.3_2
—> Activating bison 2.3_2
—> Cleaning bison
—> Fetching ossp-uuid
—> Attempting to fetch uuid-1.6.0.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/
—> Verifying checksum(s) for ossp-uuid
—> Extracting ossp-uuid
—> Applying patches to ossp-uuid
—> Configuring ossp-uuid
—> Building ossp-uuid with target all
—> Staging ossp-uuid into destroot
—> Installing ossp-uuid 1.6.0_2
—> Activating ossp-uuid 1.6.0_2
—> Cleaning ossp-uuid
—> Fetching postgresql83
—> Attempting to fetch postgresql-8.3.1.tar.bz2 from http://ftp8.us.postgresql.org/postgresql/source/v8.3.1/
—> Attempting to fetch postgresql-8.3.1.tar.bz2 from http://ftp9.us.postgresql.org/pub/mirrors/postgresql/source/v8.3.1/
—> Verifying checksum(s) for postgresql83
—> Extracting postgresql83
—> Configuring postgresql83
—> Building postgresql83
—> Staging postgresql83 into destroot
—> Installing postgresql83 8.3.1_0
To use the postgresql server, install the postgresql83-server port
—> Activating postgresql83 8.3.1_0
—> Cleaning postgresql83

Then after this, I could issue this to get on the db and start running my queries:

$: /opt/local/bin/psql83 -U username -W -d databasename -h host-ip-address

other stuff you may like...

• The Urination Iterator Strikes Again! This time on first floor UCI-ICS (1)
• The iPhone will be here soon. June 29. (0)
• The Genographic Project (0)
• slashed one Mac Annoyace (0)
• Search a bunch of files in a directory at once (0)
• getting more out of each book (2)
• Fifty Bucks for trying SunOS 10 (0)
• Building airplanes, in the sky. (4)
• Apple commercial 1983 (0)

other stuff you may like...

• slashed one Mac Annoyace (0)
• Search a bunch of files in a directory at once (0)
• Quicken Registration nagging screen begone! (2)
• calling all students… what would you do? (0)