Bike Camping

Julie and I took a mid-week adventure just to switch things up a bit. I've been talking for a while that it would be fun to go camping, and use our bikes to get there. Given the limited range on our bikes, our choices of places to camp were few. We decided on Pleasant Creek. It's pretty close and we were able to take the Cedar Valley Nature Trail up to Center Point and then ride in to the park from the northeast through the Lewis Bottoms.

The ride turned out to be a little longer than expected (30 miles), but overall not bad. The worst of it is riding on 2 lane county roads which might as well be the autobahn. I swear one car went by at over 80mph.

It's getting dark early this time of year, so we didn't have much daylight to do anything at the park. We attempted to start a fire, but were unable to find any decent brush to burn. Funny thing. You can't really carry firewood on a bike :) I did take some "fire started". I bet you didn't know that MSDN magazine puts up a fight to flame. That stuff just would not burn!

Being the outdoor geek that I am, this wouldn't be complete without talking up the gear that made the trip enjoyable. First off, I'm continually impressed with my Gregory Advent Pro backpack. The backpack is fantastically comfortable and does a great job at controlling loads. I used it before on a weeklong trip, so I already knew it was good, but that didn't stop me from appreciating it on this trip as well. I forgot I was even wearing it at times and it was jammed full with our tent, my sleeping bag, Julie's pillow, some clothes, and my headlamp.

I was also able to finally try out my new bike light. My Light & Motion Vega was great. On the way out, I kept it lit at a low setting, just for visibility to passing cars. At camp, I popped it off the handlebar mount and used it as a flashlight and mini-lantern in the tent. Having a bike light without an added battery bag lets the light serve a lot of purposes, so I was glad I chose that one. The next morning, it lit our way on the 10 mile road ride in the dark in to Center Point. We didn't have any problems with cars being able to see us and the Vega tossed out plenty of light. Even though the sun was up shortly after that, I left it on the rest of the way, just to test the battery life. I was quite impressed. I got a burn life past what they state and this was only the second charge cycle it has been through.

If I had it to do over, I think I would take the following morning off, just to allow for a little extra sleep, but I would definitely do this mini-adventure again. So, who wants to go on the next one? You don't even have to ride. You can meet us at the park with some cold beer... and firewood.

Ride your bike.

Bluetooth as Fashion?

I'm with this guy, gadgets are cool, but, in my opinion, you don't need to wear them on your body when they aren't in use. Just like the goofy cell phone on your belt, don't wear your headset when it isn't in use and you aren't expecting a call.

Be sure to check out the link. It made me laugh.

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 4

Written Clue - Don't be silly, look at the picture.



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 3

Written Clue - Is it modern?



Send in your guess

Communication Identity

Phone numbers are stupid! The fact that they exist is a burden we must live with, but the numbers themselves have no business being displayed to humans. The folks that designed the Internet knew this. You don't type 216.239.39.99 in to your web browser, you type google.com. You don't even have to type the http: part, and you usually don't have to type the www part. The software figures that out. Yet we still get "I'm sorry, you must dial a 1 before dialing that number", and we still have to remember a random string of numbers to talk to our friends? Why? Why? Why?

We need a communication identity. What's a communication identity? Well, it's you, and all of the forms of communication that you can participate in, at that moment in time. Maybe you are at work and you have email, IM, and a phone. Fantastic. Maybe you are at a movie, and IM is appropriate. Maybe you are in the middle of Utah and email can stack up for you while you are gone. The point is, when I want to communicate with "Bob", I should just communicate with Bob in whatever medium is appropriate.

The techinical details below the identity can be hidden. Phone numbers can change. Email addys can change. Your family and friends don't even need to know this is happening. The identity should just auto update over the Internet when you make a change. How many "old cell" numbers have you called? This is 2005, there's no need for that anymore.

A few of you have heard me get all breathless talking about this before. I was reminded of it again this week when I installed Google Talk. Wow. First off, I love Google Talk. The interface is clean, simple, and has little touches that make it better than others I have used. Google Talk does something cool. Each person pretty much has a communication identity. When I double click the contacts name, I am presented a chat window and two buttons at the top. Those buttons are Email and Phone. I get to choose my communication medium. I'm in love. Now, phone is attached to a service built in to Google Talk, but it seems like this could be expanded to attach to a cell phone or perhaps a Vonage soft phone in your computer for traditional "phone" calls.

How cool would it be to have a traditional phone that plugs in to your computer over USB and then works with the Call button in Google Talk. Doesn't seem too hard. It's just a speaker and a mic piped in to USB. Things like the iMic already are that thing. Slap the guts in to an old handset and you have yourself a Google Phone. Hmm, maybe I'll try building that.

The thing is, these communication identities are never going to get off the ground until our phones get smarter. We need to be able to toss our contact info around easier. IR failed terribly at that. Bluetooth has a better chance at succeeding, but I've seen enough bad software to know that isn't an easy road to travel either.

My final comment is on single sign on. Passport failed, and the Liberty project is all but unknown, but the Google beast has a chance at succeeding here. With Google Talk, I can now login to both Gmail and Google Talk with one login, my Gmail address. Now, why they can't tie this in to my Blogger identity, and my AdSense identity, I have no idea, but at least we have something to start with. Another key ingredient to Communication Identity is single sign on. Now, I'm not saying all of your communication forms have to be with the same company, but your communication client will need to be able to sign you in to all of your communication forms with one login or the whole thing is doomed.

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 2

Written Clue - It's just an expression



Send in your guess

A Gathering of Bluetooth Headphones

I don't have much to say here, I just wanted to put together a summary post of some Bluetooth headphones that have been released. The last ones, from Plantronics are the most interesting to me. I don't like behind the head designs and I don't mind big headphones so they fit my style requirements. They can't be any bigger than the Sonys I wear everyday. They also seem to have some good tech behind them. If I decide to pick up the Platronics ones, I'll be sure to post a review.


Bluetake iPhono




Creative CB2530
Review at hardwarezone




Logitech




Plantronics Headphones - Review at Yahoo! News

Edit: At Jason's request, some prices.
iPhono: ~$170 - A2DP, Headset, Hands Free, Class 2, Multiple Pairings
Creative: ~$200 - A2DP, Bluetooth 1.2, Class 2
Logitech: $150 - Class 3
Plantronics: $150 without dongle, $200 with - A2DP

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 1

This is round 5 and the last round of the game. Scoring update to follow in the comments. Today's photo is in black and white. Who needs color?



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 4

Written Clue: Are you down with the 3rd clue?



Send in your guees

Quit Whining - Ride Your Bike

I don't normally read msn.com, but it is the default homepage on a computer at work and one of the stories caught my eye today.

In the story about the costliest city to drive in is a great chart listing out the prices of gas around the world. Let's touch on a few highlights.

All of these prices are for one gallon

United States - $2.30
Brazil - $3.64
Ireland - $4.71
Germany - $5.21
United Kingdom - $5.60
Netherlands - $6.21
Venezuela - $0.12

Take a moment to let that sink in. Ok, now, have you complained about the price of gas in the last few weeks? LIAR! Yes, you have. This is another case of us not realizing how great we have it. I've been saying this a lot lately, but I want the price of gas to rise. Maybe then people will wake up and demand better fuel efficiency in their cars. Maybe then they'll ride their bike to work, or walk to the frickin mailbox, or demand better mass transit.

Sure, you'll point the finger at me and my gas sucking metal monster, but I was plenty aware of the fuel costs and I knew that I wouldn't drive that vehicle a tenth of what some people do (DJ!). I also put my money where my mouth is. I try to ride in to work 1-2 times a week, although I wish I could drag my butt out of bed for 4-5 times. I'll also ride to see friends if they live close.

I guess if you take anything away from this, let it be this. Rising gas prices should not rule your life. Adapt and conserve.... and ride your bike. If you don't have a bike, buy one with the money you'll save on gas.

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 3

Written Clue: Protection from above




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 2

Written Clue: Take a walk




Send in your guess

Paddle the Cedar River

On Friday, Julie and I took a kayak trip from Indian Creek to Palisades Kepler State Park. The trip was through the Indian Creek Nature Center, but was run by Seatasea Watersports, a relatively new scuba, paddle, and swim shop in Cedar Rapids.

The trip was great. We met at the Indian Creek Nature Center, received some basic instruction, carried our boats down to Indian Creek, and navigated the short distance in to the Cedar River. The float to Palisades took a little over two hours. Along the way, you could do whatever you wanted, as long as you stayed somewhat near to the group. I paddled a little faster than the group, so I took the opportunity to really try out the boat I got. I paddled across the river, upstream, fast, slow, and even backwards for a while. I had a lot of fun.

It was a perfect night. Temperature was in the low 80s. The water was warm. We saw hawks, eagles, deer, turtles, fish, and many birds. It was very peaceful. Other than our 13 kayaks, we didn't see any other boats the whole way.

I highly recommend taking this trip. They are doing more of these in September and you can do a few other trips with Seatasea or even rent the boats and make your own trip. We are definitely going to do another trip, either with Seatasea, or just renting from Seatasea, so if you are interested, let me know and we'll get a trip going.

One last note. Seatasea is having demo days to try out their kayaks on the next two Wednesdays, August 23rd, and 30th.

A light light

This is such a simple idea, I love it. SolLight is selling a solar powered, LED water bottle cap. They call it the LightCap. The idea is that your water bottle is out in the sun most of the day charging and then at night, the LEDs will shine through the bottom of the cap, through the water and sides of the bottle and provide some illumination to your tent or table. Now, certainly this isn't meant to be a primary light source for car camping, but I'd like to buy one of these for hiking, backpacking, and what I call, airplane camping (pack light because you don't have much room).

When I'm camping, there are always two items that are within reach at night, and those are my headlamp and a bottle of water. The headlamp will still be needed for getting up and walking around in the dark, but I think a LightCap will take over the duty of lighting the tent while I'm in it.

My only complaints about this are that it appears you must buy a bottle along with the cap. That means it probably doesn't fit a normal Nalgene bottle and I really don't need another bottle. I've got plenty. Maybe someone (*cough* Black Diamond *cough*) will come along and make a similar product that just fits on a standard bottle.

The price is reasonable ($25), time to order one up.

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 1

Sorry for the delay in today's picture. I'll count this as day 0. Correct guesses sent in on Sunday will still get full points.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 4

Written Clue - It is Downtown




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 3

Written Clue - Train Harder




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 2

Written Clue - Off the beaten path




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 1

Round 3 begins. Look for a scoring update in the comments of this post.



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 4

Round 3 starts tomorrow. The scoring is much tighter now. Photo bonuses are making a difference.

Written Clue - You are an idiot if you can't get it based on the picture.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 3

Written Clue - The sky is the limit




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 2

Written Clue - Right this way




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 1

Round 2 is starting. Samantha and Jason are tied for first with 15 points each after round 1.





Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 4

Today is the last day of Round 1. A new round starts tomorrow. I'll post standings for Round 1 as well.

Written Clue - It takes a village.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 3

Day 3 has arrived.

Written Clue - Check it out.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 2

We're off to a good start. There is some good discussion going on and I think a few of you are on to something.

Written Clue - The time is now.




Send in your guess

Update: Two people have successfully identified the location. A full round summary will be provided at the end of the round.

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 1

And so it begins.
First, some more rules.
- You can work in teams if you want, and please bring in a friend or two if you like.
- Unlike Jeopardy, I'm not going to stick to your first answer. Just like bar room trivia games, if you change your mind, that's fine, but you'll sacrifice your earlier point possibility.
- Earning the bonus points for the picture can come seperate from your guess, but it must be received within the round, and it must have you in the picture. I don't care how you get in there. Ask a stranger, stretch your arm, whatever.
- Guesses should be sent to ryan@sadida.com


Round 1 - ding ding

Photo Hunt CR

I'm going to try something a little bigger than normal here. I'm again asking for some crowd participation. I have an idea for a "name that location" type of game. Here's how this is going to work.

* On Monday I'll post a photo of a location in the Cedar Rapids area. These will be interesting locations. Perhaps places you drive by everyday but never took a moment to soak in. Maybe they'll be unexplored territory for you. Maybe they'll be obvious locations, but the pictures will be purposely obtuse.
* Your job is to identify the location and email me with your guess.
* You earn points for your guess. The points start at 10 and decrease to 1 over time. Points are only awarded for correct guesses and they must be specific. Day 1 guess = 10 points. Day 2 = 5. Day 3 = 3. Day 4 = 1.
* I'll post more pictures and clues on the location as the week goes on.
* 5 bonus points can be obtained by taking a picture of yourself at the mystery location. These can be earned on any day during the round.
* A new round starts every 5th day. For this first game, we'll do 5 rounds.
* The winner gets a secret prize, oohhhhhhhhh.

Please leave a comment if you are even remotely interested in this.

Silly, Silly, Pictures

I took these pictures on my trip to Alaska. I realize they are only mildly amusing, but I'm only mildly amusing, so these seem appropriate.

The Internet? I hear they have that on computers these days
It made me laugh to see "Internet" written in that old west style lettering.


You ever take it off any sweet jumps?
You usually don't see this kind of bike on the roof of a car. Wouldn't they have fit in the glove compartment?

Morning Fire

Here is a photo I took while riding my bike this morning. It was a very peaceful ride and I managed to make it to work seconds before the skies opened up and poured rain.

Feng Shui

I've been on a simplification kick lately. Less clutter, less stuff, less to worry about. Moving my main machine to a Mac mini (crap, that's a lot of m's) has helped me simplify my computer room. I'm finally happy with the room. The cables are under control, the deskspace is adequate, and I just enjoy being in the room. Here are a couple of pictures of the desk and the electronics cluster in the corner.

Personal Content Production

In my efforts to give Apple as much of my money as possible, I've recently been experimenting with creating books in iPhoto and ordering up large prints of some photos. For the most part, I've been quite satisfied. I like iPhoto a lot, even if it is a bit slow on my admittedly low end Mac mini. I have had iPhoto crash on me a couple of times and when it crashed, it took some of my work with it. That's no good, and now I don't trust it completely. Every half hour or so, I'll do a Quit and Restart of iPhoto, just to gurantee my changes aren't lost. Man I hate doing that.

Anyway, while looking through my nicely bound and printed iPhoto books, I got to thinking..."Why doesn't Apple do this for all sorts of content production?". Apple likes to make a big deal of their Made on a Mac slogan. It even says so right in the back of the iPhoto books. They are also looking to pull more people to their platform and they've always been known to have the full solution. For instance, with iPhoto you can import and organize your own photos and then you can order prints and books. You can make your own songs in Garage Band. How come you can't order your own CDs with your own art on them? You can make your own DVDs in iDVD. How come you can't order your own DVDs with disc art and cover art? Sure you can burn these things and write on them with a sharpie. You can even print decent looking art on your home printer, but you can print decent looking photos too, but I'd still rather pay a few bucks to get the size I want, the quality I want, and get it right the first time.

I first thought this might be a copyright thing. Apple probably doesn't want to get in the middle of producing small runs of bootlegs, but this issue exists with photos too. There are even cases of some places refusing to print photos because they look too professional and therefore are probably covered by someone else's copyright. So maybe they lack an ordering system. No, wait, they already built that for their online store and the iPhoto books. So, they have content producing users. They have content producing apps that they own and can update easily. They have an ordering and distribution system. What's the hold up? Can any of you think of a reason they aren't doing this (other than cost of running the business)?

Maybe this will get solved when the iTMS lets the little guy upload and sell their stuff. I'm still waiting for that one :)

Ring It Up

The landline is gone, sort of. We recently switched from a local phone company to Vonage. In all, I'm quite pleased.

Our main reason for switching was cost. We were paying $40-45 a month with McLeod. We now only pay $17 a month with Vonage. After getting the Vonage adapter for free after rebate, the savings is adding up quickly. It's also nice that they just charge it to your credit card. That's one less bill to write a check for.

Audio quality is fine. There is a slightly elevated background noise level on our end, but I can't hear it on the remote end and no one else seems to either.

We've activated 911 on the line, and I'm not all that concerned about needing to dial 911 when the broadband is out.

We used Line Number Portability, so we kept our old number. That switch was the most painful. Vonage didn't seem to like our first two attempts to fax in the LNP document. After they accepted it on the 3rd try, the switchover was fairly quick. McLeod were idiots about it though. They sent us a letter that pretty much read "sorry you are leaving, but we really don't care" and they also told us we had to call all of these people to finish the switch. Yeah, we didn't have to do that. Vonage had already done the switch before McLeod told us to jump through some hoops.

Vonage also has a great "dashboard" that updates in near real-time with how many minutes you've used. We won't even get close to using all of our minutes each month. We really don't talk on the phone that much. It's also fun to get voicemails as .wav files on your computer if you'd like. They need a Tiger Dashboard widget to allow easy access to these.

In all, I'd recommend Vonage.

Two Turntables and an iMic at Home

So I was anxiously awaiting my iMic. The Mac mini didn't come with an audio input and I've really missed mixing and listening to my vinyl. You see, all of my DJ gear is attached to my computer and my speakers are attached to the computer. No computer, no sound, simple as that. I picked up the iMic for a decent price off of Amazon, but I've spent all night fighting it, and the vodka isn't helping.

I've managed to get it to output sound, but only if I record a new live instrument in Garage Band. Audacity isn't doing trick, even though I used it a lot under Windows. So far, I've only been able to get it to work in Mono mode with Audacity. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, this is a grumpy post.

Pinpoint Accurate Photos

We recently took a vacation to Alaska. One of the greatest things about it was that 5 of us on the trip had digital cameras, and we used them. In all we gathered nearly 2000 still images that do a fantastic job of capturing the beauty of the terrain and the fun we had. The problem lies in making sense of all of those photos.

Writing code for a living, I'm well aware of "garbage in - garbage out". Unfortunately, this concept applies to far more than computer software. Of those 5 cameras firing off images for over a week, only 2 of them had proper dates set in them, and none of them were adjusted to the local time zone. So what? Well, now that I have the power of iPhoto's Smart Albums, I want to be able to sort the pictures by location, and without useful geocoding of those images (we'll talk more about that later), I'd like to rely on the timestamp and my own knowledge of where we were on that day to sort out the pictures. Since I now have a few hundred pictures that think they were captured in 2047, I'm going to have to figure out the power of Automator to fix that metadata. So my first wish for more accurate picture taking is cameras that can auto-set their own date and time.

Next up, location, location, location. By no means is this an original idea, but I want GPS enabled cameras! Built in is great. Bluetooth enabled cameras so that I can use an external Bluetooth GPS is fantastic too. I'd even be happy with a manual setting on the camera where I could pull up a map and point to where I was. That location would then be assigned to the photos. The software could have a setting of "Expire location after 1 day" to prevent false location data for pictures you'd take later.

We're starting to see products that do this. Ricoh has a GPS ready camera, and Mappr! is the start of just what I'm wanting.

My second wish for more accurate picture taking is location based Smart Albums in iPhoto. These would be both assignable, and searchable in iPhoto. To assign, you could select a group of photos and choose "Assign Location". Hopefully that would bring up a selection of methods for assigning location including an Atlas, Google Maps, whatever. You'd also be able to browse based on the location. Certainly Apple could create some slick panning map that would zoom photos up as you passed over the location. They could also make Spotlight smart enough to translate location names in to geocoded locations. That way, I can search for "Chicago" and get pictures of a Cubs game without having to tag the photos manually.

I don't know about the rest of you, but iLife was one of the major draws to get me away from Windows. If Apple continues to step it up and deliver features like these, I see even more switchers.

Deets

Moving contacts from Oulook under Windows to Address Book under OS X can be a pain until you figure out the easy way to do it.

I tried exporting to a .pst and importing that in Address Book. It didn't like that. I tried exporting to tab delimited and comma seperated. Outlook complained it needed to install a translator and then wanted the CDs. Forget that. I'm not digging those out. Finally, I found the way. Forward as vCard. Why Outlook doesn't offer vCard as an export type, I have no idea.

Anyway, just open your contacts in Outlook. Select all and then click Actions->Forward as vCard. Send that email to something you can retrieve on your Mac. Get the email on the Mac. Save the attachments out and then drag them from the Finder in to the Address Book. Bang, done, and you even have your contacts as vCards that can be easily backed up.

Hike and Float

Ben has been on me to post some pictures from my trip to Alaska. Well, here you go...






This is a picture of the Chilkoot Trail. We only went a few miles on it, but I'd love to go back and hike the whole thing. The Chilkoot Trail has quite the history behind it. This was the trail the gold seekers had to travel and Canada required 2000 pounds of food and gear per person that they could survive on. As 100 pounds is a lot to carry, most of the rushers had to hike the trail both ways, carrying near 100 pounds, at least 20 times. Ouch.

We took the hike and float tour with Skagway Float Tours. These guys were fantastic. I highly recommend them. The guides knew their stuff and were a lot of fun to talk with.

So who wants to go back and hike this with me? If you're driving, I call shotgun.

New Evil Nine on iTMS

I just got an email from Apple letting me know that two new Evil Nine tracks are now up on iTMS. Downloading now. That is all.

Like a Sound You Hear That Lingers In Your Ear

California Soul

I've been absolutely intoxicated by this song over the last few days. I first heard it in Product Placement, an amazing live mix of soul, jazz, hip hop, and funk by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. It's actually a combo CD and DVD and in the DVD, they have images of the 45's they are playing spin across the screen. I latched on to California Soul and then began the hunt to find out more.

My journey has taken me to many corners of the web (thanks Google). Here's what I know. It seems that California Soul was originally recorded by The 5th Dimension in 1968. If I'm wrong on that, please tell me.

I also found that 2 versions of it are used in Product Placement. First is a version by the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. This is followed by a version recorded by The Messengers.

Finally, I picked up a copy of a live recording by the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra on iTMS. Great stuff. It's quite worth the dollar.

Watch the Movie, Take Home the Soundtrack

How many times have you walked out of the theater at the end of a movie thinking "Wow, that had some good music. I should buy the soundtrack and/or score."? I know I've personally done it many times.

Wouldn't it be cool (and highly profitable) for the movie theater to have a CD vending machine in the lobby filled with the soundtracks of the films it is showing? You could even stick the crappy, we made it in a week, companion video game in there. Don't tell me there isn't room for it. Kick out that beat up Mortal Combat game and get with it.

Sell the soundtracks at $10 each and you'll make a fortune. Why collect quarters, when you can collect 10 spots?

What Color Is This?

Links to this color blind test seem to come up in discussions every now and then. I am colorblind with a few colors (you already knew that), so the site is of particular interest to me. If you haven't been there, go check it out. If you are wondering, yes, other than the first one, all of the red-green tests are spots to me. If I know what I'm supposed to see and I stare at it long enough, I can make out the hidden number.

Now to add something here, let's talk about the real world and colorblindness. As stated on that page, 12-20% of males are colorblind. 1 in 5! That's a lot of people. Why don't product designers take that in to consideration when they design their latest gadget? Nearly everything with a battery uses green for good battery and red for bad. Yep, that's all but useless to me. Working in the color amber doesn't make it much better. My simple request, use seperate LEDs or add a blink pattern so those that can't make out the colors can still make sense of your product. Green should be a slow pulse of green. If you've seen the power LED on a sleeping mac, you know what I mean by pulsing. Red should be a sharp, quick, blink.

Next time - how the hell do I get my clothes to match?

Recent Music Purchases

Everyone seems to be in a music talking mood lately, so let me join in with thoughts on my recently obtained tunes.


Moby - Raining Again
Typical Moby single. Halfway decent title track. A lame B-side. Remixes from hot producers.

I picked this up for two reasons. One, I'm a Moby collector (although I'm steadily losing interest), and two, it includes a freakin' Evil Nine remix! I like the Evil Nine remix. Not their best work, but well worth it.


DJ Nu-Mark and Pomo - Blend Crafters
Yow, this is some good stuff. If you like instrumental hip hop with some funk flavor, you gotta check this out. DJ Nu-Mark is the DJ for Jurrasic 5. If you haven't heard of Jurassic 5, please bring some cookies and milk to my house and we'll have a listening party.


The Chemical Brothers - Galvanize
Power, grace, style. That's all that needs to be said.

This track rocketed to the top of my iTunes most played list. You gotta love Q-Tip on the vocals. In case you care, the iTMS version is different from the album version. The single version is also different from the album version with the single version being the longest and quite DJ friendly.


Lyrics Born - Same !@#$, Different Day
A very strong remix album. This is the follow up to Later That Day.... There are some tremendous remixes on here. It's tough to capture the same panache when creating a remix album. This is one of the rare few that do. If you like lyrical hip hop with beats that make you grin, give this a spin. Also be sure to check out the Stereo MCs remix. They can still drop a groove.

Switch!

It has begun. It seems like it has been forever but I finally have my own Mac. I first decided that my next computer was going to be from Apple nearly 2 years ago. I really didn't need a new computer at the time, so that idea was put on the back burner. My enthusiasm was resparked when I got an iBook at work to do some testing. I fell in love with the thing and knew that it was time for Windows to go bye-bye at home.

That began "the wait". I knew Tiger was coming and I knew I wanted it. I didn't want to buy anything until Tiger released because I didn't want to pay for Tiger and I didn't want to deal with upgrading, no matter how easy it was going to be. I waited a loooonnnngg time for Tiger to release and by that time I was going to be away from home for most of the month of May and with WWDC coming in June, I figured I better wait just a bit more. WWDC came and went with no new hardware, so I stuck to the original plan of getting a Mac mini. I'd been hoping for a G5 Powerbook, but I knew the chances of that were slim.

I chose to build up my Mac mini a bit. WiFi (cough AirPort) and Bluetooth were a must for my needs, and I didn't have any USB keyboards or mice, so I went with the Apple Bluetooth stuff. These items greatly increased the cost (relatively), but it was still far cheaper than any new PC I've ever bought. BTO added 8 days to the ship time. During that time, rumors swirled that the Mac mini might get an update this past Tuesday. As mine was scheduled to ship on Tuesday, I was nervous that I would miss out on the new stuff, and excited at the same time, thinking I might have hit the cycle just perfect and I'd get a fresh one with the latest goodies. Well, they didn't up them, so I got what I originally ordered, and that's just fine.

I've spent tonight copying files off of my old Dell and getting things setup on the Mini. I'm typing this on the mini right now, using my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which worked cold out of the box. Neither a USB keyboard nor a mouse touched the mini. That's kick ass user experience. My gigantic iTunes library copied over perfectly, preserving all of my treasured play counts. Even my Casio camera, which does not work with XPs Photo management, hooked right up with iPhoto and pulled in my recent vacation photos.

I also signed up for my trial of .Mac. That was the most confusing thing so far, but obviously I figured it out because the image in this post is hosted there.

There is so much more to explore, but that'll have to wait until another night.

Apple, having used your gear before, I had high expectations for my Mac mini. So far you've met or exceeded every expectation.

My name is Ryan, and I'm a Software Engineer.

I Think We've Met Before

So what kind of fan would I be if I didn't mention the rerelease of my favorite album of all time. Dj Shadow's Entroducing... has been rereleased in a 2xCD deluxe edition.

Me, I love it, but I fear that there isn't a whole lot in the deluxe edition for those new to Dj Shadow. There are a couple of remixes that may be of interest, but most of the extras are demos and slightly different versions of the original album tracks. The price will also keep most newcomers away. At $24 or more, it is lots more than many other 2xCD releases in your local record shop. If you are intimately familiar with the album, the bonus CD is an intriguing look in to the creation of the album and the time following its release. I enjoyed it but I gurantee I'll listen to the album 20 times for every one time I listen to the extras CD.

Without Me

Has it felt empty in here? Yeah, it's been awhile since I posted. Well, to get back in the swing of things, I thought I'd share a story from my recent cruise vacation.

We were at sea one day and saw they were having a martini demonstration. I like martinis (I drank way too many of them on the cruise) so we decided to go. We get there and they have a setup of bottles, glasses, and...a boom box. Ok, sure. Let's see where this goes.

The first demo starts and it turns out to be typical Cocktail style bottle tossing and goofy dancing. As the one guy starts tossing bottles, another fumbles with the boom box. Next thing we know, Eminem's - "Without Me" is blasting. I think to myself, that's odd. The track continues on and I realize it is not the radio edit. That boy is swearing. Now I don't care, but half the people in the room are over the age of 60. We hit the part of the song where Em decides to put his "bum on your lips" and then changes his mind and gets a little more graphic. If you know the song lyrics, I'm sure you are laughing and singing along at this point. I see a few horrified looks in the crowd and can't contain myself. I'm LMFAO!

So I regain my composure and we move on to the next drink. The woman that is hosting isn't a native english speaker. She's having a rough time with it. She starts to talk about the next drink which is a chocolate martini. This martini includes melted chocolate drizzled on the sides of the glass. She proceeds to tell us that you can write things with the chocolate. Things like "I love you honey, I love you Dan, I love your Dick." Yup, she said it. Loud and clear. At this point many of the 60 somethings are laughing with me. The host gets a confused look on her face and can't figure out what is so funny.

I didn't know it was going to be that kind of cruise :)

Lateral Stability Fluid

I love movies and I love Netflix. I love Netflix because it allows me to see movies I wouldn't normally see. I've watched plenty of stinkers, but you only need to find one good one to make up for a whole handful of bad ones.

I just got done watching Equilibrium. Now, if you don't like Sci-Fi movies, then quit reading right now. This movie floored me. Remember the first time you saw "bullet time" in The Matrix? Yeah, I felt like that. It's obvious the movie didn't have a huge budget, but they did a fantastic job with what they had. The fight scenes in many of these sci-fi fighter movies grow tiresome and make me want to join the fight just so I can get my ass knocked out. The fight scenes in Equilibrium left me mesmorized. There is even a fight that is all about not being able to fire a gun at a guy. Think Jackie Chan, but without the bad jokes, and with big, big, guns. I enjoyed. I enjoyed.

Ohh, I nearly forgot, I dug the plot too. I found myself pondering the world on display in the film. I definitely would be part of the underground and I bet you would be too.

Give this film a shot, it deserves it.

Z-Trip Link

The Z-Trip album is growing on me. I plan to use a track in my next mix which should be a fun one. I promised you a live set from Z-Trip long ago. I was just over at the official site and was surprised to find a link to Old Mixes. I haven't finished downloading anything from there yet, so maybe it is all whale noises or something, but if you want to hear some live Z-Trip, you might give it a shot.

The Night Speaks To Me

I was in Las Vegas last week and had a great time. One night stuck out more than the rest. I won't say it was the best night, but it certainly was the most surreal.

Things started with a visit to friend's room in THEhotel. Wow, what a nice place. Widescreen TVs on the wall, barware, a DVD player, and nice artwork. I really wished I had stayed there instead of the regular Mandalay Bay hotel.

From there we went on to Red Square, a resturant with a Russian/Soviet Union theme, and a large selection of vodkas. The martinis here were good. If you want a spectacle, order a Chernobyl and watch them mix it. We had a Russian speaker with us, so it was nice to get the translation of things written on the walls and menus. Oddly enough, he skipped out on the pre-dinner drinks because he couldn't resist the siren song of the nickle slot machines (lol).

The surrealness began when we sat down to dinner. I began to hear very familiar music building in the background. As they turned the music up a bit, I was able to confirm that it was indeed DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt. Wow, I thought. I'm liking this place even more. If you've been following along, you'll remember that I named this DJ Shadow album in my top ten of all time. I offered anyone at the table $5 in the could name who was playing. I'm pretty annoying with that game. I'm not sure why, I just do it.

After Building finishes, I hear another DJ Shadow track, The Number Song, come in. Wow, I'm really liking this place now. The vodka is setting in, I'm with friends, and my favorite music is playing. Again, I offer up the $5, and no one thinks to guess the artist that I told them the last time. No winners yet.

The third song is again DJ Shadow. I'm getting the hint that they are just playing most of the album now. No complaints from me. I again offer up the $5 prize and no one wins. I guess my friends are slow learners. The DJ Shadow experience continues for the next hour as we dine on traditional Russian dishes and put back a few flights of vodka.

After spinning about the town for the rest of the night, I returned to my hotel room and decided to check the weather for the next day. Of course, the only proper way to end the night was by hearing an old ambient Moby track playing behind the forecasts of sun. Moby is also on the top ten list and is my most collected artist. The night had spoken, and I listened. Thank you Las Vegas.

More Apple Gushing

So last week I was pissed off at my iPod. I thought it was dying. It wouldn't sync for crap with my XP box. It would BSOD the Dell. The iPod would lockup and I'd have to warm boot the iPod. I warm booted that thing more in two days last week than I have in the entire time I've had it.

I got fed up enough to decide I needed to attempt the dreaded "restore to factory defaults". I couldn't get the XP box to live long enough to do it, so I used my iBook from work. Everything went great. I was feeling better. I hooked it back up to my Dell to sync to my library and "blah blah blah, I need to make this work with Windows, shall I do that?" came up. Sure, whateva. Go for it you hunk of crap. So, it did, but of course it restored to an older version than what is current because Apple doesn't software update the installer to PCs, only Macs. So after it finished that, I had to go download the current installer and do it again.

It was finally latest and greatest and Windows flavored and it still took a dump when I connected it. WTF? I disabled iTunes enough that I could mount the iPod and run scan disk on it, even though Apple says don't do that. Scan disk found nothing. Then I checked iPodlounge and found the disk check secret handshake. It ran and said everything was fine.

So, last ditch effort, I decide to load music in to my iBook and sync from there. Guess what? It worked perfectly. Yeah, no problems at all. Once I drained the moron juice from my head I remembered that you can turn off the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". Even better, now I can sync through the iBook without filling the drive.

But then, I found the ultimate. Did you know that you can just drag files from wherever onto your iPod icon in iTunes and it loads them up? No need for them to be in the iTunes library. It will happily copy them on to the iPod and leave the library out of it. Maybe you knew that, I didn't. So, I still need the iBook, but only as a "drag between" my external Firewire drive and my iPod, my lovely iPod.

Installing - Are you sure?

This is the poster child for bad app design. I can't blame it all on Firefox, most installers look like this. As a software engineer, I'm ashamed. Why do we need to tell the user 4 times that we are installing? Surely some of those other status areas could say something more useful, or not be there at all?

Even better, if what we are doing is called installing, why did I run Firefox Setup? Sure, someone will jump in with why setup includes installing, but to the I-just-want-to-use-it user, it's all pretty confusing.

While I'm picking on Firefox 1.03, why, as I sit in the Blogger editor, is the status circle continuing to spin and the status bar still says "Transferring data from www.blogger.com..."? IE doesn't say that. Safari doesn't say that. Firefox, take note, the page has loaded.

Don't get me wrong. I like Firefox, and I'm glad that folks spent time writing software to give to my whiny ass.

A Google Loop

Google is building an empire. It may not be an evil empire, but it is an empire none the less. Google has tremendous services and is slowly evolving from a search technology, to a provider of data. This data is coming in maps, answers, blog content, and whatever else they announced today. Sooner or later, they are going to weld all of their services together. This blog entry is an observation of one of those possible Google solutions, or what I'll call, a Google Loop.

My Google Loop involves digital photos. I love my digital camera. I love that I can shoot as many images as I have MBs and battery to allow. I love that I can make backups of those photos. I love that I can edit those photos easily. I love that I don't have to pay for developing costs. I love that my ReplayTV will use them as a screensaver.

As great as all of those things are, we haven't even scratched the surface of what we can do with these digital photos. For one, I can't wait to get a Mac so I can play with the photo books in iPhoto. But, that's still just a pretty presentation of the pictures. We need to go beyond looking at the pictures and add further context to them. Where were they taken? When were they taken? How are they different from photos that other people took at that same place, but perhaps at a different time?

They key to all of this is metadata. Without metadata, the picture's true value could be locked in the heads of the people who were there.



1. We'll start our Google Loop by importing some pictures we took at Yellowstone Nation Park in to Picasa. Now ideally, the picture already contains GPS location data inserted by the camera, but those cameras are still rare, so let's say that Picasa allows us to assign location data to that picture.

2. I never have enough disk space, and Google is nice enough to give me 2 gigs and counting in Gmail. Let's say that Google lets me use that Gmail disk to save Picasa pictures. Thanks Google!

3. I have a blog (duh, you are reading it) and on occasion, I'll put up a picture. I'm lucky enough to have server space to host those images, but most people don't. Let's say that Google allows me to link in to those saved images in my Gmail disk. Thanks Google, you're the greatest!

4. I blog about my great vacation to Yellowstone. Pictures are included and, what's this? You can click my pictures and pull up a Google Map or satellite data of the location? Very nice. Hey look, there are even "pinned" locations on the satellite view that are clickable to see my other pictures. The world is good.

5. AdSense does it's thing to the right of my blog. I see that there are tour packages available for Yellowstone. Hmmm, I'll have to check those out next time, and maybe even stay in "super-duper-fantastic hotel" that says they will give me a great rate. My friends read my blog and think Yellowstone looks like a cool place. They make use of the AdSense and book a trip. Now sure, this is possible today with AdSense, but the only reason they stuck around was all of the cool photos that I was able to host for free and nifty maps that let them do a little armchair exploring of their own.

6. OG (that's original Google) makes note of all of this and returns search results of my blog and my images when people are looking for Yellowstone.

7. Desktop search is right there too. From my Google deskbar, I type Yellowstone when I want to be reminded of that great trip and Google Desktop gives me my original images, my blog entry, and the same maps that I was able to show other people. Google, I love you.


What do I get from this Google Loop?

* Incredible usability of my pictures
* Internet hosted storege for sharing my pictures
* A one company, integrated solution
* Related information that I might find useful

What does Google get?

* A happy customer
* User profile data on me that they can use to sell me things
* Chance to serve ads to me in GMail, Google Maps, and Google Desktop
* My images in their Google Images cache which lets them show ads to others

Certainly Google isn't the only one capable of this sort of thing. Apple has a huge buzz going around Spotlight right now. I'm eager to make use of it too.

I'm really surprised that Apple isn't doing something like this. They have iPhoto and .Mac for image hosting. Add in Spotlight and things are starting to cook. What they don't have over Google is blogging, map data, and a way for them and I to make extra money just for using all of this software. Maybe that's good though. Apple gets to sell me hardware and software and I don't have to deal with ads anywhere.

In closing, this is just one loop. I'm sure you can think of others, and I'm sure you could access these services in a different loop order. That's the power of cooperative services and metadata.

Thinkback - Slices and Goofy Plastic Boxes

So Slashdot has Slashback. That's where they revisit a previously posted subject. I'll copy that theme and present Thinkback.

Today's Thinkback takes a look at some recently released Mac mini slices, and a USB hub that is not a goofy plastic box.

So, I still don't completely have what I want, but MicroNet and Macpower have brought forth some nice offerings. The Macpower slice appears to be slightly vaporware. The Micronet slice is at least orderable. I like that I can put my own drive in the Macpower slice, but I like even more that the MicroNet slice will come with a drive that it *knows* will not require an extra fan. Neither of them have front mounted ports or card readers though, so I'll hold off a little longer.

Belkin brings us a 4 port hub that is different than the regular lot. It's claim to fame is a top load USB slot that apparently is meant for iPod shuffles, but I'll get one and use it for generic flash drives and frequently attached/disconnected test tools. I can't help but notice that with the right object sticking up, this will look like an Atari joystick. Hey, there's an idea. Give me a USB hub that looks like an Atari joystick with a matching cylindrical flash drive!

Free Hip Hop

Today is just a few links to some music that you might enjoy. These links all came from my search for the setlist from DJ Z-Trip's Live at Uprock in Austin TX show. I haven't found the setlist yet, but I did find some fun stuff along the way.

What do you get when you combine DJ Shadow and Boyz II Men? Well, you get DJ Erb - Goodbye, of course.
[Edit: This was cool the first time. It was interesting the second time. I'm over it now.]
I'm going to have to explore DJ Erb some more. He has quite a few rock influenced hip hop sets for purchase. I downloaded his remix of Lyrics Born as well. Don't forget, Lyrics Born has a new CD coming out on Tuesday.

Over at Solesides, there is a page for Nostalgia Progression. You can grab their track Stepping Stone. I'm digging it. I'll bring Lyrics Born in one more time and recommend that you grab RL Burnside feat. Lyrics Born - Going Down South off of the Solesides main page.

All that and you didn't have to spend a dime.

Do You Crokinole?

Last weekend I visited my buddy who lives in Milwaukee. He introduced me to a 1800s Canadian game called Crokinole. It is played on a wooden board using pieces that look like checkers. You flick the discs at scoring areas and each other, much like shuffleboard, which I also enjoy.

I had a lot of fun playing and started looking more in to the game when I returned home. I checked out the site that my buddy bought his board from and even took a spin through eBay. At eBay, I saw a combo Carrom/Crokinole board that awakened my memories. I thought to myself "That looks just like a board my parents had when I was a kid." I called my parents up and arranged to take a look at the board the next day. I tried explaining what a Crokinole board looked like, but they didn't much care. "Just come look at it" was the response I got :)


Well, I went and looked, and sure enough, it was a Crokinole board. This thing has to be nearly 30 years old. Amazing how things come full circle huh? Boy, the game probably would have been more fun as a kid if we knew how to play it. My parents let me have the board, which was quite nice of them, especially since I probably would have shelled out the cash to buy one over the web. There was one peg broken off, but I spent some time in the garage and came up with something that seems to do the trick.
I still need some decent pieces though. We've been playing with Othello discs, which aren't quite regulation :)

I'm hoping the Crokinole board will be a big hit at our next Poker party. It should be a fun side game for the people that get knocked out.

Take a Trip - Cheap, New, Music

Best Buy's $6.99 CD this week is Shifting Gears by DJ Z-Trip. This should be a great album. The album includes collaborations with Jurassic 5, Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, and even Public Enemy. You can hear some samples here and over at Amazon.

I was first exposed to Z-Trip from reading the Denon boards. He does some incredible live sets. I'll have to dig up a link to one of those. Some of his tracks sound a bit like my favorite artist, DJ Shadow. Z-Trip even did some remixing for Shadow on the Mashin' ON the Motorway single.

I'll be at Best Buy on Tuesday, how about you?

Shack Up Your Mac

Hey, one of my predictions came true. I'm not Nostradamus, I just put in writing what I'm sure many people were thinking. A couple of weeks ago, I said "The Mac mini is begging for a USB hub and card reader that matches it." Well, The Plasticsmith made it happen. They now have the Mac mini shack.

The shack is a little ol' place where your USB peripherals can get together. There's no card reader (yet), but there are 7 USB ports. These guys are progressing from the silly Mac mini skirt, but I hope they don't quit with this hub. 7 USB ports is cool, but where's the FireWire? Where are the card readers? Surely they can cram some more good stuff in there.


You know I can't pass up a good 'shop opportunity, so I did a quick mock up for what I think the Mac mini Shack should be. First, it needs ports on the front and back. The front ones are for connecting your friend's camera, an iPod shuffle, or maybe a portable hard drive. The back ones are for your permanent Mac mini peripherals. I also added two flash card readers. The scale in the drawing is bad, but the idea is one SD slot and one CF slot. You get the idea. Plasticsmith is selling a do-it-yourself shack, so I just might have to see what "guts" I could buy to make this happen. If this thing did exist, I'd buy two. One for the mini and one for work, to use with my Dell. This would not be a goofy plastic box because it has some design to it, it would have some weight, and it would give me the front and back ports and cable management like I want.

Keep at it Plasticsmith. You are real close to getting some of my money.

Live, Location Enhanced, Data

It is amazing how the value of information increases by orders of magnitude when presented in a familiar context.

Google Maps + Craig's List = Home Buyer's Dream

Polish the Apple

Just some Apple linkage today. While we wait for Tiger to ship, you might be interested to look at Apple's latest facts and figures. I wonder if we realize the history that is being made here. All signs seem to point to "grow" for Apple right now. I bet we'll see 1st gen iPods in museums in 100 years.

Death to goofy plastic boxes

At work, I have to use quite a few USB devices and I also use CF and SD flash cards. Currently, I use some silly card readers from SanDisk that have cords that are way too long and they take up way too much space. I also have a USB hub that doesn't space the ports apart far enough to actually use them all and it is poorly designed for me since all of the ports are on the back. I got tired of my setup at work and decided to find something better.

All I found was a wasteland of flimsy, ugly, me-too plastic boxes. It seems that most USB hubs these days all include the following design criteria:
* Plastic, the more the better
* Rectangular, don't forget to round the corners
* Silver, LEDs are spiffy too, but silver is required

I don't think I'm all that demanding. I just want a nice USB hub with built-in flash card readers. I define nice as:
* Good build quality - give it some heft so it doesn't slide all over
* Thoughtful design - let me get at the ports and space them far enough apart that I can use all of them. Make the hub power supply stay in. Barrel jacks suck.
* Tasteful design - Metal is good. Wood would be fine. I have no need for see-thru plasic windows and the LEDs are usually more annoying than useful.

Let's take a quick spin around the web and see the junk that is available.

Adaptec - Goofy little plastic boxes

D-Link - Goofy little plastic boxes

Linksys - Goofy little plastic boxes

Belkin - Gggggggggggoofy plastic boxes


Targus - At least they have the best looking Goofy little plastic boxes

Keyspan - Goofy!

-------------------

Now, I did find a few devices with potential, but even these didn't wow me.

Macally - Attractive hub plus card reader. It figures that this would look halfway decent. It's marketed to Apple owners.

Iogear - I like the vertical design and styling. Unfortunately, I read a lot of reviews that say the thing plain doesn't work most of the time and plugged in cables tend to topple the thing over.

Fellowes - This one has an interesting swivel design which would be useful. Too bad it doesn't read flash cards.

Kensington - I like the dome design of this one. Unfortunately, no flash card readers and I read bad things about plugs not fitting in to it well.


Maybe something will come out of all of the Mac mini accessories. The Mac mini is begging for a USB hub and card reader that matches it. Given a decent weight, I might look at something like that for work.

How about you guys? Anyone have any products that they like that they can share? Have you seen any devices out there that fit what I'm looking for? Links please!

All Day I Dream About Soccer

If you didn't know, I'm the freak behind sadida.com. Sadida.com is the original adidas fan blog. It was a blog before they invented the term blog. I started it very humbly in 1996. I started the site more to learn about HTML than anything else. For a good laugh, you should head over there and check out the way-back link to the original 1996 site.

I sort of gave up on sadida.com in the last few years, but recently I've gotten the itch and have decided to try keeping it updated again. If you have any adidas related info for me, send me an email at ryan@sadida.com. If you write me a review to post, I'll give you a cookie!

Do One Thing and Do It Well

Throughout this blog, you'll see me complain (err, suggest) how products could be designed better. Last week I came across another perfect example of poorly designed products. Clocks, specifically, alarm clocks.

My Grandma got a new alarm clock. I can't recall the brand right now, but if I could, trust me, I would publicly shame them. Her alarm clock has two alarm settings. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is, she couldn't figure out how to set them. One of the alarms was set for 11:52 at night and it would wake her up every single night. If I were her, I would have unplugged the damn thing until I figured out how to turn the alarm off, but I guess she needed to know what time it was. I was called in to save the day and I too was initially perplexed at how to set the silly alarm. A quick consult of the instructions solved the problem, but why did I have to resort to that?

An alarm clock isn't a complex beast. It shows the time and makes noise once a day. How is it possible to design a product that makes it difficult to do those tasks? Apparently the Hilton Family thinks they have this problem licked. They are putting their easy-to-set alarm clock in all of their hotel properties. You can get a better idea of how to set the alarm clock by looking at this picture. Honestly, it looks pretty good. There is a clear indication of whether the alarm is on or off and it seems simple enough to tell the clock when you are setting the alarm time.

Finally, to balance out today's negativity, I'll tell you about a positive clock experience. Daylight savings required us to change our clocks this past weekend. I always hate that task, but at least Nissan makes it a little nicer. The clock on the CD player in my truck is cool. There is one button, and it says "Clock". If you push it, it turns the clock on. If you push it again, it turns the clock off. If you hold it, the stereo beeps and you can use either set of up/down buttons to set the time. I like this, it JFWs! I've had plenty of finger cramping combos to set stereo times before, so this is welcomed simplicity.

Your Laziness Astounds Me

Lazy American? Yes, I've seen quite a few. Let me share with you my latest encounter. In my neighborhood, we have shared mailbox areas. The mailboxes from about 10 houses are clumped together. I'm always amazed that folks drive to these mailboxes, when they are 3 driveways away at the most. On Friday, I witnessed the following... My neighbor that lives no more than 40 yards away from the mailbox came home from work, she drove past her house and proceeded to park in the middle of the frickin' street, turn off her van and get out. She walks over to the mailbox and gets her mail. Remember, she is still blocking the street. She then walks back to the van, gets in, starts it up, and then drives down one more house. She pulls in to their driveway, the WHOLE way (wtf?), and then backs out, drives up the three houses, waits for her garage door to open, and drives in.

She's not disabled. She didn't have heavy things to carry. It wasn't raining. There are nice sidewalks the whole way. I don't see any excuse to not get two minutes of fresh air. Maybe she is on one of those no exercise diets.

Bluetooth isn't dead, it's common

This article over at Blueserker was quite interesting to me. Bluetooth has now arrived. When you can buy headsets in discount stores, it isn't a niche product. It isn't just for geeks. It's for everyone. I especially like the price trends lately. Bluetooth products are reaching price point where people can buy a headset or people can buy a Bluetooth mouse, just to play around with it, try it out, and see how they like it. Next up, Bluetooth enabled GPS receivers in truck stops along I-80.

Rock Out

So I finally got around to finishing a new mix. I'm not going to go as far as to say I am proud of this one, but I do enjoy listening to it and you might as well. It starts better than it ends. You'll have to ignore the slight train-wrecking in parts. I make no claims to being good at DJing, but I do have a lot of fun doing it.

This set uses a lot more vocal tracks than I normally include. It leans towards the rocking side of Prog and Breaks. You'll notice an Evil Nine and Marine Parade flavor to the set. This is not light switch rave type stuff.

Tracklist:
Gardner & Thomas - Turn to Try
Trafik - Your Light
Infusion - Better World (Infusion Mix)
Freeland - Supernatural Thing (Adam & The Evils Remix)
Evil Nine - Cakehole
Moguai - Get:On
Phil Kieran - I Love You (Phil Kieran Remix)
Paul Jackson & Steve Smith - The Push (Far From Here) [Radio Edit]

Supernatural Thing, Cakehole, and I Love You are available on iTMS if you need to spend some free songs ;) I don't plan to leave the set up for long, so grab it while it is hot. If you know me, and want to save Ian the bandwidth, just ask and I'll bring you a burned CD or the .mp3.

Then We Can't Get Down

Evil Nine are easily one of my favorite groups right now. Today must have been Evil Nine day for me.

First, I was working on a new mix which happens to be very Evil Nine influenced. Look for more on that in a future post.

Second, I came across their video for Crooked, online. You absolutely must go watch the video. Talk about a head nodding track!

Third, I purchased some Evil Nine tracks off of Beatport. I've known of Beatport's existence since day one, but I've stayed away because I really don't enjoy buying music for lots of different sites. I like iTMS. I'd prefer to just do business with them. Evil Nine made me crack. I just had to have a copy of Crooked, and I had to have it now. Hopefully I haven't opened another set of flood gates. I already buy too much music.

BTW, Evil Nine's album releases (again) on March 29th. I can't wait.

I think we woke the baby up

Huey, Louie, and Mountain Dewey

My plan to reduce my daily consumption of Mountain Dew is proceeding as planned. I have established a baseline and as soon as the Pepsi/iTunes promotion is over, I'll start the reduction. Today, I tried something a little different. I replaced this Dew drinker's regular Dew with Diet Dew. Let's see if he notices. Hell yes I noticed. I honestly can't remember if I have ever drank a full Diet Dew. Today I did and it was not a good experience. That stuff is bottled ass! I swear I had the exact same taste in my mouth as when I leave the dentist, and that's not a good thing. I even had to add a third bottle for the day just to cleanse myself of the purgatory that is Diet Dew. Diet Don't!

So, the obligatory idea of the day. Pepsi comes in a full range of sugar pain. You start with the high octane regular, then the Pepsi Edge, then the Pepsi One, and then the Diet Pepsi. You truly do get to pick your poison. Dew drinkers have no such luxury. You either get the full caloric goodness or you get to drink spider spit. Where is my Mountain Dew Halfpipe? They make Dew in regular, Cherry, Orange, Grape, and some bastard creation, Baja Ass, they only sell at Taco Bell. Where's the reduced calorie, but non-sucky version? I smell an Apprentice episode!

Bring On the Auxiliary Displays

Many computer users today run a set of applications that is no longer requiring them to upgrade their PC every two years or so to avoid being frustrated at the sluggish performance. Now that I'm to that point, I look to how I can make my computing experience more enjoyable and productive, other than by buying the latest x.y GHz processor. Notebook PCs are one of those categories that improve the experience, but there are plenty of times that I don't need the keyboard and notebooks are far too expensive to be add-ons for most folks. I already have the computing horsepower in my desktop. I just need to untether it.

Last August, rumors started to fly about a "Wireless Display" that was in the works from Apple. This product class is very interesting to me. The idea of the Wireless Display is that the "computer" still resides in your desktop machine. The Wireless Display isn't much more than a display, battery, wireless connectivity, and perhaps a touchscreen. This is like the tablet computer class, but without the processor, seperate RAM, hard drive, and optical drive. The goal is to be able to control your main computer from this display and keep the display cheaper than buying a notebook or tablet computer which can be used to run remote desktop software.

I have also noticed a trend in "burst information" lately. I define burst information as those little notifications and tasks that are accessed frequently, and for short periods of time. Examples of burst information include:
* Email notifiers
* Instant Messages
* Meeting reminders
* Stock quotes
* Weather

Steps have been taken to improve burst information. For instance, many apps now have windows that slide out of the task tray, but burst information is still one of the primary distractions and productivity killers in today's busy lifestyle.
I'm certainly not the only one to notice this trend. More likely, I'm noticing it because of the actions of the big guys in the computer world. For those paying attention, the writing is on the wall. Microsoft is pushing their Smart Personal Object Technology [SPOT]. Today this exists on watches, but I see potential in them directing this technology to other displays.
In fact, Microsoft is calling on developers to bring apps to this platform. Apple is also trying to seduce developers with design contests for their new Dashboard technology.

Now, finally to my point. I want auxillary displays. These displays can be of varying size. Some may be monochome. Some may be full color. Some may be tall. Some may be wide. Some will have touchscreens. Others will just be screens. To make this happen, we need two things, hardware and software. The hardware won't happen without the software. The software could be SPOT. It could be a flavor of Dashboard. Most likely it will have to be something beyond what we have so far.



I did some playing and created a concept of a high end aux display. Again, nothing real ground breaking here, just evolutionary changes to existing products. Take the widescreen off of the 15" PowerBook, slim the bezel, add a touchscreen, add WiFi, add a video card, and add a fat battery. Click on the concept picture to see some further notes. Toshiba recently wsa showing off a concept similar to this.

Think of all of the things you could put on your aux display. Here are a few:
* Stock quotes (every computer tech must involve stock quotes)
* iTunes remote display with full album art - How cool would it be if you could glance at the wall in your favorite club, resturant, karaoke bar, or cycling class and see the full details of the music you are hearing?
* Vendors and presenters at conferences and expos could display more live information with less wiring and fewer computers to run the displays.
* Live picture frames - These already exist, but they are never a complete solution. They often have their own storage, require subscriptions, and some require you to upload pictures to a website. Why mess with all of that? You could just have a button in iPhoto that sends an album to that aux display. This isn't a stretch. We already have that exact button in iTunes to send the music to an aux sound output, the Airport Express.
* Weather Displays
* TV Lineups for the evening

I wouldn't expect seperate screens for all of these things. I would want a way to time share the device, either automatically or with a controller attached to the aux display. Obviously this could get very expensive, and I'm already hearing the chants of read a newspaper.

Good Control Not So Remote

Do you remember my whining about what makes a good remote? Well, Logitech has nearly granted my wish.

My buddy Nick has a Harmony remote and he loves it.

Color screen - check
Rechargable - check
Programmable - check
Download from Internet - check
Limited number of buttons - check
Durable - maybe
Not IrDA - no, but they can't do much about that until the electronics manufacturers wise up

$250 appears to be the damage. If I didn't love my Marantz remote so much, I'd order one up right away. I'll keep this in mind though.

Rules of the Purchase

I'm currently steaming from the latest round of Slashdot idiot posts regarding DRM. I figured I'd cool down a bit by putting to digital paper my rules of purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store.

I buy music that is...
1. Music that is no longer in print or extremely hard to find in physical form.
2. Music that is only available at import prices. $10 is far better than $27.
3. Individual songs that I know I like and know I don't want the whole album.
4. Individual songs that I am exploring from artists that are unfamiliar to me.
5. Music that I can only find on iTMS or big city record shops which I don't get to often enough.
6. Music that I must have, right now!

Also for the record:
Do I like DRM? [Shaking head side to side] Noooooooo.
Do I understand why it is necessary on iTMS? [Nodding head] Yessssssss.
Do I feel that the "rights" that iTMS grants me are reasonable? [Nodding head] Yesssssss.
Do I wish I had the ability to sell, or transfer ownership, of purchased songs? [Nodding head] Yessssss.

Who won?

March madness is upon us. A week ago I woke up in a cold sweat thinking, "wow, it would be cool if I could get the tournament scores on an RSS feed". So how about it? Anyone know where I can get such a feed? All I can find is NCAA Men's Basketball news feeds. All I want is the final scores (half-time scores would be nice). I know Yahoo! had something last year, but I did some digging today and didn't see it.

Bottled Anger

An updated "Bottle Bill" is in discussion by Iowa's lawmakers. For those just tuning in, Iowa is one of the 8 states that takes a deposit on certain beverage containers at the time of purchase and then returns that money when the container is returned, at least that's how it works in Iowa. It's quite possible other states do it a bit different.
Today, you deposit 5 cents and you get back 5 cents. The new bill looks to take 1 cent from the 5 you'd normally get back and give that to the redemption center that is handling your return. They say this is because the redemption centers can't make back the costs of being a redemption center and at the same time, being a redemption center is unsanitary, loud, and space consuming. You know what? I believe them.

The can redemption program is fully self-funded. It processes 1.5 billion containers a year, which adds up to 75 million dollars getting handed around. In addition, 15 million comes from beverage distributors. That's 90 million dollars. Nothing to sneeze at.
At the time the Bottle Bill originally went in to effect (1978), it probably was a good idea. Recycling centers were nearly non-existant and people didn't have the concern for the Earth that they do now. Who am I kidding, people still don't care, but I digress. In addition, 15% of beverage containers today, including bottled water and juices, are of
the variety that do not fit in to this program. That's a hefty chunk.
Certainly if people must be motivated by money to not litter, these non-program containers would be all over our roads, but they really aren't. I've participated in Iowa's adopt-a-highway program about 5 times. I've spent Saturdays picking up junk. I honestly can't say that I picked up more juice bottles than I did Pepsi bottles. If we are going to keep this program, let's add in that 15% of beverage containers that isn't covered. But what about the other percentage of containers that aren't beverage containers? Why don't we have programs for those? Ohh wait, we do, it's called curbside recycling.


My point is, I think the whole idea of returning cans to the store is past due. We have curbside recycling now. In fact, 600 communities in Iowa have it now.
Why don't we just ditch this can return nonsense and sink the $90 million in to improving existing recycling programs? According to the Iowa DNR, 500 containers per person per year are returned. That calculates to $25. I know my total is far higher than that, but I think I'd tolerate $25 more in taxes to not ever have to take bottles back to the store. I already recycle. Just let me keep doing that and get rid of this extra process for these "magical" beverage containers.

Proponents of the bottle bill like to point to the number of jobs the program has created and the energy that is saved by creating new bottles from all of the recycled ones. That's fantastic. This will still be true if we
switch to curbside recycling for beverage containers. The stuff still needs
handled, so now the high school kids will work for a state or city recycling center instead of Hy-Vee. The containers still get recycled, so we still save all of the energy.

From recent protests and public posturing by grocery stores and other redemption centers, it's obvious that they don't want to be in the business of turning aluminum in to nickel. Let's take that energy and reapply it to state and city recycling programs.

Six Degrees

Boy it's quiet out there. I'm going to lay it out there and see if I can get some crowd participation up in this mother. We've all heard of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Well, if you don't know, you better ask somebody.
Well, I like music (not necessarily from the artists we'll use in the game), so let's play the game with a music influence. For starters, let's link Tupac Shakur to Justin Timerlake. You've got six links, but you get bonus points for less. And, no, I haven't done this yet, but I'm sure it can be done.

Ready go.

Falias

Alias on ABC used to be a show I enjoyed. The last two seasons have really turned me off though. The double, triple, ocho crossing is way out of hand. It's as if they've run out of ideas so they just keep bringing back the same characters with recycled plots. My wife still enjoys the show tremendously, so I "watch" it in the background while doing other things. Ok, enough bashing of the plots of the Alias show. That's not the point of this post.

What I'd like to discuss is the Ford emphasis in Alias. If you haven't noticed (how could you not), Alias is sponsored by Ford. They have Ford commercials at the breaks, "Sponsored by Ford" messages when the show is starting up again, and a plethora of Ford vehicles throughout the show. Now, I really don't have a problem with all of that. I don't even mind the vehicle placement in the show. Anyone remember that Viper show on NBC? It can't get much worse than that. In the end, anything that gets us closer to content with no commercial breaks is ok by me.

The thing that really got me this week, was the apparent Ford politics inserted in to the episode. As I said, I wasn't really watching the show, but I was listening. Next thing I know, Sydney and her "family" are sitting around having dinner and they bust off in to an out of place discussion about hybrid vehicles and how they are the future. Hybrid vehicles? WTF does that have to do with tracking baddies? Then it registered. I think that scene was in there just to bring hybrid vehicles in to focus as it were.

I'm all for hybrid vehicles. We nearly bought a Toyota Prius a couple of years ago. Now, Ford is finally throwing their hat in the hybrid ring and I guess pimping hybrid technology on Alias is part of their plan to build market share. Maybe this subliminal shit will help, but maybe folks will see through this and not appreciate being preached to in a show that they are watching to be entertained. In the meantime, be sure to drink your ovaltine.

Wrist Top Data

My daily "cargo" is pretty limited. I carry a wallet, car keys, and, unless I forget to put one on, a watch. I don't own a cell phone. I don't want a PDA. I'd like to carry my bucktool, but the number of times I'd actually use it lose out to carrying the damn thing around all of the time. As you can see, it takes a lot to earn a spot in my pockets.

For Christmas, I got a flash drive. That's a good thing, I'd been wanting a flash drive. The problem is, like the bucktool, the flash drive is bordering on too much for me to carry for the number of times I use the thing. It's great to have when you need one, but I still hate that I have to plug it in, and it's not as small as I'm sure it will be in a year.

That got me thinking to how I could still have a flash drive, but not have to add to the mass of my key chain.
The first idea, and possibly still a good one, is to lose my ignition key. How will I start my car? Well, I already have the keyless entry dongle, so why can't that thing start my car. I guess I don't see the value in a separate physical item to start my car. If someone is already inside the interior of my vehicle, they already can take it, so what does having a key prevent? So, the first solution is to ditch my ignition key and keep the flash drive. Right or wrong, I don't think many folks are going to dig this idea, and maybe I don't either once I start to think about times where I would want people to get in to my vehicle but not start it (child getting a soccer ball out of the truck).

The next thing that came to mind is my watch. The watch is already one of the physical things I carry with me. If I could add utility to it, I don't add any items. Now, there are data watches out there, but you're drunk if you think I'm going to pull a USB cable out of my watch. Microsoft is also heading this direction with their SPOT watches. Do you think they'll ever add a wireless interface? That way, I don't have to have a cable. I don't have to crawl on the ground to plug in the flash drive. I don't have to take the watch off. If only there were a low power technology meant to replace cables (cough *Bluetooth* cough).

So hopefully this Bluetooth watch that someone is going to build me isn't going to be huge. Then again, it can't be any bigger than the tuna can I already wear. Suunto doesn't call them watches. They are wrist-top computers. Kind of like garbage men are waste management engineers I guess. [No offense to garbage men intended] Anyway, Suunto's exercises in excess already are computers, so pop a Bluetooth stack in there (cough CSR virtual machine cough), add some flash storage (1 gig please), and tell me where to buy one.

My pockets will end up lighter, not only because I lose the flash drive, but because I'm sure this thing won't be cheap.

Does Blockbuster Sell Used Cars?

Did Blockbuster bite off more than they could chew? I scampered over to
their site just now and found an interesting statement on their online sign up page.

Sign Up Today To Guarantee Your Price Through January 2006*

What's that all about? Hurry up and give us your money before we complete the bait and switch? Netflix did raise the monthly price on me once, but then they turned around and made it far cheaper than it was when I first signed up. Netflix might win this war yet.