Atlantans head eastward in search of community
Atlantans head eastward in search of community. I really like the neighborhood that I live in, and I think that East Atlanta hoods will continue to improve.
The most delayed tournament ever
I've been working, since last Monday, on our site coverage and scoring of The 65th Annual Senior PGA Championship. It has been delayed, again and again, from Thursday to today, making it the longest tournament I have ever worked on in my year and a half of doing this golf web thing. For those of you who are not that familiar with competitive golf, tournaments typically end on Sunday, around 6 p.m. Yesterday, they were finishing up round three, which would normally happen on Saturday, and had just started the last round when the tornado sirens started to blow. This morning, I woke up to thunder storms here in Atlanta, and my home was without power, so I had to get in the car and find a Starbucks with power in order to work. The course, however, is underwater again after the rain last night.
Fifty Dollars of FUD
Engadget has a post about a $50 iPod from Microsoft, and it is the tenth or eleventh post about this that I have seen come across my newsreader (NNW natch) in the last twenty four hours. I think that this is typical Microsoft. Announce really early, too early, and announce with ridiculous statements. A fifty dollar music player with iPod level storage and features? Not possible. It's a typical tactic to cast doubts and fear on the marketplace. Good old MSFT, we can always count on her for the same tactics. Prediction: Their music service will suck ass. Their players will suck too, or at least not be as good as the iPod. They will lose tons of money trying to establish themselves, and attempt to leverage Windows to get more traction. In the end, they won't be successful for the same reasons that Apple won't. The labels control the industry, and they won't let some distributor, no matter how big the company is, into their little piece of turf.
Update: Well, it turns out that the gentleman from Microsoft was misquoted. Well, I apologize for assuming the worst about Microsoft, I was wrong.
On the Bricks starts tonight
Atlanta's On the Bricks Friday Night Concert Series starts tonight with Train and Liz Phair. I'm not terribly excited about either, and have worked something like 20 hours in the last two days already, but I thought I would point to the schedule anyway.
Google Search: meeting famous people
I notice that my Blogger profile is now on the first page of results when searching for meeting famous people and meeting aliens. I find this amusing. If I had my choice, I think I would rather meet famous people than meet aliens, assuming that the famous people were A-List.
41 runs
The Yanks stayed hot this week, wrapping up a sweep of the Orioles last night with an 18-5 clubbing. Unfortunately, the Red Sox stayed hot as well, and the Yanks are half a game out of first. I really do have to get up to see a game soon. I wish that I didn't live in a National League city, I should have thought that one through a bit more. Then again, my judgement in 1997 had to be somewhat impaired considering the company I was keeping at the time.
Getting Sucked back in
Years ago, I used to work at a comic book store for about a year. I mainly worked shows, and only worked in the actual store one day a week. As the years have passed, I had gotten out of the habit of reading comics. Recently, however, a friend turned me on to Wanted (link to a 5 page preview of the first book). This series, thus far, has rekindled what I used to love about reading comics. It is not a comic for kids, with mature themes.
Original P.I.M.P. Style
Now I know where to go when I need some new bling bling.
Scroll, then scroll, then scroll, then scroll some more, then scroll
iPodLibrary aims to put books on your iPod. I could never, ever, read an entire novel on my iPod's tiny screen. I can read more than the amount of text that fits on the screen at once, and it would annoy me to have to keep scrolling to catch up.
The Believer - May 2004
I found The May 2004 issue of The Believer to be particularly good, especially David Ng's piece on computer languages and computer books. It had me rolling on the floor laughing(ROTFL). I think, in some ways, that it is a shame that they don't do more with the Web.
Apple Developer Certificate?
NSLog() discovered that Apple may be enabling third party apps in Software Update in Tiger. (via)
Fairplay is actually not fair, and it keeps me from playing.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: FairPlay: Another Anticompetitive Use of DRM This is a must read mini-piece on Apple's use of Fairplay DRM to protect their music store investment from other player manufacturers.
Scary Scary Stuff
Fox News: Al Qaeda Increasing in Strength. This is scary stuff. For all of you who have told me that I should vote for Bush because of security matters, and there have been a few of you, in what way has he managed to deplete this threat? It seems like, by invading Iraq, he has made this threat worse.
Daring Fireball: An Ounce of Prevention
The easiest to understand set of instructions for protecting your Mac OS X machine from the much discussed, but seldom understood, security issue.
I forgive myself, and I forgive you too, well, at least I am working on it
This weekend, I read Calm Surrender: Walking the Hard Road of Forgiveness by Kent Nerburn. It's more of a book of observations about forgiveness, its nature, its role in our lives, and attaining the balance to live with it, than a how-to guide of some sort. These sorts of books seem to be more effective for people of my nature. There is a chapter of the book up on his site if you want to give it a test drive. I really enjoyed the book, and I think it had a good impact on me. It remains to be seen whether that impact is fleeting or if I can make more meaningful change in my demeanor.
Imagine my surprise, after enjoying the book and thinking that I might want to read additional titles by Kent Nerburn, to discover, via the almighty G, of course, that Kent Nerburn has a blog, with an RSS feed and everything.
Nice looking iPod case
I have to admit that I obsess a bit more than I should about the cases and bags that I carry my gear in on a day to day basis. Last week, in some surfing, I was really impreseed with Vaja's cellphone cases. Today, iPodlounge reviews their iPod case which looks both lovely and functional. I gotta curb my spending though, so I can afford all that work on the house I have started.
Tim Buntel's Long Overdue and Reluctantly Agreed-to Blackstone Blog
Tim Buntel's Long Overdue and Reluctantly Agreed-to Blackstone Blog (It's a ColdFusion thing, so you know.)
The weeks ahead are scary today
Well, last week saw the launch of a new set of software that I wrote, and this software was a substantially refactored version of some software that I wrote last year. I, apparently, was much dumber last year, because I am generating the same result with my software as the set of components I wrote a year ago, but the new version is something like 2200 lines of code shorter. Anyway, I spent a good chunk of my weekend overseeing the live burn-in of that software, fixing some minor bugs that cropped up, and generating a punchlist for some improvements. All fun, and fun to cross a big project off my to do list.
Unfortunately, the end of that project coincides with the true beginning of our busy season. We have our first major event of the season this week. If I remember last year correctly, everything from this event forward is a blur of work.
I really do not know the first thing about software development
I really do not know the first thing about software development Someday, maybe I will. I am trying very hard to learn.
Yanks in First
The Yankees beat the Angels last night to go a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East. Since the Sox swept the Yankees at home in April, the Yanks have won seven straight series now.
Isn't an ICBM an InterContinental Ballistic Missile?
There have been quite a few sites yesterday and today linking to this Sacramento Bee interview with an ex-Marine who was in Iraq. I read the interview last night, and there is one section that made me a little nervous. The interviewer asks what an ICBM is after the Marine says that "I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM." The marine answers that an ICBM is "a multi-purpose cluster bomb." I always thought that an ICBM was a missile, so I went a searching. I could find no reference at all to a cluster bomb by this name. I sent an email off to the reporter who did the interview last night but haven't heard back yet. Am I wrong? Here is one of the several comprehensive listings of American cluster armaments that I found online. Update: I just got an email from the interviewer letting me know that this was an error and that it is being corrected now.
NetNewsWire 2.0 will be a free upgrade
More about NetNewsWire 2.0: "It will be a free upgrade for 1.x users. If you bought (or if you buy) NetNewsWire 1.x, all 2.x versions will be free. We won’t do this for every major upgrade, but we’re doing it this time." No mention specifically about what new functionality is in this version.
Election year hilarity continues
As this year progresses, the political humor gets better and better. This defective yeti piece is absolutely hilarious, regardless of your political orientation. The Daily Show has been just great, and I don't use that term as lightly as you might think, every time I have seen it in the last month.
Screen on the Green to delight mid-town
This year's Screen on the Green schedule looks delightful. Who could resist Young Frankenstein, a blanket and a couple of bottles of wine under the stars? Not to mention the expected fun and mirth of a mid-town crowd for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Finally, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda introducing Barefoot in the Park? I will be there, in the park, and also barefoot.
Leo Turns the Page
Leo says goodbye to Call for Help and Tech TV. I'm interested to see what the new channel, the ineptly named G4TechTv, has to offer, what it's vision is, and what the quality level of the programming will be. I know that there was a huge difference, in my opinion, between the level of the existing TechTV, which was polished and informative, and G4, which has this sort of amateurish feel to it. I had watched both prior to this merger, so I don't believe that I am biased in my thinking.
Mac OS X: Highly critical security flaw
Mac OS X: Highly critical security flaw Mac users take note! It is easily fixed by changing some settings. (Solution is in the comments of that post.)
Arrested Development to return!
According to the blueprint, Arrested Development, my favorite new show of this last television season, will be back next year. I hope they have the good sense to move it to a different night. (via)
NBC Fall Schedule looks better.
NBC Fall Lineup announced. Two more years of Scrubs!! That is good news for those of us who enjoy that particular comedy. They are adding a fourth Law and Order show. Between the three CSI's and the four Law and Orders, you could start a network that ran nothing but law enforcement dramas.
BugMeNot, seriously
BugMeNot.com is a site that lets you bypass annoying sites that force you to register to view content. (via)
RipDigital: Convert your music CDs to a digital music library
RipDigital and MusicRip are two examples of companies that will take your CD collection and rip it for you at about a dollar a disk. I've got a lot of music, and I don't think I really want to spend the kind of money I would have to to get everything ripped. I, however, am thinking about choosing about 200 disks that I really want ripped and sending them off. It would probably take me a weekend to rip 200 disks myself, adding the time it takes to check the meta-data that the CDDB returns, which, for a lot of the stuff I listen to, is somewhat wrong. Anyone used either of these services, or know of any that are better? Let me know in the comments, I guess.
Dave Hyatt: Testing Page Load Speed
There is a very in-depth article on testing page load speed posted over at Surfin' Safari.
Test post from my replacement hiptop
I had almost forgotten somehow that I can post here from my sidekick. I
ended up getting a replacement Sidekick instead of going with the Treo
600. My existing Sidekick, the black and white model, had battery
issues, and the battery in it is not user replaceable.
Daring Fireball analyzes Six Apart's Strategy Errors
Daring Fireball: Like a Lead Zeppelin: "Don’t announce ship dates. Don’t announce forthcoming features. And don’t announce future pricing. When the software is done, then announce it. You will never disappoint."
Guardian Evhead Interview
Guardian Unlimited has an interview with Evan, one of the founders of Blogger. It's the first place where I have seen someone from Blogger actually comment on their stand on syndication. He says, "We went with Atom feeds for everybody - they're on new blogs by default - because of the ease of use and simplicity." I mean, it is Google's software, and it is their decision to make, but I think that introducing Atom into the equation makes it more confusing. Even today, on a mailing list of some fairly technology savvy people that I am on, someone asked the RSS vs. Atom question, and I grimaced. If the best argument for going with Atom as a Syndication format is ease of use and simplicity, then they don't really have a decent argument for not offering both and making Atom the default. This just makes them look ridiculous and bitchy to me. (via)
Blogger Help : Known Issues
Blogger Help : Known Issues This is something that might be helpful to refer to in the future. A couple of interesting items in the list too. "Blog*Spot blogs occasionally render a massive amount of gibberish in Mozilla" Now that's odd, I seem to see a lot of "gibberish" on Blogspot blogs, and I don't always use Mozilla:-)
Incredibles Trailer looks great
The Trailer for the next Pixar production, The Incredibles, is just flat out nice. There is more good stuff over at the movie's Web site. I'm actually excited to see this movie now.
Coachella Merchandise online now, almost two weeks after the show
Couldn't make it to Coachella, but want to wear the merchandise so you fit in with the cool kids? Well, now you can.
Fourth Gen IPod
Digital Media Thoughts has some information about a fourth generation iPod, or so they are claiming. Sounds plausible to me, but also, upon further thought, sounds like something one could easily have cooked up.
Sponsored by RO
Apparently, I am sponsoring The Atlanta ColdFusion User Group's Next Meeting, which features Ben Forta as its speaker. Over the years, ACFUG has been very kind to me and to my career. I am happy to be both a board member and a sponsor.
GasBuddy will help you with your Petroleum fuel purchases for your SUV y'all.
They featured GasBuddy on some television show that happened to be on in my bedroom. For some reason, I can't remember what show it was, but that's unimportant. If you need to find the cheapest gas around you, gasbuddy.com is the place you need to surf. Me, I don't drive so much.
The New York Times: Dancing Alone
Thomas Friedman
: "There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so."
Google Groups using Atom
Google Groups use of Atom represents the first non-Blogger area of Google's operation that standardizes on Atom. (via Kottke)
Are All Consultants Corrupt?
Fast Company: Are All Consultants Corrupt?
Movable Type Developer Edition 3.0 announced
Six Apart launches Movable Type Developer Edition 3.0 and a contest for developers.
Rob's ColdFusion Blackstone wishlist
Rob Brooks-Bilson has a very interesting wishlist for the next version of ColdFusion. I couldn't agree more about the enhancements to the CF Scheduler that he requests, and number 36 "Add XML validation against a DTD" is something that a lot of people, myself included, want very badly. I would add an overhaul of Query of Queries to this list, it is problematic quite a bit of the time, and it's typing infrastructure behaves in a predictable but somewhat ridiculous manner.
The post where I actually agree with Jack Valenti about something
Hollywoodreporter.com: "Valenti: Filtering smoking is filmmakers' call"
NYC Is Smoking Less, too
Gothamist: NYC Is Smoking Less. This is good news, and I am happy to report that my brother Chris is a member of that 11 percent. It's also proof, in part, that banning smoking in bars is effective. It's funny to me, because, here in Georgia, I hear a lot of people, and I mean a real lot, saying that they shouldn't ban smoking in bars. The longer I go without a cigarette, the more I think it is a good idea.
Subtraction: Outraged by the Outrage at All the Outrage
Subtraction: Outraged by the Outrage at All the Outrage: "One of the most frustrating tricks that conservative politicians manage to actually get away with is the inversion of indignation, i.e., taking an offensive position on issues where clearly, all good sense would indicate that they should be defensive."
EA, Microsoft Bury Hatchet
EEG News: EA, Microsoft Bury Hatchet. and there was cheering in the hills, and also on Xbox Live. About frigging time they got it sorted out.
Outkast
Outkast are filming their newest video at the end of my street in an old gas station.
Anyone should be able to post comments now
I ratcheted the commenting requirements down to anyone. I'm going to see if that effects things much, and if it does, I might ratchet the setting back up.
You are calling it what?
G4 and TechTV Merger FAQ: "What will the merged network be called? G4techTV" Umm, I'm not a branding expert, or even a branding novice really, but even I know that G4techTV is an awful name for a cable network. How about just "T!"?
We love the Week of E3 in Bumpland
Engadget has some photo's of Sony’s PSP Handheld. I4U goes a step further with specs and all kinds of other PSP information. Even more from Engadget.
Some Mac OS X Menu Bar add ons
Rating Bar puts a small iTunes star rating widget in your menu bar, making it easy to rate your music. I currently use the keyboard commands in Synergy to do this same thing and more(displays album artwork at the beginning of a new song, and provides play etc controls). It got me to thinking that it might be useful to list the ones that I use here for other folks to check out.
So those are the first two from left to right. The third one is BluePhoneMenu. It adds a menu with Signal and Battery strength for your Bluetooth enabled and supported phone (I have the Sony Ericcson T61x.) It also does on screen call notification, which is quite handy if you are a headphone wearing fool like myself.
Fourth from the left is the ubiquitous Quicksilver. I'll save everyone yet another description of this invaluable utility. Next to it is SlimBatteryMonitor which saves me some screen real estate on the menu bar for more utilities without taking away the functionality of the Apple battery monitor.
Next to that is the excellent, donationware, Menu Calendar. It gives me the current date without any hassles, access to a monthly calendar, and easy access to iCal. The rest are all Apple provided ones, Airport, Displays, Applescript, Security, Bluetooth, and Sound.
Got any that you can't live without that I missed? That's what the comments are for baby!!
Google Blog launched
Well, in addition to relaunching Blogger, Google launched a Google Blog. Oddly, Evan signs his first post inside of the post itself, and it appears that they have turned off attribution in the posted/permalink section of each post. I'm guessing that this means we won't have any idea who posted things unless they want us to know:-)
playfair returns as hymn
hymn -- Hear Your Music aNywhere: "The purpose of hymn is to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. It allows you to free your iTunes Music Store purchases from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss. These songs can then be played outside of the iTunes environment, even on operating systems not supported by iTunes. It works on Mac OS X, many unix(-ish) variants and on Windows."
The post where Mark and Sarah get engaged
Mark and Sarah Foo are engaged. They are both great, and even better together.
Dan Gillmor: Blogger's RSS Decision: Atom Only
In an effort to go completely overboard with Blogger relaunch stuff and get it out of my system, I now link to Blogger's RSS Decision: Atom Only. I completely agree with Dan about this. It's worth mentioning that Blogger's claim, that different XML syndication formats are problematic for their application, is a load of crap. Forget for a moment the server farm argument that Dan presents in his opinion piece, and consider how Blogger works at a core level. They take post information, which is stored in a relational database, and then push that information through a publishing engine, which grabs your custom template and pushes your structured post information into that template in pre-defined locations. So they are already storing millions of different output formats (everyone's templates), and publishing information through all of them, but they can't support two xml outputs at the same time? If this is the case, they might want to revisit their application architecture. If you have an argument against something technical, present that argument, but don't raise some fud argument that any reasonable, semi-technical person can see through. As a former Pro user, I can still publish good old rss. However, I cannot publish both RSS and Atom at the same time, and this irks me.
Thoughts on the Blogger Upgrade from around the browser
Whitespace has a comparison: Blogger vs. TypePad. Acts of Volition has some Thoughts on Template Design of the new "rockstar" designed templates. PB, who was one of the OG Blogger folks, has some thoughts about the lack of evolution of Blogging tools/entry interfaces.
The New Blogger
Stopdesign has the skinny on the Blogger rework from an interface perspective. There is also a Blogger article about the rework from their side of the project.
Blogger Developers Network: Atom API support in upgrade
Blogger Developers Network: "we have rolled out beta support for the Atom API. This means a more robust API for you to use in creating new blogging applications."
Holy Massive PVR Batman
Engadget: Sony’s 1TB digital video recorder with seven TV tuners. Wow, I don't think that there are ever more than two or three shows I would want to watch at one time.
Ten Weeks and I am now flying without a net.
After ten weeks of wearing nicotine patches and managing to remain smoke free, today marks the beginning of my "flying without a net," so to speak. I'm ready for it, and I am going to make it this time. As far as the effects of being smoke free, I feel much better. Not that it has been easy, it hasn't. I've gained a few pounds, and I'm not happy about that aspect of my cessation.
messing about
I'm messing with the new Blogger, design might change a bit over the next few days.
Thinking too much, not doing enough
I think that I need to think less and do more. I'm not sure where the idea got into my head, but the phrase "You will be judged on your output" seems to be stuck in my head. It occurs to me that my output is very low right now, but that the amount of effort going into that output is very high. It seems as if I could generate much more output from the same amount of effort. Odd that.
Say Hi To Maple Dorothy
Say Hi To Maple Dorothy Congrats to you both.
How a Nation Forfeits its Meaning
Dan Gillmor: How a Nation Forfeits its Meaning I feel like plausible deniability is being asserted by the administration, and it is the same kind of slickness that the same group of neo-conservatives who are now such staunch supporters of GW complained about during the Clinton administration. The difference this time is that peoples lives, and everything our country stands for, are at risk. Bush and Rumsfeld are in charge, and, if they are not, then shame on them for that instead and in addition to these atrocities. I can't believe that people are not more outraged by this whole incident. It goes against the very moral core of this country to do stuff like this. I'm embarrassed, frankly, and I would like to see the people responsible for this be punished severely to send a message. As this year goes on, the Bush administration continues to do a fantastic job of driving moderates like myself towards the other party. Mistakes happen, but it's the slick nature of their response to mistakes that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. See also: The Misunderestimated Man.
Wilco - A ghost is born
Wilco has a preview of their new CD, A ghost is born, up on their site. It's due to be released on June 22nd. I was pretty disappointed that they cancelled their set at Coachella, but considering the circumstances, there wasn't much else they could do.
new version of Blogger on horizon?
Based on this post it looks like Blogger is about to unveil a new version. No details of what this new version might entail beyond a redesign and "additional features", but they haven't released a major version since Google bought them.
Husky on the iTunes Music Store
I've been meaning to mention that my brother Chris' most recent band, Husky, has their debut EP up on the iTunes Music Store. (iTMS link) Check it out, "Jukebox" seems to be the song that is turning people's heads.
MLB in tangled web of on-field advertising
MLB is putting the Spiderman logo on bases and pitching rubbers? That is messed up. Where do you draw the line? Personally, as a lifelong baseball junkie, I am mortified by this decision. This, in my mind, was what seperated baseball and football from NASCAR. Update: The Yankees are refusing to go along with MLB's plan. Good for them, like I said previously, you have to draw the line somewhere.
Back from Coachella.
Back from Coachella. I really enjoyed it. More on that later.