July 2003 Archives

I got the iPaq to sync with my laptop using a Belkin BlueTooth USB adapter. It was a pain to get them talking initially, and I'm still not quite sure what is was that I did to get it running. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. However, I still have to sit it in its cradle to recharge the battery.

I'm still not 100% happy with the text input on the Pocket PC when compared to the Palm OS. The thing that is supposed to guess what word I'm jotting is never right until I'm up to the second-to-last letter in the word. I also don't like the method of putting in punctuation on this thing (I still haven't quite figured out how that works at all).

We had a pretty good day today. Grandma & Grandpa Dion came up to visit for the weekend. They took care of Ethan while Colleen and I had a little "mini-date" and went to see Seabiscuit. Overall, the movie was very good and pretty true to the book. There were some big parts left out of the movie, but it would have been hard to cover everything in the book at any detail.

After the movie, we were walking to the car and surprised to see Dan & Andrea were at the same movie. They were up visiting my parents from Philadelphia, but it was still pretty weird that we all went to the exact same showing of the same film!

They came to the house to visit for a whlie, and then the Dions took us out to eat a late dinner. Ethan is now getting his bath, and I finally have some time to post some of the latest pictures to the site. Hope you like them!

Im putting this entry in using Pocket Blogger on the iPaq. Hopefully it will work. Ethan has been pretty fussy all day. We think he is teething.

The neighbors trimmed there '2 big trees today and it made a world of difference. Our back yard now has a lot more sun. Plus there will be no more pollen crap when we pard the car in the back parking spot.

I really need to figure out how to make "K"'s on this thing.

Now that the kid is finally asleep...

A few days ago, I mentioned that I had bought some songs off of BuyMusic.com. Well, I still have not been able to transfer the songs to my Nomad II MP3/WMA player. Creative's tech support has been no help. They got back to me real quick with some questions, but I haven't heard back since. When I moved the files to my work PC, I was surprised that the song that was marked as having "unlimited file transfers" at BuyMusic's site would not play on the new PC. After I researched it, I discovered that I can only play the song on the computer that I downloaded it on and from that computer, I have unlimited rights to transfer it to a portable music device and/or burn it to an unlimited number of CDs.

I also downloaded PocketMusic for the iPaq and tried transferring & playing the files on the iPaq, but that didn't work either (was getting similliar errors as when I transferred files to the Nomad II).

So, my initial thoughts of this whole legal buying music thing:

1, It's about time that we have this option. I'm tired of hearing how the RIAA is so anti-filesharing, but yet have done nothing until now about actually taking advantage of the technology to let those who are willing to pay for music but don't want to have to go out to the mall everytime they want to buy a song.

2, While the whole process of ordering, paying for, and downloading the songs was very intuitive and easy, they need better service after the sale in regards to people (like me) who are having difficulty legally moving the files around to different computers and/or devices.

3, The prices seem to be pretty good, but it would be nice to see some free or lower-cost selections from independent bands/singers who are just trying to get their name out.

NEWS FLASH: COLLEEN'S BASKETBALL TEAM JUST LOST THEIR FIRST GAME OF THE SEASON IN THE HOLLIDAYSBURG YMCA SEASON! SHE SAYS SHE DOESN'T CARE, BUT I CAN TELL THAT BEING A LOSER IS EATING AWAY AT HER INSIDES.

I have to admit, I'm liking this iPaq. I set up the fingerprint recognition today, as well as programmed an app called Nevo, which turns the iPaq into a remote control for my TV, VCR, Receiver, & DVD. Now, instead of trying to find all three of the remotes before going to bed at night to turn things off, I just have to fire up the iPaq and tell it to run the pre-programmed command that will turn everything off. Colleen is annoyed, but I think it is pretty cool.

Luckily, my coworker who was having trouble yesterday wasn't going into labor, but rather had kidney stones. The baby is fine, but I'm sure she isn't having a lot of fun with it!

I also purchased my first legal songs off the Internet today from BuyMusic.com. This site lets you buy audio files for 99 cents. The files come protected, and say how many times you can burn it to CD and/or transfer them to other computers or portable music devices. The bad thing is that once I downloaded the two files that I bought, they played fine on my computer, but when I transferred to my Nomad II , it is giving me an error saying "WMA license cannot be found. Obviously it doesn't think that I have a valid license after the transfer, which isn't the case. I'm hoping the Nomad II will support this, or else I will have to go back to "other" methods of getting music. The whole BuyMusic.com experience was good, but if the music won't work on my portable player, it really is worthless. Perhaps I'm being naive, I really think that if people are given the chance to purchase their music at a reasonable price, the recording industry will be pleasently surprised by how many people use such a service over P2P.

Leo Laporte's Technology Almanac had some pretty good links in it last night:

1, Ever wonder if you phone number spells something? Mine didn't but maybe yours does. Check out PhoneSpell.

2, If you enjoy pointing out other people's mistakes as much as I do, check out Movie Mistakes. You can search just about every movie and find just about every little mistake made in the movie. For example, in the movie Stand By Me apparently the directors made the following error:
"When Lardass pukes on the guy to the left of him, he moves his head prematurely, and you can clearly see that the puke is coming out of a jet positioned behind his head."
Idiots.

3, While the usefulness of this program is to be debated, no one can doubt that it is pretty neat overall. Satscape shows either a 2D or 3D map of the world and then displays the position of all of the satellite locations. I guess this could be useful if you are into astronomy, etc...

On a serious note, one of my coworkers went into labor this morning 2 months early. I haven't heard any news on what has happened, but I can't imagine what she is going through. Our prayers are with her and her family and hopefully the doctors can keep the little guy in there until a little closer to the due date.

Right after I had posted the last entry, I found this posting about RSS that some might find interesting

See that little "XML" symbol down on the bottom right of the page now? That is the link you click on to get the Really Simple Syndication feed for the Shanafelt Sector. For those of you who absolutely have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll explain it:

Have you ever gotten tired of routinely going to the same web pages to see if their content has been updated and then find out nothing has changed? Well, with syndication, you have the ability to have your computer tell you when the web pages get updated. By downloading an application such as FeedReader, the program will tell you when content is changed. It's a handy little tool, and you can subscribe to as many web sites as you like, as long as they support syndication. Some people think this is the greatest thing since Instant Messaging. I wouldn't go that far, but it is a nice tool.

Time to head to Colleen's basketball game.

I've decided to test out using a PocketPC rather than my Palm m515 for a week. I've been happy with the Palm, but it seems like the PocketPC lets you do a good bit more than just the standard datebook and contacts. The main driving force behind this is the lack of Wi-Fi in the Palm PDA. I'm finding that I really like the email and web browsing on the PocketPC.

The weird thing is that lack of PDA web page formatting on several of the major sites. For instance, when I direct the PocketPC to www.msnbc.com, I'm told it is going to redirect me to MSNBC's page specifically formated for the PDA and it comes up great. However, this is the only site that seems to do this, including Palm.com and PocketPC.com!! You would think that at least the manufacturers of these devices would have PDA-formatted web pages to promote their items.

The other thing I don't like about Pocket PC Internet Explorer (PIE) is that when entering web addresses, it doesn't have pre-programmed buttons to put in the "www.", ".com", or ".net" like the Palm PDA web browser does. This feature is so helpful and yet so simple to implement.

I'm writing this entry on a PDA using my wireless LAN. I really am having a hard time with the graphiti for some reason.

Not much new going on, Just watching about Schmidt

Now I am using the Transcriber rather than graphite and it actually Seems to be working..

I'm sitting here just tooling around with Windows XP on my laptop, and noticed that if you go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment, there is an icon for the volume control.

How is playing around with the volume even remotely considered "entertaining"? I guess I know some really simple minded people who used to listen to a song and constantly move the volume knob from low to high, and I guess it entertained them, but I'm hoping that is a low percentage of the population.

If you will excuse me now, I'm going to go entertain myself by watching running water flow out of a faucet.

We had an incidence at work today in which one of my esteemed colleagues felt he was being treated unfairly, and therefore decided to take his PDA and throw it across the hallway while screaming profanities. In doing so, this fellow has inspired me to propose a new Olympic sport: "Expensive Electronic Disposal by Violence". Participants would be judged on the following criteria:

1, Creativity - Atheletes are judged on how they choose to demolish their electronic items. The old "throw the device against a wall and watch it smash" isn't good enough for a high score here. Judges are looking for creative methods, such as hiding a steak inside a computer and then having a Rottweiler go after it.

2, $$$ Damage - In this category, you've got to prove you are willing to sacrifice more than just a wimpy $99 PDA. We're talking thousands of dollar routers and dual-processor servers to get points here.

3, Fragmentation - The items destroyed have got to break into several pieces. A cracked screen or a broken keyboard just won't cut it.

4, Anger and Violence - Bonus points are awarded for contestants who destroy their items with raw rage. Profanity is encouraged.

Pretty soon we will have to be running after this little guy!

We went to the State College Arts Festival yesterday. It was fun walking around, but we couldn't stop to look at the booths too much because Ethan liked to keep moving. On the way back, a nice fellow took this picture of the family by the Joe Paterno shrine outside of Beaver Stadium.

Here he is enjoying the ball game...

Colleeen took a sample of Ryker's urine (yuk) to the vets today and the test came back negative for diabetes, so we aren't sure what is wrong with him. If he keeps acting weird they said to take him in next week for a checkup and possibly some blood work.

Time to go to the Altoona Curve game, which will be Ethan's first! We ended up with cheap bleacher seats way out in the new section because the game was almost sold out already. Hopefully will post some pics tonight or tomorrow.

I really don't like to watch Major League Baseball, but when a player from my favorite teams starts swinging at sausage shaped mascots, then I've got to tune in. In case you missed it, you can see it here. I wonder what those guys next to Simon were saying to him: "Come on man, I will bet you 5 bucks that you won't hit that large Italian sausage with a bat next time it comes around".

At least the girl dressed in the sausage seems reasonable and is accepting an apology and an autographed bat from Simon instead of calling Edgar Snyder and pressing charges.

Colleen seems to think that Ryker, our oldest Siberian Husky, has diabetes. He seems to be thirsty all of the time and hasn't been able to control where he takes a leak (He seems to prefer our dining room floor). We've never had that type of problem with him, so we really think he it is something physically wrong with him. He is about 10 years old now, so I guess health concerns are definately a possibility. Colleen is going to see when we can get him to the vets to have him checked out. In the meantime, he is going to have to spend some extra time out on the deck.

In other news, Colleen's basketball team remains undefeated afer beating Bishop Guilfoyle's varsity team in the Hollidaysburg Summer League. This was sweet revenge for Colleen because Guilfoyle beat her team, Girard, back in the PA state western double-A basketball when she played for Girard.

I'm trying a new tool to post to this web-site. It is called W.Bloggar and it lets me create entries without having to go to the Movable Type page on the web server. Plus it has spell-checking (which I really need) and some other features. I will post how I like it after I get the chance to use it for a while.

I added a new section on the right hand column called "What Colleen & I are reading". I plan on updating this area with the book covers of the books we are currently reading. To be honest, I stole the idea from JumpingMonkeys.com, but I don't think she will mind :>. I believe there is a moveable type plug-in that does what I just did automatically by linking to my Amazon.com wishlist, (I'm not 100% sure that link will work) but I kind of like the way I did it better.

As promised, here is the program I'm using to resize pictures. It is called Multiple Image Resizer and I highly recommend it. Simply select a directory of images you want resized, set the parameters as to what percentage you want the images resized, etc... and click on Go to kick off a batch file to do the resize. Additionally, if you want to add a caption to anywhere on the picture, it will automatically do it for you.

Here is the group photo from Cottage Bash 2003. Notice the 12-foot fire just waiting to be lit in the background.

Here is Ethan showing his skills againist the Natemeier's Lucas. Notice the speed at which Ethan jabs and hooks in preparation of the mighty roundhouse.

I've spent yesterday and today at Georgtown University learning how to program an InMotion2 therapy robot. While this may sound fun to the average joe, it really isn't. Especially considering that I will probably never in my lifetime need to program one of these things. Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but I'm really not having a good time here.

I'm going to try to upload those pictures I promised from the cottage bash tonight. I finally found a free program that will resize a directory of photos, and more that I'm happy with. I can't remember the name of the app, but I will post a link tonight.

Just made it back from Keuka Lake in the NY Fingerlakes. Had a great time seeing Mark and everyone at the cottage. We managed to make it to two wineries and came back with at least a years worth of wine for us (a whole 6 bottles :>). Everyone seemed to be doing well, and it was great meeting Luke. Mark and I staged an Ethan/Luke baby boxing match and got some pretty good pictures. I'm going to try to post some of the pics on this site tomorrow.

Ethan did very well, other than crying for an hour straight towards the end the 4-hour trip back. I guess you can't blame him, one can only sleep and look at the back seat of a car for so long before getting agitated.

I (obviously) managed to get a new style going on the blog today. I believe this one is called "Stormy".

Tomorrow morning we will start our trek up to the finger lakes to partake in this year's Cottage Bash (take note: I am not in any way responsible for that web page). We will only be there for 2 days this year, because Mark charges exorbitant prices for the whole shindig and we can only squeeze out enough money for the 2 days.

Man, I just went to the cottage bash website and realized just how bad it is! Looks like Mark hasn't had too much time to update it, considering that last year's info still isn't on.

Well, I spent the majority of my free time today getting MovableType installed and running on this server. Overall it wasn't too bad. The instructions are great and are pretty much step-by-step. Tonight and tomorrow I'm hoping to do some formatting.

Oh yeah, just one note on the installation - - In the CGIScript parameter in mt.cfg, where it asks you to put in the URL to your web site, DO NOT ENTER YOUR WEBSITE IN ALL CAPS!! That caused a headache that lasted about 4 hours until somebody on the MovableType support forum helped me out (Thanx).

Overall, I'm hoping that this migration will let me deliver a more meaningful blog, complete with pictures of Ethan and some more technical articles that I run across.