Your Organic Sweetener

Second Life...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:06:43 GMT

Any Second Lifer's? Find me! My SL name is "Cevyn Kiranov"

The best thing to ever happen to me...

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:35:38 GMT

My latest upgrade....

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:03:23 GMT

I need to expand my storage options, so I had to get one of these working:

The real reason for this high-tech addon is because I have hooked up my PCjr once again and need to be able to write files from my archive to 360k 5.25 floppies.

MySpace, FaceBook...

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:23:22 GMT

Who else has one?

My MySpace can be found Here.

My FaceBook can be found Here.

I'm not on here so much these days, but I'm on those constantly. I have other profiles too, look under "My Sites" on Cevyn.com

Music!!

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:05:20 GMT

I figure it's time to share some of my favorite tracks. My favorite genres are Industrial, EBM, EuroDance, Electronica, Drum&Bass, Psychedelic, SynthPop, Classic Rock, Industrial Metal, Gothic Rock, JPop, and Classical. You can Listen to my PlayList to check some of them out :-)

Saved more electricity...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:06:14 GMT

My constant quest to save more energy never ends. Recently I built a new internet server, after discovering my existing one was drawing 400w 24/7. With my electric rates, that is about $30 a month, just to run that one computer. My new one has AMD's "green" chip, which draws 45w. The new server draws a continuous 200w now, saving me $15 a month just like that. And with that savings, the new server pays for itself in about a year.

I've tweaked many other things as well...my "baseline" electrical load used to be ~1.5kw 24/7. That is what my house draws when no extra appliances are running. Now, it draws ~0.87kw!! I've almost cut this by half by doing things like replacing my server, taking vampire loads out, and other tweaks.

My latest experiment is to not run central air during the day at all. I have my programmable thermostat set to let the temp creep up to 88 at night - I have a small window AC in my bedroom to cool it off separately, and that draws only 500w vs 4kw like central does. Now, the central AC will come on and drop the temp to 80 at 6am when it's still cool outside - meaning it is much more efficient. I will see how this affects my electric bill.

Still Alive!

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:50:16 GMT

I'm having a great summer so far...getting a lot done and making new friends. Mainly because I've discovered the awesomeness of outdoor electronic music DJ parties :-D

If you're near WV, PA or MD, you should come to one too!!

MySpace Album of Flyers

I refuse to be...

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:01:28 GMT

...tethered by phones, IMs, people, or anything else. I've concluded that I'm happiest when I can do what I want, when I want, without answering to anyone or anything. I can't stand the drama that results otherwise.

Another light bulb bites the dust...

Wed, 20 May 2009 23:46:00 GMT

This is my first HD YouTube release:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQSUZDXu4Q

A bit pissed off....

Sun, 10 May 2009 01:18:50 GMT

So to finance my HiDef camera, I put my old one on eBay....and what do you know - a dead beat bidder. Not responding to anything, not paying...what a dumbass fucktard. And eBay makes me wait 7 days before I can file a complaint....well my future high priced items will require "immediate payment". This is stupid. I won't be able to relist for at least a couple weeks, until eBay deems the bidder a deadbeat as well.

Finally!!

Fri, 08 May 2009 20:00:34 GMT

Someone has figured it out:

I'm going Hi-Def!

Thu, 07 May 2009 18:41:46 GMT

With the latest electrical stuff being so massive, intense and exciting, I've decided that I need to capture it all in hi-def. So I am getting a shiny new True-HD camcorder. It records to hard disk, has 3 imaging sensors, has optical stabilization and will capture my latest electrical experiments in great detail. The only problem is where to put such videos, YouTube will resample it to SD (Their so called HQ mode is not even Standard DVD quality), and the files will be too large to throw up on my own server. Doh!

LOTS and LOTS going on keeping me busy lately! The rundown...

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:13:59 GMT

The gigantic launcher is operational....11" pancake coil, 1/4" aluminum on a 5gal pale...seeing it yet? That's right, I am sending 5gal pales insanely high. They weigh over 2kg with the aluminum fastened on. Having destroyed the first one, I have mounted some AL on a new bucket, and torched the lid so as to form a cone....now at least it vaguely resembles a rocket. I hope to launch this sucker with a massive jolt of energy, on the order of 20kj or so, and I will definitely catch this on video.

In my never ending quest to save electricity, I have installed a small window AC unit for my bedroom. It draws 500w. The central air unit uses > 4000w. It's a lot cheaper to keep just my bedroom cool all night than the entire house, because I can't sleep when it's too warm.

It's unlikely to freeze again this year, so I have planted some of my vegetables. I should have a fairly nice organic garden of my own this year. Tomatoes, peppers, peas, green beans, radishes, herbs and more. I've even started eating all those wild onions that pop up at random around my house - they're quite good!! Now if only dandelions were tasty....time to make some wine with those...

I made a new friend a couple months ago, and we grew really close really quick. Even her daughters and I are friends...and now they're all moving back to England. It's tough, because I haven't had a local friend that I could tell everything to in ages. But England is their home and I know they'll be happier there. And I will be visiting.

Things are going well with Katie. We've had some really deep conversations about things, how we feel, where we're going. We have a couple small differences, but they're insignificant compared to how amazingly complimentary we are with everything else.

That's pretty much it for now....*hugs for all*

Second Lifers?

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:26:34 GMT

Anyone have one? I think I'm going to start using it again...

Writer's Block: Easy Like Sunday Morning

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:34:26 GMT

Ah, Sunday, the day of rest. What's your favorite way to spend a Sunday morning?

View 500 Answers

Well, I'm not a morning person. My nocturnal nature dictates that I'll be sleeping. But when I do awake, I prefer to spend the good part of a Sunday relaxing, listening to music, maybe having some friends over. Nothing that requires too much thought.

Geek Alert: 3.5tb NAS Done!

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:38:49 GMT

And mine is awesome. You can buy a 4 drive NAS enclosure for a couple hundred bucks, and it'll have a slow ass processor and some proprietary OS on it. I built a full fledged dual core AMD box for that much, and stuck 8 SATA drives in it...right now it has 3.5tb but it's very expandable....12tb with today's 1.5 tb drives and soon to be much more than that as drives get ever bigger. I'm in the process of putting every bit of media that I have on there – pictures, music, movies, all of it, so that I can access it from any system on the network. The little Mvix box on the TV can access and play any movie on demand, without putting any discs in a DVD player. Really cool, so I'm happy :-) I'm selling old IDE drives on eBay to break even on the expenses, and if I can scrounge up a couple more things to sell, I'll get the gigabit switch upgrade for my LAN.

My Christmas Wish List

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:25:31 GMT

Well, it truly is a wish list because chances of me getting anything on here soon are zip, zilch, nada. But, it is realistic and I plan on getting this stuff eventually:

1. A Pandora Linux Console
2. A few terabyte hard drives
3. A blu-ray burner
4. A >= 14mp SLR digital camera
5. A set of 1000mb ethernet switches
6. A new surround receiver, with tons of analog AND digital ports
7. A 46" or > LCD for the living room

Lucky 7 :-)

So how's everyone doing? What's on YOUR lists?

Me + Fellow Electrophiliac + Lots of Wattage = FUN!!! (And some new model work)

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:20:05 GMT

Since it's so cold out, discharging the 24kj system is pretty much out of the question, even when I do put it back together after some repairs. So I figured it was time to play with high voltage, lots of wattage, and some serious current. 4 car batteries power a 5kw inverter, which then feeds HV transformers, and various other transformers, via a ballast of a few heating coils to limit the draw to 3.3kw. The results can be found here:

Photos!!!

I did a photoshoot for the Lost Boys project...the first 4 in the top row of pics on my model art page are a sampling (NSFW):

Photos!!!

Writer's Block: When the Boss is Away…

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:45:30 GMT

How do you entertain yourself when you’re bored at work?

Interesting one...

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:59:25 GMT

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for? Answer me, then post to your own journal and see how many crimes you get accused of.

Mine is bigger than yours...

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:49:17 GMT

Bulb on the left - the second largest CFL they make, 300w equiv and only takes 55w. I have one that lights up my entire upstairs, and another that does the entire downstairs. Bulb on the right is your standard 60w equiv.

It's the end of NU-CUU-LAR age!!!

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:17:47 GMT

Yeahhh!! We will soon have a president that can speak proper english, well :-D Amongst a ton of other good things, of course!

Writer's Block: Costumes

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:45:18 GMT

We have to ask: What are you going to be for Halloween this year? And can we see a picture?

View 500 Answers

Wednesday Addams, of course!!

Halloween '08

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:26:11 GMT

Trista and I went to Midnight in DC's Halloween party Saturday night. Unfortunately her job wouldn't let her out early so we got in kinda late (and couldn't find a parking space either), but it was still awesome.

Her costume was a representation of Jack & Jill, except she was an evil (and hot) Jill who killed Jack and carried his skull around in a bucket. Unfortunately Jack's skull crashed to the floor and had to be cleaned up :-(

I was Wednesday Addams, and apparently pulled it off so well that most people there actually thought I was a girl. The frequent “you're cute”, “you're pretty”, and other comments of that sense were quite funny.

The music as always was awesome (Vlad rules) and we had a good time. I didn't even get drunk, having just a few Miller lites.

The trip home was a different story. We figured punch home into the GPS and off we go. Except we forgot that the GPS was in pedestrian mode, and therefore got lost in DC. Once that issue was fixed, and the GPS actually figured out where we were, we had no trouble getting back home, around 4am.

A word about...spam

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:17:56 GMT

Just how many people are foolish enough to buy phony Rolex watches from spammers? Are there really that many?? Think of this; if people weren't falling for this garbage, spammers wouldn't have a reason to keep spamming...after all, they're in it for the money. What about the blatantly mispelled spams for phony prescriptions? Here are some of the subject lines used in spam recently and my reviews of each:

1. "Get an outstanding deal on R0LEX ..v/atches"

2. "Largest Med'ds Store"

3. "Re: vuoekVzlAGRA"

4. "Time, Money, Keeping you from earning the Degree you deserve?"

5. "Your future, paint primer"

Now let's look at these together.

1. It's obvious they're trying to avoid filters...would *YOU* open that and give them your credit card info for some fake watch?

2. So they're selling drugs...probably illegal knockoffs that could kill you...are you that desperate?

3. OK, so it appears to have something to do with viagra. Note the Re:, to make it appear as if they're replying to something *YOU* sent.

4. Trying to sell bogus degrees I presume. You'd be taking quite a risk here, since any reputable employer will check these things...

5. I have NO idea what the HELL this means...

Well that's it for my anti-spam rant. If only I had a button that would remotely destruct a spammer's computer upon receipt of their bandwidth wasting, inbox filling S**T...wouldn't that be nice?