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Radio Goodness

A long time ago, I blogged about Rev105. Without rehashing all of that history again, Rev105 is being re-created by Minnesota Public Radio. The purchase of WCAL, St. Olaf’s classical radio station, was met by animosity in Minnesota, as MPR bought out the classical competition in the city. But MPR’s vision for the new KCMP is a radio station dedicated to local music. Following the template of LA’s KCRW and Seattle’s KEXP, 89.3 KCMP will have a focus first on the local scene, and then dedicated to playing music no one else does.

How is this re-creating Rev105? Well, their station director is Steve Nelson, the former co-host (with Brian Oake now on Clear Channel’s 97.1) of Rev105, who left after some time after the Capital Cities buyout to go to NPR. Steve was also a founder of Radio K 770, and has been on their board of directors for quite some time. Thorn, KCMP’s music director, was the afternoon drive-time DJ on Rev105. And their newest DJ is Mary Lucia, who hosted nights on Rev105, and mornings with Brian after the buy-out and Steve leaving.

MPR is hosting a blog dedicated to the launch of KCMP as they prepare to go live. No go live date yet, but my anticipation is building.

  • in General
  • 1 min read

Back Again

And the trend continues of taking websites down and bringing them up.

This time, I’ve moved my blog from silwenae.net to the newly created paulcutler.org. Why you may ask? I wanted to try out nearlyfreespeech.net in preparation for moving hosting companies. That’s a different discussion topic all together. Thanks to Fazin once again for the technical support in making it happen this morning.

So much stuff to blog about since the downtime: MPR’s new radio station, politics, Packers meltdown, and the Badgers too, books, and other stuff. More to come soonish.

I also have a technical blog running on silwenae.com with updates on my travels and travails through my servers.

A Breath(ed) of fresh air

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an amusing interview with Berke Breathed, of Bloom County / Outland / Opus fame.

I love Bloom County, as I’ve commented before. Re-reading and collecting those 80s comic books reminds me not only of my childhood, but how topical Mr. Breathed’s cartooning is and was. So much of what he talked about then still applies to today.

He has a 25th anniverary book coming out of his favorite Sunday comics he wrote.

Jinzora

Interesting… Jinzora, an open source music web management system, has announced they are working on version 2.0, that will offer an option of their normal PHP scripting, or a MySQL option.

A MySQL option is very intriguing, as I may be able to replace Netjuke, which has had one update to CVS in the 4 months as they work (or not work) on Netjuke 2.0.

I’ll have to keep an eye on this, and maybe even test out the current 1.1 version of Jinzora.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

And, it's over

I made it to about 12:30 last night, and then started to nod off. Was awake on and off until 2 am when I finally crawled into bed.

Turned on CNN this morning. Was happy to see Wisconsin went for Kerry and Feingold, but to say I’m disappointed in the end result nationally, is an understatement.

I’m shocked at the margin of winning, and how many Senate races went Republican. Shocked.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

Minnesota becoming Ohio

And I’m not talking about conservatism.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s lead story at this hour is about election concerns in Minnesota.

Higher than expected turnout, and that’s saying something as Minnesota led the nation 4 years ago at 69%, reports of voter intimidation, Moveon.org staffing their tables, and running out of new voter registration cards are just some of the things covered in the article.

And the mouthpiece of the Republican party, Norm Coleman, mouthing off about concerns of fraud.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

Here we go!

As expected, way too close to call. Indiana, Kentucky and Georgia to Bush, NH to Kerry.

Ohio just closed – too close to call.

Winning Senate races all over the place – Colorado & Kentucky are pickups, lose Georgia. Way too early to really tell on all of those already.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

And so it begins!

Go vote! Take a friend out and have them vote! Ask your friends if they’ve voted!

One report here locally from a friend is he arrived at the polls at 7:05. And there was already a huge line of 100-150 people waiting to vote.

Go vote!

Technology Woes

Spent the weekend on and off attacking my to-do list.

Got the den cleaned up, a bit. Most everything off the floor.

Spent a good chunk of the weekend trying to stop the lockups on my Ubuntu desktop. It’s definitely a Nvidia bug. Started with X freezing, but the mouse pointer works. Found the bug on nvnews.net, but no solution. Asked for help on the Ubuntu forums, but no luck there. Asked for help on the TCLUG, but can’t even get to my mail now with the frequent lock ups.

I’ve installed and un-installed the Nvidia packages from Ubuntu, messed with my XFree86-4 configuration file, including making sure the modules are right, and even trying with and without the DRI module as some posts indicate. It definitely has something to do with the GL functions – the screensavers and GLXgears lock it up instantly.

The next two things to try are swapping 4200 cards, and maybe trying to build the Nvidia drivers from source (ugh).

I did get Vino working on the laptop – that’s pretty cool as I can just use the remote desktop functionality to read my email on my box from my laptop in the living room over the wireless connection. I’ll need to play with the screen resolutions a bit, as my desktop has 1600×1200 and my laptop is 1024×768, which makes it a bit hard to read at times.

All of this makes the case for getting my Athlon64 up and running – it might be my solution to dedicate that box as my primary linux box.

I disconnected my Linksys router I use as an access point. For some reason, unlike my D-Link A/G router, the Linksys won’t serve as a passthrough to my server, so any device connected to the Linksys won’t have internet access. I attempted to hook up a second D-Link, a vanilla 802.11g, but couldn’t get it to work like my A/G. It’s a pain in the ass to do it too, as I have to dedicate one machine to it, turn DHCP and all that fun stuff off, but I’ve learned I’ll have to have a second box hooked up to the A/G so I can figure out what settings I’m missing to get it to work.

To top it all off, I’m in the living room watching football, and my UPS freaks out. It’s probably my own fault as I don’t drain it periodically like I should, but it starts beeping and won’t stop. I’ll have to re-evaluate my power needs for my den. It’s just more to add to my to-do list. One step forward and two steps backwards.

Daylight Savings Time

Babies don’t care about daylight savings time. Even when you keep them up late, they just want to get up the same time they always do.

Of course, it might not be a baby thing, and maybe be a kid thing, as Alex was up at 6:30. That might have been just the noise from Zoe though.