The much awaited ... stuff

It's been a busy few weeks. The biggest news is probably my latest purchase: I got my first non-PC in the form of a MacBook Pro. I'd been looking at getting a laptop for a while, mostly because my existing laptop is old, underpowered, has a half-working keyboard, and had been resigned to sitting on my stereo so that I could stream music to it. I couldn't even bring it anywhere, as the battery life was simply miserable.

Working at a web hosting company, spending a majority of my day ssh'd into a Unix box, I'd gotten very comfortable at the command-line again, much like I was back in my college days. Between the command line and the browser, I didn't really use any major Windows applications at the office or at home. I use MS Office, occasionally, but I don't even use that at home (where I use OpenOffice). My PC is still a great box, but it was a glorified game machine.

Taking it one step further, I'd realized how much of my life really is in the browser these days. My mail goes to Gmail; my calendar is Google Calendar; my RSS feed reader is Google Reader. A few years ago I ranted that I couldn't see ever moving completely to a thin client/browser world. Granted, it was in the middle of a major Comcast outage, where they weren't sending any traffic to Yahoo!, which is pretty significant. These days, while there are minor outages, it's rare that I can't get to my data online. When I can't, I can get it via my cell phone (and once Google gets Calendar working on a phone, I'll be pretty much set). Finally, with Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo!) exposing your data in interesting ways (RSS, iCal feeds, private HTML), you can always pull it down into your thick client and access it offline, should you need to.

I've also had a desire to get creative again, whether its restarting the podcast (which will happen), blogging more, working on my website, or just generally brainstorming other ideas, I've needed a way to get untethered from my PC. It's cold in my little office during the winter, and I can't neatly multitask in front of the TV. With most of the creative ideas requiring the authoring of at least a little bit of code, I was looking for a laptop that would let me use my friendly Vim application to hack some HTML, CSS, or Perl.

All that put together lead to me looking at a Mac. Not because they're trendy, but because it's the nicest Unix machine you'll see. OS X is a very pretty, and functional, interface on top of a Unix backend. I can take my laptop to work and scp files from a terminal window to our data center at rates that greatly exdeed anything I can get over FTP. I can pop open a terminal window and quickly turn on apache and mess with some Perl code before I upload it to my website. I can open up GarageBand and pull together a podcast a little more easily than I can in Audacity on the PC. The ability to neatly run Windows in either VMWare or Parallels while inside of OS X is what pushed me over the top. (Actually, it was one of my co-workers showing me IE running in coherence mode inside Paralells, which meant he could have IE next to Firefox next to Safari on his desktop, allowing him to test 3 major browsers at the same time. Very cool.)

So, I pulled the trigger and picked up a MacBook Pro. It took me a little while to get used to the differences between the Mac and Windows, but the learning curve to being productive is really shallow. I've nearly replicated all of the functionality of my Windows PC, but with the ability to do it from anywhere in my house. I can listen to music streaming from my iTunes library while I type this up, waiting for Heroes to buffer up enough on the DVR so that I can watch it without commercials. Soon, I'll probably throw together another episode of my podcast, which I can do significantly more easily now that I don't have to start up a bunch of different applications (I'm still figuring out how to make the built-in mic work, as it seems to record to quietly).

So, I hope that my new found freedom will allow me to be a bit more prolific. With work and general life stuff, I've had to cut back my posting at The House That Dewey Built -- I've sort of just become the tech guy and will let Jeff and the new folks concentrate on posting (though, I might have to throw something up there when the feeling hits me). I've got plans to at least throw something up at ryantoohil.com and let it be my testing ground for learning more CSS and JavaScript. I'm feeling a bit more invigorated, which is nice.

I actually want to build my home page around my little Mii off of my Wii. I haven't gotten a good screenshot yet, but here's an approximation. And yes, I'm a huge dork.

Hopefully, this desire to be creative will last. I'm going to try to get something up most days this week. I'm thinking that I'll finally revisit the "So you want to have a web site" series. I'm planning on getting up a Dear Leader-centric podcast.

If you're still out there reading, feel free to leave a comment. I'm curious to see how many are actually reading this. Checking my logs, I've got at least two readers in Google Reader (1 is me ...) and 2 in NewsGator. If I was smart, I'd move to FeedBurner so I could track it, but I've got no desire to do that just yet.

That's all for today. Heroes is starting, and I'm hoping that they'll recover from their recent doldrums and put together a fun episode that doesn't smell like fish.

Lots of stuff ... eventually

I've got lots of stuff percolating around my brain, but I just haven't had time this week to write any of it down. I'm hoping to get back to a more regular schedule shortly.

In the meantime, I can tell you that I'm very deaf but very giddy after seeing Dear Leader, Taxpayer, and Hallelujah the Hills last night. All three bands were awesome, but Dear Leader stole the show by putting on what may have been their best live show ever ... including a ridiculously good cover of "Born to Run".

Phenom.

More Google Calendar and Evite Fun

After now having at least 2(!) people besides myself using the little Greasemonkey script I wrote to allow quick adding of Evite invites into Google Calendar, I've finally added my script to userscripts. Maybe I'll eventually have 10 people using it. Then I'll be famous. And maybe rich.

D'oh. D'oh d'oh d'oh d'oh. Poo. Crap.

The Patriots just lost, ruining what was a pretty good weekend.

Rather than dwell on that, my friend Liz from back at the Reg tagged me with the whole "write 5 things that people don't know about you" meme. So I gotta give it a shot, which isn't easy, given that I'll pretty much share damn near anything with people if they ask me ... or in many cases, even if they ask me not to.

Here goes.

Umm ...

Hmm ...
1)  Ok, maybe this one. I don't cry easily, but I get watery eyes and throat lumpyness extremely easily. Like, you know, when watching the comeback in Major League. Seriously. In comparison, each time I've broken bones (my nose, my thumb, and my pinky), I didn't even know they were broken for long periods of time (10 minutes, 2 days, and like 1 month, respectively). Not a tear or even a watery eye.

But show me the last 10 minutes of Little Giants and I'll be all choked up.

Maybe that helps me figure out number 2.
2) I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. I'm not sure if it's some sort of genetic thing, or physiological, or simply my own insanity.

Going back to movies ...

3) I have no problem with violence in movies, except in two cases: against kids or against animals. You can chop off heads in horror movies, or slice people in half, or have them burned alive, and I generally won't bat an eyelash. Shoot a kid? I'm halfway to shutting off the movie. The last movie I can remember the violated the code was Project X (which I've still never seen the end of). Face/Off came close, but they only killed one kid, so somehow that was ok.

4) I pick. I pick everything. If there's a weird bump, or pimple, or scab on me, I'll find it (usually without even thinking about it) and scratch it off. Don't even realize I'm doing it. I'm just predetermined to seek out a bumpless existence. Worse yet, I do it *to other people.* Seriously.

Hmm ... number five. Let's see.

5) I think I'm abnormally patient or maybe understanding of people who work checkout lines or are waitstaff. Even if they're awful and are ruining my day, I generally can't bring myself to be confrontational or complain. Even if they deserve to be yelled at and punched in the back of the head, I'll generally apologize as if it was my fault and leave them thinking they were in the right.

Maybe I can summarize this one: I'm a giant wussy douche.

Now I'm supposed to tag five other people, but I don't even know five other people with actual blogs, so I'll tag the two I do know: Mindy and Julie. Oh, and I could actually tag Brett, too.

Wow, I've almost completely forgotten about the Patriots losing. Or not. They smell like fish.

The New Addiction: Elite Beat Agents

So, back before Christmas, Brett had been singing the praises of this little Nintendo DS game called Elite Beat Agents. He described the game exactly as it was: "you tap the screen to the beat of songs and you help these guys like cheer on people to solve ridiculous problems." To which I replied (paraphrased): "Ummm, no thanks. You smell like fish."
Then I tried the game.

And the little light bulb went off in my head. I got it. It all made perfect sense.

Elite Beat Agents is the most fun game I've played in, I don't know, forever. Basically, it's Guitar Hero for the Nintendo DS. The game sets up these little scenarios, like say, two "socialites" getting stranded on a deserted island. Then the "Material Girl" by Madonna starts playing, and you tap along to the beat, hitting these little circles in order, occasionally dragging a circle back and forth over a path. If you tap along in time, you win. If you don't, you lose.

You hear someone describe it, you think it sounds ridiculous. You see someone play it, you get a little intrigued. You play it, you're hooked.

It's one of those games where you get frustrated because you can't get by a song (let's say, "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai, since that's the one that kicks my arse), but you keep trying, since you get a little further each time. On your 5th try, you finally pick up the beat and you breeze through.

Everything about the game is silly. The song selection ("Sk8er Boi", "YMCA", "Material Girl", "You're the Inspiration"). The scenarios are silly, except one about a girl who's dad DIED and his ghost brings her a teddy bear, which is sooooo out of place in the game that it's awesome.

I can't do it justice. This game is astounding. A Technorati search turned up 4000+ mentions of the game.

You won't understand it until you try it, but to get an idea, check out this YouTube video of the "September" level.

Did It Again! VT 94 - UNC 88

Last week, the Hokies go into Cameron and beat up on the #5 ranked Duke Blue Devils.

This week, #1 ranked UNC came to Blacksburg. New team, same result. The Hokies upset UNC 94-88. That's flat out awesome.

The best win I saw while I was in Blacksburg was probably a last second win over a mediocre George Washington team. Since then, the Hokies have beaten Duke twice and knocked off UNC. If they can keep it together, there's no doubt in my mind they'll be in the tourney this year.

Evite to Google Calendar Greasemonkey Script v1.1

I got a nice trackback from the arc of time blog on my earlier post about creating a crappy little Greasemonkey script to let me quickly add Evite events into my Google Calendar. What that reminded me of was the fact that the script didn't work for events that didn't have an end time (and also got messed up with the time change).

Well, I fixed it. And now you can download the new version of the script that will let you, at least as far as far as I've tested, add any Evite directly into your Google Calendar. If there's an end time, it'll be set. If there's not, your start and end time will be the same, but you can quickly tweak that.

It all seems to work.

To use it, I'm assuming you have Greasemonkey. If not, go get it.

Then, install this user script: Evite to Google Calendar

That's it. Go to any open Evite. You'll see a column on the left that looks like the image below.

Note the link circled in red. That's what the script adds. Click that. You'll be whisked away to Google Calendar where you can quickly add the event and be done with Evite.

Again, I think it works. It at least works on what I've tested it on. Give it a shot. Let me know. If you like it, link to my blog so I can be the coolest.

Kay Hanley at TT the Bears - Jan 3, 2007

So, I've decided I'm going to try to capture every show I get to this year. On Wednesday, Kay Hanley and The Antisocialites played a fun earlyish show. I always try to catch Kay Hanley when she comes around since her shows just tend to be fun (since she's been pretty much playing here for like 15 years now or something).

I met my friend Liz at TTs and we headed in and hung out by the bar while The Antisocialites played. They sounded pretty good, though I'll admit, I didn't pay as much attention as I usually do. It was a surprisingly large crowd for 9pm, so there wasn't a whole lot of room to sneak over towards the stage. So we chatted while The Antisocialites played their rock. It was your typical local, indie rock band, but with the twist of having a female lead (and bassist, I think). I tend to like female-fronted rock bands (hence being at a Kay Hanley show) more than I should, so the sound definitely caught my ear. I'd probably check them out again.

Next up, of course, was Kay Hanley. Her shows are always fun. She knows half the crowd, and basically plays like she's at a small party and you're hanging out in the living room. The setlist had a bunch of older Letters to Cleo stuff, and a handful of unreleased songs. Surprisingly, there wasn't a ton off of her two solo albums, which was a little disappointing, but easily compensated for when Kay had to get instructions on how to play one of her new songs. Completely ridiculous (but quite funny). We also got a good view of some new tats on her arms, which were both scary and impressive. It was a pretty subdued night, but decent all-around.

Yes, this may be the least interesting thing I've ever written, but it's like 3 days later and I've forgotten some of the nuances. You smell like fish.

Kay at TTs (from Flickr, via Teddy K)

Next up, if all goes well, Bleu at TTs towards the end of the month.

Woo woo! Virginia Tech Beats Duke .... again!

I get to post this every couple of years. Virginia Tech 69 - Duke 67. At Duke. In Cameron. With all of the little annoying crazies bouncing around pretending like they don't smell like fish.

Awesome.

If Only I Weren't So Lazy ...

Remember back when I mentioned that I should build a little centralized social networking manager where you could manage your profile in one place?

Well, I don't have to anymore. ProfileLinker did it for me.

TechCrunch pointed to them today, which means they're bound to get a good bit of traffic today. Reading through the comments, folks are hitting on many of the reasons I never got energized to actually do anything about it: the networks could cut you off; users would have to really trust you to give you their login/pass; there are so many networks that you'd be constantly trying to keep up as new networks emerged (as well as keep old networks working).

Partnering with the networks is the only way to make it work long term, I think, and that's a tall order given that any centralized management system removes page views from their site, thus removing ad views from their site, thus directly reducing their revenue stream.

Still, it's an idea that needs to happen because managing multiple profiles is just silly.

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