Category: Life

Life, Personal and Leisure

Resume and skills

I’d be doing myself a great dis-service if I didn’t take the opportunity to share my resume with readers of this blog. You’ve obviously found me because you have a similar interest to those of my own, perhaps you have need of part or full time knowledgeable employees with similar skills to my own.

I’m currently employed full-time and will not consider relocation or accept contract work, but would consider small side jobs in some situations.

Please see my online resume at:

http://www.skotfred.com/resume.php

Additionally, I generally have my information available on most job boards such as:

NOTE: Resume available in other formats (such as Word) by request.

Good Day!

Open Source Diffs/Compare Tools

I often find it necessary to compare separate branches of large programming projects in Java/JSP and PHP. Comparing single files manually proves to be very time consuming. I’ve found that software to do the recursive comparisons makes this much easier as it greatly reduces the effort.

Personally, I’m currently fond of WinMerge (on Windows platforms), though I’ve got a lot of peers that swear by Beyond Compare. Regardless their usage is very similar.

WinMerge:

Beyond Compare:

Cheers!

Open source planetarium software

One of the first applications I ever saw on a (original) IBM-PC was planetarium.  Additionally, in my “Navy Days” I became quite interested in astronomy, as the skies are never quite as clear as they are in the middle of the ocean!

Stellarium is a free open source and cross-platform planetarium for your computer. It shows a photo-realistic sky full of stars, constellations, planets, nebulas in realtime 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Other items like ground, landscape, atmosphere, and constellation illustrations can also be added.  You can even see the Sun and Moon in their actual locations.

Notable is that you can also update the existing star charts with improved information so that even more stars can be seen in the application.

References:

Another good competitor that you may prefer more for various reasons is Celestia, it can be found at:

Happy sky-gazing, even if it’s only virtual!

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

I’ve used PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) since I was in college. It provides for both digital signatures and strong encryption and content without the user having to go make extraordinary effort. The process uses what is known as Public Key Encryption and uses a Web Of Trust to certify individual users.

For years I used the original PGP 2.6.2, 5.x and 6.x products that were available as freeware. After PGP was acquired by a much larger commercial entity, most development has shifted to the open-source community that makes it available as GnuPG aka GPG.

There are several plugins available for common Email Clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook to natively integrate the functions into those applications. Additionally plugins are available for Firefox to enable encryption and signing of WebMail services such as GMail (Google Mail).

My public keys are available online at http://www.giantgeek.com/pgpkeys.asc, http://www.skotfred.com/pgpkeys.asc, or through most of the keyservers.

References:

I look forward to your signed/encrypted emails,
Cheers.

Open Source Media Player

There’s a lot of free software out there, but just like with Instant Messaging software you have to install many of them to be flexible.

Examples:

Several years ago I stumbled upon the VideoLAN Client (aka VLC) when researching methods to stream video from my ReplayTV (Tivo predecessor/clone) to my laptop as the files were in MPEG4 format and my previous clients didn’t support it.

I urge you to check it out as it’s an all in one solution, so that you don’t need all of that other bloat-ware installed.

G’day!

P.S. – I should add that this plays most video and audio formats and is available on most platforms, not just Windows.

The Oath of Enlistment

Let’s review this for just one moment… all ‘sworn’ government officials take a similar oath when they assume office. This is the wording used for enlisted members of the U.S. military.

I,­­­______________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Without delving into the details, I personally feel that many of our elected officials chose to ignore their oaths, instincts, and the people they represent. Let’s not forget these facts come election time as voting along “traditional” party lines doesn’t ever seem to fix matters, it’s time for a change!

Disturbed, especially by H1B and illegal immigration.

House for Sale

Well, after just over seven years of ongoing updates to the house, we’re sadly, but finally ready to move on to a new home. I posted several months ago about our new house in Plainfield, and as of last week we’ve listed our current place for sale.

If you’re interested in moving in to my old home in Carol Stream, please contact my realtor Sherry McGovern of J.W. Reedy Realty in Lombard, IL at +1 630-629-0016.

Here’s some more information on the home:

Make me an offer 🙂

Cars?

“They” say that you can ‘learn a lot about a man, by the car he drives’…. just what do these say about me ?

What’s next, I’m not even sure, just drive fast and stay outta my way!

🙂

Wedding Information

Figured I’d finally give thanks where thanks is due…

Back in September 2005 I became a married man. My wife and I spent over a year and a half of planning our special day and things turned out beautifully.

Should you be interested, here’s a list of our vendors for the service and reception. We had a great experience with all of them!

Professional photos of everything are available online at: http://www.giantgeek.com/wedding/

Please contact me if you are interested and would like a password for access.

Until later.