Monthly Archives: September 2007

How I Met Your Mother – Season Premiere

So I just kept thinking while watching this episode that the tough girl looked an awful lot like Mandy Moore. Then I saw in the credits that Mandy Moore did one of the songs and thought that was a coincidence. Duh! It really was Mandy Moore on the show.

But the best part was at the end, when they showed you the http://www.SlapCountDown.com/ web site!!! (If you didn’t watch the show last season, I can’t explain it). Continue reading

Jott is So Cool!

So many times I wish I could call someone late at night or early in the day to leave a message without waking them. THere are some services that delay delivery like this, but they’re (at least in the past) costly and slightly difficult.

Jott BetaEnter Jott: It lets you set up a list of people on-line. You call Jott say who/what you want to Jott (you put yourself in the list too) and then leave a thirty second message and it sends it to their e-mail. Did I leave out that it very accurately transcribes the audio file into text for you too?!? And it’s free?!? And it includes an audio file link too, just in case the transcription is garbled. Think about that before I tell you what else it does…

It’ll post it to a blog for you too (Blogger, WordPress (even if self-hosted), TypePad, LiveJournal), it’ll Twitter and Jaiku it for you too and post it to a Yahoo! Group and 30 boxes and you can use it to get Zillow (home value) quotes too. And it’ll set up reminders for you too. It’s all hands-free with your phone. And it’s free! Continue reading

This is a test of Jott….

This is a test of Jott. I’m actually talking into my telephone right now and Jott is transcribing my voice. It’s gonna save it and convert it to text and then it’s gonna post it automatically to the blog. Jott is really cool. Give it a try.
Click here to listen – Powered by Jott

Warning – For this test to make sense be sure to read the Jott is So Cool! explanation.

A Plethora of Things.

So I normally don’t put too many topics per post, actually I generally only put one topic per post. But I’ve been sick and all my little post-its on things to blog about are getting too long. So I’ll steal the Bullet Sunday idea from Dave for this week.

  • Sick – I’ve been lousy with a few different things for the last few weeks, I’ve been so fuzzy I pretty much need to wear my reading glasses all the time it’s usually just late at night (and sometimes early mornings). I’m actually think the few different things are fighting it out in my body, or the drugs are now what’s causing a problem. I couldn’t get into the doctor on Saturday (actually she didn’t think another visit would do any good). I’ll have someone look up the drugs and see if I’m having any problems between them it’s the dry mouth and bad taste that popped up in the last 36 hours that’s making me think drug interactions.
  • WordPress – WordPress is one of the larger blogging platforms, lots of plug-ins and looks well supported. For example, on Wednesday Matt (a WP developer) is having a WordPress 2.3 upgrade party in San Francisco

    WordPress 2.3 is coming out on Monday, so come out Wednesday evening and upgrade your blog with the pros. How badly can you screw it up when the developers are right there? If you upgrade your blog before Wednesday come and help out others and make feature requests.

    I think it’s kind of a cool idea I’d go if I were in the area and I don’t even really use it. I’m hoping I can hold off to really using it until after Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s WordPress for Dummies book is published. What I don’t like about WP is that it’s all dynamic (but that’s part of what I do like about it too). The dynamic-ness is just going to slow things down; I liked that in MT you can make some pages static and some dynamic but the cool part is MT will cache the pages once it generates them until the next post so it’s semi-static. Keep in mind you break some important dynamic function, everything is probably going to break. I think my next blog experiments will be with WP….

  • Jott – Way cool I’ll post more on this soon.
  • Legion of Super Heroes – Season one was great but season two (started yesterday) has the Superman from the 41st century (actually a clone of the 21st century Superman) who has traveled back to the 31st(?) to work with Legion and (I’m assuming) the SuperBoy/Man of the 21st century. It seems like it’s going to be a little two complicated. They characters seem liked the characters have gotten a little bit older too (Duo Damsel is so cute).

  • Snakehead – A new Alex Rider novel is coming out. They’ve definitely gotten better as the books went along, I recently re-read the first one and it’s no where near as good as the later ones.
  • Twitter – Mini blog posts that you can read on-line or receive as text messages all day long. I don’t get it but then again, I didn’t get blogging at first either. But personal blogging at that level is too much, IMHO. News might be interesting, weather(?), local bands as to when they are performing (sometimes I just want to know what time they are performing). I did set up a page and grabbed a dozen people to listen too (but I don’t get paged, I actually have to go and look); if I find anything super (probably news/weather or something like that) I might have them go to my cell phone…
  • Season Premiers – I re-watched the season premiers of a few shows, I had a chance to see some early promos of some and they changed them a bit. The Big Bang Theory got edited in a few spots, I actually think it’s less funny for those scenes. Bionic Woman also got changed and I think it flows a little better, I certainly enjoyed it better. The odd part was that they switch out her sister (who lives with her) from a punky deaf girl to a regular rebellious teen; that seemed like a huge strange switch.
  • Bet you can’t watch just once…

    It’s only 4 seconds so give it a look see…

    Click here if it doesn’t play….

    Student Removed From Kerry Speech – Tasered After Resisting

    So I’m sure many of you know about the student at the Kerry Forum at the University of Florida (here’s one of many videos available). What I don’t seem to understand is why everyone is upset that they tasered him for what he was speaking about. From what I saw, they made him leave for not giving up the mic (which was cut off) and possibly what he was speaking about (and the audience applauded for them making him leave). What they tasered him for was for fighting as they were trying to escort him out. There were four or five police trying to get him to leave and he clearly wasn’t leaving. To me, it looked as if he wanted a scene or had some kind of mental instability.

    Am I missing something?!? I’m not saying the tasering was or was not excessive, but let’s be clear as to why they zapped him, it wasn’t for his words (I can’t imagine the zappers were even listening that close) it was for resisting to leave. I will agree the extra zaps were probably too much (it sounded like a few), especially if cuffed already, but it didn’t really slow him down so I can’t imagine it set as a regular taser (it never took Veronica Mars more than one zap to get someone in line). I generally don’t mess with the law, but I do know you don’t mess with security / police / secret service when it deals with senators / presidential candidates and when a bunch of people are escorting you out the building, you’re probably going to lose if you fight with them about it.

    Tasersurvey200709191028EstFrom this Blog from the Washington Post I get the feeling this student was familiar with the local police.

    Here’s a local Miami news survey and 44% (of over 18,000 votes) say he deserved it, cast your vote! The results really surprised me… Continue reading

    Brandi Carlile – Turpentine – Music Video

    Brandi Carlile’s new video for Turpentine is out.

    If you can’t see it embedded above click here to play Turpentine or to see the lyrics. This song always makes me a little sad, I’m not sure if it’s the music, the words or both…

    Less than a month to see her at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, MI (Oct. 14, 2007). Opening is A Fine Frenzy and I’ve been playing One Cell In the Sea over & over so I’m more than ready. If you’re going to be at the concert (and tickets are available) let me know…

    Is it proper to say “their CD” when I just purchased the tracks from the iTunes store and listen on my iPod or Treo?

    The $100 laptop is almost done and it’s WAY cool! (but it’s up to $188)

    188LaptopThis is probably the best review of the XO laptop (often called the “$100 Laptop”) I’ve ever seen. This is a very cool machine and should start manufacturing this fall. Unfortunately, it wasn’t designed for US sales, but once the demand gets up there I can see it (or something similar) being offered for sale. We have similar type items in the US but not as advanced and for more than double the price.

    With a (tablet-like) twist screen it’s pretty need at how it folds over. And the screen has two modes: bright color and high contrast B & W for outside viewing. It had an SD slot and three USB ports, ethernet, wireless (with the mesh network), web-cam for collaboration, works as a gaming device or sideways as an eBook reader. They had to remove the built in charging crank which is a problem if you’re in a really remote area. I’m sure separate chargers raise the price)?).

    The software running on the XO is just as compelling as its hardware. The Red Hat Fedora Linux-based Sugar operating system is fairly basic, and we got comfortable using it within a few minutes. The home screen displays the XO logo within a circle, and the surrounding circle fills up with running programs. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the Start Menu and system application icons, including Paint, Write, Chat, and RSS.

    – Laptop Magazine

    I can see something like this really changing computing for a 1 to 1 ratio. This is all really most people want, e-mail, web, portability (3.5 pounds) and a 10 to 1 charging ratio. The high contrast for reading an e-book will (IMHO) give them something they don’t think they want (lots of text on the go). Add some bluetooth to get on-line on my phone and I’m in. And it runs Red Hat Linux for an OS. I want one of these puppies more than an iPhone.