Video Streaming

Is there a good way to stream video from computer to TV, wirelessly? I like the way TiVo can do music and pictures, but it can't stream video.

A Picture Share!

Live from Cape Canaveral!

The volume: crank it up

RHS, I have downloaded your new podcast. I eagerly await each new one like a lamb awaiting a pack of wolves. I'm proud to say I am the first and only subscriber to this podcast!!

Anyhow, I wanted to mention that the current one is too low in volume and I couldn't hear it well enough to listen for more than about 35 seconds. This is with all the volume levels all the way up, so that if Windows decides to give me that "Critical Stop" sound, my speakers and eardrums will surely rupture.

The loudness of your is only 80 dB ... you should consider using MP3Gain, a free tool, to normalize the volume of these podcasts to a target of about 95.0 dB prior to posting. This program also works wonders for all your MP3's, even the ones you legally obtained, and any changes it makes are completely undoable.

The podcast's opening segment of music was short, sweet, and memorable. Can't wait to hear the ending segment!

Critical care podcast review

I just listened to the newest "Critical care podcast" (I am the first person to subscribe to its RSS feed!) and have this to say:

1. Sound quality wise, it is a huge improvement over the previous ones (which you should remove!!) I guess the microphone really did make a difference. No popping to be heard, and the vocal was velvety smooth, without the the big pitch/speed deviations from before. That's right, I said velvety!

2. I liked the classical music bits. Much better than the rock music from before. The only thing is that I think the intro should be shorter. With more than 20 seconds in the beginning, I was thinking, "when is this actually going to start." I think 3-5 seconds should be enough.

3. Content wise, I zoned out after about a minute, but from what I heard, the article summary was good ... I think you will be the first "podcaster" to ever utter the phrase allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

4. I personally think you should remove all references to iPods. You say in there that "although podcasts were initially designed with iPods in mind, they can be played on any mp3 player," and "be sure to tell your friends without iPods to tune in" ... this to me smacks of iPod self-importance - iPod hubris, even - and detracts from the actual critical care content. Many people think iPods suck big donkey cock, believe it or not. In fact, if your listeners have any sense of value & cost/benefit, they will have already eschewed the iPod for something more functional and less expensive. (Thought I'd throw that little iPod diss into my otherwise sensible review of your podcast).

In the beginning, I think going straight to "the goal of this podcast is to ... etc" would be better. It's good to have a reminder for people to tell their friends/colleagues about the podcast, but this should be at the end.


That's it. Again I think it sounds very good, definitely much, much better than before. I've never actually heard any other podcasts, but I think you've done a nice job with this one and again I would remove the old ones as they had an 'amateur' sound to them that you don't really want in there.

Mailing List

I'm in the process of redesigning the Q Fever! website, and need a good mailing list program. Our old one was a simple cgi script which seems woefully out of date now ... and, because of the way it sent out messages, it resulted in the entire account being suspended a couple of times due to "spam prevention."

Found this utility called phplist, which looks pretty good and should run on the Q's Linux server, and is best of all FREE, but it seems like it will be daunting to set up since it requires knowledge of MySQL databases and whatnot, and I haven't a clue about that shit.

Any of you have any other recommendations for a good Unix mailing list program?

A Picture Share!

I'm at the Miami Zoo and this is a King Vulture: DIODE's new mascot

Myspace.com downloads working

The download links at myspace.com are now working ...

http://www.myspace.com/ouijacat

Treo 650 Stuff.

Thought this might be a good time to post some things I find useful for using the Treo 650. (My brother just got one too - and despite my previous hesitation about the 650, I encouraged him to do it. He's well pleased with it so far).

1) First of all, I would agree with Mitch that it’s essential to have a KeyCaps utility on there. I don’t know about KeyCapsHack, but I use KeyCaps600, which may be the same thing. It’s free. See my earlier comment on this as well.

2) Two programs suggested to me by Mitch which are handy: FileZ (free file manager) and SofTick Card Export II (Use the SD on the treo like flash memory).

3) You can stream music from your home computer to the treo using the free service at Gloonet and Pocket Tunes Deluxe (not free). I did this once and it was pretty cool, though I don’t listen to much music this way.

4) VeriChat – an IM client for the Treo, runs AIM, Yahoo, and the other stuff. Useful if you use IM. Not free, if you're honest.

5) The Treo doesn’t come with a digital voice recorder, which is a shame. I haven’t found a good one, though I just obtained the “Audacity” program and haven’t tried it yet.

6) mEncryptor is a 256bit security encryptor for data on there. I use it to protect passwords and the like. Well worth the price, even for me.

7) I try to use the phone app “speed dial tabs” as my main launcher. These are the tabs that say “contacts”, “Call log”, “Voicemail,” etc. on the bottom of the main phone screen. You can set these to run web bookmarks and applications in addition to phone numbers. So, I get to most of my frequently used bookmarks (Google Local, Amazon (to check prices), CNN, etc) straight from here, as well as HotSync, VeriChat, etc.

8) From the phone speed tabs you can assign different ringers to different people. Useful for screening your calls. You can also record someone saying “it’s me, don’t bother picking up the phone” and have that be their ringer.

9) I disable the touch screen during calls. Prevents accidental mishaps and whatnot. Just be aware that when you press a button to get back to the screen, that first press does nothing. You’ll see what I mean.,

10) I haven’t used Jot before, but recently I tried using Graffiti Anywhere, and did not find it very useful. First of all the Treo 650 uses “Graffiti 2,” which requires different keystrokes than the Graffiti I’m used to (the one that came with the Pilot 1000). Why did they have to change it? It’s not any better with the new keystrokes. Seems worse actually. Whatever. But it’s free and worth a try if you’re interested. Anyhow, once I figured out how to set KeyCaps600 properly, the keyboard is working better for me.

11) Here’s something that took me forever to figure out (actually Mitch showed me how to do this): all those “graffiti” shortcut keys, i.e. where you make a forward slash with the stylus, followed by the key (Forward slash-C gives you “Copy” for example), are replicated by using the “Menu” button that’s at the upper right of the 4-way toggle button. So Menu button-C gives you “Copy.”

12) Oh, and I map the camera to the “calendar” button. I never use the calendar, and you never know when, um, a ‘tasteful’ picture might need to be captured. With the shutter sound off, of course. Ha.

Send pictures from your phone to this blog.

You can send pictures to the blog from your cellphone: just take a picture and send it to "go@blogger.com". You'll get a webpage where it tells you how to point it to the blog.

Doesn't have to be a treo, obviously, as long as you can type in the go@blogger.com address. More information here.

The usefulness of such a function for this blog is ... um, limited only by our imaginations. Think of the myriad possibilities. I'm trying to think of one now.

Also, for the Treo, I'm finally getting some usefulness out of the keyboard, by changing the settings on KeyCaps600. I liked its basic function (allowing you to type numbers and capital letters without the "option" or "Alt" keys) but it almost worked TOO well - if I tried typing www, for example, it would always give me w+w, because I was trying to type fast. So annoying.
Anyhow I finally figured out that, had I read the instructions in the first place, I would have known to change the way it works so that the number & capital functions only occur when holding the key down ... now it is SOO much better and typing isn't the frustrating chore it used to be. Hallelujah!!

My treo is now a tank

I just bought this for my Treo - it's even bigger and bulkier than ever but I think it's a good idea since I keep dropping the treo and it's all banged up now. Plus I'm starting to use it to make calls while I'm out biking so I'm bound to drop it at high speed sooner or later.

I love biking ... so much better than running. I guess I like the speed. It's just that you're not really supposed to listen to music while biking (for safety reasons) so it can get boring, especially on the flat land here in FL. Calls are safe, right?

Am i a podcaster now

Mempocom, you've inspired me to put some of my old tunes online at myspace.com. The product of some serious angst in the early-mid 90's. Complete in all their dissonant, hissy, dropout laden glory!

Downloadable for your D Train displeasure. Who loves ya? (And no, I still will not "suck you")

Article about podcasting

There is an interesting article about podcasting in the New York Times today. [The Battle For Eardrums Begins With Podcasts by Randall Stross] (If that link leads to the "archive" thing, get the article here.

One interesting thing about the article is that its publish date is July 3, 2005 (tomorrow). I didn't know newspapers could do that. Isn't that misleading? Is that acceptable journalistic practice?

Anyhow, it shed some light on the podcasting thing for me. If you remember, my whole initial issue with podcasting was not that I thought it was "retarded," but that I didn't really understand it. So I had a lot of questions, none which it seemed anyone had any answers to. If anything, my asking the questions served only to invoke mempocom's seething fury and unmitigated ire. As can be expected, this was so enjoyable that it in turn inspired me to step up the 'attack'. All-out-war!

After reading the article, here's what I think:

1. Any author who uses the word "portmanteau" is an obnoxious fucking asshole.

2. That said, it was otherwise a pretty good article. It addressed some questions I had (which we may have discussed but still weren't clear to me):

- Whether or not most of these 'podcasts' are just mic-in homemade speech recordings made by idiots with blogs, basically audio blogs. Answer: many are, but other types exist. Some with music, with all the attendant copyright/royalty issues. Others 'professionally' made.

- What about the annoyance of having to download these podcasts and transfer them all the time – Answer: there’s ‘podcatching’ software that does this automatically, as well as the new iTunes that integrates it.

- When does a person find time to listen to all this crap? – Answer: permanently implant the iPod earbuds.

- Who’s paying these podcasters? – Answer: Oh, sweet sweet dollar. Audible.com’s got a revolutionary idea.

- What’s in a title? "The Battle For Eardrums Begins With Podcasts"? WTF? What happened to good old radio? Didn't it begin there?

But I see now what the hype is all about. I also see that the "revolutionary" part of podcasting is NOT the podcasts itself, but the podCATCHING. The technology to MAKE podcasts (in a downloadble format) has been there for a least a decade, and never involved having to buy a mixer or a Shure mic. But the ability to have them autoupdate on your computer and media player is surely new. So not only is "podcasting" an unfortunate [new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings] , they could have named this phenomenon "Castcatching" or something like that, and saved people a lot of confusion.

While I still don't know where an otherwise productive individual (even one who's ungainfully unemployed) is going to find time to listen to all these podcasts, other than during a work commute, I agree that there's potential there. Especially advertising potential. Oh, sweet sweet dollar.

"The Next Generation Of Radio"? OK, I'll give you that. Next generation of radio. Where do Sirius and XM fit in? Rant for another day.

Test post to see if group mailing works

This is a test post to see if everyone gets an email when this post goes up.

A Picture Share!

Testing from my treo

People do the coolest things

http://news.com.com/2061-10786_3-5770822.html

Blogger Mobile

There's supposed to be this thing "Blogger Mobile" where we can post from our PDA's ...

http://www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g

I don't know what the claim token is all about though ... and when I click on the "For more info, read On the Go with Blogger Mobile" link, it doesn't let me connect to help.blogger.com. Is anyone else having this problem, or know what this Blogger Mobile thing is all about?