|
|
|
July 8th, 2008
11:08 pm - Lively? What the hell?
OK. Google has gone bonkers. They just released a virtual chatroom ... thing called Lively. Create an avatar, create a room, and enter and chat with your friends there! Sort of like Second Life, but far more limited. (Only runs on Windows. Feh.)
I refuse to put this on my work computer, so I task my friends to play with it and make derisive comments. Or admit to their secret shame of liking it. One critic's take here.
Thoughts?
|
February 19th, 2008
11:00 am - HD-DVD Is Dead
Toshiba pulls out of HD-DVD, which means that Blu-Ray is the winner, and HD-DVD is going to continue to wither and die.
At least we've settled on a format, even if both of the formats were kind of evil. Then again, I'm not a fan of DRM in general. (Suprise!)
|
September 25th, 2007
02:46 pm - Printer deal?
I'm not familiar with the company, but this place is selling HP LaserJet 1018 personal printers for $77.77 with free shipping (though the site defaults to non-free shipping, so you have to select free shipping on the menu on the left). Until the end of September, HP is offering a $65 discount on said model. (Click on "mail-in rebate" under the picture.) That means that, so long as you're willing to put $65 in rebate purgatory for a month or two, you can get a laser printer for about $13. As I said, I'm not affiliated with either, and it might be slightly sketchy, but it seems genuine to me. Thought I'd pass it along.
That said, I'm heading back into wedding-prep. Whee!
|
June 21st, 2007
01:31 pm - A-Frickin'-Mazing
So I was browsing Slashdot at work, and I notice an article on the five most active software projects at SourceForge. I noodle through, taking a look, and notice Stellarium.
Whoa. Like, major whoa.
Download it. Fire it up. It's phenomenal, presuming that it is, in fact, accurate.
With it, I was able to, within about two minutes, get an idea of what the sky looked like above Boston at the moment that I was born, with the atmospheric occlusion caused by the Sun turned off. I haven't really played around with it much, but I suspect that you could see what the night sky over Bethlehem looked like (according to astronomers) during any given Mithraic holiday a little over two thousand years ago. You might have to make some compensations for calendrical shift in the intervening centuries, as I'm not sure that the coders compensated for that.
...but wow. You can zoom in and look constellations, the phase of the moon, or whatever. Shift your location pretty much anywhere. It's really pretty, and it's really nifty.
|
April 2nd, 2007
12:22 pm - Digital Rights Management Coup?
So I'm having a hard time figuring out what it means that EMI just OK'd non-DRM tracks. (Thanks, by the by, to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bryant for the link.) Overall, I'm not a big fan of digital rights management. It's a losing battle from a technical perspective, and from a commercial perspective, it's fairly clearly an artifact of an old(er) model for selling music. If we can draw lessons from history, I'd argue that we're highly likely to ultimately move toward a simpler model in the long run.
So is this, in fact, a death knell for DRM in the music industry, or is it just an ill-advised foray into treacherous waters that will eventually spell doom for EMI? Steve Jobs certainly made his position clear, presuming that it wasn't, of course, smoke and mirrors, and presuming that the clarity of his position wasn't just a reality distortion field.
Any thoughts on this one, folks? The tech-savvy consumer is probably glad that he can download unencumbered tracks from the iTunes Music Store now, but is this a watershed moment or merely an aberration?
|
March 30th, 2007
12:18 pm - Cheating Services and Copyright
So, in my daily web-browsing, I found this Washington Post article linked from Slashdot. The short form is that a few high school students are suing Turnitin for copyright infringement, and I think they have a legitimate argument.
For those who haven't been involved in academia in the last decade or so, Turnitin is a company that specializes in determining if a particular paper is plagiarism. They have a large database of papers on file, and when a new paper is submitted to them that matches an existing paper in their database (via a proprietary heuristic), they alert the professor or teaching assistant of the plagiarism. The trick, you see, is that the papers that are submitted to them are put into their database archive.
Well, the students suing Turnitin formally made copyright claims on those papers before submitting them to Turnitin, and in at least one case, they requested that the paper not be archived. It was. Consequently, they are suing the company, claiming copyright infringement.
You see, Turnitin wouldn't be able to do what they do without their vast archives of papers, and the students are objecting to their papers being used by the company for profit, albeit in the form of a data point for their heuristics.
I, for one, think they have a legitimate argument, even if it might presage doom for cheating services such as this one. What do you think?
|
March 29th, 2007
12:53 pm - Pseudo-Update
First off, an entertaining link: Google Maps's response to how to get from Santa Cruz, CA to Santa Cruz in Spain. My favorite part is step 33. Also note that they give an estimate of travel time that is reasonable considering an average rate of speed on step 33.
In any case, life has eaten me, but I'm not dead. I'm in full-bore wedding-planning mode while still trying to work out, catch up on Strange Horizons and pack for moving across town. Perhaps I'll have some useful content here again someday.
|
March 7th, 2007
12:14 pm - Impulse Purchase Desires
Not that I have purchased it (yet), but I really, really want to buy a theramin.
Is that wrong?
|
February 7th, 2007
08:34 pm - Jobs on Music and DRM
Via brad, a link to Steve Jobs's thoughts on music. More specifically, it's his thoughts on DRM, how the record companies are confused about technologies, and how Apple doesn't have as vested an interest in DRM as one might immediately think. Worth a read, even if it does have a bit of Steve's reality distortion field surrounding it.
For those who are confused, Steve Jobs is the legendary CEO of Apple, which has expanded significantly into music with the iTunes Music Store and the iPod.
|
February 2nd, 2007
02:50 pm - Car Woes Revisited
So ... after three and a half weeks, I finally have my car back from the shop (for those coming late here, I got hit in early January). Unfortunately, I'm seeing some problems with the car in the hour or so I've driven it since I got it back:- I'm getting about 10mpg less than I did in late December and early January. This might be partially attributable to the temperature difference and changes in battery efficiency, but...
- The battery is at nearly 100% charge and the gas engine is almost always running; for those who don't own Priuses, this is very much not how they work. It was rare for me to see a nearly-full battery before the accident. This morning, 2/3 of my commute was green-battery commute.
- I'm also noticing a distinct whir and oscillation that wasn't there before. This is, in part, to be expected, but coupled with the reduction in fuel efficiency, this makes me rather annoyed.
- Note that the car was in the shop for three and a half weeks. They should have been able to go faster, even accounting for slow transshipment of parts.
Overall, I'm rather annoyed, and it means that I'm returning the car to the shop on Monday. Hopefully, when they hook it up to the computer, they'll notice some more problems that they can fix. If not, then I'll be calling up the Toyota dealership in town to see if they can give it a once-over.
In other news relating to my original accident post, I ended up settling on a Samsung A640 phone. Bluetooth-enabled, decent battery life, reasonably durable design, decent reception. I'd recommend it. The Motorola Razr and Sanyo Katana just didn't fit in my hand very well, and the A640, while not quite as slim as a Razr or Katana, is volumetrically similar, lighter, and easier to flip open.
|
January 17th, 2007
02:22 pm - Geek Techno Alert!
A coworker of mine just pointed me to the following two videos on Youtube. If you are a computer geek at all, you need to see these videos. If you're a techno fan, you need to see these videos. They are ... kind of phenomenal Euro-techno-geekcore:The group (or should I say, guy) is called Basshunter, and by God, I am in awe. His first album is entitled -- I shit you not -- "LOL <(^^,)>".
I am in awe.
|
January 8th, 2007
02:47 pm - Morning of Frustration ... and Cell Phones!
I dropped swan_tower off near the lecture she's TA'ing for this morning. Then, I headed over toward the post office to mail a few letters. ...at which point, an older lady in an Avalon slammed into my passenger side, mucking up the front right wheel something fierce and denting the door and front panel.
A call to the police and a tow truck later, I called swan_tower, who was out of class at that point. She picked me up, we made a trip to my insurance agent's office, and we had lunch. Then, we hit the Sprint store on the way home, trying to figure out how we want to upgrade our (fairly antiquated) phones.
To stave off certain questions in advance:- I am fine. I have a very slight soreness in my neck, but I do not feel as if I am going to get any whiplash at all. I've had it before, and I doubt that I'll have much more than slight ache. The other driver was similarly OK, it seems.
- There were just the two of us involved.
- I have no idea if I'm going to be ruled "at fault," here. Our stories don't entirely match up, apparently, and we both have convincing arguments for being in the right. There was at least one potential witness that the officer was going to trace down, and I have an edge in that the impact was on my passenger's side, indicating that I was well inside of the intersection. Ultimately, however, who knows?
- swan_tower and I still have two cars, so neither of us are down a method of transportation between now and getting my car fixed up.
- I do, indeed, have all my insurance ducks in a row, so the worst that will happen is that I'll be declared at fault, pay the deductible, and end up paying a premium over the next several years.
- No citations were handed out at the scene.
- Really, I'm OK. I promise you.
Personally (in part to get my mind off the nightmare of administrative and maintenance hassle I have in front of me with my car), I have a question for people who are reasonably familiar with the current lineup of Sprint phones: what are your opinions? Any far and away favorites? I'm not looking for anything particularly fancy, and my priorities are, roughly, in the following order:- reception,
- battery life,
- reliability,
- price, and
- extra gadgets.
Of the gadgets I am most interested in, I'm looking at Bluetooth (for ease of answer during my daily commute) and GPS (because it's cool), though the latter would be something I'm interested in only if it wouldn't cost significantly more, as I am unlikely to use it frequently.
So ... any suggestions on particular models or websites that you'd recommend I visit? I'm home for the rest of the day (the administrative hassle already took up most of the useful hours of the day), and I'm looking for some distraction.
|
December 30th, 2006
04:02 pm - Trials, Tribulations, and Triscuts
Haven't posted in a bit, so here's the summary of life at present:- Dallas was quite enjoyable, even if I didn't get to spend quite as much time "off" for Christmas as I'd otherwise like.
- Kingdom Hearts is a seriously addictive game that I really shouldn't have purchased, as it has eaten quite a bit of time.
- The flip side is that my primary email account has been offline for a little while now, for reasons that would take far too long to explain. Most of the work I would have been doing in lieu of playing Kingdom Hearts involved email, so I suppose that the universe just wanted me in from of the PS/2.
- I appear to have contracted a reasonably mild gastro-intestinal bug of some sort, which I am treating with all due respect (plenty of fluids, things to replace electrolytes, etc.). This has already disrupted my weekend / New Years plans to a limited degree (making me miss the Dr. Who-a-thon at kitsune_zen's), and I am hoping that it will fade rapidly, so as not to disrupt them further.
- I have managed to finally finish another knitting project, which I'll probably post pictures of soon. I really need to graduate from scarves and move on to something more complex, though that would probably require circular needles.
- My new car is still awesome.
- My primary resolution for this year-end is to join a gym and get more regular exercise.
That's about it for now. A mixed bag, but certainly not overwhelmingly negative.
|
November 8th, 2006
01:55 pm - Politics and Archivists
There are the obligatory things to mention. Friends of mine are justly happy about the next Speaker of the House. Similarly, Massachusetts gets its first African-American governor, who just happens to be a Harvard man. (Any of you folks happen to know which House? swan_tower and I are curious.) The key Indiana races went Democratic (including District 9, which is mine; go, Baron Hill!), Tester appears to have won Montana, and Rumsfeld is stepping down, to be replaced, apparently, by former CIA chief Robert Gates. Generally speaking, this appears to be a political shift and an interesting one, at that. Some of the concession speeches are worth watching.
I mean, this news is better than having found out that Britney Spears was divorcing Kevin Federline.
(Only tangentially related: If any of you are, like me, fond of loopy conspiracy theories, take a look at this one, which puts forward the idea that George W. Bush's grandfather was none other than Aleister Crowley.)
In any case, no. My current thoughts are on the various websites that will be going down between now and mid-January. This concern actually came to me when I saw this video yesterday. Apparently, the White House had been cropping "Mission Accomplished" from the video of the infamous speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May of 2003. ...at least the version of the video which is on the White House web site. This got me to thinking about the impermanence of items on such sites and the ways in which that is ... well ... wrong.
For instance, what if one wanted to see the White House site for, say, the very end of Clinton's term? It's not as if Bush's cronies have been keeping that site up, and while the internet archive sometimes has such things, it's not as if all of the lame-duck legislator sites will be kept for posterity. What about Senator Santorum's site? Senator Talent's? Defeated Indiana Representative Mike Sodrel's site? I don't think so.
I know too many anthropologists, librarians, political wonks, and historians to say that this information isn't important enough to save. Granted, individual candidate websites might not be the most important thing in the world, but certainly something like press releases should be archived, shouldn't they?
Of course, then we run into revision issues, as with the White House's editing of the video above. Most sites don't have the revision controls for their pages that, say, Wikipedia has (using as an example, in this case, the page for Mike Sodrel, my lame-duck Congressman). Software developers are very familiar with revision control packages, but not many other folks are. ...and I'll wager that most Webmasters are just as happy to be able to expunge old documents from their servers, particularly when it doesn't fit the image their employers want to project.
I've heard many times that the span of time we're in currently will be a black hole in history, as much of its literary and intellectual output is going to fall prey to data rot. I've mentioned this concern before, I'm sure. ...but the fact that there appears to be no good centralized archivist for this data makes me sad somehow, even as the Right stumbles and the Left cheers.
|
November 1st, 2006
04:57 pm - Thoughts on iPods and Podcasts
So, for those who aren't aware, I drive an hour each way to and from work each workday. This means that I spend about two hours in the car, Monday through Friday. Ten hours per week. That's a fair amount of time, particularly in an area with no kickass radio stations. As a consequence, I have grown to consider my iPod to be indispensable. I've had people ask me what the hell I listen to on those trips, and ... well ... I might as well tell everyone in one fell swoop.
First off, I'm a big fan of Audible.com, where I have a Premium account. This means that I can get the New York Times (hour-long) daily digest for free, and for some time, I did precisely that. Unfortunately, the narrator they have for the digest has a somewhat soporific voice, and I generally started to drift off around the business pages. Plus, given the Podcasts I've been listening to, this has become somewhat redundant. More important is their audiobooks. I've long since gone through most of the audiobooks I found interesting in my local library, so Audible's selection is awfully nice. At present, I'm working through George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. The first three books are all narrated by Roy Dotrice (who played Wesley Windham-Price's disapproving father in Angel and Mozart's disapproving father in Amadeus), whom I can recommend wholeheartedly. (The same goes for Lenny Henry's narration of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.) Believe me: with audiobooks, the narrator is about 70% of the selling point.
This accounts for about 30-40% of my listening time. The rest is generally eaten by Podcasts, of which I can recommend several (most pulled down through the iTunes music store, rather than through an explicit RSS feed):- CNN and NPR offer five minute news summaries, which are updated hourly and which I listen to nearly without fail.
- Ebert and Roeper's movie reviews are also available as Podcasts (generally released on Thursdays), though I'm a much larger fan of Roger Ebert than of Richard Roeper; consequently, Ebert's recent absence due to cancer-related surgery almost prompted me to remove this one from my list o' podcasts.
- Jim Lehrer's NewsHour also offers most of their stories, interviews, and panels as podcast downloads, which accounts for the majority of my news consumption.
- NPR's All Songs Considered has a weekly podcast (released Thursdays) which accounts for much of my exposure to new and offbeat artists. If I were to point to a single one of these as a recommendation, this would be the one, as the sheer breadth of music they present means that you will find at least one track on a given show to be interesting.
- NPR also offers their "Story of the Day" and their "International Story of the Day," which they cull from their various news programs (All Things Considered, Day to Day, Talk of the Nation, etc.).
- Have Games, Will Travel is a more-or-less-weekly podcast by Paul Tevis (ptevis), focusing on board games, card games, and role-playing games. There's a surprising subculture of gaming podcasts out there, and Tevis is perhaps my favorite.
- The Viking Youth Power Hour is a group of four Chicago guys in their late-20s to early-30s range who put out a surprisingly interesting show which explores largely left-leaning modern popular culture, magic(k), and the quality of the alcohol they're imbibing during the show. moonandserpent introduced me to this show a while back, and I am slowly working my way through their archives.
- Woot.com, which amounts to a Home Shopping Network for the techie set, also puts out a daily podcast which is short, amusing, and occasionally informative, which is more or less all I ask of a podcast.
- Likewise, The Onion produces a daily faux-news short that I listen to, generally before I even leave the house.
- Edit: I nearly forgot that NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is also podcast. For a humorous run-down of the week's news, you could do much worse.
There are also a few shows I've been made aware of relatively recently that I'm meaning to look into, but that I might mention:- Occulterati, which I found on jeregenest's del.icio.us feed.
- Though this wouldn't work well in a car, Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore apparently puts out an episode-by-episode podcast, which is meant to act as a secondary audio track to each episode. My friend Chase, who pointed this out to me, claims that half the fun is listening to Moore pour himself scotch and get pleasantly drunk during each podcast, describing behind-the-scenes stuff that you wouldn't necessarily get for a television show. Definitely something to play around with once we've caught up with our DVD watching.
This is probably more than any of you ever really wanted to know, but I figured that some of you might find this useful. There you go.
|
October 28th, 2006
06:49 pm - Time Dies When You're Having Fun
Thanks to my friends Aaron and Brooke, who unexpectedly had several spare PS/2s, I now have a PS/2. I made the mistake of purchasing Guitar Hero, largely because I played it over at deadmanwade's a while back.
Oof. I never thought an hour and a half could disappear that rapidly. It's a fine game.
|
October 11th, 2006
06:32 pm - Speedy Delivery!
So last night bit the big one. Today, however, saw the delivery of my new baby. Yes, it's Intel-powered, but between receiving it and getting dispensation to work from home today, this afternoon has kind of rocked the Casbah.
Woot! New toy for Kyle!
|
04:23 am - Oncall Hell
When you're oncall and they are planning for a "transparent" cutover of non-datacenter power, expect to get no sleep. Further expect that you'll be paged at least 120 times between midnight and 4am. Thank god for remote console devices.
Ugh.
At least the mission-critical servers are back up and running again. ...and now? I sleep.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) exhausted
|
October 6th, 2006
05:37 am - Dead iBook
It appears that my iBook hard drive is dead. Approximately a month after my AppleCare plan completely ran out. Joyous.
Thankfully, I have everything backed up, so I didn't lose anything. (You know, apart from a functioning laptop.)
That said, I'm looking to get a MacBook. Any cautions from anyone before I rush back into Intel laptop land here?
|
August 29th, 2006
12:08 am - LibraryThing
I, being a privacy-obsessed nutbar, poo-poohed swan_tower when she pointed me to LibraryThing a few months ago. I've since been pointed there again, and I figure that there is marginal problem with cataloging our library there. If you're at all bibliophilic, there's something awfully satisfying about inputting your books. If there were a way to integrate the process with a barcode scanner more completely, I'd probably be a happier person.
Then again, if I decided to, I'm sure I could have just bought Delicious Library, an iSight, and then exported my input via CSV files into LibraryThing. ...or kept it in Delicious Library. ...or not been nearly as much of a geek about our books.
|
|
|
