David

The Case of the Spontaneously Undocking Laptop

2009-11-06T05:41:05Z

Sometimes, when I am busily coding or composing documents, the computer would spontaneously undock itself. Every peripheral is connected to the docking station, so the laptop would suddenly become inaccessible. It's really frustrating and there's no "Dock" button or "Undo Undocking" command.

Some background: The laptop runs Windows XP, and Windows XP fails advanced (yet clumsy) users in a spectacular way. Here's the subtle way in which it does so:

Windows XP Shortcut Key Mappings
Key	Action
Windows+e	Open File Explorer Window
Windows, e	Undock the laptop

(Note: Windows+e means, "Hold down the Windows key while hitting 'e'," while Windows, e means, "Hit the Windows key (and release it), then hit the 'e' key.)

I am one of those advanced and clumsy users, and use Windows+e frequently every day. I have strong muscle memory for that left-handed pinky-finger and middle-finger action.

The problem wasn't that they shortcut keys could be confused for each other. Remarkably, that never happened. In almost 10 years of use, I never made the mistake of undocking my computer when I meant to open an explorer window, or vice-versa.

Remember, the problem was that when I was coding or composing documents, the computer would spontaneously undock itself. It turns out that when I was writing words like zed or xerces (anything with an e after a z or x), I might just overshoot the bottom-row letter and nudge the Windows key. The next letter, "e", would then be interpreted as the command to undock.

When this happens, there's no warning. Just a millisecond flash of the Start menu between key presses and then blammo! No computer for you.

There's a work around:

If you have a file in the start menu that starts with "e", then "Windows, e" will cause that file to be selected instead of undocking the computer. So I added a file, "e is not undock.txt" to my start menu. Now, the next time I clumsily nudge the Windows key before typing "e", I won't be unintentionally and irrevocably undocking the computer.

Thresholds

2009-10-21T20:45:10Z

We all stand on either side of life experiences that are thresholds. Once you've crossed the threshold, you can't go back, and you may see the world differently or be seen differently.

bicycle fall
lice
prison
divorce
incurable progressive disease
necrotizing fasciitis
death
insatiable hunger for human brains

That list is in no particular order. When it comes to certain negative experiences, the view from the inexperienced side can differ greatly from the view on the experienced side. The fear and stigma of the experience can actually far outweigh the actual cost of the experience. It's a sad thing for those that have crossed that threshold, realized that they've been through it, and have emerged affected, but basically the same person. We can serve as mentors and guides for others who see what path they're on, but are afraid to step through.

Time and time again, I've seen people on the inexperienced side invest far too much energy into anticipating and dreading crossing their threshold. It's tiring being on the other side, being able to walk them through it and to be analytical about it, only to be shunned. I'm still the same me. Yes, I went through it. That only means I've had the experience and can be more objective about it. I can be helpful. I have stories to share. Oh, the stories.

So please think twice next time you act like a vivist, all "Oh, I'm still alive, look at me, that makes me better than you: I don't have to shamble everywhere. La de da. I'm gonna kill zombies without getting to know them just because they're different and want to eat my brains."

Brains.

Prettiest Little QR Code Ever: A Tragedy

2009-10-08T05:38:52Z

Over at my other blog, I wrote the postmortem to the project I've been working on for the past week. The project didn't go as well as I had hoped, but I wrote the postmortem anyway, maybe for the closure, maybe as a cautionary tale.

I called it "Prettiest Little QR Code Ever." Well, that reflects my initial hopes for the project more than the actual outcome. Live and learn.

Two Screens of iPhone Apps

2009-09-19T05:35:19Z

Well, that particular ultimate list of iPhone apps didn't last long. Since then, some new apps have earned their way onto the phone, displacing other apps, since I strive to only have two screens worth of apps.

Here's what I've got on the phone:

The "Home" Screen

A link to Google Calendar replaced the native Apple Calendar app. I'm not interested in paying for Mobile Me, and Google Calendar now has a Windows native app for syncing with Outlook.

I've added Tiltshift Generator to the front page so that it'll be next to the camera.

Convert made it to this screen, just because it's cool. It's in danger of getting dropped for a more useful application.

Tripit is here because the service is just so insanely useful. I've also added my Tripit calendar feed to my Google Calendar. So reservation confirmations automatically get updated to my calendar. How cool is that?

Rounding out the list are Movie Genie (terrible icon), an awesome IMDB app, and Wikipanion. As awesome as Movie Genie is, it's not better for me than my own custom movie ratings page. We'll get to my awesomeness later.

Notably missing from this page is Camera Genius. I desperately need to be able to crop photos before I share them directly from the phone. But I really don't know if that's the right app for me.

Also notably missing is IDriveLite, which I do have, for backing up my contacts. If I weren't already using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for another email account, I'd use that to sync my contacts with GMail's contacts. But as things are, I need IDriveLite.

The "Auxiliary" Screen

I don't think that this screen has changed too much from the previous screenshot. A welcome addition is the Flickr app.

If we were to see a heat map of my usage of this screen, Plurk would be red hot, and everything else very cool. I've got local friends who are way into facebook. I'm trying to maintain an interest in it, but, meh.

Honestly, I have no use for Twitterific. That should go. I follow my friends' tweets from my custom feed.

In order to conserve swiping, I should move Plurk from here to the main screen, regardless of the fact that I think it "logically" belongs here.

The rest of this stuff? The games? I don't really play games much on the iPhone right now. Let's see how my behavior changes in a few months...

Some of you may notice that the image indicates that there's another page. Yeah, that's the garbage heap where I tossed Weather, iTunes, Messages, Compass, Voice Memos, Calendar, etc.

Oh, and this climber's awesome.

2009-08-27T04:54:45Z

Tuesday I went climbing during lunchtime with a couple of friends. If you're climbing hard, it's nice to climb with two others because that'll give you a couple of minutes of downtime when one of them is belaying the other. Still, if you want to climb more frequently, it's better if you can pair off with just one other climber.

A female voice came over the PA system: "Attention Planet Granite members and guests. There's a climber at the front desk who's looking for a belay partner. Come by the front desk if you can help."

A slight pause. Then, "Oh, and this climber's awesome."

We looked at each other as our bullshit detectors pinged. What was that last bit for? Was this climber so terrible or repulsive that he needed that obviously insincere recommendation?

Whatever. My buddy Charles decided to toss the loser a line. I (jokingly) reminded him, "We'll decide who's awesome around here, and if he doesn't cut muster, he's out." Honestly, the three of us are no great shakes, but it's fun to cop an attitude if you can. Charles headed off to the front desk (behind the wall), and later came back alone saying, "He wasn't at the front desk anymore. They'll find him in the bouldering area and he'll come by."

A little bit later, a tall and strikingly beautiful co-ed walks up and asks, "Are you the three climbers who're available to belay another climber?"

I was the one not tied in to a rope at that particular moment, so it fell to me to pair off with her. I'll take one for the team. They can thank me later.

She allowed me to climb first, and I went up a 5.10b with no difficulty. A 5.10c would have been trouble, though. She made some appreciative comments, then decided to warm up on a 5.11d, and waltzed up that thing like it was nothing. (If you're not a climber, that essentially means I was revealed to be an amateur in the presence of a genuine athelete.)

Climbing turned out to be excellent. She was strong, graceful and fun to watch on the wall.

Aww, geeze. She was awesome, after all. The P.A. announcement was no lie. I was the one lucky to be climbing with her.

Where Page-A-Day Calendar Pages Go To Die

2009-08-04T23:01:45Z

This is what happens to my Dilbert page-a-day calendar pages when they become yesterday's pages...

I would love to draw, but my job doesn't call for it. (Making UML diagrams is as close as it gets.)

ComicCon '09 Report

2009-07-31T07:46:37Z

Overview:

Sightings/Meetings: Mike Mignola, Camilla D'Errica, David Mack, The Penny Arcade Duo, Josh Howard
Far Away Sightings: Peter Jackson, Tyrese Gibson
Loot: Nothing, really. Just my sketch notes and some free junk like promotional TPB/manga.

Missed: Flynn's Arcade, Tim Burton, CommunityChannel
Missed Loot: Swallow, Sparrow, BluRay Freedom

Details:

I packed a lunch and arrived at the con by 7:00am or so. The line for single-day admissions was already about a quarter mile long and wrapped around the Convention Center to the Marina and along the Marriott.

I'd planned on going to Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman's Making-Of-Coraline panel, but once I got to the con, I realized that I hadn't alloted any time for the gargantuan exhibit hall, so instead, I used the morning to map out places-of-interest. (For me, that was usually artists' booths with interesting art books.)

Yeah, I spent the morning walking along the exhibit hall drawing circles on maps.

ComicCon '09 Map with doodles and Sketchbook

I saw a few artists, like Josh Howard at their tables, but I'd already gotten his signature on his trades (in his case), or they'd already be talking to somebody else, and I was on a timeline. I also saw a few stars like Edward James Olmos and Adam Baldwin.

I did my most fervent shopping for davidd in the morning.

I got in line for the CBDLF Mike Mignola artwork panel a half hour early, and that was plenty of time to get in. There was another line dangerously close that was very, very long. ::shudder:: It might have been Twilight-related or something.

The Mike Mignola panel was great! He spoke about what he was doing as he drew a scene with HellBoy in it. He'd say things like, "I love knuckles with the fleshy parts moving around." He said that Frank Frazetta was an early big influence, but he went through phases, too, like when he wanted to draw like Vaughn Bode and Alex Niño. He said that since he's right handed, he tends to draw from the bottom left to the upper right, so that's why his scenes are always composed with the smoke rising to the upper right.

Sometimes he'll place a word balloon first, without anything to say in it, just because the balloon looks good there. Then he'll have to think of something for Hellboy to say in it.

I stayed in the room for the life-drawing of Amanda Palmer by Terry More, Camilla D'Errico and David Mack. That was awesome, too. Go check out this flickr set.

Camilla D'Errico did all her drawing with a cheap, blue Bic pen. David Mack did his with an ink brush. It was fascinating to compare and contrast their styles.

After that panel was over, I made a bee-line for the line for Hall H. I got in line for the Focus Features panel (with Tim Burton) about 20 minutes early. That wasn't nearly enough. I stayed in that line, outside, for the whole panel. I didn't get in until the next panel (which I also wanted to see), the Sony Pictures panel for Legion and District 9, with Peter Jackson.

After that it was back to the exhibit hall to revisit the places I made note of in the morning. I went from Hall H to the very opposite end of the exhibit hall. Phew, that place it big. After I'd had my fill, I headed back to the hotel, where my family was waiting for me.

It was another great con, but there's far too much to see and do for a one-day pass. Going alone was a mixed blessing. I missed being with friends, but I liked not making any compromises and doing exactly what I wanted. If I wanted to camp out at IDW or Slave Labor, I could. I think the one time I really paid the price for going alone was with regard to the line for Hall H. I shoulda had a friend waiting for the Focus panel for me.

ComicCon Schedule

2009-07-19T04:47:40Z

There's no telling how my ComicCon day will actually go down this year. Popular rooms fill up, and squatting through multiple sessions is allowed. Hall H is a nightmare. Note to newbies - the line to get in wraps around outside.

Here's my tentative plan. The lines with boxes drawn around them are my first choices, my backup plans are the ones that have the circled two in front of them.

Hope to see you there! (Yeah, I know, some of you won't be there on Friday. Oh, well.)

Update to the List of Critical iPhone Apps

2009-07-05T19:33:25Z

I've had my iPhone for a few weeks now, and I really do love it and depend on it as much as I thought I would.

Remember that I made a list of things I thought I'd want with the iPhone before I actually got it? I went back to that list, and added to it the list of apps that I really got. (Complete with screenshots.) Let's go see how close to reality I was: Go check it out.

Have I got a deal for you!

2009-06-29T22:17:20Z

View Poll: Distribution of $10.00

The source of this poll comes from a study in Sway. Highly recommended.

The Ultimate List of Critical iPhone Apps

2009-06-16T02:33:07Z

What makes this list of critical iPhone apps the ultimate? I've never opened the App Store and I don't have an iPhone! It's the "ultimate" in the sense that it's being posted before the start of my iPhone experience.

In a few days, I'll have an iPhone. I think it'll be fun to post what I currently think I'll need to download, and then revisit this post in a few weeks and update it when reality hits and admit to what I really downloaded and what I actually use.

What I Think I'll Download [Original post on June 15th]

SplashID : This is the most critical application I currently have on my Treo.
Some battery saving utilities. Hopefully something that turns on BlueTooth only when it's time for me to drive.
An awesome Google application that removes a little of the chrome from GMail, Maps, etc.
Maybe a Plurk / Twitter / Micro-blogging-and-geolocating-service client.
Some organizational utility that hides things I don't use and presents things I do with fewer swipes.
Maybe some silly tech-demo to show off the accelerometer or a game. I dunno.

What I really Downloaded [Edited later on July 4th]

I'm back, and I've had the iPhone for a few weeks now. How did I live without the it? Let's accompany this with screen captures.

First, the "Main Page with Utilities"

I removed some standard apps from the main page, and replaced them with ones I deem worthy of being on the Main Utilities page.

I added TripIt, which I'd already fallen in love with, simply because if its webpage. The iPhone app was just icing on the cake. If you travel and you're not using TripIt, go check it out.

I added SpashID. I was already using it on my Treo, so it was a no-brainer to continue using it on the iPhone. There may be better alternatives, but I'd already paid for mine.

I also added Sketches, because a man needs to doodle.

Finally, and this is tentative, Pandora made the cut. I haven't been able to make all the Pandora stations I really need, but I'm willing to give it some time. If iTunes can finally come around and offer a good JPop selection, then hopefully Pandora can too. Here's hoping for a Namie Amuro station.

Second, the "Social Apps and Games page."

I added the following Social Network Apps: Plurk, Facebook and Twitterific. Plurk and Facebook were no-brainers. There are a million Twitter apps, and I'm not interested in assessing all of them before I commit. I might change it if another one come up and bites me on the ankle.

I'm wildly in love with Shazam, which has worked for me on multiple occasions. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have it recognize a song for me (that was playing at a restaurant), and make a note of it. What an awesome app.

Now Playing and Coffee Finder are both awesome location aware apps. Coffee Finder finds a Starbucks near you, and Now Playing tells you what's playing at the theaters near you. It allows you to choose the reviews it displays, and I've chosen Rotten Tomatoes.

Planets is handy for having at hand when I'm outside with the kids at night.

All the others are the sort of games that I like to play myself. Make of that what you will.

Third, the "Rarely used, Games for Children, and Emergency Apps Page."

This is the garbage bin, full of utilities, tech demos, and games that don't interest me, but interest my children.

The following two utilites almost made it to my front page, though: Phone Flicks, for NetFlix queue management, and TouchTerm, for emergency ssh.

You can see I relegated what I consider to be nearly useless standard utilites here: Compass, Stocks, Messages, iTunes, Voice Memos and YouTube. Meh on all of 'em.

Flixter is a sanity check against Now Playing, as iSSH is being evaluated against TouchTerm.

Why my kids enjoy SmackTalk so much, I'll never know. But they do, and so I keep it for them.

Notably Missing

I never got that BlueTooth enabling app. Shame. On the iPhone, you really have to burrow too deeply to enable and disable BlueTooth. What a pain.
I also don't have an excellent RottenTomatos or IMDB app for strolling around in a brick-and-mortar video rental store. [Edit] I wrote one for myself.
There's no app for efficiently browsing your LJ friends page.
I never needed the Google app I thought I'd download. Integrating GMail with Mail on the iPhone is easy, and GMail's site itself is optimized for iPhone clients, anyway.

The HeisenTwitter Uncertainty Principle

2009-06-12T05:05:52Z

On Twitter, we'd all better second-guess what we see in our friends list of tweets. Even if you want your public replies to be visible, be aware:

Your friends won't see your public replies to other friends anymore.
Or, when they can, they can't tell to which tweet you replied.

That's a lot like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. That's where you can't precisely know a particle's position and momentum at the same time. You can know either one with high precision, but not both.

At Twitter, you can either see your friends' replies, or know which tweet they were replying to. But not both.

It didn't used to be like that. If we wanted to see our friends' replies, they'd simply show up in our list of tweets, with a handy link to the tweet it's a reply to. You'd see your friends' replies, and you could click-through to see what they were replying to.

The Good Old Days - See replies and know what they replied to.

That was nice. Twitter changed that. Now, the only tweets that show up in your list of friends' tweets don't have that handy link. So you can see that they replied to something, but you can't know for sure which tweet they replied to.

Keep that in mind when you want to reply to a tweet. You have a choice to make. If you want your friends to see your reply (isn't that the point of Twitter?), then you'd better type "@username" instead of click the reply-button under the star. Or, if you want your reply to be linked to the tweet it's a reply to, you should click on the reply-button under the star. You can't have both.

Having to make that choice sucks. Welcome to the HeisenTwitter Uncertainty Principle. This is why I like Plurk.

YouTube favorites feeds: v=2 is sorted=favorited

2009-06-01T07:53:53Z

I haven't really seen this spelled out in a really clear manner on the web, so let me help out. YouTube's got useful programmatic feeds. You can specify a feed for a user's videos like:


http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads

You can also specify the order in which you want the videos. Note the "orderedby" parameter in the urls that follow:


http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads?orderby=updated
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads?orderby=published

So far, so great. Now, suppose you want to make a lifestream, and you want to include the videos that you've favorited. They've got a feed for that, too:


http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/davidblume/favorites

But it's not right. If you look at the data you get back, you see that it's not what you wanted. Those videos are going to be associated with the timestamp with which they were updated or published, not the time that you favorited them. And that's the time that matters to your lifestream! Given the way the programmatic feeds are organized, you'd think that there's a way to specify that, and that feed would be as follows, right? --


http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/davidblume/favorites?orderby=favorited

Nope. After living with a workaround in my lifestream for months, only today do I learn that YouTube did create the feed I needed, but calls it this: v=2. Yeah, like that jibes with their feed explanation.

Lifestream writers, the favorites feed (ordered by time favorited) that you want is constructed like this:


http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/favorites?v=2

(Replace "username" with your username, of course.) Now I can go delete my workaround.

Mind-Blowingly Old

2009-05-22T05:43:26Z

Ten years? Really, LiveJournal? Wow. You're old as dirt. Congrats, that's quite an accomplishment for a web service. Honestly, I don't know how much more you have in you, but your endurance in the face of vox, deadjournal and dreamwidth and all the others really speaks to the power of community.

Services thrive when they grow and maintain a community around them. Otherwise, they fail, even if they're better.

Five years? Well, nearly. In a couple of months, I'll have been here five years. Wow, I've been friends with you guys for that much of my life. Practically as long as my son has been alive. In a way, you're all a significant part of my life's experience, and I care about you. I worry about you when you're troubled, I laugh with you when you joke, and I find peace with you when you share koans and zen thoughts.

I'm concerned, though. We really are plurking and tweeting more than we blog nowadays. I've long complained about twitter's damaging effect. halophoenix has written about the state of blogging in the age of twitter. (Even if you don't read it, scroll down to the bottom and read the first two comments, between 'Phoenix and I.)

For those of you reading this: ::hug::, ::fist-bump::, Sláinte and Kanpai!

More JPop OP/EDs (Bonnie Pink, Sowelu, Amuro, etc.)

2009-05-20T18:59:12Z

I must be in a wistful mood. Some of the songs making it into my frequently played lists are various openings and endings to dorama and anime. I've long acknowledged how effective the associate between a much-loved show and a much-loved song can be. Here's what I've been listening to...

Sowelu - Mamoru Beki Mono | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I simply love this video for Sowelu's Mamoru Beki Mono. She's never been more beautiful, too. Please don't ever tell me that it's a song in the 9th Pokemon movie. I don't want to know.

Water Me, by Bonnie Pink puts me into a mood to head over to CrunchyRoll and dive into some dorama. It's the theme song to TV series "Watashitachi no Kyokasho."

Planetarium, by Ai Otsuka, was the image song for Hana yori Dango.

Can You Celebrate, by Namie Amuro. It's the opening for Virgin Road. The above clip isn't for the whole song. My favorite clip of her performing this song doesn't have embedding allowed. It's a clip of a younger Namie, with shorter hair, some baby fat, and she cries (adorably) during the performance. You'd have to go to youtube to watch it. It's worth it.

And for search engines and those who can't be bothered to dive into the cut, that was Sowelu's Mamoru Beki Mono, Bonnie Pink's Water Me, Ai Otsuka's Planetarium, and Namie Amuro's Can You Celebrate.

I think I just lost all my manly-man cred. Did I ever have any?

Anniversary Weekend (with Recommendations)

2009-05-18T04:54:00Z

Bay-To-Breakers weekend is our wedding anniversary weekend. Our kids are a little too young to join us in the race, so we didn't do it. (But we think that that would be an awesome way to celebrate.) Instead, we had a relatively low-key weekend, but one that we both thoroughly enjoyed. Some highlights:

Nothing But the Truth : Lillian rented this on a whim. When I found out, I was a little resentful because it was a standard definition DVD, but it had Kate Beckinsale in it, so I gave it a chance. I was pleasantly surprised, it kept me engaged. We both liked it. I recommend it.
The Dead and the Dying : I just finished the third Criminal trade by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It stands up to the first two. I'm looking forward to Bad Night. Highly recommended.
Wicked : We went to Wicked for our Anniversary date. We were pleasantly surprised to see that Patty Duke and David Garrison (the neighbor on "Married with Children") were in the cast. We didn't really know anything about the play before we saw it, and were better off for it. It had some really cute numbers that we'll be referencing for a month. (Sort of like Avenue Q, that way.)
Roy's : San Francisco's "Roy's" rocks. We're increasingly choosing to go here for special grown-ups-only dinners. We really love it, and always gravitate to their Prix Fixe menus. Yum. I'm full now, but want to go back already.

I didn't get any domestic chores done that I'd wanted to this weekend, but I guess I'll give myself a "pass" for Anniversary Weekend. :)

Black Lagoon's Anime OP

2009-05-03T08:52:24Z

As a matter of rule, I don't watch the opening or closing credits for anime on DVD. I'll watch them once to see how they look, but unless their soundtrack is composed by Yoko Kanno or something, I don't need to watch them again. That's time that could better be spent watching the show itself.

But every once in a while, there's an exception. I found myself sitting through the opening credits of Black Lagoon for this one frame.

It's pretty compelling. The character is Remy, a broken sociopathic murderer. She is often disenfranchised, stoic or bitter. Rarely, and usually when it precedes murderous violence, she'll be happy.

That's part of the thing that gets me about the frame. She's deceptively cute in the still, because her character isn't developed to be cute at all. My attention always starts with her eyes, smile, and scrawl on her cheek. But right after that, I become aware of the clues to her menace and strength: Her two guns strapped to her shoulder harness and the tribal tattoo going down her right arm. Only then do I realize: "Wait. Is she reaching for a weapon?"

BTW, I'm done with Black Lagoon now, and am moving on to Flag.

Fixing DQSD Definition Search (Again)

2009-05-02T18:14:27Z

(the new "df" search)

A couple of years ago, I'd already claimed to be a long-time fan of Dave's Quick Search Deskbar, especially because of its popup dictionary search.

Since then, though, Merriam-Webster has changed the layout of their site so much, that they made maintaining the DQSD mwd.xml prohibitively expensive. I needed to create a new search, and I did. (The definitions aren't as good as Merriam-Webster's, but at least they work.)

Here's what you do, if you already have DQSD installed:

Download df.zip (2 kb), and extract df.xml into C:\Program Files\Quick Search Deskbar\searches.
Modify localaliases.txt to include the following line:

           :|df

And now, you can have an easy, non-intrusive, dictionary lookup available anytime again. Just type the word to lookup with a colon after it, and the definition will appear in a popup window that gets dismissed when focus changes elsewhere. (I mention a shortcut key recipe I use for looking up words.)

In case you didn't already know, DQSD excels at many other searches, too. It defaults to Google, but I use it for Wikipedia, image, maps, the imdb, and a calculator quite often, too. It's just the popup definition lookup that needed my TLC.

The Tenth Life Lesson from Rock Climbing

2009-05-01T23:09:54Z

I think there's a tenth lesson we get from rock climbing. It means enough to me that I wrote it up over at david.dlma.com instead of here. But I have at least one sometimes-rock-climbs friend here (megami !) , so I've mentioned it here for those of you who don't follow me elsewhere.

All the rock-climbing life lessons are good, and the video is short, compared to the other TED videos I've seen.

Totally Unnecessary

2009-05-01T07:08:27Z

Rabbit, rabbit.

Yeah, I have this month covered already elsewhere. But why not give LJ a little Leporidae leporidae love too?

Three Things TODO After Vacation

2009-04-16T19:34:01Z

Gah! There's way too much to do, and so little time. All I can do at the moment is document what I need to get done before vacation. And even then, I was torn between documenting it here, or at my new experimental Habari blog at david.dlma.com. What am I going to do with that blog? (I treat it like some people treat their Moleskines. It's too special to write on. That domain name is the most me, so I've been protecting it.)

Anyway, in no particular order, here's what I want to get done:

~~Customize Twitter Friends Feed~~: I need to customize my twitter friends feed so that it won't spam my feed reader with @replies I don't care about. I need to set my preferences on a per-twitterer basis. I really enjoy all @replies from some of my friends, but not all. Maybe I'll break down and find an app that already has the feature, but I prefer having just one place aggregate all the feed activity I'm interested in. [Edit: Biz is going to do this himself!]
~~Make a Dictionary Popup~~: I loved the DQSD mwd popup definition result. But merriam-webster.com has a history of changing the layout of their page so that maintaining the mwd.xml search became onerous. It's time to replace that popup definition with one from aonaware. Here's the API call I'm most interested in: DefineInDict, with "gcide" for the dictId. [Edit: Completed!]
iTunes library rsync with OpenTape: As originally hinted.

Three Videos I Love: Bathtub IV, Marry Me, and World Builder

2009-04-14T04:15:23Z

You've all certainly seen these before. Even if it's just for my own sake, below the cut are three videos that I simply adore.

They're "Bathtub IV" by Keith Loutit, "Marry Me" a YouTube video by TROPFEST, and "World Builder" by Bruce Branit. If you've got the time or the bandwidth, watch them in HD, it's worth it.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo

HP Mini 2140, Dell Mini 12, iPhone or Pre?

2009-04-04T17:29:08Z

We're continuously fighting over the computers in my household, so the time seems ripe for another one. And I want it to be a netbook, an iPhone, or a Palm Pre. My hands are too big for the smallest Eee PCs, so I won't even go there. So here's what I've been doing.

I've been Osborning for the HD HP Mini 2140. (If you didn't click that "Osborning" link, it doesn't mean I've been biting the heads off of bats, it means I've been delaying purchasing products based on the promise of a future release.)

Looking into the HP Minis revealed something surprising to me. The Mini 1000 and 2140 are similar in many ways, but the unintuitive bit was this: The tinier 8.9" screen's resolution is 1024 x 600, but the larger 10.1" screen's resolution is only 1024 x 576.

What the hey? Based on what I saw at the store, I almost bought the one with the bigger screen! Because a bigger screen means a bigger screen, right? Not in this case. That's why I was so happy to hear the rumor of the bigger screen on the HD HP Mini 2140, that puts that particular netbook back in the running.

In my despair, I began to look seriously at the Dell Inspiron Mini 12. (Larger than I'd want to carry around, but the bigger keyboard and screen would be appreciated.)

But then again, if I had a Palm Pre or an iPhone, I'd have a rich interface to the internet with me at all times. (Except I don't want to pay for their data plans or have to change carriers.)

Anyway, only a couple of days until I find out of the HD HP Mini 2140 is going to be real. But if I get it, would it arrive in time for my vacation?

Choices, choices.

HD HP Mini 2140 - PRO: size, just right. CON: sorta expensive
Dell Mini 12 - PRO: size when considering screen and keyboard CON: size when considering storage, carrying
Apple iPhone - PRO: ubiquity (good for software selection), same carrier. CON: data plan expense
Palm Pre - PRO: keyboard, access to my favorite Palm apps. CON: different carrier

Stack Overflow, Hunch and Wikipedia

2009-04-04T17:01:24Z

Just wanted to express online my long-going contempt for experts-exchange.com for clogging up Google's search results with so much useless noise.

And I wanted to express my delight with stackoverflow.com, which has proven its worth and demonstrates it readily. I'm also delighted with the promise of hunch.com. It takes a little diving into at this early stage to really understand it, but it's apparent that it's an experiment worth trying. (This is how wikipedia felt way back when. I wasn't sure it'd really work, but I was glad somebody was giving it an honest effort.)

Yay for people helping people.

Hypothetically Speaking Again... (LAME saves the day again)

2009-03-30T07:38:59Z

Hypothetically speaking (again), suppose you bought Bonnie Pink's beautiful ballad "Water Me" on iTunes. No, wait, scratch that. At Amazon. No, wait, scratch that, too. Neither place sells it. Story of my life.

So you fly to Japan, buy a digital copy, and fly back.

They you decide that you want to sync your iTunes library with your OpenTape playlists -- Only to discover that OpenTape only plays the first few seconds then fails over to the next track.

Then, hypothetically, you'd transcode it in LAME (maybe in the Audacity GUI) form the original MP3 to another (arbitrarily lower bitrate) MP3. You'd try the newly created file in OpenTape, and discover that it now works as expected.

Thank you, LAME!

Then, hypothetically, you'd also have to start looking into the best python-friendly way to manipulate tags (really, just copy them from the original to the transcoded one). Maybe pytagger or pyid3lib?