Tag: tech (Page 7 of 7)

Silence

July 2, 2007 / DB

We had a few minutes of silence tonight. We ordered a two-screen portable DVD player for the van last week and decided to fire it up for the girls for the first time, just to make sure it worked.

We got everything working, put the girls in their seats, popped in Finding Nemo, and for a few minutes, we had glorious silence. M. could only go so long before asking 1000 questions, “What’s that? Where’s he going? What’s his daddy doing?” and C. was close enough to bedtime to be super fussy, but we did like the early results.

Let’s just hope it does as well on our trip to KC next month.

The Lure Of The Fancy One

May 16, 2007 / DB

Last week I bought a new cell phone. Not a huge deal, since something like 180 billion cell phones are sold each day. My old phone was actually in fine shape, for the most part. But after almost three years, it took as long as 30 seconds before an out-going call would connect with the network. I spent a ton of time last week scrolling through Verizon’s site, looking at the phones that are available, the discounts I qualify for, and then reading reviews of the phones on about a dozen different sites. Oddly enough, it is hard arriving at consensus on a phone. The phones editors like, users tend to hate, and vice versa.

I kept getting lured in by the fancy phones that, after discounting, checked-in somewhere in the $50-75 range. All those sweet Motorola phones, especially. I’d look at the features list and realize I didn’t need about 2/3 of what those phones offer: I don’t text, don’t surf on a phone, and I’ve got an iPod therefore am fundamentally opposed to music on my phone. But they look so damn sexy! If I whipped one of those bad boys out at a meeting, I’d surely get all kinds of respect, right? (Forgetting the fact I have no meetings to go to in the near future.)

In the end, I picked an $80 Nokia phone that was discounted all the way down to $0 plus a car charger for only $10, $20 off the regular price. First off, it got great reviews on every site. Second, I’m a big fan of the small flip-phones. I tend to park my phone in my pocket and those models work best for that. I had images of a nice, shiny Motorola getting all scratched up in about a week of use. Plus, I like the ability to spin flip-phones on the table. It actually came down to finding a phone that had good sound quality, since I will probably be doing some work on it, that also allowed me to keep using the earpiece I have. All those higher end phones that rock Bluetooth (seriously, I love technology and all, but Bluetooth earpieces are the worst thing ever) lack a jack for my old-school .25mm mini plug earpiece.

All my work paid off when I made my first call on the new phone. The line was ringing before I could even get the phone to my ear. A far cry from the old phone. It might not be sexy, but it works.

Changing Neighborhoods

March 13, 2007 / DB

It was 80 here today. Yet we still have a pile of month-old snow out in front of our house.

Well, all good things must come to an end. Or so the cliche tells us. This blog is going to die a quick, unsympathetic death in about a month. Don’t worry, I’ll still be blogging and filling your free time with the genius that is me, just not here.

I’ve been frustrated by many aspects of Typepad over the last six months or so. Some trouble posting perfectly legitimate files. A couple downtimes. An apparent focus on business blogging needs rather than those of us who are just dorks writing in our pajamas. Seriously, if I get one more e-mail telling me how to improve my business through Typepad… So, with my account coming up for renewal next month, it seems like a good time to shut this down and depart for greener pastures. Or at least a different pasture.

I picked Typepad two years ago because Blogger sucked, I wanted some freedom to make my blog look pretty, and I wanted more reliability. I didn’t mind paying for a blogging service when I was posting at least once a day, if not more. But now that I’ve scaled back my writing a bit, I can’t justify the expense.

Blogger has improved, thanks to Google finally sinking some money into it. But it still kind of sucks. They offer the same generic themes they’ve always had, and I’m too lazy to learn any HTML to create my own. I investigated three other free services, including the free service offered by Typepad. It is verrrrry sexy. Nice to look at, easy to navigate, and probably more reliable than the other platforms. But, it has two fundamental problems: 1) it doesn’t support Safari, my browser of choice, for posting and B) in order to comment, you must be a member. It’s “free and easy” to join, but I didn’t want all of my loyal readers to have to sign up for an account just to add your comments. Especially since that means you would get e-mails from the hosting company each month.

I thought about rolling the dice and learning how to code myself, either using Moveable Type or WordPress. But that would mean dropping money on a hosting plan, and the whole idea is to get away from that. And did I mention I’m lazy?

In the end, I picked WordPress’ free service. I’ve been playing around with it for about a month, and it seems like it will work. I’m still stuck with their skins, but they have more to offer than Blogger so I can hopefully vary them from time-to-time. There are a few limitations that are annoying, but I can live with them. Best of all, I can import all my posts from this blog into the new one, so we won’t lose any history. I’m not sure if the comments will come with, but hey, you know what you said. Perhaps I’ll read back and repost some of the greatest comments hits from the past two plus years.

Next, came the struggle of what to name the new blog. I wanted it to be something kind of clever, easy to remember, yet semi-anonymous. I thought I had a really cool name, but I decided it wasn’t terribly clever after all, and it was confusing to type in correctly. So I picked one that all of you should be able to recall quickly but gives me some anonymity. Oh, and it lends itself to a few catchy little acronyms. MMMM, acronyms!

I’ve been double-posting for about a week, just to test skins and whatnot, so you’re welcome to go check it out at anytime. I’ll probably blog here through Good Friday, then export all the historical files across and shut this down. So go take a look:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

March 2, 2005 / DB

There are a few developments in the world of on-line music that have got me all geeked up of late. I mentioned in my year-end post the glory of the MP3 blog. Thanks to people who are much hipper and better connected than I can ever hope to be, I’ve managed to develop some idea of what is going on in the alternative music world.

The second development that I think is great is the growth of quality, streamed music options. There have always been funky, cool radio stations who streamed their materials. However, they were often difficult to find, some outlets used odd formats for sharing their audio, and were generally low budget afterthoughts making the streams erratic at best. That’s changing as non-mainstream outlets attempt to find a voice in the corporate radio dominated world. There are a number of excellent alternative stations that now provide high quality streams, often without commercial interruption. WOXY and KEXP are two streams I’ve been listening to a lot lately.

Finally, for several months, I had been reading all about the phenomenon known as Podcasting. I won’t go into the guts of the medium here (check the link for that) but basically Podcasting is a method in which any Joe or Jane Blow can record and disseminate their own audio broadcast. Think of it as audio-blogging, which I’ve done on occasion, only on a grander scale. The nascent format already provides interesting programs that cover almost any topic you can think of. Most are definitely amateur in quality, laden with poor audio, nervous laughter, and minimal production, but therein lies the beauty of the format. You don’t have to have the perfect radio voice, an expensive recording studio, or even a distinct format. Fire up some audio editing software and you’ve got yourself a show.

(A quick aside, contrary to what the name may lead you to believe, you need neither a Mac nor an iPod to listen to Podcasts. It just happens that one of the driving forces behind Podcasting is a Mac geek. Check the article linked above to see who that person is. Who knew an 80s quasi-celebrity could make good in such a cool way?)

I know what many of my regular readers are thinking. “This sounds right up your alley! When should we expect to see your Podcast posted?” Well, funny little problem with Podcasting: the RIAA is already getting involved. While there have been no crackdowns yet, I’m sure soon we’ll be hearing about some 15 year old kid that records a podcast in his bedroom in Kansas getting arrested for illegally using copyrighted music. As cool as the concept is to me, I’m not ready to drop $300 on an RIAA license to legally use music. It’s one thing to file share. It’s another to slap something on a server that can be traced directly to you and basically beg the lawyers to shut you down. So sadly my broadcasting career will have to wait until either the rules change, I take over IUPUI’s broadcasting facilities, or, of course, I win big in the lottery.

For the time being, I’ll continue to listen to shows like Insomnia Radio, Preserves, Jellies, and Jams, Each Note Secure. Most programs lean to the indie and unsigned side of music, but they’re opening a whole world of music that I would probably never come into contact with otherwise. It’s certainly not music that’s played over the air here in Indy, nor stuff played on the Music Choice channels on our cable system.

Two Interesting Phone Calls

August 10, 2004 / DB

It was a dynamic morning here at the palatial, imitation estate of DDB. I had two very interesting phone calls. The second, which we’ll discuss first, came from the Apple Store here in Carmel. “The 20 GB iPod you requested arrived this morning. You can pick it up anytime today. Thank you for spending more money on Apple products.”
My shiny, sexy, little beast of a music player is sucking up music from my hard drive as I type.

The first call was far more life changing. I officially turned down the job my employer had offered me to replace the one they eliminated. In doing so, I informed them I will be leaving the company to focus on applying and hopefully being admitted to graduate school in the near future. It’s going to take some epic work on the GREs to make up for my sorry ass undergraduate efforts, meaning I’ll be hitting the books hard for the next few months. I find it highly ironic that after finally getting my act together and graduating, then having a pretty high level of success at a Fortune 500 company for almost seven years, and thinking the disaster that was my undergraduate transcript was buried in the dust bin of history, that now that I’ve decided there’s something I REALLY want to do, it could all come back to haunt me. Life is funny that way, isn’t it?
I’m optimistic that between a winning essay, good interviews, establishing a solid rapport with the administration, and as I said, acing the GREs, I’ll be a candidate for a master’s in Journalism sometime soon. My academic woes in the past will keep me from even thinking about applying to the nationally ranked program at IU-Bloomington. However, I’m hopeful I can gain entrance to their satellite program at IUPUI here in Indy. We shall see. This is either a brilliant move that will allow me to do something I was probably meant to do, or a huge disaster that will lead towards perpetual underemployment, divorce, and me living under an overpass somewhere. OK, that’s a little dramatic, I admit. I’ll keep you updated as the process unfolds. I’m certainly quite excited about the path life is leading me down.

I’m A Switcher

July 13, 2004 / DB

“You’re a what?” you probably ask. I’m a Switcher, which is what Apple calls people that shun the Windows world for a Macintosh. Our beautiful little eMac arrived yesterday morning. The computer Gods must have been watching, because the Dell laptop that I use for work promptly got ravaged by a virus/spyware that no one could figure out how to fix. I spent literally all day yesterday, and most of this morning, on the phone with our tech support people, or sitting watching my screen as someone in K.C. took control of the device and tried to remove the offending files. Meanwhile, my Mac sat quietly on the other side of my desk, happily cranking away at multiple applications without crashing, locking up, or doing any of the other fun things our old HP did. I’ll bore you with more Mac evangelism later; it is a cult, you know; but I feel obligated to point out regular reader E-bro in NoCal makes his living relying on the world to purchase computers with Intel processors. I’ll be happy to discuss, in great depth, the joys of the Mac world with anyone interested in switching, but keep in mind you’re helping a friend if you yield to societal pressures and stick with Windows.

Will everything that was going on last week, I somehow missed the Carlos Beltran All-Star controversy completely. Thankfully, Major League Baseball was given an out to cover their asses and wisely added Carlos to the National League roster. I could have been misinformed, but it was my understanding that despite being voted into the game for the American League by the fans, his recent trade to Houston meant that Carlos could not compete in this week’s events. He could show up and call himself an All-Star, but he couldn’t actually suit up. Was anyone really surprised by this rule? Coming from the same people who decided to let the teams play to a tie two years ago, and last season made home field advantage in the World Series dependent on the winner of the game, a rule as dumb as this seemed about right. Thank goodness it was corrected. What if the Astros had traded Carlos to Boston or New York this week, though? What then, Mr. Selig???

Another thing lost in the shuffle was the whole Maria Sharapova thing. Wow! She just worked Serena over last Saturday in the Wimbledon final. Finally, the white, heterosexual male’s perfect tennis player: hot, smart, funny, and talent on top of it all. (For the record, I’ve always been down with Serena’s looks; I don’t like to fence myself in.) In a semi-related note, columnists in the Midwest who will have to write about Kansas basketball over the next four years, were already beginning their columns comparing Alexander Kaun to Sharapova. “Like Maria Sharapova, who was born in Siberia, moved to Florida with little money and less English for the chance to play a game in the United States…” It’s going to happen, I guarantee it.

So the wife’s stomach is getting really, really big. Noticeably bigger over the past week, in fact. This poor girl was sticking out in so many different directions last night that S’s stomach looked like a misshapen pumpkin: smooth angles here, right angles there. As an added bonus, neither of us can sleep all the way through the night now. S. wakes for obvious reasons. I have no idea why four nights in a row I’ve woken just after 1:00 feeling like it’s 7:00 and spend the next 60-90 minutes either tossing and turning or down on the couch reading.

One of the best things about being a prospective parent is shopping for baby clothes. Not for the process itself, but more because you get to say funny things. For example, anytime we see clothes, mobiles, anything baby-related with a monkey on it, we say, “Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?” How is that not fun?

Something I forgot to mention in my mini book review Sunday was the fact the copy of The Sweet Forever I read was a signed copy by the author. Now why the Carmel-Clay public library needs signed copies of George Pelecanos novels is beyond me. I just hope my tax dollars aren’t being wasted here.

Do yourself a favor and check out the Snow Patrol song “Spitting Games”. Pure pop brilliance. I can’t get the freaking thing out of my head.

To close, I was pretty much sitting staring out the window yesterday morning waiting for the FedEx truck to show up with my Mac. Finally, just after 9:00 AM, it pulls around the corner, and a young guy pops the box on his shoulder and makes his way to our door. I greet him before he can get to the bell and show him in. He sets the box down and says, “This is a beautiful house, man.” I don’t know if he was just a really nice guy, or if he gets paid off by Apple to make the customer experience rewarding from the moment the machine arrives at your door. It was a nice touch, though.

Fun With Search Engines

May 19, 2004 / DB

In the blog template updates last week, I also changed the tracking software I use. I think the service I’m using now, eXTReMe Tracking, does a much more accurate job of tracking who visits on a daily basis as well as telling me exactly who visits. The true coup is the search engine tracking it includes, which is always fun. Here are some recent search engine queries that led people to my site:

Is Diana Degarmo Hispanic?
Single Armenian men in Nashville Tennessee
Prince song “Sweet Thing”
Diana Degarmo ethnicity (X3)
Bonsiour
Murray + Barbecue + Ontario + “honey brown”
Michigan’s Ugliest Baby
Michigan’s Fab Five
Fat Ugly Red Sox Fans Pics
Giada De Laurentis

I think I see why young Miss Degarmo is so popular. People want to keep her coming back so they can figure out what her ethnic makeup is. I’ve always assumed she’s a white girl. Am I missing something?

Also, in a week, people have visited from the following countries:

Canada
Finland
Belgium
Bulgaria
Singapore
France
United Kingdom
New Zealand
Taiwan
Unknown (My all time favorite country! I loved those guys in the 1984 Olympics.)

I’m Part Of The System Now

May 4, 2004 / DB

I just made my first legal download. I dropped 99 cents to grab The Thrills’ “One Horse Town” off of Musicmatch. I feel dirty. I feel like a sell out. I feel disappointed I didn’t thumb my nose at the recording industry giants and continue to grab tracks for free off the file sharing services that are still out there. Now I’m just another consumer who’s taken what the powers that be want me to take.

I never felt guilty about the file sharing I participated in over the years. I was depriving the major labels of money, not the artists. I own a couple hundred CDs, a couple hundred cassettes, and a few dozen albums. I’ve definitely paid my share over the years. Heck, some of the tracks I downloaded were ones I owned in a non-CD form but wanted to have digitally as well. Sure, I downloaded a ton of stuff I wouldn’t possess if I had to purchase each track. But when you take a look through the box of CDs I never, ever listen to, you can see the recording industry has profited nicely off me over the years. Even at my downloading worst, if I really, really liked an act, I would still go buy the CD. In June, I’ll march out and buy the new Wilco CD even if I can get every track for free.

In a perfect world, here’s how my system would work. First, free, disposable, single format downloads. Say you hear a song by Franz Ferdinand and you really want to hear more of their songs. I think you should be able to go out and grab as many tracks as are available, download in format X for free, and be able to listen to them only on your PC for a week. After that, poof, they go away. They would be encoded so you couldn’t share them with other users, a portable device, or burn them to CD. (It’s up to the recording industry to keep ahead of the game with new encoding formats that keep their product secure.) Say you love five tracks, but don’t want to go buy the whole CD. 99 cents seems a little high to me, so I’d set 50 cents as the Ownership Download figure. For that price, you can download an unlimited use track. You can burn it, share it, transfer it to every digital device you own. This gives the user a chance to preview the goods before they purchase, gives the industry both a marketing tool and control over their product, and a middle ground for distributing music that benefits both parties. As music moves to predominantly digital distribution, the industry makes back that 49 cents in reduced costs for packaging, artwork, shipping of product, and so on. But that makes too much sense so it will never happen across the board. Sooner or later, though, there’s going to have to be some kind of industry-wide system for previewing tracks, purchasing on-line, and giving control of the purchased product to the consumer or the music industry really will die.

In a totally unrelated note, I’ve removed the What I’m Listening To section of the blog temporarily as it’s undergoing some reworking. In its place, the contents of my beer fridge have been posted and will be posted upon each trip to the liquor store. Please join me in enjoying some of the world’s finest beers!

D’s Notes

October 23, 2003 / DB

Dumb sports announcer comment of the week: “Hard to believe” that Dick Vermeil coached in his first Monday Night Football game since 1981 this week, according to Al Michaels and Lisa Guerrero. Why is that hard to believe? He was retired from coaching for almost 20 years. The Rams weren’t expected to be good when he took them to the Super Bowl. He retired again after winning the Super Bowl. His first two years with the Chiefs, they weren’t good either. So really he’s coached five years since 1981, and until this season, he never coached a team that was viewed as interesting enough to put into the MNF lineup. Idiots.

Speaking of MNF, I was disappointed when they showed a shot of Lake Merritt that there wasn’t a reference to Gut Fest.

I vote that the greatest invention of all-time is the hard drive MP3 player. I decided to secretly allocate some funds from our wedding account a few months back (that’s a joke, I got permission to make my purchase) and while I really wanted a fancy iPod, I got a slightly larger (CD player size) Creative Labs Nomad with twice the disk space for about $150 less. After a few weeks of diligent efforts, I managed to get all the MP3s on my computer hard drive transferred as well as all the CDs I wanted to rip loaded. Now, every piece of music I own is on one easy to carry device. I can take it when I travel, or just hook it up to the speakers in my office and let it play all day. While a lot of people create special play lists, I prefer to load music by genre, hit shuffle, and let it play. I always have a hard time looking at my music collection and selecting what I want to listen to, so this is perfect for me. There’s nothing like jumping from the Beatles to the Flaming Lips to Dean Martin without any input from me.

ESPN Classic showed the Roberto Clemente edition of Sports Century twice Monday. I thought I knew the story of Roberto, but turns out I did not. I never knew that sports writers in Pittsburgh made fun of his Puerto Rican accent by writing his quotes the way they sounded, “Ever seence I been in da beeg leagues, I hup heet da ball meeny times.” Keep in mind this was in the mid-50s, so this wasn’t someone trying to be funny. It was a mean spirited way of reminding an outsider that he was different and inferior. As Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci pointed out, those same sports writers no doubt cleaned up quotes from many of the southern white players who spoke less than perfect English. I didn’t know that Roberto was widely considered to be a whiner and injury faker. I also didn’t realize how outspoken Roberto was about matters of race. I always thought that he was such a hero to Latin players because he was the first Latin superstar. Now I realize it was because unlike Jackie Robinson who was forced to bite his tongue, Roberto demanded respect for Latin players and was a beacon for youngsters throughout the Caribbean. When he died while attempting to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua, he cemented his status as a Latin icon.

I was really hoping our last memory of Roger Clemens would be of him head hunting Miguel Cabrera then Cabrera calmly taking him out of the park, opposite field immediately after. Still a punk, after all these years.

Speaking of Cabrera, he’s everything Carlos Beltran should be. When he steps to the plate, you know something exciting is going to happen. He has an aura that he belongs, he knows it, and he’s out to make an impact. Despite all his skills (probably more pure skills than Cabrera) Beltran often seems disinterested or distracted. He does amazing things too, but you don’t expect them to happen. I’ve just thoroughly cursed Miguel Cabrera’s career.

Pity the East Coast fan. Last night’s game ended at approximately 12:24 AM. I can’t wait for Sunday, when Indiana keeps its head firmly in the sand and forces us to wait until 8:00 for game seven to start.

I loved VH1’s “I Love the 80s”. While they it didn’t resonate the same way, I enjoyed “I Love the 70s” immensely as well. In fact, I don’t think I moved for nine hours Labor Day while watching the 70s marathon. So I think you can guess how I feel about “I Love the 80s Strikes Back”. Another ten-hour block of great television. Keeping all the breakout stars; Hal Sparks, Mo Rocca, Rachael Harris, and the pure genius of Michael Ian Black; was an inspired move. However, why are they continuing to give Rich Eisen airtime? ESPN finally ran his ass out (of course, they replaced him with some other no-talent ass clown, to use an Office Spaceism) and they pollute this tremendous program with his presence. He continues to offer the same banal, pedestrian observations. However, this time he’s sporting the unshaved look, apparently to add an edge to his commentary. What’s outstanding, though, is his attempt to bite Michael Ian Black’s style. Fortunately, he’s not nearly good enough to pull it off, so it just annoys me more. There is no Stuart Scott, which is nice.