Sensationalism

I may have actually posted about this before. It bears repeating though.

I am disgusted and tired of sensationalist journalism. It along with media saturation are why I have almost completely eliminated traditional media from my life. I now almost solely get my news from aggregated sites online such as Google news. I like to get as wide of a variety of news as possible, in as quick to digest of a form, and available when I decide, not on any other schedule.

This article represents most of what I find wrong with the news currently. News is no longer about just reporting events of substance, it is now about filling all available time and senses with anything that can pass for a story.

How is this story relevant to me reading the HawkCentral website at all? Why is the fact that this guy once played for the Hawkeyes years ago even a part of the story? Shouldn't they mention that at one point he used to eat baby food and wear diapers too? I think that is equally relevant. Moreover, why do they need to mention that the injured party was an airman who served in Iraq? Is that any different than if he was a pimp from Oakland? Seriously, the only story here is local policeman potentially used unnecessary force on another local person. It is only relevant to that location, and only to those concerned about their local police force. Nothing more.

Blech, I need more of the tasty Bud Light in the cool aluminum bottle (yes, you read that right) to get the nasty taste of this story out of my mouth.

Childish

Often my blog is far too serious and preachy, you are no doubt saying. Fear not, today you will find none of that.

I decided not long ago (or remembered more likely) that people need to spend time occasionally doing something stupid and pointless, just because it is fun or makes them laugh. That's a necessity.

I have a week off, so here and there I have been doing such things. Yesterday, I made myself a new iPod holder. Nearly everyone else says, "What is the point of that?" I say, "Who cares, it is cool!"

Today I found something even dumber to make me laugh. Here are the steps, in case you are inclined toward silliness like me.

1. Sign up at one of the bajillion free trade magazine sites out there (if you are a member of somewhere like MyPoints, you can actually get points for this as well).
2. When you fill out your address, they will usually ask for an occupation, to be printed on the label. I elected to fill out my occupation as "badass".
3. Laugh every month when your address label on the magazine says "Mrs. Chanandler Bong, Badass". I just guaranteed myself at least one laugh a month in perpetuity...
   

Oh smart phones, why do I hate you so?

It has been said far too many times, but I have expressed dislike for cell phones in the past. Unfortunate in some regards, as I do occaisionally see some value in having one. If I wasn't averse to paying money for them, or if they were cheap enough, I would actually still have one. The problem is that I have complained about some aspects of them often enough that I nearly seem hypocritical if I did.

Crackberrys and other smart phones though, that's pretty much a different story. I still find them to be a useless annoyance dragging people down. Apparantly, I am not alone.

I really want to reach through my monitor and give an ass-whooping to a few of these parents. When, oh when, will that technology be created?

Now, a few of my favorite comments from this story (RTF story first...):

• "His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."
  
  "No. No, no emails are important enough to look at en route. Period.
  Get a life, and pay more attention to things around you instead of work. There's a whole world outside, and your kids mental well being is more important than your job no matter what you might think."
  
  
• "The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men." -- Charles De Gaulle
  
  
• "I suppose kids aren't reading this, but if you are, smash your parent's blackberry. Blackberries are expensive. They might get another one, but after you smash three or four, they won't get more. If their blackberries are issued by their employer, your parent will be fired after you smash two or three. Again, problem solved. Don't be afraid. Your parent my yell at you, make scary faces and noises, and send you to your room. But that's attention, and any attention is better than none. And they'll get over it an a day or two and love you again, without a blackberry."
  
  
• Maybe the best comment of the whole thing (too long to list it here)

I realize bad parenting isn't new, and neither are clueless companies. It does seem like both are increasing lately though. I would like to see an active effort to reduce both.

The Unholy Trinity

One of these things is not like the other...

The unholy trinity I speak of in the title is a combination I stumbled upon tonight with much glee on my part. Apple iTunes COM SDK + JavaScript + Windows Scripting Host. I know, you're probably wondering what the hell kind of medicine I am on, playing with Windows scripting. I had never touched it before tonight either. JavaScript and I have a longterm love/hate relationship as well. I love to swear at it endlessly for its annoyances and lack of ease of debugging, while hating how often it ends up getting the job done for me.

That all said, this combination has just allowed me to do some kick-ass things with iTunes. I had the SDK downloaded for some time, and I wrote some sample C++ apps when I first got it. However, after seeing the Apple JavaScript examples I decided to experiment with them a bit. I'm thoroughly impressed now, similar to Unix shell scripts (although orders of magnitude less powerful), I find that I can just get a task done very quickly, as opposed to writing a full application. Quick and dirty is the key here.

I currently have some scripts to perform some actions I had been meaning to do. Remove any dead tracks from my library, and cleanup bogus comments on some of my tracks. If anyone is interested, I can give them the scripts.

Now, for the challenge. Come up with some task/feature that you would like to do with your iTunes library that you can't quite seem to make happen with playlists. I'll see what I can do about getting it done in a script.

5 of the Now

Here you go, your first holiday five of the now...

Side Two - DJ Ese, Aesop Rock, and Babbletron - Side Two

This was actually a free track that I got somewhere. I don't recall it being the free song of the week from iTunes (go here for keeping track of that BTW), so I think it must have been from when the Apple group on Facebook gave away some songs each week.
Regardless, this has a fantastic hook that sticks in your head. With Aesop Rock on it, how can you go wrong?

Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

At first my intense, burning hatred for Emo would not let me give this a listen. Thankfully, I like to at least give most music a chance. That, coupled with a resounding recommendation from the SO led me to listening and watching the video. These guys are not Emo. They just haven't quite realized that they just plain rock hard, and don't need the mascara.
This song just plain rocks. At times they evoke an image of Queen at their height in the late 70's. Coming from me, that's a resounding recommendation.

(Check out the video too, not as trippy balls as The Fountain, but cool nonetheless)

U + Ur Hand - P!nk - I'm Not Dead

Poor grammar aside, this songs kicks. I had found Pink a bit too mainstream for a while, but with this album, and this song especially, I think she is back in her own niche. This is way too raw and powerful to be classified as pop, but still a bit more polished than rock.
This is again a song where the video got me into the song as much as the music. It turns out having a bajillion channels can be good, MTV Hits actually plays music videos all of the time still.

Pack Up (Remix) - Lyrics Born with KRS-One and Evidence - Same !@#$, Different Day

Lyrics Born is almost too simple of a choice for a 5otn. The guy can do no wrong in my book. I have specifically been giving this track some additional listening lately though. Anyone interested in this better already know who KRS-One is, so I don't need to preach on that.
However, Evidence is the reason I have really included this track. I have picked up a few tracks from Dilated Peoples recently, and they are fantastic. "Neighborhood Watch" is the album I have been liking lately.

My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) - Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps

Reaching back to the classics here. Neil and Crazy Horse blurred the lines between folk and rock, birthing grunge in the process. I got back into this song as part of a pseudo-obsession with tracking down some obscure bootlegs a few weeks ago.
Specifically, there was a version of Daughter by Pearl Jam performed on Saturday Night Live back on April 16, 1994. This version was performed very shortly after the death of Kurt Cobain. Eddie Vedder segwayed from Daughter into "My My, Hey Hey", in a very cool performance (I would post it here, but unfortunately it isn't all that easy to find a live link for it).
Instead, I submit the original from Neil.
To really do this justice, make sure to follow it up with, "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" from the same album. The two songs represent one of the best "bookend" set of songs ever.

Google and Free Phone, How Can I Lose?

I had a nice post brewing about how happy I was with some of the new features in Gmail, but this one couldn't wait.

Courtesy of Lifehacker, Google now gives you the ability in Google Maps to click on a phone number, and have Google automatically hook you up to them for free. Through your phone, regardless of local or long-distance. How sweet is that?

Basically, when you click to call they ask for your phone number, call you, and then connect you to the business in three-way call fashion. No mucking.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how to hack all of my friends in as a "business" so that I can call them all for free (plotting and laughing maniacally...).

"Are you a business?"

The Underwhelming Sound of Zune

At this point Zune has been covered nearly ad-nauseum, and it wasn't even released until today. However, like others, I have some quick thoughts of my own.

I was in Wal-Mart today, and I walked near the digital audio players (DAP for all the cool kids out there) section. I immediately saw one of the new pink iPod nanos, as well as the incredibly cool piece of design that is the new shuffle. I stood there and drooled over the new shuffle, looked over the selection as a whole and then moved on.

Only then, did I realize I had walked right past the Zune display without taking any notice whatsoever. There weren't any big signs, just some small ones that said both Microsoft and Zune. I looked at it, and realized that if it weren't made by Microsoft I never would have even given it a glance. (Somebody please post in the comments the link to the Zune-poo comparison).

Microsoft better hope that their name and the silly music sharing feature are enough. I don't see much else here to make it compete with Creative or iRiver, let alone Apple.

Ride in Style

This is how you should ride to a Hawkeye football victory in style. Click on the picture to go to a gallery with more pictures.



For those interested, this is a 1949 Chevrolet 3600 3/4 ton. It was originally my great-grandfather E.B. Null's truck (Huck to most people, hence the lettering on the tailgate), and my dad recently had it restored. It's a driver, not a showpiece, so it has made it to 2 games for tailgating already this year.

It's pretty cool rolling down the road in a vehicle built in the 40's with absolutely nothing automatic in it. A/C, heater, wipers, power windows, locks, seat belts, radio...yeah we don't need any of those.

Stuff I Didn't Know

Learning is good for you. Yes, it really is, and I try to learn new things as often as possible. Often they tend to be just stupid, simple things that I didn't previously know or understand. The Internet is often my tool of choice to tackle these issues, and that was the case tonight.

Item #1 - What does being an at-will state really mean?
It turns out that my state, like many others, is an at-will employment state. I always pretty much understood that to mean that at any point in time myself or my employer could tell the other to hit the road, with paychecks ceasing. I was not sure however how this all played into severance and potential litigation after a termination. I now know the answer:
http://research.lawyers.com/Iowa/Employment-Law-in-Iowa.html

Item #2 - How do you really distinguish between a muffin and a cupcake?
This question came up during dinner, as we were discussing some tasty insomnia cupcakes I ate at work. I still don't think I really have a satisfactory answer after searching a bit though. I'll go with Shannon's definition of cupcakes having frosting, and muffins not. Here was another guy's take on it (and I like his statement of having a "Seinfeld moment"):
http://calderonline.blogspot.com/2006/10/seinfeld-moment-muffins-vs-cupcakes.html

Apple - You Fail It

I've been sitting on this post for a while, but I needed to get something back out there after taking a little break.

I've talked before (although I can't easily seem to search for where) about how much I want a nicely integrated system update service. All applications could tie into it to update themselves. Very similar to how I think backup should work. Let the system control it all, but each application can register with it, since who better than the app to decide what to backup or update.

Ryan has also said several times how ridiculous it is that due to the lack of this, every app feels the need to bundle their own updater. Apple it turns out is no exception. When iTunes 7 rolled around, Apple created something called Apple Software Update, and included it with iTunes. I groaned, but I thought, "Hey, Apple stuff is generally simple and just works." So, I installed it.

Then, after fixing a ton of bugs in iTunes 7, they released an update. I thought, "awesome, I'll have it automatically thanks to that update package, right?" Wrong. Not even when I tried to use it to check for an updated manually. Check the screen shot. The software updater doesn't have a clue, but iTunes itself prompted me to do the update.




Yep, that was the end of Apple Software Update. Promptly uninstalled.

I hope the next operating system that convinces me it is worthy of being installed finds a way to integrate these services that I want.

Extreme Stupidity

(Click here to skip the background, and go straight to the stupidity)

First, some background. I am not particularly fond of cell phones. I hate when the ring, pretty much always. I hate when people talk on them very loudly, about worthless and mundane topics. I think they are the single biggest contributor to ADD in existence currently. What I really dislike personally though is paying for them.

I had a cell phone for about 4 years in college. I remember being excited to move from my analog to a digital phone. I liked them occasionally. However, I really didn't like paying lots of money, so that people could get a hold of me immediately, rather than waiting until I was near another phone. Sometimes it's actually nice to just disappear for a bit. So, even though I never moved beyond a $25 per month plan, I eventually dropped the phone about 3 years ago, and haven't regretted it since.

People are often amazed that I am able to survive without one. Apparently, generations previous to us were just lucky that they didn't die on a daily basis without a mobile telephone.

Now, to the point. Our friends at one of the plethora of cellular service providers have decided they need to help people out, give back to the community. They have a new deal for those less-fortunate, who somehow can't manage to pay their bills, but absolutely have to have a cell phone (and a satellite, and new sneakers, and...sorry, getting off-topic).

Now, if you already qualify for low-cost utilities or subsidized phone service, they will give you an extra special package. It has 700 minutes, free incoming everything, blah blah blah. All for the low, low cost of $37 per month. $37 per month!!! That's over 1/3 more than the point where I considered my service too expensive to continue. And this is for those who are struggling with money? Bullshit. This is just one more excuse for the cell companies to line their pockets.

However, lest you think all lost, the Hawks won big today. All is now well with the cosmos again.

Hawks 47, Purdue 17

Food Thoughts

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of making this blog too highbrow or intellectual. I try to make it as thoughtful as possible usually, but that's not the case at all today.

Today we start with food. BBQ is pretty much my favorite, so let's start there. I tried out a new place called BBQ This! in Cedar Rapids on Thursday. Very good stuff. A little more money than your standard fast-food lunch, but well worth it. Large portions of tasty meat, and the two sides that I got were both very well-portioned. The apple crisp as a side is awesome. I was especially impressed that they keep all 4 of their BBQ sauces heated. Classy.

Last night, we ate at Old Chicago, a perennial favorite. Since nobody else was getting pizza, I went with a sandwich instead. They had a new Chipotle Pulled Pork sandwich, so I tried that. Freaking incredible. Maybe the best sandwich I have eaten anywhere. Plus, we had a cool waiter who told me that even though they aren't on the menu, he could make some Jamaican Jerk fries for my side. Those were extremely good too. At first it just added a bit of spice, but after eating a few the jerk flavor was very obvious. I love finding one-off menu items like that.

Finally, from the dislike side, I learned today that I don't just slightly hate Walnuts, I thoroughly hate them. We have some new oatmeal that is raisin, date, and walnut. Upon making it I was nearly sick from the walnut smell. It has continued to piss me off the rest of the day smelling it in the kitchen. I always knew I didn't like them, but I never realized just how nasty I find that smell.

There, your food blog of the day. Eat your heart out Rachel Ray.

Change of Perspective

Without getting too deep, I have been pondering lately how drastically one's perspective on something can change over time. I'll keep it simple with one example.

I used to love building computers. Everything about it. I kept up-to-date on all of the components that were out there, knew their specs by heart, and pretty much knew the best price on anything at any time.

Those days are long past. I no longer give a rip. I want my computer to work, I don't want to touch it, and I pretty much have one that is just "good enough." Until iTunes 7 came out that is, and suddenly I found my machine lacking.

Those who watch this blog saw me love iTunes 7, but also rant about it. However, I never even blogged about my biggest disappointment. After seeing how sweet cover flow looked, I couldn't wait to use it at home. However, I was instead greeted by this message when I enabled cover flow at home: "iTunes is unable to display artwork on this computer." Huh? Why? Talk about a worthless error message.

I immediately hypothesized that my last than fantastic Rage XL graphics card simply wasn't up to the task. A bit of searching on some forums pretty much proved me right. Thus, I was in need of a graphics card. I really didn't care though, and didn't want to spend time researching it. Once again, I really just wanted to be able to click the "good enough" graphics card button on Amazon or something. In the end, I went to eBay, narrowed the list by a few features I actually knew that I wanted, and bought one. Radeon 9250 it turns out, don't really care about the specs, they are good enough, and met the most important criteria, my price point of $30.

Now, I have cover flow goodness. Sweet. Now, lest I forget:

Hawks 24, Worthless Illini 7. Go Hawks.
I'll see all the cool folks under the lights at Kinnick next week.

All is Right With the Cosmos

Normally I tack this onto another post, but this one doesn't need one.

Yesterday was a good day. I got to go to my first Hawkeye home football game. I got to check out the very nicely updated Kinnick Stadium, and vastly appreciated the increased butt room.

Hung out in the parking lots ahead of time, good brews, good folks. I often forget how much energy and craziness college kids have, and it's a good reminder to see it sometimes.

I then watched a great game play out as it should. My "Beat State" shirt was still able to be worn after the game. It's all good.

Hawks 27 Clones 17

Mellow

Okay, my last post may have come across harsh on iTunes 7. That is far from how I actually feel. I was impressed with this the second I saw it, and now I am thoroughly amazed. They hit nearly every feature we were hoping to get added.

1. Burn with CD-Text - Yes
2. Kick-ass view artwork display, similar to delicious library - Yes
3. Album art for all music, free - Yes
4. Backup music library to CD, full or incremental - Yes
5. Automatic ipod updating within iTunes, not a seperate app - Yes
6. Automatic iTunes updating (is this a good thing? Oh well.) - Yes

I don't like that you still can't export a playlist to M3U format, but oh well. Very cool overall Apple.

Battle Hymn

iTunes 7 came out today. It rocks hard, very cool all around, couple this with a lower priced iTV, and things are looking good on the Apple front. I don't think I need any more explanation of all of this, as the geek sites should have it more than covered. However, there is one little caveat, Apple has now phased out anything prior to 6.x buying from the music store.

This eliminates my current workaround for being locked into DRM, using iTunes 5 with Jhymn. Sucko. The only saving grace is that iTunes 6 recently had a workaround created, and iTunes 6 is still allowed to purchase songs, even if you use that account with iTunes 7. So, I do believe I will use iTunes 7 on my main machine because it rocks, and keep a virtual PC image with iTunes 6 and purchase/un-DRM over there. Cumbersome, but necessary for the time being.

Here is a quoted block from the forums over on the Jhymn site explaining this:

Ok, here are my final results of testing iTunes version. I have three machines:

1) XP with iTunes 5.0.1.4
2) XP with iTunes 6.0.5.20
3) Macbook with iTunes 7.0

When I tried to "purchase" (free song of the week) a song with iTunes 5 and an account created with itunes 5 it told me I need to upgrade. Apple must have phased out 5.0 completely with the changes made today.

I was able to download the free song using iTunes 6 no problem.

I created a new account on my macbook with iTunes 7.0. I was then able to use that account in the windows version of iTunes 6 to download the free song.

Conclusion: Thankfully, using iTunes 7.0 does not stop you from using iTunes 6 on another computer. However, I wouldn't recommend upgrading to iTunes 7 unless you know what you're doing. It may be hard to go back to iTunes 6 on the same machine once you've upgraded."

5 of the Beat

More music for you. This time, it's pretty much an assortment of rock with some kick to it, great stuff.

Dick Dale and His Del-Tones - Dick Dale and His Del-Tones: Greatest Hits 1961-1976 - Misirlou

Killer guitar line. Maybe one of the best ever. Probably the only song in my collection that started in the 30's as a middle-eastern wedding dance song. Dick Dale demonstrates that he can do more with one string of a guitar than most people do with 4-6. Yes, you probably know this best from "Pulp Fiction." I hope you don't only know it from the Black Eyed Peas song: "Push It."

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love - Little Wing
I actually wanted to give you the Stevie Ray Vaughn version of this here, but of course, iTunes doesn't have him in the catalog :-( Stevie gives it just a little bit more kick than even the original. In either case, your productivity will instantly change. You will either kick into high gear while grooving out to this, or you will stop everything as you sit back and chill to it.

Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists - Land of Confusion

You wouldn't normally expect a Genesis song to make it onto an upbeat rock list (at least I wouldn't). I also wouldn't have expected to have liked so many rock covers of their songs in the past few years. First Nonpoint and now this. Great remake.

Kanye West - The College Dropout - Jesus Walks

I know, this is rap, not rock you're thinking. So? I've been grooving out to it lately and it had to make the list. I didn't like Kanye at first, but I really dig his stuff now. If you're looking for G's and Hustla's and Ho's, this ain't it. Check out his "Late Orchestration" CD for some really good live performances.

T.Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection - 20th Century Boy

Once again, disappointed by the iTMS. This is one of the top guitar licks of all time, by a group that has been influencing rock bands since "The Who". Nowhere to be found. Amazon to the rescue.

Okay, I know that was 5, but I need to add a 6th. I just recently picked up a single that I saw as a kid. It is the "Ruined by Rick Rubin" remixes of Queen's "We are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You." Hard to come by this single anymore. I'm going to bring it to work and let Ryan have a listen.

You've got your tongue in where?

This is probably the best self-help tutorial I have ever read. Unfortunately, I have to work with several of these bottom-feeders, some of whom live under a rock.

My personal favorite: "Try smoking some crack to ease your pain."

Brain Block

I like to include this as part of another post, but I'm truly drawing a blank today.

Anyway, Hawks win again. It was bit ugly, but you can't fault a D-line that can stop 7 straight plays from within their own 3. Big East meets Midwest Muscle and gets smacked down. Apparently the game has changed since I played as well. Now, it seems if you are a defensive back, you are no longer allowed to even breathe on the guy before he gets the ball.

Come November, this game will simply be a "W", it won't matter how ugly and close it was.

Double Shots

A simple, silly post for the night. I was chilling out to channel 49 (Big Tracks) on XM radio today, which is good rock from the 70's and 80's, and they happened to be playing Queen - We Will Rock You. So, the second it is over, of course I my ears immediately expect to hear "We are the Champions", and as expected, they play it.

Since I was driving home and had plenty of time to think, I started trying to list in my head all of the other "double shots" that exist in rock music. Songs that radio has decided long ago will always be grouped and played together. I didn't come up with a huge list, but I decided to go ahead and make an iMix of them nonetheless.

iTunes did not have everything I needed however, so here is an XML export of the actual song list.

The mix itself lives here.

I went searching for more online information about doubled songs. The best I could do was this link from good old Snopes. It did point out a very obvious one of Foreplay/Long Time by Boston that I should have included. So, who out there has some others I should list?

New Hotness

I tried out the new Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 tonight. Very slick. At least 5 extensions I used to need are now rolled into the software. Most other extensions were ready for 2.0 and worked immediately. I have yet to have any problems with it, very solid.

I researched a bit for Ryan, and found that SVG animations are not slated to arrive until Firefox 3. However, I was reading up a bit on SVG, and not only found a really good resource, but some tricks to do SVG animation with Javascript. Check this page out for some good SVG information.

What is old is new again

First, a quick update on my last post. I have IE7 installed. It looks a bit more like Firefox, I like the integrated RSS renderer and feed handling, and they did at least try to address some security concerns. However, it is still just IE. There is just no way I can go back anymore, I like my Firefox, and especially the customizations I can get courtesy of Extensions and Greasemonkey too much.

Moving on to music. Quick, when was the first rap song made? Okay, how about the first explicit rap song? No, n00bs, Kanye West and Jay-Z did not invent rap. However, I would have been way off base myself. I would not have guessed back in 1965 we had someone dropping the funky beats, in a very explicit manner, but it happened. Moreover, iTunes actually carries it: "Rap Dirty" by Blowfly. Give it a listen, I was amused/impressed.

More on music. I had heard of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in the past, and always showed no interest as it was primarily jam bands like Phish, who I like to listen to, but pretty much ignore. Who of all groups should happen to be at this year's event though? Blackalicious. That would have been awesome to see (especially if they had happened to bring along Lyrics Born...).

UPDATE: iTunes link fixed. I have also finished adding labels to all of my posts for 2006. Eventually I may tackle 2005 as well.

Cornocopia

Today is the day to dive into new, untested waters, and I'm throwing it all into one post.

This is my first post using the new, integrated blogger stuff. I switched my account over to the new beta site today. It's not quite perfect yet, and you'll notice a few things are missing on the blog front right now, but I have been pushing them to do this for so long I thought it would be hypocritical not to use it immediately.

I like it all for the most part. There is still a bit too much original Blogger lingering around, that I want to see eradicated by Google. I really like that I now simply use a Google account, there is no longer a separate Blogger account. The new template stuff is really nice, it borrows the nice aspects of Google Pages, but I still find it pretty extensible. Could use some more work still, but very much a step in the right direction.

I really like that they added label support for posts. I had some 3rd party label stuff I was going to integrate, but of course I never got around to it. This makes it easier.

I also today decided to take the plunge and install IE7 RC on my machine. This isn't all that big of a deal, as I only use IE for Windows Update now, but I thought I would check it out. To be fair, I also downloaded Firefox 2.0 beta, and plan to install that also. I know, I usually just want my software to work, and don't want to be futzing with it. Oh well, I was just on a kick today I guess. I'll have to post my thoughts on the two browsers after I use them a bit.

The Hawks won today. I hope to repeat that statement many times through January.


Oh man. The spellchecking on Blogger kicks butt now. About time.

Cleaning Out My Closet

Actually, my inbox.

Google as part of their new support for sending voicemails to people via Google Talk, created a very slick inline MP3 player that they use in Gmail. This led some enterprising individuals to find how to link that from any other site, and then of course the creation of a Greasemonkey script to do it automatically. Adam at Lifehacker actually created this script.

Now, something you wouldn't have heard 5 years ago. There is a freeware app that is available on Mac, but not Windows that I really want. Google has had the Gmail notifier for quite some time, but now on Mac only, they have the Google Notifier. This handles calendar as well as email notifications. The page links off to the Gmail notifier for Windows, but there is no Google Notifier available for that platform. Damn! Oh well, I need multiple Gmail profile support, so I will probably stick with Gmail Manager and Google Calendar Notifier extensions for Firefox.

One of These Days

The title of this post has a nice duality to it. It happens to be the Pink Floyd song I am chilling with at the moment. It also happens to be a phrase I could probably be heard muttering often lately, followed by either a string of obscenities or shaking my fist.

The target of this dislike/annoyance is customer service, or disservice has it seems to have degenerated into anymore. Companies are simply pathetic at how they deal with the people who keep them around by giving them their money.

We'll ignore pure ineptness, like my former cable company who saw perfectly fit to cancel my service when I moved, but couldn't bring themselves to turn off my automatic payment. (Yay, free money! I wish I had a business model like that). Instead, we'll focus on what it takes to get results when calling a company such as this.

Generally, if you call up and are well-mannered, state your case, and try not to spread anymore angst or hate because you feel there is enough in the world already -- you will get absolutely nowhere. Often ending up with the famous, "I'm sorry, there just really isn't anything I can do." Apathy is less-than-appealing to me.

However, call up, act like an a-hole, threaten to quit, play some Pussycat Dolls at high volume (The lack of talent, it burns!!!), and you'll get things done. Why have companies made this the new way to get things done? It's just plain pathetic in many cases. You can get a person on the phone claiming nothing can be done, that's just company policy. However, call later, threaten to quit, yell about how horrible the company is, and just plain act like a nuisance, and they will magically find a way to make it happen. This isn't reserved for on the phone either, I have witnessed retail establishments where screaming idiots in the store are getting all of the attention and service, while those are politely give their patronage are left with no service. Horribly and completely backward.

I have been advised by people in some situations that I should be more forceful, and create more of an uproar (not often, but sometimes). I tell people that I don't want to propagate anymore of this broken system. The sad fact is that when push comes to shove and I need something to get done, I have to go right back to being nasty. I feel better though that I am at least not just immediately going there.

I like it much better actually, although it is still whack, when complete indifference leads companies to try harder. Call up Discover Card and ask for a better interest rate, no payments for a month, on 1% additional cash back. You won't get any I'm guessing. However, call up to cancel, and have no intention of keeping the card, and they will throw all 3 your way at once. Repeatedly.

Well, Alan Jackson is on my iTunes now, so I'm mellowing out again. Keep your kids away from dirty,dirty slores who are nearly 30 but refuse to grow up (even when they have growing kids of their own), and everything will be good. Peace.

Just Go With It

I tried to resist it for a long time. I critiqued, I avoided, I was mostly perplexed at it all, but in the end, I became a MySpace user.

I had an account login for quite some time. I'm assuming MyPoints or somebody gave me points/money/karma for signing up, but I had never actually even filled in any information about myself on it.

I blame Ryan, among others for me slipping into the grip. Ryan points out this killer mix from Stone Lions, and we ordered a pressed copy of it. To do so, I had to contact them via their MySpace page (you really do need to check them out).

While there, I decided I would just fill in the schools portion of my profile, in case a former classmate wanted to find me or something. Well, one did almost immediately and sent me a message. While checking if my CD had shipped, I went and read the message. She said I should fill out more of my profile, so I did. Then of course I started browsing around, added some friends, and the tailspin begins...

I'm still amazed that MySpace of all places won the social networking battle for people. Their interface and site really are pretty primitive. However, the value of this type of site really lies in the number of people, and they have that.

Now, hopefully you've made it this far. I actually found a pretty cool group on MySpace just yesterday. They happen to be Hip-Hop, and they just so happen to be from Cedar Rapids also. Good stuff from what I have heard thus far, check them out: http://www.myspace.com/beeinz.

Free (as in Ski)

I need something fun and frivolous. This will do.

I hope this needs no introduction. I hope that you had SkiFree on a Win 3.1 box back in the day. You loved the cheesiness, you really loved the abominable snowman that would come eat you. Yes, silly game goodness.

I happened to stumble onto the page for the game the other day. It turns out the guy was a Microsoft guy who basically wrote this as a side project. He retained rights to change the code, so he has built some new versions that work better with WinXP and such. Sweet!

5 of the Eclectic

Some new tunes for you. In this case, most are not new at all. This is a very odd assortment, but it's what I have been enjoying so I thought I would share. Expand your horizons a bit.

Gary Allan - Tough All Over - Life Ain't Always Beautiful

Amazing song, and very obvious the tragedy he has gone through in the last year while listening to this.

Kenny Chesney - When the Sun Goes Down - Anything but Mine

I hate Kenny Chesney. So, why do I have one of his songs in here? Because he somehow got everything right on this one.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin 1 - Dazed and Confused
THE shit. You want to hear how Rock and Roll, true guitar rock was created? Check this out. Killer bass line, screaming guitars, Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones. Nothing more needs to be said.

Harvey Danger - Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? - Flagpole Sitta
A wacky fun song from back in my college days. Still good stuff even if he dropped off the face of the planet after this.

Alex Kapranos, Barrington Levy, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien & Handsome Boy Modeling School - White People - The World's Gone Mad

Automator, possibly at his finest. All of his work, especially that with Handsome Boy Modeling School is incredible. Throw in Del, and it's off the charts. Thanks to Ryan for hooking me up with this orginally.

As usual, I was annoyed when I found a song that wasn't available from iTunes when creating this post. I really want to go there for one-stop shopping. Harvey Danger, I can see maybe having a problem getting licensed. Zeppelin? Fix that now Apple, that's just sad. I'm assuming in that case it is a band issue, much like the Beatles and Radiohead, but Jobs and crew just need to work harder (IMO).

NSFW - Nope, don't go there.

A fellow co-worker and blogger pointed out what I think is a rather cool product and website last week.

I now have found the perfect complementary accessory for it. Go here when you are at home, not work, and check it out.

Services, Slick Integration, Score

Somebody started a discussion a while back about how blogs and communities online are not as nicely integrated and connected as they should be. Most places end up being the equivalent of the message board at the local supermarket. Things are posted, glanced at once, and then forgotten until they are completely irrelevant. There isn't much interaction or useful conversation, if any at all.

Lifehacker, that wealth of knowledge, has talked about coComment before as a way to solve some of these issues. I thought it sounded interesting, but still took more effort than I was willing to expend to even check out the site. However, today they throw in the magic words "Firefox extension", so now I have to check it out.

Basically coComment is a way to centrally track the various blogs and conversations that you have interacted with. Now, with the extension, Firefox can even let you know that there is new activity on a conversation in which you have participated. When you post on a supported blog, you can say "track this", and even tag it to create categories of conversations. All very slick.

The Firefox extension is well-written, looks nice, and just plain works. You don't use Firefox all the time and can't make use of this? Wow, how do you keep from the monsters in the closet eating you every night? Go download it and save yourself. Quick.

You don't really care about any of this, think Internet conversations are dumb, and just want things to stay as they are? Go back under your rock.

Testing. I'm in beta, watch out!

I mostly despise computers. Really, I do. I like using them as tools, I do it all day long for work, and often far too much at home. However, I don't actually like mucking around with them anymore.

Case in point, I started reinstalling my main machine last night. Too many years, too many odd things, have made it start to act funny. Plus, I wanted to upgrade a drive in it anyway. Man, I hate reinstalling.

However, despite all that, sometimes I like trying out new, silly software. Today's silly software is a piece of blogging software by none other than Microsoft. I really should find out some day how some of these little side projects actually get released as a Microsoft product. I know how hard it is for me to get a company product released, I'm not sure how they let these slip through.

Anyway, just announced today is a beta of something they call Windows Live Writer. It is of course aimed at their new Live site. However, they have nicely included support for other blogs. Not just for posting either, using the crappy Blogger API they were actually able to pull down my previous posts, and my visual style.

Now, rather than using the horrendous Blogger web interface (Google, you're sleeping at the wheel, yo), I can use a familiar interface. Supposedly this may be a small foreshadowing of the Blog support to be included in Word 2007. I really don't care, I just hope it doesn't have the standard Word annoyances, thus far it hasn't.

Oh, did I mention that now the spell check uses your system dictionary, so all that stuff you have taught it in Word or Outlook is still there. Nice. Plus it actually saves drafts for me, rather than eating them.

Well, if you are reading this, I believe this program has accomplished all that I wanted from it. I'm pleased.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the app. Also, here is a review that has already been written, linked from UneasySilence.

...and a screenshot for Ryan:

Sweet Interoperable Goodness

I've expounded before about my interest in Google Calendar, and how useful I find it (probably to a level that borders on fanboy). So, when I went to setup the next installment of the CRAPT (our occasional rotating poker game), I knew I wanted to involve calendar.

I started with an old invite in my Gmail account, so that I could just copy and paste for the new event. Then, I clicked the "Add Event Info" link in Gmail. However, it didn't allow me to enter everything I needed, so I clicked the additional options button and ended up on a calendar event form instead. I found all of this a bit confusing, and it took me a couple of times before I had it right. Next time, I will cut out the middle man, and just start in Google Calendar.

Once it was all done though, I was pretty happy with the result. I had the list of all invitees in the event for all to see, and I could now sit back and receive accepted or declined invitations, and see updated status on my calendar.

However, I was truly amazed at how well this all worked with Microsoft Outlook. I have quit using Outlook except at work, however my wife still uses it. I had sent her an invitation partly to get her on the list, and partly to see how an invite looked in something other than Gmail. Here is how the invitation looked to her in Outlook:

Note a couple of things of interest. First, you'll see that upon accepting the invitation it correctly got added to her calendar. Simple sure, but I was still amazed. Of course, once it was in the calendar, it could be treated like any other Outlook calendar event, forwarded on (as in the screenshot) and so forth.

The thing that really blew my mind though was that she didn't even have to click the yes/no/maybe hyperlinks at the bottom. The actual Outlook Accept/Decline buttons correctly added it to the calendar, updated the Google Calendar and notified me by email.

All in all, score one finally for interoperability. I expected this out of something like iCal, which uses the iCalendar format natively, but not out of Outlook. Very promising.

Best Buy It

Just in case Blogger decides to eat my post again, I'll keep this short.

While reading the Sunday edition of what passes for journalism, I thumbed through this week's Best Buy ad. There are some pretty sweet deals on CD's for this week. Several for $8, and other good ones for $10.

I would highly recommend that those with a rock tendancy go buy the Hinder CD for $8. I got it off iTunes just recently (not sure why I didn't have it before) and it rocks. The two hits thus far, "Get Stoned" and "Lips of an Angel" are fantastic, but the rest of the CD is good also.

Yes, some might classify this as Nu-Metal and run away. Bah. To Led Zeppelin, everything is Nu-Metal, so quit your preaching.

Shine on You Crazy Diamond

Syd Barrett died. I had a long post about it, it was open on my screen at least 20 minutes. Blogger ate it. Where is that magical save a draft feature when I actually need it? Grr.

Read Google News instead I guess to learn about it.

Buy these Floyd albums, it's good for ya:
Dark Side of the Moon
Wish You Where Here
The Division Bell

5 of the Weekend

Time for an update on tunes I have been listening to recently.

1. George Harrison - What Is Life: This song was stuck in my head ever since the Sheryl Crow concert I went to last week. It is the song she plays right before she begins, after the volume is cranked up, on this tour. Many thanks to the people on the forum for kicking me into remembering who sang it. Killer guitar riff if it doesn't do anything else for you.

2. Julien Civange and Louis Haeri - Lalala: This was actually one of the free iTunes tracks a while back, and I finally got to listen to it. Fantastic rock instrumental, I could have sworn I was listening to The Who.

3. Rascal Flatts - Life Is A Highway: This is from the Cars soundtrack. It also happens to be a remake of one of my absolute favorite tracks of all time, and a track that just so happened to be on the first CD I ever purchased. This is a spot-on remake, and it appears in a perfect portion of the movie.

4. Panic! At the Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies: Thanks to Blender and others, this group has become much more popular than I anticipated. I find this track very quirky and cool, just beware that it may become overplayed.

5. Handsome Boy Modeling School Feat. Del The Funky Homosapien, Barrington Levy & Alex Kapranos - The World's Gone Mad: This is off an album that Ryan let me listen to on Friday named White People. Fantastic stuff, and this immediately jumped to my short list since it was a Del track I hadn't heard before. Dan the Automator wrote and produced nearly every song on the album, so if you know who he is, that should be sufficient.

(Sorry, no iTunes links on any of these. My iTunes, although I can still purchase songs and listen to my library, will no longer let me search through the music store. It just dies. I'm not reinstalling though, so tough.

The Wasteful and Excessive Department

I thought this was a joke when I first read it. Directv today came out with their latest satellite TV package, the Titanium package. It is $7500 per year. No, I didn't stutter, you heard me, $7500 freaking dollars a year for television.

Why would you pay that much? Apparently so that you can have every single possible channel, all of the time, including all the porn you can eat (hope that didn't make you sick). You just know this will be the latest killer item to have on MTV cribs. "Yo, I got ma tiiitaaanium package right herrrr".

Groan...

Sheryl Crow Kicked My Ass

No, not literally. Although she did talk about jogging/riding on the Cedar Valley Trail, so she is probably in better shape then me too. We went to see her in a makeup concert Saturday night in Cedar Rapids.

Whether you like her music or not, I really don't care. I have liked it from her first CD, and I do now also. I had been a bit down at first on her latest album, but I realized more recently that like many others out there now, you have to just ignore the over-played radio junk, and find the gems on the rest of the CD.

After the concert, I find that even more true. All of the songs she did from "Wildflowers" were awesome, as were all the rest that she did. Her first set before the encore was very long, which was refreshing. She ended up doing over 2 hours, and multiple songs from all of her albums except "Cmon Cmon" before the encore. This also included her new song featured in the opening for the movie Cars (which I mentioned that I saw today in my last post). Excellent song, and it fits the movie perfectly, although I really thought for sure that "Steve McQueen" would have been used -- I guess it was too obvious.

Having seen her 2 other times, this time was hands down my favorite. It helped that we had fantastic seats. It also helped that this was a very rocking, up-tempo show, which I prefer, and the song balance was nearly perfect. She ended the show with a rendition of "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin that was freaking amazing. Between her and the guitar player, you would have thought that Page and Plant were onstage themselves, it was very cool.

The thing that impressed me the most this time though was her wide range of musical skills. She has pipes to go up against any other singer out there, I already knew that. I also knew that she played bass herself on her entire 3rd album, and she did often during the show. That alone just blows me away. However, she also played harmonica on several tracks, piano, lead guitar, and acoustic. Almost all while also singing like mad.

All of this just made me feel pathetic for not even being able to play the bass by itself well. I can write networking drivers, create protocols, and design whole computer platforms in my sleep (sometimes literally). Does anybody get excited by this when I tell them? Not really. When they find out that I play the bass (badly) though, they are always very interested. Sad. I know that this guy is interested in coding and playing bass though, so I'm not the only one with that mix at least. Need to find more time to practice...

Last note. If you play a synthesizer, you are not cool. Your instrument sucked in the 80s, and it still sucks today. Go home.

Father's Day in Reverse

Today was Father's Day. Most of you knew that, some might not have, since it doesn't have nearly the push of other Hallmark holidays. It did seem to me that it was a bit more publicized this year than others though, or maybe I was just paying more attention.

In any case, what I did today would seem odd to many. The stereotypical day is doing something that dad wants, or letting him sleep in and watch TV, etc. Instead, I spent my day working on the family vehicle (because I had to, not because I wanted to), painting the kids playset, and then taking them to their favorite pizza place, and finally to a movie they had been wanting to see (Cars).

Yes, I also love Happy Joe's, and I wanted to see Cars as well. However, it was still essentially a day of getting things done for the kids. I thought about this a bit and wondered why that would surprise anyone. Why shouldn't the day also be about helping out the kids, and doing things that both enjoy. That seems to make the most sense of all to me.

Cars is definitely another hit for Pixar also. Especially for a car/race lover like me. As I was properly warned, make sure to stay for the credits, they may actually be the best part of the movie.

Pictures of some hot, backdoor action

...of my hatrack.

Picture pages, pictures pages, lots of fun with pictures pages

Just thought I would post some pictures of some goofy looking people from the class of 1996. Hollaback.

Something stupid (but funny) for your memorial day

I wish I had something of substance to write, but I don't. Instead, check out this uneasysilence post about stupid warnings included with Sony laptops. You need to read the explanations to make it even better.

Opt-In

It's late, I'll keep this one short and simple.

Why do I need to receive 3 dead-tree versions of the phone book every year? Better yet, let me ask this, why do I need any? Google can find pretty much anything, if not, I can probably find it online somewhere else such as the dreaded QwestDex. I don't need this fat books duplicated and sitting on my shelves anymore.

Thus, I figured I would hop online and find how to stop receiving them. Turns out that isn't really easy to do yet though. This group is trying to get it done, but they really haven't gotten anywhere yet.

I do like their push to make it opt-in, rather than opt-out though. This is how everything should be. Don't assume you have my implicit permission, come and ask for it, or wait for me to ask you. Opt-out is only slightly better than having no choice at all.

In the meantime, if someone knows a trick to kill off some of these phone books, let me know.

Lists

I've always been a list type of guys (and piles). My method for remembering and organizing things falls into those categories. I create piles sorted by where things need to go, or what needs to be done. These usually are just short-lived, but have been known to stay around longer than they probably should.

When I need to actually keep track of things to do though, I make extensive use of lists. They lists have taken numerous forms over the years. Pieces of paper, written on the back of my hand, in a text file on a computer, on a web page on my computer, etc. Paper is where I almost always end up at again though, although usually accompanied by at least one list as well.

Recently, my number of things to do has increased exponentially, while my time to do any of them has decreased to almost nothing. This led me to having far too many lists. Being a lifehacker reader, I realized I needed to find a way to let technology help me solve this.

An online list program would solve many of my problems. I could have a single list, in one location, that I could reference and work on from anywhere. It could be dynamic by being computerized, and perhaps I could even find some cool software that helped me in other ways I had not yet foreseen. After a very brief bit of searching, I determined that remember the milk had all of the features I wanted, and had a very nice user-interface.

So far, I am incredibly impressed with the ease-of-use, and the ways that I am finding to group my data to make it simpler to digest. I knew for certain that I was in the right place though when I added my first todo item to my personal list. I had an item that needed to be done by tomorrow. So, when it asked for a due date, I typed "tomorrow". Lo and behold, the software actually translated it into tomorrow's date. Freaking fantastic.

So, how does everyone else out there keep track of all of this crap, and have you come up with any other interesting tips or tricks?

Q: The opposite of Microsoft Derivation?

For nerds at least, the answer would be Google Integration (okay, it's a stretch, and barely qualifies as funny, too bad, I liked it).

Google today rolled out yet another pretty slick feature by allowing pictures to be added to contacts in gmail. That alone sounds kind of cool (not on my account yet, can't say for sure). Something new they have added that I haven't seen done before is the ability to suggest a new photo for people in your contacts to use. Just imagine the great conversations that could spawn: "Hey, Suzie, you should use this upskirt shot I have of you from last night at the bar".

Anyway, all of this leads me to a topic I meant to discuss some time ago. These features and apps that Google are writing are often nice (yesterday's announcements: trends, co-op, and desktop4 do not fall into this category). However, most of their new releases are simple incremental things, or stuff I find less than useful.

Instead of looking for new things, I would really like to see them do nothing but focus on integrating and tying together their existing services. I should have a single Google account, with varied levels of services and privileges. Why the hell should Blogger have its own login, or a separate publishing space even for that matter? Same goes for AdSense. The idea of a gmail account needs to go away, replaced by a generic Google account. That way, when something sweet like Calendar comes out, I don't have to tell people they need a Gmail account and have them stare at me like something out of V. Instead, I tell them they need a Google account. They nod their head and go, "Yeah, I like that search engine. I think I will."

There are some really killer integrations that a few of us have thought up. Imagine if Talk and Calendar were fully connected. When you were in talk and someone had a status of busy, you could hover over and see exactly what they were doing from their calendar, or at the very least how long they would be doing it (ceiling cat, you know what I'm talkin' about). Things discussed in chats, such as events, could be turned into appointments and added to Calendar just like that.

How about this, integrate Blogger, make it look like Google instead of ass, and instead of making templates something no mere mortal should try to create, use that simplified new Google Pages template creator to make the site.

Here's my favorite that I just came up with. All replies to my blog posts should be dropped right into my gmail account as well, as an unread, labeled thread. Then, when I reply to them, my comments can go directly back to the blog. Drooool.

Basically, I think Google has compiled enough good apps for now, but they could really make them unbeatable and draw in many more if they just spent the time to create some synergy out of what they have (yes, I used a marketing buzzword just now, but I used it correctly, so meh).

My Hat Rack is Coming Along Nicely

ClearChannel, I Salute You!!

I salute you for sucking so severely, I'm amazed that physical properties of the universe have not caused you to implode on yourself. I must really have been sleeping in my Physics lectures in college, because I thought sucking that much would create a vacuum that nothing could escape.

Where does the hatred for the c-squared come from? Years of annoyance actually.

1. Buying up all cool local radio stations and turning them into corporate schlock playing whatever artists had enough payola to make it happen.
2. Censoring songs because you know what the American public should be allowed to hear. Similar to only playing songs we should hear as in #1. Whether true or not, creating a list of songs that were no longer kosher to be played after 9/11.
3. Now, the best of all, forcing commercials down the throat of XM, a service that has boldly stuck to the subscription vs. ad-sponsored format on music channels until now.

Some background information on this. ClearChannel was one of the backers of the fledgling XM satellite radio company as it was trying to get off the ground. Likely to make sure that if it started cutting into their terrestrial schlock profits, they could find a way to either capitalize or kill it. It appears they are aiming for the latter. XM has fought it as much as possible, but they are forced to allow ClearChannel to have 4 (or 5 depending on where you read) channels where they can completely control the programming, including sticking commercials on there.

I hate commercials. I can't stress that enough. That is probably the single biggest selling point of XM for me. This is just plain evil. The other portion of XM that I really like is the artist info, similar to RDS. The ClearChannel channels (at least as of today) do not have this information either. Boom, you've pretty much just killed everything I like about XM.

Now, the good news at least is that XM is doing as much as possible to minimize this evil. They have created 4 new channels that are essentially exactly the same programming that formerly was on the ClearChannel channels. These will be commercial-free. The ClearChannel channels now carry a nice little "cm" after them to indicate commercials, much like an "xl" signifies explicit language. In the published channel guide, these channels are now grouped over with talk radio channels as well.

So, all I am really wanting now is a way to delete channels from my XM dial, similar to my TV set. I could delete some entire groupings/genres that I care nothing about, one of them being the ClearChannel stations.

SWEET, SWEET, SWEET! I just found out that I can block them from my entire subscription. I'm doing this as soon as I get home tonight. Also, until I tried to find the links for this post, I had no idea how many sites were dedicated to discussing how ClearChannel sucks. Rock On.

Cool, self-contained solution

I like when people create easy, self-contained solutions to problems that I hear people ask about all the time. In this case, the problem is getting old record albums converted to digital.

The solution in this case, is a turntable with built-in USB recording capability, and some included software. Yeah, the quality probably isn't all that great, but neither are most people's 30 year old albums that have been sitting stacked, in a dark basement for 20 years.

$130 or so from Amazon, and the problem is solved.

Google - So Hot Right Now?

I absolutely love Google Calendar. I can't state that enough. They truly scored as cool of an app as Gmail. I will follow-up later tonight with a Google Integration post.

However, just as I think they are completely back in the cool department, they release Google Sketch. Go to http://sketchup.google.com [Link Fixed] if you don't believe me.

I downloaded it, but I haven't run it yet. Looks like any other of the free 3D software I have tried. It might be just fine.

However, why is Google releasing 3D software? Yes, I know Google Earth is basically 3D software, but that still fit in as a service, plus they got it by buying some other company. Where did this come from, and where does the breadth of Google begin and end?

30 Boxes, we hardly knew ye

RIP 30boxes. I was really digging using this, and I have gotten a lot of good use out of having an online calendar; however, things have changed.

No, I'm not ditching the online calendar, it has just been done much, much better. Google calendar is now officially in beta (which is the same as saying release for the rest of the world). I've been a bit down on Google lately, because I even though I can't live without gmail anymore, their more recent releases have not impressed me a bit. Calendar is every bit as good as gmail though.

Everything I liked about 30boxes is still there. The interface is as good as I think it could be, everything is easy to find and navigate. I love that you can select either the quick event add, or a more detailed one. Coolest of all, they implemented the feature that we said they absolutely needed. Gmail will now prompt you if a message appears to have an event in it, and you can add it to your calendar. Integration at its finest.

Calendar sharing and delegating is retained, and RSS feeds are available, something I found very useful with 30boxes. Popup reminders are included, which 30boxes did not offer.

The last thing to find out is what type of iCalendar support is included. Overall though, I see Google having the killer calendar/email integration for me.


Some quick updates:
It looks like for now iCal importing is limited to a standard browse and upload form. This could be done a little smoother. Not sure if there is anyway currently to use a website's iCalendar file without first saving it offline.

Not really a calendar issue, but there needs to be a Calendar link from Gmail. I smell a Greasemonkey script in the making...

About Time

I love Firefox. I really love Firefox extensions, that is where the true value of the browser shows up to me. What I don't like, is that extensions aren't easy to keep up-to-date. Since there are a steady stream of bugfixes, new features, and workarounds being developed, that is very unfortunate.

It seems to me that the 1.0x branch of Firefox did a reasonable job of keeping most extensions updated, at least those from either mozdev or addons.mozilla.org anyway.

Then, when the 1.5x (deer park) branch was being developed, there were promises of a much better updater for Firefox. It was going to more granular, allowing for only necessary pieces to be downloaded and updated, and it was going to be much more reliable. However, the only real change I have seen to this point is that my extensions now never updated on their own, despite screenshots such as this leading to believe to the contrary:


This wasn't going to last long though, so here is an extension which takes care of automatically notifying/updating when extensions are updated. Very nice.

I found this tip through Lifehacker once again.

Dump Complete

There's something else interesting I wanted to post about today, but it has slipped my mind.

In its place, I need to throw out a recommendation for some kickass new music. Best Buy has some fantastic pricing this week, so I ended up buying several CD's and a movie. I had planned on a buying a few of them anyway, but the prices made me just keep picking up more. Especially since I knew that Amazon was much higher on several of them.

My favorite of the group is my purchase of the new Shooter Jennings CD. As those who read my blog regularly may remember, Shooter's last CD was and is still one of my favorites (even when my wife would prefer to burn the CD, rather than hear some of the songs...).

His new stuff is as good as before, keeping his own musical touches while coming so close to sounding like his dad, that it is spooky. Check out track 3 as an example of a song Waylon would have loved to have done.

Although this is a mix of Southern Rock and Waylon's Luckenbach, TX sound, I wouldn't recommend this to those without an appreciation of some solid, country music. This is the soul of country, the way it should be.

Dump #2 - Boot Camp

The whole tech world yesterday (at least the parts I care to keep track of) where talking about "boot camp". No, not some military institution, the announcement by Apple of a boot loader that permits running either Windows or the Mac OS on Apple hardware.

This floored me. I never expected to see this announcement from them. I was barely shocked at all to hear that they were switching from PowerPC to Intel, and I fully expected that some people at that point would find a way to run Windows on the thing, but I never thought Apple themselves would endorse it.

At that point the questions really started.
1. How did they do it? Did they just steal the work done by the hackers going after the $13,000 bounty? Did they make Intel give them a reference BIOS? Did they create their own BIOS internally?

At this point, I would lean toward the latter. There is no way they would go use some hackers piecemeal code, and I'm not sure they would have even ran this by Intel. Bootloaders are not really that difficult, especially if you know the hardware and specification, and Apple would definitely have guys that fit both of those criteria. I'm sure the day the developers got an x86 board on their desk (about 5 years ago depending on what you read -- different topic) they threw together a BIOS and booted XP on the thing, just to prove it could be done. I would have.

2. Why? Apple has been notorious about protecting their overall system solution by keeping their hardware and software tightly coupled and under wraps. Are they now simply wanting to be a hardware company?

I think this answer may be the trickiest and the most interesting. It is possible they simply want to pick up hardware sales from the "switcher" market. Those people who are interested in Apple, but still have reasons to continue using Windows, and don't really want to have different machines for each. It turns out I fall squarely into this market. I really want an Apple machine at home, and I think I would wear out the iLife suite I would use it so much. However, I still need Windows for some tasks at this point, and I refuse to have multiple machines. This is truly sly, because over time I'm sure I would find replacement apps on the Apple, and grow tired of rebooting, slowing fazing Windows out entirely.

This is where the discussion gets really interesting. There has been much discussion that even if Windows XP were possible on the Apple, Vista will not be. Do a google search if you want to learn why or how, I'm not up to doing the research right now. However, if that is true, there is basically planned obsolescence for the Windows solution. If they get the people right now, when Vista comes out they won't be able to transition to it on the current hardware. However, the latest shiny new OS (leopard or greater) from Apple will absolutely run on it. Thus promoting users to simply abandon Windows at that point.

Overall, I really like how polished this solution looks from Apple. It's already very nice in beta, and will just get better when it is embedded into Leopard. Simple resizing of partitions should have been in Windows from day 1, but never was natively. Everything in typical Apple style just works and looks very polished.

I did see today an announcement of someone with some virtualization software to run Windows inside Mac OS. That is the only way to make this better. Let me quick jump over to run a Windows task without rebooting. I'll be watching this to see how it pans out.

Update: Check out Thaddeus's blog for another perspective on all of this.

Brain Dump

Lots of small random thoughts, so I'm going to throw out a bunch of posts.

I show up today at work, and Google Talk is staring at me, with lots of doodads, and a message saying that there are new features available. I really like having pictures back, that is something I missed from MSN Messenger. I also like that you can now theme your chat windows, the original now really looks like crap.

2 things I find interesting. It seems as if pictures may be stored on Google's site, as I can see pictures for people who are offline (or at least unavailable, maybe that is the key). Also, partychat has a default picture, but it is slightly different than the default pictures for people using alternate IM clients (and currently down, big surprise there). Google, give us group chats, please.

Get Me Out of This Stale Air

Time to break out of the funk...

Ryan recently posted/ranted about Chevy's new product tie-in with "The Apprentice". Having seen a new Tahoe in person, I can say they are really cool, even if I wouldn't personally buy one.
I have already commented on Ryan's post about my agreement with his points. I don't understand the blind hatred for SUV's and their owners, I still feel that all people can make their own, hopefully educated, decision about what vehicle they wish to purchase.

I also happen to subscribe to the GM Fastlane blog. It is mostly comprised of posts from Robert Lutz, which makes it of great interest to me (BTW: pick up his book sometime for an interesting read). Today's post is directly concerning the Tahoe promotion, and the media interest it has generated.

Take a look.

Google Bomb

A while back a site I read announced that Google was going to be trying out a web-based HTML editor, named Google Page Creator. The site was pages.google.com. At the time it was so backlogged that registration was closed, and you had to sign up to be notified when you could use it.

I signed up, thinking "Google makes really slick web pages. If they have an editor that makes it easy to create nice pages like that, I'm all for it." Well, I got my account today, and I found myself more than a little underwhelmed by it all. The whole thing reminds me of back in the day using templates on sites like geocities and tripod (use the wayback machine youngsters in the crowd). I found it very limiting, and I couldn't even bring myself to add any kind of useful content. I'm just not sure what this product is trying to do now, it's definitely not something for me.

Google, quit wasting time on crap like this, and get our web-based iCalendar program, tied in with Gmail, completed.

Here is a link to my very, very basic page, if you want to see what type of code their generator produces.