There’s an automated “transfer your settings from another machine via Firewire” tool that launches when you start the machine for the first time. There’s a feature for .mac members to have domains of the style (machine).(user).members.mac.com map to their IP addresses. Safari’s RSS support, while nice and clean, is a horrible way to read articles because (at least, for now), it’s just an alternative to viewing the main site. You have to click a button while at the page, and you flip to an RSS view. That’s ridiculous. That said, the use of the summarize service to control the length of excerpts is fantastic and a convincing reason that EVERYONE NEEDS TO PROVIDE A FULL FEED. More as I find it.
WWDC Keynote Running Thoughts
Jun 28, ’04
2:57 PM
I started transcribing late, since the Apple Store/iPod wanking is fairly standard.
View From The 30th Floor
Jun 27, ’04
11:04 AM
Somehow, the Grand Hyatt had run out of rooms on the floors we had booked; as such, we were told we had been bumped up to the 30th floor.
When we got on the elevator, there was another couple around our age, and an older rich-and-snooty style couple. We hit 30, the old couple hit 24, the other couple hit 12.
The elevator started up towards 12, and Katie made a comment to me about how the view would truly be a fantastic. I saw the older rich woman half turn around and make an ok sign with her hand, which I found odd. When we arrived, the first couple got off. As the elevator proceeded upwards…
…the older woman remarked to the older gentleman with that kind of smile that condescends in the way the rich only can, “The peasants on the 12th Floor!” The older gentleman offered, “Can you only imagine…” as they left the elevator.
Between that, Goomba Tempura, and attempts to launch a small asian girl up into the air to see what would happen when she hit the pavement, it’s been an interesting start to an interesting trip.
San Francisco On The Horizon
Jun 24, ’04
11:00 PM
So the previously mentioned San Francisco trip begins this weekend on Saturday evening, and carries through to early Friday morning. Due to the realities of the new job, and the sudden change of my WWDC status, I will be unable to see most everyone who had hoped to see me this trip. I honestly just don’t have the free time to do anything; I barely have any time to go sightseeing with Katie. So my apologies to all, and I’m sure I will make it back out there at some point in the future.
Now Leaving Youth
Jun 23, ’04
9:50 PM
If you’re like me, and remember all good advertisements you’ve ever seen, there were a series of car ads last year – I believe they were Nissan – which featured a car full of people gazing at incredible sights outside the car, and they pass a sign that says something like “NOW LEAVING: CHILDHOOD” or whatever. I went whizzing by one of those signs today. I had to choose a retirement plan. Sometimes I feel like being wispy And once in a while I feel like being dry But we’re doomed and we’re drowned by this feeling we surround So I hope that I get old before I die Ohhhhh It’s a long, long rope they use to hang you soon I hope And I wonder why this hasn’t happened Why why why And I think about the dirt that I’ll be wearing for a shirt And I hope that I get old before I die Clear off the kitchen table darling For on the kitchen table I must lie I’m just tired for my wife just served the banquet of my life And I hope that I get old before I die Ohhhhh It’s a long, long rope they use to hang you soon I hope And I wonder why this hasn’t happened Why why why And I think about the dirt that I’ll be wearing for a shirt And I hope that I get old before I die
First Day Warm And Fuzzies
Jun 21, ’04
10:13 PM
A lot of people have been asking how my first day at the new job went. I hereby give you a list, to deflect all IM comments!
- It was, on the whole, good.
- I filled out the HR paperwork in record time.
- I have the absolute worst ID badge picture ever. I have red eye that is more noticable in one eye than the other, and the look on my face says “I would like to kill you for looking at my badge”. I guess I look like a killer robot. This may not be such a bad thing, in hindsight.
- My cubicle is currently comedic, as I have a giant Dell tower (for the streaming software evaluation I’m doing), an IBM all-in-one just for kicks, a TiBook of some sort (belongs to one of my co-workers), and a dual 2 GHz G5 tower. And this is not the largest cubical in the world.
- The software I’m evaluating is quite nice, although there’s some kinks we’re still working out.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
I Heart The MTR
Jun 20, ’04
7:34 PM
In my mailbox yesterday:
On the back:
Please Note: It has come to our attention that Ron Burgundy does not exist, but is in fact a character portrayed by one Will Ferrell, late of Saturday Night Live and the feature films Elf and Old School. Bill Kurtis does exist, however; the documentary producer, host, and news anchor will interview Mr. Ferrell, who will appear in character as Ron Burgundy.
All of this confusion will be resolved by the new film Anchorman, a comedy directed by Adam McKay and costarring Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, and Fred Willard, which will be screened in its entirety at this event. Anchorman, produced by Judd apatow (Freaks and Geeks) and Shauna Robertson, excutive produced by David O. Russell, and coproduced by David Householter, will be released nationwide on July 9.
We apologize for any inconvenience or emotional distress caused by the above.
Tickets for members were $20 – and given that includes seeing the movie before release, plus watching Ron Burgundy LIVE, I think that’s a fantastic deal. It’s also two days before the next Tinkle Show, which means that’s going to be a hell of a week.
The Joy Of n
Jun 19, ’04
1:56 PM
When I was in my development phase of my gaming life, I had a passion for puzzle platformers. My first real salient computer game memory was of Jumpman. Later, when I got my Mac, I would spend hours playing Leprechaun. I think everyone’s played Lode Runner at one point or another. The appeal of these games wasn’t only the tough as nails gameplay, or the minimalistic controls, but the ability to make your own levels was at the time, huge. Throwing together ridiculously silly, or fun, or impossible levels and then trying to master them is an often unmatched joy in gaming. While trying to find diversions to keep me occupied for the weekend, I stumbled upon n. With the simple controls (left/right/jump), easy to follow goals, a huge number of levels in the base (150 in the current release, 200 in the current beta), an editor, and addictive “just one more” gameplay, this is completely taking me back to my childhood and making me giddy for gaming again. And besides, you control a ninja. There’s nothing better than that. I command you to download n now.
Benny Benassi vs. Dave Winer
Jun 17, ’04
10:54 AM
If you stay current on my del.icio.us links (they’re in the sidebar), you’ll have seen the latest comedic turn in the weblogs.com debacle – waxy.org is hosting a remix contest of Dave’s audio post.
Having been bitten by the remix bug a long time ago (and the recent acquisition of DJ Shadow‘s In Tune And On Time, which has live footage of Pushin’ Buttons Live), I broke out Traktor DJ Studio and browsed my library for the appropriate song to mash Dave Winer into.
Lately I had been listening to the Benny Benassi album more and more; I had originally blocked it from my consciousness as I found the single “Satisfaction” to be irritating as hell. But as I ended up listening to other tracks – particularly “Time” and “Get Loose” – I noticed that there’s some decent electro house underneath the silly vocal samples. I enjoyed the songs with the least robotic voicing the best. So when my vision landed on “I’m Sorry”, I realized a number of birds could be killed with one mashup stone. Not only was it a good song for layering samples over, and not only was there some significance to the existing vocal sample (a number of people are up in arms that Dave has not said he was sorry), but I could potentially remove the part of the vocal sample that irritated me (the full vocal sample is: “Are you sleeping? Ohhhh. I’m sorry.”, and with the exception of the last two words, I never liked it.)
So between last night and this morning, I mashed and redubbed and banged my head into the desk repeatedly until I had a workable dance track. I worked together a few jokey sample combinations (“Formats and protocols…are a DEADLY combination.” and a couple using the I’m Sorry sample), and I avoided using the “People love to jump up and down” sample, because this isn’t really a jump-up-and-down track. Some trimming and minor tweaking in Cacophony, and an encoding in iTunes, and voila. Or maybe I should say bing!
You can grab it from waxy.org, or locally on vjarmy.com. I’m pretty happy with it, although it would probably be perfect if I had a proper sampling and arranging program like Peak.
Comments happily taken.
The Great Cosmic Balancing
Jun 16, ’04
12:21 AM
There’s that old quote atrributed to John Gilmore, about the Internet treating censorship as damage and routing around it. I think there’s something else just as notable about the Internet; it seems to have a sense of karma, where wrongdoings are often righted. The big news this morning was Dave Winer’s shutdown of 3000 blogs that he had become responsible for hosting on weblogs.com. Originally they were hosted by Userland, and then at some point Userland Software split into two companies both named Userland Software, and…yeah, it’s confusing. Needless to say, Dave’s been hosting them out of his own pocket for at least the last few months, and came to the conclusion that he couldn’t afford it. There were a number of problems with the way this was handled. I won’t bore you with details – other people have this pretty well wrapped up. But as the day rolled into night, I was jarred with two ironic happenings, nearly back to back. One was, in the Schadenfreude sense of irony, the inevitable slashdotting, which I would expect will drive weblogs.com as a Manilla host completely down tomorrow – if not for the traffic, for the off-topic comments that are rapidly multiplying. The other? A number of comparisons were made today between this and the Movable Type 3 pricing structure, where the blog world collectively took a massive shit on SixApart – and it was largely justified for failing to communicate (sound familiar?) and making decisions that left a number of people scratching their heads as to how they got to the final decision. Lo, not twenty minutes after the slashdotting, Argyle on #joiito points out that SixApart emailed out a new pricing structure. The three non-commercial tiers are now:
- Limited Free (1 author, 3 blogs, no support, free)
- Personal (5 authors, unlimited blogs, support, $70)
- Unlimited Personal (unlimited authors and blogs, support, $100).
I have a coupon I have not yet used from the beta test of MT3; tomorrow would appear to be the day I’m using it. These prices are quite reasonable, have all the ridiculous limits removed, and I certainly don’t have a problem paying that much for a piece of software I use so readily over a daily basis. And besides – I’m well versed on how to import and export from MT by now.