http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble Home of Stefan Didak Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:00:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sometimes the things people say and do is nothing short of priceless entertainment, especially if what is said or done is not meant to be amusing. Everyone from a certain age group and have been involved with computers from the early days will no doubt know of, have heard of, or ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2008/06/07/an-apple-fundamentalist-in-the-wild-they-still-exist/ WhereWeDoWhatWeDo is "a community-built visual database of the spaces in which we spend our days, nights or both doing whatever it is we do". If you want to see some other home offices and fun spaces, go over to WWDWWD. And while checking out the many images, you may encounter ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2008/05/12/where-we-do-what-we-do/ A few days ago one of the smaller APC backup UPS devices decided it no longer liked me and started yelling at me. Adding insult to injury it then decided to start flashing its little lights at me to express its utter dismay of me having forgotten to replace the ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2008/04/02/new-apc-smart-ups-sc1500i/ For a while now I have been using a few dark color schemes for Visual Studio, mostly to just try out whether I would like it or not. Many others like Brad Wilson have also shared their adaptations and thoughts on the use of dark color themes for Visual Studio. ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2008/01/09/visual-studio-dark-color-schemes-and-themes/ OK, this is not really a restaurant review but it's a place worth visiting if you're ever in El Cerrito, California. What do you do for coffee in California? Go to Peets, of course. Unless you don't care about coffee and how it should taste, in which case, people like ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/09/23/central-perk-in-el-cerrito/ I've recently been really getting into PowerShell and investigating its potential as a new automation and scripting platform for the countless command line based processes I'm running all the time. The first thing I did was purchase a copy of PowerShell Analyzer, which I think is one of the most ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/09/06/short-list-of-powershell-resources/ This is hillarious. Someone going around on some web forum and calling himself SniperX has been passing off my home office as his 'gaming rig'. Check out what he's been writing. Of course, what SniperX hasn't realized is the fact that my office is famous enough that a lot of ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/09/04/sniperx-office-impersonator/ What do you mean you've never heard of those groundbreaking development methodologies? Well, perhaps you haven't but I do think you should check them out if you've got a minute so Scott Berkun can explain these to you in detail. I would like to add, OOCDD, Out Of Control Driven ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/06/22/development-with-add-cdd-cyae-dbd-gmpm/ After trying to figure out what to do with my photography pages and debating whether I should install an album module or write one myself like the quick hack that has been part of my site since I created it I've settled on using Flickr. I've uploaded a lot of ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/05/06/hello-flickr/ Since I now have a blog I'd like to take some time and write about copyrights and infringement, a subject I've had to deal with ever since I got into business for myself in 1989 and whereby the works were analog or digital in nature and effectively copyrighted material. Two days ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/04/04/amusing-copyright-infringement/ People have asked me to write something about some of the typical usage scenarios that I often find myself in at my home office. Since those are generally not easy to explain in a few words and since they could otherwise fill up the FAQ page a lot I've decided ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/04/03/home-office-usage-scenarios-1-and-2/ Oscar nominated artist Ruairi Robinson has posted the full version of his live action short film, "The Silent City" for all to see. Ruairi wrote, directed, edited, and storyboarded the entire film and has done 95% of the visual effects (which, as usual, are stunning). The film stars Don Wycherley ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/02/19/check-out-the-silent-city/ Someone just sent me a link explaining that over in Russia there is a competition going whereby my Home Office is being compared with that of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Unfortunately I can't read a single word of Russian so I've got no clue what the battle of the offices ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/02/08/battle-of-the-offices-ballmer-vs-didak/ Today I noticed, while looking at the web logs, that there has been a tremendous increase in traffic generated by the Home Office and FAQ pages. I knew that for some reason it has been linked to a lot and draws a steady number of visitors but the traffic over ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/02/03/surge-in-traffic-not-troops/ Reviewing restaurants is almost like second nature, reviewing music albums isn't. But this one deserves a solid plug. Pearl Aday's solo debut album, Broken Thorny Crown, is a wonderful release that I'm sure I'll find myself playing over and over again. Today I received the CD, along with a surprise ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2007/01/17/pearl-adays-broken-thorny-crown/ And you can take that literally. Over at Fauxto there's this really nifty example of a web application that allows you to draw directly from your browser. It certainly isn't a replacement for Adobe Photoshop but as an example it sure is impressive. http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/27/drawing-on-the-web/ I've decided to consolidate some of the old content into my new site. Over the years a lot of content has been in various places and it's rather hard to keep track of it all. Links to the old material should still work as well, though you will get redirected ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/23/consolidating-scattered-content/ Good news. VMware has released the beta of VMware Workstation 6.0 which supports displaying virtual machines on multiple monitors and running virtual machines in a headless mode (in the background without the full blown display yet still accessible by remote desktop). An even more interesting new features is the integrated ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/23/vmware-workstation-6-beta/ Over several months many comments have been made about my home office setup. A lot of these comments reside on the various blogs and forums where people have been posting links to my home office pictures. This blog entry, now that I have a personal site to play with, is ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/21/stefan-didaks-home-office/ Cafe Maddalena, located in Dunsmuir's historic district, was a very pleasant surprise while we were staying in Dunsmuir. We arrived early in the evening and went hunting for a place to eat and just by sheer chance ended up in front of where one of the locals passed by ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-cafe-maddalena-dunsmuir/ This place was a surprising discovery that turned into a very pleasant one. While driving in the city we decided to just look for a place for dinner by doing a spot-check of "hey that looks good, let's try it". After driving around and feeling hungry while looking for a ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-davids-kitchen-san-francisco/ By now you may figure out that I like Italian food a lot. And lots of it! Tonno Rosso was this incidental find we ended up for dinner at while being at the Embarcadero because we had planned to go to the Slanted Door (which unfortunately had a 5-week waiting ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-tonno-rosso-san-francisco/ Roy's is a Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine. A very innovative, surprising, and excellent place to go for food that is quite different. All food comes as a presentation of a work of art where a lot of effort is put into the balance between looks and taste. Lots of good medium ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-roys-san-francisco/ The Brookdale Lodge, good food but with an even better ambiance. The restaurant (Brookroom) has a real live brook running through it which is lit with colored lights at night and provides an atmosphere that is very good for both casual and romantic dining. The food, as I already said, ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-brookdale-lodge-brookdale/ Well, what can I say about this place that hasn't already been said. Not much I suspect. "If you haven't eaten at Fior d'Italia you haven't been to San Francisco!" is what they say and I can agree with that. The place is up there with the best of all ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-fior-ditalia-san-francisco/ Fresh preparations with a Californian/Mediterranean touch which you can find on 1373 Solano Ave. at Beauregard's California Bistro. Excellent fish. Efficient, friendly service with a smile. I am not a big fan of fish unless it's Swordfish, Salmon, or... SHARK. The shark as provided by Beauregard's was to die for. ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-beauregards-california-bistro-berkeley/ Dining out extensively is something I really love to do and I appreciate the better restaurants that one can find on this planet so it may come as a surprise that a BURGER place would be listed this high on my personal recommended list. However, Barney's burgers aren't just burgers, ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-barneys-berkeley-san-francisco-oakland/ As far as Italian food goes, Trattoria La Siciliana is about as good as you will ever get it. Unfortunately the place lacks the ambiance I so like at Frantoio, which is why this place doesn't rank at my #1 position. However, the food is so good that on food ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-trattoria-la-siciliana-berkeley/ On 810 B St, in San Rafael, you will find the best Thai restaurant in the Bay Area as far as I'm concerned (compared to the various other Thai places we have done in the past years). The food is really nice (well, needless to say it has to be ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-signature-thai-san-rafael/ The best Italian food in Mill Valley. Hell, the best Italian food in the whole Bay Area as far as I'm concerned. Frantoio is my current number one highest scoring restaurant on my personal favorites list. The quality of the food is superb, the selection of wines is excellent. The ... http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2006/12/20/restaurant-frantoio-mill-valley/