BLOG.EXE the stopwilson.com blog

What have you been working on?

2011-06-03T21:59:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm breaking a long radio silence to announce that I've caught the game development bug again. And after a "while" of development, I have a brand new iPhone/iPad game to show for it.

Tilt-a-Bowl is a game idea that dates back to the original NO2 Games days in Cincinnati. At the time I pictured something that was a cross between a bowling alley and a pinball table--in fact, the original name was PinBowl, but someone beat me to the name in the AppStore.

Check out the Tilt-a-Bowl website, and if you are a friend of mine (real or Facebook) check this link out to see how you can help me promote the game to the masses.

Thanks!

Your Personal Cloud

2011-04-03T11:44:00.001-04:00

Now that Amazon has launched their cloud storage solution for users, I think there will be a return to the classic home file server to access all your stuff on the go, but the term for it will be a much fancier one--your Personal Cloud. The word "cloud" might be overkill for something you run at home, but getting at your stuff wherever, whenever certainly provides cloud-like benefits.

If you are a DropBox user you already have some of this behavior. In fact I've been tempted to upgrade the storage space, but I would never pay to store all my music on it. Now, I've had various home files servers, Personal Video Recorder servers, etc. but the idea of a server that goes beyond just "serving files" and starts to make all your important files and media available on your laptop, desktop, mobile and even iPad has so considerable merit.

After looking at a few options I settled on adding Tonido to my home Linux server. Tonido is a really impressive option that runs a server on your Windows or Mac Desktop (in the background), on a dedicated computer or on a cute little $99 computer that looks more like a power adapter than a PC.

No matter what you choose, adding a terabyte to your personal cloud as a simple USB drive. At the time I wrote this, you could get a 1.5TB USB drive for $70 on Amazon. If you would have told me even 18 months ago, I could have a 1.5TB networked drive accessible from my cell phone for $170, I would have more than chuckled.

Now this is pretty volatile storage. Only accessible when your home has internet and power, so I would put it in the 98% uptime arena depending on your ISP and other factors. Add a second drive (for real-time backup) and run your server on a netbook (so you get a built-in battery backup) and your uptime could approach 99% and we're still under $400 total. The dual-drive netbook option is what I'm configuring as I write this.

The desktop software is free, but certain add-ins could have costs associated as they are trying to build an App store like everyone else on the planet. The photo, music and file plugins are free as well as the iPhone, iPad and Android apps, so it's hard to go wrong simply trying it out.

Playmobil TSA Checkpoint User Reviews

2011-03-15T19:37:00.000-04:00

Not unlike the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt that made its way on to Amazon and provided hours of enjoyment reading the user reviews and looking at doctored photos of Kim Jong Il sporting the fashionable shirt--today I stumbled upon the Playmobil Security Check Point.

Classic reviews contain one-liners like, "This toy would be a lot more realistic with about 350 people standing in line for an average of an hour." And, "I bet al-Qaeda is training the next generation with this very product. I am saddened to learn that Playmobile hates America."

I think it's interesting that even the lowly user review has become a source of comedy writing.

Of course, it's hard to beat the Best of Craigslist.

New site and identity work...

2011-03-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

If you saw the post below, you would have seen some new business cards I'm using to promote my consulting work in 2011. The cards came in this week and they good, but not as good as I hoped. Don't get me wrong, they will do the job for $20 and they are much better than I could print myself. I know business cards are a dying breed anyway, but I still find myself using as a stop gap until that person makes it into my contact list.

So, I went with a clean two-tone design that's a little easier on the eyes than the "green screen" look that this blog shares with my text based hub page at stopwilson.com. This however, left me in a quandary as my business cards look nothing like the site the cards tell you to visit.

stopwilson.com is a great site--in fact I want to enter it into some award shows (like the Webbies ) this year, so I do want people to experience a bit of that site before they get my sales pitch. I needed a transition between the two designs to make things work.

Luckily, I own waaaay too many URLs, so I spun up a quick site at www.michaelewilson.com (note the middle "e" for my middle name--Eugene) to have a similar look as my cards do.

Insert a stock bio and drop in some icons for my other presences on the web, and now I have instant content. This will certainly be a work in progress, as I will want to include information about my consulting practice, but for now a on-line biography is just fine.

Now I needed a way to link people who visit stopwilson.com to this page. It has a good amount of traffic, almost 250,000 page views in 2011, and it still gets tweeted about every few days.

I decided to carry over the "voice bubble" look into the lower right hand corner of the site. This area has pretty much nothing going and sits polar opposite of the top navigation. All I needed was a quick mock-up of a an alert bubble over a rounded button to the site.

The code to make that bubble stay in place (with resizing) and allow you to click to launch the site was not easy. However, a few hours of playing around with it seemed to get it to work across all major browsers, including the iPad (which doesn't really run the site because of keyboard input, but now you can click on the menu items.)

Now, if I can only get the pop up bubble to fade away after a few seconds my evil plan will be complete.

:)

Business Cards

2011-02-21T16:02:00.002-05:00

It's been forever since I had to make business cards, so I was surprised how many on-line resources there we're out there to design and print what seems now like a relic in the business world.

I went with a simple design based on a template at Overnight Prints. Mocked it up and it was wrapped in less than an hour.

These will have rounded corners to mimic the voice balloons, the front (the top image is technically the back, but I'm calling it the front) will be glossy and the other side not so much. The cards were about $10 and so was shipping. Crazy I know, but I think shipping is where these on-line printers make their margins.

Now to make some for What's in it for Tina?

Waiting on Superphone

2011-02-17T08:48:00.000-05:00

I find myself in a bit of a quandary, the iPhone 5 is maybe just a few months away and I just had my iPhone 4 pulled from my cold dead hands. At first I had considered the Verizon iPhone with it's (hopefully) better coverage and reception in the greater New York area. My wife has the iPhone 3GS on AT&T and they were nice enough to give us a MicroCell3G that makes calling in and around the house a fairly pleasurable experience.

What's a boy to do?

I could lock in for another two years with AT&T for a phone that drops connections every time I step two feet to the right. Do I begin a similar relationship with Verizon and hope it's better?

Out of principle I should own an Android device. A no-contract smartphone on that platform could be a decent hold over device until the next shiny bobble comes from the Land of Jobs.

iTouch + Google Voice + MyFi? Crazy I know, but I think that's where things are eventually going.

So, here's what I'm trying out. Virgin Mobile has a very cheap android phone now, the LG Optimus V. Their plan is $25 for 300 minutes, and get this, unlimited data over the Sprint network which is rock solid in NYC. (Now it doesn't work at my house, but that's another story.) No contract too, so the most I'm out is a $149 phone.

At home I talk mostly via Skype's SkypeOut while working, so I don't plan on going over those minutes. The only bummer is Virgin Mobile's known issues connecting to Google Voice, but that's a post for another day.

Most Things Go Out of Control Slowly

2011-02-02T16:04:00.002-05:00

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.
—Fred Brooks

I read a book (forever ago) called The Mythical Man-Month written by the man quoted above. The gist of it is "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." But how do we get to the point where we're simply tossing resources at a problem to fix it?

Even smart people can misrepresent how much much work they think that they can do. There's a process of where one imagines their most productive hour and multiplies that by 40 hours, then by four weeks, then by twelve months. One minor slip in that logic (for example, you may only have four productive hours a week) and the effects are staggering.

Communication, organization and other pieces of daily work life are all transaction costs in delivering any sort of project. It's very hard to estimate how much time these kinds of tasks will take.

I'm tackling a few personal projects over the next few weeks and I'm trying to limit them to things I can do by myself in 48 hours over a weekend. This process is one I learned doing films in a weekend for the 48 hour film festival. When you start planning a few hours at a time it's amazing what you can get accomplished.

So, now I'm thinking small+fast=done.

Back to Blogger (or Blogger does DOS)

2011-01-26T15:34:00.004-05:00

As much as wanted a self-hosted Blog solution, I decided that keeping all my older (possibly worthless) content in the same system was important. When you blog consistently from 2005 on it's a bit of street cred to keep all that in one place. Also, it's nice having RSS feeds, spam resistant comments and a generally nice look and feel on the site.

I know "real bloggers" don't like Blogger and particularly the BlogSpot hosting service. Believe me, I was as mad as anyone when they moved from their FTP publishing system which was nice for spinning up quick blogs and plugging into larger sites. I had more than one site that broke when that change happened.

But blogger has been a solid service for well over 10 years, and I think a lot of practical knowledge comes with that amount of time in a digital platform.

In fact, I opened my blogger account in 1999 when I was running a game development blog called turbo. The Wayback Machine has posts starting in 2000, but I remember pushing out well before that.

So, here is as close as I could get to a CSS based DOS-like design running in Blogger's blogspot system.

Enjoy.

A DOS-like CMS is a Go!

2011-01-10T15:17:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Kure I now have a very light weight CMS/Blog system that mimics the DOS side of my website. No comments, RSS feed or other fancy-pants stuff yet, but it's a start. The big deal is the PERMALINK to the main article everyone retweeted changed, but other than that we should be good to go.

No doubt I will upload my DOS template for the Kure CMS (nerd alert) once I work out all the bugs and implement the commenting system.

I’m looking forward to updating my DOS website from my iPhone on the train.

The Day Aftermath

2011-01-05T19:15:00.000-05:00

The party is officially over and now I'm stuck cleaning up this mess. Hundreds of red plastic cups are everywhere. I would like to say thanks again for all the Reddit readers that stopped by yesterday. I don't really believe that you're a poor man's Digg, it was just Internet fame getting the best of me.

Now for the numbers--what is a page one, top of fold spot on Reddit worth?

138,224 unique visitors in about 18 hours

196,390 page views (the site had only one page for the first 12 hours)

8,297 views of my belated blog post

100+ new Facebook friends

70+ new Twitter followers to @stopwilson

Enough with the quantitative, on to the qualitative.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. It was more fun than it should have been staying up late and watching the Internet swirl. As the day progressed, awesome people awesomely tweeted about both the site concept and my writing. Some internet ladies claimed to have crushes on my site design! My wife would claim that that site design is spoken for, but she's not reading this.

I'm sure you are so bored that you want to read each and every one, don't you?

What's next?

The meat and potatoes of this site are these blog posts (like the one you are reading now) and are hastily hand coded HTML. So there are no comments, no blog archive, or anything we've come to expect from even the worst blog platform.

I will be thinking over the next few day how to DOS-ify commenting most probably using the Twitter JSON API which powers the "tweets" command on the landing page. Any other ideas are welcome.
Everyone keeps yammering for Easter Eggs and I think I have one good idea, so we'll see how long it takes to get that going.

So for now, tweet your comments to @stopwilson.

The Five Things I Learned about Being Internet Famous for a Day

2011-01-04T20:11:00.000-05:00

Just my luck that this first Blog post will go live after the largest single day of site traffic I will ever get. I guess I shouldn't complain, seeing how I don't know too many other bloggers who have graced the front page of reddit.com. For those of who don't know Reddit, it's a poor man's digg.com. For those of you who don't know Digg, it's USA Today meets the National Enquirer if all the editors had Attention Deficit Disorder.

Alas, I made it there with only the idea of how my content would be presented and a little help from my friend(s). So if you are one of the few people who will stumble upon this site after its 15 minutes of fame, I present to you the five things I learned about being Internet Famous for a day.

ONE / Don't become famous on a day that you're super busy.

It was our first day back in the office after the holiday break. Also it was a brand new office we had just moved into a few weeks before--crap everywhere. And my calendar was chocked full of stuff that didn't include surfing the internet or fixing spelling mistakes that were tweeted to me like a thousand times. Seriously, I was so busy that I tried to squeeze an extra day out of a deodorant that was two days past needing to be trashed. To my nearby co-workers, I apologize--to the spelling police on the interwebs, not so much.

TWO / Why don't I have any cool pictures of myself?

This was my chance to be discovered as the next big--something. I needed to have a cool picture of myself doing something cool. Both my Facebook and Twitter profile pictures are pretty lame, I've got some corporate photography that my work uses for speaking engagements and such, but that is somehow lamer. From now on, I will keep a picture of me alone, laughing and eating a salad.

THREE / The internet is fickle.

I like to think I know stuff. For example, I've been called out of important business meetings to setup a projector. Knowing this, it is logical for you to believe that I have a firm grasp of nerd irony. But what surprises me is that "comment people" could agree that I was smart enough to put together this web site, but not smart enough to know that "ls" was a UNIX command (not DOS) and therefore should be removed from my fake website and stricken from the public record before Google finds out.

Also there was a guy that hit me right in my sweet spot by saying, "Your blog layout is genius. Literally. I mean, it takes a genius to design a genius layout, thus making you a genius. Or genie. Like the one in Aladdin. His name is Genie. But he's played by Robin Williams. Therefore, you are comparable to Robin Williams."

Make up your mind, Internet.

FOUR / Originality is for suckers.

When I thought this idea up, I almost peed my pants I thought it was so original. Then I searched around the internet and saw 50 other nerdtastic guys in their 30s had thought it would be cool to retro up the web with a DOS-like look and feel. In fact, some of the code for this site was borrowed from various forum posts on the same subject. That's right I said borrowed, I plan on giving it back when I'm done with it.

The really sad part is that these people have done it as good, if not better. But most a little suckier.

FIVE / When your website has nothing on it traffic is not an issue.

I really sweated having 30,000 people an hour visit my site since I have the crappiest server in the world. It is held together by Bubblelicious and dreams. But then I realized that my whole site is one page and that one page is 10 times smaller than an animated GIF of James Van Der Beek crying.

So, I managed to keep the site content free enough to stave off the onslaught of new readers who came to read nothing. 129,345 page views never looked so wrong, but felt so right.

Enjoy the blog, I hope there's more to come.

More love for Pringles Can Hands

2010-04-19T11:11:00.002-04:00

Pringles Can Hands has been nominated for The 14th Annual Webby Awards in the Banner Singles category. As one of only five nominees in its category, the my agency is eligible for the Internet industry's two most sought-after awards: The Webby Award and The Webby People's Voice Award.

While the Academy selects The Webby Awards' winners, the online public selects The People's Voice Award winners. Webby People's Voice voting starts April 13th and ends April 29th.

Vote Here!

Classic MST3K on Netflix Watch It Now

2009-10-14T11:32:00.003-04:00

It's about time. Classic 90's show (or movie) Mystery Science Theater 3000 now has about 8 episodes--including one of my favorites Laserblast--available to stream via Netflix on your Xbox 360, HTPC or regular old computer.

These search results have all the videos available, look for the blue "Play" button for streaming titles.

Xbox Cured

2009-09-27T18:50:00.002-04:00

So the Xbox 360 is back and working a promised. Seems to be as good as ever.

Although, I loved the Hulu Desktop so much that I will put a small quiet desktop PC in my entertainment center for video streaming. More on that in another post...

Xbox Repair Completion Time Just 14 Days?

2009-09-16T08:23:00.005-04:00

That's that. My Xbox Red Ring of Death has been repaired and the Console has been shipped back with a scheduled delivery date of 09/21/2009. I'll post to confirm that it's working, but if it delivers on time that would make the entire repair 10 business days or 14 calendar days--well under the original six week estimate on the site.

Under promise and over deliver I always say.

NFL Sunday Night Football Streaming via Web

2009-09-13T11:36:00.002-04:00

Cable challenged Packer's fans and I will be able to watch Sunday Night Football tonight via an Web based HD stream on NBC...

Content for SNFExtra is presented in hi-definition through a technology called Smooth Streaming, part of Microsoft Silverlight. When watching a video with Smooth Streaming, the Bit Rate indicator (signal strength meter) on the right end of the control bar will indicate the quality. When the video is playing at optimal definition, the HD icon will appear.

Here's the link.

Xbox Repair, "In Proccess..."

2009-09-12T11:19:00.003-04:00

No real additional information. Yesterday when I checked (a Friday) it was still being shipped, so it's progressed about half way through the repair process. I find now a days I don't play games on it as much as we watch movies, so the Hulu box from my last post is filling in just fine.

Hulu Desktop App is Pretty Darn Sweet

2009-09-10T10:07:00.002-04:00

Since my XBOX 360 is being held in triage at XBOX's Texas Repair center, I was looking for a replacement for the Netflix On-Demand that we watched almost exclusively as TV since we moved.

Enter Hulu with a very cool Hulu Desktop application that did an amazing job of streaming content from my aging Sony VAIO laptop to my TV.

It could learn a little functionality from the open source projects XBMC and BOXEE, but let me tell you--this tiny program is a joy to use. A wireless mouse is all you need to control the programming and the minimalist commercial breaks during an episode of Late Night with Conan seem to take less time than skipping them with a Tivo.

Some functionality required a Hulu login and I haven't had time to figure out how the site and the app will work together, but my assumption is that I will be able to queue TV in Hulu just like I queued movives in Nexfilx.

You can get Hulu Desktop here, and my online profile is here.

My Xbox 360 countdown to repair!

2009-09-09T13:40:00.004-04:00

Xbox Says: Your console should be returned to you within 2 - 3 weeks from the day you ship it.

Follow my Xbox 360 on it's happy journey!

Tell me how you eat your Pringles

2009-08-05T19:53:00.003-04:00

The good people at Pringles are running a Pringles 100 Ways to Enjoy Sweepstakes

Evidently I like mine upside down.

Livio Radio Rocks The House

2009-07-15T11:08:00.002-04:00

I was contemplating buying another Chumby for internet radio in my office. It's a great device, but for $200 you can buy a netbook and the speakers on the Chumby leave a little to be desired.

Enter Livio Radio. This is a (relatively) inexpensive internet stereo at $150 that has the Pandora thumbs up/thumbs down buttons built right in.

Here's the most unexcited guy in the world explaining how it works...

If I wasn't trying to by a house in NY, I'd be all over this. :)

Braving McKinley

2009-07-05T13:47:00.003-04:00

Last week I wrapped another 48 Hour Film. This one is a mockumentary on a theater group that reenacts the assassination of President William McKinley.

By far, this is the tightest production I've ever done. The (digital) film looks great and was shot in full HD. The sound is good with little to no post production. What you see above is my cut with about 3 minutes of footage added in--the 48 hour film project requires films to be no more than 7 minutes.

Enjoy!

Canon T1i/500D Test Footage and Puppies

2009-05-16T08:52:00.003-04:00

Here's a quick unfiltered look at the Canon T1i indoors at night with minimal lighting.

The pups are three lab boxer mix pups that we are boarding for the week--sleeping and being generally cute... Shot handheld with manual focus. No post processing, no color correction. Original file was about 150MB...

New Canon T1i Heading My Way

2009-05-14T20:21:00.004-04:00

I hate buying electronics--not because I hate electronics, but because I obsess over reviews, consumer reviews, unboxings, sample videos and whatever other information I can find pre-purchase.

So, after about a three months of debating on what HD video camera I wanted to buy, I completely switched gears and bought a Digital SLR still camera. Why you ask? The Canon T1i is a hybrid DSLR that shoots HD video (720p at 30FPS, about what a movie downloaded on Xbox Live would look like) and 15 megapixel stills.

I know equipment that try to do too many things often fail, and I do think Canon failed at building a usable everyday video camera--it won't auto focus while recording, audio is poor and BlueRay quality HD mode (1080p at 20FPS) is too slow to be useful. However when I see clips like this, I get excited about shooting video with a real 35mm lens.

If you click through to YouTube you can watch it in HD, but even there it's still not the full resolution of the 720p mode of the camera. (BTW, the 500D is the European version of the T1i, so same everything.)

I've got lots of things to figure out like manual focus, camera support, power, etc, but I think that DSLRs that shoot video will be the wave of the future.

It arrives tomorrow, so I hope to shoot some test footage this weekend.

UPDATED: Best Google Ad Ever!!!

2009-05-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: My best guess is someone was just banging on the keyboard to make a test ad and KLM are just so close to each other on the keyboard that that's what the URL ended up being.

The sad part is it's probably one of the few ads I've clicked on in my Gmail, so this tactic may be surprisingly effective. :)

We've got a KLM person in the comments who may be able to verify. Kudos to them for following up.

Keep up the good work www.KLM.com!

Tech humor not worth it...

2009-04-29T08:44:00.003-04:00

An oddball conversation yesterday reminded me of this web comic...

More System Backup

2009-04-24T08:11:00.002-04:00

Now that I have GoodSync running (see my last post) I was looking for cheap local storage. What I found at the local Best Buy was close out 320GB USB drives--good, small, cheap.

Now I wish I would have done my homework, because I found 320GB of firewire storage for $80 shipped at Amazon.

No doubt I will be using these as video editing drives.

GoodSync + Amazon S3 = Sweetness

2009-04-12T17:10:00.003-04:00

I've been struggling with my home network all day. I had a 250GB drive in my FreeNAS server fail and it's made my whole Easter Sunday very depressing. Lucky for me I had dual drive setup that mirrored all my important data, but I hadn't been good at keeping it all that up to date.

I was a big fan of Microsoft SyncToy for backing files to my home network, but it's failed me in the past, and the new Sync 2.0 framework that seems to run constantly system is bothersome, so I ventured out for a new solution.

I've been using Siber System's RoboForm for years and I knew they had a sync solution, but I hadn't investigated. Oh, what I've been missing out on is file-syncing sweetness...

This bad boy will sync files between networks, FTP sites and (the kicker for me) my Amazon S3 storage account. Now I can have automated local backup to cheap USB drives or my FreeNAS (if I ever get it working again...) *and* I can backup to the Amazon cloud storage for mission critical files I can't afford to lose.

April is a good month to cracking, GoodSync is $19.55 until 4/15 (down form 30 bucks with coupon code 1040G) and “data transfer in” to Amazon S3 is only $0.03 per GB (vs. the standard $0.10) for 3 months, April through June.

Enjoy!

I’m going to post to my blog more!

2009-04-01T12:49:00.002-04:00

April Fools!

Seriously, April 1st is a big day for me. It means 90 days in a new city, 60 days in a new house and the 30 day anniversary of discovering the location of my iron.

All in all, the move was quite a bit more intense that I ever would have imagined and the New York City pace is everything people say. I find that my days are a good two hours longer in Manhattan then they were in Cincinnati and the risk of being unproductive is much higher. I really have to focus on the task at hand to keep the day from slipping away.

I am enjoying the train commute (half of my Facebook updates originate there) and I’m getting back into listening to Podcasts and really using mobile internet sites. I can see how anyone who commutes into the city needs an iPhone or SmartPhone.

I am not enjoying the red tape that moving to a new city entails. My wife and I have made a collective five trips to the BMV to get the cars registered, countless reams of new job and insurance paperwork, and all new banking and utilities to deal with. You know you have to update the Netflix account or they’ll stop sending you movies :)

That leads me to an April Fools challenge for those of you who still bother to read this drivel. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the low budget indie film April’s Fool?

This little gem of a film was released in 2001 and I was lucky enough to stumble upon one of the few theatrical showings at the Esquire Theater. It was shot mostly in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky and unlike Airborne I remember it being somewhat good. I’d love to rent it again to see if it has a shelf life.

Happy April’s Fool day!

Rebuilding my Home Server

2009-03-29T13:48:00.004-04:00

I have a million pressing things to do this weekend, but I'm pushing it all aside to rebuild my home file server. I debated shelling out $500 for one of those fancy Drobo drives, but I thought I would update/upgrade my FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is a free NAS server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

When I get finished I should have a mirrored 250GB of space with 2GB of Flash memory for various server plugins. I hope to get it configured as a media server to play my musice over the XBOX 360, but we'll see.

Wilson tweets SXSW

2009-03-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

Quick update from my mobile. You can follow me at SXSW on Twitter @stopwilson.

Have you met TED?

2009-01-27T14:41:00.002-05:00

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration, and this year I was lucky enough to get the nod from my good friends at GREYnyc.

There will be so many people blogging and twitting about TED that you won't see any of that on this site, but I have been ask to shoot video of the event. So I will post that here after TED wraps.

Stay tuned.

Train Blogging

2009-01-06T18:53:00.003-05:00

So this post is being written on the 6:42pm New Haven express train from Grand Central to South Norwalk, CT. Usually I keep my blog postings to techie things I find/make/covet, but I felt like posting on something the usefullness of those gadets.

I'm currently in the middle of moving with my company to the New York City area, and now I'm finding that all my tech toys are really more suited to the commuting life style I have now than the one I had in Cincinnati. (This post is a testament to what a free hour on the train and a bag full of gadgets will force you to do.)

So I'm sitting here, shoulder to shoulder with other commuters with my Acer Aspire One netbook in my lap. It's teathered to a Sprint Centro phone via a USB cable and I'm surfing the internets at oldskool dial-up speeds. It's enough to check email and write blog posts, so who knows--maybe I'll be a blogger again someday soon.

I'm also liking Pocket Tunes on my Palm based phone. I just found out that it not only will pause the music when an incoming call comes in, but it will play the callers audio over the ear buds and still let you speak into the phone like in hands-free mode. Of course I look like an idiot talking into my music player, but the sound on both ends is good.

Of course I've been loving GoogleMaps Mobile and 1-800-GOOG-411, they've both been a big help finding my way around a new city.

So from gadget collector to gadget user in only a few days. Who knew?

Cincinnati Digital Hub

2008-11-17T09:31:00.001-05:00

I was a last minute add to the speaker roster at the Cincinnati Digital Hub Initiative Non-conference. It was a good time as well as being my 2nd un-conference of the year. Will I ever pine for the days of just a good old conference-conference?

Glenn Platt's AIMS blog for Miami University has a round-up of what went down at the conference that's better than anything I could write. (It also doesn't hurt that e liked my talk on Consumer Behavior.)

So check it out.

BeeReader URL

2008-10-13T09:56:00.002-04:00

A reader asked me to post the URL to BeeReader... http://beetagg.com/

BeeReader is a QR Code reader for Palm

2008-08-05T16:21:00.001-04:00

BeeReader is a new QR Code (or Semacode) format that has alot going for it right now. It reads QR and DataMatrix codes and has it's own format that can scan from about 3 feet on a computer monitor. (BTW, that's impressive.)

It's internal format supports URLs, feeds and contact info from it's web builder, and has pretty tight integration (at least on the Palm OS) to the Web browser and contact tools.

The image above is my RSS feed.

Memes, Rats and such...

2008-08-01T14:58:00.001-04:00

I seem to be pretty attracted to the idea of memes. A quick wiki-definition for those of you not familiar with the internets...

The word meme (pronounced /miːm/)^[1] is a popular neologism denoting any learned thought, feeling, or behavior. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways resembles a gene.

I stumbled across a interesting new meme that I think is incredibly funny. Take a look at GraphJam...

So my idea is to take the various memes out there and apply them to my meme-mock site LolRats.com. (Believe me, photoshopping rats gets old real quick.)

Enjoy!

OMG Force (48 hour film version)

2008-06-23T13:18:00.002-04:00

Hello all,

I know I've been slacking on the posting lately, but I've been busy. The video below is Shooting Bridge's entry in the 2008 48 Hour Film Project. I had the pleasure of directing a cast and crew of around 25 people--mostly amateur--to deliver a pretty rocking idea in just 48 hours from start to finish.

Mad props to everybody who contributed, and check out www.omgforce.com soon for production photos, scripts, etc.

ZenBurger

2008-04-07T11:34:00.003-04:00

This is an actual email I sent to my wife today about the "restaurant" ZenBurger

From: Wilson, Michael
Sent: Mon 4/7/2008 11:31 AM
To: stuntmom@???????.com
Subject: Ate a vegetarian breakfast today....

...by accident. I was walking around Lexington Ave and I saw this "burger" joint that has "breakfast" sandwiches...

http://www.zenburger.com/

Can you believe there was no line!?!? So I stepped up and ordered a "Sausage" and "Egg" sandwich on an Whole Wheat English muffin. It came back fast and I sat down and started eating. ($8 for a McMuffin and Coffee, I pondered? Well it is New York...)

So as I ate, I was like, "This thing is horrible, but I'm hungry." (Which says a lot about my personality that would continue to eat a bad breakfast as long as I thought there was some meat inside.) And it wasn't until my last bite that I saw a menu next to where I was sitting that said everything was vegetarian.

So can you guess if I ate that last bite?

RockBand Rock-a-thon for the Arts...

2008-03-28T10:45:00.003-04:00

My work is doing a RockBand/GuitarHero "rock-a-thon" to support the Fine Arts Fund. We did some sweet shirts, posters and other nonsense to promo the event. The image below links to our blog that has the full rundown and info on how to donate.

Also, check out the Web Cast starting today at noon.

FindingMy.org

2008-03-12T11:37:00.001-04:00

A good friend of mine has created a site to help him find a new career in the non-profit world. He's a smart person with the unique ability to get things done.

I want people who are already experienced in the not-for-profit world to show me how things work and I want/need their help in directing me towards the best possible position for me to chase. If you want to directly help me get there, thank you very much. If you want to just read-along that’s cool too.

via FindingMyDotOrg

On my way to the Game Developers Conference...

2008-02-20T09:49:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's that time of year again. The GCD is in full effect in San Francisco and I'll be leaving in a few short hours to rub elbows (hopefully just elbows) with the best and brightest in the video game industry.

"Got plans," you ask?

Why yes I do. I'm hoping to meet the peeps from Qube and get a demo of their Q Middleware solution...

Q is a new middleware for games and other real-time 3D applications, the result of everything we've learned through our history, creating Reality Lab at RenderMorphics, and Direct3D at Microsoft, working with game developers and hardware vendors whilst integrating real-time 3D into the world's biggest selling operating system.

I also met the ScaleForm GFX crew last year, hopefully they have a Indie solution for me this year.

Last, but not least, I was really impressed with the TorqueX system from GarageGames and that coupled with the XBox 360 content creation account I expect to see some great stuff at the Independent Games Festival this year running native on 360s.

If Hollywood was a Person...

2008-02-20T09:26:00.001-05:00

Wacky stuff going on in the on-line comics space. The "Funny Pages" might be the canary in the coal mine of what will eventually happen to TV/Music and radio.

Click around Subnormality and you can find a wealth of free (and paid) content that's as good (if not better) than the crap in your local paper.

Added ShareThis to the Site

2008-02-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

I met a few of the principles from ShareThis at my work yesterday and decided to add their tool to my personal blog, just to try it out.

It's the green button below...

UPDATE: It looks like I messed something up that's keeping it from working with IE. I'll take a look at fixing it later this evening.

UPDATE: Working again. Looks like I had a case of RTFM.

UPDATE: Interesting Password Generator

2008-02-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

You probably don't know, but I'm a password junkie. I have well over 100 sites that have user names and passwords.

To stay secure, I try to different passwords for each site I visit. That way if someone discovers my password on one site (like the OC fansite message board) they can’t use it on another site (like the Desparate Housewives fansite message board.)

So, I try to use a combination of a single password (awesomesauce) with the site that I’m on (ebay) into a new password (ebayawesomesauce). You can imagine how complicated that gets on hundreds of websites and how easy it would be to crack that code if you saw a few passwords.

Here comes the SuperGenPass to the rescue. It will generate new passwords based on the domain of the site you are using in conjunction with a “master password” encrypted to the point where no one can see the master password in the first place.

Confused yet? Check it out and keep your identity safe(r).

Stupid Stat: 5 Big MMORPGs Have More People than Poland

2008-02-07T09:50:00.001-05:00

When you total the subscriber bases of 5 of the largest MMORPGs they hit a whopping 45,000,000+ users. As of 2002, the total population of Poland was 36,983,720.

Want proof? Here's a chart :) **

I picked these five pretty much at random to show a mix of free, paid, US and Asian. Numbers are rounded and are probably made up by the companies themselves.

** Of course, finding these numbers isn't easy. Here's the sources for each of these numbers. Ragnarok Online, GameSpot Article. World of Warcraft, Blizzard Press Release. Lineage I + II, MMOCharts.com. Gaia Online, GigaGames.com Article. RuneScape, MMOCharts.com.

Take that, Bob.

Windows Live Writer gives Blogger a GUI

2008-02-05T16:50:00.001-05:00

Check out Windows Live Writer--a free download from Micro$oft. It gives you a great WYSIWYG editor for your blog even if it's hosted by Google.

Download and installation took quite a while for such a small program, but configuring it for my blog took no time at all. It even grabbed a sample post from my site to allow me see in real-time what my post will look like. I've made major updates to the templates Blogger gives you and I'm self-hosting so that's no small feat.

Small centered text? Check.

It also gives you drag and drop image support (see above). I'm planning to step up up posting on the myriad (yep, spell check works) of blogs I've started and abandoned, so this should keep me engaged for a while.

I totally found this on Timmy's TechToolBlog so blame him if it destroy's your system.

The Hurdle Book

2007-12-10T14:07:00.000-05:00

Many people struggle with basic business principles, and it's amazing how even a rudimentry knowledge of enturpernial business frameworks can help in every day work situations. While doing some research on entry level bunisness planning books I stumbled on a link to a free online version of The Hurdle Book.

The site says, "The Hurdle Book was created to help encourage people to empower themselves and to learn the process of business planning to better accomplish their business goals."

Even though I haven't read it, after a quick scan of the pages it seems to deliver.

Enjoy!

Console Points Exchage Rates

2007-11-26T15:58:00.000-05:00

Both the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii have addtional "live" content that can be downloaded via the internet if you so choose to give your console a network connection. Some of this content is free, but most of the content is paid for with "points" that can be purchased on-line or from various retailers.

The interesting thing about a Points Model is that it abstracts the true cost of what you are buying. The live links above (at the time of this writing) put a Wii point at $0.009495 (a little under a penny) and a Xbox point at $0.01186875 (more than 10% over a penny). Of course you would have to calcualte shipping and/or tax (maybe?) into any equation to come up with a true cost. Then you could look at discounts (i.e. coupons) that could be applied to the overall exchange rate.

Wikipedia has taken a good shot at exchange rates based on average cost of Wii and Live points. I would be interested in seeing the cost to the distributer of these cards and the cost of manufacture, because these are surely devaluing the royalty payments the content owners are getting.

Putting together a good deal on points doesn't look to be that hard. Buy.com typically carries the Microsoft 4000 Point card for $48.99 no tax, no shipping. First time Google Checkout uses can knock off $10 anything at Buy.com wich drops the point cost to $0.0097475 which makes buying something like Puzzle Quest (a 1200 point game) to just $11.70 with points to spare. It simple economics--and I'm sure all the video game kids are all about that.

It's amazing that the console manufatures are making their consumers jump through all these hoops. Hasn't anyone learned anything from NetFlix? Consumers like to feel like they are getting a deal not like thier getting ripped off.

Bridge Worldwide

2007-10-22T12:52:00.000-04:00

My company Bridge Worldwide has been selected again as a top 25 best small business to work for in America and to celebrate we're going on a talent hunt.

Image from our Grass is Greener Campaign

If you think you've got what it takes check out our Careers Page.

Michael Vick T-Shirt (or fun with iron-on letters...)

2007-09-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

I had my second fantasy football draft of the season and I decided to make an iron-on T-Shirt with my team name on it. Being the dog lover that I am, I brainstormed some anti-Michael Vick team names and settled on "The ConVicks." In the long run I dropped the name because I felt it might be construed as supportive of Vick (and iron-on letters don't come in upper and lower case.)

But, I still bought all the stuff, and I did want a T-shirt for the draft, so I chose a simple one word shirt--CONVICKTED.

I had an old red "ringer" t-shirt that I had planned on making a Cincinnati Reds shirt out of once they got good. Needless to say it's been sitting in my closet for more than a few years.

First I laid out the letters in what I thought was a pretty straight line using a sheet of paper as a guide.

Nice and clean, but I wanted to give it a bit more of an athletic shirt feel, so I used a serving dish that had more of an elliptical curve to it.

Much better. Now all I had to do was break out the iron. (I hope my wife doesn't read this and realize I know how to use an iron...)

Ironing was a bit tricky. You have to time hitting the letters long enough to get them to stick, but not so long you burn the shirt. I tried about 15 seconds on the front, then turned it inside out for another 5 on the back side.

All said and done, the shirt cost about $6 in supplies and took about 20 minutes. Not too shabby...

Careful, I'm a Persuader

2007-08-09T16:09:00.000-04:00

I've been researching psychographics for work projects off an on for a a few years, and I'm always interested in testing and databasing results from psychology tests. Here's a site that does it very well... (Even though it could use a face lift...)

These are my actual results...

Career Inventory Test Results

Extroversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	60%
Emotional Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	90%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Altruism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Inquisitiveness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%

You are a Persuader, possible professions include - entertainer, recruiter, artist, newscaster, writer/journalist, recreation director, librarian, facilitator, politician, psychologist, housing director, career counselor, sales trainer, travel agent, program designer, corporate/team trainer, child welfare worker, social worker (elderly services), interpreter/translator, occupational therapist, executive

Take Free Career Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

UPDATED: 4 Hour Work Week?

2007-07-31T14:03:00.000-04:00

I looked into that 4 Hour Workweek book. Although it doesn’t appear to be worth reading, the idea is starting your own business then off loading the “busy work” to outsourcing firms in India.

This article is shorter and much funnier version of the same thing... Thanks to Marty for the link.

UPDATE

My friend Scott loaned my the book and I plan on taking it with me to the 2008 Game Developers Conference and giving it a good read.

Me as a Simpson's Character

2007-07-15T21:42:00.000-04:00

'Nuff said...

UPDATE: Remote Desktop causes Unexpected Shutdown in Windows

2007-06-27T14:26:00.000-04:00

I replaced my nVidia GeForce 6600 GT with a different video card to see if it helps the issue. I did use another nVidia board--the 8600--which is listed as a Vista ready board.

We'll see if that stabilizes my home system.

See this post for more info...

Modding my old Xbox...

2007-06-19T13:25:00.000-04:00

I've been spending some time lately modding my old Xbox with a homemade USB cable. It's actually pretty amazing what people are doing with the oldish first generation Xbox hardware.

Have a looksee... By the way, this is not my video, just a the same software I'm installing... :)

Maybe I'll drop a few pictures as things progress.

QuickDock 2.0 posted

2007-04-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

Not much to say, QuickDock 2.0 has been posted to Yahoo.

Note: I recommend starting completely over by making a fresh shortcut directory and making new shortcuts directly from the .EXE files.

Remote Desktop causes Unexpected Shutdown in Windows

2007-04-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

(Worst title for a post ever...)

I'm struggling to troubleshoot Remote Desktop with Windows Vista. It seems that when connecting through the RDP Vista will reset itself with an "Unexpected Shutdown." It works better (but not perfectly) with Themes unchecked, but I don't have any idea why.

This isn't a reported bug, so I'm hoping some one stumbles across this and chimes in.

QuickDock 2.0

2007-04-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

Look for a new version of QuickDock to be posted in the next few days. A majority of the work was done by contributer Art McBain, but I have added a few visual updates for the next release.

The widget is currently pending approval...

Vista Gadgets...

2007-03-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

Now that I've got Vista installed at home, I'll be looking into development of Vista Gadgets (i.e. Widgets) for useful (or not) desktop items.

Here's the practically hidden development site.

Vista Thoughts...

2007-03-04T15:04:00.000-05:00

For the first time since Windows 98 I didn’t participate in Microsoft’s beta program for their next big operating system. I figured that I’d get Vista when comes out and not have to deal with buggy software, apps that didn’t work, poor performance, etc. So, the beta came and went (and this time they opened it to pretty much anybody) and I chose to keep plodding away with WindowsXP.

Now, that I’ve upgraded, I’m really surprised how many applications I run on a daily basis that work great in XP but poorly or not at all in Vista. Here’s a short list of what I’ve found so far…

Quicken
CD/DVD Burners (Nero or Roxio)
Audio software (due to a lack of drivers…)

And most of the game software I wrote for Windows 2000 runs with warnings, but anything I wrote using OpenGL (like my rss screensaver for windows) has major issues.

This wouldn’t be so bad, but almost every vendor website that mentions Vista compatibility issues are charging for new releases that are Vista certified. In my case, my DVD drive came with DVD burning software for free, but to simply get my Drive working in Vista I’ll have to spend $40. (Vista, of course has it’s own DVD writing component, but I’ll have to use it more to either condone or condemn it.)

Long story short, if I didn’t have to upgrade Vista so I can support it in my past and future software, I might have waited until I bought a new system.

Quick Dock 1.2

2007-01-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

Version 1.2 of Quick Dock has been submitted to the Widget Gods for approval. It incorporates McBain's updates as well as a few other fixes. (He added a very cool Drag and Drop for new shortcuts...)

Assuming this fixes the last of the issues, I'll work on some more features.

rsssaver updated

2007-01-21T21:21:00.000-05:00

I pushed a fairly big update to my rss screensaver for windows...

That's right, I skipped a whole version number... This version tackles the big interactivity problem and sets the stage (finally) for foreign characters. Here's what's new now...
Hold down the SHIFT key to speed up the current story (fast forward)
Hold down the CTRL key to snap the current story to full frame
Hold them both to quickly view stories
Some additional color palettes added to config

Check it out at rsssaver.com.

Quick Dock 1.1

2007-01-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

I updated Quick Dock to support a custom shortcut directory to fix the issues many people we having (mostly from non-US versions of WindowsXP.) It has been sent to Yahoo! for approval and should be available from this link soon.

Quick Dock 1.0

2007-01-02T02:15:00.000-05:00

I had some down time over the holidays, so I worked on an upgrade to rsssaver and started a new project called Quick Dock. Quick doc is a Yahoo! Widget Engine widget to replace your Quick Launch Toolbar with something that looks more like the Apple iDock in OSX.

I'm still waiting on approval before it's available via Yahoo!'s Widget Library, but I'll update this page when it can be downloaded.

Update:

The widget is available for download here.

Web 2.0 Style for Free with Inkscape

2006-12-15T10:20:00.000-05:00

Sick of "Web 2.0" style buttons and badges yet? Me either. (Or me too, depending how you answered.) However, one of the problems I have with the whole silky smooth movement is that everybody uses PhotoShop to do their work. There's nothing about that style that can't be done in vector (and for free) using the great open source program Inkscape.

Here's the proof... (Click for a bigger image.)

These graphics could be "good to go" as SVG files on a web page, dropped into Flash, or converted to JPGs or GIF for traditional HTMLing.

Here are the source files of the images above.

Coming Zune?

2006-11-08T09:59:00.000-05:00

The new Ipod challenger from Microsoft comes out net week and has a very interesting marketing site that hypes the free content that will ship on the device. This includes songs, posters and music videos.

www.zune-arts.net

So, whether you like the device itself or not…

www.zune.net/en-US

…or think that Microsoft can’t compete in this hip space (especially with a brown MP3 player, ewww) the way they’ve gone about getting the word out through their "Coming Zune" campaign is pretty interesting.

We're number 9!

2006-10-21T14:44:00.000-04:00

Bridge Worldwide, my day job, was named the 9th Best Small Business to Work For in America by the Society for Human Resource Management. This is the same organization that lists Fortune Magazine's Best Companies to Work For.

So, it seems were doing something right. Also, we are in need of technology people who are looking for a great place to work. Feel free to submit your resume at our website.

A Programming Font?

2006-10-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

I never thought about what font would be best to view 1000s of lines of code. Of course it needs to be monospaced, readable and “zeros” need to look very different than “Ohs.” Oher than that, I though Courier was a fine choice—and then I found Triskweline.

Triskweline is a fixed-width font especially suited for text editors and programming environments. It was designed for maximum legibility and tidiness and supports all important symbols and Latin-1 characters.

Make the switch—your eyes will thank me.

[Edit-Check out Tim's related article here.]

Portal Alternate Reality Game

2006-09-28T09:56:00.000-04:00

Alternate Reality Gaming has become an interesting way to grab internet buzz for a product launch. For obvious reasons, computer and console video games have latched on to the method to extend the experience prior to when their games are released. With shows like LOST, TV has also joined the ARG revolution.

Today we’ll look at a game called “Portal” that has a theme built around science experimentations. To get an idea of what this game is like, visit the trailer on YouTube…

The game trailer mentions the “Aperture Science Enrichment Center” as the place these experiments take place. A quick Google search reveals….

http://www.aperturescience.com/

If you type the word LOGIN, the experience begins. Pick a user name (the password is obviously PORTAL) and type HELP to see what you can do.

ARGs are all about secret codes and this one is no different. If you type THECAKEISALIE, there is a hidden video and text, in which someone comments on how Aperture Science's Relaxation Vault has no doors on it, and how the installation is on lockdown, seemingly because someone has escaped from the doorless room.*

To quote the game, "If at first you don't succeed, you fail."

* Stolen from Wikipedia's Hint Page

Google should filter Russian Spam

2006-09-21T10:53:00.000-04:00

This Russian spam thing is really beginning to annoy me. I’d say about 20% of the spam that makes it through Google’s spam filters is in a Cyrillic character set that I can’t read and I’m 100% sure I don’t want.

I tried writing a filter that looked for tell-tale Cyrillic characters (see image) and flagged those as spam, but the issue became that any email that may be 99% English would get thrown out if it had the briefest mention of the “Mother Land.”

I propose the smart people at Google add a language filter that could attach a label to email that may arrive in any give language. Easy right?

Wow. This space is dead...

2006-09-09T19:06:00.000-04:00

Can you tell I've had a busy summer? I can.

Never fear, there are a few things in the works that I'm hoping to wrap up in the next few weeks. rsssaver has an update, as well as Mr. Bigshot, and a few "play" websites I've been toying with.

Hang tight, things are coming soon.

SketchUp 3D for Free

2006-06-29T11:01:00.000-04:00

Google has released a free version of the 3D program SketchUp.

Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program whose few simple tools enable you to create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects – even space ships. You can add details, textures and glass to your models, design with dimensional accuracy, and place your finished models in Google Earth, share them with others by posting them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp (free) is a great way to discover if 3D modeling is right for you.

Hopefully Google buys more software I like and releases it for free.

Who Killed the Electric Car

2006-06-20T01:36:00.000-04:00

I’ve always been fascinated by the "activist documentary." Classic films like Roger and Me and the more recent Super Size Me did an amazing job shedding light on corporations that have made decisions that they weren’t so proud of.

Sony Pictures Classics has a new documentary about a pure electric concept car that had great potential, but was eventually pulled and seemingly covered up.

Click the play button below to watch the trailer…

CMS + Wiki

2006-06-09T10:57:00.000-04:00

I've been looking for a simple CMS program that has Wiki-like capabilites. I think I might have found it...

When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web – a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations – ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint.

Sounds about right. I'm going to try to install this on a server somewhere and check back with a review.

Wei-Hwa's Puzzle Challenge

2006-05-31T18:14:00.000-04:00

I spent some time today figuring out Wei-Hwa's Puzzle Challenge...

Using the numbers 3, 3, 8, 8 (in any order), make a mathematical expression that equals 24. You can use only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (and parentheses), but in any order you wish. Note that you have to use all four numbers; otherwise 3 times 8 would be valid -- and that wouldn't be much of a puzzle, would it?

It took a little while, but I figured it out. Here's a link to a Google Calculator version of the solution.

Ubuntu Linux

2006-05-23T11:35:00.000-04:00

Ubuntu Linux will be the OS I drop on my next test machine...

Ubuntu is a free, open source operating system that starts with the breadth of Debian and adds regular releases (every six months), a clear focus on the user and usability (it should "Just Work", TM) and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of support for every release. Ubuntu ships with the latest Gnome release as well as a selection of server and desktop software that makes for a comfortable desktop experience off a single installation CD.

A new baby!

2006-05-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

I'm a little late on the post, but we have a new baby!

Penelope Rose Wilson was born on 5/3/2006 at 8:15 AM weighing in at 7lbs and 7oz.

Pictures are posted here.

Wilson 3.0 to be released tomorrow!

2006-05-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

Check back here for the latest news!

rsssaver released!

2006-05-01T12:28:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I released the first open beta of my rss screen saver. Not too many people know about it right now, and I'm waiting for a big push to Download.com or digg.com.

If you want to try it out head on over to rsssaver.com.

rsssaver coming along nicely...

2006-04-18T23:32:00.000-04:00

My web enabled rss screensaver that I've been working on nights and weekends is coming along pretty nicely. It's already fairly functional, I just need to add some more polish to the interface, build a installer, etc.

I'm working on a download page that will be advertising sponsored and a "begging" screen that asks for a few bucks if you like the software. I think this is a better route than doing a full up shareware program if you don't have the time to support it.

My first "blog" closes...

2006-04-16T22:11:00.001-04:00

After 7 years of providing information, articles and code for the Borland Game development community, turbo has officially decided to close.

It was a very small site, but followed by a dedicated community.

Read the rest here...

M4P to MP3 Conversion

2006-03-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

One of the most popular questions I get from friends and co-workers is “how do a put an iTunes/Napster/etc. song on my MP3 Player/CD/etc.” The “lock down” factor here is something called DRM, and that’s a much bigger subject than I care to tackle.

However, smart programmers are finding gaps in the DRM system. The most interesting of these exploits is a little program called TuneBite. Instead of cracking the DRM, TuneBite runs in the background and re-records the songs as the music is played by your system's sound system--just like an old school dual tape deck.

It’s interesting because they aren’t really circumventing the copy protection and they might even be covered under the Audio Home Recording Act.

Anyway, I haven’t used it, but I certainly recommend the idea.

rsssaver (or the r-triple-s...)

2006-03-30T22:29:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a little nights and weekends project to design a visually compelling screensaver that displays RSS feeds on your desktop.

It's still in the fairly early stages, but I think it's already pretty cool. Check it out at rsssaver.com.

Prediction: Vintage CASIO LCD Watches to Make Comeback

2006-02-23T17:18:00.000-05:00

That’s right; my guess is that you’ll see all the hipsters returning to the geek-friendly plastic LCD watch. Street prices on these things seem to be about $10, just a little too cheap to justify purchasing on line.

Next time my wife drags me to T.J Maxx I’ll be doing a deep dive into their fine electronics selection.

Until then, I’ll have to keep sporting the Sponge Bob Square Pants watch my 3 year old daughter re-gifted me.

CinciClassic, the Classic Video Game Show

2006-02-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Those who know me know that I'm big into "oldskool" video games. So each year, a bunch of fellow nerds and I rent out a space and host what best can be described as a video game swap meet circa 1985.

Tons of good hearted folks put lots of time into this project, and one of the things that I do is put together our direct mailing campaign. (Read as postcards.)

Here is this year's layout. (If you find any proofing errors, keep them to yourself. I already printed them and I'm not doing it again!)

Living in Cin...

2006-01-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

One of my work-mates, J-Star, posted some shots of what it's like working and living in downtown Cincinati.

Check out her flicker page here.

Sony Acid XMC for $4.99 shipped after rebate!

2006-01-02T20:33:00.000-05:00

People who know me, know I like open source software--and for audio, I love Audacity [Corrected Link]. (Check out some of the old posts for a review...) Audacity can tackle almost any recording project you can think of, but it doesn't really "make" music.

When I saw that Sony had $30 off thier ACID and VEGAS lines of software via a rebate, I jumped on the already value priced ACID XMC.

I was a big fan of ACID when it was owned by Sonic Foundry and the newer version hadn't really added much functionality. But at a net price of $5, it's hard to go wrong.

Congrats to CRE824 Winners!

2005-12-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Alas the team from Bridge Worldwide (poorly named Tentpole) didn't win the CRE824 contest, but we did put together one very good entry. The teams who did win were good people and also had a great entry.

There are a few pictures of me up on the CRE824 site--I'm the guy in the yellow shirt who looks like he hadn't slept in about 3 days.

All in all, it was a good time and I'd do it again.

I'm at CRE824

2005-11-18T08:07:00.000-05:00

Myself and a small team from Bridge Worldwide are competing in a 24 hour web design competition for the Web Design International Festival 2006. If our team win we will represent the US in an international version of this same contest in France in 2006.

Here's the poorly translated description of what is happening today...

The Webjam Contest is going to be launched at French hour 2:00 p.m. simultaneously in 10 participating countries. You will (normally) be able to find here a way to live with us and in real time these performing and creative next 24 hours.

Check out the site at CRE824, and wish us luck. I'll try posting some media from the event as it unfolds.

Podcasting Setup for under $150 via a USB Mic

2005-11-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

I needed to purchase a small podcasting setup for a project at work and I wanted to keep the budget small enough so it would fly “under the radar” of our sleuthy accountants. I'm also an audio snob so I wanted a setup that was at least as good as my home recording setup that I've built over the years for way too much money. (I'm also kind of lazy—I didn't want to drag my home setup into work to record a day or two of interviews.)

What I netted out with was a nice voice recording setup for under $150 (laptop not included.)

First, I picked up the C01U USB Studio Condenser Mic from Samson. It originally listed for about $225, but Amazon or Sam Ash are currently carrying it for $79. It's not a high end microphone, but the fact that the A/D converter is built-in (and it just plugs into a USB port rather than a crappy sound card) makes it one of the cleanest mics I've ever heard. It's very portable too, I just dropped my Dell laptop into one of the few rooms in our office that has a door, and I was ready to roll.

Next I added add a pop filter and a desk stand. I used my Sony studio headphones, but you could grab any decent set of cheap headphones like the Sennheiser HD 202—even for $20 these will be better than your laptop speakers for playback.

For software I highly recommend Audacity. Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. So no matter what kind of computer you have, this will cut the mustard. It also has built in filters for reverb, compression, equalization, etc. Just don't go nuts with it.

That's it. If you ordered all this stuff from Amazon, your total would be somewhere around $140 and you wouldn't be able to tell you weren't recording in a fancy studio. Well, except for the barking dogs, crying babies, and ambulance sirens that are pretty much 24/7 at my house.

PVR Pics (a.k.a NerdAlert)

2005-10-21T22:09:00.000-04:00

So, finally. Here's the final 120GB, dual tuner GB-PVR box in all it's glory. In this photo the DVD drive is ejected.

The uber-quiet fan on the left is controlled by a knob under the DVD drive that allows my to turn all the fans down to make the system nearly silent. When the movie is over, crank the fans back up and the system stays cool even though it runs 24/7.

It is awfully big and slightly menacing, but the door in front locks up to keep the kids out. (Although my youngest does have a habit of hiding the keys around the house in very unsuspecting places.)

If your interested in the full story, dig through the old DIY PVR posts and see how this Tivo-ish thing got built.

Another Server Upgrade...

2005-10-12T00:52:00.000-04:00

I had to upgrade our servers at NO.2 Games again to fix some lockup problems our Linux box had that I just didn't have the time to trouble shoot. Now we're on a phat system that I can remote desktop into to watch all the processes in real-time.

I still have a few dependent websites to move over, but the process is going fairly smoothly.

Bad Day

2005-10-06T18:42:00.000-04:00

A really bad day at the office today. Three things I had moved from the "my problem" category to the "not my problem" category returned in thier full glory.

In other news, my wife's blog www.stuntmom.com is proceeding along nicely. I'm quite proud of the quality of her writing. (This from a person who claims not to be able to write.)

So to make this a completely disjointed post, I read today that Nintendo-branded a WiFi Dongle. Go figure.

My 2nd Tuner is Here...

2005-09-28T11:17:00.000-04:00

Alrighty, my 2nd tuner showed up yesterday and got a 6 way splitter (antenna, cable, internet and digital phone are all coax connections in my house.)

Hopefully tonight, I will be able to drop the card in and add a extra 40GB hard drive I have laying around just for MP3 music.

Fun, fun, fun. (Well, geek fun that is...)

Where's My 2nd Tuner?!?!?

2005-09-26T13:40:00.000-04:00

My 2nd tuner is now over 10 days late. Oh well...

DIYPVR: Adding 2nd Tuner

2005-09-13T19:46:00.000-04:00

My plan is to add a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE as a 2nd tuner to my GB-PVR setup this week in prep of all the new seasons of shows...

For $65 I'll be able to record two shows at one time or watch a show while I'm recording another one.

Portfolio Updates

2005-08-28T13:56:00.000-04:00

I updated my portfolio area with a few graphic projects and a movie script project.

(I hope to digitize some of my early work in the public access TV area and stick it online in the near future. A few bits might hold up well even though our production values were so low in the mid-90's.)

All My MP3s to CDs

2005-08-26T09:05:00.000-04:00

I just bought a new car (the Scion tC) that has both an MP3/WMA car CD player and a handy AUX jack in the arm rest. Although I like the idea of taking my MP3 Jukebox with me in my car for long trips, I'm pretty certain that I’d like to get at least 50% of what I listen to in MP3CD format.

So, this weekend I’ll begin another big conversion process, and it seems like only a few months ago I took all my audio CDs to MP3 in the first place.

DIYPVR: Wireless MediaMPV

2005-08-14T11:57:00.000-04:00

A few weekends ago I took my MediaMVP wireless with the help of the Belkin F5D7130 which is both a wireless access point and a range extender. It worked like a charm.

Now I can cut down that 150' long Ethernet cable I strung down the back of my house and get on with listening to my ever growing MP3 collection.