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Sunday, January 30, 2005
 
iPod Shuffle? Maybe not
Last year, my son, Jeff, bought himself an iPod and so far he loves it, as do apparently a lot of people who own them. Recently at MacWorld 05, Steve Jobs announced the iPod Shuffle, a scaled down, more reasonably priced model ($99) of the same technology that is sure to appeal to others. I told Jeff about its availability because I know his son and daughter, Dustin and Maegan, and his wife, Deanna, may also want to have one of these cool devices. Who doesn't?

Well, it seems that Dave Ciccone may not. In a side-by-side comparison of the iPod Shuffle and the SanDisk MP3 player, Dave concludes that the SanDisk is a better choice because it offers a number of features that the iPod Shuffle doesn't. And frankly his article convinces me. Not only does the SanDisk player allow you to select the songs or podcasts you want to hear, it also offers portable data storage, an FM radio, a voice recorder with a built in microphone, and a cheaper price. It is a bit larger than the iPod shuffle but still small enough for that not to be an issue.

In the words of Will Smith's character in Independence Day after he had a chance to fly the alien spacecraft, "I have got to get me one of these!" They come in three sizes: the SanDisk SDMX1-256-A18 for $65.99, the SanDisk SDMX1-512-A18 for $105.99, and the SanDisk SDMX1-1024-A18 for $139.99. All prices quoted are from Newegg.com.

Saturday, January 29, 2005
 
Saturday morning update
During my first two weeks of training at my new job, I've been sitting next to a young man named Marc Bryant. His computer training station is just to the left of mine. During our down time in training, he and I have chatted about a number of things, and I learned that he has a web page which I visited this morning. I was pleased to get to know him in a different context than our work environment and surprised to learn that he is a writer of stories for comic books. He has had a few of them publish already. Quite interesting and creative. Check out his site if you are into that sort of thing.

I've made some progress with the MixCast Live beta. I've shared a couple of podcasting experiments with a small circle of friends as a learning experience to help me identify what works for me and what doesn't as it relates to my style and content and to test out my skill at using the tool. I'm still working on creating a podcast that I'm ready to link to from here, but as soon as that is ready, I'll let you know and post a link.

MixCast Live is almost ready for a pre-release version, probably some time within the next week or two, so you early adopters out there might keep an eye on that web site (or here because I'm sure I'll announce it too) and jump on the bandwagon when James Prudente opens the doors for business. I think this tool is going to be very popular with Windows users and make a big splash in the world of podcasting because it gives you a lot of abilities that make creating a podcast easier, and those who buy the pre-release version may get it at an introductory price, I am told. But I'll leave it to James to decide when to announce it and what the specifics are once he is ready to go. He seems really committed to getting it out the door as soon as he can, but he appears to be even more committed to making sure that when it goes out the door, it is ready for use and free from as many bugs as is humanly possible. I'll just say that from what I've seen so far, I believe you'll like it a lot.

By the way, here's a link to another description of what a podcast is and a bit about its origins. This phenomenon is still in its infancy, but podcasting is catching on rapidly.

Friday, January 28, 2005
 
Controversy in bloggerland
Last night, my friend Tom Wright, sent me a link to an article and asked my opinion. He said, "Wondered if you might be interested in reading this discussion of blogging and reactions from bloggers. http://www.slate.com/id/2112621/"

Here's the reply I sent him.

"Thanks for the link.

I've just read Shafer's article. I had seen other posts from people I read regularly, Dave Winer, Dan Gillmor, etc., about the conference at Harvard and I had picked up some of the tone of the "dispute" from their posts, but since I don't think of myself as an either/or kind of guy, I hadn't paid much attention to it.

My own take is that blogs will have more influence than some people think and less than the true believers and evangelists prophesy. I don't think the mainstream media will go away, but I also don't think they'll escape having their feet held to the fire by the blogosphere. And I don't think that bloggers will survive their "fame" without quite a few of them (us) waking up one morning with egg on our face because we bought a meme that was later shown to be false.

There's a whole lot of us-versus-them-ism in this country right now that doesn't result in civil discourse but merely serves to erect barriers between points of view. I frankly am old enough to almost long for the practice that I used to hear from Senators when they'd say something like, "As my esteemed colleague from Illinois (while thinking, "who is dumber than a bag of hammers and often has his head up his ass") will agree, ... " Name-calling between the blogosphere and the mainstream media has become like the rapper's spiel or the talk show host's rant. Conversations where each party recognizes the other's intelligence and right to a difference of opinion are an endangered species of dialog. When I hear what passes for discussion nowadays, I just sigh and lament that it is far too easy to get seduced into following suit and far too hard to retain a commitment to respecting the comments of those who differ with my point of view.

This tempest in a teapot will pass away before the mainstream media is toppled by blogs or blogs are shown to be uninformed opinion-pushers by the fact checkers. Both will be with us for some time to come, I think. The world is populated by both cats and dogs, and that isn't likely to change any time soon."

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
 
Thank you, Shannon
Last night Shannon Kamer and I spent about an hour on the phone tweaking various things about TightVNC to make it more secure. We added SSH and PuTTy to my system. But what excited me even more was that Shannon helped me configure my system to serve up podcasts and other things I might want to make available to others over the Internet via TCP. This is a big step forward for me because it makes it unnecessary for me to find a service that will host my podcasts as I begin to record them.

Monday, January 24, 2005
 
First impressions of my first week
I have returned from the grave. Well not exactly, but this is the first post in quite some time. I've discovered that in some instances that posts to my blog seem to be in inverse proportion to the number of things going on in my life at the time. While a lot of activity would seem to provide the material for a new post, the fact that many things are going on means that I have less time to post than I would normally. But I am due to catch you up on what has been going on since my last post.

First things first. I began training for my new job on Monday, January 17th, and I'll have to say that the first week gave me a very good first impression of my new company. The facilities are nice, the people are friendly, the benefits and compensation are generous, and the corporate philosophy is something I feel good about. U. S. Cellular talks a good game of being customer-focused, and until I see evidence to the contrary (which I don't anticipate), I'm going to assume that what they claim is the way they operate.

Also this week as I said previously, I've been beta testing MixCastLive, a program for creating podcasts. After some initial problems with its working on my system, the author, James Prudente, has put up a version that works for me. During my spare time this week, I plan to try to produce my first podcast so that you can hear the results of using this program. So far, I am very impressed with its capability for us Windows users. Up until now, Mac users have had an advantage in tools, but once MixCastLive is released, Windows users have a tool that makes integrating several different audio sources into one recording. I'm exploring a resource that will make it possible for me to upload these MP3 files so that they can be either streamed or downloaded. But I suppose that will have to wait until later in the week after I've had more time to investigate it.

Friday, January 14, 2005
 
Beta testing
Trying out a brand new product can be both interesting and not just a little bit frustrating. Beta testers, as they are called, are those folks who are willing to exchange the chance to see a product in the making for the risk of a possible system crash or the disappointment that the product won't perform as expected because of the peculiarities of the system you are testing it on.

Why would anyone volunteer to be a beta tester? Most often it is so they can get an early look at the product and possibly help to shape how it turns out. They agree to provide the primary author with specific feedback on their actions and what elements in their system might have caused any failure that occurs. Without the feedback of beta testers, authors of software would have a much more difficult time putting together programs that work for the public in general.

The reason should be obvious. There is an almost infinite variety of unique configurations in use, so if a product is to be successful its author needs to have it tested on as many of those unique setups as possible before rolling his program out to the public at large. What's more, users often interpret instructions for using a product differently and make unanticipated decisions about using the software. So no matter how brilliantly a product is designed or how carefully the instructions are written, end users are remarkably capable of finding ways to be confused or to discover unique ways to make the product fail. So thorough beta testing is the only way to assure that initial buyers of the product don't run into unexpected problems and conclude that their money was misspent or return the product and ask for a refund.

I tell you all that as background to say that I am participating in a beta test of a new product called MixCast Live, a software program designed to facilitate creating Podcasts. If you are interested, you can see a demo of the product here. So for the next few days or weeks, I may be posting information about my experiences in participating in this beta test. And as I get it to work for me, I may even be posting some of the Podcasts that I'm able to create with it here on my blog. That way, you'll get to participate vicariously in a beta test without suffering any of the risks involved.

Thursday, January 13, 2005
 
TightVNC, to gain remote access to your computer
Have you, as I have, ever wanted to be able to connect to your computer when you were not at home but been unable to do so? Or do you have friends who solicit your help in knowing how to use or perhaps fix some problem on their computer? If so, then what I'm about to introduce you to could prove very valuable to you.

TightVNC is a free remote control software package that enables you to see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would if you were sitting in the front of that computer. It is simple to set up the VNCServer (which is password protected) on your home machine, for instance, and you can take the VNCViewer with you on a floppy disk and run it from any computer to connect to your home machine. This page shows some screen shots of the components of the program.

Last night, my friend Josh Yonce and I experimented with accessing each other's computer remotely using this software and found it to be very cool. Because both of us are behind routers and both of us are using Windows XP, we had to tinker with the settings for a while to gain access to the other's computer, but eventually we figured out the right combination which opens up a whole range of possibilities to those with a little imagination.

Most of us get a new IP address each time we log onto the Internet through our Internet Service Provider (ISP), the so-called dynamic IP address. This means that you can't always count on the fact that you are at the same location on the Internet all the time. You can find out what your IP address at several places on the Internet, but one of them is in the Tools section of DSL Reports at this link. If you click that link, the page you end up on will tell you the IP address that accessed that page, and that will be your IP address. The reason it is important to know you IP address on your home machine is that it is required to use the VNCViewer and therefore to be able to log into your machine remotely. Fortunately, there is another free service called No-IP.com that you can use to always stay current with your dynamically changing IP address. You can check out that service here.

One thing Josh and I discovered while we were tinkering last night is that this program will not work if you have Remote Administration turned on on your XP machine. By default that setting is OFF for most installations of XP, but if you have turned it on for any reason, you'll have to turn it off to be able to use the TightVNC package.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005
 
New job
This morning I went for a second interview, a so-called "performance-based" interview, with my potential employer, U. S. Cellular, at 9:00 AM. I felt good about how I presented myself in the interview, and afterwards the interviewer said that the company had a new training class starting on January 17th, next Monday, but that I probably wouldn't be in that class because my application wouldn't be processed in time to be included in it. He indicated that the next class would start either the middle of February or at the first of March. So I was a little concerned that I might have to endure 4-6 weeks of unemployment between the end of my current job at ClientLogic on this coming Friday, January 14, and the beginning of training with the new company. And even that optimistic assessment was based on the assumption that I would be hired by U. S. Cellular which, of course, wasn't assured, despite my good feelings about the various interviews I have had with them.

As it turns out, I received a call this afternoon around 5:00 PM from a representative of U. S. Cellular who offered me the job and invited me to be a part of the training class that starts this coming Monday. So I am very pleased that I won't miss a beat or have to suffer any gap in employment at all. I'll finish up the job at ClientLogic on Friday and begin the job with U. S. Cellular on Monday morning at 9:00 AM.

I'll be in training for the next five weeks between the hours from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Upon completing training, my schedule will shift to the hours where they need help, presumably between 12:00 PM and 9:00 PM, but I'll know more about that later.

There are a number of good things about the new job. First, the company's office is about 6 miles closer to my home than my former job is. Second, they offer medical coverage from the very first day of employment so I won't have to pay for medical benefits between the two jobs. And third, one of the fringe benefits is a free cellphone with unlimited minutes, which means I'll own a cellphone for the first time in my life, and I'll be able to make free long distance calls on it. So there are some nice advantages to my new position, not to mention the benefit of a chance to learn new things, make new friends, and start over with a clean slate in an organization where I can build a good reputation. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Thursday, January 06, 2005
 
Common sense just isn't very common.

Stereo Y-Adapter
Originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

I spent about 2 hours this afternoon and nearly spent $40.00 trying to solve the problem of how to avoid having to swap the plug on the back of my computer between the headphones I use for making Skype calls and the system's speakers. It serves to illustrate for me that once you fixate on a solution, it is easy to lose all perspective and perhaps waste a lot of money. Fortunately, I have a very smart son with some common sense (that apparently came from his mother's chromosomes rather than mine) who saved me from myself.

Paul Moor and Phil Petty and I had successfully carried on a conference call using Skype earlier in the afternoon. Phil and I had been talking about what a pain in the neck it is to have to swap out the speakers and the headphones when you want to use the headphones to make a Skype call. So I left the house and headed to Radio Shack to see whether they had a switch for a stereo line.

The part in italics in the previous sentence was the solution I fixated on and the beginning of my path down the road to stupidity. The young fellow at Radio Shack was very willing to help, and we looked at all the possibilities he had, exploring the various kinds of A/B switches in a variety of configurations but all to no avail. He then suggested that we could build one, and we started putting together the necessary parts. We eventually amassed about 8 to 10 different pieces of the puzzle that would be required for the project. When I looked at the total for the solution we had come up with, it cost just a bit over $40.00 -- all just to avoid having to reach to the back of the computer to unplug one device and plug in another.

At that point I left Radio Shack with the ingredients I had assembled and headed to my son, Mike's, house to see if I could borrow a soldering iron from him. Fortunately, he couldn't find one, and as I was leaving his house, he said to me, "All you really need is a Y-adapter." I said, "no, I have to have a switch so I can turn off the system speakers when I want to make a Skype call." He asked, in a brilliantly insightful cut-to-the-chase question, "don't the speakers have an on/off switch?" It then dawned on me that the speakers, in fact, do have such a switch, and that he was right. That was all I needed. So I called Radio Shack and found that they have just the adapter I needed for a total of $5.99.

I felt a bit sheepish at my tunnel vision in searching for a switch, but I was greatly relieved that someone in my family had some common sense. And I was very grateful that I hadn't spent too much money to solve a minor problem when all that was needed was a different way of looking at the situation.


Wednesday, January 05, 2005
 
Update on MixCast Live correspondence
This evening when I arrived at home from work, I had an email from either "the author" or one of the authors of MixCast Live announcing that he had accepted my request to be a beta tester for this software. I'm delighted, and can now hardly wait to get my hands on it and try it out. Stand by for news about my first Podcast, coming soon to a weblog near you.

 
MixCast Live
This morning I found a link to the website for a new beta program called MixCast Live thanks to Adam Curry. There is a demo on the Tiny Science website of the program that enables Windows XP users to create Podcasts. They are currently accepting beta testers so I wrote to request that I be allowed to be a beta tester for this product. Having listened to Podcasts since back in October, I've been interested in experimenting with this new medium, and I feel this program would provide a really nice tool for doing so. Here's hoping that I'm given the opportunity.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005
 
"The times, they are a changin'"
Today at work, I sent my supervisors an email that I was leaving work early (at 3:00 PM) to attend a "job fair" at another company. I had earlier received an invitation from one of their employees to a job fair at another company here in Knoxville. It had come to me through my daughter-in-law, Cheryl Jenkins-Nelson, from a friend of hers, Mark England. So I had decided it was worth checking out the possible opportunity this job fair might offer me.

Then around 1:00 PM our supervisors asked us all to assemble in one of the meeting rooms at the company, and we, of course, did so. Around 1:10 PM, the Site Director, Greg Jimenez, came in and announced that BellSouth had made the decision that Tier 2 support (the group with which I work) will be moved to the company's Philippines facility. Our last day of business in Oak Ridge will be January 14, 2005. Once again, my job has been eliminated.

So it appears that my decision to leave work early today was well-timed. I went to the job fair with more enthusiasm than I might have exhibited otherwise, armed with the information that Greg had given us. I realized that I should be open to the possibility of employment with another company. Fortunately, the first part of my interview process went well. I will go back on Thursday of this week, my day off, to complete more of the process. I hope that this next step in the interview process will proceed as well as the first part and that I'll be offered a job at this other company. (I'll leave its name out for the moment until I learn whether I've gotten the job.)

Life is full of transitions. They can't be avoided, nor should they be. In fact, it is probably better to accept them and enjoy them because they offer new opportunities to prove your worth to a new group of people. I'm looking forward to the next step in my life's journey and to finding more stable employment in the near future. I'll keep you posted.

Monday, January 03, 2005
 
Speeding up Firefox
As most of you know, no doubt, there have been a lot of recommendations from various authorities around the Internet to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox for security reasons. And those who have downloaded it (in the millions) will attest to its increased security as well as its many useful features, such as tabbed browsing and extensions that add functionality to it.

Recently, recommendations have appeared about how to modify its configuration so that web pages will load much, much more quickly. This morning, I made those modifications and I can confirm that it does, indeed, speed up page loading dramatically. However, at this link, the following explanation is given for why these settings are not the default value for Firefox as it is shipped:

"The downside, and the reason it's not enabled by default, is that it can prevent Web pages from displaying correctly. If you've enabled this, and you find pages that aren't displaying correctly, please don't blame Firefox or the Web developer. It's probably the fact that you enabled an "unsupported" feature which is incompatible with some Web servers and proxy servers."

I'd recommend that you look at all the links in this post and make an informed decision about whether the modifications are something you'd like to do or not. For the record, I plan to continue using them until I run across sites where they cause a problem. The important thing is to remember the modifications you made and to reverse them if they become problematic for you.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
 
New Year's Day traditions
I've spent this first day of 2005 observing a number of personal, family and national traditions.

On the personal level, I began the day at the computer, as I always do, going through my first few cups of coffee, but this year I got to add something to the routine that I haven't had in other New Year's Days of the past. I spent about an hour on a Skype call with Paul in Berlin. I experimented with trying to record at least his side of our conversation, but I discovered that it caused his voice to echo back to him and that produced a period of several minutes where neither of us could figure out what was causing the problem. Eventually, I realized that my actions were causing it, so I turned off the recorder and our conversation returned to the normal excellent quality that Skype offers. Paul and I have been talking each morning at 7:00 AM here in Knoxville and 1:00 PM in Berlin. I've enjoyed having the ability to call him and keep up with what is happening in his life each day. And so far, he seems to appreciate the opportunity too, so we'll continue until one or both of us tire of it.

The family tradition that I observed today was that I cooked black-eyed peas, rice, turnip greens and cornbread for lunch, and Mike came over and shared the meal with me. If you grew up in the South as I did, perhaps you are aware of the superstition that you are supposed to have this meal on New Year's Day to ensure that you would have wealth in the coming year. So both Mike and I ate big helpings of this traditional southern meal (not wanting to tempt fate and risk having a lean year financially), and it was really quite good. In the last few years, I haven't cooked these things and we've had to scramble to find a restaurant that was serving it. This year I chose to avoid the hassle of having to locate a restaurant and just cook it myself. Mike even brought over some country ham that someone had given him at work, and we cooked up some of that too. (I plan to cook some biscuits tomorrow morning and have ham biscuits for breakfast.) Of course, we also had big glasses of sweetened iced tea to wash everything down with, which is another southern tradition.

And finally, I satiated myself on four or five televised football games this afternoon and evening. I was pleased that Tennessee and Georgia won their games, but the really terrific games were the Iowa and Texas wins in their games, both of which were won on the last play of the game. Iowa beat LSU and Texas beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl. In this one day, you'd think I would have gotten enough football to last me for a year, but like most male Americans I'll still be hooked on football until they play the Super Bowl in late January. Then I'll be able to put it aside until next September.

One tradition (or superstition) from my upbringing that I did not uphold this year was that I did a load of washing today. And I didn't think about the taboo that my mother drilled into me as I was growing up until it was too late and I had already started the load of washing. That taboo was that you should never wash clothes on New Year's Day because that would mean someone in your family would die during the year. I certainly hope that I haven't signed my own, or some family member's death warrant by slipping up and doing a load of clothes today, but I guess only time will tell about that.

So that's how I spent my New Year's Day this year. I hope you observed your own traditions and that you got the year off to a good start in your own unique way. Do you have traditions or superstitions such as my family's about New Year's Day? If so, leave me a comment and tell me what they are.

In any event, Happy New Year everybody! I hope 2005 is a very good year for you.


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