Author: John Bollwitt

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Welcome to the world of baseball 2.0

This video report from CNet truly scares me. In case you don’t feel like watching it, I’ll do my best to sum it up.

Cisco demoed new technology to “enhance” your ballpark experience, focusing mostly on the new stadium that is being pushed for the Oakland A’s. Electronic tickets on your cellphone or PDA is alright, but the idea of letting video screens detect you in the proximity of their display and then changing to specifically target you based on what your wireless device says about you is a bit on the tacky side. Of course, it’s all technology meant to get more money out of your pocket.

The other thing that left me not liking what I saw was the concept of using mobile PC’s while watching the game from your seats. Score keeping goes digital, get instant replay as it happens, or get an alert that you were on the fan cam on the scoreboard. You see the picture as well as the many ways that you can purchase the picture, much like going on amusement park rides.

There is something to be said about the simplicity of just enjoying a day at the ballpark, and the last thing that I really want to do is have a whole bunch of gadgets getting in the way. Don’t forget about the dude behind you who just dumped his beer on your mobile PC. The first thing I want to do when it comes to enjoying a baseball game is turning off the rest of the world.

Oh, and don’t think that this is just limited to the ballpark experience. They mention that this is a new concept in the way of enjoying professional sporting events in general. Once again, when I go to GM Place for a Canucks game, I’m all for getting alerts about better seats for a game. After that, I just want to be in my seat and enjoy the atmosphere that is hockey.

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Giving RadioZoom its own legs to stand on

Back in March, Andrew from Geek.Farm.Life was gracious enough to purchase the “radiozoom.net” domain for the podcast. He’s in a reverse situation than myself, living in Indiana with his American wife, and a long time listener of my podcast. I’ve posted about GFL before, so be sure to go read that to find out more about his podcast.

Until last night, the domain was a redirect to the site that I had setup within this domain. That’s much easier to market to listeners rather than saying “blah-blah-blah slash blah-blah-blah”. I’ve been content with the setup for some time, but the slight confusion of the podcast name combined with the actual URL for the podcast episodes was starting to bug me. It doesn’t give the podcast enough of a brand, at least for me, if you tell people one thing and they end up seeing another.

It took a few hours to propagate down the DNS chains, but the domain now has full control over the site. All the old links to old episodes still work. The change has allowed me to move forward with ideas that I couldn’t implement otherwise. These are more noticeable behind the scenes, and that really matters to me more than you. This also means that it’s less I have to think about while falling asleep at night.

Once again, many thanks go out to Andrew for helping to make this possible. Go check out RadioZoom.net and see for yourself.

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The battle of who could care less

The Killers pointing fingers at Green Day? Say it isn’t so!

The Killers ‘offended’ by Green Day

Brandon Flowers doesn’t want to be an ‘American Idiot’

Brandon Flowers has criticised Green Day for what he sees as their calculated anti-Americanism.

In particular, Flowers singled out the track ‘American Idiot’ and the fact they filmed their DVD ‘Bullet In A Bible’, which features the song, in the UK.

“You have Green Day and ‘American Idiot’. Where do they film their DVD? In England,” The Killers‘ frontman told The Word. “A bunch of kids screaming ‘I don’t want to be an American idiot’ I saw it as a very negative thing towards Americans. It really lit a fire in me.”

Explaining he was offended by the set-up, Flowers added: “You have the right to say what you want to say and what you want to write about, and I’m sure they meant it in the same way that Bruce Springsteen meant ‘Born In The USA’ and it was taken wrongly, but I was really offended when I saw them do that.”

The singer added he felt the DVD was a bit of a a stunt.

“I just thought it was really cheap,” he explained. “To go to a place like England or Germany and sing that song – those kids aren’t taking it the same way that he meant it. And he [Billie Joe Armstrong] knew it.”

The Killers‘ frontman said he believed that his band’s new album ‘Sam’s Town’ is a much better representation of America.

“People need to see that, really, there are the nicest people in the world here!” he declared. “I don’t know if our album makes you realise that. But I hope it’s from a more positive place.” [nme]

It seems like I hear the latest by The Killers every morning when the alarm goes off and the radio in the bathroom gets turned on. Mind you that we don’t own a car, but seems like everytime we are in one, “He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus…”

Someone told me something not too long ago that makes a lot of sense and is completely applicable to this situation. The industry does as much as it can to milk every last drop out of an artist that it possibly can.

Even artists with one album can have their own DVD pushed onto the store shelves. You don’t need a long track record to have that live, special edition to hit your local Wal-Mart or Zellers. Two or three albums later, the “best of” whoever and whatever start showing up.

Politics or truly representing what Americans are, it’s all rock and roll. The record execs want to push more of the product as they possibly can. Brew a feud, create a buzz, and launch more ways to increase revenue. Even if there is truth to what is being said, I doubt anything was that well thought out and planned. The thing that probably bothers people more is the fact that they had to pay $40-$60, per ticket, just to get in and see any of these guys.

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Firefox 2.0 released today

I haven’t had much time to really put Firefox 2 through the test, but it is installed and running on my Powerbook. The main reason that I really wanted to make this post is the inline spell checking that now comes in this version. This is the thing that I have been wanting for a long time and, I finally have it. Hallelujah!

Firefox 2 is the next generation release of the award-winning Firefox web browser from Mozilla.

These Release Notes cover what’s new, download and installation instructions, known issues and frequently asked questions for Firefox 2. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla.

Give us your feedback through this feedback form.

[mozilla]

After painless installation, I checked to see if the speed up tweaks that I posted about a while back held, and they were all there. I only have two extensions that didn’t want to play nice, but they seem to have been built into the new release. All the additional search engines that I have added are there as well.

For the most part, what I’ve been able to read about this release is that the internal overhaul has been more than the external. There is some noticeable changes, but it’s looks and feels the same for the most part. Then again, I’ve been using a skin that made it appear more like Safari, so that might have something to do with it. Oddly enough, that was one of the extensions that didn’t want to work with this version. The other one was a tabbed browsing extension.

Wow. I love this built-in inline spell checking. Oh how I have missed this.

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Traveling along the US-Mexico border

In the last year, I’ve become fascinated with the southern border of the U.S. My grandmother crossed the Rio Grande when she was very young, long before a border patrol was established. In those days, it was more considered to be open rather than guarded at all.

A journalist for the Guardian Unlimited recently wrote about his experience of traveling the length of the recent hot topic in Washington, going from west to east. Gary Younge paints a unique perspective about the border and the people who live there, literially on the front lines.

About 10 minutes’ walk from Reyes’s office flows a stretch of the Rio Grande about 15 metres wide. As I drove down to take a look, a car full of people was leaving in the opposite direction. Alone on the bank was a teenage boy with four tyres and a heap of wet clothes. He wasn’t answering any questions, except about fishing, and after a while the car came back empty and picked him up.

At the city of Del Rio, the river starts the first of its elaborate curves before it heads south towards the Chisos Mountains while the main road heads north. A 200-mile detour down back roads hugging the border takes you through towns and hamlets that have occasionally been used for spaghetti western sets. Most look desolate. Then Lajitas, a luxury resort that bills itself as the ultimate hide-out, emerges like a mirage.

At Lajitas the cheapest room in low season goes for $175 a night and the most expensive cottage is $825. For the Texas beau monde there are weekly flights in private jets from Dallas and “Get out of the Dog House” packages for the negligent businessman, which offer prickly pear margaritas and Mexican wedding cookies on your arrival and two 50-minute massages. Behind the hotel complex runs the Rio Grande. On the Mexican side live four extended families; a boat is tied up at the riverside. The nearest official border crossing is in Presidio, 50 miles away. Every day, to avoid the 100-mile round trip, people cross the river by boat in a couple of minutes. You can see their footprints on the Texan side. The afternoon I arrived a man was nipping back to Mexico to repay a debt to a friend. The next day Ms Rodriguez rowed her two children and a rooster over to see their grandmother in Mexico. [guardian]

That’s just a portion of the article, but it’s a good example of the many stories that this issue has. There is also a slideshow with audio commentary by Carlos Cazalis, who photographed the journey along the way.

During my days at KRUI, a group of us made our way to Austin, TX for SXSW. One wrong turn and we were being beckoned by a few hundred day laborers that were standing on a street corner. A couple people freaked out, thinking that we were about to be robbed. I had a quick sense as to what was happening, but there was really no use to explain. One u-turn and we were heading back towards 6th Street, the place where everything seems to be happening in Austin. Clubs, good shows, and great food.

It’s that easy to forget that this problem exists. I’ll be damned if there’s an easy solution though. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev recently compared the building of the 700-mile long fence on the southern U.S. border to that of the Berlin Wall[mywesttexas]. It’s not that far of a stretch, but maybe I’m missing the element that says “cooperative effort for a solution” in the thing that represents “keep out”.

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This is the MacBook Pro that I was looking for

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inchActually, I’m really torn. I love my 17″ Powerbook G4, but the processor is getting closer and closer to the low end of things. I’m probably on borrowed time until the hard drive starts to give me fits, so if I’m going to replace the whole thing, then I’m going to stick with the notebook way of life.

Just today, Apple launched some new models of the MacBook Pro that I am very interested in getting my hands on. The big thing for me is FireWire[wiki] 800. Processor speed, graphics, and memory kind of come second. However, the specs on these suckers are looking sweet.

Apple today announced that its entire MacBook(TM) Pro line of notebooks now includes the new Intel Core 2 Duo processor and delivers performance that is up to 39 percent faster than the previous generation. All MacBook Pro models now offer double the memory and greater storage capacity than the previous generation, as well as a FireWire(R) 800 port for connecting to high-speed peripherals. [macrumors]

When you go with a laptop, your hard drive is never going to have enough space on it for you. As space gets cramped, much like on mine, you need to think external. At the same time, the speed of your hard drive is critical, and very rarely do you get anything above 5200 RPMs. Why? Heat and power consumption. It’s all correlational.

With the amount of audio editing that I like to do, I have to have my external, 200GB hard drive. FireWire 800 makes it really easy to make backups and copy files really quick like, but the best part is actually doing all my recording and editing to it. Before this, the fan on my Powerbook would spin quite a bit, not to mention programs hiccuping from time to time because the internal hard drive couldn’t be accessed quick enough. The software was outdoing the hardware, but life is better when you work on the external and allow the processor more room to breathe.

Now that FireWire 800 is apart of all MacBook Pro models, it has me thinking about moving away from the large screen screen world of Apple notebooks. I know that the 15″ is not that much smaller than the 17″, but it can start to matter when you think about simple portability. Bags and protective cases for large laptops are a bit of a specialty, not to mention that you can forget how big that laptop in your bag really is from time to time. The door can and will hit you on the way out if you forget that it’s there.

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Skype 2.0 goes gold for the Mac

Video panel in the preferences of Skype 2.0Skype is the staple of The Crazy Canucks podcast. I got it downloaded and tinkered with it just a little bit(the image posted here is a quick screenshot of the video panel in the preferences, which has similarity to iChat). We’re actually looking to record another episode this evening, but I doubt this will really effect anything involving VoIP. The major addition to this version is video support being added for Mac users, making video chatting available between PC users of Skype.

Posted on their blog yesterday:

Skype for Mac 2.0 goes gold today, which means that we’ve tested it, you’ve tested it and we all agree that it does a pretty good job. Download it now and video call your friends, family, colleagues or anyone else you’d like to see face to face. Remember not only does it work with other Mac users but it also works with Windows users too. That means even more people for you to video call with.

We’ve improved the video quality and made changes so that video calling can now work on older systems allowing more of our Mac community can use it.

Thanks for all your feedback and help to improve the quality of video throughout the beta. A lot of you have sent in your stories on how you’re using Mac 2.0 to get face to face with far flung friends and relatives and we’re delighted we can help to bring you all closer together. Many of you also told us that you’re using video calls with business colleagues across the globe or to see your family back home when you’re away with work. If you have any more stories you’d like to share with us please email them to stories@skype.net. [skype]

The question will be about quality when you make your video calls across platform. The quality of your video card combined with the quality of your webcam will offer mixed results, more so when it comes to the world of PCs. Regardless, you’ll still be able to see grandma wave to you over the internet, no matter how blurry or pixelated she might look. You’ll just never know if she’s giving you the finger or not.

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The Vancouver Salos

The Vancouver Salos [credit: VCOE]Because of a comment thread on Vancouver Canucks Op Ed on this post, Alanah whipped up this creation. I laughed my butt off when she emailed this to me. Too crazy to post on her site, but too hilarious to not post here. Rebecca was the one who started this, but I just perpetuated it. It’s more truth than fiction, but strictly platonic, Sammy. I’m a happily married man.

It all started with an episode of The Crazy Canucks. I said that it seemed like we were being called the “Vancouver Luongos” with the way that the media talked about team as the season got under way. With my favorite boy from last year, Carter, now with Columbus, I’ve been searching for someone to fill his place in terms of my favorite player. Perhaps this is a bit too much of an extreme, but I have to say that the last few days has made this guy rise to the top of my list.

Be sure to check out more on The Crazy Canucks podcast. We’ll be recording episode number four later this week. Been a crazy last few games on the road, but at least we’re up in the wins and points columns. Can’t fail to mention that a lot of that is in part to Sammy “The Friendly Ghost” Salo.

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RadioZoom Episode #116 – Interview with Aberdeen City at Richards on Richards

Something for you to listen to over the weekend, episode #116 of RadioZoom has been posted.

This episode goes mobile as Rebecca and I spend some time with Aberdeen City before they take the stage at Richards on Richards in Vancouver. They were in town on October 17, 2006 on their North American tour, opening up for Electric Six. Answering an email that Rebecca sent them, they arranged for us to be on the guest list and hang out in the green room before the show started.

We get into a variety of topics, including life on the road, their brief time in Vancouver, what it’s like to tour with Electric six, and so on. The whole atmosphere is very laid back and unscripted. You get to hear the whole interview from beginning to end, with only minor editing to make all the segments flow together. Call it what you want, but this is podcasting. There are no rules. (FYI: some explicit language is used in this episode)

On a technical note, this is my first time using Levelator in an episode. This was very useful with the raw audio that I recorded of the interview. I’ve been impressed with what it can do and recommend checking it out for yourself.

54:51 minutes
radiozoom.net

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Followup thoughts on Levelator

My initial post about Levelator was more to raise awareness about this application.  As I said before, this is a brilliant concept for podcasters and audiophiles everywhere.  It’s a drag and drop program that compresses, levelizes, and limits your audio, all on its own.  What more can you ask for than that?

Within minutes of making that first post, Doug Kaye dropped by my blog and offered some thoughts on what I can do to make my use of it better.  Ignoring the pretty cool fact that he is one of the orginal podcasters, I thought it was great that one of the main guys behind this application was quick to offer solutions on Levelator.

I have an episode of RadioZoom that I will released later today, if not tomorrow, in which I have my first venture into utilizing this program.  I am very impressed with what it did to a single AIFF of nearly 38 minutes of audio that I recorded with my mic and minidisc.  It was a mobile interview, and this application just cut my editing time by over fifty percent.

The quality is just as impressive.  It gives you solid sound that can take hours of tweaking, depending on how precise you want your audio to be.  I can get pretty picky some times, but this is an answer to that for sure.