Monthly Archive for September, 2005

links for 2005-09-28

Everybody Hates Chris

links for 2005-09-21

iTrip LCD

I’ve had the iTrip LCD for a couple of weeks now, and I am very frus­trated with it. I’ve used the reg­u­lar iTrip for a couple of years, and it per­fomed about as well as can be expected from an FM transmitter.

How­ever, when I recently broke it, (the con­nec­tor some­how bent and detached, caus­ing some wires to dis­con­nect), I decided to buy a new one. When I saw the LCD ver­sion, I ordered this instead.

My setup in my car is exactly as it was with the orig­i­nal iTrip, (2000 Saab 9-3, 3rd-Gen iPod, with flat EQ and broad­cast to 88.7), but the result is simply maddening.

With the old iTrip, the iPod volume was set to about 90%, and caused very little dis­tor­tion. But, with the new iTrip LCD, the sound is heav­ily dis­torted at 90% volume, and the unit auto­mat­i­cally reduces the volume to about 50-60% for most music. This of course ampli­fies the static and back­ground noise. To make mat­ters worse, even then the music is still dis­torted. DX-​mode makes only a mar­ginal difference.

I hate to rain on the parade, but I had the old one, and it worked fine. I sub­mit­ted a help ticket to Grif­fin 12 hours ago, and have yet to receive a response… per­haps their ser­vice techs are busy draft­ing the product’s sup­port web site?

14 is My New Favorite Artist


Thanks Raymi.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

It’s a pain to build web sites that behave prop­erly in Inter­net Explorer — and, if my IE7 beta any idi­ca­tion, it will con­tinue to be a pain.

But, Microsoft just released the Inter­net Explorer Devel­oper Tool­bar Beta.

Some of the many fea­tures are:

  • View HTML object class names, ID’s, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
  • Out­line tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
  • Val­i­date HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
  • Dis­play image dimen­sions, file sizes, path infor­ma­tion, and alter­nate (ALT) text.
  • Imme­di­ately resize the browser window to 800×600 or a custom size.
  • Dis­play a fully fea­tured design ruler to help accu­rately align objects on your pages.

But of course, I still love the Web Devel­oper Exten­sion for Fire­fox. It’s just that some­times you have to work with IE.

Google Secure Access client

Jeez, Google is branch­ing out in to all kinds of new businesses… the latest is a ven­ture to pro­vide the world with a secure WiFi con­nec­tion, espe­cially use­fule in public places.

Dubbed Google Secure Access, it pro­vides a free VPN con­nec­tion to Google. Some observers are already ques­tion­ing Google’s com­mit­ment to user pri­vacy, which gives pause — but, I for one, would love such a ser­vice. Too bad the down­load is avail­able only for WIndows.

Stef in Norway

I noticed that Stef some photos of her Euro­pean trip. I wonder if she’s back yet?

Norwegian flag on Ulriken

Norwegian flag on Ulriken, by Mystera
Preikestolen, just about at the top!

Preikestolen, just about at the top!, by Mystera

links for 2005-09-17

links for 2005-09-15

Office 12

Microsoft unveiled its new user inter­face for Office 12 ear­lier this week, and they seem to have departed rad­i­cally from past releases:

…we set about rethink­ing the UI from the user’s per­spec­tive, which is “results-oriented,” rather than from the developer’s per­spec­tive, which tends to be “feature-oriented” or “command-oriented”… instead of having to learn how to make some­thing shad­owed, or what the aspect ratio is or the per­cent gray, you just say, “Oh, I like that one,” and you pick it, you click it and get it in your doc­u­ment. It’s more visual.

outlook12 outlook12-2

Word, Excel, Pow­er­Point, and Access are due to get the face lift, but Out­look (the one Office appli­ca­tion that I use con­stantly, and which pisses me off the most), will remain largely the same, accord­ing to the press release.

(Although oddly enough, xBetas has a couple of screen shots of a sim­i­larly engi­neered Outlook.)

My ini­tial reac­tion is very wait-and-see… True, it looks like an aqua rip-​off, but con­sid­er­ing I use the suite every day on my work PC, any­thing new will peak my interest.

links for 2005-09-13

“Underground Man” update

Thanks to Mint, I noticed that a few vis­i­tors were referred here look­ing for the text of a New Yorker arti­cle writ­ted in Feb­ru­ary 2004 titled, Under­ground Man: Can the former C.I.A. agent who saved New York’s subway get the Tube back on track?. I had scanned the text a while back, but my direc­tory secu­rity set­tings on my server were tight­ened, and the scans were no longer available.

So, if you’re look­ing for the arti­cle, it’s is now prop­erly linked in the orginal post.

I still wish I had a way of extract­ing the text via OCR…

links for 2005-09-10

301 (Permanent redirect)

I’ve taken a second step toward fixing my Google index­ing prob­lem. On the advice of Casey, I mod­i­fied my .htac­cess file to rewrite all ned.suckahs.org URLs to nedward.org and send out 301s (Per­ma­nent redirects).

Now, when a user arrives here via a ned.suckahs.org URL, they’ll be trans­par­ently redi­rected to nedward.org and Google will see the 301 mes­sage. Hope­fully then, Google will get with the program.

Thanks Casey!

Scooterist killed in Boston

I am shocked and hor­ri­fied by a report in the Globe today, that a Scooter­ist was killed last night in a col­li­sion with a truck:

Police were search­ing last night for the driver of a trac­tor trailer sus­pected of strik­ing, drag­ging, and killing an 18-year-old man riding a motor scooter at the Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue onramp to the Mass­a­chu­setts Turnpike.

After the impact, the truck con­tin­ued down the ramp, taking the scooter and its rider with it, police said. Both were found at the bottom of the ramp, which was closed for sev­eral hours after the acci­dent, police said.

Even more dis­turb­ing that this, the driver either didn’t know the col­li­sion occured, or fled the scene:

After hit­ting the teenager, the driver of the 18-wheeler stopped momen­tar­ily on the Turn­pike to look at a tire that was on fire, said Boston police spokesman David Estrada. He refused the help of sev­eral Turn­pike work­ers and drove off with the tire ablaze, police said.

We don’t know much about the victim yet, but this inci­dent should serve as an impor­tant reminder that motor scoot­ers are not toys — they are motor­cy­cles. Too many people just buy a new twist-n-go Vespa, with­out much expe­ri­ence riding, or knowl­edge of safe riding habits. We fre­quently see Vespa riders in shorts and t-shirts, with no hel­mets or gloves, duck­ing in and out of busy city traf­fic. This is simply insane.

Do your­self a favor — take a motor­cy­cle safety course. It’s well worth the $200, and you get a dis­count on your insurance.

Rollyo

Rollyo is cool — sign up to beta test.

Walkman

Not to be out­done by Apple yes­ter­day, I saw that Sony is once again rethink­ing it’s Walk­man brand.

I admit that the design is far more com­pelling than Sony’s pre­vi­ous offer­ings, but a monocra­matic, low-​res screen? C’mon Sony!

links for 2005-09-08

iPod nano & ROKR phone

Wow — we all expected the new iTunes phone, but who would have guessed at the iPod nano?

First, the ROKR is avail­able from Cin­gu­lar now. It’s got iTunes (100 songs), Blue­tooth, and a VGA camera (sucky) — for $249.00.

But, I’m more intrigued with the iPod nano… Sure, it only comes with a max of 4GB stor­age, but the small size, color screen, and “wow” factor is going to make it a big hit. And, the price is right at just $249 for the 4GB, (the same as the now dead, iPod mini).

Start saving your money… even the ini­tial acces­sories look neat, (if not a bit girly).

Godson

Here is my Godson, Tommy…

Godson

Godson, by nedward.

I was in Buf­falo this past week­end to cel­e­brate my Grandma’s 100th birth­day, and got to see my cousins Maggie, Lauren, Sarah, and Emma.

Have a Mint

I just ordered and installed the new site stats pack­age Mint, which was launched today by Shaun Inman.

It’s been eons since I had a reli­able site stat tracker, and this pack­age looks as good as the hype. RIP, Refer.

links for 2005-09-03

BU Today

My alma mater just launched a nicely-​designed portal called BU Today, which pub­lishes (offi­cial) daily news from the uni­ver­sity. It’s as if this school finally “get’s it” — that Public Rela­tions matter.

I’m dis­ap­pointed to see that the code is full of Dreamweaver javascript, spacer GIFs, and <table>-based struc­ture. And, the weather widget at the top is flash-​based.

Oh well.

links for 2005-09-02