SquareCalc

My first android app is now on the android market, it is a square calculator. You enter in the length of the 2 sides of the square to get the diagonal. I designed it for squaring up decks, but it could be used for many other things.

Here is the QR code that you can scan with your android barcode scanner or google goggles:

Garden Entry 6

New Dining Room Table

Just built this beast this morning.

Carlos Avery

Garden Entry 5

Rotten Apartment Building

Fawn in the woods

Here is a picture of one of two fawns we saw last weekend lying in the
woods. Is it normal for fawns to be so approachable? (we could have
petted them but decided not to)

Bass at the Cabin

How to use a hammer in a violent way tutorial

Here is an old video we did:

Green treated deck

Just finished building this deck today in St. Francis, MN.

Fishing at the Cabin

I went fishing at the cabin and it was a success.  I found a downed tree where fish were jumping and started catching. 

Grooveshark

Lately I have been using a website called Grooveshark, which is like a Youtube for music. You can search and listen to pretty much any song.  You can get an account for free and save playlists as well, and if you pay $3 a month you can eliminate the ads on the right side. (I can deal with the ads personally)

Grooveshark

Fix a mobile photo

I found an excellent article on lifehacker on fixing a photo taken by a camera phone using photoshop.  I used this method with a cell phone photo I took and it worked great.  The results are posted below.  Original article:  Punch Up A Photo In Under 60 Seconds

Before

After

A day at the cabin

I spent a day up at my parents cabin helping them put together their new roll in dock.  I also did a little fishing, but only caught a large-mouth bass that was just a little too small to keep.  The dogs got a lot of well needed exercise which included Frank playing fetch while Rocky attacked him and tried to keep Frank from having fun. (see the picture below) 

Rocky being jealous of Frank

Dogs

Dogs keeping each other warm.

Garden Entry #4

Yesterday I transplanted my tomatoes and peppers outdoors, and into larger pots.  I also weeded the cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and mesclun classic mix that are already in the garden.

Tomatoes and Peppers

Lettuce and Mesclun mix

Close up of Mesclun mix

I think Broccoli and Cabbage (could be reversed)

Messing around with Google Buzz

This is a test this is only a test, sorry I haven't posted anything lately, I have been working and job hunting.  Lame!

Camping the Old-fashioned Way

Right now I am camping the old-fashioned way with an internet connection and a laptop by the fire.  Ahhhh, nothing beats roughin' it. Now I know how Lewis and Clark must have felt.  I have an unlocked HP iPAQ Voice Messenger running Windows Mobile, which is sharing a $10/month T-mobile unlimited wireless internet connection to my old IBM Thinkpad A22m laptop.  For $10/month I only get T-Mobile's EDGE, which is faster than dial-up but much slower than DSL or cable.  I assume Lewis and Clark only had dial-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if they constantly shut their laptop off out of frustration with such slow internet speeds.  

How to make farmer's cheese cheap and easy

I have been making farmer's cheese for a while and since it is so easy, here's how to do it.
Things you need:

• 1 gallon of milk
• 1/2 cup vinegar (i use distilled white but I'm not sure if it matters what kind you use)
• 1 table spoon of salt
• cheese cloth (got mine from walmart in the fabric section)

1. Bring the milk to a boil, make sure to stir often so it does burn.
2. Remove from heat, slowly stir in vinegar.  The milk will curd at this point.
3. Dump the contents into a colander lined with cheese cloth.
4. Stir in salt, grab the 4 corners of the cheese cloth and twist.
5. Put the lump of cheese between two flat surfaces that are slanted (so water drains) with weight on top
6. Wait for 2 hours and enjoy about 1.5 pounds of farmer's cheese.

Garden Entry #3

Here is another update on my garden, and in case you were wondering what was what I labeled the rows in the photo below.  If the picture doesn't make sense, the first 4 row starting from the left are tomatoes, the fifth row is habanero peppers, the sixth row is green peppers, and the seventh row is pepperoncini peppers.

kitty

Kitty sleeping

Garden Entry #2

Here are some up to date photos on my tomato and pepper seedlings I took today:

Here is a photo I found of my garden last summer:

Battlefield 2 AIX mod

For the last 5 or 6 years I have been playing a lot of the Battlefield games starting with Battlefield 1942, then Battlefield Vietnam, and of course, Battlefield 2. I never bothered with 2142 because I am not into the whole future thing, if I want future, I'll play Unreal Tournament 2004 (which I still do). I know a lot of console kids play Call of Duty or whatever but in my opinion Battlefield 2 is way better.

A couple of years ago I started checking out mods for Battlefield 2 and came across Allied Intent Xtended (AIX). This mod turns Battlefield 2 into the best multiplayer first person shooter ever. I am skeptical to see how Battlefield 1943 is in comparison, but as of right now Battlefield 2 with AIX 2.0 is awesome. The cool thing about PC games like Battlefield 2 is when you get a new video card its like you get new games. For some reason I thought you should match the resolution of your monitor so I always ran BF2/AIX at 1152 x 864, just recently I tried jacking it up to 1680 x 1050 and wow! It's like an entire new game, it looks so crisp, and I even felt guilty because it felt like I had an unfair advantage because I could spot bad guys so easily.

Here is a list of a few of the things that make AIX such a good mod:

• Longer run time (all-time run on some servers like DOD)
• Better weapons
• More helicopters and jets that are equipped with more weapons
• A ton of new maps
• Pickup weapons
• Health and Ammo
• A portable Stinger (a bazooka that locks onto choppers and jets(pickup only))
• C4 20 second timebomb
• Grappling hook and zipline
• Lazer mines that sound a siren, shoot a flare, and jets can lock onto

If your PC can hang with the big boys you'll be able to run Battlefield 2 decently otherwise stick to the kiddy consoles. You can buy Battlefield 2 for $10 at the EA store here,

AIX 2.0 mod is free and you can find that at www.aixtended.com

If you make it that far you should also aquire the TNG2 mappack which a lot of AIX servers require. I know you can get it from the ISA clan's site but you have to sign up to access the files.