In My Experience... | Random (8760)

Category Archive » Random

Seems irresponsible to me.
[ November 25, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

When C|Net bought mp3.com, I didn't realize that they were only buying the domain from Vivendi and not the actual business as it exists today. C|Net says "the company plans to turn MP3.com into a source of information for digital music" as opposed to another online music store, but that's nothing new and isn't the real story. The real story is that Vivendi is going to delete all of the MP3.com content/material from their servers. Delete?

A few days ago VU sent out the announcement that the url MP3.com had been sold and the new owner was not taking possession of the music and band pages. This means the music will die, disappear, and vanish forever. MP3.com is a global treasure. First off, it is the largest music site in the world, nothing else is even close. And as I mentioned, it contains a diversity of music found nowhere else. If you want Britney Spears, there are lots of places to go. If you want Brittany Bauhaus, Brittany Lacy, Brittany Frompovich, or even Lymp Brittany, MP3.com is the one place in the world you'll find them. On December 2nd, their sites there will no longer exist.

Delete? Doesn't that seem irresponsible?

I can only imagine that a million MP3's takes up some massive amount of space (ie, SAN fabrics), and likely requires some big iron to dish it all out. It's likely that the cost of that hardware is just that, a cost (as opposed to a profit center). But why not just let Archive.org do its thing and archive it all? I can only assume copyright/intellectual-property issues are there, or just laziness and ignorance. Who knows? I don't.

Media bias.
[ November 13, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Crackpot! When you stop to consider how the various parts of a chunk of content are presented to you, it can become clear how other people want you to feel about something or someone. In this case, it's something other people have already pigeonholed as "media bias." The icon to the left is the icon used on the aol.com home page which is a feed from CNN.com and is a picture of a certain crackpot who has been in the news recently. I'm avoiding using her name for some reason to avoid the Google hits that may be generated down the road. But that's beside the point. This person has recently shown herself to be a crackpot (imho) and the media, in it's own subtle way, is pointing that out thru their selection of this image. They could have picked an image of her smiling, but they chose a sneer.

Recently consumed.
[ November 05, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Total cost: $43.77

This is deplorable.
[ September 09, 2003 | Permalink | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued, and settled with, a 12 year old girl over online music file swapping. The RIAA "was pleased with the settlement" that will cost the 12 year old girl $2000. I can't believe that the RIAA thinks that suing kids is good for the music business.

Best Spam Ever.
[ April 11, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I got a spam today with this subject...

Satisfy your wom@n you pindick

The ridiculousness of this works on so many levels, just the same way most of the humor in The Simpsons does. And for that, it gets my Best Spam Ever award.

Autechre's new record.
[ April 08, 2003 | Permalink | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

The new Autechre record, Draft 7.30, continues the series of nearly incomprehensible 'music' that started several years ago with LP5. It's nowhere near the cacophonous EP7, but doesn't come close to the melodic brilliance of 'Incunabala' which remains as one of my favorite IDM records of all time. This new record is alienating.

I think it's interesting though that Autechre attempted to be listenable again. Their skill and musical talent has been hidden and (imho!) wasted on attempts to make noise into music. Their willingness to experiment and not kowtow to commercialism makes them worthy of repeated attempts to find enjoyment in this new batch of tunes, but I imagine I will quickly go back to Esem, BoC and Ochre for my melodic fix.

[ The Milk Factory has a more favorable review here. ]

I missed a few things.
[ April 07, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

In the past several weeks I've worked on one high profile project (the orange thing in the top right at AOL keyword: Safety), broken bad news to my wife, watched too much war coverage, played two thirds of the way thru Zelda and purchased a TiVo. Because of that I've missed these important items...

Mozilla is following a new path.: "It's clear to us that Mozilla needs a new roadmap, one that charts a path to an even better future. Below we will propose a new application architecture based on the Gecko Runtime Environment ( GRE ), which can be shared between separate application processes."

AOL may restate earnings again.: "Regulators reviewing AOL Time Warner's accounting said they may require the company to restate as much as $400 million in advertising revenue booked in relation to a deal involving the company's America Online division and Bertelsmann."

Plagiarism is still bad, even on a blog.: "Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek online and National Public Radio.

The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized -- lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor."

Wanted: One Conference Friend
[ April 07, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I just purchased my airline tickets and made my room reservation for the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference, and need someone cool to hang out to make me look cool while attending said conference. I like long walks on the beach, Macintoshes and ways to boost blog visitorship. (heheheeh)

OK, seriously, I'll be arriving on Tuesday, I won't be attending the tutorials that day, and plan on making my Cupertino pilgrimage. Starting Wednesday, I'll be attending sessions and will attempt to blog everything I can, and photograph all the nerds with my Nikon 4300. I'd like a chance to meet up with any other webloggers who may be at the conference (which will likely be most of the attendees, so this shouldn't be hard).

I'm going to try to do everything I can to get the most out of the conference.

Even Dolphins hate Saddam.
[ March 25, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Dolphins are helping out in the US led war against Iraq by searching for under water mines. Meanwhile, many people on shore don't have drinking water. That contrast is shocking.

Poor kitty.
[ March 23, 2003 | Permalink | 8 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

This cat knows it's ugly.
This image seems to be making the rounds recently, but I'm not exactly sure where it originally came from. At the very least, this cat seems to know it's been violated, and is unhappy about it.

Glasshaus is dead.
[ March 15, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

This was posted to the Webdesign list today. It's bad news because Glasshaus made User Interface, Info Architecture and User Experience oriented books. The Ed books were pretty good too, I don't care about Wrox though...

From:	"Hugh Blair" <xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx>
To:	"'Webdesign-L'" <list@webdesign-l.com>
Date:	Sat, March 15, 2003 12:24 am
Subject:	RE: [WD]: [OT]: Glasshaus and Friends of ED: RIP?

> -----Original Message----- > > > I hear that Wrox is dead too.

Dear all

Please note that Peer Information, our parent company, has just been declared officially insolvent (bankrupt). This means that all current book projects end immediately and there will be no more friends of ED books.

All of us that worked here are now unemployed. Please accept my apologies for the sudden announcement, but it came as a bolt out of the blue to all of us here - we knew the company had been in trouble but had been led to believe it would be able to pull through, this turned out not to be the case.

Further to my communication regarding placing Peer Information into liquidation, I would like to clarify that Peer Information includes the following legal entities:

- Wrox Press Ltd
- Friends of Ed Ltd

Wrox Press Ltd also trades as: Glasshaus, Curlingstone, Active Path and Tect.

UCLA Surveys the Digital Future.
[ March 11, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I attended this thing at work today where Jeffery Cole, a Ph.D. at the UCLA Center for Communication Policy (see inset) spoke about current internet trends. It was pretty interesting, but I felt that one major hole in is presentation was bilateral media communications (eg, blogs).

Anyway, here's a bulleted list of some of the things he spoke about (notes were taken in real time, and thus punctuation and grammar are assumed to be absent)...

Surveying the Digital Future
Year Three: The Emergence of Trends
Jeffery Cole, Ph.D.
Director, UCLA Center for Communication Policy
The UCLA Internet Report, 2002
-----------------------------------------

Intro for Cole emphasizing social and economic impacts of digital media on society.

Cole apparently arranged the Info Superhighway conference with Al Gore nine years ago. Today he stands on a stage, bathed in a projected AOL logo talking about the impact of the net on the social fabric.

Today 14 year olds are watching less TV, and this confirms the fact that bilateral communications are attracting people away from TV.

In interviews with a random sample, 5% of Americans appear to NOT be online for the simple reason that everyone else is.

He feels that the gap between Broadband users and modem users is wider then the gap between modem users and non-users. "Broadband changes everything." (And I agree, due to the simple fact the immediacy of data interaction creates a seamless experience, and allows the user to concentrate on the data and the experience instead of the delivery of it. The mental shift between the meaning of the data and the delivery of it creates roadblocks.)

59% of Americans are online. 42% of the rest expect to go online soon (within 12 months) but that might be a hopeful statistic.

Hours per week usage has increased about 2 hours/week in two years.

As people gain internet experience, their usage and online time increases. A bar graph shows a relatively linear increase.

The graph for "at home" connections is vastly modem based, but broadband connections of growing pretty well. WebTV is on the decline. Cable modem seeing the greatest numeric increase.

Internet use is sapping time away from of-line media activities, except in the case of movies.

Broadband use impacts TV advert watching and modem use impacts general TV watching. Broadband use tends to be more atomic, as in, bite sized chunks, perfect for preempting commercials.

My obligatory snow storm post.
[ February 19, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Maybe my baby will want to rock out.
[ February 11, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

CNN reports that "Lollapalooza set to return after six-year hiatus" and I'm pretty psyched about it because Jane's Addiction is slated to perform. Over a decade ago I used to hang out with my high school friends a lot and skateboard and listen to Jane's. I saw their last club date and their first arena date (for the Ritual tour) and was really blown away by how bad Perry sounds at the beginning of a show and how good at the end. I also managed to make it to the second and third incarnations of Lollapalooza, which pretty much sucked (imho).

This spring, more than a decade after my last Perry Ferrel sighting, my wife will give birth to our first child (a girl! whoot!). I wonder how many other new parents will show up to Lollapalooza this year with a 'baby or board' sticker in their Sedan.

Career Control is the key.
[ February 07, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

C|Net reports on worker dissatisfaction...

The study said that one of the reasons workers are so grumpy is because managers wrongly interpret why employees are so disgruntled. Some of the major reasons that workers cite for their unhappiness are: amount of workload, a lack of a chance for professional development, boring job tasks and insufficient recognition.

Meanwhile, managers mistakenly believe that employees' feelings about management and the future of the company were more important to job satisfaction than workers' personal goals. In fact, the opposite is true. The study also found that managers underestimate the importance of many factors contributing to workplace satisfaction, including career development opportunities, rewards, challenging tasks, and a sense of self-confidence.

When management hands down edicts that directly contradict the business model of the company and are obviously tailored to self preservation, at the expense of doing good work, I get pissed.

It's institutionalized. Companies create systems where by people get promoted based on how many people they manage, or by being connected to the right projects at the right time. That creates a system whereby individuals seek out the situations that will benefit them the best (we are after all, human) at the expense of others. Human nature gets leveraged by corporate ignorance of the real work being done by the coal shovelers, and this creates fear and loathing when you have no control over the process. The article cited mentions "self-confidence" as a factor, but for me, it's career control. I want to feel like the work I am doing is better preparing me for what is next in my career.

I want to believe.
[ February 04, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I am, at best, a copyright neophyte. With little experience and too few hours spent considering the issue, I come accross a proposal by Lessig that seems to make sense...

The basic idea is this: 50 years after a work has been "published," a copyright owner would be required to pay a copyright tax. That tax should be extremely low--this proposal says $50, but it could be $1. If the copyright holder does not pay the tax for 3 years, then the work is forfeit to the public domain. If the copyright holder does pay the tax, then its contacting agent would be made a matter of public record. Very quickly we would have a cheap, searchable record, of what work is controlled and what work is free.

The idea seems worth considering, but since I haven't spent much time doing that, I don't really have anything to add other than some blog space.

Amazon Temptation.
[ January 25, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Amazon has done many things that are usable, or innovative, or just plain new, but this new one is lust plain devious. Upon arriving at the site today, in an effort to buy Doctorow's book that I don't have to buy, I saw the item you see to the left. They really seem to be woprking the impulse buy angle (eg, the Gold Box) these days.

SBC, Unisys and BT: All Extremely Lame.
[ January 23, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

British Telecom sued Prodigy over a hyperlink patent claim, and lost. What lamers. That's like patenting an air duct as 'an apparatus containing and transporting molecules in a super liquid state (air) thru a gated and integrated system.' It's just a tube. It's just a link.

Unisys suddenly said to everyone 'give us money for these GIFs you're using,' and got dissed.

SBC now says they own the patent to Frames technology. Fine, you can have 'em, they suck anyway. The thing that sets SBC apart as a heartless corporate ho bag is this...

In the letter sent to Museum Tour President Marilynne Eichinger, SBC's Harlie Frost, president of intellectual property, pointed out that the Museumtour.com Web site contains tabs pointing to different Web pages within the site, and those tabs are in a frame that does not disappear as a person navigates the site. SBC said those "features (as well as other valuable features) appear to infringe several issued claims" related to certain patents.

They sent cease and desist letter to a museum?!?! At least BT went after Prodigy.

Preventing the Harvest.
[ January 22, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

For what it's worth, here are some ways to attempt to stop bots from harvesting your email address from your website...

SpamStopper is a web designer's utility that will help keep email address harvesting spambots from grabbing email addresses from your website(s). No, I'm not joking - this actually works!
Convert your email address to a graphic, automagically (but exclude the blind from reading those email addresses in the process, so try the other idea first).
Botbomb tries to come up with ways to help you out too, but they are controversial (eg, seeding bad addresses).

Also for what it's worth, I encode email addresses on this website using hex codes. It's not that hard to change your bot to work around that though, so it's a token gesture. I'll likely remove the email requirement when posting comments in the next rev of this site (coming soon). URLs are better anyway.

RIAA: Time to Panic
[ January 19, 2003 | Permalink | 7 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I'm a UI designer and front-end developer, so what do I know about the music industry? Enough to know that RIAA has run out of ideas. The idea of extorting money from ISPs for allowing its users access to music sharing sites is pathetic and devoid of the one thing RIAA needs, ideas for compelling people to pay for music. Some efforts have been made, but...

Officials from Pressplay and MusicNet, which are in their second year of operation, declined to disclose how many customers they have.

You have to guess that millions and millions of subscriptions would be touted in the press and be used as marketing material. NOT disclosing your subscriptions or sales figures means one thing, you suck.

Let's face it, the music industry is churning out pure crap. It has been churning out pure crap for several years now, and who wants to pay 16 to 22 bucks for that CRAP? Not me. CDs are too damn expensive (I buy about six a year) for the value they deliver and on the other side of the coin we super cheap MP3s of comparable quality music. Price to performance ratios seems to be something the music industry does not understand. You can't sell crap for a lot of money when good stuff can be had FOR FREE (or just really cheap).

But, I digress. Let's get back to the extortion. My guess is that the RIAA thinks they can pin ISPs against the wall by saying to them, "hey, your users are violating copyright, which makes you guilty by allowing that to happen." But by proxy they are also saying, "because we can't possibly make copyright violation claims against millions of people (and reap rewards worth the time, effort and gobs of litigation cash), we're going to attack entities that have a lot of money and see what happens." This is a reactionary effort that attempts to deal with the symptoms of a wider problem, regardless of the laws in place that protect ISPs from the activities of their users.

Note to RIAA and the music industry: I used to work at a record label and used to run a radio station. I know the system, and the system is...

expensive
unfair to those who create the value
severely out dated
dependant on CD sales thruput
less attractive in the face of the iPod
only effective when the good ol' boy network can be enforced, and on the net, it can't be

Corprate taunting of a merely mortal customer.
[ December 11, 2002 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I am being deliberately taunted by the CLEC's, MSO's and the vast right wing conspiracy in the form of fiber conduit on the sidewalk in front of my house (click inset image).

Regular readers will be aware of my connectivity dilemma (which is basically explained as me being stuck at 56k) while being so close to AOL, Exodus, Verizon, SpeakEasy and GeekSpeed points of presence. NONE of them are able to feed me the gorging amounts of data thruput I so desire. The kick in the pants, represented in the inset pic, is that they already have put conduit in the ground, at the very point those spools sit. They pumped that junk into the ground six months ago!

Just this past weekend I called Adelphia to see what kind of time table that cable modem access is for my area. The gave me the same answer I've gotten for the last year, "2 to 3 months." I think they put the backhoe and conduit directly in front of my house to tease me. Don't you?

I want a HipTop or a Treo, but...
[ December 10, 2002 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

My phone number is the killer feature of my phone. I've had the same mobile number for about 5 years, and I'm not letting go. The phone companies know that your phone number is a valuable asset as well and "wireless carriers are not required to provide telephone number portability at this time." This is a competitive advantage leveraged by one of the most basic usability rules that familiarity makes things easier. Changing your number doesn't breed familiarity, and prevents me from adopting competitive technologies.

And don't let the wireless carriers fool you, number portability between GSM and CDMA networks has been available in Australia since 25 September 2001.

AGAIN, even though it's weak, turn on the WEP.
[ December 09, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I've said this before, and had high profile digerati say I'm crazy, but I maintain that Wi-Fi is a security risk. Uncle Sam thinks so too.

Snow, and lots of it.
[ December 05, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Here's the view from my house today. It hasn't looked like this around here in a long time.
Landscape View of Snow in Northern Virginia

Surgery.
[ December 03, 2002 | Permalink | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I had my gall bladder removed yesterday after having some problems with Gall Stones. I tried to take notice of the experience while going thru the process, and I have to say it wasn't that bad and pretty direct. At the core, there was a process, step by step that made sense.

It was a shock though to wake up in recovery after the surgery. I've had general anesthetic before and recall the process of passing out, but the process yesterday was different and I wasn't told when I'd be dropping off into la la land. I would have preferred to have known what was going to happen next and how many more steps there were to go, just the same as the checkouts process at Amazon dot com.

I'll be using the downtime this week to work on a redesign of this site. suggestions are welcome. I also hope to pick up the pace on postings which have been kind of sparse over the last few weeks.

Pique me, get paid.
[ October 28, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Why [Would] You Join Salon Premium?

Good question. I've been waiting for about 6 years for a content site to entice me into a paying subscription for access. I have a poll asking if you would be willing to financially support this site and expected a resounding 'no' to be returned, but I wanted to get a feeling for why. I don't pay for blog access, or online newspaper access and never imagined Salon would hide things behind the curtain that I'd want to reveal by throwing money at them (I don't even sign up for free access). But, they did it.

It's not like I think getting to finish reading the linked article is going to change my life or pay me back the cost of the Premium membership. It's my curiosity. Pique me, get paid.

Fear and Loathing in D.C.
[ October 14, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Perhaps the title of this entry is a little exaggerated, but it's interesting to see Lessig express his feelings about his appearance before Supreme Court last week (transcript should appear here soon)...

Every night since Wednesday I have awoken in the middle of the night, to spend the rest of the night reanswering Justice Ginsburg, or asking Chief Justice Rehnquist just how he could distingiush Commerce from Copyright. The kind words of so many notwithstanding, I know and have always known I am not Larry Tribe, or Kathleen Sullivan. And if, after getting this so close to the right result, I have lost this by not being them, then I am not quite sure how I will live with that fact.

Wednesday.
[ October 06, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Reminder: Lessig speaks to the Supreme court this week (the docket) about copyright issues. Here's a preview.

Lack of wit leads to link barrage.
[ October 03, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I'm busy today and don't have anything really smart or educated to say, but there are plenty of other people who do...

dive into mark notes "that Google has made some major changes in their most recent update. The weblogging community was hit hard (for instance, I used to be the #1 "mark"; I am now #6). The changes appear to be the result of an attempt to stop two phenomena: explicitly selling ads based on PageRank, and Google bombing."

Winterspeak keeps on the Xbox issue with a few questions like "How important is it to play DVDs or CDs on personal computers (or a game console)? How important will it be in the future? Given how consumers want PCs to be open and content owners want media players to be closed, how much will these domains "converge"?".

More and more folks seem to be opening Terminal in Mac OSX. To wit... "The growing number of Unix-friendly Mac users is especially apparent here at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference, where developers and enthusiasts have gathered to discuss the company's new operating system."
I'll tell ya, I see more and more OSX machines here at AOL every day. There's even signs in the lobby advertising the new OSX version of to the employees.

Is the PlayStation network adapter worth it? Kuro5hin presents an op-ed.

Feel the love.
[ October 01, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

As ripped from a Usenet article...

"qwazz" wrote in message
news:EgDl9.16880$q42.795542@bin3.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...

> So i pick up UT2K3 at Software Etc. on Saturday.
>
> The box is not the usual oversized box I usually get there.

The fact that you had to post the box size as a gripe tells me I need to
hunt you down and frag the living shit out of your ASS.

Whiny little bitch.

Jim

Hahahahaha, Usenet will never let you down in the bile department. But, like a former intern asked of me a few months ago, "what's usenet?"

MP3 war.
[ September 30, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

It shocks me how bassakwards 'the recording industry' is when it comes to battling online swapping of MP3 of copyrighted material. As noted by CNN...

Congress is considering expanded legal protection for record labels who resort to sabotage in their ongoing battle with "peer to peer" networks that allow users to freely trade music, movies and other copyrighted material.

This is at the behest of Record Labels who want action like this to occur...

a technique called "interdiction," which closes off a user's hard drive to others on the network

Never mind that the American economy has been based on competition in the marketplace. Forget trying to bring out better products that better meet the expectations and desires of the consumer. No, just keep doing what you are doing, release over priced CD's, and make sure the consumer only consumes in ways you prefer (because they produce higher margins).

I've worked at an independent record label before, and the deals with artists were heavily weighted in favor of the label (artist gives up ownership and only gets their music released when the label so desires it). It's worse at major labels. IMHO, the recording industry needed a kick in head, but I fear they might simply retaliate instead of waking up and smelling the global distribution medium.

In a world of privacy concerns, FOAF.
[ September 23, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

This is meme-y to the core but I like how it's based on interpersonal relationships and connecting people. It's FOAF and it uses RDF, so it can't be half bad. You can even make your own FOAF and publish it, on your own site. How long do you think it will be before a dot com comes along to aggregate and propagate this meme? Someone is already squatting the foaf.com domain name.

[ via diveintomark ]

Fix your Passat misfire.
[ September 22, 2002 | Permalink | 220 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

We interrupt this blog to bring you the method for fixing a misfire in the 1996 Volkswagen Passat. Little did I know when I bought said car that annoying, expensive and consistent problems would arise. Finding explanations and fixes for the problems I've had have come few and far between.

In an effort to Google bomb this explanation for fixing the misfire in the 1996 Volkswagen Passat GLX VR6, I am posting this blog entry, complete with keywords, such as...

Volkswagen
Passat
GLX VR6
ignition coil
coil pack
misfire
misfiring
engine sputtering
$350 part
repair costs
outrageous labor costs
do it yourself
$3 epoxy
i hate my car
thank god i live only 4 miles from work

It took me several hours to find this article about the coil pack. Hopefully other unfortunate 1996 Passat owners will now find it more easily. Also, I recently found another relevant page about fixing your coil pack with epoxy. This page has more discussion on the suggestions made at the guide linked above.

Please post a comment below if this information has been useful to you. Also, if anyone is interested, I have the old cracked coil pack left over from my recent repairs. If anyone would like to buy it, just make me an offer (I mean, someone might want it, right?).

[edited Oct 3, 2002]

First to post the MP3 wins!
[ September 20, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Record labels have stooped to a new level of stupidity by sending promo copies of CDs to reviewers with portable CD players wrapped around them. Glued shut cd players, so the CD can't be ripped to MP3 format. Glue.

Now, unless they made these players out of titanium, or steel, or some other material requiring torches to open, getting the disk out will be easy. It seems to me that this is a challenge that begs to be taken, and I'm sure someone will, or just sell the player/disk on eBay. There is kitch value after all.

Weekend reading.
[ August 29, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Cory Doctorow has a short story published on Salon today. I haven't read it yet, but plan to based on another story from Doctorow called Eastern Standard Tribe. I've found Doctorow's writing to be a bit heavy on the futurespeak making it less accessible to those of us who aren't hax0rs, english lit majors and/or info tech workers. The evidence is in the linked jargon, but what the hell, it's fun reading.

You can't win.
[ August 20, 2002 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

About 4 years ago I was a 3-Coke-a-day kind of guy. Then, two things occured to me; there is diabetes in my family, and I was over 180 lbs (which is heavy for me). I didn't change any of my eating habits, but removed Coke from my diet and replaced it with Diet Sprite (another Coke property, so what do they care?). Well, it dawned on me today that I'm 165 lbs for a reason. Who knows though, the substitution of sugar for aspartame will prolly give my cancer instead of diabetes.

Some site maintenance.
[ August 16, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Email addresses of comment posters are now harvesting protected thru MovableType's mechanism. Also, I fixed a JavaScript problem with the link check box at the bottom right (it wasn't as smart as I thought I made it). I'm working on random optimizations, and have come to the conclusion that I want to do an entire redesign.

Anyway, if you get a JavaScript error, or a comment posting barfs on you, let me know.

Looking into copyright and fair use.
[ August 13, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I have to link to this article written by Cory Doctorow about Hollywood and digital tech, because it..

...answers my Nana's question about why the FCC wants to force TV makers to include digital tuners. (Of course it's money)
...has a clear Macintosh bias. (Like this site)
...touches on a lot of points in this First Monday Article. (Which takes it a step further)

3rd party Blog services starting to proliferate.
[ August 05, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Blogs are gaining momentum enough to be uncool to the likes of the WebDesign list (I'd link to a thread bashing blogs if I could). But for those who don't wear sun glasses at night, there's a couple new blog services available out there...

BlogTree: If you are reading this blog then you probably already know about Blogtree since it's been linked from just about everywhere. But it bears mentioning again since it's a neat idea and contributes to 'community' aspect of blogging. The basics are that it's a genealogy tool for weblogs (as in, what blogs spawned new blogs).

Tangent.cx: "Tangent.cx is the home of a centralized SOAP-based Web service that aims to make connections between sites all over the web. Tangent will integrate with the content management tool you use to manage your site, and automatically contribute and retrieve content from a central server that will create links between pieces of content based on text searching and your preferences."

Mother Earth Mother Board: Neil Stephenson's telco story that appeared in Wired mag years ago is a pretty interesting read within the context of the land line bandwidth glut. I remember receiving this issue in the mail, and it was the thickest magazine I'd ever gotten (except the Sears catalog) due to the length of the Stephenson article; more than 50 pages.

Nathan Shedroff's Unified Field Theory of Design: This is an oldie but a goodie that provides good advice for the aspiring info designer, web applications producer, and information architect. I've always read this piece keeping Web applications and the network mediated experience in mind. However, it's a Unified theory and not limited to 'web design.'

Fixed cgi link from yesterday's article.
[ July 10, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Yesterday I posted an article with a link to a file, and that link was broken. More to the point, the link was right, but Pair.com is pretty serious about security on their servers. The presence of "cgi" in the file name made the server refuse to deal with the file in that location. I renamed it to remove the cgi part, and reposted the file. You can download it here.

I suppose it's a good thing that Pair has things configured correctly, and I'd be the first person to recommend them as a host for this type of site.

Coming up next week...
[ July 03, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Next week I'll be publishing a two part series on installing, configuring and using mod_mp3 on a Mac OSX based machine. Day one (probably Monday) will focus on compiling and installing mod_mp3, and then day two will focus on coding a usable front end. I'm also going to try to get TrackBack implemented and integrated by then, so wish me luck (and please have a safe 4th of July).

In the meantime, consider this quote from a c|net article today...

Kay also questioned how many Mac OS X 10.1 users would move to Jaguar, although he did see a good market for those on the older system, Mac OS 9.

What kind of crack is this guy smoking? OS9 users are looking at OSX, and all versions of it, as the big upgrade in the sky. Anyone who has done the OSX upgrade from MacOS 8 or 9 is chomping at the bit for ANY upgrade they can get (remember how dog ass slow 10.0 was?). And I think I'm hallucinating when I see quotes like this...

Kay was unenthusiastic about the Jaguar release, contending that Apple's OS updates come too frequently.

Too frequently? IMHO, too damn slow! I've been using OSX since the beta test, and based on the original road map, I should be using 10.5 by now. I'm willing to bet if these updates, especially the upgrade from 10.0 to 10.1 were more spread out, Apple would have seriously damaged the rate of OSX uptake (because, again, 10.0 was god ass slow). Dollars to donuts says this guy isn't an OSX user.

My year-to-date server logs (link fixed, REALLY).
[ June 24, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I have nothing to say today, so I thought I'd share my server logs that cover most of the year to date (as reported on by Analog). Enjoy it, and no teasing me on the average request per day stat (read: it's low!)

Sorry about the broken link, and the fixed but still broken link. It's really fixed this time.

It's your loss Verizon.
[ May 04, 2002 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

If you've read this blog with any regularity, you probably know that I'm bandwidth challe