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Page last modified: November 15, 2009.
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What's New on Mark Headrick's Blog
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- Tuesday, February 9, 2010 2:34 AM: Why all this 3D technology does nothing for me.
What with Avatar, ESPN and Discovery announcing 3D networks, and 3D Televisions appearing at CES, there's been a lot of talk about 3D technology lately, which is certainly warranted and understandable. However, none of it means anything to me because my brain and eyes are just not wired for it.I was born with one (maybe more) of the muscles in my left-eye missing or otherwise defective. As such, that eye was pointing to the side. This generally results in what is called a lazy-eye. I went through 5 eye surgeries by the time I was 5 years old. I also happen to suffer from astigmatism.
Due to my sight issues occurring at such a young age, my brain essentially re-wired itself to deal with it and how I see is perfectly normal to me. 75% of what I see in my field of vision is my right eye. When I close my left eye, I only loose a certain part to the left of me, basically, what my right eye doesn't physically see (the nose kinda gets in the way LOL). However, what I see does not shift any. Now, when I close my right eye, things change a lot. My brain lets my left eye now “see” what my brain had only been processing from my right eye and images shift to the right and down.
Because of this non-convergence in my eye-sight, none of this 3D stuff works with me. With those red and blue glasses I either saw all red stuff or all blue stuff. The images simply do not combine to form a single image. Needless to say, I will not be buying any 3D HDTVs, 3D DVD/Blu-Ray players, or watch any 3D television networks.
Thank god Avatar was released in a 2D version at the local AMC theater; otherwise, I would have skipped it. If you look now, you'll notice that only the 3D versions are still playing there.
My only hope is that movie studios keep releasing 2D versions of their movies. Well, the ones worth seeing anyway LOL.
- Friday, January 1, 2010 4:01 PM: Three movies added to DVD Collection.
I have added the following three movies to my DVD collection:
As usual these days, I've scanned in at least the DVD cover and included a trailer. These along with Star Trek (2009) were all Christmas presents. Thanks to everyone that gave me these.
Oh yeah, Happy New Year!! Here's hoping 2010 is a great one!
- Wednesday, December 30, 2009 5:49 PM: Star Trek (2009) added to DVD collection!
I've added Star Trek to my DVD Collection! 
This movie was AWESOME! They did a fantastic job re-introducing the Star Trek franchise with this film and handled the concerns I had going into it. By creating a new timeline (parallel universe) with Spock and the Romulan's interactions, they are freed from having to match what the first crew did and experienced. It will also help explain why the technology of this particular crew will be so much more advanced than the original due to the input and advances introduced by the original Spock This, in turn, lets them get away with using better special effects than what the original series and movies had at their disposal.
What's even better than all the effects is the character interaction, story, and acting (something which Star Wars I suffered from). Zachary Quinto as the new Spock was perfect. It's amazing how much he looks like the original. It was good to see Leonard Nimoy playing Spock again as well. I'm not one to go on and on about movies, so I'll just say this one more time: It was AWESOME!
I've included the outer cover image that the case slides into as well as the front and back images of the case itself. 3 Trailers and 1 TV spot are also included in a combination video that I found on YouTube.
- Wednesday, December 23, 2009 5:36 PM: Merry Christmas!
Just wanting to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Oh, and a safe one too! - Saturday, December 19, 2009 11:52 AM: Configured Winamp v5.57 and website to use new Now Playing plug-in.
After upgrading Winamp to its latest version (5.57), the Now Playing v2.1.2 plug-in I was using would cause Winamp to crash every time I closed Winamp which caused none of its settings to be saved. After some googling around I came across Brandon Fuller's Now Playing: A Winamp Plugin which seemed to do what I needed. It would allow me to FTP a XML file containing information about the last X number of songs I played and would also let me send a HTTP post request to run a PHP script with the current song's information contained within the $_POST variable. It calls this HTTP request a “ping”.
When this “ping” is sent, my PHP script parses the newly uploaded XML file to create the now playing images and song history (as seen on my Entertainment page), as well as a prepared Twitter message in a separate file should I choose to send a tweet out.
You can also send Twitter and Facebook updates using this plug-in. I've only tested it with Twitter and it seems to work; however, I use a separate PHP script to manually Tweet the song I'm currently listening to so I don't fill my Twitter stream with song spam. I may enable it to send tweets out using my @mrheadrick_np account.
This plug-in does lack a couple things that the older one would do:
- Send an album cover image along with the rest of the song's information in a $_POST variable such as a folder.jpg located in the same directory as the song; however, it will send a link to an Amazon album image if the information matches (sometimes it doesn't match correctly or just can't find one). I am working on a mechanism to get around some of these pitfalls by uploading album images and having my script check for the existence of the local album image first.
- Work with Shoutcast streams to extract out song information.
Even so, I will continue to use this plug-in for its compatibility and continuing support by the developer. It also seems to be a bit more reliable and stable than what I was using. Yes, I did purchase a license key.
General Information
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Background: I was born on June 6, 1969 in Wichita Falls, TX, but grew-up in Edmond, OK, including going to Edmond High School there.
Current Occupation: It's a secret.
Before my present job, I was: a bank teller, Interned/Co-oped with IBM down in Southlake, TX at their Performance Evaluation Center programming Remote Terminal Emulators, and then worked for the State of Oklahoma in the Department of Vital Statistics (birth/death certificate stuff) for awhile, then spent 13 years working for Creative Labs, Inc starting out as a Technical Support Agent and ending up as a PC Technician/Help Desk Support in the IT Department.
Current residence: Oklahoma City, OK. If you want to know where Oklahoma City is in Oklahoma, or if you want to see what other internet resources there are in Oklahoma, click Oklahoma. Here's another site for info about what's in Oklahoma City.
Graduated May '92 with a Bachelor of Science in Computing and Information Sciences from Oklahoma State University.
Hobbies: Computing and all that stuff, Music, Movies, Snow Skiing (it's been awhile since I've been :/ ), Chatting on the internet (generally while working on our website or programming), and goofing off.
Radio Station I mostly listen to is the Classic Rock station KRXO 107.7 FM, followed by: KJ-103 and Rock 100.5 the KATT., all out of Oklahoma City, OK. I also listen to a fair amount of Internet Radio. The two I listen to the most are Club 977, the 80's Channel and Ravetrax (Breakbeat Trance House). I listen to and watch their live video streams using Winamp. Ravetrax rocks, I suggest you check 'em out! I also subscribe to XM Satellite Radio and my favorite stations there are: BPM (Dance, 81), The System (Dance, 82), The 80s (Decades, 8), Top Tracks (Rock, 46), Bluegrass Junction (Country, 14), Cinemagic (Pop & Hits, 27), Squizz - XL (Rock, 48), and XM Classics (Classical, 110)
I have one sister, Jill, who got her PhD in Physical Chemistry, researching the atmospheric chemistry of alkylperoxy radicals (believe I got that right.. has to do with lasers, studying molecular behavior of various gases, CO2 and Ozone among others).. at the University of Colorado She's now a Research Associate at the University of Kansas.
Website was created with HomeSite v4.5 After Macromedia purchased HomeSite I stopped upgrading. It seems to do the things I want.. so why upgrade? Also, some aspects of version 4.5 that I use on occasion were removed from later versions.
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