Worst fortune cookie fortune ever...

I received this fortune from the Fire Bowl Cafe in Round Rock yesterday:

You will receive a fortune. (cookie)

How lame is that!? At least it came true.

Awesome PC Specs

My parents sent us some Christmas gifts this week, and they packaged them in an old box from storage in their house. It so happens that the box in which they sent the gifts was originally used to package an 80286 PC that we used to own when I was a kid. The specs are still written on the box, and I couldn't help but laugh when I read them.

Here are some specs:

Brand: GoldStar

Model: GT212 Slim Size 286-12MHz AT Compatible

Features:

• IBM PC/AT compatible
• 1MB of RAM standard, expandable to 4MB high speed memory on motherboard
• High Performance 16-bit VGA built-in with 640x480 VGA mode
• 3 expansion slots for optional Modem or game port adapters
• Serial, parallel and mouse ports
• 30MB Hard disk
  
• MS DOS 4.01 (User friendly DOS Shell is included) / GW BASIC

Some promotional text:
GT212 is a slim size 16-bit 80286 based AT that runs either at 12MHz or 6.25MHz clock speed. This AT-compatible system features 1MB RAM (expands to 4MB), a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive, and a built-in hard disk interface (IDE).

GT212 is pretested at an elevated temperature to assure greater reliability.

Canadian Election

Canadian voters will be heading to the polls, likely sometime in January, after the opposition brought down the minority government in a no-confidence vote Monday evening.

The election has been set for January 23rd. You can learn all about it here.

INXS

I downloaded their latest album with their new singer - the guy who won the TV contest. It sucks.

Normally, I wouldn't have downloaded it since I'm a moderate INXS fan at best. But since the new singer was from Nova Scotia, I figured it was worth a shot. Too bad. I really wanted to like it.

I'm quite surprised that the album has been released already. I can only guess that INXS had all the songs in the bag and just needed someone to sing the lyrics. I think it's obvious that Michael Hutchence was the musical force behind the old INXS. Unfortunately, he used a leather belt for more than holding up his pants, and that was the end of that.

Covariance

Covariance is a concept in object oriented programming. That's all you need to know for the context of this post.

Here is a quote from an article where the author attempts to explain a type of covariance. If you weren't already confused...

Covariant return types on method overrides make this explicit, allowing the use of a type that is derived from the return type of the method being overridden as the return type of the method doing the overriding.

What a mouthful!

Ride for the Roses

The Lance Armstrong Foundation's Ride for the Roses was today. 100.55 miles (162.2 km). 5 hours, 20 minutes. Blustering wind. And now, legs as wobbly as a newborn giraffe.

I have a certain sense of satisfaction having setting myself a goal of riding 100 miles, and finishing in a faster time than I expected. My friends Scott and Peter also rode with me today, so congratulations to them.

You can get all the stats for our ride, collected by my GPS unit, here.

Fun Project

Now that I have a Bluetooth-enabled device that can store over 1GB of music (see previous post), an idea occurred to me. Wouldn't it be cool if I could sit down in my car and have the music from my phone start playing through my car stereo?

The problem doesn't seem that difficult to solve, if you don't mind dropping about $100 on some new hardware. There are a few manufacturers out there that now make Bluetooth headphones. Conceivably, you could buy these and splice the analog lines between the Bluetooth transceiver (or internal amplifier, if the headphones have one) and redirect the analog signal to an auxiliary input of a stereo. Then, simply by pairing the phone and the "headphones", and allowing the devices to connect automatically, I should be able to get in the car, hit "Play" on the phone, and enjoy. I'm not quite to ready to drop the $100 just yet, but I'll document and blog the project if I ever decide to give it a shot.

No iPod Required

My Motorola cell phone really sucks. I came to this conclusion after being frustrated time and time again with its poor reception quality and its absolutely horrible software. I even took it to a Cingular store in hopes that the firmware could be flashed to a newer version (a coworker had his phone updated - but it was a slightly newer version of the same phone). According to the Cingular guy, Motorola says the firmware is fine - no flashing required.

I decided to search for a new phone - specifically a used AT&T GSM phone (since my SIM card was from AT&T, I could just stick it in the phone and voila!), or an unlocked GSM phone that could accept my AT&T SIM card. I did some research, and decided that the phone I wanted was the Audiovox SMT5600. After a few days of looking, an unlocked phone appeared on eBay and I grabbed it.

It finally arrived a couple of days ago, and I must admit - it rocks. I'm not going to list off all the features - you can read about them for yourself. The one feature that I will talk about a little is the Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.

As I discussed in a previous post, I subscribe to Yahoo's Music Unlimited service. Each track downloaded from this service contains DRM, so I can't just copy them to any device and listen. I first copied a track to the phone using Windows Explorer, and when I attempted to listen, the phone told me that it needed to acquire a license for the track, and that it needed to connect to the Internet to get it. I let it try, but it didn't quite work. That pissed me off a bit, but the fact that the phone tried to play it and knew what it needed to do to play it was encouraging. I then tried to synchronize some tracks using Windows Media Player on my PC, hoping that the license might be acquired by Windows Media Player and transferred. Success! I can now listen to all my subscription tracks on my cell phone. So, I promptly bought a 1GB miniSD card to give me quite a few hours of audio. I have most of the album art for my library on my HD and Windows Media Player copied those to my phone too, so when tracks are playing, the phone displays the album cover on the screen. Very cool.

New Domain Name

Not sure what I'll do with this yet, but I registered the following domain:

Technoblogic.com

At the moment, I'm hosting it on my server at home. I think I might set up some kind of technology blog. Crazy I am. Any other suggestions?

John Madden

Is he senile, or what!? I truly believe he is losing his mind. He is so nonsensical, it's hard to listen to him.

Blog Spam

I f'ing hate it! I'm sure that within minutes of clicking "Pulblish Post", a comment will be left on this post, hawking some useless product. Blogger (Google) needs to do something to prevent this.

Bodyrockers

I discovered another new band that I like quite a bit. The Bodyrockers have a unique sound - "rock 'n roll with electronic soul" is how they describe it. Listen to their album here.

Ride for the Roses

The Ride for the Roses is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's annual charity bike ride here in Austin. This year, I've decided to ride the longest distance - 100 miles (161 km). Riding 100 miles in one day is referred to as a "century" in the cycling community. I've never ridden a century before, so this will require some training. I've put together a training schedule and I'll share that here in a future post.

To help with my training, I've purchased perhaps the coolest cycling toy ever. It's a small GPS receiver (Garmin Forerunner 301) with a built-in heart rate monitor. Using this, you can record all your training data, and refer to it to track your progress as you train. I then found the web site, MotionBased.com. This site allows users to post their training data, and plots the GPS data from your ride onto maps and satellite images. It's pretty darn cool. You can even share your ride information with others. For an example, click here to see my data from last night's training ride. Be sure to click on the "Map Player" tab on the top-right of the page. This will replay my ride on top of any map of your choosing (you might need to install some Adobe software to actually see it).

Success!

The surgery was a great success. It wasn't nearly as painful or uncomfortable as I thought it would be, and my breathing has improved immensely. Well worth it.

Septoplasty

I had a septoplasty performed yesterday. It'll be a few days before I know how successful the procedure was. I'm feeling a little discomfort today, but nothing some Tylenol 3 can't fix. The must uncomfortable part is the blockage in my nose, making it difficult to breath. I get the splints removed tomorrow, so hopefully that will help.

Slump

I'm officially in a slump. I play hockey regularly (about once a week). I can't seem to score this season. In the spring and winter leagues, I was one of the top scorers on my team. In this summer league though, I really suck. I think I have only 1 assist in 6 or 7 games. For the most part, my team is made up of the same guys as the previous couple of leagues, and our opponents consist of the same players as well. However, I just can't put the puck in the net or make a pass to save my life. Oh well, maybe the upcoming fall/winter league will bring me better fortune.

On the bright side, the NHL is coming back this fall. I can't wait. The Penguins won the Sidney Crosby lottery, and look like they're going to get a few other strong players as well. If they can sign last year's number one pick, Evgeni Malkin (what a cry baby), they'll be pretty stacked. Mario says he's going to play another season as well, so they should be exciting to watch.

Of course, my eyes are still on the Edmonton Oilers. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of exciting news to report regarding the Oilers. They are pretty far down in the draft order, and don't have a lot of money to sign any of the many free agents that are now available in the league. They're playing in Dallas in October, so I hope to make a trip up to big-D to cheer on my team.

Sam - World's Ugliest Dog

Sam - World's Ugliest Dog

Danko Jones

I discovered this band (Danko Jones) last week while listening to one of Yahoo's streaming stations (the Hard Rock station I think). They're really good. If you like the rock and roll music, I think you'll like them. Here are a couple of their MP3s:

   Dance
   Lovercall

Yahoo Searches

If you go to Yahoo.com and search for "music engine plugins", take a look at the first result that doesn't link to elsewhere on Yahoo.com. Where does it take you? Lo and behold, it takes you here, to the Daily Babbler. Crazy. It was the 5th item listed when I searched earlier today.

Incidentally, searching for "yellow pee" ranked this entry at number 3 when I last looked.

P.S. If you wonder how I know this, it's because I noticed that many people were getting to this blog by searching for those words and phrases. So, some people actually do search for "yellow pee". If you want to track traffic on your blog, go to StatCounter.com and sign up for a free account.

Crazy lizard

CRW_0051_edited-1
Originally uploaded by bigmac72.

Lucy (our dog) was freaking out today in the back yard, and this was the reason why. Our neigbors have a peach tree in their yard, and this little green guy was looking to get some lunch from it. Lucy was also looking to get lunch, but had little interest in the peaches.

IIS7 , Seattle, etc

I'm in Seattle this week for technical preview of the next version of Microsoft's web server, IIS7. As usual, they're not committing to any release date but say it'll be about a year or so before it's available. So far, I haven't been really impressed by it. It seems their biggest objective for the release is to make it as flexible and extensible as possible - and I'd say they've accomplished that. They have also provided mechanisms that allow you to integrate managed code (i.e. code running in the .NET CLR) into the HTTP pipeline of IIS, so I guess that's kind of neato too. I still have a couple of more days to see what else they've got planned, but I'm pretty bored by the whole thing.

Seattle is a nice city, but I haven't seen the sun in 3 days. I guess that's typical. Tonight, we went to a bar near our hotel to get a beer and some food. I kept smelling something awful and couldn't quite figure out what it was. Eventually, it turned out to be our waitress. She had the worst BO ever. Pretty gross. The beer was good though.

Sub-standard

I just had lunch from Subway. Why is it that Quiznos toasted subs are good, but Subway toasted subs suck? It's an age-old question (months old to be sure).

Improv Everywhere Mission: Even Better Than The Real Thing

This is great:

Improv Everywhere Mission: Even Better Than The Real Thing

Cars

I have two car-related things to discuss tonight.

The first is regarding the cool new Audi A3. This car has been available in Europe for some time now, but they are bringing it to the North American market. One of the coolest features that this car has is that it has 2 Secure Digital (SD) card readers built into the stereo system. This allows you to copy your MP3s to your SD card(s) and listen in your car... no need for messy cables to hook up your MP3 player, or burning to CD.

The other car discussion really stinks - literally. I think something crawled into my Mazda 3's engine area, or under the body somewhere - and then it died. There is a stench of something dead emanating from under my car. Originally, I assumed that Ewan had spilled some milk somewhere and I could not find it. I knew this wasn't the case when I continued to smell it when I was outside the car. I'm not sure what to do about this. I have looked everywhere under the hood and under the body, but with newer cars such as mine, there is not much to see unless you remove a bunch of plates and panels. I guess I will just have to wait for this thing to dry up and stop being smelly. Gross.

Guess Which Movie

This is kind of fun...

Guess Which Movie

New blog

I've created a new blog, PhotoBabbler. It will consist of nothing but pictures taken from my cell phone and posted by emailing directly from my phone. If I am feeling energetic, I might even type a word or two describing the picture, but don't count on it.

Yahoo Music Engine Plugins

As I discussed yesterday, I recently downloaded the Yahoo Music Engine (YME) as a part of my search to replace Windows Media Player as my media library management software. One thing I failed to mention about the YME was that it has a completely customizable plug-in architecture. This allows anybody with moderate software development skills to write their own code that runs inside the YME.

You want the YME to do something, but it doesn't do it "out of the box"? Write it yourself. Sounded interesting, so I gave it a go.

As a test, I wanted to see if I could search my library for tracks who's metadata did not contain a URL for album art. (I'm kind of picky about little things like that. When I play a song, I want the album cover to be displayed.) Since the YME automatically attempted to update the metadata with this information when it created my library, I was curious to see how efficient it was.

I assumed that to create a plugin, I was going to have to brush the dust off of some of my old C++ books. It's been a while since I've written C++, but I was up for it. As it turns out, creating a plugin couldn't be easier. The Yahoo team was kind enough to expose almost the entire programming interface through COM components. Better yet, they have created a mechanism by which YME will host an HTML page thereby allowing you to create simple HTML forms and use Javascript to access the Engine's API.

Anyway, I didn't spend much time on it, but I did get some results. The image below is a screen capture of my plugin after if performed the search in my library.





So that you can see how little code I wrote, here's the entire source:

<HTML>
<BODY>
<script language="javascript" src="yme.js"></script>
<object classid="clsid:5F810AFC-BB5F-4416-BE63-E01DD117BD6C" height=90% width=100% id=datagrid VIEWASTEXT>
  <PARAM NAME="CheckBoxes" VALUE="0">
  <PARAM NAME="ShowAlways" VALUE="1">
  <PARAM NAME="FullRowSel" VALUE="0">
</object>
<br><br>
<A href="javascript:startSearch()">Search</a><br>
<script>

  datagrid.AddColumn("Artist", 150, 0, 0);
  datagrid.AddColumn("Album", 150, 0, 0);
  datagrid.AddColumn("Track Title", 150, 0, 0);

  function startSearch()
  {
    mediaDatabase = window.external.MediaDatabase;
    allMedia = mediaDatabase.GetAllMedia();
  
    itemIndex = 0;
    for( var i = 0; i < allMedia.Count; i++ )
    {
      media = allMedia.Item( i );
      metaData = media.Metadata;
   
      imageUrl = metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_IMAGE );
     
      if( imageUrl == null || imageUrl.length == 0 )
      {
        datagrid.AddRow();
        datagrid.SetRowData( itemIndex, 10 );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 0, metaData.GetPredefinedValue(  METADATA_ARTIST ) );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 1, metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_ALBUM ) );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 2, metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_TITLE ) );
        itemIndex++;
      }
    }
  }
</script>
</BODY>
</HTML>

I also had to manually add a key to the registry that enabled the "Al's Plugin" item to show up in the left-hand navigation pane of the YME.

All in all, I am pretty impressed. I might just keep it around a little longer.

Music Management Software

About a week and a half ago, I decided to replace my current music management tool - Microsoft Windows Media Player. Media Player is fine for simply playing music, but I found it very cumbersome for managing portable devices like our Dell DJ and Creative Muvo Micro N200.

The leading software in the non-iPod/iTunes market is Musicmatch Jukebox. I used this a few times a couple of years ago, and at that time, I thought it sucked. But, being open minded, I decided to give it a try. After a few days of using Musicmatch I decided it was significantly better than Media Player, and that it would now become my music manager of choice. It has quite a nice user interface, and it is extremely simple to synchronize my portable devices.

My only complaint about Musicmatch is that it does not have the ability to resample my media files to a lower bit-rate. Most of my music is encoded in WMA format at a relatively high bit-rate. I'd like to reduce the bit-rate to increase the number of tracks I can copy to my devices. The Musicmatch documentation states that WMA files can no longer be resampled (I guess this was possible in previous versions) because of license arrangements with Microsoft. Hmmm...

A few days after becoming satisfied with Musicmatch, I learned of Yahoo's Music Unlimited service and its accompanying Yahoo Music Engine software. I decided to give it a try. I originally decided to try only the Music Engine software. I didn't think I'd care for the music "rental" business model...

The Music Engine software is mediocre. It does not have as many useful features as Musicmatch, but it does have a few useless features that Musicmatch does not offer (like integration with Yahoo Instant Manager - big deal).

I then decided to give the Music Unlimited service a try. With a 1 week free trial, I figured it couldn't hurt. What I found is that the service is extremely addictive. Heidi and I just sat there for an hour and typed in artists and songs, found them and played them. It was pretty fun. At just $5 a month ($60 per year, billed monthly), it's hard to complain about the price. You can download and listen to any song in their library provided you pay the monthly fee.

I ran in to one serious issue with the Unlimited service though. The tracks downloaded are NOT compatible with either of my portable devices. That is a serious drawback. The list of supported devices is still pretty small but is sure to grow as the service catches on. The newer Dell DJs support the format, but my model is not supported. And from what I've read, a firmware update will not be offered that would make mine compatible. I can probably sell my DJ for about $190 on eBay and get a new one (with 30GB vs my 20GB) for about $230, but I haven't determined if it's worth it yet. I haven't learned if the Muvo will eventually support the format, but I doubt it. Besides, since our Muvo is only the 256MB model, it would quickly get filled since the downloaded tracks from the Unlimited service cannot be resampled to smaller bit-rates.

So, the jury is still out. For ease of use, features, and performance, Musicmatch is the clear winner. However, the Music Unlimited service is quite attractive. It is possible to use the Music Unlimited service for music download, and Musicmatch for music management (Musicmatch honours the DRM built into the downloaded tracks), but I'm looking for a single solution.

Guess I will just have to get an iPod and use iTunes... right Matt?

Hearing Impaired

Last night, I went to see Chevelle at La Zona Rosa. It was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time (despite the fact that they didn't have any pyrotechnics.). It was just a good, solid rock-and-roll show. I'd write more about it, but my head hurts a little today. I'm also quite deaf today.

www.benedictxvi.com

A month ago, a guy by the name of Rogers Cadenhead registered a bunch of internet dot-com domains using names he suspected the new Pope would choose (i.e. LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com etc.) He got it right with www.benedictxvi.com

He's a pretty good writer too. I enjoyed reading his blog.

I Rock

...because I just bought a Kiss belt buckle. Party on, Wayne.

Bomb it

Click here to drop nuclear bombs on this blog.

Orb streaming TV

Orb provides a really cool new service that allows you to stream a TV signal (amongst other things) from your home PC to other networked devices (such as your PDA, or your computer at work). I think my friend Eric might have mentioned this to me be before, but a co-worker was watching TV on his computer at work today (I guess he had lots to do!) and that's when I realized how cool the service could be. Check them out.

Another use

Our dishwasher died again. This is the third or fourth time this has happened, so we bought a new one. While removing the old dishwasher, I realized that I didn't have the proper tool required to remove the drainage hose. The clamp required a flat-head screw driver to loosen the screw. Since I was in the kitchen, I saw no need to walk to the garage and get a flat-head - for in the drawer next to the dishwasher was a perfectly good tool for the job... a butter knife!

Butter knife

Yesterday, Heidi stuck the SD card into my Canon SD300 camera upside-down. It got very, very stuck. I was as mad as a hatter (but I calmly did not let on). I got it out with a little help from a butter knife.

The butter knife is really quite a versatile tool. I suspect its most common secondary purpose is to act as a flat-head screwdriver. My earliest memories of the butter-knife-as-a-tool involve a TV and the little cylindrical transformer that you had to use to connect the cable to the back of the television. Remember those things? Remember using a butter-knife to tighten those little screws that held that thing to the TV?

I've also heard you can use them with an empty 2-litre Coke bottle, an electric stove (with those coil elements) and some hashish. "Hot-knives" is what all the kids called that use of the butter knife.

And of course it spreads butter. But its versatility allows it to spread much more than just butter. Other common items that can be spread include:

• Peanut butter (a form of butter, made from peanuts)
• Jam (or jelly)
• Cheeze Whiz (available in Canada only I think. But that's okay. It's gross.)
• Cinnamon Spread (available in Canada only I think. Too bad. It's great stuff).
• Cream Cheese (I prefer a dedicated "spreader" for this, but a butter-knife works in a pinch.)
• Margarine
• Mayonnaise (I prefer Miracle Whip.)

Wow, look at the crap I wrote. I only intended to talk about Heidi and the SD card (you forgot about that, didn't you?), and it turned into this whacky thing.

It's St. Patrick's day. I'm going to go get a beer.

Dogblog

Poor dogs.

Dogblog

Dance, White Boy, Dance

I'm sure this was staged, but it's still funny...

Dance, White Boy, Dance

Ironic?

In my previous post, I used the word "blog" and "blogging" a few times. Before publishing my post, I spell-checked it. Did you know that the dictionary used by this site (blogger.com) does not contain an entry for "blog" or "blogging"? Crazy, eh? I bet Alanis Morissette would have sung about it back in the 90s...

New Blog

I have created a new blog on another blogging site. Not that I write here very often, but the content will be slightly different on the new blog. Mostly family-related items and what not. The reason it's on MSN is because it offers space for photo albums as well as blogging. Take a look at the new blog here.

P.S. I pretty much use Firefox exclusively now as my web browser. However, I must admit that the photo album feature of the new blog is much nicer if you're using Internet Explorer.

Napoleon Dynamite

I had heard from several people that they thought this was the funniest movie of all time. So as I was flipping through the channels last night, I saw that it was playing on one of my movie channels. Because of the hype, I decided to watch it. I had been hoping for an hour and a half of gut-splitting comedy. I was sadly disappointed. While it did generate a few laughs (I particularly liked the dance routine near the end of the movie), I found it pretty dull overall.

It always seems that when a movie generates hype, I am very disappointed. I enjoy movies much more when I watch them with few or no expectations.

Read more about "Napoleon Dynamite" at IMDB.com.

Real Men Love Jesus

It must be true, because it was stencilled in huge letters on the back window of a some guy's pickup truck in the parking lot at work.

Grocery store

Lately, I've been doing most of the grocery shopping in our household. Heidi compiles the list and I head out and get the goods. (Before I forget, I must comment on the lists she compiles for me. Knowing that I don't really enjoy the grocery store, she does all she can to make it as painless as possible. So, when she creates the grocery list, she writes the items in the order in which I will come upon them on the shelves of the store - starting from produce, and finishing with any toiletries. Isn't that nice? I think so.) There is something that really bugs me about the grocery store though. What irks me the most, is other shoppers. It's amazing how preoccupied people get with their own grocery buying. They seem to forget that there are other shoppers in the store. Did you ever notice how you are always bumping in to people at the grocery store? Ever notice how people just leave their shopping carts in the middle of the isle, blocking all other people who want to get past? It's really, really annoying. I compare it to people who can't drive while talking on cell phones. So the next time you're grocery shopping, please be aware of everybody else. They'll appreciate it.

I'm a geek

A neutron walk into a bar and orders a beer. He pulls out his wallet to pay, but the bartender won't accept his money. "For you," the bartender says, "no charge."

Heheh....

Jenny, are you there? (867-5309)

This person clearly had too much time on their hands...

Jenny, are you there? (867-5309)

Rent a Midget

I think they're serious...

"Think about the best party you've ever been to, wouldn't it have been better if there was a midget there? Another boring day at the office, why not have one of our little people go down and bring some life in there!"

If you think you need a midget around to bring a smile to your face, visit them here.