June 2005 Archives
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June 30, 2005
iTunes Bug and Resolution
So, as you can probably tell, I'm still using iTunes. However, I recently had a problem. I was trying to set the Album Art on each of the songs that I like (4 and 5 stars) but it wouldn't let me. Actually, sometimes it wouldn't let me and other times it would let me but the image wouldn't persist.
In any case, a few web searches turned up many people having this problem. However, I didn't find any solutions with web searching. So, I had to solve it myself. It was rather simple, really. Maybe so simple that I simply missed the solution because it would have been really short.
All you have to do is change the ID3 tag to none and then change it back to a version. Then you can drag'n'drop all you want. If you have a whole bunch of files that need to be "fixed", as I did, you can select them all and do it. The only thing I noticed missing was any album art I had already managed to set on fixed ones.
Anyway, here it is graphically:
Interesting Insight Into Child Acting
I've always sort of assumed that if you're a child actor your parents are really pushing you to do it -- maybe even to the point of forcing. Seems that it is somewhat that way (he never says he was pushed, just that it was a routine his mom and him did). I really like the insight this post by Wil Wheaton gives on it, not to mention that fact that games bring back memories for him. Some do for me, too.
WIL WHEATON dot NET: Where is my mind?: the seat with the clearest view
Cool New Estes Rocket
Well, at least I think it's cool because it's Hyrdogen Fuel powered. ;)
Is This For Real?
I can't help but wondering if this is for real. If you read the rest of the post on hackerz, it almost seems like the "long" presses have to be exactly 1.2 or 1.5 seconds. Either that, or the spacing between the presses needs to be. In any case, I can just see the phone of watching people all over trying this when it's completely bogus. The problem is, though, if it's not it's incredibly useful -- and fun. And yeah, I'll have to try it. ;)
The most popular hack, which works on most models, is the "Instant Walk." Three short clicks, followed by two long, one short, two long, and three short; turn any crosswalk signal from "don't walk" to "walk" with a matching change in the traffic signals.
This Table Provides Sunlight
I can just see the logos "Sunlight Inside" already.
It's actually an interesting idea, although I think sunlight from the walls would be better.
June 29, 2005
Aerial Kite Photography
Actually, it's KAP as these guys call it. Taking photos with a camera attached to a kite. These guys come up with all sorts of ways to get the shot they want, from luck to attached X10 video cameras. It's all very cool and something I'd want to try sometime. Just not with our current cameras. ;)
Here's a link to the groups slideshow on Flickr. Do check out the ones of the whales just at the surface of the water. It's very cool.
4GB Apple iPod Shuffle
I could use a 4GB Shuffle, actually. As long as it comes out at, say, $99, that would be cool. Well, I bet they'll lower the prices on the .5GB and 1GB and these will come in at $149 and $199. That's about right for a 4GB player, anyway. Actually, I don't bet... but we'll see. Besides, the wait could be... well, indefinite. ;)
Who Needs PSP Games?
With all of these emulators available for the PSP, you can get one and not even have to buy a game. You can rip your own videos (that you own, of course), grab a few emulators and play your old NES, SNES, GBC, and other system games on it. And even browse the web... or wait, don't you need a PSP game for that, still?
Anyway, lots of fun. But when do I get one?
The Gadgeteer - Emulators for the Sony PSP: An Overview of the Best
Cool Articles on this Site
His little SAT trick of getting 200 is a fun read. Interesting fact: a 1490 pre-1995 would now get one a 1600.
An AI that can play tetris with web cam vision.
Intro to neural nets.
Other fun stuff:
A Paper Enigma Machine!
This is the coolest thing! We compared the output to this Flash version of the enigma and it was identical!
Towards the bottom of the page it mentions cutting slits so the rotors stay in place and are easier to push/pull as you work through it. I did this and the results are great. It works really well and once you get used to it you can encode a letter fairly rapidly.
One thing to note: Be sure on your first encode that you move the right rotor up one before you encode the first letter! We missed this part. The starting position assumes you'll do that first.
XZPHS!(I-II-III, SAC) ;) (I used the paper version and then confirmed with the Flash version, and it was correct and the same, once again.)
I think it's cool how it's reversible. In the above example, E becomes X in the starting position and X becomes E in the starting position. It wouldn't work without that, but it's still cool.
Enigma (done in Flash -- a bit slow)
Via gizmodo.
June 28, 2005
Mini Cars do the Lego Mindstorm Trick
Remember those? Well, these little cars can do the line following, too, but they're not much bigger than a lego brick. Could be a lot of fun around the office -- or with a cat. ;)
Eminent Domain: How to Prove a Point
How about by using eminent domain to take away one of the justices homes:
Cool Little Picture Viewers
These little devices are great for someone who can't afford to buy a free cell phone that can function as a picture viewer. Instead, you can buy one or more of these keychains or necklaces that can show up to 56 pictures for up to 2 hours on a charge.
Now, they are relatively cheap. And they're actually pretty cool looking.
June 27, 2005
Santa Cruz County: Where I Live
This site has some interesting statistics. Our zip code, 95062, has an average household income of $46k with an average house value of only $334k. In comparison, the zip code my dad lives in has an average household income of $74k with an average house value of $409k. Note that this is house value, likely the number that comes from the property taxes. Downtown, however, with an income of $54k has a house value of $417k, which means it is effectively more expensive to live there.
There are some other interesting statistics, like the white/black/hispanic distribution in the area and such.
Anyway, they can be seen at this site. However, a warning! This site has ads that break through my popup blockers. Be aware of that first...
June 25, 2005
Subscription Buttons and other stuff...
So, I finally gave in an added subscription buttons like the rest of the blogging world. When going around the various sites trying to find what the "proper" graphics and URLs were I had to sign up for all of the services.
I really like the look and feel of newsgator and I might even give some of its headlines and blogrolling links a try.
Bloglines was probably one of the more difficult for me to find the links as they weren't linked to from their help section like everyone else. Actually, to be fair, I still haven't found MSNs official one, but that may be in part due to the fact that MY MSN is currently unavailable -- but there isn't anything about it on spaces, either, other than the automatic link it adds.
One strange thing though was that when I would search for my site on these places, most of them would come up with two hits. Even stranger, those two hits on My Yahoo! didn't actually show anything new where the syndication I added when testing my button worked fine. I wonder what's up with that?
Read the rest of "Subscription Buttons and other stuff..."June 23, 2005
More DoCoMo 4G News
It's been a while since DoCoMo did their 100 Mbps wireless test. Now they're at it again with a 1Gbps test. All wireless, of course. I'm curious as to why wireline isn't testing at even higher speeds. These speeds are surpassing most common ethernet networks, even. I know ethernet has a 10Gig standard, but who actually uses that? The GigE standard isn't even all that widely available, although with laptops starting to come with it this could change in the next year.
I just love this part thought:
The 1Gbps real-time packet transmission was realized through Variable Spreading Factor-Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM) radio access and 4-by-4 Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) multiplexing using "adaptive selection of surviving symbol replica candidate" (ASESS) based on Maximum Likelihood Detection with QR decomposition and the M-algorithm (QRM-MLD), which was developed by DoCoMo.
In other words, VSF-Spread OFDM radio access and MIMO ASESS based on QRM-MLD developed by DoCoMo. Got it? Good.
June 22, 2005
Star Wars Episode III: Going Strong
As a follow-up to my last post about this, we've got some preliminary numbers on where Episode III is going to land. Please note that it was still #5 in the box office for Monday, so it'll continue up some.
It has now grossed some $349,270,153. That's puts it in 11th of all time. That also puts it ranking #3 of all 6 movies, just as I predicted. ;) It's doing about a million a day plus weekends in the $10 million range, making it unlikely to grow another $80 million, putting it ahead of Episode I, but it's entirely possible. It will likely be in the top 10 before this next weekend is out, though.
Well, I certainly enjoyed the movie. It was a lot of fun to watch and I thought they did a good job linking in to Episode IV. However, I thought there were a couple of places they may have tried too hard to find a link. Like really, what are the chances of running into our favorite Wookie? Amusing, but seriously now, that's a little far out that. ("Far, far" out there, I suppose.)
I can say this with absolute certainty: It was a much better 3rd movie than the 3rd in the Matrix. ;) Comparing to Lord of the Rings isn't fair, as that series came from a trilogy many people knew, read, and had already stood the test of time as a story.
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: Star Wars: Entertainment or Just About the Money?
How Odd: Audiovox 8940 External Screen
So, I've had my 8940 for a while now. You can change the internal screen background to whatever you want. However, the external screen only had certain themes to choose from.
Today, however, it had a new theme. It seems summer related. So, I thought maybe it was just changing it based on summer coming.
After looking at the settings, though, I see that it still has the graphic I chose. And the graphic it's displaying is another option and there are only 3 options total.
Gah. This phone has so many problems it's not even funny. It get's into a mode where it won't receive calls or messages. Everything looks fine, so it's hard to tell it's in this mode. If I ever really try to use it for anything other the the time in this mode it'll often crash, too.
*sigh*
I love the features, but it's just not very stable.
Well, the cool thing is I've decided I like the new external wallpaper it gave the phone. ;) It's actually designed for the analog clock and not the digital clock, but it looks fine with the digital clock up.
June 21, 2005
Jury Summons
I've actually been called in! I've never been called in before. I don't really know what it's going to involve, either. I'll just show up at a bit before 9am and do whatever it is they ask me to do.
I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. But I'm not looking forward to it in that I don't expect it to be a very exciting experience, but rather a time sink. I could be wrong, of course. I could actually get selected for a jury. However, I think the chances of that are fairly low.
Ah well. It's just too bad it effectively cuts into vacation time, I think... not sure about that yet at my company. They can't discourage me from taking time off to server. However, the wording implies that you do voluntarily take time off. Maybe i'll learn more about this later.
I've always found it odd how expensive it can be for a company. When I was at a consulting company it could literally cost the company thousands of dollars in lost revenue a day. And the only reimbursement is to the employee at $15/day. $15? What's that supposed to pay for? And it only starts on the second day.
Blah.
June 20, 2005
Modern History: East Timor
Alright, what is this about? Well, I was looking through the list of countries sorted by per capita gross domestic product (GDP) recently. At the very, very bottom of this list I saw East Timor at a mere $400 USD per capita GDP. On this same list we have Luxembourg at $58,900, the United States at $40,100, Canada at $31,500, the European Union at $26,900, Russia at $9,800, and the World average at $8,800.
So, I was curious. What was this country that ranked below even the Gaza Strip ($600) or Samalia (also $600)?
Where is it?
East Timor is in Indonesia on the eastern half of the island of Timor, which itself means East. So yeah, it's East East or maybe the Far East (to quote Laurie). ;)
How did it come about?
In the 16th century, Portugal traded with the island. They skirmished there with the Dutch until 1859 when Portugal ceded the western portion of the island. During WWII, Japan held the island, but it this portion returned to Portugal afterwards. In late 1975, East Timor declared independence from Portugal. In 1976, it became the province of East Timor as part of Indonesia.
During the next twenty years, some 100,000 to 250,000 people were killed during a "pacification" process. In 1999, with the help of the UN, East Timor declared independence from Indonesia. During this time, nearly 300,000 people feld to West Timor. An Australian peace keeping force brought peace later in 1999. In May of 2002, East Timor was internationally recognized as an independant state.
This last part is part of why I find the whole thing fascinating. The country is barely 3 years old, although it's offical independence day is November 28, 1975. In any case, most history classes in school barely even get to Vietnam much less more televised things like the first Gulf War. This is such a minor area of the world and everything is so recent that unless you're really paying attention to the world news, stuff like this can just slip by.
So, it caught my attention and now I've written about it. Now I'm curious about all of the other world changes that hardly make the US World News. Even if it does, I'd probably miss it because I only really ever get my news online, if that. Although I have been listening to NPR lately, which gives me some of what I've been missing. Speaking of NPR, there was a commentary recently on just this: the fact that some people get their news online, but only get the news in subjects they want, such as sports or, in my case, gadgets.
Read the rest of "Modern History: East Timor"June 15, 2005
Apple iTunes: A Feature I Like
So, I've still been using iTunes. Given that there is now integration of Windows Media Player with MSN Messenger (it'll show what you're playing) I've got even less reason to keep "giving it a chance."
However, I just recently discovered a feature I happen to really like. At work, we don't particularly approve of streaming music. This isn't to say it doesn't happen. However, it's not supposed to. So, what I've gotten to doing (although I haven't done it in quite a while) is recording some of my favorite streams using WinAmp. I've done this with classical, 80s, techno, and other things. The quality isn't quite what it is when I find and rip a CD, but it's usually more of a "best of" list anyway. However, there has always been a really annoying problem. The break in the songs isn't detected very well. That means that many of my songs both start about 30 seconds in as well as end with a station sweeper and a few seconds of the next song.
iTunes, however, solves this problem. Each song has a field for when in the song to play and when to stop playing. Using this, I can get rid of the ending part without editing the file (which would further reduce the quality since many are already relatively low bit rate).
Now that's a feature I'll be looking for in my other players.
PC Case Turned Espresso Maker
And not just any espresso maker. You pour in the whole beans and out comes wonderful espresso. It does everything else. It comes at a cost... 80 hours of work, $3,000 in materials, and who knows how long sitting on ebay looking for the materials.
The result (watch the video!) settles out like a well poured pint of Guinness! Ahhhh..
I'd love to have the time to spend in making something like this, though. This really is the ultimate desktop. ;)
June 13, 2005
The Day After Tomorrow
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Who's on First?
A great remake of Who's on First using movie names. Enjoy.
June 10, 2005
Talking to Space
I was watching a special on CNN recently (via VCAST, actually). It had a CNN reporter talking to the crew of the International Space Station. Before they got going with the talking, the reporter warned everyone that there was a long delay because they were "traveling at 17000mph and 125 miles up." At the end, the reporter says the delay was about 5 seconds, again exclaiming that they're 125 miles up. I dunno, but last time I talked to the UK there was no delay and I'm pretty sure that's more than 125 miles away!
Actually, even if the ISS was on the other side of the planet the radio delay would be well under a second. That means the delays are being introduced but some store and forward packet system or something. I don't happen to know why myself, but the capability for a shorter delay is there...
Miata: Going Strong, But Lit Up
Yeah, that's right. It's running well, but it doesn't know it. That is, it put on the check engine light. Silly car. What does it know about itself?
*grumble*
I'll have to take it up to get the engine code pulled. Again. *sigh*
It's barely been 100 miles since I picked it up. I never should have done the post yesterday talking about it.
