An evening of spyware, pizza and podcasting
Last night, I went over to Tom Wright's to help him rid his computer of spyware because his system had become so sluggish that he could hardly get anything done. David, shown here in November '04 photo with Tom, has recently rented a room from Tom (to help ease the general financial burden on both of them) and he was there as well. We had fun with the project, though much remains yet undone. I was able to help speed up the system a bit, but we ran out of time before I got everything accomplished.

I have always enjoyed visiting Tom's home because it so evidently reflects his interests and his personality. In an older section of Knoxville near the downtown area, it is neat and tastefully decorated and a tribute to his talent for making it his own.

We ordered pizza to be delivered (it's apparently an unwritten rule that geeks always have to eat pizza when they are working on such a project), and after we had devoured as much as we wanted, Jack (the cat) came in, pounced up on the counter and, in what Tom described as a "cat-off," the left-over pepperoni was the cat's choice.

It was a fun evening with friends on a sultry night in Knoxville. I was even able to rope them into listening to an example or two of my podcasts and thereby introduce them to podcasting. That experience evolved into a spontaneous kind of mini-focus-group about the names of software programs that intimidate the non-geek population and how they might be better named to make them more approachable for that segment of the computer-using world. I'll most certainly be sharing those observations with James Prudente, as he is nearing the release of MixCast Live 1.0.

- posted by Perry @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

 
Test post of image

This post is simply a test to experiment with Blogger's addition of the ability to post an image.

This image illustrates the options available in Firefox.

This is the way I have my tabbed browsing set up.
- posted by Perry @ 3:14 PM 0 comments

 
Fandango.com
This site has links to movie theater listings by zip code with show times, prices, and in some cases online ticket purchasing. Could be useful.
- posted by Perry @ 3:07 PM 0 comments

 
Oops, Jubilation a bit premature
Although Blogger Support has given me a work around, it isn't perfect yet.

If you notice in the previous post, you'll see that the text goes under the sidebar to the right.

It's back to the drawing board.
- posted by Perry @ 12:22 AM 0 comments

 
Thank you, Blogger Support
At long last, I heard from Blogger Support and they have posted a work-around for the "bug" I discovered in their handling of templates. They suggested that I insert some code into my template that seems to have resolved the problem I've had for the last three days. Hooray!!! My faith in Blogger is restored.
- posted by Perry @ 12:19 AM 0 comments

 
Day three, and still no Blogger support response
To my consternation, I still haven't heard any response to my plea for help from Blogger support, aside from their automated acknowledgement of having received it. This post will reveal, no doubt, that the problem still persists.

Meanwhile on other fronts, I have recorded a 10-minute podcast response to James' efforts while attending Gnomedex over this past weekend. You can listen to it, if you wish, by clicking this link, and in this link, you can hear James' response. These podcasts are part of a series of podcasts in which those of us who are using MixCast Live and BigFeeder.com are participating in an audio discussion about the product/service and our use of it. To listen to any individual podcast in that series, just click on the M3U button beside the podcast you want to hear. It will download a small playlist that will start up your MP3 player, probably Windows Media Player, to stream the podcast to your system.

As James indicated toward the end of his comment in response to my podcast, I really need to produce a more general podcast for you, my loyal readers of this blog. Look for that real soon now, perhaps in the next couple of days. And thanks for continuing to tune into this blog, despite its currently unsightly appearance.
- posted by Perry @ 10:59 AM 0 comments

 
Still no personalize response from Blogger support
This post will reveal whether yesterday's posting problem, in which the title of the text and the body of it are separated by an amount of white space that equals the height of the sidebar on the right, still persists.

I find it quite frustrating that the way this is displaying is not at all what I intend. I'm sure Blogger support has other fish to fry, but they need to reach the point they can respond to emails from individual users within a 24 hour period. An automated, canned response directing the user to answers to some of the more commonly occurring problems is certainly better than nothing, but it isn't sufficient.

I've got to believe that what I am seeing is something that has occurred before and that it can be fixed easily. But when and how?
- posted by Perry @ 8:33 AM 0 comments

 
The strangeness persists
After having posted the previous entry, I now note that the formatting weirdness persists but primarily with the first entry on the page. I'll have to contact the Blogger support team and ask them to look at my blog and give me some help in fixing it.

Update. I've sent the plea for help to Blogger support and received a standard reply from them. As yet they haven't had the time to respond to this unique situation. 1:39 PM EDST
- posted by Perry @ 10:50 AM 0 comments

 
Blogger strangeness
I haven't a clue about what is causing the entry prior to this one to display in such a weird way, but if you scroll down far enough, you'll seen the entry associated with the title. If I could fix it I would, but since I haven't changed anything, I don't know what to fix. In fact, I'm interested to see whether this additional entry shows the same strangeness.
- posted by Perry @ 10:32 AM 0 comments

 
From the first day at Gnomedex
Aside from all the oo-ing and ah-ing over seeing the "celebrities of the blogosphere" in the halls of the Gnomedex conference, the major news from the first day seems to have been Microsoft's announcement that it is building RSS support into IE7 and Windows Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out at some as-yet-unspecified time in the future. In this entry at the IE Blog Dean Hachamovitch, who made the presentation that revealed the news, gives a one page summary of the significance, as he sees it, of what this development might mean to developers and users. And the 58 minute video, which was shot by Robert Scoble of the Channel 9 team, at this link shows some of the people involved in the project (including Dean) and provides a more in-depth explanation of it along with a few views of how it might look in IE7.

And James Prudente, our intrepid representative at the conference, doing his best impression of Kermit the Frog as the ace on-site reporter with microphone in hand (I don't know whether he's wearing a trench coat and frumpled hat with a press pass in the hat band, but I like the image) contributed five, count 'em, FIVE different podcasts from yesterday's session. In this one, just after the Microsoft announcement, James gives his impression and assessment of the news for about 9 minutes. Here's the link to the show notes he mentions in this podcast.

In this one-minute podcast, he captures the moment when Dave Winer and Adam Curry shake hands on stage, which elicited a round of applause from the audience because it seemed to signify a truce in their not-too-hidden "feud." (I'd explain what the feud is about, but it's not worth the effort, in my opinion.)

In a three-minute podcast about conversational podcasting, he gives a glimpse of where he sees podcasting going. In many ways this is one of the more important of the podcasts he has done from the conference so far, because it reveals a vision of what is possible but not yet being done in many podcasts.

This podcast recounts a hallway encounter with Adam Curry who, not realizing that James was the developer of MixCast Live, recommends his competitor's product.

Here, James interviews Spencer Nick, a recent convert to the Mac OS who runs a web site called TachyonXero, about podcasting and their experience at Gnomedex.

Listening to all these podcasts and watching the video at Channel 9 will occupy a considerable amount of your time, but doing so will also give you a sense of what it is like to attend one of these events. So if you have the time, watch and listen. I think you'll find it interesting. I know I did.
- posted by Perry @ 7:52 AM 0 comments

 
Podcasting from Gnomedex
James Prudente, the developer of MixCast Live and BigFeeder.com, has made available his first podcast of several from the Gnomedex 5.0 conference that begins today in Seattle and runs through the 25th.

Over the next couple of days about 300 industry leaders will gather to explore the bleeding edge of technology and to rub shoulders as they cross-pollinate one another with ideas, many of which will be borne out of competitive envy, jealousy and greed, and maybe a few of which will spring from altruism, but the end result will be that they'll come away from the conference with a better understanding of what others have done, are doing or may do in the future. Such events often stimulate growth and progress, as developers see where their competitors are taking their products and are thus inspired to enhance their own product just to keep pace and in the hope of gaining market share.

If you use an RSS reader and wish to subscribe to James' reports from the event, here is the link that you need to copy into your RSS reader:

http://tinyscience.bigfeeder.com/rss/feed/gnomedex

I plan to follow along and participate vicariously as James podcasts from this event. Not only will he be reporting on events, conducting interviews and sharing impressions, he'll also be demonstrating the power of MixCast Live and the speed with which he can use it to get a podcast created and then uploaded to BigFeeder.com.
- posted by Perry @ 6:16 AM 0 comments

 
More about BigFeeder.com and MixCast Live
Things are progressing nicely with MixCast Live and its associated podcast hosting service, BigFeeder.com. James recently produced a demo that illustrates how the program and the service work together. Click HERE to view it.

If you find this first introduction to this program / service goes by a bit too quickly for you to follow what is going on, not to worry. Just view it more than once. You'll find it includes a number of terms that may be new to you, such as "feed," "rss," "tags," "mp3 file" "xml," or "id3 tags" etc., but if you'll just not trouble yourself with your familiarity with those things for the moment and watch the demo to grasp the overall concept, it'll all become clearer as time goes on. If, on the other hand, you find this is a bit like watching the sausage being made, which is to say, something you'd rather not do, again don't worry. You can just relax and enjoy listening to the podcasts when they begin to appear here. However, I recommend watching James' demo at least once so you can "look behind the curtain" and appreciate how easy he has made it to create a podcast and make it available to listeners.

We are having a discussion about MixCast Live over at BigFeeder.com that may be interesting to some of you. Remember these individual podcasts are in reverse chronological order, similar to a blog, so it will make more sense to start at the oldest entry and listen to them in chronological order. To listen to any podcast at BigFeeder.com, just click on the M3U link for it, and the podcast will play in whatever application you have configured on your computer to handle *.mp3 files (which is what podcasts are).

Another development that will be of interest in the coming week is that James (Prudente), the developer of MixCast Live and BigFeeder.com, will be attending and podcasting from Gnomedex in coming days. Once the feed begins on BigFeeder.com, I'll post a link here so that you can follow those podcasts, as I plan to.
- posted by Perry @ 8:11 AM 0 comments

 
A special day at the park
This story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports page recounts the story of the Atlanta Braves' father-son broadcasting team of Chip and Skip Carey. It's worth a read (and even enduring the requirement to register for free at the site) if you have any interest in the Atlanta Braves, in baseball or in the relationship between fathers and sons.

I hope all you sons and daughters remember, with me, your own father's best qualities and how much he loved you. I also hope you will, with me, take a moment to forgive him for being human. You can take solace in the fact that despite those moments when he might have been an embarrassment to you, he did the best he could at the time to be your father.

None of us fathers ever has enough experience, or is wise enough, or is quite as good as we'd like to be as a father, but all of us, I believe, feel at some point or other that the best thing we ever achieved in this life was to participate in the beginning of another life and to do what we could along the way to help that child become an adult.

Happy Father's Day to all of you who may read this, but especially to my two sons, who are themselves fathers, and to my own Dad, God rest his soul, to whom I never said quite sincerely and completely enough ... I love you.

Here is a link to a song that has, at times, been almost a theme song for my relationship with my children. The truth of its words is at times frightening.
- posted by Perry @ 7:41 AM 0 comments

 
Father's Day stories
NPR's Morning Edition had a nice, heart-warming segment this morning featuring a father and son, John Heins and his son David, discussing their thoughts about being fathers that I think is well worth your time to listen to. You can find it at this link. The audio should be up later today or tomorrow, if it isn't yet available when you check the link.

It's an example of the two of them saying things to each other that each might wish they had said if one of them were suddenly taken away and the opportunity to say those things were eliminated. It caused me to think about the quote from Harriet Beecher Stowe in which she said, "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
- posted by Perry @ 8:52 AM 0 comments

 
BigFeeder.com
BigFeeder.com is James Prudente's hosting site that works in conjunction with MixCast Live, his podcast creation tool that makes creating podcasts and uploading them to the hosting site simple and easy. I'm sure I'll be saying more about this in coming days, but check it out. If you click on the M3U link beside any of the podcasts you see listed there, it will create a play list that will begin playing in the program you currently have configured to play *.mp3 files. In other words, one click and you can listen to a podcast. Experiment with it a bit; I think you'll like it.

Today I listened to "A Dirty Computer Show #3" and enjoyed it, because the two co-announcers do a nice job of interacting with each other in a high-energy, slightly off-beat report on computing. Check it out.
- posted by Perry @ 6:02 PM 0 comments

 
PC Magazine on using Firefox
This article contains some useful tips about using Firefox. Recommended reading when you have the time.
- posted by Perry @ 5:44 PM 0 comments

 
RSS Feeds for Microsoft's Knowledge Base Articles
In this entry, Scoble reports that Microsoft has now made hundreds of RSS feeds for Microsoft's knowledge base available. Here's the link to them. His link was first published on 5/26/05, but I'm just now getting caught up on his blog.

He says:
This is really huge. Now someone who is really passionate about one of our products and wants to keep up to date on all the problems and fixes for that product, can subscribe and instantly be warned when a new knowledge base article comes out.
- posted by Perry @ 8:54 AM 0 comments

 
Where I got my Internet start
Calling all BBS'ers

Robert Scoble had this to say:

"OK, all you people who were nerds back in the 1980s, this site is for you -- BBS: The Documentary.

Yeah, I was one. I remember my friends who ran bulletin board systems out of their garages. I remember dreaming of the day when I would finally be able to afford a Hayes 9600baud modem like those that my friend had running in his garage. That's so slow in comparison to the Wifi network I'm typing to you on right now it isn't even funny."

For those of you who didn't participate in the BBS fad this link may make little sense, but if you were one of those who did, I'm sure it will bring back memories for you.

- posted by Perry @ 12:45 AM 0 comments

 
New Blogging Tool
This post is an experiment with a new blogging tool called w.bloggar. One reason I am attracted to it is that it works with FeedDemon in a way that permits me to post items I read in FeedDemon more or less directly to my blog, and up until now I haven't been able to do that. Acquiring this ability, enables me to point to other bloggers' posts more easily, which is something that I'd very much like to do. Also it may simplify the process of blogging something and therefore increase the likelihood that I'll be able to post more frequently.

As it stands now, I can post easily from my Flickr site because they have built the interface into Flickr, but without w.bloggar, posting directly from FeedDemon didn't appear to be possible for me.
- posted by Perry @ 12:17 PM 0 comments

 
Build it and they will modify it!
Hey Google, Map This!
Inventive web developers are taking Google's online map service to a new level, layering in house sales and apartment rentals, real-time traffic stats and Flickr photo tags. By Daniel Terdiman.
- posted by Perry @ 8:51 AM 0 comments

 
Mike's Flickr site
Mike and Cheryl and their family are on vacation in Destin, FL, this week, and he has begun posting the pictures to his Flickr site. He's getting some excellent pictures, and the girls have already begun to strike poses like real models. I'm really enjoying seeing the vacation in almost real time. Hope you enjoy them too.
- posted by Perry @ 9:43 AM 0 comments

 
One down and fifteen to go
Tonight I spoke with Betty, Carole's sister, because Carole was at a church function when I called. She said that the first chemotherapy treatment took about 2 hours and seemed to go by without incident. The chemo had some medication in it to prevent nausea, and Carole was given some additional medication that she would take every twelve hours to help to suppress the nausea in the future. So far, she hasn't experienced any adverse effects from the treatment.

She will go again in the morning to have a shot that is designed to help the chemo have maximum effect. Afterwards, she and Betty will go to the wig salon to pick out a wig for when her hair falls out or when her head is shaved.
- posted by Perry @ 10:03 PM 0 comments

 
Chemo begins today
Today Carole goes in for her first of 16 chemotherapy sessions. Her sister, Betty, has come up to visit and will accompany her to the treatment. I don't know how quickly the side-effects of such treatment appear, but it is one of those things that has to be done no matter what the side-effects if one is to conquer the disease, so Carole is approaching it eagerly and with optimism. We've both wondered whether her legendary appetite will suffer as is common with chemotherapy. If anyone's can, her's will, I'm sure.
- posted by Perry @ 10:09 AM 0 comments