Musings on Almost Anything (Occasionally)

5 of the mostly now

2009-12-31T16:30:00.003-06:00

I've been a bit lax in posting any 5 of the now music recently, so some of these tracks are finely aged at this point. All still good though. A nice mix of some mainstream, and some really fine remixes.

1. Cage the Elephant - Ain't No Rest For The Wicked - Ain't No Rest For The Wicked
Good, solid rock. I thought for sure this was a hair metal track that I somehow missed, only to learn it was brand new. I've only heard this on KRNA on rare terrestrial radio listening occasions, so I don't know if it has gotten much airplay or not. I dig it.

2. Lateef & Z-Trip - Ahead of the Curve - Time (Freestyle)
Z-Trip is hands-down one of my favorite DJ's, and I've been a fan of Lateef's since his work with Lyrics Born. This track is the current favorite off of what is a great mixtape.

3. Rhianna - Umbrella (Travis Barker Remix)
Since becoming more interesting in drums, I've been even more amazed with what Travis can do. His work with DJ AM was incredible. This track is very much along those lines.

4. DJ Earworm - Heartless (In a Bottle). I first came across DJ Earworm after his "United State of Pop 2008 (Viva La Pop)" mashup of the top 25 pop songs of 2008. He has a number of other very smooth mashups, with this one being one of my favorites. The Fray doing Kanye + The Police + Black-Eyed Peas + others. Fabulous.

5. Toby Keith - American Ride - American Ride
Toby Keith is often hit or miss for me. This one nails it though.

Albums of 2009

2009-12-31T15:54:00.003-06:00

For the past few years (initially started by Ryan, I believe) at the end of the year I have assembled a list of my favorite albums that I purchased during the year. These are not individual songs, instead they are whole albums that ended up getting lots of play during the year.

This year proved to be particularly challenging. First, in something that should be a sign to the ignorant record companies, I did not buy a single, silver, shiny disc this year. Not one. I didn't do this to purposely not buy CD's any longer. Instead, I have just found that price, convenience, and ease of use by me all lead to me buying nearly all of my music as Amazon MP3 downloads. Second, I also greatly loaded up on the amount of free music I was finding, and a healthy dose of Pandora. All of this lead to a rather small list of possible albums. However, out of that list, I was able to find 4 albums that had significantly more listening mileage than others.

These are in no particular order. They are simply 4 albums that I purchased this year and found to be the most interesting of 2009:

1. Kid Cudi - Man On The Moon: The End Of Day [Explicit]
I was first pulled in by "Day and Night", and the "Make Her Say" remix was far better than the original. Good stuff overall.

2. LMFAO - Party Rock (Amazon MP3 Exclusive Version) [Explicit]
Raw fun. That's really all you need to know. This stuff never gets old, it just perks up your day when you hear it. "I am not a whore" remains my favorite.

3. Shinedown - The Sound Of Madness
Yes, this album got a significant amount of standard radio airplay. Despite that, this is the real deal. These guys are how I want my rock to sound. The title track still kicks me in the rear when I need it.

4. Steinski - What Does It All Mean? - 1983-2006 Retrospective
If you dig people such as Girl Talk, DJ Shadow, etc., you need to give Steinski a listen. In my mind, he's the Grand Wizard Theodore of the mashup/sampling movement. He's the originator who almost nobody knows - he doesn't have the mainstream name. However, this stuff is top-notch. More info on Steinski is here.

5 for July

2009-07-22T18:32:00.004-05:00

Billy Currington - People Are Crazy - Little Bit of Everything
I've been in the mood recently some simple, feel-good country music. This is a really light track, but I have yet to get tired of it. "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy." I can't disagree with that.

Rodney Atkins - It's America - It's America
More simple country goodness. Not really a good explanation on this one, but I enjoy it.

Primus - The Toys Go Winding Down - Frizzle Fry
"This isn't even AC/DC - it's just some techno band". Yeah - true that. Les Claypool and Primus have been beyond cool since I was in high school. Couple that with AC/DC, and I'm sold. I can't believe I didn't know about this until I got it as a free track somewhere. Free music FTW!

Ben Harper & Relentless7 - Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart) - White Lies for Dark Times
This is the BEST SONG EVER. That comes straight from my son's drum teacher. I don't disagree. The intro, the heavy metal yell, the drum, and the bad-ass guitar. Listen to it at high volume. Do not resist.

A Perfect Circle - The Noose - Thirteenth Step
Possibly the smoothest song ever. Maynard has unparalleled vocals, and the production on this is amazing. One of my favorites for a long time. Here's looking at you, Cheney and Bush.

5 of the now

2009-05-15T21:11:00.004-05:00

Wow - haven't touched the blog since February. Unfortunately (maybe), Twitter has mostly replaced blogging for me it appears. The 140 character bursts fit my available time better.

However, the blog still provides a great place for 5 of the now to land.

Charlie Robison - Good Times - Good Times
True Blood has one of the best mixes of music I have ever heard on a TV series. An eclectic mix of primarily swamp rock, country, and folk. Charlie Robison brings the perfect stoner band song to the mix. Mellow out and enjoy.

Lyrics Born - Funky Hit Records - As U Were
I already knew Lyrics Born was badass. This track just blew the lid off the place though. Just try listening to this and not nodding your head and rocking out. It's free to boot.

Shinedown - Sound of Madness - The Sound of Madness
Shinedown was on the last 5 of the now, and here they crank up the rock. This thing rocks out hard, and has a chorus that is beyond catchy. There is a hint of vintage Metallica running through the beginning, and then they make it their own. Definitely my favorite rock group of the moment.

I'm Just Raw (Remix) (feat. Del The Funky Homosapien & Pigeon John) - Lyrics Born - Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live!
Yes - a 2nd appearance by Lyrics Born. Until I saw him live in Iowa City, I actually didn't get this song. Now I do. One of the single best performances I have seen. This track isn't actually live, and you can now get it on his 3rd mixtape album, but Del puts this one over the top.

A Little Bit Of Riddim (featuring Cherine Anderson) - Michael Franti - All Rebel Rockers
Now for something completely different. Open up wide and enjoy some music that is different than anything you have been hearing. This entire album is great, but this is probably my favorite.

5 of the now

2009-02-18T19:02:00.002-06:00

2NU - The Best of 2NU - Crossroads (Chaos)
Great flashback to the early 1990's (for me at least). I was a huge fan of 2NU and "This is Ponderous" back in the day, and one of few people to actually own their CD it turns out. This track came out on one of their later discs, but I find it very cool still. A bit of spoken-word mixed with odd humor, so not for everyone.

Shinedown - The Sound of Madness - Second Chance
This is one of the best songs I have heard in years. I really liked Shinedown's previous album with "45", and I picked up this album before this track really started getting a lot of airplay.

Team 9 vs. Stereogum - Stereogum & team9 Present... MySplice The Third - Lockdown Shelter
Team9 makes some of the best mashups I have heard this side of Z-Trip. Pairing Kanye with the Stones is an unusual and completely fantastic mix. This might be the best mashup I have heard to date. Plus it's free!

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burritos! The Flying Burrito Bros: Anthology 1969-1972 - Christine's Tune (A.K.A. Devil In Disguise)
This one was picked up by watching True Blood. This plays on the radio during the final episode of the 1st season. A catchy little number, especially if you have the show context behind it. Once I found out that Gram Parsons wrote it, I understood why I liked it so much.

Tom Morello The Nightwatchman - The Fabled City - The Iron Wheel
I admit - I got this track (and album) originally because Shooter Jennings is on this track with Tom. They go way back to when Tom actually produced albums for Stargunn. However, I enjoyed this particular track much more than expected. The Nightwatchman is Tom's folk/country alter-ego for those who don't know, or can't believe it.

Dominance

2009-02-17T23:43:00.002-06:00

After doing some research of my own, I thought I would throw some fun facts out here about the Iowa Wrestling program - the definition of dominance.

I realized that one great measure of a program is how many members of that program end up coaching in the sport. Specifically, I wanted to see just how many Big Ten schools had coaches from Iowa. Here are the results:

Indiana - Duane Goldman (Iowa 1983-1986)
Mike Mena (Iowa 1994-1997)

Northwestern - Tim Cysewski (Iowa 1973-1976)

Penn State -
Mark Perry (Iowa 2005-2008)

Wisconsin - Barry Davis (Iowa 1981-1985)
Bart Chelesvig (Iowa 1988-1992)

Illinois - Mark Johnson (Iowa Coach 1980-1990)
Jim Heffernan (Iowa 1983-1987)

Ohio State - Tom Ryan (Iowa 1989-1992)

Iowa - Tom Brands (Iowa 1988-1992)
Terry Brands (Iowa 1988-1992)
Doug Schwab (Iowa 1998-2001)
Mike Zadick (Iowa 2000-2002)

Minnesota - J Robinson (Iowa Coach 1972-1984)

That makes 8 out of 11 schools with at least one former Iowa wrestler on the coaching staff. Pretty impressive.

Now, just to bask in the glow for a bit, here's a shotgun listing of some stats that range from bad ass to completely mind-blowing:

Record at Carver Hawkeye Arena - 164-18 (90%)
16 undefeated seasons

National collegiate dual meet attendance record - 15,955 (2008-12-06)

101 Big Ten Champions
182 Big Ten Championships
32 Big Ten Titles

49 NCAA Champions
76 NCAA Championships
21 National Titles

9 consecutive NCAA Championships (1978-1986)
11 of 12 (1975-1986), and 20 of 26 (1975-2000)

There's a reason this program was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the top sports dynasties of the 20th century. Looking forward to wiping the floor with other programs again at the Big Ten and NCAA championships this year.

...And I start to complain that there's no rain

2009-01-18T22:12:00.001-06:00

Google recently announced they are shutting down some of their service offerings. This move is at least partially driven by reducing costs and focusing engineering efforts on more popular services.

I found this all interesting for a few reasons. First, while at least one of those services, Google Notebook, was flagged as unpopular, I personally knew someone who used it quite a bit. Second, it brought to light something which was always dangling out there with these new "Cloud Computing" services.

It's all the rage right now to utilize these services, and move as much as possible to the "cloud" model. Applications as services, delivered through the web, is one of the current flavors of the month. In many ways it's very appealing, and I admit, I drink from the faucet freely. I have signed up for countless numbers of these sites and services, and many from Google in particular are now indispensable in my daily routine. They are easily accessible from any computer and possibly more important - consistent. They can be updated immediately and everyone simultaneously receives the new upgrade.

However, that last point is exactly the looming underbelly of all of this. When a vendor no longer finds it worthwhile or profitable to maintain a service, it disappears. It doesn't just go end of life, it doesn't just stop receiving technical support, it ceases to exist entirely. {Note - in this case it appears that the service won't disappear entirely immediately. There are plans to leave it simply unmaintained for a while. I'd guess eventually it will cease completely though.}

This is a substantial change from nearly any paradigm of the past. If you bought (or received for free) a service or product, you continued to have it. Unless it was a consumable, even if the company no longer made the product or stopped supporting it, you could continue using it as it was. Not so any longer.

Cloud computing on the web isn't the first to have this issue, other "connected" services had this type of potential gotcha as well. Certain Satellite dish receivers and other boxes that receive television guide data have bumped into this issue in the past also. It is just becoming much more prevalent and open to a larger potential user base now via the web.

With most of these services of course, this basically falls under the "get what you pay for" category. However, I would use this as a reason to be very wary of cloud computing services that want to start charging for service. It should also serve as a reminder to keep all data backed up in an offline format as well - unless of course you want to be the next JournalSpace.

As for Google Notebook, it appears some services are stepping up to try to switch existing users. Hopefully more will follow suit. Lifehacker has offered several suggestions for those feeling abandoned by this service being discontinued.

Get the Lead Out

2009-01-12T23:14:00.008-06:00

Why does it seem whenever the US Government tries to "look out for our well-being", it nearly always ends up doing the opposite? I'd like to think I'm making too generalized of a statement, but it really does seem to be the case.

The current incarnation of this is a law that will go into effect on February 10th of this year regulating the amount of lead in products for children. "How can limiting lead be a bad thing," one might ask. It seems recently that every toy shipped here from China has later been recalled due to lead, so this seems like a good plan. It's "for the good of the children" after all.

Except there were already lead restrictions on kids toys in place BEFORE these crappy items started rolling in from China. Based on that, I argue it will do nothing to change what type of products are cheaply made with potentially dangerous chemicals overseas, by large companies looking to "protect shareholder value."

Now - here's why I'm angry about this. The new law says that all children's products (toys, jewelry, etc.) must contain 600 ppm or less of lead. In August, that will drop to 300 ppm. If this fact can't be certified, these products are not allowed to be sold.

That certification part is the rub. Certification costs about $150, and must be done for each unique item. That's cost-prohibitive for many small, local businesses making handmade products in the U.S. [Note - the article linked mentions that second-hand stores will be hurt, there is now in-fact an exemption for them].

This of course is where it hits home for me. My wife has a line of jewelry that she designs, makes, and sells. One of her lines is children's jewelry. After Feb. 10th, she would have to get certification for each and every one of those items at $150 apiece. Not going to happen. Instead, that line will cease to be sellable on her website. Poof. Gone.

So - what will be the net effect. Fewer small businesses in the U.S. making handmade jewelry (and other products), and likely then even more of it being made in large factories in China instead. Does anyone think that is a good trade off? Were we worried the mom's working at home on a side income were killing off the kids of this country with lead poisoning? Were we wanting to run to China to keep our products safe?

I sure as hell am not. A few good places to go do more about this are http://cpsia-central.ning.com/, and http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/RepealCPSIA/. The usual letter writing, phone calls, and emails to elected officials are worthwhile as well.

Quick and to the point

2009-01-08T23:31:00.002-06:00

This is sports-related, and it's going to be extremely short.

Now that Florida has won the BCS "championship game", many people are going to be calling them the national champions for college football. I beg to differ. The BCS can go suck it.

Here is a fantastic article that I found on ESPN that sums up my feelings for this bowl season better than I possibly could.

Screw it - I just want to watch the Hawks pummel the Cocks again.

Albums of 2008

2009-01-01T09:38:00.001-06:00

Ryan nudged me to say that it was time to post my favorite albums of the last year. I actually had this done in time for the New Year, but never posted. So here it is now. As with him, I bought almost no physical CD's in the past year. In fact, the ACDC (no other choice) and Waylon CD's on this list are the only ones I bought all year. Amazon is now my drink of choice over iTunes, but they are both where I get 99% of my purchased music.

Also of interest - this year my free vs. purchased ratio was far in favor of free. I think that is the first year for that.

These are in no particular order, they were simply the 5 albums that I own and found to be the most interesting of 2008.

1. AC/DC - Black Ice
Surprisingly, as AC/DC is one of my absolute favorite bands of all time (XM channel 53 is really the only XM channel I need), I didn't buy this CD right away. Partially because I could only get it at WalMart or ACDC.com (yeah - I got it from the latter). Partially because I wasn't sure how good it would be given their last effort. I'm now mad at myself for waiting. This is the best stuff since Razor's Edge, if not Back in Black. As good of hard rock and blues as there has ever been.

2. Waylon Jennings & The 357's - Waylon Forever (The Final Recordings)
Waylon sends us some tunes from the great beyond, courtesy of Shooter. This was an effort of Shooter's nearly 10 years in the making. In the end, we get an eerie reminder of Waylon's greatness as he re-imagines stripped-down versions of some of his great songs. A fantastic original collaboration with Shooter is included as well.

3. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
I don't think this needs any more accolades, although it deserves them all. There's a reason this is overlapped with Ryan's list. I know I said these weren't in a particular order, but this album takes #1 for this year hands down. The most original and incredible work I have come across in years - possibly ever.

4. Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song
I originally got a sampler song from this for free, and then my wife told me about another on the radio. I bought the whole album, and was amazed at how good it was in its entirety, especially for a freshman effort. A great new country voice I hope to hear continue.

5. Various Artists - Music from the Motion Picture 21
This CD got a ton of play this year. It has an assortment of great songs and acts. The LCD Soundsystem track was good, as always. More importantly, this album introduced me to MGMT, who I had somehow managed to not stumble upon. Correcting that mistake makes this album worthwhile by itself.

iTunes Store Gripe

2008-12-12T22:32:00.004-06:00

I could expound on this to include bad metadata that has plagued digital music from the beginning. I won't - I'll keep this succinct for now.

iTunes (Apple) - why the hell do you feel it necessary to change the name of the album for your free songs each week? You have the song, you list the correct album it is from, but then you tack on " - single of the week" and label it as track 1 of 1. NO!

Actually, it's worse than that in some cases. Sometimes the real name of the album instead becomes "song title - single of the week". But, it's not an actual single, and the album art will still of course be for the full album.

This came from a real album, with a real title, and it had a specific track number. STOP CHANGING IT!

Some Interesting BBall

2008-12-12T22:05:00.002-06:00

Tonight, as I have done regularly for about the past 23 years, I attended a Hawkeye basketball game. It happened to be the Iowa State game which always adds a bit of excitement, the crowd was the best I have seen in a few years, and Iowa happened to play a great game and pretty much had their way with the 'clones. Follow that up with the traditional playing of "In Heaven There is No Beer" and all in all - a most excellent experience.

It turns out I also got a nice little celebrity sighting out of the deal. Ashton Kutcher, being an Iowa native and former U of I attendee (I actually had 2 Engineering classes with him the sole year he was there as an engineering student), came back to the state to do some benefit work to provide money for flood recovery. Both he and Shawn Johnson (Olympic gold and silver medalist from Des Moines for those not paying attention) had events throughout the week to help raise money, which I think is very cool of both of them.

Ashton and his wife, Demi Moore, both sat at the scorers table about 10 rows in front of our seats along with Shawn Johnson. I was impressed that along with the good they were doing this week, they did not simply show up for the game, make their appearance, and then duck out. They all stayed well past the final buzzer, and generally seemed to be into the game and all of the events. My craptastic cell phone pictures aren't worth posting, or I would add them here.

There was a screening for Ashton's new movie, Personal Effects, at the Englert theatre in Iowa City tonight as well. I'm not so sure about the movie - it may have had a bit too much pandering to the Iowa fans for even me to stomach, but I'll probably check it out as a rental at some point.

OCD

2008-12-01T21:34:00.005-06:00

"3 posts in one day - he must be sick, or deranged."

I recently picked up a TON of great Aesop Rock singles and bootlegs, and many of them are incredible. However, since I don't happen to live near somewhere where you can easily find a lot of the stuff Def Jux put out on 12" easily, I tend to resort to a little bit of ARRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I pay for my regular music - I feel that bootlegs and such are the spoils for those able to find them on the Internet.

The only trouble with obtaining this music in this fashion, is that it messes with my OCD-like need to get my iTunes library to be pristine and complete. I usually turn to my good friend, wiki, but this stuff is a bit too obscure for even wiki to be of help.

I now have a new friend in this battle. google site:rateyourmusic.com ALBUM_NAME ARTIST

At least in the case of Aesop Rock, I found every one of his obscure singles and common boots out there. Fantastic.

Multidock

2008-12-01T18:39:00.005-06:00

On a less tyrannical road than my previous post, I received in the mail today a new point and shoot camera to replace our ailing one which has finally died after about 5 years of good use. This camera gets used daily in my wife's business, so it definitely has gotten a workout (being dropped in Key West, Florida did nothing to prolong its life though...).

I found a great deal on a Canon SD1100 and I was very impressed. Very similar to my old S400 ELPH, but smaller, quicker, MUCH larger view screen, and several other niceties. I would recommend it highly to anyone needing a good point and shoot.

Now, to the one nitpick on Canon. We now own 4 Canon digital cameras, so I don't think you can say I'm not a fan of theirs. We have the S400, the SD1100, our 400D SLR, and a ZR50 mini-DV camcorder. All 4 use very nice, rechargeable Li-Ion battery packs which all have awesome runtime.

Now - guess how many of those battery packs allow charging inside the device over USB? None. A bit annoying, especially if you forget to turn off the camera after dumping pictures onto the computer. So, since I can't use USB for charging, I have to use a battery cradle instead.

Okay - guess how many of these 4 cameras use the same cradle? Yeah, the answer would be none. Amazing - they really couldn't come up with a common charger? The chargers aren't exactly small to begin with, so taking a little extra space to be more flexible really wouldn't be an issue.

Guess I can't be too hard on my company for not having a universal dock yet. Why is this such a hard thing for companies to achieve?

Delusional Ramblings

2008-12-01T18:30:00.002-06:00

First, can we finally now admit that the FCC has no idea what they are doing? I hope the fact that most of these articles point out that this is the "outgoing" FCC chairman indicates that someone with more intelligence will be coming in. We can't just print money, and I'm really tired of the federal government thinking it (it being the taxpayers of this country) needs to finance everything for everyone. Free Wi-Fi has failed in metropolitan cities - this would just fail in a more spectacular fashion, and that's not even considering their ridiculous "porn-free" clause. *Sigh*.

That plan segways nicely into the next delusional rambling though. How do we find a way to eliminate all credit cards? Now. Seriously, if you don't have the money, you can't spend it. It's as simple as that. You can't have a horribly failing economy and then have the best Black Friday ever - not possible. I know more people who bought flatscreen TV's, Wiis, and computers this year than any year in the past. When did it become a guarantee that every family in America was entitled to a flatscreen TV? When did people start spending thousands of dollars at Christmastime? There is one way to fix the giant blob of crap that the country is languishing in right now. Get some self-control and willpower back in our lives. Stop buying crap that isn't a necessity. Don't buy anything that you can't cover with cash in the bank (yes - I know there can be exceptions like housing - quit nitpicking). Let's want better for ourselves, and put in a little bit of hard work and restraint to make it happen.

vimrc

2008-11-25T14:25:00.004-06:00

Ryan just did a post asking to expose our VI settings to the world (wait, you all use VI, right?). I'm going to follow suit and throw mine out here. Surprisingly, for the amount of time I have spent in that editor, and how much I enjoy using it, my vimrc is rather sparse.

" Stop me from accidentally doing things when I click the stupid scroll-wheel
map
map <2-middlemouse>
map <3-middlemouse>
map <4-middlemouse>

" Prefer unix format
set fileformats=unix,dos
set fileformat=unix

" Use Vim settings, rather then Vi settings (much better!).
" This must be first, because it changes other options as a side effect.
set nocompatible

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set cindent shiftwidth=4
set history=50 " keep 50 lines of command line history
set ruler " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd " display incomplete commands
set incsearch " do incremental searching
set expandtab " Spaces, not tabs :-)
set autoindent
set smartindent
set nobackup " Live dangerously
set tags=$init\tags " Tags - the secret to life

Just Like Cash

2008-11-16T17:00:00.002-06:00

So - if you're like me and spending money at Amazon is pretty much a certainty (especially now that nearly all of my digital music is bought there), this is a pretty slick deal.

Coinstar and Amazon teamed up a while back to let you turn in money at Coinstar machines, and avoid the transaction fee if you redeemed the coins for an Amazon gift certificate instead of cash.

Now, they have a special deal where if you turn in $40, you can mail in for an additional $10. So - I can drop by the bank, get $40 in quarters, and then drop them into the closest coinstar machine. After mailing in my receipt, I end up with $50 I can spend on Amazon. A nice little 25% gain on my money (or equal to a 20% off coupon, however you want to look at it).

Worst case if somehow the $10 deal goes wrong, I simply tied up $40 at Amazon that is guaranteed to be spent eventually (and often far too quickly).

Pump It

2008-10-27T16:04:00.003-05:00

Although this blog largely ends up discussing technology-related topics (such is the nature of being immersed in a technical field), I enjoy nothing more than doing non-technical things at home.

This weekend, Sunday in particular, pumpkins were the name of the game. I decided to go for 4 carved pumpkins this year, and I must be improving my efficiency because I finished them all on Sunday night after we got back from some kids activities.

Here are some shots of the happy pumpkin family before and after. I need to get a tripod to make the night shots turn out better, but this will do for now.

HOWTO - Bootable Windows XP System on a USB Flash Drive

2008-09-18T16:28:00.004-05:00

I really need to create (or bring back as it turns out) a website for tutorials on random computer-related topics. As it is, this is going on my blog for now, and I'll just crib it or link to it later if I get around to getting a website going again.

I recently had need to create a bootable Windows XP system on a 1 GB USB flash drive. Seemed like it would be pretty simple to me...turns out it isn't. Microsoft likes to mess with the USB driver on boot up which isn't a good thing when you are booting from a USB device.

After looking on the Internet for quite a while, I found a tutorial that helped me accomplish what I needed. The original tutorial I followed is at (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded/2005-10/msg00332.html). While I am very thankful to have found this, I thought I could possibly write a more succinct tutorial, and that's what follows here.

Final note - this most likely isn't the best way to do this, or the simplest. It worked for me and might be useful for others, so I think it is worth posting here. I did find another tutorial that might be a more correct way to do this at (http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8). I haven't tried it though, so YMMV.

Initial preparation

Make the intended target USB flash drive installable. See the following section for help with this.
Boot the newly installed XP install from the hard drive.
Disable the pagefile. This is done by opening the system control panel, choosing the advanced tab, clicking the top “settings” button, changing to the advanced tab, clicking the “change” button, and then choosing the “No paging file” option and clicking “Set”.
Insert the intended target USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP.

Registry modifications

Backup the HKLM\System registry key before starting (just to be safe).
Import or make the following modifications to 6 registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbehci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbhub]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbuhci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub]
"Service"="usbhub"
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub20]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbhub"

Create 2 registry keys based on the specific USB flash drive that will be used. Following are 2 examples – the key names will have to be customized for the Pid/Vid and hardware ID of the specific target flash device. The ClassGUID and Service keys should be entered verbatim.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USB#Vid_1058&Pid_0300]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbstor"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USBSTOR#DiskWDC_____WD1600BB-00FTA0_15.0]
"ClassGUID"="{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"
"Service"="disk"

The Pid/Vid for the target USB flash device can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB. Open the subkey for each item until you find the DriverDesc of USB Mass Storage Device, a Service of USBSTOR, and a LocationInformation that matches your specific flash drive.

The hardware ID can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR. In this example the chosen key would look like:

Disk&Ven_WDC&Produ_WD1600BB-00FTA0&Rev_15.0

Again, find the device that matches your specific flash drive.

The Hardware ID is created as Disk(8)(16)(4) where the values are:

8 digits (in this example WDC_____ ) as the vendor of device
16 digits (in this example WD1600BB-00FTA0_ ) for the device type and
4 digits (in this example 15.0 ) for a version number.

Delete key HKLM\System\MountedDevices.
Delete string value HKLM\System\Setup\SystemPartition
Change HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR\Start from 3 to 0.
(THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT – YOU WILL GET A BLUE SCREEN IF THIS ISN’T CHANGED)
Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and change the permissions to deny full control to the “System” group.

Preparing the target flash device

This step likely has to be done from another PC, or while booted to a different drive. Otherwise, some files end up being in use.

Copy all files and folders from the completed hard drive to the USB target flash drive. Do not copy the recycled or system volume information folders.
Delete \windows\system32\config\*.sav, *.log, and *.evt.

Adding support for additional USB flash devices

To add additional USB flash drive support to the original hard drive image, follow these steps:

Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and remove the deny full control to the “System” group attributes that were set in step #7 in the registry section above.
Insert the additional targeted USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP as in step #4 of the initial preparation section above.
Follow steps 3-7 of the registry modification section above.

EDIT: It turns out there is more to this than what I have posted. This will be limited to a specific flash drive, not just a certain PID_VID. The image will need to be recreated with each additional flash part that will be used added to the registry for this to not blue screen when moved to a different flash drive. Suck.

Genius!

2008-09-11T01:48:00.002-05:00

I really didn't think I would find much use for the new "Genius" feature in iTunes 8. It seemed like a gimmick, and primarily to push more stuff from the iTunes store in my mind.

However, after playing with it for less than a night I'm pretty happy with it now. I was a bit concerned when my iTunes memory usage climbed to 800 MB while it was first compiling my genius information (and if you still care about privacy of your data it will disturb you as well). After that completed though, it was pretty cool seeing it group together songs from my library based on a given song.

After playing with that for a bit, I decided to turn on the sidebar and let it show songs from the store as well. The related songs portion is only mildly interesting to me -- what I really liked was the list of other songs I might be missing from that same artist.

It was while browsing an artist I happen to have nearly everything ever made, that I noticed something else that I found amusing. It claimed there was a song I didn't have, and that it was on an album that I physically own and had ripped to my library. After being thoroughly stumped for a bit (keep in mind it's the wee hours of the morning, and I have all sound muted), I realized that it was actually a hidden track. It turns out that if you buy the album from iTunes, the last song is broken into 2 separate songs, rather than one long track. Interesting. Also cool - because I now know the title to what was previously an untitled hidden track to me.

Now I know I've lost my mind

2008-07-02T23:56:00.003-05:00

Yep - it's gone. I've gone off the deep end into the esoteric world of geekdom. Even true geeks now laugh at how far gone I am.

I love learning new computer languages, I should do it far more often than I do. Practicality often gets in the way of my true self. I of course almost always learn with some form of a hello world. If you don't know what that is, quit reading. Seriously, you will only find yourself in pain from this point forward. Just quit.

While waiting for a backup to finish tonight, not particularly wanting to do anything else, I stumbled upon a Brainfuck page. I had actually been here before after linking there from Eric Raymond's (ESR) INTERCAL webpage (don't ask - it's easier that way).

So - I decided to write a hello world in Brainfuck...and I enjoyed it. I'm sick. Here it is:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
+++++++++++++
>
++++++++++
>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<< [.>]

Hopefully Blogger doesn't screw up the format. You'll probably think it did anyway, it basically just looks like line noise. I kid you not though, compile this bad boy (here's a link to the compiler I used), and it will output "Hello World!\r\n" (rendered appropriately by your terminal).

Only after I was finished did I go check out the wiki for Brainfuck, and see that they had their own version of a hello world.

Anyway, if you are sick like me, seek help. Otherwise, follow these steps to validate I'm not lying to you:

1. Download the compiler from the link above. Rename from bf.asm.txt to bf.asm.
2. Look at the assembly source and verify there is no voodoo trickery going on - it really is a compiler.
3. Run "nasm bf.asm" to create the bf executable (your compiler). Make it executable.
4. Copy my source into a file named HelloWorld.b or something similar.
5. Run "cat HelloWorld.b | bf > hell.elf
6. Run "./hell.elf"
7. Run screaming from the room as you realize what you have become.

Goodbye Smoky Air - You Won't Be Missed

2008-06-30T22:35:00.002-05:00

Today is the last day of dirty, stinky public air. No, sorry, I can't promise that actually. I can say though that tomorrow is the first day where the fantastic new Iowa smoking ban will be in effect.

I'm freaking thrilled about this. Any public place is basically now a safe haven from something I despise. Despised isn't actually strong enough - pure hatred is better. In fact, after my introductory post, the very first post on this blog was against smoking.

Some will say this goes too far and infringes on personal liberties. They'll say that it is a slippery slope of government control. I don't give a rats ass. I'm normally very careful about allowing government to get into our affairs too. The difference here is that this is something that effects others, not just the brain dead who is puffing away. I'm still not legally allowed to beat the hell out of them or defecate on them, so I think it fair that they can't smoke around me.

The only disappointing thing to me in this is the very few loopholes that still made it in. Casinos and hotels still have exemptions. F the casinos, I'll stay away from your smoky, old folk piss establishments. Now I just need to find a hotel chain that positions themselves as non-smoking.

How to make music fun

2008-06-28T13:56:00.004-05:00

I know - it looks like I'm just padding my posts count at this point. I'm on track to have as many posts this month as I have the entire rest of the year. Have to take advantage of it when the ambition is there.

Parts of the music industry (mostly the evil parts who hide behind a shell company known as the RIAA) are bemoaning the fact that people are not buying their music anymore, and that interest in their manufactured crap is on the decline. [completely wacky sidenote: I realized yesterday you can't say "Fiduciary Duty" without saying "douche"]. This zombified race of former humans can't figure out what they should do to get people to enjoy music again, so they err on the side of suing everyone and introducing painful and ugly DRM into their music.

Well, as I again realized over the past few days, that's completely the opposite direction to go. Music is a social creature. Just like the scorpion, that it's nature. Music is not really appreciated until it shared and experienced by many people. The RIAA is running scared and doing exactly the wrong approach.

I've enjoyed some fantastic musical sharing over the past few days, and I haven't even been to any concerts. My daughter loves all kinds of music, and I have been making CDs for her lately. There's not much more fun than doing that. It started with some bedtime music. Initially I started pretty mainstream, but more recently we ended up with a Marley (Bob and Ziggy) CD that she loves. Yesterday and today we created a "rock" CD for her. It turns out she has inherited her dad's wide range of musical taste - we have everything from pop, to 70's hard rock, to some modern and classic country.

The other sharing dropped in the form of a new 5 of the now from Ryan. Ryan came up with the 5 of the now a few years ago on his blog, and it's great both from the creating and listening perspective.

As his post and my previous post demonstrate, there is no lack of free music out there. Have no fear - music wants to be free and always will be in the end. Wise up RIAA.

Digital Battlefield

2008-06-28T08:50:00.003-05:00

It's too bad other companies did not have the foresight and unique position of Apple to make their online music stores truly succeed. I say this not because I don't like iTunes, I've said before how it is pretty much my primary source if at all possible. However, some other companies are starting to do some good things and it is just a nearly insurmountable obstacle for them to overcome, which I think limits some progress that we should be seeing.

Okay - that was a long run-on way of getting to my real point. Amazon continues to improve and add to their excellent MP3 download service - yet I still basically forget about them entirely unless something pokes me to remind me. This is especially weird given that for almost all of my other online shopping, I prefer to use them first.

I received an email pointing out that Amazon has weekly album deals that are really good. We're talking $5 or $7 full album, non-DRM downloads of some really good artists. I assumed these would be pop radio schlock, but they actually have a good assortment of some good music.

Then, on top of that, I find out that Amazon has weekly free songs, just like iTunes, except again they are DRM-free of course. These songs change weekly (and possibly daily, some that I saw yesterday are no longer featured). Here is a link where you can find some, or signup for their weekly newsletter if you're like me and need a poke to look outside the iTunes garden and see the other music all around.

iTunes is still the simplest path around for me, without question. Nobody else can yet pull off having a single app where I can search their store, manage my music, and drop it on my device all in a well-designed interface. Amazon's downloader does a decent job, but I still consider it somewhat of a hack. However, low-priced DRM-free music is a good way to at least get me looking at them.

Adding on quick - here's another link to 30 free hip-hop/R&B songs courtesy of AllHipHop.com. A bit of a pain, you have to get your iTunes code via email - but some pretty good songs.

Quick Techie Splatter

2008-06-25T13:12:00.005-05:00

After changing something on my Linux home router today, I realized I should make a post about the Tomato replacement firmware. Yes, I realize most people have no idea what I'm talking about right now, but for those that do, keep reading.

Tomato is one of many replacement open source firmwares available for the Linksys WRT54G family of access points and routers (among other devices). Most people are familiar with this little ubiquitous device, and many are aware that you can replace the firmware on it thanks to open source software (and some people behind the scenes who poked Linksys until they "did the right thing" with their open source support).

DD-WRT has been one of the most popular of these firmware packages for quite some time. I was a big fan myself. However, a few things began to sour me on it. First and foremost, DD-WRT does a fair job of stepping all over the spirit of open source. Yes, it is technically possible to get the source, but good luck ever figuring out how to get it to build. Moreover, I have seen many (possibly rumored) reports of less than desirable behavior related to the DD-WRT codebase.

Over time, a "subscription" version of the firmware has become available. I see any new features in the future likely only being available to people willing to pay for this, and the free version simply stagnating. This along with the firmware itself having an ever-growing amount of services that bordered on adware made me want to look elsewhere.

It turns out unless you really needed every last knob of DD-WRT, Tomato is both far simpler and equally fully featured. In addition, its hot-set capability for nearly all parameters is very slick.

I won't go into exhausting details feature by feature of the two. I'll suffice it to say that I see no reason why someone wouldn't be equally or more satisfied by using Tomato vs. DD-WRT. A quick Google search of "tomato wrt" brings up others opinions on this subject as well.

Linux Recovery Single User Mode

2008-06-21T16:24:00.003-05:00

I recently found myself not knowing the root password on a Linux server I have in my house (it is temporarily relocated until a new hosting location is ready).

I had tried very successfully to forget all of my years of mucking with Linux servers, so it took me a bit to remember how to pull off resetting the root password. I'm throwing it on here in case I forget again in the future.

Since I had local keyboard and monitor access, this was really rather trivial. This was an older server still running Slackware. Slackware was the distro I first learned Linux with, and where I really polished my Linux skills. That said, I'll never use it again. I'm just not interested in the mucking any longer, Ubuntu server is the way to go for me.

Since this was an older Slackware box, it was still using Lilo. So, I stopped the boot process at the Lilo prompt by holding shift. I then used the following command line:
linux rw 1 init=/bin/sh

Now to explain a bit. "linux" was the name of my kernel image, "rw" says that I want to mount the root filesystem read/write, "1" is how I signal to drop to runlevel 1. All of that would be sufficient for simple troubleshooting. However, I needed to startup as root in order to reset the root password. Setting init to /bin/sh takes care of that nicely.

Firefox 3 Extensions

2008-06-21T16:17:00.002-05:00

First of all, I really do love Firefox 3. Most people already knew I preferred Firefox to all other browsers. Firefox 3 was exactly the kind of updated I like. It didn't add a bunch of extra fluff and bloat that I didn't need. Instead, they focused on making it quicker, more stable, and even simpler to use. Fantastic.

People often ask what extensions I like or must have. I used to have a monstrous list back in the early Firefox days. Anything that seemed remotely useful I added. I have since tried to make my list be more of an "essentials" list. Some will argue my list is still fairly large, and some are still just niceties. However, I find that every item in my list in some way enhances my browsing experience on a nearly daily basis so they are all worthwhile.

I didn't feel like exporting a text list, so I'm going to be lazy and give you a screenshot instead. About the only extension I would really still like is a better version of the Google Calendar notifier that I used to have (which doesn't work in FF 3).

Take the Long Way Home

2008-06-15T20:08:00.004-05:00

I've been meaning to blog several things, but just haven't had the motivation. The flooding has pretty much zapped whatever was left of my ambition. Kudos to KCRG and the CR Gazette though for turning news sources that I often chastise into awesome online sources during the floods.

For something with an equal mix of silliness and depression, I created this Google map of how we had to traverse one of the very few (and possibly only) routes between my current town and my hometown today.

Click on the link near the bottom to be able to see the points of interest better.

View Larger Map

Static Variables in Shared Libraries

2008-04-22T14:31:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted for a while, and this isn't really a deserving post, so I apologize for that.

This is however, something I can never seem to keep straight in my head, so I'm throwing it out here to keep track of it for myself and possibly others.

How Static Variables within Shared Libraries (C or C++) Work Under Linux
Static variables within shared libraries for the most part work exactly as they do directly in an executable, on a per process basis. There is no consistency of value between multiple processes using the same shared library.

Each process will have all static data within these shared libraries initialized to zero, and then their scope will be maintained throughout the lifetime of that process, independent of other processes.

I have tested this empirically and found it to be true, and in line with how I theorized that it worked. If you know otherwise and can explain it to me (and shatter my understanding of the world) - I would love to hear it.

5 of the Recent

2008-03-09T12:02:00.000-05:00

I've had this post and these songs queued up for a while, so they aren't exactly "of the now". However, they are all still high on my playlist.

Before hitting the list of 5, I have to throw in a plug for an album I bought last night. Del (aka Deltron, aka Del the Funky Homosapien) just threw down his first "real" album in at least 8 years, and the first to be listed as just from him in over a decade. As always, Del is awesome.

Pick it up from iTunes, or grab it from Amazon for a buck cheaper. In either case, you can grab it before it is even available in stores on Tuesday.

Now, on to the list:

Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild (Music for the Motion Picture) [Deluxe Version] - Hard Sun
I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you're looking to get depressed. However, this song reminded me of why Pearl Jam rocked so hard back in the 90's. I think Eddie is finally back to his roots, when I enjoyed listening to them. This is a bit of alt-rock mixed with folk, but mostly it just showcases Eddie's voice.

Pearl Jam - Love, Reign O'er Me (As Featured In the Motion Picture "Reign Over Me") - Single - Love, Reign O'er Me
This movie is also a bit on the downer side - the difference being that there are 2 amazing actors in it. I recommend this highly (which I would for pretty much any Don Cheadle movie). This song (mostly the original by The Who) is a central theme to the movie. Pearl Jam's version plays just as the credits begin to roll. Eddie easily has the pipes to emulate Roger Daltrey on this one.

Craig Morgan - Little Bit of Life - International Harvester
Here's something to liven up the list a bit. You might have to have grown up in a small, farm town in Iowa, playing with farm implement toys to truly appreciate this one. You might also need a 3 year old who loves to sing along. I happen to have both.

The White Stripes - Icky Thump - You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)
This is my surprise song of the list. I always knew that Jack White was a great producer, but I was never a fan of his band's music. I happened to catch this song on a rock station one day and assumed it to be some long-lost classic rock song I didn't know. Nope, new White Stripes.
This has a mixture of Black Crowes, with some 70's Cheap Trick thrown in. In other words, catchy as hell and exactly my type of music.
Overall, I've been happy with the whole CD. This is the brightest spot on it, but I dig it all.

Miley Cyrus - Hannah Montana 2 - Meet Miley Cyrus - See You Again
So, I threw this on here mostly to prove that I can. Yes, that's right, I just put a Hannah Montana song on here. That's because I'll admit that I think it's a damn catchy song, and that Miley Cyrus actually has a really cool voice. Go actually listen to it and just try to claim that it isn't catchy.

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I swear it was influenced by "Sunglasses at Night" - see if you agree.

Besides, the Cyrus family has a dynasty in the making, so you can't avoid them. Billy Ray is getting the last laugh at everyone. Not only are he and his daughter making millions (or billions), now his son has his own band on the radio too.

Gwendolyn Fae

2008-02-13T13:00:00.000-06:00

(This blog is often about my interests, such as technology. This post probably makes it obvious that it is still my personal blog as well)

Gwendolyn Fae was one of the best people you would ever meet in your life. She spent her entire life providing love and hope to others, and all she ever knew was love by all who came in contact with her. I really wish you could have met her in person. That wasn't possible though, since she died on Sunday, the 3rd of February in 2008, 6 weeks before she should have been born.

Morpheus in The Matrix said "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?" That's been my life this past week. This can't be reality. There's no possible combinations of events and universes where I can be expected to do these tasks. You can't go from anticipating yet another addition to the happy family, to knowing that person will not be alive, in a single moment. I can't be balancing trying to help others cope, planning events, and mourning all at the same time. How do I wake up? How do I know when it is over?

Without any insight, I always thought I understood when people stated that "children should bury their parents, not the other way around." I had no grasp of the true gravity of it though. It is absolutely unconscionable to require this of a parent, but it goes well beyond that. No parent should have to go through losing a piece of themselves, which every child is in some way. No parent should have to find a way to tell brothers and sisters who have been longing to meet their new sibling that they will not be able to play with them as they had been hoping. Finding a way to say that, and continuing to help them understand it all might be the most difficult aspect of the entire ordeal.

When all of this happens so unexpectedly and and in a mostly unexplainable way, it makes it that much more difficult to process. So much potential and future events that will never get to be, and we have no clear answer why. This is where faith can either be tested or fully realized.

If any good can come of all of this sorrow, it is an increased realization of the power of people all around you. Family and friends can in an instant demonstrate how much they care, and how involved they really are in your life. I always realized the value of both of these, but not to the fully level that it exists. Hopefully everyone who has been affected or involved can also take away some increased realization of how fleeting things can be, and how valuable time with friends and family should be. This sounds a bit trite, but it bears truly thinking about and believing.

I'm sure there is more I should explain, but at this point my mind has been in this dream state for so long, I find any additional thoughts to be fleeting. If you have come across this and have had a similar experience, let me know. I hope that this can help you in understanding the thoughts drifting in your mind as well.

Good luck on your journey without me Gwendolyn, I hope to understand it all someday.

Recovery

2008-01-25T23:36:00.000-06:00

I never quite got around to posting this over the holidays, but I saw the pictures tonight and thought I would do it.

It turns out sometimes I do unplug from my computer. I actually try to do it as often as possible (although not as often as I might like, especially during the arctic winter). I make a habit to only check once in the morning and before bed on weekends, and I try not to use it at all during the night while I am home with the kids.

I'm very glad when I find new tasks to try and do that aren't computer-related also. Expanding my knowledge of varied other topics is very refreshing.

When we moved into our current house, we bought a new dining set that happened to come with upholstered chairs. At the time we knew that probably wouldn't mix well with our kids, but the set works really well with our house. Less than 2 years later, the seats were completely trashed and looked horrible.

Since I like new challenges, and I don't like money coming out of my wallet, I convinced my wife that her idea of recovering the chairs was a good one, but I should do it myself. I kept saying I would eventually do it, but then she used the fact that we were hosting Christmas dinner as a reason I should speed up the process. Couple that with my nearly 3 week vacation from work, and I made it happen.

In reality, it only took me 2 nights to get all 6 chairs recovered. I needed very few tools and things to make it happen. I borrowed an electric staple gun, bought a nice pair of scissors for cutting the fabric, and some very nice leather-like fabric from a local fabric store.

Here is a gallery of some before and after pictures. I can't say I'm a master upholsterer yet, but I will say they look far better than before, and even better than when we originally got the chairs.

Who's Fault?

2008-01-07T22:46:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, even the best stores can be a pain.

Amazon is far and away my favorite online retailer. That means I can pretty safely say they are my favorite retailer period too. However, I was a bit annoyed when I had to return something.

I recently ordered something, and inadvertantly ended up with 2 in my cart. Because I was using a gift certificate it didn't dawn on me as quickly that I was paying too much either. All mostly my fault.

When I received the package I immediately realized the error. My handy included packing slip indicated that for a full refund I could simply visit their returns site. After clicking on recent orders, and choosing exactly which item I wanted to return, I had to choose a reason. "No problem", I thought, "I'll just choose the 'Accidentally Ordered Duplicates' option, or something similar." No, that was not even close to one of the options:

So, at first I selected the first option. I didn't really order the wrong item, just too many, but I figured this was the closest. However, while I would receive a refund in that case, they stated that I would have to pay shipping costs (prepaid USPS, but they would deduct the shipping from my refund amount).

This probably should have been acceptable to me, but since I didn't pay for shipping in the first place, I was annoyed. So, I began choosing other options to find out the varied outcomes. It turns out that if I simply claim I didn't like the item (as displayed in the image above), they'll cover the shipping costs. Hmm.

So, if you end up needing to return something to Amazon, this is apparently the route to go.

Albums of 07

2008-01-01T21:49:00.000-06:00

Ryan switched up a bit from our 5 of the now format, and gave us his favorite full albums of last year.

I'll admit, I'm as big of an album fan as him. As much as I like just finding new music, and skipping around in my playlist, I'm still thoroughly impressed and amazed when I find an album that truly works from start to stop. This should be obvious I guess, Floyd never put out anything as a single that wasn't ten times better within the context of the album.

I had to stretch a bit to figure out my 5 favorite of last year. I can't say it was the best year for the album, but these were all at least ones that earned repeat from me. Also, this is a list of albums I enjoyed this year, not necessarily albums released this year.

1. Shooter Jennings - The Wolf
Yeah, this probably seems obvious, I'm a huge Shooter fan. That said, even I was amazed how much I liked this album. It just grew even better over time. Hands down his best effort yet. See you in August, Shooter.

2. Timbaland - Timbaland Presents Shock Value
This stretches the concept of album a bit. The amount of collaboration here makes it difficult to get a consistent theme going...or does it? The consistent theme here is Timbaland's continued incredible production value. That and the fact that I kept finding a new track to be my favorite. "Bounce" is the current one - Missy and Dre along with JT, that's just good business.

3. Z-Trip - All Pro
Old-school hip-hop masters, with some nice metal behind it. Where was this in high school?

4. Aesop Rock - Fast Cars, Danger, Fire, and Knives
This album and I had some difficult times. I often referred to this as the devil album, due to it having superhuman DRM from iTunes somehow. I also thought that it wasn't nearly as good as some of his former or his current album. I was wrong, it just took some time.

5. Various Artists - Lost in Translation Soundtrack
Yes, this is fairly old at this point. I just finally got around to watching this movie this year though, and then getting the soundtrack. RZA is a master minimalist.

First Post

2008-01-01T09:04:00.000-06:00

...of 2008 that is. Only 366 days to go until the end of the year, time to get going on your yearly plans.

Let's start with some news from 2006. That was the original year when analog TV was supposed to be done. However, it really looks like it will finally happen in 2009.

For quite a few years I was rather annoyed by the government's plan to supply converter boxes to those who needed them. I wasn't sure that television should qualify as a basic need that should be assumed to be provided by the government. Actually, in this day and age (probably aided by the fact that I don't have television service) I think the Internet is a much more valuable and basic need. As a matter of fact, that's where I watched the 2007 countdown live from New York.

Back to the point, it turns out the the cost of converter boxes is just a cost of business associated with the government's overall plan. That cost is a drop in a bucket compared to what they intend to make by selling off the returned analog frequencies.

Thus far, they have attempted to implement this whole process by providing silly $40 coupons to people who request them, up to 2 per household. I say if you have any need for this at all, go take advantage of this offer.

The site appears to be having issues today, but here it is for reference.

Winter Break Projects

2007-12-30T16:43:00.001-06:00

I've mentioned countless times before (although not necessarily on this blog) how much I enjoy my Xbox Media Center. I still find the quality of software that those open source guys kicked out to be incredible and I use it pretty much every day.

So...one of my projects that I ignored until my winter reprieve from work was to fix an Xbox of mine that didn't quite work right. Couple that with one that offered to fix for someone else, and I created the ultimate Pimp My Ride scenario in my living room:

"We put three xboxes on top of your TV!!!"
(Eat your heart out, Xzibit).

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about right now, there was an episode of that ridiculous show where they stuff 3 xboxes into the trunk of a Nissan 240SX. I was amazed to find a thread with the guy who owned the 240 today while searching a bit.

Super-cool web goodness

2007-12-26T19:10:00.000-06:00

I always like when I run across some new web technology (no, I won't call it web 2.0). I'm still amazed daily at some of the stuff people can pull off. It's especially great when it does something very useful, in a very intuitive and clean way, and then a bonus when it is applied as a fairly old technology.

Lifehacker pointed me today to a site that allows you to take fully-interactive snapshots of any website. By snapshot, I mean it is literally as if you snagged a piece of the site verbatim. The throwback part is that it possible to create it as an image map, not just an actual graphic. All hyperlinks and images, as well as layout, are completely retained.

Obviously, there are some copyright issues to consider here. This is substantially different than just linking to a page. However, if you own the content, this is awesome. Here's a snapshot from this blog to show as an example:

Musings on Almost Anything (Occasionally) via kwout

I was initially just going to add this to my Google Reader shared items, but decided it was just too good and needed to be posted. However, I thought I would throw in here how much I am digging Google's new feature that shows your friend's shared items right in reader. It lets me basically have a feed of things I probably wouldn't run across, and they are from people who have mostly similar interests to my own. A very nice addition.

Potpourri

2007-12-13T21:01:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I did a post with several interesting items, so here goes:

Completely Missing the Point
I'm to the point where I'm almost entirely paperless with my monthly bills. I think the city water bill is the sole holdout at this point; everything else is either delivered directly to my email (fantastic), or I download from the web (better, but still not the best). I can now use email tags or folders of PDFs to store all of this data very succinctly, and in a searchable and usable manner.

Maybe the biggest benefit though was time savings and reduction of effort. Quite simply, especially with automatically tagged email, there is little to no interaction with these bills any longer. I check them over and archive them.

So, I was highly disappointed to receive the following email after downloading my latest telephone statement from the local co-op:
eLation@southslope.com

Data concerning your account was recently made available offline.
If you didn't download this data, it may indicate an unauthorized individual has accessed your account.

A PDF version of invoice 10224020 was downloaded.

In accordance with an FCC ruling, you are being notified that data from your online account was downloaded.
The text of this ruling can be viewed at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-22A1.pdf

Needless to say, I was not "elated" about seeing this. What a pointless email. I can only hope they are taking this ruling too far, and that I won't start seeing this everywhere.
Missing iTunes Feature
Here's a sentence I'm pretty sure I've never said before: "Man, I wish iTunes had this feature I heard about in Windows Media Player." That changed after seeing a post on lifehacker today though.

Basically, this is a way to put media player into a full screen mode and have it locked with a numeric password. So, the theory is that you can throw the player into party mode and go full screen with some cool visualizations. Now, somebody bumping or trying to use the computer won't kill the tunes. Simple, but cool.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
As always, this is a great mantra for living your life. Lately, near the holiday time especially, I have been very interested in the first. Looking at all of the pure excess and junk in the stores just leads me to believe we are wasting effort and resources on pointless junk.

Without leaning too heavily into the preachy category, I thought I would share an interesting article about reducing the number of useless gifts given simply out of expectation and replacing them with things that are thoughtful and simple. In other words, something original and practical, not something overpriced and grabbed from an end cap.

Wiki Wiki

2007-12-12T20:21:00.000-06:00

Everyone who knows me well, know that I love some wiki action. Usually when I say that, I'm of course talking about the super fantastic wikipedia.

However, tonight I found myself in need of just a general purpose wiki. I wanted one I could setup, with a variety of potential topics, and get a group of people together for collaboration. I googled for about 30 seconds (I sometimes forget how lazy I have become over time courtesy of Google) and had about 4 potential sites. I checked out wikisites, wikispots, and probably something else named wiki. In the end though, Zoho's wiki solution proved to be exactly what I wanted.

No ads, nice clean design, and ability to create my own sites for collaboration. Very nice.

Blowing it off

2007-12-09T23:29:00.000-06:00

Sometimes there is nothing more soothing or relaxing than working on something completely pointless and fun. I'm trying to do more of this, as silly as that may sound.

You might notice my (hopefully) growing list of links on the side of this blog to my other various sites and projects. One of those has actually been around for a while, but I just added to it again tonight.

Here is my latest t-shirt design: http://www.cafepress.com/floydpink.105916729. In this particular case, I resurrected an old web classic, and brought it to textile form. Why? Because I can.

5 + 1

2007-12-01T01:08:00.000-06:00

Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) - Handsome Boy Modeling School featuring Lord Finesse, Mike Shonoda, Chester Bennington, Rahzel, Qbert, Grand Wizard Theodore & Jazzy Jay - White People
I had to start with this one, as it really kicked off my listening for nearly the past month. I originally found this song when Ryan first introduced me to "Handsome Boy Modeling School". I was hooked immediately, but this song in particular is awesome. References and performances by some of the true greats of Hip-hop. These are the creators of the whole genre, and most of them still kick ass. I recommend taking down names, grabbing some Wikipedia info, and then working your way through some of their works.

Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
The song that pretty much kicked off her career (and continued to prove that Timbaland was really on to something). This track holds up perfectly yet today, I never tire of it. My kids never tire of the "Beep beep, who got the keys to the jeep?"

Shooter Jennings - The Wolf - Slow Train
Anyone knowing me or paying attention to my blog for any period of time knows Shooter might very well be my favorite artist right now. The perfect mix of country lineage and southern rock. I've been impressed as usual with his latest album, but this track with the Oak Ridge Boys takes it to another level. Nothing like working with some of the best to bring out the best in an already great artist.

Kanye West - Graduation - Homecoming
I've flipped on my opinion of Kanye completely over the years. I disliked him at first when "Gold Digger" was being overplayed. I slowly started to get into his music though, all the way until he teamed up with DJ Premier for the kickass "Classic" single. After that, buying "Graduation" seemed like an obvious move. I wasn't expecting it to be so good though. The Daft Punk-sampled track would be the obvious pick for a 50tn with its incredible energy. However, I went with a bit more intriguing track. His collaboration with Chris Martin of Coldplay would be intriguing by itself, but I find the lyric play in the song fantastic also.

Z-Trip - Kiss (Remix / 2006)
Raise your hand if you like free music. Okay, raise your hand if you like hip-hop and rock mashups done by the best in the business. Even if I'm the only one still raising my hand, you still need to check this out. Z-Trip invented and perfected the modern version of the rap/rock mash-up (Aerosmith and Run obviously creating the original...). On top of that though, he provides some great mixes for free on his site. His remix of Prince featuring Murs is more than worthy of a listen.
If you don't feel like browsing, here is a direct link to the song

Holiday Bonus (since I've had this post waiting for so long)
Sarah McLachlan - Wintersong - The First Noel/Mary Mary
It's that time of year, where my wife attempts to drown me in holiday music. I generally just ignore it, and sometimes become a bit annoyed. However, this CD and this song in particular are a different story. Her version of Noel is about the darkest Christmas song you will ever hear, bordering on a very Celtic sound. Incredible.
(Note: You can now get this for free right here)

Silly Bowling Team Names

2007-11-30T16:33:00.000-06:00

A group of us at work are going to be doing our annual Bowling for Kid's Sake event again this year to help out the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program (click here if you actually want to donate to me).

In doing so, we needed to come up with a good team name (there is swag on the line...). So, we came up with the following list:

I'm with Stupid
Head Bangers
Nuns with Guns
Than we shall bowl in the shade...
...and the horse you rode in on
Overstuffed Windbags
Smoka Bowl
Jason types like Shit
Bowling John Malkovich
Ebowla
Off Constantly
Victorious Secret
CloscoresEX
The Muffin Stuffers
Shocker
Huge Racks
Mines in the Gutter
RTFB
(10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)
Bowl Movements
Freshly Waxed
Snarky Self-deprecating Elitists
The CN4's
I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter
Off in the Gutter
Muppets and Naked Breasts
If it weren't for my horse
Richard Craniums and a Female

In the end, we narrowed it down to the following 2 choices (our team has 5 males and 1 female in case you were wondering):

Mines in the Gutter
(10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)

Although I still find the 2nd choice particularly awesome, we decided on the first for a good team name. Why am I sharing all of this? Because sometimes you just need a good, stupid post on a Friday. Alternatively, why not?

Go Away!!

2007-11-28T23:19:00.001-06:00

Before falling off the deep end and admitting he liked the blue light, Thaddeus had reminded me of a post that I had been meaning to write.

He talked a bit about the "Do Not Call" list, and wondered if it worked. While I obviously don't have hard and fast evidence, I would have to say that it has worked very well for us. I signed up on the first day that you could do so online, and within about 2 months our unsolicited calls had dropped off almost entirely. Anymore, other than the stupid political, highway patrol (usually fake), and alumni calls, we don't get any crap calls. If I could find a way to stop those entirely, I would be extremely happy.

The real point of my post though is that the list expires every 5 years. If you registered early like me, that means you are nearing the time where your number will fall off the list. You can renew your spot early, so I strongly recommend you go update your number. Actually, make sure to update ALL of your numbers.

The Future is Simple

2007-11-26T22:05:00.000-06:00

(Click here to go straight to the webapp creation details)
(Click here to grab the template webapp file)

Web-based applications are all the rage currently (if you haven't heard, you're either under a rock or better at avoiding hype than I). Creating a functional application that makes use of HTML for a UI makes a lot of sense, and can greatly speed up development.

An idea based upon this that has intrigued me recently is the idea of SSB (site-specific browsers), and specifically Mozilla's Prism application/framework. A site-specific browser has also been called a distraction-free browser. The idea is to take the presentation aspects of a web browser, but remove all other associated web-browser nuances/distractions (i.e. toolbars, navigation controls, etc.). Basically you end up with the equivalent of a single, desktop application that still uses a web browser underneath.

I finally found the answer for how I would try this out while trying to solve a separate problem. My son (currently 7 years old) has been using email off and on for about 3 years now. I started him out with Gmail, but initially had him use a POP3 client. However, after moving the rest of the family to solely use the web interface I wanted to remove the installed client. This left me with 2 options:

Teach him how to open a link to Gmail, logout the current user, and type his username and password.
Find a way to give him his own access to the web browser interface that didn't interfere with anyone else in the family.

The first option was not a possibility. This was both too much work, and potentially too disruptive to other Gmail users in the household. So, I had to determine the best option for #2. After briefly considering having him use IE (since none of us use it), I regained my senses and realized that Prism could be the perfect solution for him.

5 minutes of learning how to create a Prism configuration file, followed by about a minute with "view page source" to figure out how to directly log him into Gmail, and I was ready to go. Now, couple that with a slick Gmail icon from one of my favorite free icon sites, zip it all up into a "webapp" file, and I was done. I ran it once to install into Prism, and then used the "Install Shortcut" option in the bottom, right-hand corner of Prism to install it to the desktop for him. It turned out very slick overall. I might yet make use of some of the scripting and styling features of Prism to automatically resize the window to a given size (currently it remembers between sessions just fine though), and remove some of the unnecessary UI elements from Gmail for him. For now though, this solves the problem very nicely.

One final tip. I wanted to host the template webapp file for all of this someplace permanent so that I could link to it. It turns out that Google Groups fit the bill very nicely for me, up to a 100 MB limit. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't handle .webapp (or maybe it is the zip file format) very well so I can't directly link to the file. You'll have to right-click and save it.

Now, for the implementation details.

Create a file named webapp.ini, mine looks like this

[Parameters]
id=gmail@localhost
uri=https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?
    service=mail&Email=YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN&
    Passwd=YOUR_GMAIL_PASSSWORD&continue=
    https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html&zy=l
status=no
location=no
sidebar=no
navigation=no
icon=gmail

Find an icon file (in this case it would need to be named gmail.ico, but you could modify the "icon=" line if named something different. The "icon=" line can be removed entirely to use the default Prism icon.
Zip up the .ico and .ini files with your zip program of choice (I use 7zip). Once you have created the archive, change it from a .zip extension to a .webapp extension to have it automatically load with prism upon double-click.
Double-click the webapp to load it in Prism.
<optional>Verify that everything is working correctly, and then drop-down the gear icon in the lower-right and select where to create a shortcut.

Finally, here is a template webapp file you can customize to do this yourself. All that needs to be changed is to open the webapp file up in your zip program (again, 7zip for me), and edit the webapp.ini file. The only things that will need to be changed are the YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN and YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD values (to your Gmail email prefix and password respectively).

One last note. I needed this to work on a Windows PC, so the instructions are very much tailored for that. There shouldn't be any reason this won't work on Linux or Mac though.

UI Consistency

2007-11-24T15:06:00.001-06:00

Ryan had a post about "Inconsistent Time Sliders", specifically with regards to Apple software products. I had enough thoughts on it that it eventually just turned into a post of its own.

First, I think that Ryan notices UI components more than is healthy for the average human being.

This is actually a good thing though, and it usually Apple is the company who takes care of this. Is diversifying their product line taking its toll? Are they losing attention to small details such as this? Not sure.

I really don't think there needs to be more than perhaps 2 types of sliders. Shouldn't we be able to figure out pretty quickly if circles, triangles, or squares are the best marker? In reality, how does pushing a triangle or square down a round tube make sense? Stick with the round markers.

Given that we know the marker, I think the only thing that might change is dependent on whether transparency is allowed or not -- Ryan mentions this as well.

In general, these are the type of thing that get overlooked, and in the grand scheme of things
won't really hurt a product. Conversely though, paying some attention to these details can lead to a highly coherent and strongly-branded product (that which Apple has done the best at in recent years). Also, as Ryan mentions, usability can be greatly increased even with new products if a consistent UI is presented.

It takes a strong attention to detail, and some time commitment from a company to address these issues. However, overall it is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase marketability and sales of product.

In my opinion, the cover flow (and perhaps the new DVD player) slider is the best. I like a very unobtrusive slider that only shows when I need it, with the rounded slider. Buttons can be reduced to three, the play/pause, and a previous and next. Anything else is auxiliary and be hidden behind a click or menu, or perhaps available in a separate interface.

More Google Coolness - Blogger Style

2007-10-25T23:06:00.001-05:00

Sometimes Google gets on a roll with getting new features out there.

First, this may have been there for a while, but I finally notice it tonight. You can now check a box after commenting to have all additional comments on a post emailed to you. About time, now maybe commenting discussion can being to improve on a wider scale with blogs. Blogger is at least trying now to go a little ways toward improving the poor blog commenting that some have discussed in the past.

Second, I continue to find good things at Blogger in draft. For those who haven't seen it, Blogger in draft is where Blogger first rolls out new things (primarily for blog site design for now) before giving it to the general public. To see this, just go to draft.blogger.com, rather than www.blogger.com. I noticed today that they now have available any of the literally hundreds of Google gadgets that are already available for places such as the Google personalized homepage. Now, I just have to find a way to wade through the cruft, and find the goodness.

On a separate note, as those who added it to their RSS will already have seen, I finally kicked off my financial advice site tonight. There is a link under my other sites in the sidebar, but the site is http://financiallysimple.blogspot.com if you are so inclined.

What's old IMAP is new IMAP again

2007-10-25T10:23:00.000-05:00

Leave it to Google to make ancient software cool again. I switched from POP3 to IMAP back in 1997 while I was still going to school and working at U of I. I used it all the way up until I switched everything over to Gmail web-goodness. Most of that time, it seemed that almost nobody else cared or used IMAP, they were almost all using POP.

Now, suddenly, after Gmail introduces this feature it suddenly comes off as the newest and coolest thing around. Amazing. In my mind (and apparently a sentiment shared by others) it is long overdue. I actually wanted to switch the domain for one of my email addresses to Google Hosted a while back, and the lack of IMAP for use on my friend's cell phone was the reason we couldn't.

So, I now am so stuck on the gmail web experience that I really have no use for this feature, but since it was on one of my accounts, I decided to give it a whirl.

Overall, it looks like they have done a very good job with it. I think it appears to function well and I think all of the logistical questions that I have are now answered. Here are my thoughts.

The Good

Labels show up as separate IMAP folders. Better still (and to answer one of my main questions), if you tag something with multiple labels it shows up in multiple folders under IMAP. Very nice.
Inbox and folders are shown at the top level, and then hidden under a [Gmail] folder is essentially the folder list from the left-hand side of the web interface. Thus "all mail" and friends are available, but nicely hidden.
Refer to #1. Now, try to go the other way. Dragging a message into a folder will automatically add that label to the message in gmail, copying to multiple will add all of them. Very slick.

The Bad

Remember Gmail's fantastic idea that you never delete anything, you just archive it? Fantastic idea, I've raved like a lunatic about the value of data for a while now, and I use this as a shining example of how to do it right. Until you have to fetch all of those headers over IMAP... Outlook (my unfortunate choice of IMAP client) froze completely for about 10 minutes trying to pull this off. Most of that is Outlooks fault though. As long as you never fetch the headers for the "all mail" folder, this shouldn't be too terrible (maybe).
This actually isn't anything against Google, it is against Microsoft. It turns out there wasn't as much bad as I expected, so this is filler. I setup the account in Outlook to use IMAP, and I happen to have a gmail address that is "something.somethingelse@gmail.com". Outlook politely warned me that my email address looked invalid, but then happily continued and worked perfectly. Morons. Reminds me of when BestBuy.com couldn't handle the hyphen in one of my email addresses. Read the email RFC's guys, this isn't hard.

So, good job Google. Your implementation of 1990's technology seems superb.

Ringtones

2007-09-12T20:09:00.000-05:00

The introduction by Apple of ringtones to its arsenal has prompted some discussion, and made me actually think a bit about something I generally just find to be a nuisance.

The general consensus when the iPhone first came out was that the lack of custom ringtones was something Apple needed to remedy. This has been a staple of all of the other phones and providers for some time now. They did just that with their most recent announcement. However, I think many were expecting more/different since it was Apple doing it.

First, some things that I think they did right. Being able to pick which 30 seconds of the song to use is good. This is something I would have always considered a must, but it isn't available directly from any of the cell providers. Next, they don't force you to just buy an overpriced ringtone (anywhere from $2 to $5 from what I can tell most places); they allow you to make them from your own music that you already own. Yes, I know there is a catch, we'll get there in a minute. Finally, it can all be done from the safe haven of iTunes. Pick the song, pick the musical selection, and get it loaded on the device is all possible and very simple. The last one is the type of thing I have come to expect from Apple, and may be the single largest benefit. As usual, most people miss the benefit of simplicity.

Now, the things I think were not done the way I would have hoped or expected. I need to preface this by saying I don't think any of the current providers or ringtone offerings have done anything positive; they have been nothing short of horrendous. Overpriced, a pain in the ass to get or use, lack of choice, and a general annoyance is how I would summarize all previous offerings. I can't understand personally why people pay anything for a ringtone, let alone more than I am willing or need to pay to purchase a full song from the iTunes store.

Although the 99 cent price sounds about right, you can't actually purchase any ringtone for that amount. You have to already have bought the song or buy it at that time, which means there is an additional 99 cents to include. Thus, the minimum for a ringtone is actually $2. However, you do also get a full copy of the song for listening as well.
Not all songs are available for making ringtones though, even if you have purchased them from the store. This one seems confusing. You would think if you bought it from Apple, they would let you pay them another $1 to make it a ringtone no matter what.

Now, these few downsides seem to be far overwhelmed by the positives. However, I wondered immediately why Apple would put restrictions such as these on the songs. It doesn't fit with some of their past policies and my expectations of them. Coupled with the recent news that found many of these issues could be easily circumvented in iTunes 7.4 (although they have since been "patched") it made me start to wonder if Apple had nothing to do with these. Were they in fact mandated by some other entity?

I did a (very) little research on this, and came up with some additional conclusions and thoughts. Since this post is fairly long though, I'm going to make like Back to the Future 2 and leave you with this...

SEE THE EXCITING(POSSIBLY) CONCLUSION IN TOMORROW'S POST: "Idiocies of Licensing"

Pain and Suffering - Courtesy of Redmond

2007-09-04T12:55:00.000-05:00

This one is for the true geeks, or those who just like to be dumbfounded by how bad software can go. In this case, it demonstrates how software can interact in completely odd and unexpected ways, and this is why computers are far less deterministic and stable than they should be.

I was attempting to install Silverlight. I'm not really going to even get into why, that's not important at this point.

The important part is that after downloading and running the installer, it stopped with an error at 90%. The installer splash screen then pointed me to this incredibly helpful error page: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/help.aspx?errorID=2. Once my head quit spinning, I started investigating a bit more. Obviously, the error page didn't help in the slightest, it was actually completely out of date. I tried moving the file, extracting it manually, various things did not work.

Amazingly, I did actually find the problem, thanks to a point where I had moved the installer to my root c: drive, but the temp folder still magically showed up on my desktop with a reference to s:.

It is at this point that I should mention a cool little trick I have setup on all of my Windows machines. I create a batch file that runs automatically at startup, using the old dos "subst" command to map a drive letter to my desktop. Yes, I was adept at tab-completing the full profile name (documents and settings\username\yada yada), but it's much nicer having it as my s: drive.

So, seeing the s: drive in the error message tipped me off. I deleted my shortcut drive, and lo and behold it all worked. Bizarre.

If you've read this far, you probably need professional help. I'm still in denial.

Good things are worth the wait...

2007-08-22T22:20:00.000-05:00

Xbox media center rocks hard, I'll have more to say on that in an upcoming post. For now though, enjoy the madness:

Click on the image itself to see more details, or to see the original video that inspired all of this.

5 of the Now

2007-07-15T12:05:00.000-05:00

Some new tunes to bump to, not really any theme this time around, just stuff I have been finding interesting. No links right now, the iTunes link maker thingy/pile o' crap is not working at the moment. I'll try to add them later when it is fixed. All of these are available on iTunes.

Scientific Lifestyle - Flight 273 - The Arrow EP
I chose this song, because this was the one that Blender was showcasing that led me to find this group. I like the whole EP quite a bit, and their other album available on iTunes as well. Smooth beats, with some interesting vocals. A good blend of mellow and beats.

Big and Rich featuring Wyclef Jean - Please Man - Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace
In this case, I chose this song to spite several reviews who have trashed it (plus I know nobody will listen to it anyway...). First, this whole album is incredible. In fact, the only songs I'm not sold on are the 2 more stereotypical-styled rockabilly songs (and the horrendous cover of "Shook Me All Night Long", that should be surgically removed from all future CD printings). Everything else on here is solid, modern country and done fantastically.
This song however, is all about just having fun. Wyclef gets it, these guys have always gotten it. Sometimes it's more important to just have fun with music, than to produce some epic. Great stuff.

Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend (Dr. Luke Mix featuring Lil Mama) - Girlfriend Single
I'm throwing this on here first because I think it's cool that this made it out as an officially-sanctioned remix. Second, it's on here because it's one of the few tracks featuring lil' mama that you can get from iTunes right now. The original song I can pretty much take or leave, but I'm extremely impressed right now with lil' mama's rap skills. She has some fierce flow to her rhymes.

Air - Alone in Kyoto - Lost in Translation Soundtrack
I finally saw "Lost in Translation" this past week (yes, I'm not sure why it took me so long). Great movie, and the soundtrack is equally on-par. I have lots of other stuff by Air already, and I think this is one of the top 2 tracks on the soundtrack. Jesus and Mary Chain would be a close second.

Carbon Leaf - Learn to Fly - Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat
I would have never heard of this group if one of their videos wasn't playing on a cruise we took a few months back. More on the alternative side, but this is just generally a good song. Doesn't hurt that they cribbed the title of a great Pink Floyd track either...

Map 2 Text

2007-07-01T18:42:00.000-05:00

So, apparently the hot new thing to do right now is send maps to your cell phone via text message.
Josh is in the middle of pulling off a nice hack to do this with weather map information. In his case, you send a text to an address, and get back a map.

Now, I see today that Google is letting you call their 1-800-GOOG411 number, say "map it", and then they'll text you a map.

Now, how about marrying it all together. Have Google wire it up so you can email like in Josh's solution, and then have Google add weather maps as a service. Best of all worlds.

Somewhere, the Bluetooth DJ is doing a happy dance...

2007-06-25T20:55:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I would be referring to Ryan in the title. If you have read his blog at all, you'll know that he often has pined for a much simpler way of finding/communicating with people. A single contact point that can find a person no matter what.

Well Google, that no evil doing behemoth, is positioning themselves one step closer to that. There are rumors that they plan to buy GrandCentral, a service where you can call a single number and it attempts to reach the person at all of their contact numbers.

Looks promising.

Transformers Outlast the Cassette Tape

2007-06-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

If at some point in the 1980's you had said the title of this post, I think most people around you would have thought you were crazy. At the time, cassette tapes were still unfortunately the most popular form of music around. Transformers on the other hand were just the silly toy flavor of the month (a month which somehow ended up occupying nearly all of 1985/1986 for me).

Fast-forward to the crazy futuristic year of 2007. An inbred monkey is the president, and while cassette tapes are as dead as Micheal Jackson's career, Transformers are heading back to the box office in CGI goodness. There are product tie-ins galore, lots of toys, and a blockbuster movie. At this point I declare that they have successfully outlasted the tape.

Lending more evidence to that fact was a conversation I had with my son today. First, after teaching him the finer points of Autobots vs. Decepticons, we were looking at a picture of Optimus Prime. So, of course I had to show him my original. Yeah, there it is, first generation goodness. You know you're jealous...

Now, along with Optimus Prime I had some other pretty cool transformers. They were cassette tapes that transformed into animals and robots (ahh, now you see the tie-in coming...).

I showed them to him, and after showing him how they transformed asked: "Have you ever seen tapes like these before? Maybe at Grandma and Grandpa's house?" (there was no way he would have seen one at our house). His answer was a resounding "no". Thus, he had no idea what cassette tapes were even used for, but he knew about transformers starting several years ago (thanks to my toys), and now was even interested in getting some of his own.

Now, just for the heck of it, here's a picture of another favorite kids toy (one that's been well-played with since 1982).

Light 'Em Up

2007-06-13T08:24:00.001-05:00

This was a picture taken this past weekend while we were playing with sparklers, before our town's yearly fireworks show started. Shannon thought it looked pretty cool, and I tend to agree.

I thought it was a good way to introduce a new photo gallery that I recently created. I am going to post some of the pictures I have taken that I think work well as interesting computer backgrounds. You can find the gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/floydpink/Backgrounds.

Browser Showdown

2007-06-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

Following up on my previous Safari post, I noticed that Ryan had compared the screen real-estate used by the two browsers.

I'm liking Safari a bit more as I use it again, but they still need to fix the font display and some windowing usability before I can test drive it on a daily basis.

Pointing out once again the flexibility of Firefox though, I thought I would post how the 2 browsers compare on my system:

Software and the idiots who use it

2007-06-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

I needed something to get me fired up (many of you will find that hard to believe). This will definitely do it.

As many know, Apple released a version of their Safari web browser for Windows yesterday at their WWDC developer conference. An unexpected move for many, including myself, and one that spawned a good amount of discussion and pondering.

Don't confuse pondering with pandering though, which is what many in the tech community love to do so much. The bits had barely hit the web before people were trashing the release. I'll admit, I tried it immediately, and was less than impressed with the usability and visual aspects of this particular build. Guess what? It's beta. Should this be a surprise? So, rather than bitch continuously, I simply closed it and will wait for a later version to do additional evaluation. After all, Apple actually still uses beta to mean pre-release, not perpetual unwillingness to claim completion like other companies.

The worst of these were some of the security exploits supposedly found, as covered by Slashdot. The first of these idiots is the guy who supposedly had found a bug in Apple's Airport, only to be smacked down later. He claims he found a bunch of holes, but he will not be disclosing them to Apple. Fantastic, great plan. Run around, spouting off about how great you are and poking holes in software, rather than attempting to improve something. Specifically, a beta, which is released entirely to attempt to find issues and get them fixed before release. These people need to have their Internet pass revoked.

Personally, I want to see Safari not only succeed, but excel. Mostly, because I want some competition to push my favorite browser, Firefox, a little harder. At this point, I really don't see myself ever moving to Safari. I like some of its features, but I have nearly all of them already courtesy of extensions. Extensions are still the silver bullet of Firefox for me. Also, I find Firefox to still run very snappy, and I have his memory in check on my machine. I look forward to some friendly competition between the two to keep improving them both.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

2007-05-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

Well, real life has kept me quite busy (a good thing, as I have pretty much been living outdoors playing with the kids), so some of my online projects have gone a bit neglected. This blog would be one of those things.

Something came up today though that is extremely cool, and worth discussing. Google in August of last year bought a company named Neven Vision, who specialized in Biometrics. Why, you ask? Well, specifically the part of biometrics that they were interested in initially was facial recognition. Now you see where I'm going with this, who thinks that both Google image search and Picasa could benefit from being able to find photos with faces of people in them? I certainly see a large value in that.

Today (it may be gone by the time you read this), they are testing some of this functionality on their image search page. Add the following modifier "imgtype=face" to the end of an image search, and you can see what I mean. Example: change http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images to http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images&imgtype=face
and you will be greeted with the face of that billionaire who lives on that infinite loop thingy.

Very good stuff. Now, back to my hiatus status for at least a week.

5 of the Now

2007-05-06T21:06:00.000-05:00

You'll notice a definite hip-hop flavor to this list. That's been the majority of my listening lately...perhaps MTV is to blame.

Queen & Wyclef Jean - The Platinum Collection - Another One Bites the Dust
This track rocks hard. Queen was hands down my favorite group as I was getting into Classic Rock back in high school, and Freddie's stripped-down vocals own the track here. Couple that with Wyclef's smooth production, and the seriously amped-up bass, and it's a winner.

KRS-One, Kanye West, Nas & Rakim - Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been) [DJ Premier Remix]
I like Kanye, but I bought this for the wealth of original hip-hop talent that he brought along. KRS-One alone would have been enough to intrigue me, but bringing along Rakim and Nas just improves it all. Good stuff. Thanks to Blender for pointing me in the direction of this track.

Rihanna featuring Jay-Z - Umbrella - Good Girl Gone Bad
This track has grown on me a ton, and is now my favorite track that she has done. Smooth, good beat, all-around great track. This was obtained at the request of Shannon who wanted it for driving music on a trip we were taking. I would give an iTunes link, but this won't actually be released until June. If you listen, make sure you have XM, as the crap that passes for FM radio cuts Jay-Z off the track entirely.

Busta Rhymes, DMX, Lloyd Banks, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Papoose & Rah Digga - Touch It Remixes (Explicit Version) - Single
Music tips can come from unusual places. This was on Nelly Furtado's Summer Top 10 list on MTV Hits recently. I liked her quite a bit (at least her music), but man she came off dumber than hell on that show. However, her pick of this is impeccable. The video trots out an endless lip of hip-hop celebs, and Mary J throws down with some force. The whole track has a very Missy-Timbaland influenced feel to it. Great track. Welcome back Busta.

DJ Khaled featuring Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Baby & Lil' Wayne - We Takin' Over - Single (USA)
I can't say I condone the theme of this song, but screw it, I like Fat Joe and his gang. Akon's unique vocals are a great contrast to people like Joe and Rick Ross. Still can't stand Lil' Wayne, but I'll let it slide this time. This and "Make it Rain" by Fat Joe are both incredible.

Now, one last tidbit to leave you with. It turns out MTV.com has tons of music videos that you can watch on your computer. Who knew? http://www.mtv.com/music/video/

I was impressed to see they had both new and old videos on there. I also did not expect Aesop Rock to look anything like this: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1225460&vid=65229

This makes me sad/angry

2007-05-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

I'll get off of my soapbox here one of these days and start posting new content again, rather than just syndicating other news items, really I will.

However, I couldn't skip this one. The original slashdot link for this story is here. The summary from there is:

"A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."

I hate close-minded people screaming terrorism, censorship, etc. and running for the hills in general. I do my best to try to educate people when this is happening, to stop it from spreading. This one hits close to home though.

When I was in high school, I made a DOOM 2 map of my high school (a wad, for those who remember). It turns out our school was old enough that it had all sorts of cool, hidden areas that I had found my way into over the years. My personal favorite is the lofts above the auditorium, where there is likely still tagging with my name to do this day.

All of it combined to make a really cool world for my friend and I to play DOOM 2 over 9600 bps modem. Good old days indeed. Would I have had an inkling in my mind that anyone would ever consider something like that a threat? Hardly, and I bet this kid didn't either.

Texas, I'm seeing proof that your education system ranks near the lowest in the country. You don't have to look farther than the political personnel that have risen from your ranks in recent (or not so recent in certain executive examples) years.

What is this number?

2007-05-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

How DiD i come up with a Very Dumb blog post? And, Ask yourself Could Sending it to the junK foldEr be verY smart?

In either case, I have no idea why my typing was so bad on the previous sentence, or what this number means: 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Why Google, Why?

2007-05-01T11:46:00.000-05:00

Others have talked about how they really like the personalized Google homepage, and even the new themes. I personally no longer use a homepage, I never really close my browser so it wouldn't make much sense. I tend to just bounce between a few Google applications for the most part.

However, even those I know who do like the homepage would have to question Google's latest move I'm guessing. Since its start, the personalized page was at http://www.google.com/ig (OMG, how did I just link to your personalized homepage? --fun with n00bs). Apparently, that "ig" now stands for "iGoogle", complete with an ass-tastic logo and all.

Google, you should know better. Why did you stoop to this lowness?

You Don't Care About This

2007-04-10T14:10:00.000-05:00

I used to have a website where I posted random tidbits of information. I haven't bothered to resurrect it after I changed hosts, so I'm going to post something here instead. Thaddeus has posted random coding snippets in the past, so it must be cool.

Earlier today I found myself asking the question, "How do I tell if a statically linked application was built with glibc or uclibc?" The answers of course is:

"nm | grep _main | grep __"

Since you didn't ask, I've just told you.

Iowa, where's that?

2007-04-08T18:16:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, I bet that's a phrase a bunch of golf fans were uttering today.

In case you don't follow golf whatsoever (I admit, for the most part I don't either), Zach Johnson surprised a bunch of people by winning the Masters today - the golf equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Zach is a native Iowan, who grew up in the Cedar Rapids area. It turns out he is related to some good friends of our family as well. I have met and talked with him at several Hawkeye tailgates, so I have always rooted for him to do well. It's very cool to have him win such a huge tournament. Now, I hope he enjoys the media whirlwind as people try to figure out how someone from this state in the middle of nowhere can manage to play golf, and beat the invincible Tiger Woods.

Congratulations Zach.

New Music Found

2007-03-30T13:12:00.000-05:00

I really enjoy finding entirely new music, both new artists and new forms of music. This is usually especially good when found in the context of a live show. The energy and sound from a live show is still unmatched by any recording medium I have found.

Last night, I took Shannon to a concert by Patty Griffin. I have discussed her recently in my 5 of the now album post. Her portion of the show was tremendous. Her band was awesome, the Englert Theater in Iowa City is a great place to hear a small show, and her voice made perfect use of that setting. They ranged from slow, bluesy numbers, to soft folk ballads, to some rocking guitar licks. All great stuff.

Her drummer for the evening happened to be a member of her opening act, Terremoto. I knew absolutely nothing about these guys coming into the night, but they were awesome as well. The band is just 2 guys, but they play a wide assortment of instruments, ranging from the stand-up bass to bongo drums. Their music is primarily Latin and Cuban, with strong Brazilian influences. They also did a very cool New Orleans Jazz number. Primarily their songs are instrumental, but both members also have vocal portions for several of the songs. Great stuff, definitely worth a listen.

Update: Ryan nicely points out that their music is available from iTunes.
I believe their next album will be on CDBaby as is their current one, so I may go that route to try to pad their pockets a bit more.

Negative Feedback

2007-03-06T20:44:00.000-06:00

No, not Ebay, a bank. I do plan to create a financial advise blog very shortly, as I have a fair amount of experience in that area. Until I do, I will have to let some of it leak into this blog.

For tonight, enjoy my response to a certain large banking company who requested that I fill out a survey after a recent loan application. Keep in mind that I am glad to see companies requesting feedback of any kind, but I was particularly annoyed with them.

I did not have any problems with a recent mortgage through Countrywide, so I assumed I would not have problems with an equity loan either. Since I had the offer on my online account, I assumed it could be done more cheaply and easily than somewhere else also.

Instead, while I wanted to be closed within 2 weeks of my loan application (about 2 weeks before the end of the year), it was a few weeks into the new year before I received anything in the mail.

Once I did receive the package, I was expected to fax/mail an exorbitant amount of paperwork. My emails to my designated loan officer about this went completely unanswered.

Moreover, the closing costs were $600, compared to my local bank, who were able to close within 3 days, who had costs of $48.

So, a company that had just recently obtained all of my information and advertised this service to me (Countrywide), was completely inattentive, slow, and wanted to charge me over $500 more than my local bank for the privilege.

Congratulations. That is a spectacular formula for generating negative word-of-mouth and pissing off existing customers.

5 of the Now - Long and Varied

2007-03-06T13:54:00.000-06:00

Something different this time. 5 albums rather than songs (that's the long part), and in a progressively different range of music (that's the varied).

This will start with rock-influenced rap, to rap, to rap + orchestra, to folk. Dig? (I aplogize, I can't get iTunes to very elegantly link to just an album. I did try to link to my favorite songs on each of these.)

1. Lyrics Born - Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live!
It's no secret that this guy is hands down one of my favorite performers. This performance blows the doors off about anything else you might hear too. Find somebody else with more energy in their performance. Seriously, because I want to hear them if they exist.
I would suggest listening to some of his other stuff first though, as this is almost better as you hear him improvise with his existing material. Rock/rap cannot be combined better than this.

2. Dilated Peoples - Expansion Team LP
I discussed in a previous 5 of the now track how I found out about Dilated thanks to Evidence being on a track with Lyrics Born (check out that smooth segway..). Shortly after that, I actually bought all 4 of their albums, mostly unheard. I liked their stuff that much.
I'm actually recommending their initial release from 2000 as the one to get if you can get only one. Check out the final track, "War", especially. The 'Dubya should be required to have this as his bedtime music (or the asshole from Diebold...but I digress).

3. Nuttin But Stringz - Struggle from the Subway to the Charts
This stuff is crazy good. These brothers are equally adept at rapping or playing classical violin. I first saw them while watching Noggin with the kids, but it turns out they were recently in the movie "Step Up" which I watched as well. Fantastic stuff.

4. Phish - The Story of the Ghost
Time to chill. Most people would not be surprised in the slightest to see a Phish album pop up on the blog of somebody with some pretty obvious interest in Pink Floyd. However, I'm actually not a big Phish fan. This is one of the few exceptions. I recently found this CD buried in a box, and began listening to it again. Smooth, flowing tracks.

5. Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Shannon was the one who found this, which makes sense because this is very much her style of music. A cross between Sheryl Crow and more folk-influenced singers such as Loreena McKennitt. Very mellow music. The track, "One Big Love" was the one I originally helped her track down, and is probably my favorite as well.

Let it never be said that I don't listen to a wide range of music...

Random Dumbness

2007-03-04T23:06:00.000-06:00

It's Sunday night. Bear with me as I hit you with some mostly random stories of stupidity.

I was going to post about the stuff on Slashdot from today that just plain made me angry. Especially the comment from the guy who said, "I'm smarter than most other people (98th percentile)...", but I just couldn't contain my rage long enough to write about it.

Instead, I'll start you with this gem. This guy lives near an International border and doesn't bother to check if he can build a 4 foot wall? I would check on that for my own private property lines, which come nowhere near the border of even a small municipality. Moreover, why did they need a $15,000 wall to contain erosion? I could have set them up with a few hefty bags strung together like the DOT uses, and pocketed the rest.

Next, less pure stupidity, and into the scary stupid category. How do we have government agencies that are setup to be so dumb? "Hey, let's kill the golden goose, because that's what our process says to do." I'm sorry (not really), but I completely disagree with this type of thinking. This is wrong and should be stopped/blocked/killed immediately.

Man, I see why Lewis Black finds it so easy to come up with material and get worked up over it. Because of that, I will leave you with some great quotes of his:

"Metal detectors don't work. I went through the metal detector and they said, 'we're gonna hafta check you.' 'I just went through the metal detector. That should be it.' Then they check you again. That means, that doesn't fuckin' work, does it? All right, so then, they got a thing called a wand. It's the same thing. It's like a metal detector for your hand. And they go, woo-wooo, and then you're clear and then they say, 'well, we'll pat you down.' Well that didn't fuckin' work either then, did it? And if what you really need to do is pat us down, then pat us down. Pat us the fuck down. Don't do this bullshit. Don't send me through two fake things that don't work."

and now a long one...

"When from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.' I'll repeat that. I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here, and we may die.' She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddy up, giddy up, let's go - 'I wouldn't have spent that year in college,' a degree-granting institution. Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apparent reason. There's a reason. You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works. So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' then it'll go away. But they're gone. And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away. Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right. But every so often, somethin' like that happens: 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.' So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a bitch! I wonder what that's about!' I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school. Maybe it was a polo pony; she had a polo pony scholarship. Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she - she was betting on the horse! WHAT THE FUCK?!! And then you realize that anybody who went to college would never say anything that stupid in public. And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."

The Missing iTunes Feature

2007-02-21T09:12:00.000-06:00

I know I've posted about this in the past, but I'm far too lazy to find the reference. I'm guessing it was either in a five of the now post, or simply in a post about how to improve iTunes.

One thing that has annoyed me about iTunes in the past was that I couldn't export a playlist, smart or otherwise, in a standard playlist format (I'm calling m3u the de facto standard here). If for no other reason, than it would be nice to have the ability to backup my playlists should my library ever decide to crash.

So, I was very happy to find this morning that someone wrote the program that I had on my "to do" list. Here is the iTunes playlist exporter. It will allow you to export your playlists in .m3u format, just as I wanted. Sweet.

Awesome Artwork

2007-02-19T20:41:00.000-06:00

I created an artwork gallery for some of Cale's work today. I will periodically be featuring a piece from that gallery on here.

Today on our agenda we had, "Decorating the House." This involved him drawing, coloring, and cutting some pieces for us to hang around the house.

From Decorate the ...

These items cover several spring and holiday items. Contained within are: heart, tree, flower, heart with arrow, 4 leaf clover, cupid, butterfly, groundhog, and hippo (because everyone needs a purple hippo).

Needle in the haystack (aka the ballad of strstr)

2007-02-18T13:36:00.000-06:00

Slashdot over the years has degenerated to the point where I expect nearly no value any longer. However, I keep it around just for the rare times where it finds a gem. This is one of those cases.

Any readers of this blog should already have a pretty good idea what I think about Digital Rights Management (DRM). (sidenote - what a nice spin of words to try to make it sound like something non-evil, was Digital Handcuffs (DH) already taken?).

This blog post, courtesy of Slashdot, is just about perfect. Fantastic read. Macrovision sucks.

Sleazy

2007-02-17T10:24:00.000-06:00

I don't usually make this blog a spot for gossip. This one's too good to pass up though.

If you haven't heard about the Joe Rogan vs. Carlos Mencia showdown, you need to check this out (original YouTube clip in case it drops off the frontpage of his site eventually). Obviously this is only one side of the story, but the video linked alone pretty much tells it all.

I never really cared for Joe Rogan as a comic, although I always found him somewhat interesting back on "News Radio". However, I never found Carlos Mencia funny in the slightest. In either case, Rogan threw down on him like no other and it is funny as hell.

Must Know for Gmail Users

2007-02-15T20:59:00.000-06:00

I've wanted to post about this little tip that I find incredibly useful for some time, but hesitated until I had a good reference link. Well, no better than Google themselves to talk about it, I suppose.

The Feature: Gmail has a way that you can "mute" a conversation. All additional replies to that thread will skip your inbox entirely. Fantastic for off-topic mailing list posts. The weird part is how hush-hush Google has made this. There is no mention anywhere that I could find, other than this help page, that even mentions this. It is a keyboard shortcut, "m", but it isn't documented with the other keystrokes.

Perhaps they are just trying to not clutter the UI with a feature many will not use. Perhaps it was created in the apartment of one of their employees again. Who knows?

Another New Endeavor

2007-02-05T01:02:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I created anything new online. I always seem to have tons of ideas, but as with many people, I lack the time to actually get them out there.

Well, this one is out there now. I have a CafePress shop where I will be featuring pieces of apparel that I have designed. There have been countless times in the past where I have come up with ideas for clothing, and now I have an outlet for them.

Check out the Floydpink Originals shop. It's just starting out, but expect it to grow slowly and steadily.

If anyone has ideas they would like to see, feel free to send them my way.

Update: Some have asked for better pictures of my first item. Here they are:

Weekend Tidbits

2007-02-04T13:24:00.000-06:00

Some interesting sites I stumbled upon today, to occupy (I.E. waste) your time.

The first is an interesting concept albeit a bit too focused on the MySpace generation. Share2me is a site that lets you add your contacts from email, IM, and other places. Then, if you have something interesting to share with people, you can automatically add them from a list of contacts and send it to all at once. Regardless of whether that means it sends by IM, email, or posts to a MySpace page. I dig the concept of send once, regardless of mechanism. Go check out the demo on their page.

Second, is something even more tailored to me. A site that exists simply to allow for debating various topics. There are 3 different methods for presenting and arguing a topic. You choose one, make your case, and then attempt to with the debate. I know at least one person who reads this blog fairly regularly should be as interested in this as I am. I smell a new time waster...

Ah, less clutter

2007-01-30T10:48:00.000-06:00

Update: Ryan pointed out that my code got eaten

This one should have been obvious to me, but then again, my mucking level on my blog hovers at or around 0. This tip cleans up the overall page, lending itself very much to my goal of letting content (hopefully) rule this blog, rather than lots of formatting or clutter.

Here is the simple way to do this, that doesn't involve editing your stylesheet at all:

Go to the template tab on blogger.
Click "Add a Page Element".
Choose the "HTML/Javascript" type.
Cut and paste the following snippet:
<style>
#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}
</style>
Click "Save Changes".
Rejoice as the top of your page is now uncluttered.

Fun Task for the Day

2007-01-24T19:03:00.000-06:00

Music by color.

Go into your iTunes collection, type a color into the search box, and hit play.

Tonight's playlist for me: Green.

Tired. Dog Tired.

2007-01-23T20:56:00.000-06:00

Yes, I am. I have actually wanted to get some posts out here several times already this year. Just too tired to make it happen until now.

However, I'm not nearly as tired as a technology/idea that I realized today I want to see die off much quicker then is currently happening. Voice mail. When I say voice mail, I'm using it as a general term to refer to answering machines, and any kind of voice mail such as those at offices, or used by cell phone providers.

They are all flawed. Steve Jobs obviously (to anybody not hiding under their rock) pointed out in his keynote that navigating in a sequential fashion is horribly outdated. That is just the start though. How much time each day do you waste listening to the following:

"I can't come to the phone right now, please leave your name and number after the beep and I'll get back to you"

Were you really wondering what to do when that person didn't answer and this mystery device started talking to you? Multiply that times each person you can't reach per day and you are just burning away minutes of your life. Put the 2 previous examples together, and now both parties are wasting double the time just trying to achieve asynchronous communication.

Why? We have already defeated this problem. It is called email. While not perfect, it is hands down better than anything voicemail has done.

So, we need smarter phone systems. Do like Vonage and send messages as audio clips via email (or optionally do speech to text as well). Then you don't need Job's iPhone, you simply need a phone that can do IMAP/POP.

Next, the stupid greeting has to go. Let your phone display a status on the screen, just like IM. You can quickly find out that I'm away, busy, screening, running from the plague, etc.

Make it so.

Sensationalism

2006-12-28T16:14:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-27T18:04:00.000-06:00

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.

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).
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".
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?

2006-12-09T10:50:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-27T00:23:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-24T20:03:00.000-06:00

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?

2006-11-17T10:07:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-14T18:07:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-29T14:17:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-25T22:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-07T15:16:00.000-05:00

(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

2006-09-24T11:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-17T09:20:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-12T22:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-12T22:06:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-12T00:16:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-09-10T15:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-06T20:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-03T00:51:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

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.