Seth Hoisington

So I got tired of my photos always coming out so so, and when you are taking photos of your family and friends, you want them to come out great.  Jessica and I have had a Canon G1, and then got a Canon digital Elph.  Then we got a SD850is that we still love and is extremely portable (we still use it).  But now I have decided to step it up a notch and bought a Canon 40D.  Let me just say, I (we) freaking love that Camera.  We took it too Michigan, and it took awesome pictures.  Before heading out, I watched a couple of very informational videos on YouTube on how to go beyond the standard “Auto Mode”  I still have a lot to learn, but did find myself switching off Auto a few times so I good choose my focus point and choose what to meter or going into Av and Tv modes to play around and see how the photos would turn out with different aperatures and shutter speeds.  There were a couple of hindsight moments that I wish I could go back and re-do, but hey, it’s a learning process.  I know my SD850is has some similar modes, so now I need to play on that one as well.  2 bad things about buying the 40D though…. 1, I am going to have to buy a good raid set since we have already shot about 8 gb worth of photos…(might want to add a offsite backup option as well) Also, I am already looking at what lens to add to my collection.  Do I go for a good wide angle lens or a prime portrait lens…..  There were a couple of times this last week, were I wish I could go wider because do to rain, we spent a lot of time in doors.  But I also see Jessica taking tons of pictures of the kids, so maybe the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM would be a good addition. (or go crazy and get the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM)

Hopefully in future posts, I’ll have a couple of photos from the events I work at.  Don’t worry, I won’t loose sight of who I am (as the Disc Jockey, not the photographer).  I leave you with a shot of Aiden waiting for our plane in the early early morning.

Recently I have discovered a great service that I am recomending to all my friends.  Storms have a tendacy to hit fast with no warning, especially at night when the TV isn’t on.  I started to Google around and found that www.Weather.com offers a free SMS/Email alert service for National Weather Alerts that effect a specific zip code.  So I signed up.  I sleep with my phone near my bed, so alerts from the servers I manage will wake me up, but this is a much better reason to be woken up.
Here is the registration page:
https://registration.weather.com/ursa/alerts/step1

Breaking News Alerts:

Also, if you have a twitter account, friend CNN Newsbreak for breaking news
http://twitter.com/cnnbrk
So far, they haven’t blasted me with a ton of messages.  If you look at their page, you will see that only the top headlines get twitted.

I start a new job tomorrow!!!! I have worked at DMS for the last four years and I will miss the place, but in the interest of progressing my career and being more able to support my family as child #2 is to arrive in Feb 2008, I have accepted the Network Administrator position at IRMI I will now be working over on the south west corner of the High Five interchange (635 and 75) So if you are in the area and you want to do lunch one day, let me know. While I will miss the family I grew to know at DMS, I look forward to what is on the horizon.

ps. Yes I know I live in Denton, and yes I know that the High Five is far, but it’s actually the same drive time as my last job. Also, now that I am addicted to audio books from www.audible.com, the drives fly by.

Ok, so I wasn’t going to get addicted to any new web trends and then http://www.twitter.com/ comes along. I don’t know why I like or use twitter, I just do. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. Here is the question Twitter asks you. What are you doing right now in 140 characters or less. Pretty simple right? and the question you are asking right now is, “Why the heck would I answer that question repeatedly and why 140 characters.” The reason for 140 characters, is that you can tie your account to your cell phone number and SMS your updates. Jessica and I have unlimited SMS messages, so there is no charge to do this. We just SMS to 40404 and our twitter account gets updated. I also have a Mac Widget and you can also IM your account and have it updated. Why would you answer this question? If you goto http://www.twittervision.com/ you will see the wierd, cyber voyeristic, strangly addictive nature, net community across the world that Twitter creates. Also, you can choose to follow or friend people. But it’s not like other social networks where you want tons of friends, you only want to friend people you want updates from. For starters, I turn off the SMS updates, that way when someone Twits or tweets (not sure what the correct term should be), you don’t get sms’d the update. I’ll go to my twiiter page to see all my friends updates in one screen instead of 50 sms messages that day.
It’s not for everyone and not everyone will “get it”, but for me right now….. I am wierdly addicted to it.

(Update) I guess I got over it pretty quick. :p

Wow, 2007 looks to be a great year for my DJ business. I have already matched 2006 and we are only in March. The funny “Murphy’s Law” about booking these weekends, is that people always request the same weekends. I think a lot has to do with the planning process of looking at when schools let out, holidays, and good travel dates. One date in particular is 7/7/07. I booked that date a while back and have gotten about 1 request for that particular date about every other week.

Here is a great piece of software I found for MegaSeg DJ’s or any Mac DJs. It’s called Tangerine and it can be found here What it does is scans your entire mp3 library and analyzes the BPM. It only costs $25 and it will update all the tags with the discovered BPM. There are a couple of apps like this on the PC, like mixmeister’s free bpm finder, which could always find the BPM, but it never updated the tags correctly. So anyways.. I bought Tangerine and it did a pretty accurate job with the exception of the usual double or halved bpm that many algorithms are susceptible to. The original intention of the software was to help people make playlists based on the BPM (For working out, resting, reading, etc..), but it works great for us DJ’s. I had Megaseg re-import all the tags and now I can tap the = button and then do a little tweaking to get the speed just right.

btw. It currently can only analyze mp3’s and unprotected aac files. They are working on Itune purchased files for a future release.

Ethan Update
Ethan slept in his converted bed last night with no problems.  He was a little upset for the first 5 minutes, but gave up, walked over to his bed, climbed in and grabbed monkey, and fell asleep.  Through out the night, I would turn on the tv to check on him (I have a security camera in his room).  It was pretty funny to see the different positions he would end up in, now that there is half a short rail to keep him in his bed.  Sometimes, he would have his legs dangling down to the floor, and then he would wake up, pull his legs up and go back to sleep.  We went to Sams yesterday and bought his big boy bed (twin) but I haven’t set it up just yet.  We need to finish his big boy room first (which is looking awesome due to my wife’s extremley creative mind)  I will have to post pictures soon.

Whew, I have been gone for a while and am now back in town.  First Jessica hosted a party for her book club at our house.  Then Jessica and I went to Ohio for Thanksgiving to hang out with my Sister’s family and then we decided at the last minute to rent a car and drive up to Detroit for the day to see Jessica’s family.  Then we came back to Dallas for a week, hosted a party, and then left for a 7 day all inclusive trip to Jamaica.  We spent our first 3 days at Couples Ochos Rios until a room opened up at Couples San Souci (where we honeymooned).  Jessica’s cousin and wife were at San Souci, so we had a blast hanging out and enjoying the amenities of the resort.  We got back Saturday and then went to a friend�??s annual industry party.  If that wasn’t enough, Jessica went to another holiday party last night, we are hosting our family party this Saturday and then my company party on Sunday and we might even attend a friend�??s wine tasting party on Friday night.  Gotta love the holidays.

But there is a solution.  If you are like me and you can’t stand people who download these annoying layouts for their myspace, because somehow they think making every image blur or reverse or having a dizzzying background is teh kewl, they are wrong.  It’s annoying and makes me want to click off of your page even sooner.  But now there is a solution for Firefox users.  Goto http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3316 and download their greasemonkey script.  You will need Greasemonkey first which is available here http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
Now browse through Myspace minus all the CSS junk.  It’s not perfect, but does make the entire experience of Myspace better.

Also, here is an interesting article I read last week about Myspace, http://www.valleywag.com/tech/myspace/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exhaustive-edition-199924.php  I encourage all myspace users to read it.  Below is an excerpt from the article written by Trent Lapinski.  (When he references the name “Anderson” below, that is Tom, the friend everyone gets when they sign up.  Tom Anderson is his full name)

“Most users believe that MySpace started as some kind of fluke–a happy accident that began in Anderson’s bedroom or garage–and many still don’t wonder, know, or care about the site’s real business history and model. Heralded as a haven of DIY self-expression, MySpace was actually created by executives whose backgrounds are anchored in spam and mass marketing, and who are tied to investment scandals. With his almost alternateen good looks, Tom Anderson has served as an exceptionally convincing distraction. The PR campaign is one of MySpace’s two strokes of genius, brilliant, but not groundbreaking.”

Well, if your an advid watcher of Noggin, then the title and picture today will most likely get a certain song stuck in your head.  I have to admit, children’s show writers write some pretty infectious songs.  I, like everyone else in Dallas, is extremly excited about the current shift in weather.  I know it’s a signal that summer is winding down, but after the long stretch of tripple digit days, I am excited to be able to go outside again.  Yesterday, Ethan and I went to the park behind our house and played for over an hour.  We met a nice couple with a 13 month old named Daniel and a golden retriever named Molson.  Ethan spent the whole hour informing me that there was a “Doggie!!!” in the park.  The weather was in the mid 80’s so we made use of it and did everything the park had to offer at our skill set.  Slides, steps, swings, volley ball court (aka, giant sandbox), walk around the 1/3rd mile track, back to more slides, and swinging again.  A boy who was waiting for soccer practice to start, even let Ethan run around with his soccer ball.  Needless to say, it was so much fun.

    The other great thing about the weather turning, is that it always subconciously pushes me to change myself and surroundings as well.  Just as God has nature changing all around us, I think it’s impossible to not want to change as a person as well.  It breaks the cycle of wake up, work, eat, sleep, etc…  

To kick the season of change off, Jessica and I spent Labor day cleaning and purging our house of stuff that has been packed up since we moved into the house.  Obviously these items were so important, that they could sit in boxes for the last couple of years.  80% of the stuff was trash.  We filled our “green monster” (our curb side trashcan) and the back of my van as well (see Jessica’s blog for a pic)  The sad thing is, there is still so much more to go through and purge.  Evenutally we will get through it all.  Two boxes we through away, were DVD movie cases and CD’s.  We catalog our movies into binders and I do the same for my music, because it is more space efficient.  The liner notes are worthless to me, so whats the point in keeping them.  As we move more towards a digital life style, It’s amazing how much it reduces how much we store in the realm of physical media.  Now my fear is, backing it all up.  As hard drives become larger and cheaper, I think we will see people just having a closet shelf somewhere with a stack of Drives labled Movies, Photos, Music….  With Apple starting to sell movies this month in digital form, I see us moving away from store bought DVD’s.  I also unburied some of my college text books covering Networks and such, So I have decided to dig into the nitty gritty of how networks specifically work, instead of just understanding the general ideals and concepts.  We also have a gym membership now, that I hope to start using more.

Sorry if today was random, after feeling that first cool breeze and having a full day of rain, I had to post my thoughts about seasonal change.

It’s Alive!!!
After sitting here and collecting dust for 3 years. http://www.hireseth.com/ has been redone and I hope to keep up with it. It’s original intention was a holding place for my resume when I was getting my degree (BS in CS from The University of Texas in Dallas - Go Comets!! or is it Temoc now). After I got hired, I didn’t know what to do with it, but now I do. Hire Seth is on the air. My blog will be random, covering the many aspects of my life. From information security advice to sound engineering techniques or thoughts, wedding dj’ing stories, plus being a Husband and Father advice. My life is crazy, so peek into the chaos a little.

I want to thank

My Awesome wife Jessica for being awesome
Ethan, for being the best son a father could ask for
Tim Schmoyer one of the first blogs I started to follow (and also where I found this theme)
This theme from http://www.jide.fr/english/
WordPress for a great product
Web Hero for 6 great years of web hosting (and many more)
Tivo for being Tivo
The internets for not getting it’s tubes clogged
And the parentheses for allowing me to abuse them (see I am doing it again)