http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss macprince at mac dot com © Dan Kuehling Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:53:46 -0600 Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:53:49 -0600 iBlog 1.4.0 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E355271968/index.html NetNewsWire has completely spoiled me when it comes to getting my news, Yahoo Groups postings, and even FedEx package tracking at a glance.

So I definitely agree with Jon here, especially when it comes to the banking. (Ever been accidentally overdrawn on your checking account because of a transaction you didn't know was coming? I have. Not fun.)

Darrin proposes an interesting idea for TV listings via RSS. Right now, I use Excite's TV Favorites page to track my favorite shows, and it works pretty well. But, of course, I have to go and check it manually.

What I'd actually prefer is a program like the now-abandoned tvmenu, where I could select my favorite shows and have the program automatically find instances of those shows (using something like XMLTV), and alert me when they come on. Give me lots of notification capabilites including the option to sync it as a calendar (with alarms) to my iPod, let it control an eyeTV, Formac Studio TVR, or AlchemyTV card, wrap it all up in a simple and intuitive interface, and you'd have one killer way to manage your TV viewing. Are you listening, Delicious Monster folks? I would fork over $40 or more for something like this that worked well. ]]> Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:40:33 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E355271968/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E75929514/index.html My new baby!

A dual 1.8Ghz Power Mac G5, to call my very own! I would compare it to the PowerBook G3, or that iMac that I've been using since the PowerBook started to die on me, but really, there is no comparison. Absolutely and totally blows it away.

512MB RAM 160GB HD SuperDrive ATI Radeon 9600XT graphics card (sweet for gaming!)

Got it from the Apple Store for Education for $2100 plus tax. Rounded it out with a Samsung 17" flat CRT from Sam's Club for $110.

Only problem is I can tell sometimes that, under certain conditions, it's starved for RAM. (Virtual PC, mainly.) Well, that, and I'm going to owe my Grandma for quite a while to pay back the loan.

I've had The Monolith (as I have dubbed it) crunching Folding@Home packets in it's off time. Really cranks 'em out, and it's interesting to hear the fans speed up as the processors crank into high gear. ]]> Wed, 01 Dec 2004 02:34:55 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E75929514/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E264638139/index.html Hi, again, everybody! Didya miss me?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

So, what's new in my happy little world since I last shouted into the ether?

Well, I'm finishing up my 3rd semester of MCC.

Financial Accounting: Required for the business track for my Computer Science major*. We have to do everything by hand. A ClueStick for you, Mrs. Leslie Kruser: nobody is going to be doing their accounting by candlelight when the power is out. We tend to do these things on computers now. I understand that we have to know how it all works, but why not at least teach us the basics of a computer accounting system? It's not like the class isn't held in a computer lab with Quicken and Peachtree Accounting loaded on all of the machines.

Computer Science I: OK, strange story time. I started off in this class, which was 12:00 - 2:20 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Save for the Chinese teacher's accent, I was doing OK. Then, out of the blue, she announces that she's leaving the class, because she's gotten a better job. (A "real programming job", apparently.) The head of the department says that he's found a new teacher for the class, but there's a timing conflict and the class will have to be moved one hour later (1:00-3:20). OK, fine, but.....

I have my Music Appreciation class at 2:30.

Problem!

So with this new teacher who, I believe, isn't teaching us as well, I have to leave an hour early to not miss the other class. A wonderful screw-job all around. Then the head of the department says that he's going to make sure the II class runs to make sure everyone who misses out on this class gets to do the next one. Right. Sorry, Bob, no deal.

Music Appreciation: Pretty cool, actually. I do have trouble hearing the differences between some of the composers and periods, but I'll pass it and get my remaining Fine Arts credit, which is what I took it for.

College Algebra: Easy. I usually do the homework in class while she's talking.

Plus, in my (now extended) lunch period, I like to hang out in MCC's "Belly of The Whale" student lounge. (More on that in another post) Lots of cool people there. Maybe you'll see some of their faces in one of my upcoming posts. ]]> Wed, 01 Dec 2004 02:24:54 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E264638139/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E729318961/index.html Jon's got his iStick, and as soon as FedEx gets it here, I'll have mine.

512MB, USB2 for $57 ($54 now) with free shipping from NewEgg.com.

(Yes, I'm gloating. Why do you ask?) ]]> Sat, 04 Sep 2004 21:25:41 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E729318961/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E796992463/index.html That's great, it's really cool of them to do that. You know, assuming any of the buildings containing hotspots are still standing after this is all over.

I'm picturing geeks climbing out of the rubble and huddling around the ruins of their nearby Starbucks or Borders for internet access. ]]> Sat, 04 Sep 2004 21:04:44 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E796992463/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C568514409/E2100449334/index.html If you need to know how to torpedo your own political career, just ask Alan Keyes.

Geez. Like somehow it's not bad enough that he's going to get skunked by Barack Obama come election day, he has to get on Dick Cheney's bad side, too. ]]> Sat, 04 Sep 2004 20:52:48 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C568514409/E2100449334/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1927872185/index.html ]]> Sat, 04 Sep 2004 20:40:34 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1927872185/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1724030157/index.html Uh, sure, Yahoo Maps, whatever you say. ]]> Sun, 11 Jul 2004 15:50:20 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1724030157/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E985441722/index.html If these specs are for real, and it's going to come bundled with The Missing Sync v4 (like the rumors say), then I may just have to start carrying a Palm again. ]]> Sun, 27 Jun 2004 01:56:51 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E985441722/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1384612845/E69755341/index.html Apple's AirPort Express looks like an awesome little 802.11g Swiss Army knife for any traveling Mac user (or PC user, for that matter). I'd love to have one just to have a pocketable wireless access point for traveling. I hadn't expected that they would kill off the modemless AirPort Extreme Base Station, but it makes sense given the feature sets that they would.

AirTunes- now that's just really damn cool. It's a simple way to go toe-to-toe with all of these digital audio boxes without a lot of added complexity and interface design. I could definitely see this technology popping up in other devices in the future- wireless speaker systems, stereo receivers, etc. Maybe TiVo will code it into their Home Media Option so it'll finally be able to play iTunes Music Store files. I had not expected that the AirPort Express would have an optical digital audio output, especially in this clever dual-purpose jack. I suppose it's a boon to the audiophile types who drooled over Apple Lossless Encoding, but to those of us without The Golden Ears™, the analog jack should do fine.

I could definitely find a use for this in my network. When provided a wireless network connection from an existing wireless access point, you get a remote Ethernet jack perfect for that game console, old computer, or other device that doesn't do wireless, a USB printer port perfect for liberating a USB printer from tyrannical control by one particular computer, and of course an audio jack to stream music to a stereo, speaker set, or any other audio device with a spare input jack. I'd put one of these on my desk to give me a spare Ethernet jack, to share an additional USB printer, and to stream music into my stereo. Could put another one down behind our big screen TV to stream music out the TV's speakers. Of course, if we end up moving to a house that lacks Ethernet jacks (Horrors!!), we'd need a pair of these to get the iMacs connected to the network again.

My only question is what kind of protection is there to keep unauthorized users from sending their own music to your AirPort Express? Given that this will work with both PCs and Macs, uses Rendezvous to announce its' presence, and seeing how most people don't protect their wireless networks*, it might be fun to check for these when wardriving. Give someone a musical interlude that they weren't expecting.

Oh, and here is a great "how it works" article from the fine folks at MacWorld. Bummer side is that you can't play to multiple outputs at once this way, but there is also a really neat little tidbit: apparently the optical audio out means that the AirPort Express can handle multichannel (5.1, 6.1, 7.1...) audio if you can play it in iTunes. Which currently you can't (to my knowledge) but who knows what the future holds...

*(The AirPort Setup Assistant prompts for a WEP password on an AirPort Extreme Base Station by default, so Apple might have this set up the same way.) ]]> Mon, 07 Jun 2004 22:47:27 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1384612845/E69755341/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1905849278/index.html If I believed in that kind of stuff, I'd think this guy was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I really thought Apple would have better taste than to carry him on the iTMS.

Of course, when I see him singing, the only thing that comes to mind is this. ]]> Mon, 03 May 2004 01:25:32 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1905849278/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E1476794351/index.html Some serious geek-cool going on here.

I can only think of about a skazillion things I could do with a system like that! Hey, Phidget folks (Pholks?)! All I need is an API to hook into this stuff with AppleScript and you can put me down for a Starter Kit #2, pronto!

(Thanks to Chairboy for his post over at /. ]]> Sat, 17 Apr 2004 00:08:36 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E1476794351/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1809099894/index.html Fourth floor, products with incredibly small market potential.

Y'know, it'd be cooler if it worked off of a single USB connection- power, audio (both directions) and transport control all on one cable.

(And no, this doesn't deserve the Cool Tech category.) ]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:27:00 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C720917797/E1809099894/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E1301035980/index.html I've seen various spoofs of the terror alert level system that pull from the DHS website to stay updated.

Naturally, I wanted my own. But I couldn't find one that was easy to install/implement, or easy for me to understand, for that matter. So after much PHP writing, re-writing, wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc., I finally cobbled together a PHP script that works for me.

Here it is in action, with my own graphics from Dragon Tales*.

OK, so it's neither terribly efficient nor fast, but it's simply constructed and it works! The customization should be fairly easy for anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML. If you want to distribute it, please link to me to show where you got it from. Otherwise, it's open.

Thanks to Phill Kenoyer for posting his original PHP script that I swiped the XML parser out of. Thanks to Oscar Hills for the idea to use preg_match to determine what the status is instead of stabbing in the dark with '=='. Thanks to my bud Dan Pourhadi for use of a hundred KB or so on his web server to run this. Thanks to TheCodingMonkeys for SubEthaEdit, with it's rocking syntax highlighting for PHP (and 15 other languages, too).

*(I was also thinking of doing one with Pokemon...how does "alert level Pikachu" sound?) ]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:19:25 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C1070661379/E1301035980/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C568514409/E405575987/index.html Yep! Voted in the Illinois primary today. My first time voting- my mom was so proud! (I'm sure she would have been even prouder if I had taken a Republican ballot, but still...) They definitely need a voting booth or two that's about a foot and a half taller for us really tall folks.

I lied about the voting for Kerry thing. I voted for Dean, if only just to encourage him to run in the future, since I really like him. Kerry's going to win, of course, so I'm going to vote for him in November.

Voted for Barack Obama for Senate- I dunno, he just seemed like a neat guy. ]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2004 18:32:19 -0600 http://homepage.mac.com/macprince/iblog/C568514409/E405575987/index.html