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.

5 of the Me

As Ryan does, periodically I like to throw out a list of 5 songs that I have been listening to quite a bit recently.

Here are the five tracks, in no particular order: (Artist-Track-(Album)).

1. Staind - Right Here (Chapter V)
2. Beastie Boys - Flowin' Prose (Hello Nasty)
3. Led Zeppelin - Hey Hey What Can I Do - (Box Set disc 1)
4. George Jones - It don't get any better than this - (It don't get any better than this)
5. Lou Donaldson - Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky (from now on) - (Everything I play is Funky)

This list turned out pretty eclectic. The first is pretty tame and a popular current song. Next, we move into something a bit more obscure. I have had Hello Nasty for quite a while, and enjoy it as I do with pretty much all Beastie's music. However, I have revisited it recently and was happy with how fresh it all sounded, especially my selected track.

The Zeppelin choice is just a good, classic rock staple.

The George Jones track may be a bit too extreme country for most people. However, it is pretty much a sampling of the greats of country music. The track features George, Waylon, Cash, Hank Jr., Merle, and Willie. When you can have 6 artists who can all be referenced by a single name on one track, it's very cool.

Finally, we have the Donaldson track. I actually bought this from iTunes after having a mix for years that sampled this song. Lost n' Alive did a remix back in the 90's that used this, and it is one of my favorite tracks. After doing some research and finding the original sample, I had to download it. When it recently popped up on my playlist, I figured I should share it with others.

Have at it, give them a sample, they are Amazon links because I'm not supacool enough to have an iTunes referral account, and Ryan was busy.

Trials and Tribulations of Software

Ryan posted a thorough post yesterday about the fantastic new iCalendar standard that is quickly gaining steam, and also about its remaining deficiencies. As with any software (unfortunately and to my chagrin) I discovered a few more deficiencies while I was playing with it a bit.

The first should have been obvious to me, being a Linux guy who has worked with servers for years, but Ryan was the one who figured it out. When I tried to download Ryan's sample .ics file, it just showed up as text in the browser -- pasted here for your learning pleasure:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
X-WR-TIMEZONE;VALUE=TEXT:US/Pacific
METHOD:PUBLISH
PRODID:-//Thoughts Abound\, Inc//iCal 1.0//EN
X-WR-CALNAME;VALUE=TEXT:Example
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
SEQUENCE:5
DTSTART:20060307T200000
DTSTAMP:20060307T011706Z
SUMMARY:Read Thoughts Abound
UID:EC9439B1-FF65-11D6-9973-003065F99D04
DTEND:20060307T210000
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-P1D
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Event reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

This is because our lovable Apache server did not yet have the proper mime type of text/calendar associated with .ics files. Changed that, and everything behaves correctly...or differently as it turns out.

I expected after making that change to now see the Firefox save-or-open dialog defaulting to Outlook, just as Ryan posted. However, I was surprised to see this instead:


Oh yeah, I have a beta of the Mozilla Calendar extension for Firefox installed. This is the same code they use for the standalone Sunbird client they are writing, it is just packaged as an extension to Firefox or Thunderbird. Sweet, another test case!

It's a good thing Calendar is still in beta, because this one is horribly lacking in the integration department. It defaults to creating an entirely new calendar for me, which is probably not what I want. However, it also does not allow you to add it to an existing calendar. Not only is there no drop down list of existing calendars to select from, but if you do manage to type the name of your calendar exactly, it creates a new one with an identical name. Bad, all bad -- get to work on this Mozilla guys. Here is a screenshot after it was added (click on it if it is too small to read):

Okay, so I disable the calendar extension and figure surely now I will have it go to Outlook. Sure enough, I get the open with Outlook dialog as posted by Ryan. Now, there is no way it can fail, right? Wrong. Ready for another screenshot?


I use the excellent freeware program IrfanView for viewing graphics files. The reason it is even trying to open this file and generating this error message, is because it has a file association for .ics files (hmmm, seems like we are in a roundabout way back to the MIME type issue). For all but the one person in the world who knew what a .ICS graphics file is, here is the association list from IrfanView:


Image Cytometry Standard Format. Rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn't it? Okay, so I uncheck that box, and now when I click on the file, everything works as expected and promised.

Wow, we have just seen a demonstration of how software is still not ready for prime time. Better stated, there is a gaping hole where integration is lacking in software, and that is where I think great strides (and possibly money) can still be made by developers. I shouldn't have to be a Software Engineer to figure out how to make this stuff work, but I do when stuff like this happens. That's alright, it just provides motivation to me to make my products that much better.

Now the preaching is over...

A Place to Hang My Hat

Media Fun

I had heard Blogs were dead, but I guess they can't be. Here is my latest blog find. Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em.

Read this article if you are at all interested in Windows Vista. I admit, the writer is VERY pro-Microsoft, but he did introduce several new items I didn't expect. It looks like a solid upgrade to me.

Go to the Movies

...or better yet, bring them to you. I found one of those Internet movie quizzes tonight, and got myself hooked. Thelonius did something similar a while back.

Try this out and see how you do. I just made my very quick first pass and got 15/30. I'm going to go back through now and see how many others I can figure out.

2nd Pass: Okay, went back and quickly bumped it up to 20/30. Now, I'm fairly stuck, and will go to bed. Let me know what scores you are getting, and I'll see if I can't finish off the last 1/3 tomorrow. Here are the ones I have not gotten thus far: 3, 4, 9, 14, 18, 20, 21, 23