(r) = rhapsody playlists, (v) = video, (lv) = "bloody portal wanabes", launch video (ies) = "Internet Exploder sucks, but its required", (M) = 3.x+ Rhapsody Musician Reference, (A) = 3.x+ Rhapsody Musician/Album References, otherwise.. (____) = ____ is what it is.
This site is managed with GVIM, Filezilla and PHP, yeah I code my own stuff..
Due to the nature of this blog, archives have to be provided in seperate locations, to
get back to the most recent blog, simply click on the default link. The site will always
link to the most recent one.
Youtube + Me = Chann3lz, a completely random music video playing jukebox of content, managed by the audience, no registration necessary, all mechanism, no policy..
If you want your own netcast (netcast = podcast, Apple is trademarking podcast), but are not sure how to set one up, get my drop-it-in netcast generator script. Script is provided as-is, use at your own risk, thus I'm not liable if somehow you don't get it to work or it eats your cattle and causes you to lose a bunch of money.
My tutorials require Real Video not because I'm a Real-Rhapsody fan, but because RealVideo happens to be the best format for low-bandwidth tutorials
Rhapsify Everyhit.com looks for albums of a date range precise to a month, providing links to rhapsody-online (and YouTube). YouTubeify Everyhit.com is much better for tracking down music videos to precise songs on "YouTube.com".
BEST WAY TO PERUSE YOUTUBIFIED LINKS
go to url "about:config" in address bar of firefox browser.
toggle 'browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs' to true (pre 1.5; post v1.5, search Advanced Options )
then middle mouse click on each youtubified search link
click on the videos, bookmark, make into playlists, enjoy..
Alternative Content Discovery:Blogdigger, WebJay Trouble Viewing Videos? You need some Codecs: Matroska Pack (good), free-codecs (works, but it may have a Trojan) Need to convert Media format X to media format Y? Use Mediacoder its a freeware media swiss army knife, that is supposedly open source (its on sourceforge, huh?). Need to convert video formats that Mediacoder doesn't? Use AVS Convert , I own a copy myself, and it lets me do stuff with Quicktimes and WMV's that neither Microsoft nor Apple will permit me (note the site looks kinda cheap, but the program isn't. My most favorite rhapsody playlist:Smooth And Punchy Playlist My most favorite bands (and most played): Level 42 (r), Nik Kershaw, Cock Robin, Double (not played, on my wishlist), etc. My most favorite years (musically):1978 (r), pretty much any year from 1976 to 1989 My most favorite movie (note: works, and could be made on a low budget):Brainstorm Most Favorite Music Video (5/12/07):Brinsley Schwarz - Surrender to The Rhythm..
Why is this page so huge: Google can cache it all, audience is broadband users, I use less than 50% of my quota per month. Your most favorite rhapsody playlist:The Brian Eno Playlist Big application wish: SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! PRESET EXPORT, so I can share with you some of my killer rooms.
Cool way other than Chann3lz for listening to audio.
Bag 'O' Tricks Directory lists tips/tricks and reminders and other stuff I would love to clog my header with.
* - Wikipedia is edited by anarchy, don't use for christian inspiration. Christian Bahai is a oxymoron BTW. *! - I use Zonealarm Pro, which is what that flash demo is demonstrating, ZoneAlarm costs about fifty dollars a
year with updates, but is well worth it, it also comes with spyware weeding software, so there is no need for an application like "Ad-Aware",
"Spybot Search & Destroy" or "Spyware Doctor".
Companies/Organizations I Currently Consider Evil or Stupid:
Why?: Claims to save time and accelerate processing
(12/31/06 9:58 PM): I'm feeling better, I got a laundry list of foods I can eat, like Saltine Crackers, Jello, etc.. It's snowed a
lot up here in Los Alamos.. I think this is true for every place in New Mexico.. If Santa Fe's getting 26 inches on their
ski-slope, sounds fantastic, we got about that much in all of Los Alamos.. I wa sick for much of it, but I got to watch it fall
from my bedroom window. Hanging from the eaves are hundreds of ice stalactites.. My girlfriend who rooms in the same house, says
they look like the teeth of some gnarly creature.. It reminds me of some "Yes(M)_"
cover art. We started off our New Years celebration watching some "House of Mirth__"..
And we got extremely bored, or at least I was dosing off.. So she decided to pull out the Peter Gabriel(M)_
(the one he did with Paula Cole, Secret World Live?).. Now she wants me to dig up Paula Cole(M)_
albums from Rhapsody.. As a pun on her popular hit, "where has Paula Cole(w)__
gone?".
I'll have to get a video of these ice creations, and put them up here.. I can't take pictures until I get that
Panasonic.. This
is the camera I've been looking at..
(12/31/06 4:24 PM):
Spent the past week entertaining my girlfriend's parents and
my brother from Malibu. We had a lot of fun and ate plenty of good food. I then contracted some form of Stomach Flu which left me
incompacitated for the past two days.. I'm still recovering.. I got snow on my Olympus C-750 (after taking a few pictures in snow
shoes around Pajarito Ski Hill) it at first started making a high pitched "whirring" noise along with an inability to
expand/contract the lens, then as it dried up that went away. However the camera is unuseable for another reason, Olympus put in
insignificant sensors to determine if the memory card door was open.. It's features like this I think manaufacturers intentionally
put into their products to reduce their longevity. This malfunction, that the card door is always open shown as open, doesn't seem
to be resolving at all..
Now I'm serriously thinking about not buying another Olympus product in the future.. Manufacturers that
have stupid ideas/schemes should be punished for them.. In fact I'm looking at a 12x zoom, Panasonic camera with 6 Megapixel and a
special 16:9 848x480 MPEG4 movie mode, Image stabilization and similar focal distances as that of my Olympus, with an easier
menuing system, at a competitive price.. It has all the benefits (it seems) of the Olympus brand of point-and-shoot high-end
variety without the terrible MJPEG video compression used in movie modes, such as my failing C-750.. I wonder if panasonic has a
trade-in rebate.. Anyhow, I see that at Best Buy and other retailers, the panasonic's sold out.. I wonder what affect this is
having on Olympus perception of quality. I have said before I will never buy a product from CASIO ever again, I don't care how good
their cameras are, I know how they sell products, how they try to avoid future products competing with previous lines by making
things significantly different to discourage the devaluing of stock.. In other words, Casio is friendly to those who stock their
product, not to the consumer.. Nate bought a Casio camera, but I have no problems with Exlim, they are nice simplicity, but I need
something more in a camera.. And besides the Casio Exlim's are expensive.. You are paying more for the size of the camera..
On
another note, I found a panasonic portable CD controller in my father's car while trying to locate the YP-T9, which I had thought I
had lost, I found it too. What is newsworthy here, is that both devices are about the same size, and I found each on either side of
the emergency brake in a Hyundai Elantra. So if you are missing some little gadget like this and you think you lost it in your
car, and your car just happens to be a Hyundai Elantra, try looking in that crevice between the seats.. Actually I could say this
about any device being lost in any car, but it was funny the coincidence that two similarly sized devices, one obviously of a
previous car owner (as we bought ours used), should be found in roughly the same location, and so easily overlooked.
Furthermore if you are looking for buried treasure...
(12/23/06 3:34 PM): I was looking for information on the Sansa M230, which I already have, so I could be sure about giving it to
another. The one who I wanted it for, or was giving it to, in this case, I was wondering if it had enough features and support that
they would find it useful.. Anyhow, in the process of looking it up I found a review on Cnet given by none other than James Kim(w)__,
the member of Cnet that had died in the wilderness of Oregon earlier this month (or was it last).. It's a little spooky to watch but it's
informative..
(12/23/06 11:13 AM): You should probably get quite a bit of Music Videos out of this Tubified Playlist (thinking about
puting them on the T9).. I was looking at a few, including Lucy Lawless (aka Xena Princess Warrior) singing the other half od Kenny
Loggins' "Whenever I call You Friend" (I don't think stevie nicks would be able to sing it anymore)..
(12/23/06 10:36 AM): This is a hot video from Concrete Blonde. I mean Joey.. Heard the song a billion
times, but never saw the video..
(12/23/06 10:22 AM): I found out about 4
Strings(M)_,
oddly enough from my Dance Dnce Revolution (DDR) games, anyhow, this is a really cool video from them.. I was so sick of the music I never
bothered to check up on the music video.
(12/23/06 12:26 AM): I was on one of the servers, I think FMJ, and I saw the dark clan was atop a roof.. And I wondered how people
are doing this.. Well I found this video on YouTube...
Strange hack..
(12/23/06 12:11 AM): I got kicked off Tactical Gamer because I had held the other team fighter ship in our hanger, so it wouldn't
spawn in theirs.. When we lost, the TG losers kicked me off claiming it was because I was taking part in combat. Their server BTW
is a 8086 running on a 100 baud modem.. They used to have a nice server, but now it sucks and its slow.. Well if they like having
the ability to kick people and that makes them feel all nice and wonderful, fine.. I have the ability to blog about it.. I don't
like tactical gamer anyhow, I only play it because Nathan likes it.. It used to be cool because you were forced to play BF2
unranked on it.. But now there really isn't anything that sets it apart..
(12/21/06 7:48 PM): Our christmas guests are due to arrive tommorow, my girlfriend's parents and my brother and his wife (from
Minnesota and Claifornia) respectively.. My girlfriend's parents got caught up in that Denver mess.. She complained that the
airline didn't do anything to fix the problem.. I told her that the airlines are not in the best of shape after the mess and
hysteria that was left after 9/11.. But I agree, it's not the thing to do, send people to Phoenix instead of Colorado (just because
the planes can't land there).. I don't think the airline was going to take them back to Colorado.. Anyhow, maybe I got the story
wrong.. Anyhow. Hollidays.. Sheesh..
I got Rhapsody Online workin on my laptop, which already has Listen's Rhapsody (2.0)
installed.. I don't have Rhapsody ToGo installed, but I found out that the Rhapsody ToGO and Rhapsody Online login/password is
incompatible with the login and password of "Listen's Rhapsody".. It would be nice to get these login/passwords consolidated, but
they are different offerings.. One is classified under "Listen Rhapsody" and the other as "Real Rhapsody". "Real Rhapsody" is
Rhapsody Online, Rhapsody Radio, and Rhapsody ToGO.. And Listen is just the older direct method, which I can use to generate rpl
files.. I think the ID's stored in the rpl files can be used to call tracks via a URL on Rhapsody Online. The interesting thing is
playlists can be passed around as URL's and those URL's contain the database id's of the tracks.. So I could probably generate rpl
files from urls on Rhapsody Online, and vice versa. Bu tI wish it was eaiser to just bring arbitrary playlists into Rhapsody.. So I
can import playlists from some other place.. The advantage of the RPL files, that I can't get from the Rhapsody Online URL's, is
that the RPL's not only store the database id's, they store the artist name, song name, and album name. SO the rpl files can be
exported to playlists.. I think Real doesn't want this because they don't want their consumers to be jumping ship to iTunes and
taking their playlists with them.. But I hate walled gardens myself.. I don't think this is the way to deal with your consumers,
if they are going to do it, they will do it the hard way or find some other way.. Worse yet, they might (lord forbid) export all
the database id's and correlate them to songs, then create a tool that encodes and extracts playlists knowing the id/song
correlation.. The only reason I have the "Listen" rhapsody is so I can create rpl's.. I then have some code that converts rpl's to
youtube searches, so I can go looking for music videos on Rhapsody, which is very useful.. But I have other methods of searching
youtube, this is just one method.. Given that youtube is a video site, and that youtube has no way to determine what is illegal and
legal content, that is reliable, and that YouTube was not designed to be a music video site, it allows people to place music videos
there illegally but yotube is legally allowed to keep it until the copyright holder wants it taken down. I have no problem with
this, it allows bootlegged videos to surface.. I've never seen soo much of Split Enz(M)_
and ELO, before YouTube... After, I hae a new found interest in Split Enz, in particular.. I'm finding that "History Never Repeats"
album to be highly inadequate.. It was Split Enz's best hits, but it wasn't Split Enz best.. I don't see anything from Woodface on
that album.. I don't see songs I'm finding on youtube.. I mean, I've never seen Tim Finn so alive and young before.. The "History
Never Repeats" album doesn't tell you a dang thing about the group that makes sense, it's all internal information.. Like the point
behind "I see red", that the community around Split Enz scoffed at them as a silly band or something.. If I was was in New Zealand,
it would probably make sense to me, or I would probably recall such an incident, but these guys like Neil Finn and Tim, live in
their own little worlds and don't realize that people don't who they are.. They are still pretty much unknown.. I mean, really
unknown.. There are more people who know who Sheryl Crow is, and Sheryl doesn't even have a percentile the song writing capability
of the Finn brothers.. Example: Dirty
Creature (yt), Six
Months in Leaky Boat (yt), One
Step Ahead (yt), I
Got You (yt), Straight
Old Line (yt), and the ever popular Crowded
House Tune "Don't Dream It's Over" (yt).. Now You've heard that song, but you still probably don't know who the heck Neil Finn(M)_
is.. He's Tim Finn's(M)_
younger brother.. Tim Finn is the lead singer of Split Enz, and then was handed to Neil, Split Enz temporarily broke up, and Neil
formed Crowded House, now he's this popular songwriter, but still relatively unpopular.. Splie Enz was doing some wild outlandish
music which you could only really compare to Genesis, maybe, at the time.. I mean look at some old videos of Peter
Gabriel (yt)(video), from around the early 70s..
Then look at Split Enz.. Not much difference, the makeup, the wild lyrics, etc.. Then look at David Bowie in the early 80s.. I can
imagine that Split Enz had some influence on the 80s new wave, having come out the way it did.. Or maybe they didn't, but they were
weird and unusual before even Souxie
& the Banshees (yt) and "The Cure
(yt)" had begun the goth trend.. What was Split Enz doing in the early 70s with with bizarre behaviour and excessive
makeup? Where was Klaus Nomi(M)_
even?
See I would never have known all this stuff without You Tube.. So really I think the best thing to do now is not try and
create this little community within Rhapsody and keep people from sharing playlists.. But Rhapsody should be allowing people to
export their tastes and discover the musicians through youtube and whatever media a consumer has available to them.. Sure you lose
the ability to track the tastes of the consumer, or the interaction they have with other users within Rhapsody (it isn't like
Rhapsody has still yet replicated the "Sound Galaxy Satelite" community (a napster style music p2p service that went a bit beyond
napster to enhance people's taste in music by making music styles easier to find..
Whapsody comes close, but it treats
consumers as playlist creators, not music collectors.. That's why they haven't grown like they should, it's trying not to become a
music community, when really that's what it should be..
Maybe they figure they wouldn't be about to manage the bandwidth for
music delivery with the bandwidth required to manage all the messages people would post. they are managing playlists, as if that
weren't a lot of data to store away, well the tracks are stored in the database (probably) as numeric references, like a long
integer, so they are making efficient use and creation of those playlists.. Relying on blogger to create the community.. Maybe
there is room for a Rhapsody, Blogger, YouTube "mash up"(w)__..
Anyhow.. I'm getting wordy, sorry..
Oh what I was really going to tell you is that a playlist I sent myself from Rhapsody ToGo,
didn't play correctly in Rhapsody Online (maybe I have an old Rhapsody Online plugin), but I was able to get the same playlist to
play from my stored set of playlists.. The codes that Rhapsody ToGo emails are not one to one with the codes that Rhapsody Online
uses.. That's something to keep in mind..
Anyhow, it's good to see the "Online" and "ToGo" as one thing, that will add to my
ejoyment of the service. But I still need to determine what I'm going to do with my old rhapsody Direct Account..
(12/20/06 5:14 PM): I got this card in the mail from kodak about a trade-in, my old camera for one of theirs.. All I have to say is
"KODAK SUCKS AND WILL FOREVER SUCK AND SHALL SUCKETH UNTIL THEY ARE DEAD AND BURIED WITH THEIR ARROGANCE". Look at this, I did the calculations and this
is what I got for a camera I paid 500 dollars for, that you can't really get for less than 100 dollars even on ebay.. If you can,
it's a good deal:
Trade-In Estimate
Point & Shoot Olympus 4.0 to 4.9 Megapixel
CAMERA CONDITION: VERY GOOD CONDITION
OPTICAL ZOOM OR DIGITAL ZOOM: 10X Optical OR MORE
CAMERA FOCUS TYPE: AUTO FOCUS
EXTERNAL MEDIA INCLUDED WITH CAMERA: 8MB TO 31MB
FLASH: BUILT-IN FLASH
LCD DISPLAY BUILT IN: YES
ORIGINAL SOFTWARE INCLUDED: YES
BATTERY TYPE REQUIRED: Uses Standard AA or AAA Alakline Battery(s) - Not included
AC ADAPTER / CHARGER: NOT INCLUDED
INSTRUCTIONS / OWNERS MANUAL: INCLUDED
ORIGINAL CABLES AND/OR DOCK: ALL ORIGINAL CABLES and/or IS INCLUDED
PC CONNECTIVITY: USB and/or FIREWIRE
BLUETOOTH CAPABLE: NO
EXTERNAL TELEPHOTO CONVERTERS / LENSES: NONE
Estimated Trade-in Value:
(includes a Prepaid shipping label) $47.79
Now I was just taking midnight shots last night with this Olympus C-750.. It lasts about 3 hours on four double-a's.. It's got 10x,
and 4 megapixel, pretty low, but not so bad considering my last camera was 1 megapixel.. When the cameras reach 16 megapixels,
that's when I will be compelled to purchase the next camera.. See in Two Dimensions, resolutions have to increase exponentially in
pixel count to equate to really be an upgrade. So if I get a 8 megapixel camera, that's only about 50% more pixels in the width and
height, that is not twice the resolution of a 4 megapixel camera.. twice is 16 megapixels which yields 100% more pixels in the width
and height.. So instead of 2000x2000 which is what 4 megapixel is, it's 4000x4000.. But 8 megapixel is around 4000x2000 or
~3000x2666 .. It's Evil 666, Evil!! No just kidding.. But anyhow, Kodak hasn't made a single worthwhile digital camera, I've
witnessed, in the years they've tried, and they are not going to start making money off me by selling mine, no sirreee.. Kodak has
another thing coming if they think they can get me to tradein for one of their novice-crap-cams.
Just for the heck of it I did an unreal estimation on a top of the line virtual cannon camera, this would probably be the best
yielding trade-in.. Let me see..
Trade-In Estimate
Point & Shoot Canon 8.0 Megapixels and Above Megapixel
CAMERA CONDITION: VERY GOOD CONDITION
OPTICAL ZOOM OR DIGITAL ZOOM: 10X Optical OR MORE
CAMERA FOCUS TYPE: AUTO FOCUS with MANUAL FOCUS OPTION
EXTERNAL MEDIA INCLUDED WITH CAMERA: 2GB TO 4GB
FLASH: EXTERNAL FLASH COMPATIBLE - HOTSHOE MOUNT
LCD DISPLAY BUILT IN: YES
ORIGINAL SOFTWARE INCLUDED: YES
BATTERY TYPE REQUIRED: Uses Standard AA or AAA Alakline Battery(s) - Not included
AC ADAPTER / CHARGER: INCLUDED
INSTRUCTIONS / OWNERS MANUAL: INCLUDED
ORIGINAL CABLES AND/OR DOCK: ALL ORIGINAL CABLES and/or IS INCLUDED
PC CONNECTIVITY: USB and/or FIREWIRE
BLUETOOTH CAPABLE: YES
EXTERNAL TELEPHOTO CONVERTERS / LENSES: 1
Estimated Trade-in Value:
(includes a Prepaid shipping label) $180.48
Screw Kodak, just send me your camera and I will sell it on ebay and give you 50% of the value, how's that.. Or maybe you could
sell it yourself and get all the value.. Kodak is trying to make money off tech-ignorant people.. Like your elderly mother or
father.. But hey if it works, it works..
(12/20/06 2:20 PM): The band Nathan introduced me to a couple of years ago, "The Knife(w)__",
whose name I had forgotten for such a long time, because they had removed their content from the Internet, no lyric sites evidently
carry unsigned bands, so I couldn't even located them in a lyrics search. There was one video I recalled with some kids skateboarding and portions of the video shows
flying birds and such, and I only recalled a portion of the lyrics that I thought would allow me to find them on google, but to
make a long story short, I couldn't find them.. I happened upon them a second time (just to scratch the itch in my brain) while
listening to "Net@Nite" or whatever that show is with Amber Mcarthur and Leo Laporte.. They got on the topic of swedish bands, and
she mentioned she liked "The Knife", and a neuron in my brain popped up and screamed "That's it!". Oh yeah, those gals..
Nathan
happened upon them, I guess listening to a UK radio station at work via realaudio and a web page.. These days his company won't let
them access anything, I guess seeing it is distraction or something.. Maybe they are afraid people will blog about how much they
suck or something.. Anyhow.. He got into it because he thought they sounded like a new wave band, for one song.. I don't recall the
songs name but it's probably floating around.. The stuff on their site is now more professionally done videos, but I actually prefer
the kichey old 80's style videos they made..
Leo said they sound like "Bjork".. Yeah a little bit, I would place them at
somewhere between Bjork and "Til Tuesday" girl, what's her name, "The Knife" is pretty original.. One band I wish was on Rhapsody,
but no loss that they are not.. In fact it's best for new bands not to sign on with services like Rhapsody because their music is
not widely distributed, that means you are not going to find someone distributing it on a file sharing network.. The more popular
your band is, the more you need to go for a rhapsody style distribution model, but the less popular, the more you need top just
sell your stuff online or in CD, probably at a performance venue.. I bought one of Tally Hall's CD's, when they released their
first, and got a T-shirt with it.. But I haven't bought anything else of theirs, I would get another CD, but I really got the CD
for the song "Banana
Man__"
("Do you want a banana, this banana for you", VIDEO), which
was a song on par with Fish Heads(w)__
(video) and heck of a lot more interesting.
(12/18/06 9:40 PM): Boy Epinions__
is getting hammered, either by consumers or manufacturers in china with hordes of bot-nets.. But it's getting hammered..
(12/18/06 10:55 AM): Good group: "The Divine Comedy".. I heard a song on Rhapsody's Absinthe Radio station.. Unfortunately there is
no music on rhapsody otherwise from this group.. It looks like one guy's work as the photo on the profile is of one guy.. Sounds
like Echo & The Bunnymen mixed with the Smiths..
(12/17/06 7:43 PM): The stupid Rhapsody To Go (anytime I said Rhapsody Online, I meant ToGo, sorry), Rhapsody ToGo, when it
searches my Samsung YP-T9 for songs, it doesn't know how to discern videos from songs, so it counts up all the music videos, then
says "your player is empty", because I haven't put any songs on it.. This is "Real" Media, not Samsung's, fault.. Maybe I need to
download the newest revision of Rhapsody ToGo.. Anyhow, it's quite annoying.. That and when licenses fail, usually before the end
of the month, but it may be sync'd to when I purchased my Rhapsody ToGo membership.. It's awfully a stupid way of licensing the
files.. They really should offer a way for one to determine when their licenses will fail.. Maybe I'm not syncing the players up
right, but it really should be more obvious when the music licenses are going to expire.. Oh well..
(12/17/06 4:35 PM): My girlfriend revealed to me that a 19 year old kid, I guess a male kid, wrote Eragon.. Then she follows it
with "Can you believe that?".. I didn't say it, but I was thinking "Yes, I can".. There wasn't much depth to it.. It felt like for
the first part of the movie like every story where some peasant gets access to some power, then everything in the world is out to
get him, his uncle dies.. Wait wait.. Where have I heard about this before. Star Wars!! A Peasant farmer, living with his uncle,
find a dragon (or C3PO and R2D2).. Well it felt like it was a rip off in a way.. But he didn't capture what made Star Wars special,
it was that Lucas had many stories going at once. This kid only has two stories going at once.. The enemy seeking vengence, and the
kid suiting up to fight.. I kinda felt like there could be a few more stories weaving around in this, like if there had been a
couple of small children, which you really don't see anywhere in the movie.. Or if the fellow dragon rider had had something else
going on.. It's just that the characters had a one dimensional feeling to them, like a straight arrow and their whole life is about
running from something to something.. You don't get a feeling that they have hobbies, that they have interests, brothers, sisters,
families, etc.. There is no narrator.. There is some flying around here and there, some killing, some magic, but there isn't
enough to tell you how he learns the words, or why the dragon grew up so fast.. I can't tell if the book was longer or shorter..
The movie was in essence a summary of what might be better described in the book.. But it felt like the primary audience was 8 year
olds, not the science fiction and fantasy crowd which are 30 somethings like me.. Well I guess it is baby boomer children that is
the focus.. Kinda like Harry Potter.. But I enjoy Harry Potter, Harry Potter has a lot of depth and intertwining stories.. Harry
reminds me of the kind of writing you'd find with say Doctor Who, where there was so much you didn't know that was being spoon fed
to you in little bites here and there until you came to know.. It sort of felt like to me Eragon was a draft that hadn't been
reworked enough.. Maybe it was summarized to keep it on budget, but I feel like it's being sold to a niche crowd, mostly children..
(12/17/06 1:00 AM): I got a Samsung Lightscribe(w)__
DVD Writer recently, about the same time I got the Samsung player, for 50 dollars from Best Buy. It is pretty cool, however read
the fine print on how long it takes to print a label on a "lightscribe" disk.. I read that it takes anywhere between 20 and 30
minutes to etch a label (using some laser technique). Whereas it takes about 5 minutes to burn a 4 GIG DVD with that drive.. I
know one of these days they will have a color lightscribe, and it will be worth it, especially if some of the dyes allow for
metalic colors, but that's far in the future, 20 to 30 minutes is hardly worth waiting for.. I can print a label on my ink-jet for
my CD Stomper, in about a minute and have it on the CD in less than fifteen seconds.. Maybe if you are sending it to someone you
wish to impress, but other than that its too long a wait to get the label printed, unless you have multiple drives like 10 or 20 of
these..
(12/16/06 2:37 PM): What amazes me about Second Life(w)__
is just how bad the graphics are in it and people can still be so into it..
(12/16/06 2:26 PM): You know, voices hardly ever age. What these aging musicians need are motion suits and virtual counterparts..
Hold concerts in some place like Second
Life__,
and have them replayed every now and then.. I was thinking, I wonder if Adam Ant could make a comeback, I guess I've heard he's an
insane drunk hanging out in pubs in egland these days.. Well.. I think he has a potential of a comeback, but my sister-in-law says
it is the baby boomers who have all the money.. Adam Ant wasn't really a Baby Boomer staple, he was more a Generation X'er (my
generation). Or maybe it was the "Me" Generation.. Somewhere between me and my eldest brother, who claims he is on the tail end of
the baby boomers (1961(w)__).
(12/16/06 2:06 PM): I don't have a way to link to this, but there is a bookmarklet to zap plugins__
(or rather zap embedded content, such as flash content, I use it a lot when I come to sites where the flash slows down my browser,
especially on my laptop). What you do with these bookmarklets is drag and drop them on your bookmark toolbar, so you can click on
easily.. Bookmarklets are like 30% of the functionality that I glean from using firefox.. Like "google site search" will perform a
site search on whatever site you are on, and the one I use also does a keyword search at the same time.. It's basically like puting
a google site search on the website, and clicking it.. But this way you don't have to wait for the web developer of the site to add
it.. You can just invoke it from a bookmarklet on the website.. It's greeat if you are trying to look for something on a website
that the terrible interface is not giving you access to.. It's for his reason, and multi-tabbing and search engines, that some
sites use javascript to hide portions of their site, so this technique doesn't give you everything, but for sites (usually not
forums) that are relatively simple (such as mine), it makes looking for stuff relatively easily..
Some sites get around the
use of bookmarklets like "site search" by using a PHP (or cgi) script to firewall the pages, so that every page uses a random code
keyed to a variable in the database that keeps track of where you are in the website.. This is to allow them to track your usage
and keep you from accessing areas without jumping through hoops and over hurdles that they believe will make you more successful or
exploit some utilization in their (site designers) mind is going impress you or their client.. I could use this technique, but it
also makes pages slow.. I am preprocessing the content.. Everytime I add double square brackets to a word, like [ [ Rupert Murdoch
] ] , I have some internal php script code that turns that into a link to wikipedia.. Actually I have an ambiguity, I have angle
bracket tags for wikipedia too, beacuse everything filters through the angle bracket filter.. All it does is take anything that
looks like a tag and checks to see if it is one of my tags, if not it leaves it alone, if so, it replaces the tag with a link.. I
know I could do this in javascript, but javascript relies on your readers to have javascript on their web client, so to make this
page visible on other computers, I preprocess it in PHP before serving up the content.. Anyhow..
(12/16/06 1:36 PM): I'm watching "Sowing the Seeds of love" (tears for Fears) right now.. I'm amazed how impressed I was with that
video an all the imagery is photographed and layered. There was no 3D graphics anywhere in it, it was just layered movies with
transparency.. Makes me wonder how much that style of video still works.. Some people say 80s videos were corny or stupid, but
I'm still impressed with how much ideas they have and how much they were willing to take chances to get people interested in
watching.. But there were a lot of ones that sucked too (over relying on keyed video effects, and early computer graphics). Weird Al(w)__
(who said recently on the Best Buy podcast that he once knew how to play Elton John's entire yellow brick road on accordian,
something I would like to hear) once had a show on MTV called Music Video
Cliches__,
where he would challenge people to spot the music video cliches, like street gangs dancing (I think that was michael jacksons
trademark). I saw a Tears for Fears video cliche just now, in "everybody wants to rule the world" the part when the motorcycles
are riding out from behind Curt Smith (the one who looks like Donny Osmond), this visual cliche was used in QuarterFlash's "Harden
My Heart" I think, but I think Quarterflash did it first. I'm probably wrong, it's pretty easy to say "it will be great we will
just get a bunch of bikers riding around in the video that will catch people's eyes". There is so much stuff you can do with video
context..
(12/16/06 10:54 AM): Maybe after all the poor sales that Sony has been having, and after the Sony Rootkit scare (in their search
for DRM for standard CD's), and their dwindling sales in the music industry, possibly the death of the CEO sometime in the recent
past, maybe its a domino effect of all their problems that is causing the PS3 to be released un such an unreliable state and why
there is a shortage of PS3's.. They probably released it too early and are just trying to save face by holding back the
distribution.. But I think the people perpetuating the rumors either want to be heard, or are doing it to make people hysterical..
There is really nothing that is worth a PS3, I've seen showroom models of it and it's graphics reminded me of a Pentium3 800Mhz
with a ATI graphics card. I think Sony is slowly dieing and they can no longer really compete with Microsoft.. And Nintendo, is in
the same boat, but they are at least relying on good design skills to get them through this one. What some people want is the
Blu-Ray disk on the playstation, which costs more (I think) than the PS3 does.. Maybe someone should release a video game machine
with a HD DVD player on it.. Anyhow, I get all my video game enoyment from 2142.. I'm not bored enough of it to want another, as
there is no others that can compare to that experience.. BTW, I made Silver Lieutenant last night.. 130 more points and I make
Gold.. I've got all the upgrades I want as field upgrades, but it will take about 5 more ranks before I get those things
permanently.. I like the ranking system on 2142 better as you can really jump in rank if you are a commander.. That always
encourages people to be commander, something that was sometimes a problem on BF2. What is scary is I can remember everything about
every version of Battlefield from every release and have a sort of familiar feeling about the warfare of each game I played on
BF1942, the upgrades, BF1942 mods, Vietnam, BF2. Now it's 2142.. It's the same thing over again, but they got it right this time..
(12/15/06 9:14 PM): I saw Eragon today, I was the first in Los Alamos to buy a ticket, and I was the first to exit the theatre,
well second to my girlfriend.. And I like the idea... It's an interesting story, but it needs more depth.. I mean it wasn't as keen
and delicious a story as say my all time favorite "Shawshank Redemption". My girlfriend however hates it when I have opinions about
movies.. She likes to leave the theatre satisfied.. I'm pretty hard to satisfy.. It felt short, like this was the beginning or the
resurrection of the Weekend Serial, like Lone Ranger and Tonto movies.. Maybe a TV serial set in a movie environment.. But my
girlfriend who is a librarian says she thinks that was it, that that movie was the whole thing.. It doesn't feel right, I mean, it
felt like something was missing, like this was a extrapolated "sell" on an even bigger movie concept, or a proposition of another
set of movies with dragons at the center, and magic, and such.. I believe it would be a good thing.. If the author is dead, which
my girlfriend didn't answer me on (I haven't done research), that would be a shame.. Maybe the books she read were designed to be
read as movies, like some authors do.. I think if the author is still alive, I would suggest consulting with multiplayer video
gamers and board gamers (the kind that play DnD games). And also to maybe read a ton of good books, maybe look for storylines that
are keen and inspiring.. To satisfy me, I have to be ripped away from reality enough to not know where I am.. It's been a long time
since a movie has done that to me.. But videogames do that to me all the time..
(12/15/06 3:47 PM): Nope, you can't load SWF files into the player.. Well, I had hoped to put a flash movie in there, but this is
not an option.. Maybe someone will write a hack that will let you do this..
(12/15/06 3:04 PM): This is so cool.. The SVI format on the Samsung YP-T9 is really what you expect, it is the AVI format that
Windows uses.. Just rename the files AVI and you can play them on your machine.. This is what I read in the AVI or um SVI file,
after viewing it in Windows Media player.. The Video Codec is "3ivx D4 Video Decoder".. I think 3IVX is a open source video
format.. The resolution of a normal video is 208x176.. Aspect Ratio: 13:11.. I think TV is 1.2:1, which pretty close.. HD is
something like 1.6:1 . Anyhow... Audio Codec is MP3.. So good maybe I convert videos directly to the format without Samsung's
Media Converter.. I'm backing up from the player to a drive on my machine accessing the device as a drive.. It's rather slow on
load of the folder, but it's doable..
(12/15/06 3:52 AM): The color display on the YP-T9 is 18 bit, not 16-bit like the Sansa E250.. That is 256,000 colors instead of
65,000 colors..
Though for video playback on a fresh charge is 6 hours, for video.. I was wrong about how long it would last, I
was thinking something like ten hours.. I wonder if there is a bettery mode where I could provide power to the USB port and it could
be made to last longer.. Anyhow, 6 hours is fine, that's enough time to show three movies, though the player could store about 6 90
minute movies, plus a 40 minute video..
(12/15/06 3:51 AM): Whoa, it looks like you can load SWF files into the player.. I f this is the case you can put in flash
animations and flash games.. That would be pretty cool, I oughta try that tommorow..
(12/15/06 3:33 AM): Samsung has better specs on the YP-T9,
than anyone.. I was right that the player has 220 by 180 resolution, actually it is 220x176, but in video playback mode twelve
lines are not used, so you get 208x176 instead of 220x176.. But I was right about the video format, the SVI format is MPEG4.. The
sansa E250 uses MJPEG, which is like 10 to 1 compression.. MJPEG is great as a source format, but not as a distribution format, in
other words I would rather shoot a video in MJPEG than to give it to my friends in that format.. MJPEG is pretty braindead in
implementation, it is just a concatenation of JPEG'd frames..
(12/15/06 3:00 AM): I feel really stupid now.. I checked out CNET's review of the Samsung
YP-T9, and they have a somewhat better review.. They said that the FM radio can be recorded at up to 192Kbps, which is really
good!! That means if you lack mp3's you can rip from the radio music to populate the player.. But I had given in my Amazon review
that even though the player doesn't have an external input for audio, you can use a FM transmitter.. And having the top bit rate be
192Kbps, is the icing on the cake..
I had believed that the Sansa E250 was MJPEG, I was correct, it uses a 15fps MJPEG
compression.. I don't know what the Samsung uses, but MJPEG can eat up space on a player.. I have a camera that has 256 MB of
memory, and 10 minutes of 320x240 video will eat up the full memory of the camera easily.. The YP-T9 has to be using some kind of
MPEG compression.. Anyhow the CNET review was claiming that he processor is slow on the YP-T9, but actually I can't tell.. I don't
know where they are getting their facts from, but it seems rather fast to me..
(12/15/06 2:39 AM): Beware of TigerDirect.com__,
they are having a 72 HOUR sale, but most of the items I checked out have terrible reviews, like the Polaroid 8MP camera
(i832), or the Kodak Camera (C433), and the Video Capture device for 24 dollars.. They all had bad reviews.. So don't give into
this 72 Hour sale, they are just trimming fat..
This is a little bit better, I still like the effect that it's Japanese guys
showing this stuff off.. But then again it is a Japanese product..
Maybe I will do another video showing off the Video
Encoder..
(12/10/06 7:54 PM): It's best to do a search for T9
(yt) on Youtube.. Not YP-T9.. Nobody but a two guys, me and this unbox guy, are calling it the YP-T9.. Well Whatever, it
seems the big fans are Japanese kids.. Maybe it is not as qidespread as I thought, maybe I'm lucky to get an early one.. BTW, the
fact that the inerface is flash based is a sign of the quality of CPU this player has, the Sansa E250 uses color icons which don't
impress me as much..
But yeah, the Flash content could be animations.. But it feels like a flash animation, it doesn't feel
like canned animations.. But then again it could be animations because the interface is monochromatic.. Okay.. Maybe.. It feels
more solid and well thought compared to the Sansa E250.. BTW, I've been forgetting the model number of the Sansa, I only had it for
a day, but when I downloaded the video from the player and looked at it, the resolution of the demo video was 160x120.. This may be
why I thought it was crappy.. I may not know what the real resolution of the Sansa is, but I'd think if you want to show off the
capabilities, you'd put a few high wuality videos in it like Samsung did, an animation and an advertisement, along with a musical
demonstration.. Shortly after I was stuffing music videos ripped from YT on it.. It's hot stuff..
(12/10/06 7:14 PM): All I'm finding in the Sunday inserts, is shops selling Sansa Video Players.. As I said when I got that player
it was complete crap, I would not get those Sansa Video-Screen Music players.. They are only Samsung YP-T9__
Wannabes.. That Sansa E250__
Series is complete Bull$%^$%, I would not even waste a dime on that player, even if the one I got had worked for me, the conversion
software, and the controls on the player, felt really weak, and really did not do the job, it seemed.. I looked at the video format
for the Sansa's and it is something like 160x120 MJPEG, not MPEG-4, or anything related.. The Samsung YP-T9 seems to use a MPEG
related video compression.. Why is MJPEG weak? The compression is 10 to 1 at most, not 100 to 1 like MPEG is.. So you can't really
get a whole lot of good video time out of it.. It's not 240x180 like the Samsung YP-T9.. It's also a frame rate like 10fps, instead
of 15fps like the Samsung. 30fps is fantastic, but 15 fps is sufficient to watch movies, and if you like YouTube, the Samsung YP-T9
is on par with YouTube quality video. But what really sucks about the Sansa E250's is the little circle in the middle of the case
that is supposed to make dialing through menus, is never used for obvious things like radio dial, it's used as a volume control.. I
beg people to try looking at a samsung YP-T9 and a Sansa E250, and compare the features, and you will realize how much a farce the
recent advertisement blitz from Sansa in all the inserts from Target, Wal-Mart, etc. is to try to get rid of this stock as fast as
possible, because the players totally suck!! Even their names are the same almost, But I'm not fooled, SanDisk__
makes disks/memory (I think they got into the market selling a high density floppy disk in the early 90s), Samsung__
makes everything (been around for a long time, but haven't considered it to be up to par with Sony until recently).. Now the Sansa
M230, is perfectly fine, I've got two of those and they are fantastic, but the Video Player variety of players from Sansa (not
Samsung) are complete wastes of money, you will be returning them to the store the minute you get them.. Unless you are so lost
with computers and electronics, in that case let someone else decide, and preferably nobody in the store.. The guys at my Best Buy
were totally clueless about the players and kept directing me to the plexi-glass box with Creative Zen's and Apple iPod's, selling
for tens to hundreds more than the Samsung YP-T9..
(12/09/06 3:37 PM):
I'm surprised, YouTube finally got my YP-T9 Demo up.. This is a demonstration
of the handy little player I purcahsed from Best Buy for 139 dollars.. I think this is the only place you can buy them, I haven't
been able to locate it anywhere else.. Incidently, I used a Olympus C-750 camera (10X optical, 4 Megapixel, I purcahsed for 500
dollars about 3 years ago, if you can still get it, it's pretty good) in Super Macro Mode to make this video, which is MJPEG
format.. Which sucks for demostrating the capabilities of this player, as it is more dynamic in sound quality.. But the camera can
focus on stuff withing a quarter of a inch in front of the lens, so it was suitable for getting all the video.. I'm looking at a
video camera that has this capability, but my girlfriend wants me to get a higher resolution camera so I will give here my old
Olympus.. I'm thinking about it.. Anyhow, she also likes my "Pure Digital" One Shot Video Camera from Target, because it is ultra
simple, just hit the record button, to record, the play to play, and the delete to delete..
(12/06/06 5:45 PM): Man Joomla is bloatware.. How much crap do you want to put into a CMS, this thing needs Beano.
(12/06/06 7:46 PM): Liam Lynch's Happy Song.. This is the
best fan-vid I've seen on YouTube..
(12/06/06 6:00 PM): Found this site, with a list
rating free webhosts with php (if you can imagine that). I was really looking for PHP scripts that assess quality of
webhosting, I really want to nail Alentus.. I'm thinking about writing my own, but it would be cool if there was one that would
test things like the type of server, the throughput between several servers, port tests, download tests, interaction, repeated
downloads, access times, database response times, and so on.. It would be a good way to sizeup the web hosting solutions.. Alentus
has been somewhat of a nightmare, for me.. It also seems their webhosting is slower, like they don't seem to be caching output, or
their Internet connection is sorry.. I just realized now that I can't even rename directories.. Their control panel doesn't offer
any site management controls, like you can't rename stuff, archive, or move directories around.. A complete nightmare for a web
administrator..
I even had to add my own password protection to scripts in directories because IIS, or Alentus sorry
sysadmins, don't support UNIX style file protection.. I can't just say "chmod 000" a directory, I have to password protect it, or
move it out of document root.. IIS must die!!
(12/05/06 6:51 PM): Note that they limit you to
75GB bandwidth per month, they charge 350 dollars a month.. This is 150 times what I'm paying for my service with DH2.. I guess
they can't afford to get more leased lines, I think a T1 is about 300 dollars a month, and that is unlimited bandwidth per month,
you could do that with you rlocal telephone company.. These guys are cheap, quality wise..
And 75 GB in terms of hours is,
(use my bandwidth calculator, pop in 750 Kilobytes per second, and look for DVD's, it's about 20 dvd's.. That's about a day of
continuous data downloads, I can download about 4 gigs every 3 hoursi, from experience.. )
(12/05/06 6:08 PM): Why the heck are people using Microsoft webservers in the first place, check this one out..
I contacted the
guys at Alentus, trying to solve a smaller problem of protecting a directory with phpMyAdmin in it..
He emailed me, he did not
pass email back through my boss as I requested, obviously this is not something they want the purchasing client to know.. There is
no reason that they have to use IIS is there, as far as I know you can run PHP on apache just the same as IIS.. And Apache on
Windows supports CHMOD.. Why the heck does IIS demand that all files stored on a web server be accessible to all users? Doesn't
this mean that if you have your logins and passwords stored in a file, and say the IIS forgets to preprocess the file, the file
gets displayed with logins/passwords?? Yes... I can't tell if this is a problem with IIS or a problem with Alentus.. Incompetant
sysadmins.. Hey they live in California, I'm sure there 100 dollars and hour is like minimum wage here..
Anyhow, here is
the letter I got from Alentus..
Hello,
IIS does not support it, we wish it would but its not something we can change. If you let us know what folders you need writable
we can set that up for you.
Regards,
Bart (name changed to protect innocent)
Customer Service
Alentus Internet Services
-----------------------------------------
Original Inquiry
-----------------------------------------
EMAIL: Re: FW: Alentus Inquiry
BTW, why is chmod not supported on the Windows machines??
If I do a chmod 000 on a directory or file, the permissions remain 777..
I recognized that the servers response to this was that chmod is not a
recognized command.. So how am I able to protect directories?
(12/05/06 3:08 PM):
MICROSOFT PLEASE JUST DIE!! WE DON'T NEED YOUR TECHNOLOGY/SOLUTIONS!!
Sorry, I'm dealing with the
braindead Alentus.Com.. I hate Microsoft centric web hosting solutions like the
devil.. I wish for them to all just die, and let Linux dominate.. When NT Admins claim they are trying to protect your scripts from
their servers, it's then that they should tell you that they don't know how to configure NT/XP file permissions because it involves
associating priviledges with roles, then associating roles and permission roles for each directory, file.. In other words, you
can't really know what you are doing.. They probably also run all users as role equivalent of "nobody", so that the execution
environment is limited to working in certain directories.. When I experience limitations like this in a web hosting service,
especially when their tech support comes to a few usage policies, some FAQ's, documents on how to write in ASP (none for PHP), and
a tech-support-ticket system, and almost no tools for managing files, permissions, installing open source technologies like PHPNUke
and Joomla (like www.dh2.net sells for 50 dollars a year and has way more things accessible in their control panel).. Alentus even
goes on to say that if there is problems with your scripts, they will charge 100 dollars (probably more, consulting charge) to fix
your scripts.. That's just lame.. They are incompetant.. MAybe the "Clipart-People" on their site fool managers and executives, but
any web designer could cook up a facade like this in a day (having such well lit photos of people require a professional
photographer and some flash umbrellas, likely Alentus is running their service out of someone's office or home, and the servers are
probably at a co-location facility or several, fancy facades are for the stupid consumers who are easily won over happy faces.. They
offer enough of Microsoft's Plug&Pay technologies, to satisfy those wanting a standard environment that works for remote office
integration (the only reason my boss/client wants them), they suck for web hosting.. The only reason they are using Microsoft
products is to lock you into their service.. 1&1.com does this, but without using Microsoft products execlusively..
The ways
BRAINDEAD Internet companies try to make money off the computer ignorant consumers (my boss). It will change once the
managers/executives get wise, or die off.. Microsoft is dieing because it's consumer base no longer trusts them.. I don't trust
them, and will never.. No matter what they say.. Microsoft and Alentus might as well just quit and fire their employee base, these
organizations are not profitting anyone.. In the case of Microsoft, I use windows, but I do because of their success at locking me
into their operating system which is incompetant compared to Unix/Linux.. The last thing I want to do is go to a Microsoft centric
web hosting solution and submit myself to their lockin.. NOOOOOO!!! HELLL NOOO!!!!
But those who roll their eyes and say "jeez
just give them what they want, all I want is to get my work done", but I say to these idiots, you don't understand, you are dope
noses and you are not even high.. They have you hooked because your pain threshold is so low that you give in easily, paying for
anything that prevents you from understaing something about computers or technology.. I admit I do that sometimes but, people pay
when they haven't sufficient experience to solve their problems. Likely I have more experience than my boss.. I'm telling her,
let's go to some other Internet service. Something like www.dh2.net.. Some cheap, streamlined and fair web host.. Not something
like Alentus where there is a lot of hand holding and lots of lock-in.. I guess managers and executives must pay for their
ignorance.. The reality is we all are paying for their ignorance..
Alentus makes ten times, no actually about a hundred times,
as much money as www.dh2.net, for dedicated servers, see
this than DH2 makes for it's basic web service (go look at DH2's service plans,
5 gigs of disk space, 300 GB per month, that's a lot of bandwidth/storage for a web site.. Figure in, how much people are going to
be downloading more that 5 gigs from your site, and is your content more than that, how much do people see at any one time, how
many people are visiting your sites now.. Is your site bigger than 5 gigs, is your bandwidth greater than 300 gigs per month..
Then maybe you need a server.. No? Then why not buy a 50 dollar per year account with DH2, you will save, let me see, 5950
dollars.. But if you need a dedicated server, you should pay 6000 a year for that, Alentus CEO needs a new house!! ).. This might
be good if you were running a online multiuser game environment, but there is no telling what their uptime is like, or what their
throughput is like coming out of California.. I doubt htey have servers at Level-3, or are on a OC-3.. You could buy a Dual Core
per month for as much as they are charging for a dedicated server that is a Dual Core.. This service is milking baby boomers..
The important thing in web hosts is not the speed of your processors, the important thing is the speed of the Internet connection..
See the BUS of a standard 486 is faster than the connection you will have to the Internet, so you will never use the CPU bandwidth
of your machine, unless you are running "ray-tracers" on the machine.. You could use a Pentium Pro, and still be able to handle
thousands of users online.. I want these sysadmins to fess up and show how much these servers are being utilized, how much memory
badnwidth is being used, how much of an Internet connection the users get, etc.. I bet you will find that you are paying 600
dollars a month for a server that is utilizing less than 10% of its resources 24x7.. IT's more worthwhile to get a Pentium 4, and
have daily tape backups.. That's worth more than having a dual Xeon server.. Having multiple RAID drives will be more useful than
having multiple processors, because the more RAID drives you have, the faster the access to data on the drives, it's also possible
to make the drives fault tollerant by duplicating data across the drives, so if one fails the others can be referenced while the
one that failed is replaced with a new drive.. It's better to have multiple servers than to have multiple processor servers.. If
one server fails, the site is down until the server gets copied and moved to the new server.. See Alentus is just taking advantage
of their client's total ignorance about technology.. You just have to know what your customer wants, you don't have to know what
the customer needs..
Notice that the Google Mini search servers use Dual processor P3-1.26 GHZ machines, at 300 dollars a
month.. PEntium 3's, not Pentium 4's.. Not Dual Core Xeons.. P3's.. Because you don't need lots of processing power to run a web
server.. I'm running a web server right now on my P3-500 Laptop.. I use my Pentium D 2.8GHZ machine to play games, 2142 uses way
more resources than a web server does, to use a processor like a video game does with a web service, you would need 1000 people on
your server, and have them downloading podcasts.. I doubt that unless you are Leo Laporte, you haven't got that kind of
throughput.. You don't need a server at Alentus unless you can use all the bandwidth and disk space at www.dh2.net.. I challenge
you.. If you can use up all the bandwidth at dh2, then maybe you need a dedicated server.. The reason to have a dedicated server is
if you are a power user and want to configure custom services on the server.. Most executives don't know how to configure a server,
nor have the need to exploit a server in the way that someone (say me) could.. You practically either have to have a completely
hybrid (highly locked in) environment where none of your programs are open sourced.. Thus a good bit of corporate amaerica.. So
Alentus is selling servers to big companies with lots of money without a care for efficiency.. GO ALENTUS GO, MAKE A FORTUNE OFF
THESE STUPID CORPORATE ENTITIES, THEY DESERVE IT!!
BTW, I figure the reason why european web hosters are doing so well, more
bandwidth, more server utilization, purportional service plans (50 dollars a year for instance).. While the american web hosting
services (mainly the corporate-america web hosts) are centering on big everything, with less bandwidth. The web hosting is going
overseas because the telephone and cable companies are trying to limit people's connection throughput.. So in america you would pay
ten to 50 times more than in the UK or Germany, or Asia.. America's Internet connections suck..
BUT SLOW INTERNET CONNECTIONS
ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS, RIGHT?!!
(12/05/06 2:24 AM): Thank God, a podcast based on 2142.. I'll have
sweet dreams tonight.. BTW, this is the ONLY video game I play.. Aside from what I can get in Virtual Pinball and MAME
emulations..
(12/04/06 4:27 PM): It just hit me, this guy also lost his tongue.. He can't taste, smell, or see anything anymore.. No telling
what the fungus did to the nerves in his head, he probably can't even sense if there is something growing in the cavity that was
left behind.. He can chew food, he has a complete digestive system, teeth, saliva, and esophogus and such.. I heard once heard
about a guy on Oprah Winfrey(w)__
who ingested some sort of cleaner (to commit suicide), and lead to the removal of all but about 5 feet of intestine (no stomache),
which left him with a condition where he must eat every 15 minutes (imagine living your life on the stool 24x7, no Colon, no
Stomache, just one long esphogus from mouth to anus.. That I would think would be prone to all sorts of intestinal infections and a
very limited diet, he probably also has to eat a lot.. It's amazing what people will endure to avoid death.. Anyhow, I really can't
imagine having only ears and teeth, a face incomplete, and body, a brain atop.. He still has hair, he has facial hair, but not much
else.. It makes me sad to think about it, Dang I wish I could forget.. Sorry people...
(12/04/06 1:53 PM): Looking at GPS locators, this is a gift idea for myself and girlfriend.. I was looking at this model, and it
says in the specification that the screen is 160x122, this
screen in this diagram is not 160x122.. Cheaters! Magellan or Wal-Mart needs to wise up ( I mean this doesn't look like a
160x122 display, that's like the half-resolution of my digital cameras Video modes, and that looks awful, so few pixels to
represent anything, it's also (I think) the screen resolution of a Commodore VIC-20(w)__)..
(12/04/06 12:20 PM): I woke up and had no mucus in nasal area, thinking of the story from before about the fungus.. I decided to do
a little research to put my mind at ease.. What puts me in the hypochondriac mode is that I have reduced digestive function (which I
won't go into, it's not unusual, but it still concerns me), and that once I had gone undiagnosed for months of having a sinus
infection the size of a grape.. This guy with the fungus, his started out as a sinus infection, I believe I heard from the report..
I was interested in what would be needed to get in such a position as to have a terrible fungus to survive against the bodies
immune system. And I read somewhere that this is what the Liver does, is handle the detoxification process which includes
expelling/destroying fungus. Here's a funny chart based on the song by Paul Simon(M)_,
50
ways to leave your lover (yt), this one is 50
ways to love your liver.
This is so strange, I happen to be working on a http://www.hepcchallenge.org/ and some related hepatitis websites.. I mean I was that guy
who wrote the quiz system that the doctors are using to get credit for Hep C. I guess that is just a strange coincidence. Anyhow,
the guys running the "http://www.hepeducate.org/" website have hepatitis
themselves, so its a good place to go if you may suspect you have the disease or are concerned, or treating people with the
disease.. I'm hoping to get a better quizing system in place someday, but this works..
I found this page on the net, in relation to fungus fighting
treatments.. I wish that Firefox(w)__ had
support for multiple url bookmarks, I know that the W3C is unlikely to approve of such a thing, but hell that is what open source
is for.. You either control or be controlled.. Or let Bill Gates determine what should be standard (and accepted).. But I guess
the programmers of Firefox are just trying to keep the peace.. It just isn't very smart to require people to transmit and annotate
indiviual URL's.. I guess they figure people can export bookmarks as HTML.. I could do that, yes, but it's not effective.
Oh
yes, Skin Eating Fungus__,
that's what I searched for that started all this investigating..
(12/04/06 4:41 AM): I made the mistake of investigating the Digg Story about the man who's face was devoured by a fungus, which I
don't suggest looking into, it's on you tube. It's pretty horrific, but I've thought it over and believe it is something I could
overcome, as anyone I'm sure can imagine. But it's a terrible thing to have happen.. Anyhow, to get my mind off this (thinking I
would have nightmares if I went to bed). I went up on iTunes and finished my transfer of mp3's to my father's player, as well I
plan to update mine.. It's a small service I perform, but it's something that helps me take my mind off sad stuff like that story.
I even had imagined that if that had happened to my girlfriend, I would still love her, though we are not bound yet.. I felt even
compelled to help this man, but I guess not strongly enough to seek him out.. But I believe there is life after such a terrible
catastrophe.. It's strange when you see things like this, it brings something out of you that you didn't expect to find.. I thought
to myself, how would it be to have that happen, how would life change.. How would I entertain myself, would I dwell on the obvious
lack of eyes and nose.. To me the eyes are one of my favorite senses.. The nose, I probably could do without, but they help me
sense dangerous smells, they help me ward off cold and such.. I guess I can't really imagine life without those.. But I gain a
tremendous amount of pleasure from the use of my ears, and I would be able to eat food, but I can't imagine what it would be like
not to have the sense of smell, to be able to enjoy the food.. After seeing a story like that, it makes one real humble, and causes
one to think of the senses one has, that we take for granted.. I feel challenged, in a way, to make the most of what I have.. I am a
bit frugal.. I waste my time more than I should.. I think to myself, what should I be doing, what can I do.. I think to myself what
use am I.. Just many things go through my mind when I see stories like a horrific fungus that reduces a man to a freak.. How does
life continue?? And I'm left to imagine.. It's really something to see, I guess it is on the level of seeing something like "The
Passion", though I never saw it.. I have a thing about seeing movies that don't really tell me something I didn't already know..
But I probably would identify better with Christ if I had.. Well..
What I really came up to write about is Rick Steeves has a
great video (requires eyes, sorry, but if needed, you can email me, I can probably give a description of the imagery), but since I
have eyes, I feel so blessed to be able to see this imagery.. Boy I hope I get over this concern.. That's so sad, put it aside,
life goes on..
Rick Steeves has a video series on Christmas in Europe, after seeing the video through iTunes, I thought "How
cool!!", the video on Nurmberg, showing the gingerbread and hotdogs and such, the sights, the smells, (argh!!! I can't rip my mind
away).. Anyhow, I suggest watching these videos, they are pretty fantastic!!! Here is a link to the website, you can find it in iTunes as well..
Okay, how in the world can I watch a Video about Fungus, Daryl Hannah's Video
Podcast.. Yeah, that's right.. It makes me wonder what keeps these mushrooms from eating this guy's face off.. I know that's a
cruel thought, but I can't imagine being around Mushrooms right now.. And no I didn't go looking for this story, I just happened
upon it by accident, I was curious to see what Daryl Hannah was doing..
(12/03/06 9:57 PM): The YP-T9 Failed to respond after a file transfer.. If this happens to you, don't wait until it powers down..
Just hold the Record and Menu buttons down at once, this will cause a system reset.. Hey they thought of everything
(12/02/06 7:06 PM): Was watching the "Da Vinci Code" with my girlfriend, and couldn't watch it anymore.. Not because it says some
false things about Jesus (without much proof), but that this Novel seems to be created to earn the audience that it's selling to..
Put it together: Christians are not going to kill you if you have theories about Christ, even if you spread disinformation.. What
makes Christians Christians is their faith in what they believe, it has nothing to do with ones self-deception.. But don't sue
them for wanting to speak out against such theories, they will.. The writer obviously doesn't care about the Christian audience,
but he targets conspiracy theorists (the kind you find in bars), and to people who know little or nothing about religion.. It
practically makes fun of Christians and Secularists alike.
Simply: The book I feel was made to sell...
Blech, I hate
uninspired works..
the writer started with the audience he wanted to sell to, worked backward and forward several times, but to
make it believable, he did some research on the Cannon (the bible), and added in some disinformation and conspiracy theories to make
it sound convincing TO THE "inexperienced" and "unconcerned"..
Well you are what you buy.. Thankfully she just checked this one
out of the library (I think).. Maybe it was a rental.. But it was her dollar not mine..
I pay for stuff that is more truthful
about it's intended interpretation. Not necessarily truthuful, but set out to entertain people, not just to make money..
This
writer, whose name I will claim ignorance about, as I don't wish to know, I really don't care enough to know..
I ask him to make
a mystery of Mahammad, or Budda, try a few others.. Isn't it funny that those with man-made religions will kill to protect their
beliefs and Christians won't.. (The Crusades don't count, that's a catholic thing, you are buying trouble anytime you let
mortal/sinful man intercede between you and god)..
Of course he, or she, or it, what is this author, I forget, something, this
author won't risk this if this author is as inspired by money as I think, inspired people write about stuff they believe in, wimps
write about stuff that will make them money..
I guess what I was saying is I don't like movies/books that are written backwards
and tailored to the target audience.. That's how you make money if you are braindead and uncreative, to pretend to be profound and
make stuff up, to inspire people to purchase it.. It's a bit like watching business people with tunnel vision attempt innovation..
New York is one of the least innovative places on the face of the earth.. The Ice Creams you get in the stores are like at most two
flavors and vanilla.. You can extropolate from that (however, I'm talking about concrete upper east side and such, not the
village). Well that is something else entirely..
When creation becomes an art, and the work has no substance, that's when I
leave in disgust.. To be entertaining, it's got to be, for me, uncontroversial, it shouldn't just use nasty language for shock
value, taking advantage of the same parts of the brain that are attracted to sex, gossip, and such.. What I find profound is when
someone does something unexpected, without appealing to basic human behaviour.. When the ideas presented are creative in the
configuration, when you get little clues along the way, but are left freaking out at the end when you see the big picture.. Like
the Shawshank Redemption, that's one heck of a work of art.. If Stephen King did that just to make money, he could have fooled me.
Well, Yes, The Da Vinci Code brings out the idiot in all of us.. I felt like an idiot for watching it, but not unlike as much
an idiot as watching a Michael moore film.. Actually Micahel Moore is a blatant Guerilla Film director, the art in his movies is
the manipulation of content to mislead.. Sure he aims to sell, but at least you know what you are getting..
(12/01/06 05:10 PM): Got email from a friend, about some supposedly new Mercedez Car__,
a SCL600__,
that uses a Joystick to drive with.. First off this is COMPLETELY BOGUS URBAN LEGEND!! It was most likely produced by a 19 year old
kid with a copy of blender. Note that there is no color bleed (radiosity), he didn't even use any HDRI lighting, he was careful not
to use sunlight or any direct light, pratically all the materials used are ray-traced reflective materials or reflection maps. The
kid that released these pictures, into Chain Letters everywhere, is having himself quite a chuckle.. There is no way in hell
Mercedez would make a car like this.. Think about it, if you were driving, and you take a hard left, wouldn't the gravitational
force of your body pull the joystick in the direction of your shift, it would produce some feedback effects not unlike the jerky
driving of a drivers ed student on manual shift. If ever this was to work, one would have to be able to detach the wheel, and it
would be better if the joystick was small, this joystick would be tiring to manage, you would have all sorts of shoulder soreness,
and plus if your dog or children jump up and land on the stick, you could get into a wreck.. This is not a car, or even a prototype
from Mercedez, this is just ome teenagers prank.. URBAN LEGEND SPREADS FASTER ON THE INTERNET, TOO BAD SOME PEOPLE CAN'T SPOT FAKE
CONTENT!!
(12/01/06 11:11 AM): Businessweek (pron for businessmen) had a story about the Design lead at Microsoft.. Albeit this guy is a year
older than me, all it seems to say in the article, I did not read it all, is that he was a programmer that circulated a memo in 1995
about how Netscape was going to eat Microsoft's lunch. Well it did but not as Netscape. I like the bit about how he argued to
Ballmer that the Zune should not run a copy of Windows (CE?), that it instead should have its own OS's.. I guess that is why the
XBOX 360 is so successful (three processors, a non-windows OS, etc.). But the ZUNE doesn't strike me as innovative. I imagine what
Microsoft will do is hang out and see what the consumers suggest, and pick and choose which features will make the player better,
making Microsoft more money. That's not a bad way to work, but I doubt they will pick up on some ideas I had, that would be
possible with such an implementation. My ideas, which I will not mention, would do Wal-mart out of business, and another would make
it easier for business people to come together. I will mention one of the ideas, which I don't expect to be a big seller.
In
2000, I tried to patent something of a E-Harmony.com applied to Conference Networking, thus you are a businessman, you show up at a
conference, you want to find those with the right social chemistry and those closer to your interests, use a wireless device like
the Zune, have it transmit a vector outlining all your major interests, then perform a dot-product on this vector and the vector of
each profile hovering around in the locality. Sort profiles in order of closeness (in both proximity and psycho-social profile
match). I have several sealed notorized envelopes, from when I was in New York with this idea, I guess if I had some Lawyers I
could probably get a piece of E-Harmony's pie, but my colleague and I determined early on that the dating-search stuff wasn't a
suitable target for the technology.. Because people tend to date at social functions: bars, parties, church functions, etc. If you
look at date sites, more often you will find more men than women, something like a ratio of 10 to 1. And usually dating sites (and
date-match telephone services) allow women to create free profiles and men have to pay to put up theirs. That's because these
services don't work, it's just the guys don't want to go out to parties or church events to search for a date. These services make
money, but they don't work. E-Harmony might work, but the drawback to the psycho-social profile vector stuff is that you
effectively have to pass a psychological evaluation before you can perform a match. Consider if an Advertising or Marketing agency
was to get access to that information? I bet they could better target those commercials, get the right person to call you on the
phone, etc..
Anyhow, we determined that it would be best to target executives going to conferences.. Well we never got the
patent, but it was mysterious how E-harmony popped up several years following the time we paid for a lawyer in New York to push our
idea through the patent process. It makes me wonder if that lawyer had mingled with someone in California.. Maybe it's just a
coincidence, but I'm willing to bet E-Harmony is burning off it's funding.. Maybe it is successful, maybe not.. But the real place
to target is executives attending conferences..
Okay that was just one of my ideas..
One of my other ideas, what I call
the Wal-Mart killer, hasn't been implemented anywhere it seems, and I don't expect Microsoft to have the brains to imagine it, but
I will tell you the Zune is a suitable platform for this idea..
One thing I would like on the Zune, a copy of Mame or Visual
Pinball and VpinMame running on it. Maybe that is why Microsoft's Lead Designer was hanging out in a Pinball Arcade toting the
Zune. I had already mentioned the idea of using mp3 players with wireless connections as clients with ubiqitous song servers, if
that's his best, I feel sorry for him..
I know that executive/E-harmony doesn't sound like much, but this is a "throw-away
idea" for me, I have beter ones, including one that would revolutionize the medical informatics, and the Wal-mart killer. No, I'm
not overly-confident, but fatman, little boy had and I have something in common.. Ka-boom!!
(12/01/06 12:07 AM): Sometimes I'm amazed what people will put up on YouTube, in thise case I'm not so impressed, but at least you get to see what it's
like to open up the package of a Samsung YP-T9__..
At first I thought the video was about the de-casing of the Samsung YP-T9__
which has got to be next to impossible, considering it's got the thickness and solidity of a vacuum sealed time piece (watch). But I
liked how this guy was going at the mylar, that's got to be about the worse part of getting to the player.. The 4 Gig version sells
for 179 dollars, I'm wishing now I had of bought that one, but 2 gigs is enough for me. I can fit 150-200 Music Videos on a 2 gig
YP-T9__ or
100 videos and leave the rest of the storage for WMA(w)__DRM(w)__
protected content from Rhapsody Online (BTW, the "They are playing our song" playlist on Rhapsody Online is the perfect un-xmas
music collection, but delete the Gram
Parsons(M)_'
"Love Hurts" from the playlist (after hearing the Nazareth(M)_
version for years, I can't listen to it much at all), it's so not Holiday music).
This is a little bit better, well this is cool video effects in showing the
T9 quickly, I'm working on a better demonstration..
.
Unless obviously not copyrightable, all original works of Kiernan are Copyrighted: Kiernan Holland (C) 2000-2010
