freeform goodness

I’m still around, just really busy and not writing much. I’m in the middle of a large project with a large, unnamed company and it’s keeping me very busy. About the only time I’m at my official office desk is to plug in every few days to do a laptop backup.

• PubSubHubbub looks interesting. One reason I’m writing a blog post is so that I have a reason to ping. ☺
• If you happen to be Google Wave, you can add me as a contact: marmoset |at| googlewave.com
• I rewrote my old messy del.icio.us tagquery script in Python, in the process speeding it by a factor of 4. The new version lives here, and will still point and laugh if run on anything other than a Mac with delimport installed.

:: Dave Walker 17:37 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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• Congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Leija, Raymundo and Jennifer. We love you and wish you all the best in your new life together.
• There are far worse things to be doing during one of the coldest, wettest Februarys I can remember than traveling to Phoenix, AZ, even if it is a working trip. It went very well, and the highs were in the mid 70’s (F) the whole time, which, considering there was an ice storm the morning I flew out of DTW, is the sort of thing I can appreciate.
• Little things I’m enjoying the heck out of, even if they’re just “a little cool” rather than “Wow, I need to write 500 words about each of these!” Please allow me to go all TechCrunch on that ass.
  • The release of all 9 Basic Channel (wikipedia) EP’s digitally, via Beatport, the first time these have ever been officially available for download. I think we’ll actually be posting a big retrospective about these over on Moodmat, maybe.
  • Skitch, the über screenshot utility for OS X from the clever folks who brought us Comic Life.
  • Tripit lets you consolidate all those maps, reservations, and confirmation numbers into a single, self-contained printout, and if you booked through one of the services they support, will do so with nothing more than an email forward to plans@tripit.com.
  • Sandy, the automated reminder/digital assistant, i.e. you email reminders to “her” and she can extract contact info, meeting invites, etc.
  • Prologue, a Wordpress theme that allows you to do something that approximates a “behind-the-firewall-Twitter” within your own workgroup.

:: Dave Walker 20:55 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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(and Morris, and even from Dave.)

:: Dave Walker 22:57 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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:: Dave Walker 17:08 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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Okay, so obviously I drained a Foster’s-sized can of STFU, but I’ve been reasonably busy in various ways since my last real blog post.

As posted previously, September began with a bit of organ loss and ended with a trip (literally) to the other side of the globe. October saw the loss of my dear Aunt Betty Ann, who passed away after a long illness, but also the birth of another in a long line of small children (hello Cody Nicole) who’ll insist on me tossing them into the air whenever I visit their parents. I ignored Halloween this year, but was happy to witness the marriage of my office-mate Chris. I took time out to vote in the election Tuesday.

My employer shipped updates to several of its flagship software products, and I learned that my planned trip to Tampa, Florida for the Supercomputing 2006 trade show was not to be, as the exigencies of the business have me instead traveling to a slightly cooler climate. Send warm thoughts.

:: Dave Walker 13:08 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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Just a small update… We grilled some chicken the other day, and I had Pocky (ポッキ) and madeira for dessert. Oh, yes.

In all seriousness, I’ve been a bit paralyzed by having, probably, way too many things to write about, and so I’ve neatly settled the issue by writing, um, nothing. At least I’m not switching to Ubuntu.

I’ll probably be visiting the Tastefest (warning — pitiful web presence) again this year. We had a great time there last year. I was planning on going on Sunday, but appears the Great Lakes Myth Society will be playing on the 4th so maybe we’ll wait until then.

I make it a rule not to write about work, but, um, I get to visit NASA in 2 weeks. :) Dude.

:: Dave Walker 13:10 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc

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• Chorizo con huevos — a really simple breakfast, but a tasty one. I had bicuits and honey with them, instead of tortillas, though.
• I’d like to wish Randy Morin a very happy 37th birthday!
• This link keeps getting reposted all over the place, but for those of us who “imprinted” musically during the ’80s, it’s a revelation.

:: Dave Walker 11:27 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: links

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1. Windows Vista will slip into 2007. There will be at least two very high profile “retirements” at Microsoft attached to this.
2. Comcast will offer TiVo service bundled with its set top boxes. Existing TiVo customers will be disappointed with the costs and technical hurdles involved in tying together their existing accounts with Comcast’s offering.
3. Xbox360 early adopters will complain loudly about a 6-month “game drought”, as the gap between the launch titles and the next wave of games makes them question the wisdom of an early purchase.
4. Sony will ship the Playstation 3 on the ninth of September. There will be at least one flawless game, and about 2 dozen mediocre ones. Early sales will be quite strong, as the system will be one of the cheapest ways to get a BluRay disc player attached to your HDTV.
5. HDTV will achieve a 25% penetration rate in N. American households around Christmas 2006, thanks to extremely aggressive pricing on LCD sets from east Asian manufacturers.
6. Apple will finally announce it’s living-room entertainment solution. They will ship a broadband attached set top box/DVR (basically an Intel-based Mac mini on steroids) with dual HD tuners, CableCard support, an iPod dock, and 802.11n. It will, of course, be tightly coupled to the iTunes store. They will also ship several different Cinema displays which will be styled to match.
7. Google will partner with Apple to provide web services for the new home entertainment platform.
8. Yahoo will continue to buy startups, and will continue to fail to integrate them into their main-line business.
9. Google will introduce Google Calendar, which will expose an AtomAPI-based facility for synchronization.
10. There will be several dozen new OPML applications. None will interoperate in any meaningful fashion, and the developers will be forced to wear a scarlet “F” (for funky) on their shirts.

:: Dave Walker 14:08 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/misc/webmemes]
:: tags: webmemes 2006 meme

:: Comments (4)

• One nice thing about having a week and a half away from work is that I’ve actually been able to use my Mac as my main computer again for an extended period of time. I’ll have to figure out a way to do more of that…
• I’ve largely cut over to Splenda for those times when I’m not just drinking my coffee black. Please, no lectures about the evils of modern chemistry / genetically-modified foods, whatever. Live like a cyborg, die like a cyborg. Anyway, I only mention this because, really, at this point there’s virtually no difference in taste (though there is a barely discernible difference in texture) when drinking the stuff in a beverage. One weird side effect the “table blend” suffers is that it, well, foams a bit when you mix it into coffee. I figure it’s got to be the cut (in this case maltodextrin and air, basically.)
• The comment feed hadn’t been updating since November, and I just hadn’t noticed. Fixed. Just YAFCJ.
• Since there seems to be a fairly strong movement afoot to standardize on a single icon for web feeds, I’ve added it for those who are unfortunate enough to be using a browser/OS/aggregator combo that isn’t smart enough to autodiscover. Unbelievably, I actually displayed the thing in (pukety pukety rolf) orange until I made myself remember enough Photoshop to be able to re-tint it in a more palatable fashion.
• If you’re as irritated as I am about religious organizations throwing their weight around and determining what independent adults should be allowed to watch in their own homes, fire up your BitTorrent client.
• It’s rare that you hear a really, really funny blonde joke, but this one made me wet my pants.

:: Dave Walker 13:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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:: tags: misc rambling

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The same dozen or so bloggers who only link to each other have been going on and on about Memeorandum for the last few months, and I’ve never really figured out why. I’ve never actually seen anything pop up there that wasn’t already being beaten to death by that same list of people — if you’re looking for current stuff that’s worth a look I still think you’re better served by del.icio.us or digg or your own aggregator.

Randy seems to have discovered the trick for gaming Memeorandum: post at least 100 words of carping about nothing (you can generate easy inbounds if you slag the favorite targets [e.g. Dell, Google, the Bushies, etc.] of the other dozen you always link to), and mention one or more of those folks by name (their ego feeds will light up like Christmas trees and the logrolling will begin).

:: Dave Walker 08:55 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/misc/webmemes]
:: tags: webmemes

:: Comments (2)