Beating A Caffeine “Addiction”

Not too long ago I decided to give up caffeine. I used to drink a ton of pop. I’d also have coffee pretty frequently, but the main source of my caffeine intake was definitely from pop…Pepsi and Mountain Dew primarily. The reason I decided to give it up stemmed from a sleep problem I was having at the time. I figured drinking a 24 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew at 10 at night probably wasn’t helping the matter. Not only that, but whenever I would go without any sort of caffeinated beverage for any length of time I’d get pretty brutal migraines. After a while I sort of got tired being so dependent on a substance so I figured it was time to give it up.

So I did.

My method was pretty basic…I just stopped consuming any pop, coffee, or anything else with caffeine in it cold-turkey. I’ve often heard people say that a caffeine addiction was really tough to beat and I honestly have to say that it wasn’t. I started out by replacing my coffee/pop (which were, at the time, my primary drinks) with flavored water and juice. Flavored water most of the time is flavored with Asparatame which also isn’t good for you so after a couple weeks I got rid of that as well, instead drinking regular tap water. I still have juice or milk every now and then but right now I mostly drink water…anywhere from 2 to 4 bottles a day.

I just wanted to share that because I had heard people complaining about trying to overcome caffeine (especially because we finished Lent not too long ago) and my experience was really pretty easy. So if you’re thinking about giving up pop, coffee, or any other caffeine-filled drink don’t be too concerned. I’m sure you can beat the addiction.

New updates to my wiki.

I just wanted to make a quick blog post to say that my wiki has been updated. All of the walkthroughs for installing web-server addons to your Ubuntu machine are updated.   I needed to do those for a class I’m currently taking (Networking II at Pitt-Bradford) and I think that it came out pretty well.

So check out the wiki, if you go to DaveKemick.com you’ll be forwarded there. I may end up adding some other installation guides if I think of something relevant. If you have any suggestions or ideas about the wiki please email me at dmkemick@gmail.com.

Thanks.

Optional Extortion

So, in case you didn’t know I’m a gamer of both the PC and console variety. Right now as far as consoles go most of my time is spent with my Xbox 360, which is great. I love it. It has great games, a great online experience, Xbox Live Arcade is sweet, and so on. Being an Xbox owner I’ve often felt jealousy towards PS2 owners because they have access to a wonderful game called Guitar Hero. If you haven’t played Guitar Hero it’s a game played with a plastic guitar peripheral that looks like something you might have seen made by Fisher-Price as a kid wherein people with no guitar skills (myself) can “shred” to some classic tunes. It’s a really fun game and it finally came to the 360, so needless to say I was very excited to pick it up.

The game itself is great and I definitely recommend it to 360 owners (especially if you never owned a PS2 and were therefore unable to play GH1 or GH2). My problem with it has to do with the down-loadable content, one of the biggest draws to the 360 version. Three song packs have already been released for download, each containing 3 songs taken from the original Guitar Hero game. Anyone who followed this game knew from the get-go that one of the major draws would be the option of enhancing the experience with down-loadable songs that would eventually be released, and that’s great. My problem (and many other people’s problems) is with the pricing scheme they chose.

Right now the price set on the individual down-loadable song packs is 5000 Microsoft Gamerpoints which is equivalent to roughly $6.25 per pack…that’s a little over $2 per song. That’s right, to buy these covered songs (most of Guitar Hero’s songs aren’t the actual original renditions of the songs do to licensing issues) you pay more than twice as much as you would pay to download the originals from iTunes. I have no idea why they thought this price point would be plausible but that’s what we’ve been dealt and Guitar Hero fans have to deal with it. Most (like myself) are deciding to avoid these re-packaged songs all together.

A lot of people I think have the opinion that no one should be getting worked up about this because, after all, you’re not forced to download the songs…they’re optional. Still, the fact that they think they can get away with micropayments of this magnitude is cause for a little noise in the gamer community I think. So if you bought or are planning to buy Guitar Hero 2 for the 360, please vote with your wallet and choose NOT to buy any of the downloadable content and maybe in the future Microsoft will rethink their pricing. Other than that, enjoy the game!

Teenagers dig(g?) the iPhone

I was reading this article I found via Digg.com (that’s D-I-G-G ah-dot com) that explains that of 500 surveyed teenagers 84% have heard of the iPhone and 25% were willing to cough up 500 bucks of their (or their parents’) money to get one.

Damn.

I’ve been excited for the iPhone since it was first shown at MacWorld ‘07 and think it’s one hell of a device. It has true Apple style combined with great functionality and the patented Apple sticker shock. Admittedly though the hype has sort of died down since then as some things have been revealed about the iPhone that don’t interest me that much…most notably of which is the fact that the battery is rumored to only last about an hour or so per charge. I hope you don’t have to make any emergency phone calls anytime soon.

The touch-sensitive screen is rumored to work great and the phone system itself that the iPhone uses is leaps and bounds beyond any phone I’ve used before not to mention that, oh yeah, there’s an iPod with a brand new interface as well as many Internet-capable application included.

However, I think I’ll probably hold off for a few of the following reasons:

1. As I mentioned, the battery life is kind of suspect.
2. There will no doubt be a standalone iPod released with the same touchscreen interface.
3. $500.
4. I’m not on Cingular’s network, Verizon ahoy!
and finally,
4. I go through iPods like used tissue.

Maybe it’s just my bad luck but it seems that every iPod I get eventually breaks on me. That’s not that big of a deal when you’re only spending $100 to $200 dollars per shot, but I definitely don’t want a $500 device to become a $500 paperweight. So basically I guess, when it comes down to it, I don’t think I’m ready to pull the trigger on a $500 phone…I guess yet again I’m the exception. =P

Source article: http://tinyurl.com/yq9kws

Alright, just another quick update…

So I decided to change the blog away from the default, considerably “noobie” theme.  Unfortunately the theme I used isn’t custom or anything, because I don’t yet know PHP.  So in the meantime I figured I’d just use one of the themes a user uploaded to Wordpress’ site.

Anyways, I’ve gotten a lot done today.  I bought the domain name and hosting for this site earlier in the morning and, since then, have gotten a wiki going as well as my blog.   The main purpose of this site was the wiki, which is part of an assignment I have in one of my classes, but I liket he blog just as well.

Unfortunately though I think I’m going to be forced to skin the wiki, so we’ll see how that goes.  It shouldn’t be too bad because from what I saw its mostly CSS.  Anyways, that’s all for now.

Damn, I never thought I’d have one of these.

But so it goes. Speaking of things going, I have no idea where this will go, if anywhere. I’ll try to come up with things to post as often as I can.

Anyways, welcome to the ramblings of a college student/tech enthusiast/quasi-web developer. I hope you enjoy what I have to say.