Toluu : my name is neal

my name is neal

I use my blog and the podcast as a therapeutic release. If friends and nice people read or listen cool, I guess, but I'm not asking you to.

A desktop is kind of like a living room. In living room design, I like clean, modern, peaceful design with one thing that’s old and rugged to add contrast and texture. The same holds true for my desktop, except that I had one element: darkness. It’s soothing to contrast the brightness of the work screens with a dark desktop.

My Sunday afternoon project was to re-design the appearance of my desktop and I made three changes:

Created a new Wallpaper.
Changed icons.
Increased the size of the icons on the desktop.

This is the result (click to see a full-sized screen capture):

I like the end-result so I’m sharing the wallpaper. The icons are from Apple’s download page. I used some from two sets because I wanted to distinguish between folders on the Mac network and folders on the HP MediaSmart Server. The feed reader at the top is an Adobe Air app called Snackr. Here are the links:

Darkhand Wallpaper by Neal

Macworld 2009October 18

We’re planning ahead for our MacWorld coverage in January. We want to do something different that the typical tradeshow floor interviews and product features. After all, it’s Apple and Apple encourages to think different.

We booked a hotel room and we’ll be in San Francisco from January 4th - 10th. Capturing video is easy. Post-production isn’t hard but it’s a massive time suck. Our goal is to get help with editing and segment planning.

Some shows use volunteers. We’ll need that, but I wouldn’t feel great about using voluteer editors. We have a lot of planning to do.

Shooting GeekBrief.TV at the State Fair of TexasSeptember 30

Saturday we’re having a meetup at The Great State Fair of Texas. In addition to the Corney Dogs, Fried Green Tomatoes and (added this year) Chicken Fried Bacon, I’m particularly excited that we’ll be able to shoot some episodes of GeekBrief.TV in a smart home exhibit put together by women engineers called SmartHouse: On the Cutting Edge of Going Green (I’m ignoring the going green nonsense - we’ll focus on efficiency).

Someone tweeted Cali to ask if we would be interested in shooting, and Cali’s first response was to ask for proof that it was a smart home. Last year’s “House of the Future” was a mobile home of last Thursday. It looks like this one might be legit.

Typically, Smart Homes are just glorified showcases put together by huge brands. Don’t get me wrong. The HP Smart Home would be an awesome place to live (if I could bring my Macs), but to me, more diverse technology makes a smart home smarter.

Details about the meetup are here on this post at

Home Theater DesignSeptember 25

There are few things in life I love more than elegant design. Today, I found this room with a view which is part of the Sempachersee Golf Club near Lucerne in Switzerland. The building was designed by Smolenicky & Partner Architektur and the view is of a golf course.

Really great design inspires other ideas. Imagine this room with an electronic movie screen that would drop down to black out the window. It would instantly transform a bright room with a beautiful view into a home theater. I want this room!

via the cool hunter

Neal PolitikSeptember 20

The political part of my heart is unshakable. I don’t believe in political compromise. I believe in political victory. My personal politics is influenced by the grace and love of Jesus and it’s enhanced by the political philosophy of Ronald Reagan. Smaller government is better for the freedom of individuals. That’s what I believe.

My political conversation is going to be at NealPolitik.com. There, I will be raw, truthful and fully focused on blogging on behalf of individual liberty.