jtnt://life/unedited

Kottke.org (KTKE) Lowers Earnings Estimates

So, in essence, Jason Kottke, is now running a public company. Right?

I'd like to see him report his earnings.

C'mon, Jason. Spill the beans. How much did ya pull in?

By my count, he had 627 micro-freakin-patrons. I'll be aggressive and say the average, er, patronage was $30, the suggested amount.

Carry the one.... $18,810. Minus taxes.

I suppose this makes Jason (because all bloggers call each other my their first name, even though we don't know each other) the most-popular blogger below the poverty line.

9/11 Commission Report Free on iTunes

Get a free audiobook of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report Executive Summary from the iTunes Music Store.

Vote.

Installing OpenOffice on OS X plus one or two other things...

Don't let the title fool you. Installing and Tuning OpenOffice on Mac OS X, by Marc Liyanage, is way more than just another run-of-the-mill software install tutorial.

This article goes from installing X11 and OO all the way to getting a 3rd-party PDF generator plugged in and even loading up a Perl script to start Distiller (or a free alternative, Ghostscript) automatically. And he makes it sound so easy!

Check out his OS X software installers and tips while you're at his site. This is one smart man.

Rapidly Accumulating Thoughts On Gmail

The multiple redirects upon login are alarming, at the very least.

Login often (all the time?) hangs upon logging in twice in one browser session.

A refresh usually remedies this. Still a pain.

Need a way to display messages by label differently. e.g. Show all messages that are not a certain label.

There are no headers for the columns on the main interface.

(Click image larger view.)

I mean, I know Google is known for their simple interface, but there are some things an interface just needs. Column headers (no matter how obvious it is what type of data are in the columns) are one of these things.

What's up with the weird code that runs the pages?

There almost nary an XHTML tag in the stuff - all JavaScript. Not only that (who really cares what the code looks like), which among other things makes right-clicking links in order to open them in new window/tabs, print, etc. impossible, since the browser doesn't recognize them as links per se and only gives you the generic options as if you'd clicked in space.

That's downright rude, if you ask me.

Slick use of layers and javascript to enable fast access to (and from) things like Search Options, Reply/Forward fields, Create a Filter, and especially the other messages in the same "conversation" (as Google calls a thread of emails).

Props on the accessibility front for offering keyboard shortcuts.

When viewing a conversation, there is no indication of which messages have been read, which ones haven't.

(Click image larger view.)

There is no way to save a message while you are composing it.

p.s. No, I do not have any invites to hand out. I was only cool enough to land my own invite until after they stopped giving those out. Sorry. You're first on my list if I get one, though. I promise.

Gmail Ggeek

I received a coveted invitation to sign up for the Beta of Gmail, Google's 1 gigabyte web mail service, and I was visibly excited and even didn't take a call during the sign up process.

I am Gmail Ggeek. Here me Ggiggle.

Internet Explorer is a security nightmare. Download Mozilla Firebird. Pass it on.

I just sent the following email to all of my friends, telling them to pass it along to everyone they know. Join the movement!

Quick and Simple:

IE is insecure and makes your computer vulnerable to hackers. You should download the below browser now and never use IE again.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

-------------------------------------------------------------------

More details:

Now, you know I am not one to trust the US government, but they've gone and said something with which I happen to agree.

Basically, Internet Explorer - the internet browser most of you probably use - is rife with security vulnerabilities that can allow a hacker into your computer, to greatly simplify things. You can see how this could be problematic. You'd be lucky if all that happened is someone erased your hard drive, and didn't go in and steal your Excel file with your passwords in it, or your Quicken database with your checking account info in it, etc. You get the point.

The best solution put forth is to not use Internet Explorer, and I wholeheartedly agree with this recommendation. The browser you should use is called Mozilla Firefox, and it has the added benefit of having a built-in pop-up blocker.

Download Firefox here: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

You should download this now and never use Internet Explorer again.

If you get fucked by a hacker because you didn't do this, don't come to me for help. I'll only point to this email and tell you, I told you so...

Thanks for listening.

Erickson Barnett Design Monkeys

Do you love sea monkeys?! Of course you do. Who doesn't? Those little, mysterious pets we all remember from the back of comic books are just too, well, mysterious and little not to love! Plus, they make reference to them in Dazed and Confused, so they're a bona-fide pop culture hit in a cultish kind of way. (It's hip to like sea monkeys, and you're not un-hip, are you?)

Well, the thing you never thought could happen has happened. Through the miracles of modern science and active use of one's imagination, Erickson Barnett, a marketing and creative agency, has developed a human-sized mutant version of the sea monkey called the Design Monkey.

We have seen these Design Monkeys roaming the halls and producing work for clients already, so they are alive and fast becoming productive members of our Erickson Barnett society. I can't wait to see what they'll do next!

I am, I am, I am SpammerMan!

Look no further! I've found both your new CMO and Head Copywriter! See how he knows to use spam to get the word out AND has the the skills to wield powerful similes in order drive it home. With "super-class" work, you can't go wrong!

Don't forget to "press" on his links if you want to contact him.

Why not?!

Why not have an animated live logo, which like a magnet will attract the eyes of your website's visitors? A logo which will directly express the the nature of your business.

No matter what your tastes, marketing goals, budget, and deadlines are - our talented and experienced design team will assist you to create a special visual identity for your company. We write screenplays, design custom artwork, create special visual and sound effects, mix and create the music.

We make super-class animated flash logos!

http://www.akuz.org/9567.asp

Check out samples of our work.

Best regards,
Jack Bruston
http://www.akuz.org/9567.asp

_____________________________________________________
Press here to remove your address from this list: http://www.akuz.org/out.html
_____________________________________________________

Vacation Preparation Step #1: Digital Music

• Purge your iPod of all the albums you haven't listened to in months.
• Scour your CD collection for discs you haven't listened to since you got your iPod.
• Waste a rainy morning listening to 30-second bits of about 200 songs you haven't heard in years. (Songs open in iTunes. Get it.)

I thought computers were going to save us time and that digital music held the promise that we could bring our collections with us anywhere. How come I waste so much time sitting in front of my computer playing with digital music. (And who would have ever thought that you could play with music?)

Why I love Comcast

Let me tell you why I love Comcast, because I know you were all clamoring to know.

Sometime last night our cable TV went out completely. Nothing but static.

No fear. I called Comcast, and after some brief troubleshooting, I had an appointment with a technician for 9-11am the next morning. My guy showed up at just before 10am and my cable was back up and running less than an hour later.

The last time my DSL went out it took me two weeks to get it going again.

Shudder.

Why I love DSL

Let me tell you why I love having DSL as opposed to cable, since I know you were all clamoring to know.

Sometime last night our cable TV went out completely. Nothing but static.

No fear. I popped into my office and surfed the web for my news and entertainment.

If I was on cable internet, I'd be forced to read a book or something equally banal.

Shudder.

Damn Safari bookmarks, again!?

If you're currently using Apple's web browser, Safari, bookmark this page right now into a new bookmark folder called "Dumb". Right now! Bookmark it now quick!

Gotcha! Again.

You can't bookmark a page quickly into a new bookmark folder using Safari. It requires two distinct processes. One to first create the folder and then one to actually create the bookmark. There is no opportunity for the user to create a new folder while in the act of saving the bookmark.

This makes no sense.

It's the little things, people.

Update: To Safari's credit, you can choose "Add Bookmark Folder" after you access the Add Bookmark function and before you save the bookmark, but it's still a separate process and just as clunky as not being able to.

Oh, the irony.

If only Alanis Morissette had as good a grasp on irony as Wired.com.

Exhibit A

(If you don't get it, that's a video ad over there on the right. And the content ads displayed on the article page are either video or Flash ads as well.)

Safari bookmarks, you did me wrong.

I found out the hard way a big problem with the Safari bookmarks page, and it's functionality in relation to the site you were visiting when you clicked over to your bookmarks.

I was buying something from a site and had gotten to the end of my transaction. I was about to print the this page as my receipt and inadvertently clicked the bookmarks icon in my Bookmarks bar. No problem, I just clicked it again thinking I could easily return to the page I was on.

It seems that Safari doesn't cache this page - or thinks it must reload this page - so when the page was reloaded I was greeted with an error message from the site telling me that my transaction was complete and the page could not be loaded. This is because the page was the result of a form submission, not simply a static page.

I have not tested this on other pages to see if this happens all the time, but the fact that it happened once is enough testing for me. Safari should keep this page in memory, as if in an invisible tab, not reload the page from the site. This can't be too hard to accomplish.

You've played this song over 1 billion times.

I plugged in my iPod yesterday and noticed that I had some rather strange play count statistics on some (812 of them) of the songs on it:

I took care of this by simply resetting the play counts for the effected songs, but I'm still searching for the cause of the anomaly. Any help is appreciated.

I'm still jonesin' for a new firmware update. Especially one that will do away with the pause between the end of one song and the beginning of another. I know that the iPod looks ahead to see what song is next and loads that into memory to decrease hard drive accesses, so I'm baffled as to why there is a pause. iTunes doesn't exhibit this behavior.

Call the Better Business Bureau

At this late stage in the unsuccessful process of trying to get my new graphics card to work, I can hardly stand to relive the last couple days. Suffice it to say that this happened, and I'm not really pleased with Megamacs.com. No link given, because you're better off just staying away from them altogether.

The story of a boy, rush hour traffic, and his new iTrip.

After 5 months of delay, Brown delivered my 2nd generation iTrip today. I'm still not sure of exactly what problems Griffin Technology had in getting these out on time for the initially-announced mid-July ship date.

My first trial with what has to be a nominee for the cutest accessory for the iPod, if there were such an award, was at work. I looked for an open station via the freeware iTrip Station Finder software kindly offered by Griffin, and headed into my boss' office, where the only digital-tuning radio in the office lives. It worked, but the audio was filled with static.

With disillusionment and low expectations, I, still excited, headed to my car to try the iTrip out on my way to a holiday party to which I was following a co-worker. This will come into play later.

While stuck in traffic, I got my first opportunity to scan for an open radio frequency. This, I have found, is the only way to find a reliable station. The aforementioned iTrip Station Finder is a joke. After a few times around the dial, surfing the alarmingly busy Washington, D.C. airwaves, I settled on 101.7. There were virtually no frequencies that weren't picking up some noise from their neighbors.

I set the iTrip to broadcast over 101.7 via the somewhat clunky method devised by the Griffin engineers. The process involves choosing the frequency from an "iTrip Stations" playlist, playing a song of blips, bleeps, and whirs, pressing Play/Pause again, and waiting a few seconds for the iTrip to sort everything out.

This drawn out process becomes somewhat dangerous if it has to be performed on the road, which is where I use my iPod 80 percent of the time.

More annoying is that to test the station you have chosen, you must back out of this playlist, find a real song to play, and see how it sounds. If the frequency isn't clean enough, your iTrip sounds like it's playing via a radio station in another state, and you start the process all over. If you are in the middle of a song, and a previously clean frequency starts to go bad, you must stop the song and submit yourself to the laborious tuning process, then go back and find the song to which you were listening. Not money, as my co-workers would say.

Returning to our story...

As annoying as all that is, 101.7, after an initial couple of hiccups, turned out to work very well throughout my evening's travels from Virginia, to Maryland, and into DC. There were occassional bits of static, but overall the sound was acceptable, and I quickly got used to the fairly rare occurrences of interference.

Still excited about the quality of my now-wireless audio solution, I wrang my co-worker in the car also stuck in traffic ahead of me (I told you he'd come up again.), and told him to tune his radio to 101.7.

"Oh, man! That is so cool!," wrang through the cell phone. His radio was now playing, with listenable clarity, the song my iPod/iTrip was broadcasting!

We tested the signal by moving farther apart, and to no surprise the quality went down. A big SUV got between us at one point, and even though my co-worker reported that he would still get the broadcast on and off as it bounced around the cars, the audio still came through. I wonder if the wall-to-wall traffic helped the signal or hurt the reception he was getting?

Basically, as long as we were in sight of each other, no more than 20 feet apart, he could hear my tunes. We immediately realized the multiple-car roadtrip possibilities of this, especially if combined with those ubiquitous walkie-talkies.

The true test of the usefulness of the iTrip and it's process of finding a clear channel will come on my first long trip, where I will travel in and out of various radio markets. We'll see how setting everything up on-the-fly goes.

The iTrip didn't fully live up to my expectations of perfect FM signal sound, but I've only had it for a few hours, and I'm holding out hope. Until then, my new favorite radio station is definitely 101.7 WJTNT.

Canon Digital SLR for under $1000. *Drool.*

Oh my. OH my! OH MY!! My beloved Canon has done it this time. They've announced the first digital single lens reflex camera that to retail for under a grand.

At $900 USD, the EOS 300D doesn't offer the metal body of the EOS 10D, and it offers much few image control settings, but it does save you 600 smackeroos.

I love my tiny Powershot S230 too much to part with it, but I might just have to sell one of my old EOS film cameras to help finance this little guy. It's almost too hard to resist! We'll see what the Erickson Barnett Santa puts in my stocking this holiday season. I'll just have to drool until then.

BitTrickle*

I am currently on a BitTorrent swarm that has 182 complete seeds going and 33 other active downloads. My speeds should be blazing, right? Not exactly. They're hovering in the 3k/sec range. BitTrickle, indeed.

Are all those "experimental" clients that allow people to set their upload speed to minimal amounts (without really affecting download speed much, I've tested it out) to blame? I hope not.

Update: I'm now hovering at around 12-20k/sec. A marked improvement. But certainly lower than what I would expect for such a popular swarm.

* No relation to Dick.

$1/Gig

I added a big, fatty, 120Gb Seagate Barracuda drive to my machine, Walfredo, today. And when I bought my G4 a couple years ago, I thought the 60Gb drive it came with was big. I'm freaking swimming in hard drive space now.

My only complaint is that it didn't come with mounting screws. On the up side, I now know about 6-32 UNC mounting screws. Joy is mine.

Why BitTorrent is destined to fail.

Or put more positively, why it will succeed only on a small scale.

BitTorrent, for those that don't know, is a P2P application which you can use to download any file offered by someone with a BT server. The power of BT is that everyone who is downloading contributes to and shares from the collective bandwidth of everyone else currently downloading the same file(s). Even after downloading the file, if you keep the file active, you continue to contribute. This can also be it's downfall.

Yesterday afternoon, for example, I started a download of a live Phish show. A total download of over 900 megabytes. Right off the bat my download speed was a blazing 90kb/s and there were over 25 others downloading the show along with me.

Two hours later only 9 people remained on the download, and my speed had dropped to 9kb/s. Another couple hours later there were only two people still connected.

So, it seems that while speeds were blazing, people hopped on, got the show, and hopped off. Leaving the rest of us who didn't get on so early to struggle through the rest of the download without the assistance of their plentiful bandwidth.

You can see how the value in this P2P model depends on the the collective kindness of the community. Others must, after they have gotten what they came for, give up additional bandwidth (and computer performance, as BT is a resource-hog) for others to use. This, as you can also see from the above, is not something people are so keen to do.

That said, I have currently been downloading a Grateful Dead show with speeds averaging above 90kb/s the whole time. (I'm not trying to contrast the two music communities, but are Dead fans just more altruistic than Phish fans? Maybe just older with longer attention spans.)

Another serious pitfall of BT is that the original source files are taken offline relatively soon after they become available. With FTP, the person running the server simply has to have the FTP server running in the background and have the files residing where FTP users can get to them. With BT, the server admin must actively keep the file in a sort of "state of upload." That is, even if the file remains on the admin's drive forever, if he doesn't have the BT server actively serving that particular file, no one can get to it.

In the world of online music sharing on BT, shows are usually only available for about 2 weeks. It's good for initially getting the files distributed to a few, but not good for providing long-term access to the masses.

This again, is relying on people to take an active role in sharing the files. However, sharing is not something people would do after downloading a file via FTP or the like anyway. With BT, they are at least helping others whether they want to or not while they are downloading the file.

BT, while it is a truly forward-thinking technology, is not ideal. It relies too much on a Utopian model to flourish long-term. Communism doesn't work on the Internet either, I guess.

Disclaimer: I am a huge user and, in current practice, a huge fan of BitTorrent. I have downloaded tens of gigabytes of live music using it, and I hope that I will continue to be able to do so for as long as possible.

I, by the way, am no leech either. I not only leave my downloads open well after I have gotten the complete show, but I also help seed shows through the denance.net BitTorrent server.

51 hours. 409 emails.

Spam sucks. It struck me today as I checked my email, which I hadn't checked since Friday afternoon, and I had over 400 messages. The vast majority were spam, of course.

I wish the problem was that big companies were sending spam. They would feel pressure and rethink their policies. Even discontinue using spam altogether! Hey, this is my fantasy.

But, alas, the people and companies that send spam are shady thieves, operating from the darkest halls of the web. A place where identities are fleeting and regected email is like smog. Just a necessary by-product of the industry.

At least that's how I like to imagine spammers. I don't reallly need help hating them, 409 emails in 51 hours (that's 7.5 a minute, BTW) handles that just fine, but I welcome any help I can get.

Another web project I've thought about is keeping a history of spam. Like spamarchive.org, but with a more artistic (less scientific, at least) goal. Sort of an active time capsule, constantly updated by anyone online. An online museum and historical record of spam.

I'm sure someone has done something of this sort, but I'm liking the idea more and more all the time. Stay tuned...possibly.

Fair and Balanced all over the place!

Well, the other day I made what I considered to be a keen observation that Daring Fireball had changed its title to "Fair and Balanced" as a sort of protest to the whole Fox News/Al Franken legal battle. Now I find out that it's a bonafide movement among bloggers. I couldn't resist joining in.

Local DC bloggers

I got an email about a new Meetup.com MoveableType event today. After not voting for a venue (simply becuase all the venues listed were awful), I clicked around to see what some of the locals were up to.

In the internet alter-world bloggers live in, geography is forgotten and indeed looked at as irrelevant. I disagree. And I think Meetup.com is a testament to the fact that geography and the internet can come together. In fact, I think each enhance each other or feed off each other.

Without the desire to get together with like-minded people, meetup.com would not be as successful as it is. Without the internet, it would obvisouly not exist at all.

The very fact that everything is so placeless on the internet makes me even more curious when I do find a site (especially a personal blog) that is produced locally.

Here are a few sites I found while poking around on Meetup.com that were either interesting to read or pretty to look at. All local to the DC area.

• Webcrumbs
• samLife
• Farrellyville

Pleas(e) For Help

If anyone can offer assistance on getting a BitTorrent server running on Mac OS X with a Netgear RT314 router and dyndns.org service (to get around the dynamic IP crap), I'll... I don't know... help you with something. Basically, all the Python scripts work, and I am able to generate the metafile correctly. And I am even able to run the headless downloader fine, but no one can connect to the server. I have the ports setup in the router and have messed around with all kinds of stuff, but still no go.

(Disclaimer for the RIAA: I intend to only legally share music that is specifically allowed by bands that have an open taping and trading policy. Lay off.)

Also, Michael Tsai released a seemingly cool utility called BBAutoComplete today that offers automatic word-finishing in BBEdit and some other Barebones apps. The problem is, I can't seem to get it to do anything. I haven't completely RTFM yet, but I think I've read the important parts, and the damn thing just doesn't do a thing. (Figured out the root of my ignorance. Was starting with a blank document to test this out, and BBAutoComplete uses the text in the document and other open documents to figure out how to complete the words. Got it. I'm a dunce.)

If you happen to be able to help me with both of these, I'd prefer help with the BitTorrent stuff. I have a feeling that I'm just missing something stupid on the BBAutoComplete and will figure that out soon. Thanks!

Where do PDAs go when they die?

I've added to my collection of dead PDAs - although my first Palm IIIx that died I threw away in a cleaning/purging frenzy. I usually maintain that purging is good, but I still regret throwing that out just for history's sake. I can see myself wanting to bring that out in 20 years just to see what things used to be like. I guess the Visor is pretty close, but that cheap, grey plastic on the IIIx is classic.

Anyway, I pulled the trigger today and replaced my severely handicapped Visor, which I bought as a refurb off eBay, with a brand-new Palm m515. I can't wait for the color screen! I can't wait for it to actually turn on when I need it to!

I was going to get a refurbished Handspring Treo 90, but I test drove a co-worker's, and there was no graffiti pad. You had to use the built-in mini-keyboard. That was a deal breaker. If I could have tried it out for a day or two to see how that was I would have, but I wasn't about to blow $250 on yet another PDA with which I was disappointed. Plus, I got a free mini-keyboard and leather case for the m515 anyway. Seemed like a no-brainer to me.

iPod Imbulse Buys

I was given a new 15gb iPod in celebration of 5 years at Erickson Barnett (formerly, eDesign). It is by far the coolest thing I own. And even though it was free to me, it has been the genesis of more than one impulse buy. The latest evidence of this:

• iTrip
• PowerPodAuto

The iTrip is, as the site says, "the coolest iPod accessory in the world." It transmits whatever your iPod is playing over a customizeable radio station freequency. To listen to the iPod, just tune a nearby radio (like the one in your car) to that frequency and you have wireless audio. Ships July 21st.

The PowerPodAuto is more of a utilitarian buy. Now that I have grown as attached to the iPod as to my own thumbs, my greatest fear is being in the car and having the iPod's batteries die. I will live in fear no longer.

Get an AIM name!

If you own a computer connected to the Internet, if you have an email address then you should also have an AOL Instant Messenger account.

This morning - and into the afternoon - three friends and I exchanged well over 25 emails in planning a dinner and round of golf in a couple weeks. We also exchanged many sharp jabs - and let's be honest, insults - at each other. The emails were so quick and so funny tears honestly came to my eyes once. But regardless of how much fun the exchange was, I can only bet that it would have been much funnier and more heated (not to mention quicker!) if it was done in an IM chat.

BTW, I'm nicholasebagency if you need me.