Aimless Wandering

I’m still really interested in the D-Link DSD-150, but I think I’m going to wait a bit.  After reading the reviews on New Egg I’m a little concerned that this device isn’t quite there yet.

I’m really troubled by the person who complained that the DSD-150 interefered with their VoIP and since we use Vonage, I’d prefer not taking down our phones…

I suspect that with a firmware revision or three the situation will change.

Anybody heard of this thing?

I stumbled across this on the D-Link site and was intreged (When WordPress 2.1 comes out I won’t make such spelling errors ).  One box and the processor hogging, RAM eating anti-virus and firewall software can go away, heck it even works with Macs.  Sounds cool.  But is it any good?

I’ve only been able to find a three reviews, two were positive, the other was pretty negative however I think that’s because he was trying to use it with Windows 2000, which isn’t an issue here.

Now before all the Mac lovers say I should just get Macs and then I wouldn’t have to deal with it…  There’s two here, one of which I’m using to type this post on, but we can’t go all Mac (and I really don’t want to).

Anybody got any thoughts?

Journalist/Blogger Om Malik addressing a group here at WordCamp regarding the difference between bloggers and journalists.

He made a really simple comment about a very basic concept…  And promptly lost several attendees…

It’s simple, if you want credibility as a journalist, you can’t just start a blog and fire away.  If you want the companies, organizations, and people that you want to write about to take you seriously, you needs to establish credibility.  That credibility is earned, you can rarely just fire up a site and go and expect to be taken seriously.  It’s going to take determination and time.

It seems to be a difficult concept to grasp, either that or there are quite a few people who think that they can become the next TechCrunch/Gizmodo/Huffington Post/etc and that they can do so overnight.

So, let me make one thing clear about THIS blog.  I’m not a journalist.  I’m not looking to be your definate source on anything other than what’s going on in my mind.  Beyond that, I don’t expect to be too credible about ANYTHING!

….and as I suspected the situation is improving.

Some random thoughts and observations….

There was a guy who does a podcast who doesn’t format his podcast in MP3, but rather AAC. It’s an interesting idea that works well for him since he does a Mac-centric podcast. However, I don’t think it will work for about 90% of the podcasts out there who are concerned about loosing their listeners who don’t use iPods.

I met a gentlemen who has offered to assist me with figuring out what the heck is going on with the podast over on the Cruise Planners news site. Something between iTunes, Feedburner, and the feed coming off the site isn’t playing along with others. He works for Apple, so at the very least he’ll be able to let me know if iTunes is the problem or not.
Matt Mullenweg, was scheduled to talk about “the state of WordPress,” I was impessed with how this session went. In reality it was less about where WordPress is and where it has been, but more of the users commenting, suggesting and asking about the program. Most of the comments were pretty good, and based on the impression I got from Matt, provided they are technically feasible, many of the suggestions may come in future versions.

One of the coolest mentions, Wordpress 2.1 (I believe the next version) HAS SPELLCHECKING!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

According to Matt, the code base for Wordpress as it stands now is very stable (and I think the several hundred thousand people who use it for the blogs would agree with that), and the majority of the updates now are feature improvements and security updates.

I was also very impressed with Matt’s commitment to making WordPress as simple to install and easy to use as possible. While he admits there is still plenty of work to be done, it’s a big priority for the development folks.

Power on the other hand continues to be an issue. It’s been a challenge finding three prong outlets that are A)free, and B) work.

While power has been an issue, internet access has not. The folks who provided the WiFi appear to have setup a pretty robust network with enough bandwidth to support all of the flickr posting in progress.

…. and already I’m pissed off.

This is an event that was thrown together in 30 days (maybe less) and it shows…

Let’s see first there’s the parking situation… UMMMM there really is none.  The nearest garage is a mile away and the rest is all metered, with 1 hour limits!  Obviously nobody told the organizers that if they didn’t want their attendees constantly running out to move their cars then they might have wanted to come up with a location that had some halfway decent parking.

Planning, it would have been nice if the schedule for the event was posted more than 9 hours before the start of the event…

Power…  Your holding an event where almost everybody attending is going to have a laptop in a building with few outlets…  How about sending an e-mail out more than 9 hours before the event allowing people to plan to bring things like oh power strips and extension cords.

Check in? The line was out the door for at least 30 minutes before the event started, and eventually they gave up on the check in just to get people up to the first presentation.

I can only assume that it will just get better as the day goes on… But so far, it’s pretty lame…

I’ve frequently joked that some people need turn signals, because determining their intentions is dang near impossible…

But I never thought that anybody would actually go ahead and make them!

Up on e-Bay (of course) you can find indicatears, which amoung other things according to the seller are “perfect for fancy dress parties!”  Ok, I’d like to see somebody wear these to their next black tie event….

So here I am, spending another less than thrilling evening babysitting a dorm full of 18-24 year olds and hoping that tonight they don’t blow themselves up/light the building on fire/get drunk and puke any where/trash something/etc…

I could be doing something usefull like working on some paperwork that I need to do, except that stuff is on my portable hard drive… which I have…  However the cable to connect it to a computer… well, that is what I’m lacking.

So instead to try and pass the time I find myself discovering things like the bizarre pillow below or looking for a decent recording of London Underground’s “Mind The Gap.”

Tomorrow however should be a halfway decent day, but to find out why you’ll just have to click on “more.”

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Now these are pretty cool. 

These are solar powered bricks with LED lights embedded in them.  These are neat little accent pieces, I wish I had these when I was landscaping our old yard.

I’m not sure I can decide if this is a unique new parenting aid, or a creepy new way to overly pamper AND ignore your infant all in one fell swoop…

Meet the Zaky pillow

These bizare disembodied hands are supposed to allow your child to continue to think that you’re touching them… even when you’re not…