Personal homepage of Richard Podsada. http://www.oblius.com/ Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Podsada. All rights reserved. richard@oblius.com 1440 en http://www.oblius.com/blog/rss/images/rss_logo.gif http://www.oblius.com/ 120 42 Well, the second piece of advice for amping up my Nerf Rapid Fire 20 (RF-20) was also a failure. The advice was to open the barrel assembly and dump out the air restrictors. This actually rendered the gun inoperable. Yes, I assembled it correctly again, the barrel spins, air is pumping out of the barrels. But I think what people are calling air restrictors on the RF-20 are in fact displacing air inside of the dart in order to reduce the amount of... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.212 I recently acquired a small arsenal of Nerf weapons for the office and being both male and nerd in nature, my first desire was to make them shoot further, faster and better. So I spent some time browsing various Nerf modding sites to see what kinds of things people were doing. There is some pretty creative stuff out there! I decided for a first project to mod my Mavericks (I have a set of 2). This is the first nerf maverick mod I tried. An... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.211 A lot of people customize their bikes and often need to source out non-OEM and custom-fit parts. A gas tank is definitely one of those parts, and sometimes an OEM tank from a different year, make or model may work well ... unless you don't know if it fits.My advice for suppliers putting OEM fuel tanks on E-Bay for sale is to post full dimensions for every tank you sell (a diagram would give you real bonus points but even a text description is a g... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.210 I'm really loving this game, it has great graphics, gameplay and some really neat features in spawn and server management. One of the coolest features of the game is the spawn manager. In most multiplayer FPS games, each team has a definite side of the map that they start on. As they die, they spawn from these same locations to re-enter the battle. The positive aspect of this is it makes a map easier to learn because there is a definite flow of d... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.208 The (semi) finished bikeThis is the first bike I've ever owned. I was on my way to a fundraising event and saw it in a garage sale on the way. The moment I looked at it, I knew this was going to be my first bike. Funny how that works - I had been thinking about getting a bike for a while before that, and voila, it appears.The bike was fairly weathered (spent one year outside) and needed some maintenance, but otherwise it was in excellent shape wi... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.207 I think it's a 1974 Norton Commando 850 MKII. I found a picture of it online and it looks pretty close:The distinctive trait about his bike is the shape of the seat and how it flows into the rear fender. This style of seat is closer to a sport bike which cups to help keep you forward on the bike. The majority of Commandos that I have seen have the classic 70's style bread-loaf seat, like this 1973 850 Commando:Both of these are great looking bike... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.206 Are you trying to connect to a RealVNC Free Edition server on a machine with Vista x64 and getting booted out right after entering your password with the following message? Connection reset by peer (10054) The free edition of RealVNC does not support 64-bit operating systems like Vista x64. To get RealVNC server to work on one, you will need to purchase the Enterprise edition of RealVNC. Screw that, I say! A cheaper and better solution is to ge... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.205 I'm tired of my site design again. I need something to inspire me. Something fresh. And most of all, I need time to do it. Hmmm....... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.204 Flash is getting really powerful these days. As much as the Adobe takeover of Macromedia has caused grief in some areas (InterAKT products for instance), it has been a blessing for Flash users. Every new version of Flash introduced under the Adobe banner has added seriously useful tools and very powerful features to the platform. Features that make you cry out, "Oh my god I need that!!!" or "Thank god, I will never have... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.203 Jade Empire Kicks ass! Yes, sad mortal that I am, I have never played it until last week. Purchased a pre-played copy at EB Games and it sat on my shelf for months before I even opened it. Finally thought I'd kick back on the long weekend and was very glad I did - the game was excellent and tons of fun!After finishing it I stumbled upon the website of a guy who modeled Jade Empire scenes in Lego, customizing & painting the figures to matc... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.201 Always keep your eyes fixed on the goal – opportunities present themselves unexpectedly. Be quick to grab an opportunity when it presents itself. Never give up. “To get the toy one must catch the dog.”... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.200 ... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.199 ... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.198 I've decided to completely axe "ASAP" from my project management vocabulary. It seems like anything attached to this term is guaranteed to end up on the back burner. I'm making a habit now of asking for a definite deadline for everything I do, and if the client doesn't know or says they don't care (that's a lie, every client cares), I set a timeline myself. It is WAY easier to manage multiple projects when you know exactly what ... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.197 Is it me or does it seem like all we do on a computer these days is install updates and patches? Like for crying out loud... you download windows updates, it nags you to restart 500 times. When you finally decide to shut er' down and reboot, the Java updater pops up. You delay that for 3 days then the Adobe updater pops up. That never works so you delay that too and then it's your Antivirus software. By that time Microsoft has become more secure ... http://www.oblius.com/?.blogs.196