Ongoing Life…

I’ve tried using linux multiple times in the past with each time ending the same way; me going back to Windows. These cycles started in my freshmen year in college when I was considering a Comp Sci major. I had installed RedHat since that was the popular variant at the time. I got my system up and running but I couldn’t  get my video card working so back to Windows I went. My most recent attempt was during the  past month with my laptop that I had used for grad school. Since I didn’t have any important school stuff to worry about, I thought I’d give it another go. Unfortunately, I think there are way too many sources of information in the open source community. I’m more of a linear thinker in the sense that I follow directions to a fault. If I run into troubles or challenges, I search google and follow the directions of one of the top search results. This got me in trouble when the first directions I stumbled across didn’t work and so I found the next search result and continued from there. Apparently, running cryptic commands from the terminal can hose up a system. It ended up that I had somehow removed or unassociated the file explorer piece of the interface so I was unable to browse the CD or hard drive. I took this as a sign that the linux gods still think I’m incompetent (which I acknowledge) and should not roll with linux.

After getting good ole familiar XP loaded, I decided to sit down and post some musing on my blog. When I logged into the blog there was a headline that there was a new version of MovableType out that fixed some security issues. Sounded important,  so I downloaded and ran the upgrade. I thought somethingwas amiss when I ended up with four login boxes on the login page.

As a result of the botched upgrade, I’ve now given up on the MovableType blogging platform. I had been using it since I started my blog back in college. Through the years, I’ve tried other blogging platforms, but I always came back to MovableType due to the knowledge I had accumulated and my ability to edit it to my liking. This tacit knowledge came through various problems during upgrades over the years. These problems manifested themselves as corrupted databases to the most recent issue of duplicate login forms.  Searching google did not yield any solution to my duplicate problem. So I thought I might as well make it a night of installation by installing WordPress. I had briefly used WordPress a while ago but I stopped using it due to challenges in making my blog do things I wanted it to. This previous install made re-installing it a little more difficult.

As you can see, I’m not completely inept at technology and software since I got this up and running agian.

Dork computer, install, linux, Wordpress

As per my usual method of operation, I’m up late tweaking and tinkering with the blog. Most of the changes were minor things that bugged me when I took a look at the blog the other night. As always, the changes are so minuscule that I need to dig deep into the template. Every time I take a sabbatical from posting my mind turns to mush and I have to relearn how to navigate the templates to make the changes I want.

Please note this is a Dork post.

To continue on my previous post where I got into too much technical talk about digital reader, Amazon is set to announce an new version of the Kindle. Some early marketing photos can be found over on the forums at MobileRead. I’m not sure if this is a newly upgraded version of the Kindle or if it is just a redesign. I tend to lean towards the latter since I have not heard any information leak about any significant upgrades to the technical specs. From the leaked photos, the design team definitely listened to the chatter regarding the harsh, boxy design of the original. One blog I read (I don’t remember which one) said that it seems to be Kindle 1.5 rather than a second generation device. The price is reportedly still at $359, which is still too high for widespread adoption. This pricing challenge is seen across all of the digital readers.

The feeling I get is that Amazon is trying to do to books what Apple did to music. What Apple was able to do successfully is release hardware priced on the high end of market value and pair it with a simplistic way of loading content onto the device. Apple accomplished the content side of the equation with iTunes, while Amazon is utilizing its Kindle Store and the Whispernet (some of Sprint’s cellular network) to easily deliver content to the reader. I have doubts that Amazon will be able to have the same market penetrating success that Apple has had. The fundamentals of music and books are dramatically different. In general, people do not have the same attachment to books as they do with music. This attachment, or even engagement, sets a higher value on music and the devices that play the music. As a result, the customer base with this passion for books is significantly smaller than its big brother music.

The challenge with digital readers, as I alluded to in a previous post, is the different formats of the content. Amazon has a significant amount of content in its proprietary format in addition to a simple way of loading it to the device. The Sony device has a replica of iTunes but for books. When I was looking at readers, this scales were hardware cost and content cost. The Kindle was priced at $100 premium over the Sony reader. Sony wins hands down on the hardware price. Moving onto the content piece I did some unscientific search of authors I read, the Kindle’s content was equal to or less than Sony’s offerings majority of the time. Kindle won the first round of content competition. The problem with the content is that I’m cheap and had found many resources online that offered free content. It’s not illegal content, it’s books that are in the public domain or the author has published it for free in the digital format. This swayed the judges and caused the content bout to end in a draw. Based on cost of hardware and content, Sony ended up being the winner for me. However, if I was heavily dependent on New York Times best sellers, the Kindle would have smacked Sony around pretty bad.

The value proposition that Amazon presented to me was something that pushed me further into the Sony corner.  The Kindle had more advanced features such as: keyboard, dictionary, Wikipedia access, wireless book buying. Unfortunately, I did not value any of this additions. All I saw was a bunch of things that I’m paying for that I would never use. This caused me to view the Kindle as significantly lower value than its competition. Don’t get me wrong that those features may be useful and cool to use, but I wouldn’t get $100 of value from them. If the Sony was priced in parity with the Kindle, then these would have come into play.

Okay, long post. It’s taken me an hour to get this written out. It’s now past midnight and Aves is going to be getting up in around five and a half hours. But I’ve found this fun to do. I’m not sure if anyone reads this but I do find it fun to discuss things with a monitor (luckily it never talks back). I’m sure Michelle will be appreciative since this will hopefully keep me from jabbering on about stuff like this to her. Although, I did tell her about the new Kindle as we were driving home from dinner.

Did you actually read the entire post, hon?

Dork

This post is to test out the Wii browser.

Dork

Well the six week wait is almost over. I should be receiving a letter from the U this week sometime. I’m hoping on tomorrow since I’ve been going nuts for the past couple weeks. I got excited last week to see an email from the admissions office at the U. Unfortunately, the only information included in the email was the explanation that is was policy to only notify through the US Mail and that everything would be sent out on Monday the 14. How long can it take a piece of mail to get sent from Minneapolis to Champlin?

Dork

It started with not being able to get to my email from Jason’s server, but then I couldn’t even bring up his site. I’ve had service interruptions a couple other times using his server, never anything serious. This time it was bad, real bad. He ended up losing his entire server to a “catastrphic disk failure”. That meant his blog, my email, Michelle’s email, and my blog were all toast. I never thought that it would be a big deal until I realized how much I use email. I had all my contacts and othe emails I keep for reference. We were in the process of buying a new house so the realtor and mortgage people were using that email to send me info. The blogs were pretty much gone. I was able to get my posts from Google’s cache but that took me a good 4-5 hours to copy and paste them into the new blog software. I’ve migrated off of Jason’s server to Blogger (as some may have noticed). It seems to have the same functionality but with the annoying banner at the top. I hope that this will only be a temporary stop, but I’m not sure if Jason is going to open up a server anytime soon. He lost a lot of work he did on ComputerJargon through the years. I do know that he may have learned a lesson and has a one touch backup on order.
Many other changes are on the horizon but I’ll save that for another day.

Dork

I know I’ve been neglecting the site for awhile. So I thought I’d take a break from studying and watching Big Brother 6 to officially welcome Apple to the 21st Century.
With the introduction of the Mighty Mouse Apple has finally acknowledged the need for a right-click. I’d like to point out not only did they add a right button, but also middle and side buttons. This increases the click options by 4 times over their standard mouse. There is also a little trackball that functions as a up-down and side-to-side scroll wheel. It seems that they have gone from extremely simplistic to somewhat complex in one fell swoop. They have increase their click options by 4 times!!
The single mouse button made people new to technology comfortable. They didn’t have many options. It was either a single or double click. Apple seemed attached to the simple is better approach for so long. The Mighty Mouse seems to go against what Apple has stood for. I do think they are smart in not packaging the Mighty Mouse with a new Mac. Only the power users and PC converts are going to want the right-click. And if they want their mouse to match their iMac, they get to pay $49.99 plus tax.

Dork

Apple finally announced that they are moving to Intel chips. I have read about the possibility since OS X was released. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs has already said that the consumer will not be able to get OS X without buying Mac hardware. I would happily plunk down the $129 for OS X to run on my current box.
The one thing that I’m hoping for with the switch to Intel is a cheaper Mac. Since OS X came out I have been yearning for a Mac. When I was having computer troubles I priced out a Mac Mini, but the cost was still more than what I wanted to spend. I’m hoping that an Intel Mac will be competitively priced against a Dell with a similar configuration.
All I want is a useful Mac Mini under $500. The base Mini needs a couple upgrades to make is useful to me. The Mini needs to have a minimum of 512 RAM and Wi-Fi. If you price these options out on a Mini you are in the $630 range. My current computer system (computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse) cost around that. I’ve always been a value shopper and the Apple premium is too much.
Apple is missing a huge segment of consumer because of their premium. They are missing people like me, the value consumer. They already have a better operating system. If they came in with a value computer that could compete with Windows machine they could grab market share. I think many people are interested in the Mac OS but the start up cost is prohibitive.
The minute I can buy the Mac I want for under $500, I’ll be the first to place that order. Better yet, let me buy OS X and dual boot my current machine.

Dork

Another Friday night of catching up with things that I keep thinking about but never sit down to do. I’ve noticed that its obvious when my wife is working. Most of those nights I’ll get on and post something. Tonight is no different. But I do have a couple posts to get caught up on.
The thing that had me all giddy this week was I found the podcast This Week in Tech. Check it out and skip the next paragraph if you aren’t interested in any back story.
I’ll start from the beginning. Back in college, the cable company carried TechTV on basic cable. TechTV had a show called The Screen Savers that was on 4 or 5 days and was an hour and a half long. They would talk about computers and technology for the whole time. They would also take any computer related phone call; tech support, hardware recommendations, etc. The show could go from extremely technical to very basic in a matter of seconds. That was the appeal of the show. Everyone could watch it; it wasn’t technical for the entire hour, but it wasn’t elementary either. Unfortunately, I graduated and moved back to Minnesota where the local cable company, Comcast, did not carry TechTV on basic cable. During this time Comcast bought TechTV. The idea that Comcast had was to merge G4 (television network for gamers) and TechTV into one channel, G4TechTV (Real original, huh?). The result of the merge was a consolidating of the shows and personalities. Unfortunately, the two main hosts were let go and replaced. They were replaced by new people or someone who did small segments on the old Screensavers. I found various sources and was able to see a couple of the new Screensavers. It seemed that the direction of the show became more gamer oriented. No more technical computer info. On various message boards you could see that many Screensavers fans disliked the new show. Needless to say G4TechTV has dropped “Tech” from their name after sometime. The show was renamed Attack of the Show. A couple sites have said that the show is good given that you don’t expect any in depth computer coverage. I may check it out just to see. Fast forward to present time.
I knew one of the old hosts of Screensavers has a show on Canadian TechTV (see previous paragraph regarding US TechTV), so I went to his site. I saw that he has started doing podcasts of a couple radio shows. But what caught my eye was “my newest podcast, this WEEK in Tech, with Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and other former TechTV hosts”. These were the people I like so much on the Screensavers. Kevin Rose was a host of the Screensavers during the G4TechTV reign, but he wasn’t able to get technical due to the new focus of the show. I browsed through This Week In Tech and found that there were 8 shows available to download. [There are 9 now due to a special midweek show] The group of Leo, Patrick, and Kevin have been doing weekly shows for awhile. I downloaded the first two shows and listened to them to see if the show was good. The next day at work I listened to the remaining shows. The shows are exactly what the Screensavers was when it was at its best.
Michelle was not as excited as me. She’s just happy that she doesn’t have to sit through them. During college I would sit and watch the Screensavers at 6 pm and watch it again when they re-aired it later that night.

Dork

A couple things have happened in the last couple days to put me in more into the dork category. Music itself would not push me in this direction but my action do put me in the dork area.
The first thing that happened is related to a band I saw when I was in 7th grade. That band is Edsel. I won tickets for a concert from the local radio station. It was a school night so I was only able to see one or two of the opening bands. One of these opening bands was Edsel. They completely blew me away. After the concert, I spent the next couple days tracking down their two CD’s. I ended up buying them from CDNow (which was taken over by Amazon sometime ago.) At that time CDNow didn’t take charge so you had to place your order and then send in a check. They released another full CD in 1995 or 1996 and an EP in 1998 or so. I got the full CD but I could never justifying paying the high cost of the EP ($10 after shipping). The EP only had 4 songs on it, so I always kept an eye out for it on Half.com and Ebay.
Last weekend I couldn’t sleep so I started searching for any info on Edsel. I’ve done this previously and never came up with any results. Most of the results came back regarding the car. I did remember that they were from Washington, D.C. so I included this information in the search. I came across a new page that listed the names of the guys in the band and a little update of what they were doing. There was a site that was linked in the article. I checked out the linked site and on the page was a contact link. Not too promising. I went back to the article and found the lead singer’s name and typed that into Google to see what I would hit. One of the top results was the page with the contact link. I thought what they hey, I’ll send off an email to see if this person is connected to the band to see if I could buy a copy of the EP directly.
To my surprise the very next day I got a very courteous response. It was indeed the website of the lead singer. He gave me a quick update on all the guys of the band. Unfortunately he did not have any copies of the EP I was looking for. He did offer to post the MP3′s of the album and some other rarities. I quickly responded with a enthusiastic yes for the MP3′s. A couple days later I got a link from him for around 100 megs of music. I just downloaded the zipped file and am listening it as I post this.
On another dork, I finally broke down and bought into the satellite radio. Target had a great deal on the receiver after a rebate and my employee discount. I haven’t listened to much radio besides 89.3 the Current. I looked through what both XM Radio and Sirius had to offer and decided that Sirius had more offerings that Michelle and I would listen to.
I told Michelle that I had made the decision that we were going to get it and her response was “Who is going to install it?” She didn’t like the idea of me trying to tear apart her car trying to get this thing installed. The receiver has an antenna that mounts on the top of the car and a power cord that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I got the receiver mounted very quickly since it’s just a suction cupped to the windshield. I decided just to place the antenna on the dash and it seems to be working. I think we are in an area that had repeaters on the ground because the receiver says the terrestrial signal is 100%. I don’t see any reason to go through the hassle of mounting the antenna if I don’t need to. The power adapter needed to be hidden under the dash and I thought this would be easy enough to do. I searched the internet hoping to be able to find directions on how to remove the dash in my wife’s Santa Fe. When I told her that I would need to remove her dash console I could tell she was a little worried.
It took me awhile but I finally stumbled into a Santa Fe owner’s message board. I found step by step instructions on how to remove the console, so I was ready to go. After a twenty minutes of “firmly” pulling on the dash, I got the pieced removed. I have never removed a dash on a car so I was having problems with the firmly part. It took more force than I thought it would. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t busting anything since Michelle would have killed me. I got the power adapter run and the dash back together without any other problems. My wife told me that everything worked fine during her drive to work. She did run into some interference because the receiver is using a FM transmitter to get the signal to the car’s stereo.
The added bonus is that I can stream Sirius to my computer at work. I can listen to Alt Nation all day long. Alt Nation plays all the best 90′s alternative/grunge that I grew up with. I love it.

Dork

What do you get when you mix New Castle, listening to music, writing a web page, and a dog chewing on a bone?? You get my Friday night.
I have been using J. River’s Media Center for a couple years now. The program has skinning and plug-in support. Back in college I spent many hours working on a skin that I called Simpleton. I want one thing that the program doesn’t offer. In that case I wanted a slim skin. All the skins available at the time were huge. I just wanted a line that told be what song was playing and playback controls. So I spent countless hours in Photoshop Elements creating the skin. This did expose me to XML and how it worked I still haven’t used it much but I have a good understanding of it.
The project I’m working on now for Media Center is s visualization. This will display the album art, title, album, artist, and a couple other random facts. The visualization is basically a HTML template so I’m trying to work my way through that. I figure this will be a little warm up for when I redo the layout of the site. I want a new layout but I don’t seem to have the creativity to come up with what I want. I’ve tested out some new colors but I can find anything that I like. I want something in the green family, but it’s either too pastel or too dark. Most likely it will be a long while before I finally decide on a new layout and I doubt anyone really reads this anyway.
More on the dork front I got a new cell phone. I have been waiting for the phone to come out for a couple months. I saw an ad in one of my smut magazines (Maxim, FHM, or Stuff). The phone I got is the Sanyo VI-2300. My previous phone was a Sanyo and I loved it. I had Sony and Samsung phones before, but my old Sanyo had the best reception out of those. As a result I am now a loyal Sanyo customer. My old phone had a cracked screen for about a year. Dust has started slowly working it’s way under the screen. I saw the ad in the magazine for the phone and I immediately knew this is the phone I need.
If you haven’t shopped for cellphones lately let me recap the landscape of the cellphone market. Your choices are either dirt cheap phones with low quality or phones with all the bells and whistles for $500. The only thing I wanted from a phone was a sturdy flip phone without a camera. The 2300 fits the bill perfectly. It is a quality phone but it excludes the camera I don’t need. The phone came out about a month ago but I just got it this week. Sanyo is a manufacturer that is finally realizing that people like to stand out. They have started making their phones in different colors. This phone will be available in 6 different colors. They first released silver and a blue. I wanted a black one so that’s why I had to wait a month. I called the local Sprint stores once a week to see if they had the black phone in stock. After a couple weeks they finally had it in stock and I was able to go look at it. I was happy until they told me that they couldn’t get my saved numbers off my old phone. With the help of Michelle I was able to enter in all my saved numbers manually.
Something else that I have been fascinated with lately is Audioscrobbler. This is a site that you sign up with and then install a plug-in for your media player. It tracks what music you listen to and builds a profile based on it. You can look to see what people who have similar tastes are listening to. You can also look up to see what is the most played song. You do have to take into account that this isn’t something that the people who listen to pop do. This may explain why Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, and others show up while Britney isn’t there. A cool thing with the profile is that it’s linked up with Last.fm. You can launch your personal radio station based on bands you have previously listened to. The Audioscrobbler site has had some major issues in the past two weeks, but I think they are up and running at 100% now. Check it out.
That was my Friday night. Not much fun for most people, but I had a good time.

Dork