vented spleen

google reader

2007-04-09T12:50:00.001-04:00

i checked out google reader again... and made the switch from the sage firefox extension.

i'll still keep sage installed , but i really like using google reader now for rss feeds.

i'm finding it very handy to use firefox for instant messaging (with all the services), email, rss feeds. i don't use meebo that much at home, but when it's aways an option available to me.

google

2007-04-08T18:34:00.001-04:00

i'm a big fan of google. i've bought into most of the google applications. there's a few i don't use because i don't like them. google desktop. google rss feeds. last time i used them i found them to cumbersome to use, but i'll check them out again after i've posted this. i think google notebook has potential. it's not there yet.

i've decided not put in a link of anything easily found in google. only the more obscure stuff. just about every link i've been to i can find on google.

if i can force even one reader of my blog to use google that's potentially one less person i might have to blog about later...

twit

2007-03-18T19:28:00.001-04:00

a couple of months ago i bought and ipod nano. i still like the iriver mp3 player, but anybody who owns one knows that the interface is horrendous to use. because i only had the 256 meg model i didn't do a lot of mp3 transfers with it. my biggest use was listening to the radio with the built in fm tuner. the nano made it more convenient to transfer and navigate.

up to a month or so ago i'd completely avoided podcasts. i have to read enough idiot content on the weeb, i didn't want to hear it also. patrick norton of dltv fame mentioned the TWIT podcast. twit is hosted by leo laporte who used to host the sceensavers and still does call for help. i've never watched call for help as it was mainly clueless windows users who got themselves into trouble or for some reason didn't know about or couldn't find google.

anyway, i downloaded a few ep's of twit and i was hooked, both on the show and with podcasting in general. i found it was too time consuming to watch dltv and cranky geeks, so i started listening to the audio only podcast of those shows. i've since added security now. i'm behind on all of them, taking me a while to catch up but i'm enjoying them a lot.

i'm not likely to start my own podcast. not really in my personality, and i know bandwidth could become an issue.

anyway, if you miss the old screensavers you can get the same thing with twit and dltv, and if miss the old techtv show silicon spin you can get the same thing with cranky geeks.

kubuntu

2007-03-05T20:52:00.001-05:00

i had a chance to install kubuntu the other day. i'm not really a fan of kde, but i wanted an ubuntu install with kde.

kubuntu suffers from the same problem that all debian distros suffer from. first off the latest kubuntu itself was out of date. i have yet to install any debian based distro that didn't have to pull down more updates after the install.

then of course there is the debian philosophy that older buggier software is more stable.

i finally had to wipe the kubuntu install because i couldn't compile vim with gui support. i just couldn't seem to pull down enough libs for the configure to find what it needed. if i want to do that much work with linux i'll just work up an LFS.

in contrast to that, i installed xubuntu, and found it much easier to work with. i'll keep with that to see how it goes.

slashdot and video

2007-01-03T19:21:00.001-05:00

i think i figured out what would happen if you took the stupid comments you see on slashdot and added video to them:

youtube.

don't get me wrong, i like youtube, i first saw the baseball funtwo guy there. and the copywrited T.REX stuff that's been ripped and posted are great. it's too bad they couldn't get better quality of the dvd's they're ripping. the 70's were NOT that blurry :)

i'm actually referring to the guy who proves there's no global warming by melting an ice cube in a glass of water.

obviously not a physics major. snrk.

multi blogging tools

2006-12-01T18:54:00.001-05:00

i had to give up on qumana. i haven't actually tested it under windows now that i've upgrade my blogger account to blogger beta. but i'm just going to assume it broke qumana..

on the other hand, the performancing extension for firefox works on ubuntu for both blogger beta and msn live spaces (or whatever they're calling it this week).

also even if qumana DID run under linux, the java install would probably change my mind about using it.

freeguide again

2006-12-01T18:12:00.001-05:00

i mentioned a while back that i accidently got freeguide working.

i thought i would try the same process to get a version running under ubuntu.

no such luck. you need xmltv installed. you can get that through the package manager. you need java installed. you can get that through the package manager also.

and then you install the freeguide .deb file.

it should work, but a few hundred java errors come up.

i dunno. how about using a real language, so all i have to do is ./configure , make, and then make install.

i can't imagine how the freeguide code is easy to maintain.

i also can't express how much i think java sucks. it's quite possibly the suckingest thing that ever sucked...

oh, and it's slow and bloated too. snrk.

ubuntu

2006-11-22T19:04:00.000-05:00

to keep the warranty ok on my laptop i decided to install linux on an external usb drive.

the choice of linux isn't really a factor for me anymore. i've been using it long enough that i only really need to get used to vendor specific tweaks (or quircks for that matter)

i liked the whole idea behind ubuntu and even though it's based on debian if figured i'd give it a whirl.

first problem was finding out the information needed to install it on an external usb drive and actually get it to boot. i wanted the process to go fairly quickly and after googling around i found ubuntusb

you have to pay for an "install key" but that was a minor inconvenience. it installed in about 15 minutes. rebooted, all my hardware was recognized and x came up fine.

i'm not all that impressed with support from the site. i had a technical question that got answered about a day after i got my install key, which also took about a day. i misplaced my install key email and i emailed the support to see if i could get it resent. i found it soon afterwards, but as far as they know i've paid for product i can't use. i still haven't received a response.

i like the clean x interface ubuntu has but i'll probably add a few more window managers.

my only problem with any debian distro is their insistence on using stale software. ubuntusb is based on dapper drake and the version of vim installed is 6.4.6. version 7 has been out for a while now. with 135+ patches. all those patches are bug fixes so there is no logical reason other than maybe laziness that version 6.x should be on any linux distro.

ie7

2006-11-22T18:49:00.000-05:00

microsoft has pushed out ie7... and a bunch of you drooled like there was an actual advancement in browser technology...

um, there isn't. ie7 can be safely ignored

linux blogger clients part II

2006-11-22T14:44:00.000-05:00

spent a little more time searching for blogger clients that would run on linux. i had to give up early on ms spaces clients...pretty sure that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

anyway i found drivel for linux. specifically debian, but as per usual it was out of date (in the debian world "old and buggy" = "stable" go figure...

i updated from the drivel web site manually, but...

blogger is forcing an upgrade to their new version, so rather than be forced at an inconvenient time i decided to do it now. and that immediately broke drivel. so now i'm doing this via blogger itself...

there's somthing to be said for the simpler way tkblog does things :)

linux blogger clients

2006-11-21T17:03:00.000-05:00

didn't seem to be an ms spaces linux client, so i think i'll probably have to do that one manually.

seems like qumana the cross-platform blogging tool (written in java, insert appropriate snrk's here) doesn't have a linux version.

tkblog of course requires no changes to work under linux... the only thing you might want to do is change your paths in the tkbog.cfg file. oh... and you need tcl/tk installed. nobody has ever asked for a linux binary but i could provide one if anybody needed one...

debian and the boat

2006-10-21T13:21:00.000-04:00

what's debian got to do with a boat? that's an easy one. they missed it.

here's some reasons. they're are probably more.

the biggest one is old software. how is it the debian people thought that old software with bugs should be labelled "stable" i can probably name 20 or 30 packages right off the bat that have bugs but have been knighted by debian as stable.

and then there is apt-get, the pride and joy of the vocal debian crowd. sure it was great when there were only a dozen or so linux packages, but now there are thousands and apt-get doesn't scale AT ALL. on top of that apt-get is pretty much useless for the less popular software. i've killed 4 or 5 debian installs by getting the memmap error. i think it just choked on the number of dependencies it had to automagically get and configure. at that point i was back to using tarballs. and if you ask me, if you're using linux you should be using tarballs anyway. for both the initial installing of new packages, and their upgrading.

let's not turn linux into another windows where we have to spoon feed it's users.

i read on slashdot (like that's the last bastion of tech news. snrk.) that one of the upper management type guys just up and left. that's what i want, none of the debian problems being fixed because a few 12 year olds got their knickers in a knot.

another bit i read on slashot was the problems they were having with the firefox people. debian dumb move. i'll go out on a limb and say that firefox is much more popular than debian will ever be. don't know about you but if it came to a choice between the two... s'later deb try the next boat...

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freedos v1.0

2006-09-05T10:22:00.000-04:00

and today another release announcement on freshmeat: freedos v1.0.

i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the last time anybody used dos as their main os was around '95 at the outside. i know those guys who ran bbs's (and didn't use os/2) were running it on dos.

ok, just kidding, i'm gonna install freedos on my 3gig machine because i know all my favorite dos programs will just scream on it.

i'm sure the owners arj and 4dos. just giggled until they wet themselves at the prospect making $150 collectively for software for all those who will need it on brand spanking new freedos machines. snrk.

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freeguide

2006-09-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

i saw via the freshmeat rss feed a few weeks ago that a new version of freeguide was released. so i thought i would give it one more try.

lo and behold i actually got it working. once i updated my account on the web page that actually contains your account/data info, freeguide seemed to pick up the changed and do it's thing.

i notice that program listing updates slowly. i'm just assuming that it's because freeguide was written in java.

i sure htf java is running on any medial equipment that require realtime updates. snrk.

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msn spaces

2006-09-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

i kinda wish microsoft would stop playing follow the leader. they're failing badly.

things they screwd up: email (hotmail), instant messaging (messenger), and now blogging (msn spaces, windows live, or wtf they're calling it this week).

i went to make a quickie post saying i was in the middle of a move and would blog things later and noticed that windows live had screwed up the look on my browser. on all three of the browsers i have installed. apparently it looks ok to others so i guess that's not the worse thing.

what you SHOULD be seeing on my spaces page. is two even columns, blog on the left side and archives on the right.

i noticed a few weeks ago that i could no longer see the comments. i have them enabled but i have no way of reading them without logging in to edit the settings.

if there's a secret, email me ('cause i sure can't read the friggin' comment)

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wireless

2006-09-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

after the move i had the opportunity to set up a wireless router and pc.

i'll tell you that after the set up and some help (hi ross) i remain unimpressed with wireless.

i gather most wireless users are too. you sure don't read about the wonders of going wireless.

maybe if, along with your router, mouse, and keyboard; your speakers, monitor, external drives, printer and scanner were ALSO wireless you might have something to rave about. right now i have a wireless router sitting by the cable modem, and like it's been for the last 10 years or so, my computer set up is a mess of wires. if you didn't notice the antenna on the router you'd never know i went wireless. snrk.

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baseball cap kid

2006-09-05T09:29:00.000-04:00

if you spend any kind of time on the interweb by now you've probably come across youtube and probably that kid with the baseball cap playing pacabel's canon on guitar (arrangement by jerryc).

i originally saw it from dvorak's blog and read all the slashdot like comments (ie. stupid things like what slashdotters post. some idiot said the kid was just faking it. and someone else thankfully pointed out that if he could fake it that well he might as well be playing it for real.

curiosity got the better of me so i went over to youtube and searched for some of the others playing the same thing:

the guy who lights the cigarette had too much distortion on his guitar...and he made mistakes.

the guy who rolled (oh this is so easy a child could play it) his eyes had too much distortion...and he made mistakes.

jerryc himself made mistakes, and like the others i mentioned he was a poser.

as far as i'm concerned if you make that stupid devil's rock n roll horn thing (at any time when music is involved) with your index and baby finger you should immediately have them both pulled off with a pair of pliers. notice i didn't say CUT off. snrk.

the baseball cap kid makes mistakes too. but he's such a good guitar player he managed to cover them up and you really have to look to catch them.

one of the more interesting versions was a guy playing the tune with an acoustic guitar and mainly using hammer ons and pull offs.

it's refreshing to see a kid with that kind of talent. he's better than a lot of guitar players who get paid money to drink until they puke on stage.

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moving

2006-08-06T21:34:00.000-04:00

i've been in the middle of a move. i have a number of things that i want to blog about. some related to the move some internet stupidity :)

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meebo

2006-07-12T19:19:00.000-04:00

lately i'm finding that if i can use firefox to perform the same function as a desktop program i'll go the firefox way. which is to say the ajax way.

i use gmail and yahoomail via their respective web sites. my real email account is web based.

now that i have a writely account [and many thanks to the kind soul who invited me] i don't really need a word processor installed. i don't think i would write code in writely, but it will work for all the word processing i do.

i used to use the blogger and msn spaces sites themselve and cut and past from tkblog.

but now i just use qumana and tkblog.

lately i've been reading my newsgroups via newega. not fancy but it works for casual reading/writing. it probably won't replace agent for me.

and after watching ep #56 of dl.tv i found out about meebo. now i can use firefox and meebo to do any im'ing. i have firefox running all the time anyway.

somebody on the meebo forums said firefox was overrated. i bet all IE users say that before their machine gets owned. snrk.

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maddox

2006-07-11T13:29:00.000-04:00

crankygeeks ep #11 was about myspace. everyone there over 15 thought myspace was a fad and not well done at that. the ryder stacy guy (if that's your real name, snrk) like, thought it was like, the coolest, like thing, like for kids, like you know?

i didn't count the number of "likes" he used to express himself, but, like, it was LOT.

he mentioned about this maddox guy who had more power on the internet then coca-cola. umm............no. if you're under 15 you'll disagree with me. snrk.

i'll admit. some of maddox's stuff was funny. most of it was contrived. he seems a lot more concerned with pop culture than any adult is, and it looks like he'll eventually degenerate into sarcastic blogs that cut up his hate email.

if maddox ever decides to envision himself as more powerful than coca-cola, he'll add oh, an rss feed. although now that i think about it. 90% of his audience might not know what to do with it.

either way, the vented spleen has 5 years on him for that kind blog (ie. venting your spleen) via the dialup bbs.

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google writely

2006-07-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

now that writely has been taken over by google, accounts are as rare as hen's cliches. as of the timestamp of this blog you can only get an account by invitation. or you could probably buy one on ebay if you need one right now. as before with gmail i didn't know anybody who had a gmail account, and now everybody i know has one. once i'd been given an invite to gmail, i sent out invites as fast as i got them.

i'm thinking that writely hasn't got as much widespread appeal as gmail did. a lot of people will probably get accounts and never use them. anybody wants to invite me i'd be eternally grateful :)

just watched ep #9 of crankygeeks. at the end they complained about stupid slashdot comments. hopefully they just didn't figure out the moronic level slashdot commenters can get to.

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software deals

2006-07-06T19:27:00.000-04:00

a few years ago i bought vc++ v6.0 professional on sale at a bookstore [of all places]. it was a deal i couldn't pass up, and since then i've used it to compile vim from the tarball. i've written the odd command line program, but never anything gui related with it. i just don't do c++ programming.

the professional version IS a nice package. it included a number of goodies among them was a vc++ specific version of installshield, which could actually be used for creating installers for any binary. i had that installed along with installshield express but never really used either one with the exception that one release of tkblog used it.

anyway right beside the incredibly cheap vc++ was office 2000 developer tools. and i pretty much forgot i had that...

till sunday night. when i remembered that the office 2000 dev tools have the redistributable access runtime included. that means i could write access 2k applications and my end users didn't have to have be ripped off by microsoft and forced to buy a copy of access.

it also means i could run my book database application even though microsoft won't let me use my legitimate copy of access 2k2.

so i say this to microsoft: FYITN*

*some swear words meaning "screw you in the neck" [thanks penn & teller :) ]

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shuttle costs

2006-07-06T08:29:00.000-04:00

from what i've been reading after googling around the shuttle cost $10 billion to develop/build in the '70's. the cost of a shuttle launch is up to $1.3 billion. the total cost of the program is approaching $150 billion dollars.

and a 5 inch piece of foam weighing less than an ounce can turn the shuttle into a big fireworks display?

what's wrong with that picture?

maybe it's time to get the cost of foam tiles and adhesive up into the billion dollar mark instead of that dollar store stuff they're obviously using now.

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sqlite

2006-07-04T09:07:00.000-04:00

sometimes i start the morning with a particular objective in mind, and through frustration or the inability to find the information i need end up where i started.

the last few weeks i've been using visual studio express c# edition . i know i've complained about .net before, but that was when i was using win2k and very reluctant to screw up an already working os by a failed .net install. of course xp doesn't have this problem as it's already part of the os.

part of the requirement for the vs c# is sql server express edition, and so yesterday morning i had the brilliant idea of transferring over my access2k2 book database to sql server. the only frontend applications i could find were database managers with the actual database stuff done through sql statements. i'm reasonably competent with sql but for quick updates that's not efficient.

and sql express is not exactly portable, so i started looking at sqlite which IS portable.it's the backend db that popfile uses so it's robust. same problem: all the applications fell into the category of db managers.

i googled for hours, installing various mssql/sqlite applications i could find, but no luck..

i came to the conclusion that both sql server and sqlite were aimed at programmers and NOT the end user. which is fine in itself, except that no programmers have cranked out any database applications for the end user.

for now i'm still using openoffice's base. it's a little bit of overkill. right now my book database is a flat file that i could easily export to csv and just use a text editor. i have other plans for it, and the db paradigm is the obvious way to go for the information i have.

as per usual when the internet world is lacking the once piece of software i could make use of, i end up writing my own database program...probably based on sqlite or mysql to keep it portable. last time i had to do this, the result was tkblog :)

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knoppix 5.0

2006-06-30T13:53:00.000-04:00

from version 3.2 of knoppix onwards i haven't been able to boot on an old pII/350. could be the hardware was too old to work with the updated changes on the knoppix cd.

after googling around i was lead to smart boot manager. this got me to the knoppix boot prompt and i was able to boot from there.

there's been a lot of changes since the v3.1 i had hanging around. all positive as far as i can tell. with the flakey hd's on that machine, i have knoppix as the default os.

while i was working with live cd's i tried goblin mini, and it wasn't ready for primetime. also tried (and liked) the afterlive cd. burnt that to a mini-cd. it will be added to the list of tools i need to carry around.

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roving swarm

2006-06-23T08:20:00.000-04:00

i mentioned here my frustation with divx when getting files from www.publicdomaintorrents.com .

since i posted that i'm STILL trying to get three movies [as i type this they're at 6.8%, 24.9%, and 27.8% complete]. utorrent [that's "u" as in micro] has been running for weeks. i was thinking yesterday that i can't be the only one who's having this problem with obscure torrents.

so i think i have a solution. it's called a "roving swarm". if something legitimate like this already exists i couldn't find it. basically, it's a group of users running a bitorrent client. google for a good one, i use utorrent. and what they do is take a users request and "migrate the swarm" over to that torrent. once the person requesting the file has it, he leaves a message on a mailing list and the users in the group can remove the torrent data, and wait for the next request.

obviously anybody requesting copyrighted software is removed from the group.

does this sound altruistic? well, yeah, it's a white hat kind of operation. the whole idea to get large legitimate files, quickly. it has the side benefit of showing isp's that p2p programs can actually be used for something good. it will also show the real power of the bitorrent protocol.

if bitorrent is something you'd like to get into but thought the clients were too hard to set up, then just get the latest opera 9 browser, it has torrent client built in.

if you've ever had to wait for a large and lumbering torrent if you're just interested then join up at roving_swarm.

even if there were just 25 of us it would make a significant impact. more and we could handle more requests at a time. i have some other thoughts on the whole process, but i'll wait to see how successful it is.

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oooh, scary

2006-06-06T07:49:00.000-04:00

don't look now folks. it's Tuesday of the Beast

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editor wars

2006-06-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

it's probably safe to say that just about any newsgroup has had the vi vs emacs war at some point. nobody really touches the learning curve argument as they both have it, but usually the power of each is argued until godwin's law is eventually reached.

if you're looking at sheer power, then emacs probably wins. doing email, newsgroups, debugging, etc. all within your editor makes it more powerful. this seems to be the antithesis of the unix philosophy of one program that does one thing well. that argument is generally overlooked in the editor wars between the two.

back in '87 vi was the first real editor i used (learned on microsoft's xenix :) . there was no usable version of it on dos, at least one that was cheap or free, so i hadn't used it for awhile. but when i got into linux around '94, vim was an editor usually installed by default so i made it a point of updating my vi skills to vim.

around '98 i made it a point of learning emacs, not so i could involve myself in any of the debates but just to add another tool to my toolbox.

but i didn't need full emacs. i have an email client i like better than the emacs effort. same with my newsreader. same with my debugger. and probably the same with every other extension you can get for emacs.

the other day my interested in emacs was piqued again, so i installed the jasspa version of microemacs. i've used other editors with emacs style keybinding (jed, etc.) but i find i end up spending more time configuring them. my intent on installing microemacs was to maybe config the colours for easier reading, but to leave it as stock as possible.

so reducing emacs to just the editor part with microemacs which one is better? i guess it depends if you like a moded editor or not. vim is great if you're a touch typist (as i am). you appreciate the one key commands as opposed to the finger contortions needed to do even simple tasks with emacs.

i'm far from a vim expert. there's all kinds key commands it has that i don't use and may never use. i'll at least get my emacs skills up to where i can get on a linux machine and use either one comfortably.

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ghost of divx

2006-06-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

i wanted to add something to my windows context menu [more details next blog] and to do that i fire up a program called context edit . you can read the pc mag article about it here .

i've been using the program for ages, but this was the first time it encountered an error with my registry. it caught me a little off guard but i got a whole different feeling when i saw it was a divx registry entry.

xp wouldn't allow me to delete the registry keys directly because they were corrupt.

it took me a few minutes between regedit and ccleaner to remove all the divx garbage the divx uninstaller behind.

i got to thinking about how badly an operating system could be designed that let a third party program screw up parts of the os so that the os itself and other third party programs were affected. and that user with admin rights couldn't do anything about it with the tools that come with the os.

that's because windows xp is a piece of crap. windows has ALWAYS been crap. it will aways BE crap. if there were a "Which OS is the Worst Piece of Crap" contest windows would come in last.

why?

BECAUSE IT'S A PIECE OF CRAP.

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american idol

2006-05-25T07:59:00.000-04:00

um, how did peter funt win american idol?

i don't watch the show but i DO know they already voted off the island the guy with the most talent

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bono's ego

2006-05-21T13:26:00.000-04:00

sidenote for you kids that aren't getting the education you deserve. africa is a continent. there are 54 countries IN africa.

but i'll tell you what kids, africa isn't NEARLY large enough to hold bono's ego.

he wants africa to cure malaria or something. i realize he thinks of himself as one of the most influential people that ever lived, but does he really think he can get all 54 countries, of which i'm guessing only 1 or 2 ever heard of him, to rally around and fix the malaria problem. a problem, apparently that has gotten bigger than poverty, aids, and war.

i COULD be out of line here. if bono has set his sights on a smaller project than world peace, and decided to fix the african malaria problem then he IS making progress.

so i'm a little confused... i'm... "i'm mystified by the man". insert big ole snrk here.

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decoding the davinci debuggers

2006-05-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

first off let me declare my bias. i think a good number of people claiming to be christians are narrow-minded, ignorant, and intolerant.

myth #1 - dan brown claims all the facts in the novel are true.

decoded: NO HE DOES NOT. for those of you claiming this about the novel and have not actually cracked it open , the "claim" actually says:

"All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in the novel are accurate"

emphasis is mine first, an accurately described document does not magically make it fact. and second the novel is fiction. as far as i'm concerned i consider everything after the copyright notice, dedication, and acknowledgements in a novel to be part of the novel.

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divx feedback

2006-05-11T08:51:00.000-04:00

sent feedback to the divx people via their feedback interface.

they sent a reply back. in the body of the all the replies they have the following:

"We hope your issue has been solved. If we do not receive an update
from you in this same incident within the next 24 hours, this incident
will be set to solved."

"Please do not reply to this e-mail. E-mail responses do not update
your request."

and below that they pointed me to where i could get a divx diagnostic utility. and then said to attach the two files it outputs and send it back.

so let me get this straight. if it takes me over 24 hrs to not solve the problem it'll be "solved" on their end? chalk one up for tech support, another problem fixed [sounds of high fiving in the background.]

or. i give up on it completely? same result? solved?

but i like the second quote the best. which to me reads: "here's a convenient email address that has the word 'support' in it. so could you NOT reply to this address and attach the files we requested so we can solve your problem?"

if you add all the emails together, this is the basic content:

ME: divx 6.2 reboots my machine without warning before the install completes. an earlier version WILL install, but the codec isn't recognized by windows

THEM: divx doesn't not work properly?

ME: 6.2 doesn't install, earlier versions aren't recognized.

THEM: here's a utility. run it and send us the results.

ME: ok, i'll send it through the web based feedback interface. [i do that]

THEM: [instructions for running the diagnostic utility], then [here's an exact quote:]

"Attach a screen shot of the error message to your Question. You can take a screen shot by pressing the 'Print Screen' key on your keyboard and paste in the Paint Application."

ME: divx 6.2 reboots without warning before completing the install. earlier versions DO install, but the codec isn't recognized.

but with that last email, i actually emailed them to the support email address that email says not to reply to. just my way of sticking it to the man.

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windows users

2006-05-09T18:23:00.000-04:00

for the most part windows users are clueless oh sure, you find people who know everything there is to know about windows.

but who cares. they're windows users. there used to be a fidonet tag line that read:

windows expert: the guy with the biggest font collection

bill has made a whole generation of computer users into idiots. and a lot of them can't spell either.

i went to the bookstore today, and i saw a computer book series whose covers actually made me chuckle out loud. i thought i would come home and write a sarcastic blog aginst the publisher.

and then i saw who the publisher was: oreilly

then i realized this was just tim's way of being sarcastic. again. how do you appeal to a clueless windows user? get them buy computer books with covers like these.

thanks tim. your books are expensive, but the real computer books are worth every penny.

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shilo

2006-05-07T17:29:00.000-04:00

another quick hello to anybody popping up here from the new shilobrats msg forum.

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divx and windows

2006-05-07T16:29:00.000-04:00

i was watching episode 22 of dl.tv and they were talking about publicdomaintorrents.com. it turns out there are some real gems on this sight and they're in the public domain.

decided i would try both hosts favorite bitorrent client. patrick's was utorrent [that's a micro in the front there]. and robert's was azureus.

robert probably has the fastest machine ON THE PLANET because he's sticking with that client. the rest of us will see that it's HUGE and SLOW just like the rest of the java apps out there.

so i went to the site and that's when i ran into some of the stupidity.

it was subtle but you could see fear of threats of legal action by riaa and the mpaa.

first off movies are only downloadable via bittorrent. that might be a great idea to save bandwidth, but you've eliminated the casual and newbie end-user. and the dial-up user. and the user with a very flakey cable connection [snowzone raises hand]. bitorrents are S-L-O-W for obscure files.

second the geniuses who go to all the trouble to crank out the movies in various video formats decided to NOT use a windows standard: wmv. and possibly locking out the mac and linux people . not really a problem because there are other cross-platform video formats. but the one they chose was the avi [divx] format. now that shouldn't be a problem either but it was.

you need to download and install a divx decoder. the latest as of this blog is divx 6.2. codec and now here's the interesting part:

it has all kinds of problems in windows xp sp2.

read that again. how many millions of machines are using that version? and there are a number of people having a problem [like me] because the knowledge base on the site was filled with problems and possible solutions.

i said possible because i spent ALL day yesterday trying to encode a public domain movie on legally purchased software/equipment and could not do it.

first problem the divx v6.2 codec would NOT install on my computer without rebooting before the install finished. ok, not a disaster, i just went back a version, and that DID install ok.

next problem. windows xp sp2 didn't recognize the codec. windows media player didn't, winamp didn't, at least a dozen pieces converting software didn't. the bigfix program the divx site has available didn't work either. i went back to earlier versions [back to v5.0.2] and none of them were recognized.

i DO have a solution for the divx programmers. but i'm sure they won't like reading it. they can either:

FIX THE GDF* PROGRAM

STOP PROGRAMMING FOR WINDOWS

i tried using a few trial versions of programs that had built in divx codecs for converting and the closest one that worked converted a 733meg avi at 1hr 7min of playbackl file to a 17meg mpg at 1min 38sec of playback. so i'm just gonna guess here and say it didn't work.

anybody has a solution i'm all ears. email me

*gdf is some swear words

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hockey blog

2006-05-04T09:56:00.000-04:00

well, i did it. i started a hockey blog.

this wouldn't have happened 10 years ago.

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hockey blogs

2006-05-04T08:20:00.000-04:00

after watching calgary-anaheim last night i'm tempted to start a hockey blog to start commenting on some of the games i watch.

anaheim has a great passing game which was made just that much better by calgary passing to them every chance they got. snrk.

i was sorta hoping for an ottawa-calgary final, but last night it looked like the flames were tired and just not hungry enough for the stanley cup.

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feedblitz

2006-05-03T15:52:00.000-04:00

for those of you who track every change that happens on the web page you'll see that i added a "subscribe by email" option. a place called feedblitz makes this possible.

those of you who can't be bothered with configuring rss software can now read the spleen with your favorite email client. all three duped blogs have this option.

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qumana review

2006-05-02T08:22:00.000-04:00

this review applies to the Qumana 3 beta.

stuff i didn't like

it's written in java. java is slow and huge. i doubt the developers will rewrite it for me :) so i'll learn to live with it. Qumana is a great front end to blogger/msn spaces so i can overlook java's glacial performance...

the drop pad. i know this is a big feature point for them but as "text blogger" i have no interest in it. and after reading the FAQ i found out that the drop pad isn't as intuitive as you would think. it didn't work like i thought, so i had to read the FAQ to see if it was covered there. the fact that it doesn't work with msn spaces would limit me to posting images to blogger. thankfully you can hide the drop pad but only after Qumana has fired up.

bugs

the only thing i encountered which could be considered a bug is when i clicked on the 'unordered list' button. i couldn't find a way in the "WYSIWYG" tab of getting out of the list. i had to go to the '"view source tab" and do some editing there before going back to the WYSIWYG tab and continuing on.

[later] after writing this blog, i see how to fix the above so it's not a bug.

stuff i'd like to see

the ability to turn off the drop pad completely.
- when you click on "publish post" i'd like to see some kind of indication verbose of what's happening. right now i sometimes see a "publishing" circle thingy
- the ability to see comments (or maybe a button to get to comments directly) for a particular post.

other than that i'm pretty happy with it. and because it's a Canadian company i'll continue to support it with the "powered by" tag at the end.

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duping blogs

2006-04-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

i was asked by someone why i'm duping my blog to 2 other places:

tkblog

blogger

msn spaces

when originally wrote tkblog there was no other software [that i could google] that did the same thing [ie. standalone, cross-platform, free]. i had to settle for any two of those attributes :)

i only wrote tkblog because blogger had a broken account set up. now of course, you can trip on a blogging program because blogging is even bigger now than it was when i started. msn spaces makes a blog more like a home page and can be set up in less than 10 minutes.

tkblog is 4 years old now. the current beta adds a few features, but definitely can't compete with something like qumana. i think it's ok for someone who's isp gives them web space but not much else, or even someone who runs their own server but doesn't want to bother with perl/php based blogs and the associated back ends.

one one person actually added some code for inline images and tweaked the rss feed code (which has been tweaked and tweaked as the standard changes). for the most part i can probably name tkblog users on one hand...

obviously i feel a certain loyalty to tkblog and i'll still support those using it, but it was written out of necessity and was a good learning experience.

one of the reasons for duping on blogger and msn spaces is that the archiving is much better than tkblog's. both tkblog and blogger allow you to customize that the html/css level. that's both an advantage and disadvantage depending on your level of expertise. . msn spaces has better templates, and the setup is probably much better for newbies.

i'm counting on the longevity of blogger and msn spaces over my isp or any third part hosting company for that matter.

for a java app qumana is faster than i thought it would be, although it does take a few seconds to fire up.

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qumana

2006-04-30T12:40:00.000-04:00

microsoft has been playing monopoly again. this time they've decided that emailing your blog to msn spaces via google will be a hit or miss thing. so far i've had two misses so that's why i'm trying out qumana

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half mast

2006-04-25T15:01:00.000-04:00

when it comes to fallen canadian soldiers the prime minister has decided to "return to tradition" and NOT honour them by flying flags at half mast.

instead, the soldiers' families can wait for the governent's respect on rememberance day.

7 months from now.

it's not like the soldiers gave their lives or anything...oh wait, they did.

i guess my first question is: what does bono think of this? and what's he doing to change it?

stephen harper 0
bono's ego 1

bono: frankly, i'm.... "i'm mystified by the man"

i wonder how many canadian solders will have to die in dubya's war before the canadian people do something about it.

well, just a sec, they DID do something about it. they voted harper in.

how's it working out for you guys?

vcd's

2006-04-23T17:26:00.000-04:00

so. vcd's.

my intention was to burn dltv ep's to vcd so i could watch them more comfortable on my tv and not my computer.

why vcd's instead of dvd'?. two reasons mainly; one, dvd's were total overkill for what i wanted to do. and two, i don't have a dvd burner on the computer in quesiton. i'll likely NEVER have a dvd burner on a computer by choice. i have no need for one.

anyway, it turns out that various movie exectutives, the government, and the authors of ripping software were pretty sure i was going to turn the entire star wars saga into 25 or 30 vcd's.

i guess they don't realize that anybody interested in the special effects of these movies are NOT going to reduce the quality to get them on 25 vcd's

but that didn't make the software hard to find. i eventually settled on a shareware program called super dvd creator it lets me create vcd's from a variety of media formats. all from one program that was handy so that was an easy choice to register.

i found a suite of programs to rip dvd's to vcd's called eazyvcd, but i have no reason to use it.

one thing i learned is that doing something like this for free is going to have you excersizing your google skills. if you don't mind paying a shareware fee, it's a lot simpler.

simpler worked for me.

patrick norton

2006-04-13T10:04:00.000-04:00

every now and then i'd google around to see if patrick norton had finally started a regular blog yet. the last one i saw was here but as you can see that's over a year old...

ever since the tv execs of techtv turned it into a video gaming network [snrk] all the regulars ran from it and the whole thing is unwatchable if you're over 6 years old.

the good news is that i DID find patrick norton at http://dl.tv and he's there doing what he does best.

the offshoot of finding dl.tv was getting into vcd's so i would watch the ep's at night at my own convenience.

more on vcd's next blog...

multitail

2006-03-31T08:55:00.000-05:00

i have a new favorite piece of software: multitail. you need cygwin to run it on windows, but it's worth the install.

i'm a big fan of logs. i've written a number of specific log parsers for my own use, but multitail has made some of them redundant.

if you need to track the progress of any number logs this program is indispensible.

site meter

2006-03-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

added sitemeter to the page. it's also added to my blogger and msn spaces site.

rap sucks

2006-03-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

rap "music". it sucks. it's the suckingest music that ever sucked.

when an example of that garbage gets nominated for an academy award you think "ok, they want to show the world that they're hip and with it and not a bunch of old hollywood cronies."

but then it wins, and you get some ignorant, illiterate, talentless fup accepting the award.

my prediction: next year ALL the nominees will be rap songs.

email clients

2006-03-03T08:21:00.000-05:00

i still have thunderbird v1.5 on my system and i keep it up to date, but it's no longer my primary email client.

for that i'm back to agent. v3.2 has been released and it it included much needed features which probably should have been there as far back as 1998.

i read a lot of mailing lists and newsgroups and it was just too painful using thunderbird to do this. even though you can use the keyboard, thunderbird is oriented to the mouse. agent makes reading/working with email and newsgroups much easier.

burning questions

2006-02-13T19:10:00.000-05:00

like all canadians we have some important questions to ask our new prime minister:

what doe he think of bono (inventor of world peace)?

what does he think of bono's job as master of world peace?

will he grant an audience to bono when bono demands one?

is he "mystified by the man"?

add snrk's where appropriate. snrk.

dark ages

2006-01-23T22:23:00.000-05:00

we just had a federal election up here in the gwn:

stephen harper 1
canadian charter of rights 0

i'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who voted and for setting us back 40 years.

you bunch of feepers.

red tape

2006-01-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

as a canadian citizen i have no real need to go anywhere.

if i WANT to though, i need a passport. i used to have a passport as a kid when i moved to and from europe, but obviously that's no longer valid.

i have all the proper supporting documentation to get a passport. and i'll also have to send $85+ worth of portrats of the queen before i'll get one.

one of the documents i have to send is my birth certificate. not a photocopy, not a notarized copy, my original birth certficicate.

what this means is that i have to trust a branch of the canadian goverment that's handling potentially MILLIONS of passport applications, AND a crown coporation (ie. Canada Post) to NOT lose either my application and birth cerfificate, on the way there, or my passport and birth certificate, on the way back.

so my plan is to apply for a copy or duplicate of my birth certificate ($30+ in queen pictures). and send them THAT copy of it.

and if i get ANY questions about the process along the way, i'll send letters to my MP, MMP, and probably the local paper. it's unlikely to do anything, but at least my objections will be on record.

all this because osama got a bug up his ass about dubya.... if you ask me, george didn't drop NEAR enough bombs over there.

norton's goback

2005-12-30T12:17:00.000-05:00

forgot to mention yesterday that one of the things i tried was an internet security suite offered for free from my isp. it's some kind of deal they have with the f-secure guys.

after installing it, the only real "feature" i could see was rebooting continually on a reboot. i did that twice before using norton's goback.

the cost is $49.95. let me tell you, the first time bill's software has hosed ALL your tweaking and installed applications and you're dreading the reinstalling of EVERYTYHING, you won't even think twice about what you paid for it. amof, you're going to think that was a steal.

firewalls

2005-12-29T14:33:00.000-05:00

zonealarm decided to act up on me today for no reason.

i've had various problems with it. i've moved up an down in version numbers, but i've come to the conclusion the effort just isn't worth it. so uninstalled. never to be used again. ever.

enter kerio personal firewall the deal they have till march 31, 2006 is hard to pass up

pretentious wankers

2005-12-20T11:40:00.000-05:00

i think it's funny when your average movie goer who happens to have a web site (or any online forum) decides s/he's a Movie Critic and starts reviewing movies they've just seen.

one of the worst offenders was/is the filthy critic.

for a guy who's claimed (i say 'claimed' as it's clear there's some movies he's reviewed and definitely NOT seen) to see a lot of movies he's generally clueless to the purpose, plot, and everything else about a movie. i've mentioned this a few times before.

anyway i just read a 'review' of a movie today that said king kong was the funniest movies he'd seen.

everyone pretty much knows the beauty and the beast plot, so there's no suprise there. peter jackson probably has his own take on it as well (i'll be seeing the movie sometime in the next 2 weeks).

i'm assuming (yeah i know , i know) that the 'reviewers' knew they were going to see a big budget special effects movie. folks that only means one thing. consider it a fringe benefit if there's any plot. consider it a bonus if there's any real acting.

if you assume anything else you're a pretentious wanker and shouldn't be allowed to go see movies you don't get.

50cent

2005-12-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

that moron 50cent was in canada the other day.

an agent of our Ministry of Bad Music tried to stop him at the airport but was unable to.

maybe 50cent just shot him. snrk.

harper's not so hidden agenda

2005-12-16T10:40:00.000-05:00

surfing around looking for watchdog websites for the various canadian political parties.

as expected i found blogs where the author thought stephen harper would be good for canada.

i just assumed that the poster was under 30. otherwise he was a hypocrit...unless he actually AGREED with the suppression of our freedoms as outlined in the canadian charter of rights.

triple blogs

2005-12-15T12:27:00.000-05:00

it's probably just a matter of time before i get tired of doing it, but for the last few months i've been duping my blog to my blogger and and msn spaces blog.

i can do it all from firefox v1.5 between, an extension, gmail and a link on my navigation bar that fires up tkblog

Blogger Web Comments for Firefox

2005-12-15T12:05:00.000-05:00

i think i missed the point of googles new "blogger web comment" tool. on any blog read on blogger it seems to be useless...

late fees = no late fees

2005-12-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

up in here in the gwn blockbuster has "removed" late fees.

in reality the process goes something like this

you rent the movie

actually you bought the movie you just rented

if returned before 7 days are up the "sale" reverts back to rental

if returned within 30 days there's a $1.75 "restocking" fee.

and to clarify thats: RESTOCKING. that extra $1.75 is a fee that is in no way related to you being 29 days late with the movie.

harper the nazi

2005-11-29T09:21:00.000-05:00

the canadian government fell last night.

how did that happen you ask?

seems like the distant 4th and the distant 3rd party (ie. parties that will NEVER have a form a federal government) brown tongued the 2nd and voted againt the current federal government in a non-confidence vote.

politically speaking the 3rd and 4th are light years beyond the 2nd. and that will show itself clearly enough when they have to back peddle and support the current government when it comes to issues like religous freedom, medical care, etc.

stephen harper could very well be the scariest man alive. he makes dubya look like clinton. only he does it behind a lying smirk.

open blog to canadians: go ahead, vote for harper. you'll see that the sponsership scandal was meaningless compared to what you get to watch, hear, and think.

self importance

2005-11-25T17:37:00.000-05:00

bobo (clown of world peace)...ok sorry, bono (master of world peace) dropped by the prime minister's (of canada) residence looking for an audience.

so check off the appropriate description:

self important

not self important

i just hope to hell he ran it by buck reporter spicoli first. [a snrk is so inadequate here.]

tkblog v2.50 beta 5

2005-11-23T08:17:00.000-05:00

tkblog v2.50 beta 5 is available.

more info here

portable firefox

2005-11-10T09:27:00.000-05:00

i'll bet you can't do this with internet explorer

suse linux

2005-11-10T08:13:00.000-05:00

recently i upgraded my suse 6.4 box (affectionately known as "frankensuse") the majority of the software i used was compiled from the tarball and the only rpm remaining programs were more of the system level things that with the exception of recompiling the new 2.2.x kernels as they came out didn't get upgraded .

the suse box now runs v10 . it was clear during the install that i hadn't been paying much to the suse world.

now that novell owns it, they've decided to make the iso's available. which should have been done from the start, but better late than never.

tkblog forum

2005-11-09T18:28:00.000-05:00

tkblog forum is now avialble. link is on the right

1001 blogging rules

2005-10-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

sometimes i wish guys who thought they knew how the web should look would just go away

i think this guy means well, but this article saps all the fun out of blogging.
and yes i made a point out of doing something he doesn't like. snrk.

perl6

2005-10-17T17:18:00.000-04:00

i think this pretty much describes my feelings about perl6

magic the gathering

2005-10-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

recently i decided it might be fun to collect hockey cards again [i used to way back when]

i don't need more card boxes to store so it was time to dump my magic cards. i've already given away half of them but i still have a little over 5000 cards to get rid of. i'm keeping the decks i had the most fun with, and would play again when i find someone interested. but my magic days have slowed WAY down

beta's and spam

2005-09-21T09:05:00.000-04:00

saw that there was a new release of firefox [1.07] thought i would update. decided to try out the 1.5 beta 1 also.

more than half my extensions didn't work, so i just gave it a few minutes and then gave up on it. i'll stick with 1.07. unfortunatley 1.5b1 screwed up enough of the settings so that 1.07 had severe display problems. reinstalling didn't help.

norton go back to the rescue. that's twice now that the program has saved by butt.

thought i would blog my experience, and as i dupe this blog on blogger.com and msn spaces, i check to see if any new comments have been left there. turns out that blogger.com allows a new type of spam based on comments.

i've gotten two of these on my blogger.com blog. i think i see now why you can set blogger.com to disallow anonymous comments...

missing the boat

2005-09-20T07:21:00.000-04:00

looks like opera is now free.

it's interesting that this comes on the heels of mozilla foundation setting up a separate entity to handle the money they've been making from the free firefox/thunderbird/mozilla.

i will probably install the new opera to try it out. i'm unlikely to use it though. i've gotten use to the power of firefox and it's extensions. i don't want to give that up.

seti@home

2005-09-14T12:45:00.000-04:00

a few weeks ago i wanted to fire up my seti@home client again...
turns out that boinc is the "recommended" version.

apparently you can link your "classic seti" account with the new boinc one.

after a number of 'wrong email' and 'wrong password' error pages, on the "account activation" page, came to the conclusion that you can't. so the 1300 WU [work units] from my "classic" account are lost.

which is probably a good thing anyway because i don't know wtf the new "credit" system actually translates to. yeah, there's a page explaining it. i'm not sure that giving 16.73 credits for wu is an improvement over 1 wu credit given for wu worth of work though. could be just me [snrk]

versions

2005-09-11T10:51:00.000-04:00

microsoft is going to have 7 different versions of windows. that one gets a [snrk] all on it's own.

so does that mean:

7 different eula's?

7 different versions of office?

7 different versions of each virus?

celebrity blogs

2005-09-08T19:27:00.000-04:00

today i thought i would grab some rss feeds from celebrity blogs. so i hit google looking for blogs to tap.

every celebrity bloglist i found listed the same 7-10.

and all the "best celebrity blog" lists i found listed...the exact same 7-10.

looks like wil [war is bad] wheaton's is one of the favorites.

bill maher had a good blog (left wing that it was) but that disappeared. i think he really wrote his and it was not ghost written by his assistant (like the other 7-10 are)

it's too bad harlan ellison didn't have one. that would be a great blog

but he doesn't believe in computers in general, or in the internet. that's ok mr. ellison, the internet believes in you. :)

the world is safe

2005-09-06T09:06:00.000-04:00

after single-handedly saving iraq, sean penn decides to save new orleans (yes, singlehandedly also)

he was shown how to do it properly when he needed rescuing himself

somebody at the academy forgot to tell mr. penn that the golden statuette was for acting

personally, i don't know why the tree huggers, anti-nuke, anti-war, pro-lifers are worried when it's pretty clear to me that both sean penn and bono are going to save the world. [snrk]

expect

2005-08-24T10:07:00.000-04:00

i'd like to think my scathing blog was the reason :) but activestate just released a new tcl/tk package that inludes expect. for free.

kinda feel sorry for the guys that bought it at the ridiculous price of $300.

radio shack

2005-08-22T18:52:00.000-04:00

i read slashdot pretty much on a daily basis via rss. and a few other tech related websites some how i managed to miss the renaming of radio shack

apparently this is canada only, but still it feels like i stepped into the twilight zone. probably a good thing i'm not a slider :)

what's in a name

2005-08-17T09:11:00.000-04:00

open blog to sean combs:

hey, i gotta an idea. PICK ONE.

here's some for you to chose from:

piffy puffy cloudy diddy diddler doody doodler piddly puddly poodle

not new

2005-08-14T15:25:00.000-04:00

somewhere on one of the links here (profile i think) it says i've been blogging since aug 2005. of course that's not right. that's the first blog HERE.

this is my first real blog.

my number one fan

2005-08-09T08:03:00.000-04:00

i'm not sure i should feel flattered or not, that out of all the blogoshere mr. perdue has singled out my blog...anyway...

i'll quote some excerpts from the comments, and reply to them:

perdue: "Anyway, to the subject at hand: Dan Brown won a round, but the case is far from over."

i guess as long as this thing stays in the news, you will sell a few more copies of your books. to clarify, i had copies before i read dan brown's book.

perdue: "Contrary to the headlines, Judge Daniels did not "acquit" Brown, but quite to the contrary, acknowledged that there were many similarities in the setting, plot and characters, in other words the key ideas making up my books."

let me repeat. neither your ideas, or brown's were original. davinci codex aside, i've run across the basic premise before. i came up with the basic premise in '75 or so. i don't think either one of you should be claiming it's an original idea.

ok, the setting is the same, but i'm not sure that point should be mentioned in the lawsuit. any thriller involving those themes is probably going to have scenes that take place in italy.

the plot of all the books involved was formulaic. certainly not original. same with the characters. male hero, temporary female sidekick/love interest/possible key figure. is there a thriller on the books shelves that DOESN'T have that?

perdue: "Thus, I believe Judge Daniels erred in his decision. "

i'm not sure you're going to get very far with this line of thinking.the attitidue of: 'we're standing in front of you your honour because we think the last judge was wrong...and if you're wrong, we'll just find another judge until he thinks the right way' is very productive.

i find it hard to believe that your books aren't selling more because of the lawsuit. even, god forbid, some illiterate judge decides it IS copyright infringement and awards you the money, you probably still won't have a best seller on your hands, just the winnings of the Litagation Lottery.

as a writer myself, i also find it hard to believe that YOU [as a writer] have not come to terms with the fact that ideas can be conceived of in parallel. and that somebody could get those ideas published before you do.

you conveniently avoided one of my main points: the davinci code is a better read. it's more interesting, entertaining, and it's better written [refer to my two examples of the writing]. i agree with the judge's 'erred' comment about that also.

vocabulary

2005-08-08T12:59:00.000-04:00

[i would have commented on the blog in quesiton, but again, it was elitist
blogger.com only comments allowed.]

just read a blog via blog explosion about somebody complaining they
couldn't swear on various msg boards they frequent.

i think it was isaac asimov that said 'swearing is a crutch for the
illiterate'

'nuff said

test post

2005-08-08T12:46:00.000-04:00

trying to decide if i should actually use blogger or not...