Technology

Is Revver Down?

Jeromey Balderrama

I havent’ seen this on the Internet, but I just wanted to put this question out there.  Greenfoot has some new concert footage, and I’ve been playing with various video-streaming services, seeing who is offering the best quality.  I’m still experimenting, but was pretty happy with Revver’s quality, when the site went down Thursday for scheduled maintenance.  However, it’s almost 24 hours later and the site is completely down – getting DNS failures.

This is a bummer if this is a long-term thing, it’s a bummer because Revver was a pretty cool site.

New MacBook Wheel

Jeromey Balderrama

With the Apple Keynote at MacWorld this week everyone is going gaga over the DRM removal from the iTunes music store (even though they are now going to be raising prices on a good amount of popular music), as well as the Macbook Pro that doesn’t have a removable battery (WTF?) – but people may have missed this announcement as well:

I love this, characterizes how Apple repackages limitations as “features”.  The last line about people using Macs in the work place is the best line in the video.  Classic!

More Graphic Design Artwork

Jeromey Balderrama

I wrapped up my semester in my Graphic Design class, with things turning out pretty well. I wanted to share some of my final work in that class.  We had two remaining projects: A 1929-era travel poster, and a movie poster for our favorite movie.

Starting with my Vintage Travel Poster: I really struggled with this project the most. I’m a modern-oriented guy, who loves the bleeding edge – so to try to re-create something that looked old and dated was really tough to wrap my head around.  I decided to go with a train poster, starting with Paris, then was later convinced to do a series of travel posters around France.

The last project was the poster for our favorite movie, which I chose The Dark Knight.  I decided to gear my poster towards people who have seen the movie and understand the specific scene.  Let me know what you think:

More artwork: CSU Alternative Spring Break Benefit Poster

Jeromey Balderrama

Earlier this week I posted my Rockies logo for my Graphic Design class.  Last weekend, I put together a personal project.  Greenfoot is playing a benefit show for the CSU Alternative Spring Break, and I volunteered to put together the poster for this show.  I’d be anxious to hear your thoughts:

Also if you’re in Fort Collins/Northern Colorado, we’d love for you to come out on Sunday night and support a great cause with us!

Tech Gripe: Does Qwest cap uploads?

Jeromey Balderrama

This is another question/technology gripe I’m throwing out there to see if anyone is experiencing the same thing: Does Qwest DSL drop your connection when you’re uploading large files?

I was doing some Greenfoot work tonight, and am trying to upload our new tracks to a hosting/steaming service.  The service is asking for WAV files so that they can encode on-the-fly – fair enough.  I upload the WAV files ranging from 40-55mb, not huge by any means, but sizeable.  I tried uploading directly to the web site, but about 20% into the upload my DSL connection drops for a few minutes, reconnecting to a different IP address and breaking my upload.  I’ve tried different protocols/applications (Live Mesh, FTP), which resulted in the same behavior.  I’ve eliminated any doubt that this is being caused by a specific machine, then eliminated my router from the equation.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me using Qwest DSL, so I’m left with my original question: Is Qwest dropping DSL connections that are uploading large files?

I *think* I’m solving the issue by breaking the file into 2mb pieces, FTP’ing the files to a non-DSL machine and uploading them that way.  Talk about a pain in the ass!