I tend not to speak much anymore.  I used to be much more animated and lively, etc.  Recently there is little to be lively about that I tend not to speak.  I’m not mute but muted.  I hope this ends soon.  I’m considering an idea to force myself to speak daily.  Maybe this will help.  Maybe the conversation with the air will lead to less forced vocabulary.  More on this project soon.

I made my first dashboard widget a few days ago and I’m surprised at the positive response. I made a remote control for the social media platform Boxee. If you happen to run Boxee and want to control it from your Mac laptop download it and give it a try.

I’ve already had some requests for a windows version so I will try to port the code over to a gadget soon. Or maybe a Yahoo widget as well. If you really want a linux port of some kind let me know and what widget platform would be best.

Links:
Life Hacker
Tech Startups

Over a decade ago I made my first website. A horribly designed personal site written in notepad. I remember the title being A Dreamer’s Workshop, I was a freshman in high-school so I hadn’t quite grasped the idea of horrid cliches yet. In addition my sense of aesthetics wasn’t well developed either so my GeoCities page was a horrific blend of large tables and dark backgrounds and possibly animated gifs. The iconic flying toaster was a part of it I believe. It’s the kind of page that if I see today I immediately throw up a little in my mouth.

It was a strange time in web development, because everything was new and nothing really looked bad because nothing really looked good yet. We hadn’t had the medium long enough for anyone to truly develop as a proper designer yet. So even with the flying toasters it was a decent page for the time. Nonetheless I will forever associate the beginnings of personal pages with GeoCities, so I’m a little saddened that today it closes it’s doors.

RIP GeoCities

I finally got my invite to Google wave and it looks like the many youtube videos I have seen of it so far. It’s fairly responsive and things seem to work well-ish. There are some noticeable bugs, like folder organizing not being as smooth as it should be etc. The biggest problem with Wave at this point is I have no one to wave to. No one I know has a wave account. Google has pulled the direct invite method and gone to an invite queuing method. I’ve read reports of people getting their accounts between 15 hrs and 5+ days after being put on the invite list.

It’s like getting that amazing new toy on Christmas and finding out batteries aren’t included. So you end up hunting through the house steeling batteries from remote controls. Well unfortunately there are no remotes to steal batteries from here. Google is holding all the remotes and there is nothing I can do about it except wait.

I’ll post my thoughts of it once my invite list get their accounts.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

- Neil Postman

I must become a collector…An avid collector. A collector of information, ideas and associations. Here is where I begin. This is a challenge to myself, to my ultimate sense of creation. Do these thoughts have more value than the pretty echoes they create as they bounce around.

More soon on this endeavour.

I’m getting into the Kevin Pollak Chat Show as it begins to evolve. It’s very much a Charlie Rose, inside the actor’s studio kind of show but less drivel and more nonsense. I’m endeared by the nonsense, little things that no one would get to in an interview in normal TV space. I also enjoy the comfort level of the actors on the show. There have been some interesting actors that have come to the show, not necessarily the same actors that would be on the Tonight Show but a good set of interviews none-the-less. There are also interviews with web stars, which is a nice change. To get a more in depth interview with someone like Felicia Day for example is a nice touch. There is definitely an audience for this show, if it doesn’t drown or run out of funds. Check it out if you get a moment, it’s major draw back and greatest asset is that it is a long form video. An hour plus per interview.

p.s. Will someone over at Mahalo learn how to use Motion. I’m tired of the same standard templates for all their title cards and lower thirds.

Two of my newest geek crushes are Boxee (an internet on your tv solution) and BuzzFeed (one of the best viral web blogs of all time). If you haven’t checked out either please do so. Today Boxee released a method for getting Vimeo channels onto Boxee with ease. Vimeo is one of my favorite video sharing sites and they maintain a spectacular product. So, I eagerly created a Boxee app for my own channel. Considering I only have 5 videos on vimeo I decided I should make one for a more productive channel. My thoughts turned to BuzzFeed and one of my favorite video bloggers Ze Frank, who’s been doing a rather interesting series on BuzzFeed and Vimeo called HardTimes. Anyway, here it is, the HardTimes Boxee app.

You’ll have to install it manually for now.

::Link Fixed::

Download the app here and extract it to ~/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/User Data/Apps

Then edit up the sources.xml file under ~/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/User Data/Profiles/<username>

and add this peice of code in the video section.

<source>
<name>Hard Times :: Ze Frank</name>
<path>app://zefrank/</path>
<thumbnail>http://images.vimeo.com/11/30/60/113060111/113060111_300.jpg</thumbnail>
<private>false</private>
</source>

You may need to restart Boxee after doing so to get the app to appear. I submitted it to boxee, who knows maybe they’ll put it in their repository.

This is brilliant! I would take a portable autotune machine with me everywhere.

Bonus video:

So in a moment of nostalgic weakness we decided to watch all the Alien(s) movies this weekend. Not having a single one in my collection, I turned to the legal online services I enjoy. I began with Netflix and they had the first three movies. So without much hassle and thanks to the new silverlight player we were watching the first three movies, no problems. Then came the 4th movie in the installment. Now I know it’s not that good a movie but it was a marathon, it can’t be stopped. Netflix however failed me. They didn’t have it on play it now. No biggie, I can’t expect them to have all of them. I turn to hulu in hopes that they might have it. Nope, just a few clips to entice. So I broke down and rented it from iTunes. Now the pc I have hooked up to my TV isn’t the greatest so the rental ended up crashing iTunes every time I tried playing it. I copied it over to my intel iMac and was about to watch it there when I get a prompt saying that the movie was authorized on a different computer. This is one of my 5 authorized computers for music but apparently the rental movies are locked to one machine. I ended up letting iTunes support know about the problem. I think after all that including paying the 2.99 rental fee from iTunes I’m entitled to watch the movie. So I torrent the flick and within about 40 minutes we were watching the movie. We used the break to make snacks and the like. BTW 20th Century Fox I deleted the movie after viewing. I just wanted to watch it, not sell or distribute it. Hell I don’t even want it as part of my collection.

If only apple would release new Mac mini’s, so I can make a new media server. *sigh*