Great quote

From a Marx Bros movie:

"OK, just sign here"

"I uh forgot to tell you - I can't write"

"That's OK - there's no ink in the pen anyway!"

iPatch?

Just heard on TV someone talking about a pirate accessory for a costume - an eye patch. I wasn't paying much attention, and was wondering what new model of Apple music player (iPod) they were talking about!

Measuring Boredom

Alec is measuring boredom in pounds - school is one pound boring!

Wired News: U.S. Cell Phone Tracking Clipped

Wired News: U.S. Cell Phone Tracking Clipped: ". . .judges rejected the location tracking portion of the request in harshly worded opinions, concluding investigators cannot turn cell phones into tracking devices"

W00t! Checks and Balances Do Work.

Wired News: Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show

Wired News: Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show: "Web 2.0 is very open, but all that openness has its downside: When you invite the whole world to your party, inevitably someone pees in the beer."

Build Your Own PVR

Build Your Own PVR: "The “You have ten seconds to drop your weapon.” Robocop School of Software."

An amazingly funny look at Microsofts' Media Center 2005. The dude built a *monster* system.

A few other fun quotes:

no where close to a vintage Tivo

What Media Center does really well is [...] allow you to practice starting in “safe mode”

People from the non-geek world who bite on this instead of Tivo or the satellite/cable DVRs are going to be unhappy.

A Picture Share!

Alec got his costume!

What makes a good conversationalist?

I asked this question on the ST1100 e-mail list, and I got a great answer back:

InterestED vs. interestING has a lot of truth to it, but I don't believe it should be taken as an absolute. To me, a good conversationalist is a person who draws out my opinion, and makes me believe they care. Not just by nodding and agreeing, but by offering input on certain points, asking for clarification and forcing me to more clearly define my beliefs, or by interjecting alternate notions, theories, etc., without commandeering the conversation. Not just a passive listener, but a contributor, catalyst and inspiration to further discussion.

A good conversationalist will have the strength, skill and discipline to not let someone trap them in a monologue for half an hour without a break. They will do it in such a way that the motormouth does not take offense.

A good conversationalist is able to segue smoothly from one topic to another without the other party feeling that they have been cut off from their story. This, in my mind, is especially important in the case of returning to a boring conversation after an interruption. The good conversationalist will take them back to where they were, and then gently guide them to a more interesting place.

A good conversationalist will try to involve, or at least acknowledge all participants within a small group or cluster.

Most importanly, they will laugh heartily at my jokes. And they will make me believe that they meant it.

Hmmm. Seems that I have just described what I would like to be, rather than what I am. Going to have to work on that.

BeST,

Paul Forkheim
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip for Mac OS X

Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip for Mac OS X: "MPEG
Streamclip is an application that converts MPEG files (including transport streams) into muxed, demuxed, QuickTime, AVI and DV files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro and Toast 6."

More importantly to me, I can rescue my old MPEG-1 home movies from 6 years ago and re-encode them to the latest standards for inclusion on my video blog

Blog Vlog Schmog

Blog Vlog Schmog: "Video blog by Will - old (and new) movies ripped to iPod ready format. Look - a Podcast! Once I get a bit of clue, I plan to publish to iTunes." (defunct)

Update: What a PITA. Blogger doesn't have the right kind of feed - they use Atom, and ITMS requires an RSS 2.0 feed, with special tags. So, I have a blog set up at Mylanders but that server doesn't grok M4V files - tries to dump them out as plain text. Sigh. Fix the mime.types, now it works.

Try this blog

Download standalone Quicktime 7.0 Player

Apple - QuickTime - Download - Standalone QuickTime Player

Skip the 30+ MB download of iTunes and just get the player so you can watch my videos!

Somebody Got Up Too Early!

Somebody got up too early! Time for a nice rainy afternoon nap.

Yes, you can use dual monitors on a G5 iMac

macparts.de/ibook :: View Forum - iMac: "The ultimate Mac screen spanning resource!"

Ok - it's not supported, and it's a hack, but folks have been using that patch for 6+ months and reporting no problems.

(Nat - checking to see if you read this thing!)

Note - the iMac G5 only has analog VGA out - your second monitor must accept analog VGA.

Watch NOVA online from PBS

NOVA | scienceNOW | Watch Online | PBS: "Watch any or all of the six segments from the October 18, 2005 broadcast of NOVA scienceNOW. To see previous episodes go to past stories."

Fancy. Just need a fast connection and a modern computer. The window is a bit small, but quite watchable.

Side Note: they do some really cool things with Quicktime.

A Picture Share!

A Picture Share!

Ms concert

Appears to be an epidemic...

In two of the three cubes surrounding me, I can hear people talking about how to search for jobs. Something tells me the employee moralle has slipped a bit.

By The Way, anyone have a good job for a general purpose 'net geek?

A Picture Share!

Alec at ms concert

A Picture Share!

Sunset in kansas

Pete Townshend - free book

Whoah. Pete Townshend, from "The Who", has written a book, and is now giving it away free on his 'blog, one chapter at a time.

http://boywhoheardmusic.blogspot.com/

Way too cool.