Regular readers know I’m obsessed with wikis. I have a new favorite desktop wiki that’s already displaced my last pet favorite (voodoopad). This one is cross platform compatible and free. Check out instiki. It couldn’t be easier to install, it has a clean simple interface, and you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes.
retro lunch hour
Check out everyvideogame.com, which lets you play a ton of old school arcade and 8-bit console games right in your browser using client-side Java. Who can resist 10 minutes of ms. pacman action on their lunch break? I just wish the graphics window was a bit larger.
Best…video…..evar!
I’m going to let this one speak for itself aside from noting that it is Soolin and I this Sunday at Andrew Bruning’s mom’s farm. Oh, and it was as awesome and fun as it looked, and despite the apparent concern, Soolin liked it too. Check it out (.avi file)
Switching jobs cost me HOW much?!?
I just did my taxes. The move to a new job cost me just over $7k in lost wages this year. I was shocked. I knew I had lost a good bit of income, in fact I was beating myself up over the fact that I ended up depleting my savings by $5k while getting established in New York. Now I don’t feel as bad about that, but damn! And to pour salt in the wound, my tax return is below my average for the last 5 years or so by like $800. Note to self, change jobs as infrequently as possible.
Mediaportal is all that and it’s free
Wow. Wow! Mediaportal is like the answer to my media box prayers. I’ve played around with a bunch of different front ends for my home-brew tivo (things like Meedio, Beyond Media, and Xlobby), and nothing has come remotely close to mediaportal. It worked with my remote, my favorite DVD/movie file player (immatrix’s zoom player), my ancient copy of winamp, and it recognized my network shares and my album cover art collection, all without me having to do any configuration. Or almost none anyway. I’m completely impressed, and it’s completely free. If you’re on a PC you should check this out. Between this and hauppauge’s new sub-$75 mpeg encoding card you can build a home-brew tivo on the super cheap. Mind that I haven’t tested the tv recording module yet since I already have Beyond TV and it works great, but the rest of the modules are fantastic.
A different kind of calculator
Remember writing out calculations longhand on a piece of paper when you were in primary school? One wouldn’t initially think that a calculator that mimics this process would be anything other than a novelty, until one actually tries such a thing – go get longhand and decide for yourself. It’s Mac only. I like it lots, it’s replaced the built-in calculator on OS X for me. Oh, and it’s free.
A word on the mac mini
Work is finally starting to settle down and I have a few moments to post here. Apple announced the mac mini while I was too busy to comment. I love the thing. We got one in at work immediately and I’ve had a chance to tinker with it a good bit. I’m going to dump linux as my hosting environment at home and swap over to OS X, after about 6 years on the same hardy little linux box. I’m also going to switch over from winamp to itunes for managing my music collection. That’s the cool news. The bad news is this will delay me fixing my weblog such that comments work again. I’m going to wait to pick up the mini until after the next OS X revision (Tiger) ships, presumably sometime before the end of March. I have to hand it to Apple, they’re really firing on all cylinders right now. Most folks didn’t notice but they’ve grown back to the annual revenue they were seeing at the height of their success during the last 2 quarters. If they keep it up for the next 2 quarters they will have their largest annual revenue ever. It’s well deserved. I love my ibook after having loathed the last one, the mini is just brilliant (yeah, it’s the Cube again, just rationally priced this time), and they’re the only company to really figure out how to handle digital music and DRM that works for both consumers and the content companies. Want to lay odds on the mini being the gateway device to them making the same deals with hollywood they have with the music industries? I’m not sure but I sure hope it turns out to be true.
Hope for Tivo?
I selfishly like to think someone’s paying the price for their complete failure to recognize that by bending over for entertainment industry they’ve sunk their chances at keeping their market (see my numerous previous posts on the subject), but the company that invented the PVR is actually more likely to be paying the price for market commoditization (is that even a word?) coupled with some poor business decisions. What am I rambling about? Both the President and the CEO of Tivo have announced they’re leaving the company over the last 2 weeks. Good riddance, they appear to have steered the company into dead end. Maybe new leadership will help them get back out again. I’m not holding my breath, but anything is better then what they had been doing. My guess is someone is going to be owning Tivo at a bargain price pretty soon now, one of the cable companies is my completely uneducated speculation.
Soolin’s second week
This time done in a stream of consciousness style, and keep in mind it’s one of the busiest weeks of the year for me work-wise. It went something like this:
Puppy puppy puppy puppy! Puppy puppy! Drool! Yay! Puppy puppy puppy piddle! D’oh! Webct webct webct puppy puppy webct epitaph webct puppy puppy puppy piddle! D’oh! Piddle Piddle puppy puppy puppy! Webct. email overload. sleep?
Repeat for the past 6-7 days, and you have my life in a nutshell. Not much sleep, a lot of work, a bright-eyed little puppy looking for all the attention I can muster, and again a very frazzled me. On the positive, Soolin continues to improve in terms of piddling outside – we made it through the entire weekend without any accidents and she totally gets that the bell on the door means she can go out, and she pretty much gets that if she needs to go, she should use the bell.
On the negative side, she is not sleeping through the night anymore, now she wakes up repeatedly and barks up a storm. Last night we went to bed at 10, it took her a half hour to settle, then she was up at 2AM, 4AM, and then finally at 5AM I carried her kennel out of the bedroom into the living room and shut my door, I couldn’t take it. I’ve done everything the books say I should do, rewarding her for going in her kennel, ignoring her when she cries (aside from carrying her kennel out and telling her to shut up at 5AM, I have completely ignored her antics) and trying to make sure she gets plenty of physical activity (Saturday we went to Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Sunday we hiked a mile down the road and then I had her bustling through snow that was over her head for like 3/4 of a mile), but instead of improving things seem to be getting worse sleep wise. Tonight I’m going to try a combination of an even longer hike (about 2 miles) partly through snow and not letting her catch any cat naps after supper. The books advise me to let her take them, but I’m going to try one night without to see if she sleeps better.
So…a long winded puppy update. I’ll get week two pics posted shortly. I don’t know when I’ll get back to posting regularly. The work stuff will start to settle down by the end of this week at least.
Soolin’s first week
First up, for the impatient and the curious – stop clamoring, I’ve done it, I’ve done it! Pics of Soolin’s first week can be found by clicking the gallery link above, or by clicking here.
Next. In terms of how she’s doing, she’s just amazing. I can’t believe how smart she is. To give an example, yesterday afternoon my Aunt Melissa gave me a bell to hang on the door, the idea being to teach Soolin to nuzzle the bell when she needs to go out. Less than 24 hours later, she’s already figured it out, and aside from an over-excitement accident when Andrew and Patty came for a visit today, she hasn’t piddled in the house since, and every time she needs to go out she sits under the bell and rings it. My jaw dropped when I watched her do it this morning the second time she wanted to go out. She’s also basically figured out what sit means, and when it’s just the two of us she pretty much does it whenever I ask, but she gets distracted when other folks are around. She doesn’t really like the leash and collar thing, and getting her to come along after me is sometimes a struggle when she has something she’s interested in, like a stick or a person, but in generally she’s better than I expected after only a week.
Personality-wise, she’s a joy. She’s been coming to work with me every day after lunch (I leave her in her crate in the morning when I head off to work) and she’s met tons of people so far. She loves to meet people and is always excited when someone new comes to say hi. In general she’s just a happy little camper. She also likes exploring the campus with me, I’ve been gradually exposing her to more and more of it. I can’t wait till she gets her shots so she can go to the areas where other dogs congregate.
I’ll keep posting pictures on a weekly basis for her first couple of months as she goes through her growth spurt. So far I couldn’t be happier. As soon as she gets her shots she’s going to enroll with me in an obedience course and from what I see so far my expectation is she is going to excel in it.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 