HBO Intermission music and video in the early days of HBO

I distinctly remember watching intermission programming on HBO between regular programming when I was a kid.  We didn't subscribe to HBO, but during their free-trial weekends, I would watch as much as I could.
I recall turning on the TV and either seeing a movie or hearing this "weird" music.  I vaguely remember them also showing calming color patterns along with the text showing upcoming programming.

It always wondered what the music was, and I've finally figured it out after many Google searches.

The music is Brian Eno's - Music For Airports.  Specifically track 1/2.

I'd call it haunting and memorable.  Exactly how I remember it.

Progress report (old post, out of date order)

All of the carpeting is out and all of the walls are down, the last one was next to the furnace and water heater and came down on Saturday night. The partiers on the street looked perplexed to see me carrying out rolls of old carpet and old 2x4s at midnight.

We're trying to get an estimate on cleaning up some plumbing that is running in front of a basement window.

Comfort Windows and Doors is coming on Wednesday to insulate the band joist and sill plate area. This should prevent a lot of air infiltration and make the basement less drafty and lower our heating needs.

New water heater is installed and pumping out the nice warm showers.

Reconstruction is expected to commence next weekend, starting with insulating the above-ground portion of exterior walls and, then framing the walls.

Pictures coming soon!

Right Coupon is the Wrong Malware unless you get the the right cleaner.

I noticed one day a LOT of ads were appearing in my Google search results page, along with the fine-print "Ads not provided by this site".  Wondering who was supplying them, I started doing some research which yielded even more ads including coupon slide-out widgets.  Oh crap, I have some adware/malware...

Being a fan of Nick Francesco's computer show, I immediately went to Security Tango at http://securitytango.com/ as I've heard that it is the definitive solution to removing viruses, malware and adware.  The steps boil down to rebooting in safe mode and running a bunch of programs.  Then rebooting and doing it one more time to be certain.

I diligently when through the first time, performing each step as instructed.  When the programs found some infections and cleaned them, I was relieved.  I decided I didn't need to run through a second time.  I rebooted back to normal mode and ran my tests.  Bad news, RightCoupon was still presenting ads on my pages.

So, I guess I do have to do the second pass.  I reboot to safe mode, perform all the steps in the first pass, reboot to safe mode, perform all the steps again.  Whew.  Finally done (6 hours later)

I reboot to normal mode and ran tests again.  Bad news, RightCoupon was STILL adding ads to me pages!

I did some painful googling (try to find the results when you're getting served dozens of third party ads), and found a page suggesting using the free AdwCleaner to remove RightCoupon.

I installed and ran it, and it like, the Security Tango found a list of infections and cleaned them up.  No safe mode, no 5 step program, no two passes to be sure.  Just run it, then reboot.

I ran my tests again, and Ahhhhhhh.  They're all gone now.   Thumbs up to AdwCleaner.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

Classic bread recipe

1 cup water 120 degrees

1 cup buttermilk - room temperature (substitute 1 tbsp lemon juice and milk to make 1 cup)

.25 cup olive oil

1.5 cup wheat flour

4 cup bread flour

.5 cup sugar

2 large eggs beaten

1 tbsp salt

4 tsp yeast (room temperature)

Mix liquids.  Add wheat flour and mix with wooden spoon until smooth.  Add sugar, mix.  Add eggs, stir until smooth.  Add salt, mix.  Add yeast, mix.

Add .5 cup flour at a time, mixing until absorbed until it becomes too hard to stir.

Pour flour on counter and continue to add more flour, kneading dough for 8 to 10 minutes.  Dough ball should be elastic and slightly sticky.

Place dough into lightly oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Pour onto floured surface and degas.  Cut dough in half and form into two rectangles.  Place rectangles into greased 5x9 inch loaf pan.  Cover and let rise until dough crests pan.  45-60 min.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 min.  Remove to wire rack immediately.  Internal temperature should read 180 degrees.

My Iced Tea recipe

So you like my home made iced tea, huh? Well, here's the recipe.

1 gallon water
4 black tea bags
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice concentrate (like "Realemon") or juice from one lemon.

 Boil water.
Add tea bags.
Let steep 6-12 hours
Remove tea bags
Add sugar and lemon juice
Stir.
Serve over ice and enjoy!

Acrobat Distiller/Normalizer joboptions AutoRotatePages settings and behavior

In the Adobe Distiller or Normalizer products, there is a joboptions file that controls presentation and conversion to PDF behavior.

I've been doing some research around the settings for the AutoRotatePages entry in this file. When editing the joboptions file with a text editor, the valid values are "None", "All" and "PageByPage". These correspond to the GUI editor settings "Off", "Collectively By File" and "Individually". 
In theory, the settings mean:

•  None/Off: Do not perform any automatic page rotation. 
• All/Collectively By File: Rotate the minority number of pages such that all pages are presented in the orientation of the majority of pages. 
• PageByPage/Individually: Present each page such that its native orientation is demonstrated 

In practice, it's a little more complex.

A PDF document has a default orientation that applies to every page. That orientation is either portrait or landscape.

One can give the impression of a differing orentation for a subset of the pages by using page rotation. For example, a Portrait PDF file may have pages that appear in landscape orientation by rotating it 90 degress clockwise or counter clockwise.

Additionally, using the Document->Insert pages menu item in Acrobat Pro, one can insert pages that are in a different orientation than the rest of the PDF. This is not accomplished using page rotation, but by defining the page dimensions (in points) for a page. It is not possible to change an existing page's dimensions, nor is it possible to add a new page with different page dimensions.

Consider this PDF (Portrait with inserted landscape pages)
After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, but page 2 and 3 are rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise
All: Same
PageByPage: Same

Consider this PDF (Landscape with inserted portrait pages) After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, with landscape pages rotates 90 degress counter clockwise
All: All pages are displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise
PageByPage: All pages displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
Analysis:
Page By Page setting does not work. It should show each page in its native orientation but it always behaves the same as "All".
All setting makes all the pages render in the same orientation, based on a majority of page orientation. This setting should be used in most cases.

End of May Basement update

The basement project is coming along nicely. Next I'll be working on the floor, including leveling some areas where there will be vinyl flooring and selecting the carpet and floor that we'll be using. In the last few days, we've sprung another leak near the furnace - I hope it's just the drainage water pump, but I may have to call my furnace guy over. On top of that, we have a tree coming down in the yard, some aluminum fascia work to be fixed, we have electrical work to be performed on the first, second and third floors, and we have to have insulation wrapped up. Oh, and I start teaching a new class format next week and I have a 100 mile bike ride for Tour De Cure on 6/10. Yikes.