Category: Geeky

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Blogger taken into beta by Google

Finally, after buying Blogger a few years ago, Google is starting to make some changes. I would say improvements, but that remains to be seen.

The new Blogger is only available to new users and a select group of existing users right now. A full roll-out will happen “eventually,” according to Blogger’s Buzz news blog. Blogger users who want to try out the new tools can sign up for a new user account under a different name, then merge their accounts later.

New features include the addition of tags, which Blogger calls “labels,” to posts and photos. The new beta also has updated privacy and user management options which allow for private posts, tiered user permissions and multi-author blogging. Blog owners can define whitelists of “blog authors” and “blog readers” who have access to publish and read blog content. [wired]

When I first started out blogging, and like many other people out there in the same boat, I used Blogger. And for those just getting into the whole blogging thing, it’s great. More importantly, it’s free. All you need to get going with your own blog is an unused name for your URL and internet access.

Oh wait, did I just say that it’s great? I meant to say that it can be a real pain, and that goes beyond your butt. The reliability isn’t always the best. Somedays it will publish your posts, other days you’ll sit staring at the screen screaming, “Oh come on already! PUBLISH!”

There’s lots of other things about Blogger that made me jump to WordPress, and I haven’t looked back since. It’s about time Google did something about it. They’re promising lots of changes to come. I’m curious to see what they come up with.

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Thoughts on Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC

WWDC 2006 Keynote Streaming Re-Broadcast (apple.com)I’m sitting here, being my classic, Apple geek self, watching the stream of yesterday’s keynote speech by Steve Jobs[wiki] at the World Wide Developers Conference. I figured that I would throw some of my thoughts about it while I watch it.

Why? I dig this type of stuff. It’s not about being on top of everything that comes out there in terms of technology. It’s exciting. It’s a spectacle. I’d do the same thing about the NAB in Las Vegas, but I don’t make it down there for it, nor is there anything comparable to what Jobs does during these keynotes.

Dude, it’s just fun.

Phil Schiller[wiki] always kills me, and I think it’s great that he came out to unveil the Mac Pro. Yes, say good bye to the PowerMac and the legacy of the G5. I’m actually sad to say that. That word “Power” had a nice ring to it, but getting back to the basics is alright with me. My parents bought an original Macintosh when they came out in 1984. Life changed a lot then, and damn… look at where we are now.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC”

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Plasmas beat out sports cars and diamonds

It appears that if guys want to really score with chicks these days, you’re better off going for technology than you are for the bling in order to woo(buy) her love.

Diamonds are no longer a girl’s best friend, according to a new study that found three of four women would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond necklace.  […]

The Girls Gone Wired survey of 1,400 women and 700 men aged 15 to 49, which was conducted by market researcher TRU, found that given the choice, women would opt for tech items rather than luxury items like jewelry or vacations.

The study found 77 percent of women surveyed would prefer a new plasma television to a diamond solitaire necklace and 56 percent would opt for a new plasma TV over a weekend vacation in Florida.

Even shoes lost out. The study found 86 percent would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.  [wired]

Interesting that TV’s win out here.  You can get something that would make her want to stay inside and be a couch potato versus going out and actually doing something fun out of the home.  On the other hand, it is Florida we’re talking about here.  I might want to stay home and watch Anderson Cooper report live as yet another hurricane slams into the sunshine state in high-def.  I also feel like I should be making a correlation here of this to obesity rates and laziness.

Still, and I think Rebecca would agree with me, we’ll take a trip before we toss down money on a flat panel TV.  Tech can be cool, but memories last a life time.  So does screen burn in on a plasma.

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Getting bit by not managing my data

So... much... audio...The last few days, I’ve found my mind swimming through the issue of managing the data that rests on my laptop and external hard drive. This goes beyond the basic backing up gigs of junk in the event of catastrophe. I’m pretty good about staying on top of such things.

What I’m talking about is the simplicity of keeping track of everything, where it is, and how much space it’s taking up. I have so much audio sitting around, it’s getting nuts. It doesn’t help that I come from the radio mentality of not wanting to delete anything.

Back at WSUI, we archived so much onto CDs, it’s not funny. Stacks and stacks of blank CDRs would turn into piles of archived programs and interviews. You do it for the sake of history and yourself, creating evidence that you were once on the radio and hopefully good at it. Of course, those piles, no matter if it was your stuff or not, would be disowned when it came storing them. There’s probably still boxes and boxes of stuff waiting for some part-time, student employee to spend hours doing something along the lines of catergorizing everything into some sort of library.

With all of my podcast audio floating around, I’m starting to have flashbacks. Raw audio that I saved as a back up to go back to in case something went wrong during editing. Then the polished audio, edited and spliced up to my liking. Finally, exported clips of uncompressed audio. All of this eating up storage space.

You start a new project with the thought in your mind of keeping everything in check, only to work so hard on getting this new episode out that you forget about simple house cleaning. Yeah yeah, I’ll just be sure to take care of it next time… right? Wrong.

So here lies my pain of being a sucker and not managing my data better. Going through and finding the various pieces of audio, compressing them for storage, deleting the uncompressed stuff along with any program data that might have resulted from the numerous editing applications that I use, and repeat. It’s a slow, tedious process, but I put it off for far too long. Once it’s done, I’ll have gigs of storage space back and a DVD or two of archived audio.

This is a lesson to be learned for anyone that is podcasting, but can be applied to many situations. You never want to just delete a bunch of stuff to simply make some space. Archive it. You don’t know when it might become handy at some point in the future. At the same time, that’s history on your hard drive.

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The spirit of MST3K lives on through RiffTrax

Via Slashdot, RiffTrax is the latest project to come from Michael J. Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000[wiki] fame. Imagine MST3K, but without Crow and Tom Servo, and then apply that to more recent films. Except this time, you download the audio file (for a small fee, of course) and listen to it while watching the movie on DVD, granted that you already own it or will go out and rent it.

Do you feel that some of the movies coming out of Hollywood are just, well, missing something? At RiffTrax, you can download Mike’s running commentaries and listen to them along with your favorite, and not so favorite DVDs. It’s like watching a movie with your funniest friend. And it’s easy to do. Just check out our FAQ; more than likely, you have the tools to do it already.

Don’t just sit back and take whatever Hollywood throws at you. Transform the DVD experience with RiffTrax. It’s the most fun you’ll ever have at the movies. [rifftrax]

We’ve actually been watching a lot of MST3K lately at home (read Rebecca’s post), so this was interesting news when it popped up today. It’s something me and my buddies in high school wanted to do back in the day but never got around to it. The sample of the first, and only at this time, movie, Road House[imdb], is funny, but I’m not so sure I’m sold on it yet. $1.99 to download the Rifftrax, and then I’d have to rent the movie. Makes me curious though.

And don’t get me wrong, Mike Nelson is a funny guy, but I still feel like Joel was the better of the two when it came to MST3K. And if it’s just Mike doing the commentary, that might be a little lame. Even just having more than one voice adds to the comedy, god bless Crow and Servo.

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Breaking in the Nokia bit by bit

Last night at the meetup, I ran into another Vancouver blogger that got the Matchstick deal that I did, so perhaps it is time that I get around to mentioning a little bit more about this Nokia 6682 that I’m starting to like more and more everyday. I promised myself to never own another brick again, but this thing has me thinking twice.

Seriously, giving me stuff for free makes me think twice about a lot of things. Have a new, Apple laptop you want me to try out? How about some recording equipment? Digital audio devices? Anyone?

Anyhow, here’s three pictures I took last night with the Nokia. Click on them to see the full image. All three are being uploaded and posted without any altering, so what you see is what the phone takes.

Walking the trail in Stanley Park

Looking out into the inlet from Third Beach in Stanley Park

Look towards Kits from Third Beach in Stanley Park

I think what I’m going to do is pass this off to Rebecca some time soon and let her play with it some more. She also talks on the phone a hell of a lot more than I do, so there might be some advantage to her giving a second opinon about it.

Just weeks before Matchstick contacted me, Rebecca and I signed a new contract with Rogers in a plan that got us new Motorola v710’s for each of us. I’m still out on a verdict, but the Nokia feels better in my hand, even though I’ve been a flip phone fan for some time now. I hope to post comparison pics of the camera of both phones, as well as my digital camera. The best part is that both the Motorola and the Nokia have Bluetooth, which play very nicely with my Powerbook.

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I’m one of those “Matchstick lucky ones”

I’ve been watching various Vancouver bloggers talk about getting contacted by Matchstick for a few months now.  For those not aware, they are a marketing company wishing to have bloggers to use the Nokia 6682 in the hopes that they’ll post about the phone.  Buzz marketing is what they call it, and posting about it on blogs is really just a cheap form of advertising.

I got my phone on Friday of last week and spent a portion of this afternoon with Rebecca getting it all setup.  It’s nifty, but that’s all about it for now.  Will be posting more about the phone plus the entire process soon.

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If it’s metallic, lightning is attracted to it

There has been one of those warnings put out by medical researchers saying not to use iPods or cellphones during thunderstorms[guardian]. This makes complete and total sense, but is it really anything that we, as educated human beings, shouldn’t already know?

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — A teenager who was hit by lightning over the weekend talked about his close brush with death Thursday.

Jason Bunch was mowing the lawn and listening to his iPod at his home in Castle Rock in the 3200 block of Cherry Plum Way on Sunday when he was struck. […]

“From where the iPod was, it damaged my hearing and it ruptured my eardrums. Where the cord was, it burned me all down my body,” said Bunch. “We need to shave my head because my hair is like dreadlocks. It’s all sticking together.” [thedenverchannel]

Now there are couple other details to this that strikes me, no pun intended.

He was mowing the lawn in weather conditions where lightning was possible. It seems to me that the mower would have been the main thing saying, “Hey, lightning! Here I am!” However, since his ear buds were the highest point of contact, that’s where the strike made its entrance. Any part of his body touching the mower probably didn’t help much, but with the iPod on him, the bolt did it best to fry those components first before moving on.

With that being said, why is the focus here on the iPod? He was probably trying to mow as much of the lawn before the storm came in. Lots of people do it. It just seems that the story here is saying that if you have an iPod on while you frolic in the rain, you will be struck by lightning. Officials will admit that occurances of this is rare, but worthy of educating the public.

Millions of golfers from around the world are saying, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

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Say it with authority

It’s official now. Google is in the dictionary, and it’s a verb.

The next time one of your fancy-talkin’ friends tries to correct you for using Google as a verb–as in “Let’s google for pics of Scarlett Johansson”–point out that the hoity-toity Oxford English Dictionary now backs you up.

According to a Motley Fool news story the dictionary added the word during its latest round of updates. Over at the SearchEngineWatch they posted the dictionary’s definition of the word:

intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet. trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine. [techweb]

Does this also mean that it’s fair game in Scrabble as well?