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April 2, 2007

Temperature Sensitive Faucet Light

Filed under: Bathroom,Content,Reviews,Water & Ice — roclar @ 8:00 am

About a year and a half ago, I posted the LED Faucet Light. At the time, I thought it was a neat and inexpensive way to add a little flair to an existing fixture, but it didn’t really add a whole lot. Just a static blue light whenever the water ran. When I saw that they had added a temperature sensitive version I couldn’t resist any longer. I have only had this installed in my kitchen sink for a few days, but I have been pleased with the addition. Given that hot water has to travel accross the span of the house in/under my cement slab, it takes a while for it to reach the kitchen sink. The Faucet Light gives a nice visual cue that the hot water has arrived. The Temperature Controlled Faucet Light is available from Think Geek for $20 where you can also score the blue only version for $13. Mini-review after the break.

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March 26, 2007

Lets See If I Can Get This Thing Started Again

Filed under: Site News — roclar @ 10:04 pm

This site has always tappered down a bit around the holidays, and the end of last year was no exception. Coming off of the holidays, most of my normal sites were focused on Macworld 2007 and CES. While both of these shows are interesting, they both focus on products that have not been released and in some cases never will. Work then got kind of crazy preparing for the Daylight Savings Date change courtesy of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Thanks to 109th, I got the opportunity to patch systems at least six weekends straight at a variety of fun hours in the evening/morning. While I do enjoy the extra daylight hour in the evening, I wish legislators would spend more time considering potential drawbacks of changes such as this. Anyway, I have been collecting topics over the past few months. Expect some of these older topics interspersed among the new for a while at least. I also have a Wii now, so there will probably be more posts related to that as well.

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March 8, 2007

Great Firewall of China

Filed under: Computer Related,Links,Site News — roclar @ 9:16 pm

China’s firewall has been well documented throughout the history of the internet. greatfirewallofchina.org has come up with a test to see if a site is currently blocked by the .cn firewall. So what could be more fun then seeing if a site thats been dormant for three months and makes a point of not discussing politics is blocked? (yes, I know…lots of things…work with me, people, mmk?) The answer is of course China’s firewall doesn’t bother blocking roclar.net. Ah well. Maybe one of the two people still reading will have better luck.

digg Referer
UNEASYsilence Referer
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December 15, 2006

Super Mario Advance 2

Filed under: Content,Games & Related Links,Retro Gaming,Reviews — roclar @ 8:00 am

Super Mario Advance 2 is Nintendo’s 2002 Game Boy Advance re-release of Super Mario World. Super Mario World was originally released in 1991 in the states. Unlike its sequel, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, I did play this growing up on the SNES but nowhere near as much as I played Super Mario Bros. 3. I have to admit that playing through it again after NSMB, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 and Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 I was left kind of underwhelmed. Its quite possible that I am just burning out on Mario, besides Tetris DS, the Italian plumber has been occupying nearly all of my gaming time. Still, there are a couple of things that irked me playing through Super Mario Advance 2. For one, the addition of Yoshi seems like an afterthought at times. There are a number of events and powerups that force you to leave your new-found dino-companion. I was also bothered that there were certain instances when you had to figure out secrets to successfully complete the game. I will touch on both of these points over the course of the review which starts now.

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December 11, 2006

Super Mario Advance 3

Filed under: Content,Games & Related Links,Retro Gaming,Reviews — roclar @ 7:55 am

Super Mario Advance 3 is Nintendo’s 2002 Game Boy Advance re-release of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island which was originally released in 1995. Since my console days virtually ended after I went to college until this past August, I had never played nor heard of this sequel to Super Mario World. Since I have been going through quite a Mario phase of late and Yoshi’s Island DS was set to be released (Yoshi’s Island DS came out on November 13 here in the states) , I decided to see what I missed. The cartoony graphics and baby Mario concept threw me at first in addition to not realizing the game was auto-saving it took me a little while to get into the game. Once I made it through the first world though, I was hooked. Since I will be playing the sequel and its relatively similar to the original, I didn’t get every trackable coin, flower and star and unlock the extra levels. With all of that being said, on to the review.

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Back From DC

Filed under: Content — roclar @ 7:50 am

National Museum of the Marine Corps at sunset

I am back and mostly recovered from my business trip to DC. I attended the USENIX LISA 2006 conference. I hadn’t been to LISA since LISA 2001 (which had an excellent talk by William LeFebvre about running CNN’s web servers on 9-11). This time I focused on the tutorials which were quite good though I wish I had taken a day for talks or shorter tech sessions. Particularly, I would have liked to see this year’s keynote but they unfortunately scheduled it during one of my classes. It also would have been nice to have some time to site-see. At least I got to ride the metro up to Shady Grove to have lunch with DrFaulken and some of his coworkers, most of whom I have met before and/or IM with (names withheld to protect the innocent).

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November 29, 2006

Connection Trouble and Short Break

Filed under: Site News — roclar @ 3:45 pm

roclar.net’s ISP is having a couple network connectivity issues. The first is that there is insufficient bandwith upstream between said ISP and the internet causing extrodinary latency. The second is as of 2PM today, a routing issue cropped up causing certain portions of the internet to be inaccessible including my ability to connect to here from home. There is no firm ETA for either solution. As I do all my updates from home and I am going on a conference next week there probably won’t be any updates until roughly Monday, December 11. Hopefully the internet woes will be resolved by then.

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November 28, 2006

ingenuiTEA Teapot

Filed under: Content,Kitchenware & Utensils,Reviews — roclar @ 8:00 am

loose leaf tea starter set from Adagio.com

Tagline: The most convenient teapot you will find anywhere – we guarantee it.

This is the teapot that got me into loose leaf tea after using it at DrFaulken‘s house. You just have to heat the water to the appropriate temperature, add the right amount of tea, pour in the water, allow the tea to steep and place the tea pot on top of your preferred drinking container causing the tea to drain and discard the used tea leaves. This teapot has not one but two US patents: US Patent 5,826,493 – Infusion coffee maker and US Patent 6,058,827 – Structure of a tea flushing device. As per DrFaulken’s Adagio.com review and recommendation, I bought two of the pots (one for home and one for work) as part of Adagio Tea’s starter set for $19. They sell the teapot by itself for the same price go figure.

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November 21, 2006

Sirius Satellite Radio and the JVC KT-SR2000

Filed under: Content,Music, Sound & Speakers,Reviews — roclar @ 7:04 pm

DrFaulken suggested that there might be some interest in my take on Sirius. Being that I have been a subscriber for almost two years, I know a little about the service. I have a JVC KT-SR2000 Sirius receiver installed in my truck and occasionally listen to the service via the internets (which is available with Sirius for no additional charge). Given that a bad commute day for me is ten minutes, I probably don’t listen the service enough to justify the $13 a month subscription fee, but I like having it available both on the compies and especially for long trips.

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Super Mario Advance 4

Filed under: Content,Games & Related Links,Retro Gaming,Reviews — roclar @ 3:15 pm

Super Mario Advance 4 is Nintendo’s 2003 Game Boy Advance re-release of Super Mario Bros. 3. Super Mario Bros. 3 was originally released in 1990 in the states and I remember countless hours playing it on our NES growing up. As evidenced by some of the lists I have linked here such as the NES Top 100 List and Some of the Best Levels of All Time I am far from being the only person with fond memories of the game. I finally decided to play all the way through the game and finished it last week at some point and thought I would post my experiences since I finish console games so rarely these days. In fact the only other game I have beaten since getting a DS Lite back in August was the DS native New Super Mario Bros. (NSMB). Anyway, on to the review.

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