Tom's blogspot

Podcatching the Word

2004-12-28T05:15:00.000-08:00

http://godcast.org/ This is exciting to me, simply in terms of the audience size and the momentum it adds to podcasting as an accepted distribution medium. I'd love to see Davidson's sermons podcast, especially now that he's getting mondo hits from the blogosphere on his Living Under Fascism sermon.

Soda in my java

2004-12-20T20:03:00.000-08:00

Fascinating. A java animated Tinkertoy um... I don't actually know what it is. It's sodaplay.

http://www.sodaplay.com/

"But I don't own an iPod!"

2004-10-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

I honestly don't get the disconnect here. The strength of the word "podcast" to alienate non-ipod users is astounding. I kind of like the word, but I certainly see Chris Pirillo's point that the term itself makes non-ipodders dismiss this ridiculously important concept out-of-hand.

Tom: Hey, if you're not into podcasting yet, you will be.
Joe: I don't own an ipod.
Tom: It really has nothing to do with an ipod. Any MP3 player will work.
Joe: Oh? Tell me about it.
Tom: Well, a podcast is when they throw media into an RSS enclosure. Then you use a podcatching application to monitor the XML feeds and execute an unattended download the media content.
Joe: I don't have an ipod. It doesn't sound like something I'd be interested in.
Tom: You don't need an ipod. Look, you use an RSS reader, right?
Joe: Hellyeah, I don't visit web pages any more. Everything in my aggregator.
Tom: And you have a Tivo, right?
Joe: Oh yeah. Gotta have my television delivered to me on my schedule. I can't live without Tivo.
Tom: Right. So why wouldn't you want that to happen with your audio content? Go check out doppler or ipodder, I'm telling you.
Joe: Oh. Well, I don't have an ipod.
Tom: [bangs head on table]

I simply don't understand how anyone who groks Tivo and RSS feedreaders can ignore this technology. I feel vindicated because my super-smart spousal unit fired up ipodderX and within 5 minutes knew how important podcasting was. To paraphrase Suck Magazine, the National Association of Broadcasters doesn't understand podcasting any more than the dinosaurs understood that big rock that fell out of the sky. But the lawsuits will be appearing in a few months, I expect.

I do understand if people don't get into Dawn and Drew. But hey, Howard Stern can command big coin, and Dawn Miceli has it all over Stern. "Wait! ... Good night, Inkernet." is destined to be the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" of 2005. Okay?

So gimme some of that ol' Janx feedback to let me know why podcatching sucks, eh?

Hello, shoes

2004-10-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

My messenger notification window says strange things again. Without looking, I blame Rob.

obRob content: Volume Shadow Copy FAQ

Google Desktop and other search doodads

2004-10-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Google Desktop Search - I'm all over this like a donkey on a waffle. Lookout kicks much tail for indexing my Outlook mailboxes & giving me halfway decent search options, but I've never checked into it's filesystem search functionality. I'm still frustrated when trying to grep my hard drives for files; it seems Microsoft's search functionality degrades with each new version. This is getting installed on at least one machine.
Another google goodie for Win32 users: the Google Deskbar. It allows you to write custom searches; for example, 90% of my google searches are against support.microsoft.com so I have a custom search for that. I need it, because of course the search functionality on Microsoft's knowledge base sucks as well, and I've been using Google against it for years. Deskbar is a definite hit, if not quite as extensible and agile as Dave's Quick Search Deskbar.

Tom broke my server

2004-10-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

Apparently my reputation for changing stuff on production servers has reached the west coast. It's strictly a rumor. I swear.

William Shatner. Has-been.

2004-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

Bill Shatner has a new record with such lyrics as
I hate to be the bearer of bad news,
but you're gonna die.

That tune (You'll Have Time) was on the Oct 11 Daily Source Code podcast. Also featured was the George W Bush Singers.

If you're not into podcasting yet, you will be. </broken record>

You don't see this every day.

2004-10-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

The other day I was driving home after dropping the kids off at school. The road goes next to a busy train line, but I'd never seen one of these before:

It's called the FRA T2000 and it's the Federal Railroad Administration's Automated Track Geometry Inspection Doohickey. The spec sheet shows this to be a pretty specialized vehicle, with comfortable facilities for the folks who have to work in this all day. If you're a rail junkie, I suppose crewing one of these is a dream job. I haven't seen one of these in HO or N scale for the model railroad enthusiasts.

JibJab's at it again

2004-10-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm probably three weeks overdue on this, but I just saw it. The guys from JibJab have released Good To Be In D.C., another uproarious stab at both sides of the aisle.

I'm sure there are animators who know what this genre of animation is called. I'm not one of 'em. So I'll just watch and giggle.

NymWatch

2004-10-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Well, there's a guy (chrisatelunch.com)who blogs what he had for lunch. I can at least screencap Rob's inane screen names. If you're going to have nothing to say, you may as well make it truly ridiculous.
(The word missing from this cap is "evil." Not that knowing that will help you understand what the hell Rob's on about, but I include it for the sake of completeness)

It's TIVO for your MP3 player

2004-10-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

I just received an MP3 player that I'm not sure I need. But it was free, so I'll take it and try to use it. Now I see that Jake Ludington's MediaBlab has an article called Podcasting with Windows Media Player. Scraping streaming audio onto your iPod? Now that is cool. Windows Media Player is, of course, clunkier than iTunes, but this works for me.
iPodder project home page: http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/

One geek's pseudonyms

2004-10-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have to admit I'm a big fan of Windows Server MVP Rob Moir, but (or because?) he's sort of quirky. He keeps changing his Microsoft Messenger handle, and it never says anything remotely resembling "Rob Moir."

Rob works as BOFH and general IT servant for a college in Luton, England. Which I think in American English means he works for a high school in the London 'burbs. His college gets top billing at the Stupid Email Dislaimers site. I'm sure that this famously stupid disclaimer has nothing to do with Rob.

Rob's current nom de plume

Maestro de Auschron

2004-10-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Prentiss for winning the Austin Chronicle Best Of Austin Award Doodad for Best Austin Blogger. I guess that means he'll have to stretch a cheesy vinyl banner across his front porch, clotheslining me when I'm not paying attention, and next time I go over he'll be inexplicably out of business and a Starbucks will be there instead.
At any rate, check out aprendizdetodo.com for some Prentilicious crap before Starbucks gets to it.

ExBPA webcast

2004-10-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, this blog isn't for work stuff. We have one of those. But it's mine, and I don't have anything else to put here, so rather than rip it down I'll post Exchange stuff. If you have Exchange Server in your org, and you haven't seen the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Thingy, you really need to check it out. Paul Bowden knows more than anyone in the universe about Exchange Server, and he'll be giving a web presentation on the ExBPA Thingy on Thursday morning (11AM Eastern), Oct 7.
This tool is cool and magical and does your job for you and takes out the trash. If you're only going to see one swiss-army-knife-for-microsoft-messaging-products webcast this year, see this one.

Stupid executive tricks

2004-08-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Investor's Business Daily reports that Jeremy Burton, Marketing veep at Veritas, has decreed email illegal on Fridays.

If this is a good idea, then getting rid of meetings for a day is a great idea.

Catalog as pleasure reading

2004-08-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

I used to get the quarterly catalog fromA Common Reader, not because I wanted to actually order anything, but because the catalog itself is a pleasure to read. In my news aggregator today, I saw another person mention that they love this catalog, and remembered that my umm... subscription? had lapsed. So I went off and ordered up a copy. It's a wonderful read. I always feel terrible when I tuck it into my pocket, with the books I want circled with my trusty purple crayon, and trudge over to my local Half Price Books to spend my money. I think I'm going to try to spend a little extra money and order some stuff from A Common Reader itself, because they do score limited runs of out-of-print works, and turned me on to such gems as Mark Twain's The Jumping Frog IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH. THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED LANGUAGE ONCE MORE BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL. 50 cents at HPB. Twain was playing that Babelfish game 130 years before Altavista existed, and his was funnier.
Just order the catalog, you'll see what I mean.

I also want to subscribe to McSweeney's but their web site is so damned satisfying I can't bring myself to shell out the $15 an issue. Maybe if I blog about it, McSweeney's will just comp me a year or three.

Yummy food, crappy web site

2004-07-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

Deep Foods, Inc. makes a line of frozen Indian dishes called Mirch Masala. Yum! They don't skimp on the spices, and for three bucks you get a huge meal when combined with a few pieces of frozen naan popped into the toaster.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you cannot browse their product line! They do have a search box, but the only argument it accepts is the UPC code from one of their boxes. Luckily, I'm currently chowing down on some Kofta Curry so I was able to give this info, which (click the link) then exposes the drop-down list of products in this line. So the pages are built, but not readily available to the Indocuisine-curious consumer. I think their Curry Classics line is the same deal, but I have no way of knowing since I threw out my Chicken Tikka box after lunch the other day.

Okay, I want to help these folks peddle their three-dollar frozen goodness and become wealthy. So I click on the contact us link and fill out their ASP form to tell them to yell at their web developer, only to find out their SQL skills are quite on par with their usability testing. Sheesh. Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80040e14' -- and of course no email address listed anywhere.

Hell on earth. Erm. Above earth.

2004-06-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

Singapore Airlines has announced non-stop service between Newark and Singapore. While I hate stopovers and loafing around airports as much as the next person, I can't imagine a travel experience more excruciating than an 18.5-hour flight. The flight from LA to Hong Kong is a little over 12 hours, and the return flight is 15. Never again: I wanted to amputate my own feet after about 13 hours.
$1300 economy isn't bad, but for a flight like that to be tolerable (especially if you're cursed with excess height, as I am) I think you'd need to fly the $5900 business class - there's no first class on this flight.

John Kerry doesn't get it.

2004-06-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

sacbee.com -- Nation -- Kerry touts tech plan in San Jose: "'We're not going to get very far with a leadership that lets America fall into the position of 10th in the world when it comes to adopting broadband Internet access,' Kerry said. 'We need a leadership that says if Bangalore in India can be completely wired, then so should all of America.'"

Interesting. And wrong. Completely wrong. I've spent the last few weeks trying to be an information worker in Bangalore, and I've been a miserable failure at it. I have to lug my Thinkpad six blocks to the nearest broadband access, and hope the power remains on for long enough to do some real work. Contrast that with Austin, where if my wireless access point (unheard of here) poops out, I just jump on one of the two open wifi access points that my neighbors have available. Bangalore isn't even in the same league as America, unless we're talking about some of the reservations in the Dakotas that represent the most destitute counties in the nation. The Times of India thought that while it is encouraging that American politicos have this misperception of India, "...broadband as it is known in the US is pretty much non-existent in Bangalore or anywhere else in India."

But it makes a good sound bite. On the down side, it takes away from the conversation about the Bush administration's assault on scientific integrity.

My office in Bangalore

2004-06-24T01:03:00.000-07:00

My desk

This is my desk. It has my notebook and a very cool battery called an N-Charge.

Next to my desk

Here's a row of monitors near my desk. A cute little mouse lives behind that electrical plate from which all the wires protrude.

The Accursed Hub

This is the accursed hub. It hangs by a nail jammed into a crack on the wall. The power connector is loose and I have to go jiggle it. It connects to my computer with an ethernet cable that was crimped with somebody's teeth, which you also have to jiggle. The cable, I mean. And probably somebody's teeth.

Pile of stuff

This is a pile of junk in the room I inhabit. It's probably for sale.

Tonight's dinner

2004-06-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

Every morning about 6AM the hawkers start up with their yelling, as they maneuver their pushcarts through the byways of Yelahanka. You can purchase your vegetables, greens, coconuts, or clothing from them. They'll iron your clothes with a portable charcoal-fired iron, sharpen your knives on their grindstone, or take your garbage away. You just need to pop your head out when they arrive, and all is taken care of for a few rupees.

Vijay suggested that those homeless guys hanging around on the street corners with cardboard signs might do this instead.

Paying PepsiCo in rupees

2004-06-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

We packed up the family into a little Maruti van and headed down for some Americana at Pizza Hut in Bangalore. It was a pretty interesting experience. First, you stop in and put your name on the reservation list, because there's a 20 minute wait. Everyone's milling around dressed in really nice clothes, because I guess this is some sort of fancy-schmancy restaurant here. Then you get seated and get to choose from the delicacies available on a menu that's been modified for the Indian palate. Chicken Tikka, Lamb Korma, and capsicum everywhere I can accept, but I was appalled to note that most stalwart atrocity, pizza with pineapples, has found its way over here. I didn't ask if they had low-carb beer to go with it; I really don't want to know.
The pizza arrived at our table and we dug in, only to be interrupted by our waiter a few minutes later. With profuse apologies he gave us the bottle of ketchup that he'd forgotten. A quick glance around verified that the correct way to eat pizza is with a fork and knife, after completely burying the slice under a half pint of ketchup. I think I'll remain the ugly American and eat it the way I do back home.

This glimpse of American dining is a rough culinary equivalent to the Indian cuisine available at the perennial Austin favorite Indian restaurant. The Clay Pit serves pretty good food, but not significantly better than you can get from a heat 'n' serve pouch. And in both venues, I leave feeling I overpaid to be undernourished.
(Now I sit back and await the hate mail for speaking ill of the Clay Pit, from people who have never tasted Indian food in India)
Next time, I spend 30 rupees (about 80 cents) on the vegetarian thali instead.

My pants arrived

2004-06-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

Every time I come to Bangalore, I lament that we didn't schedule our flights to allow a 48-hour layover in Singapore, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, or whatever wonderful place I only know as a transit visitor. This time, my pants spent a week in Frankfurt; I suppose they had better ideas than the sprint through the terminal to catch our rerouted Bombay flight.

Lufthansa told me they'd reimburse me half the price of new pants if I presented them with receipts. I don't need new pants! So I bought one pair of pants, attached to a nicely embroidered, tastefully-accessorized new kurta pyjama set that I never would've sprung for without an airline industry pantaloon bailout. I'll have to attach pictures. I cut quite a dashing figure, the once per year I actually wear ethnic garb.

I, for one, welcome our new sociolinguist overlords

2004-06-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

I'm really taken with the idea of snowclones. The term was coined to describe the phenomenon of templates that can be used to turn a clever phrase without the bother and mess of actually being clever. Specifically, the term was inspired by the formula, "If Eskimos have x words for snow, then Los Angelenos must have y words for traffic."

Another interesting thing about the word is that we know to the second when the term originated. I'll have to keep an eye out to see how this is annotated in various dictionaries' etymology entries.

Controversy finally solved.

2004-06-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm glad we got that cleared up! From rec.games.chess.misc:

> "Jerzy" wrote in message
> news:...
> > "Gunny Bunny" wrote in message
> > news:....
> > >
> > > Please don't top post!
> > >
> >
> > Please don`t cross post !
> >
> >
>
> Please don't post!

Next on the agenda: vi vs. emacs. Given the vituperative fervor this issue generates, why can't I find alt.usenet.([top|bottom])-post.advocacy on my newsfeed?