Category Archives: Tech

Writer’s Block

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Nothing to read here, move along.

I have had very little motivation to write something new here recently, sorry if I disappoint anybody (probably not, you are most likely immune to the blog droughts by now if you are still coming here today). I have only these few things to share, which I have freely stolen from Boing Boing and Table of Malcontents:

Amazing acrobatics that make me feel old and tired just watching it. I don’t think I believe the title of the video, which definitely sounds a tad make-believe, but the video itself is still compelling.

Then a cool video about a promotion for Jeep with an incredible waterfall display. It’s mesmerizing.

And finally a quick link to a happy little fun game where you play as an infectious disease, and your job is to evolve in the right way to infect and ultimately kill all of the nasty humans on the planet. What a better way to lift your spirits on a Friday afternoon, than by eliminating those pesky frickin’ bipeds?

There you go folks.

Weekend Tech

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So it looks like if all goes according to plan I will get some time to attend to technical matters at home this weekend. I have not even glanced at the stuff there for a long while now and things are still running fine, but there’s some crusty stuff I really want to clean up.

For one, I am going to finally get some disk for the server at home. It’s nothing all that special, technology-wise since I live well behind the curve of new technology, but it will be a large increase in space (~5 fold) for the media library, and it will probably cost me $100. Yeah, things are not that cutting edge at Vallentyne.com. Don’t get me wrong, I work on the cutting edge, but I live way back on the handle.

Then it’s time to start a fresh new music library. I have been muttering about this for years now, but this is the time, the time is now. I’m going to take some shortcuts, but it will still be a long time before I’m all done. The music folder has something like 5500 songs in it now, and I am not all that happy with the quality of some of them. So I am starting again and will be taking much greater care to get good quality MP3s from the beginning. That means hauling the huge box of CDs up from the basement and ripping my heart out.

Another change which I should have done long ago was to have a single iTunes library for everyone in the house. I originally started off by taking a selection from the main library and storing it on my workstation. That in hindsight was a huge mistake and is more or less why I need to fix all of this crap now. Similarly, when Nikki got her own iPod I had started a new library just for her workout stuff. Needless to say I have made a mess of things and it’s time to fix it. So I will be doing something similar to this article at Lifehacker, and have just one iTunes library for the whole house. This will let us all share playlists and song ratings, etc. The hard part will be finding ways to not lose my ratings to date, since there’s just way too much time invested in those to lose altogether.

Once we get a nice solid library of songs, then I can take some care and fix up our photo library in much the same way. Well, I can’t actually go back in time and take better pictures of our kids when they were young, but I can organize those pictures better and have meaningful names and tags. That way I can maybe actually find them when I am looking for them. Of course one weekend is simply not nearly enough time to do all of this, but the main thing is starting a job. Then I can plug away at it bit by bit later.

Finally the whole point of doing all of this work is so that one fine day I can buy something like this or this and easily use all of my music and pictures, and eventually, videos with ease.

It’s good to be a geek.

Apple products release

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Aw crap.

Apple just announced a mobile phone/iPod/smartphone that I suddenly have a deep abiding NEED to have. What the hell is it about this company? I also want one of their TV streaming devices. I can’t link to anything yet, the keynote speech is still going.
Sigh. Sorry Nikki, there’s a few hundred dollars I’m going to want to spend on toys.

Ok, here’s an update now.  The Apple TV thing is here, the iPhone is here.  Man, that’s cool stuff.

I’d like to table a motion…

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I have seen it around the webs lots lately, so another me-too post of this thing just can’t hurt.

I would suggest that this table is probably the coolest piece of furniture I have ever seen. There’s just nothing quite like it. Click on the videos and watch this baby move.  It’s like furniture porn (never thought you would read that sentence, eh?).
Product Site

Video #1

It’s made by a company with one of those web sites that finds it vulgar to put an actual price up for people to see. It’s like a “If you have to ask you can’t afford it” thing. Still, way way cool table.

Please give me back my lunch hour

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I will never have the time I spent on this Flash game back, so whatever you do, don’t click on this link.

It’s a fiendishly difficult game where you try to spot the differences before the time runs out.  Some pictures stumped me for a good long while….  Wilson, this game is right up your alley since it’s all about the subtle differences in a series of photographs.  I expect big things (I made it to level 27 before fiscal responsibility kicked in).  I’m not sure if there is an end or what happens since I have physically torn my eyes away from the screen and am going to do some useful work elsewhere.

I stole this from Table of Malcontents, which is a good source of Internet weirdness.

Evil Genius Creates World-Destroying Blender

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Here’s a great angle on marketing your product.  This company makes incredibly powerful blenders for home and commercial use, they have had some fun around the office by trying to blend lots of things, and someone in the office (very smartly) decides to start taping these things and put them on the web in a sort of video blog.  It’s so smart, I am jealous.  It’s entertaining and immediately makes people start talking about your product (which to be honest looks like no other blender I have ever seen, this thing is maniacal) and instantly generates buzz.  So smart.

Have a look at this thing in action, it’s a little scary how easily it makes dust out of anything; marbles, golf balls, a whole coke can, etc.  Too fun to watch.  It certainly proves to me just how good these blenders are, that’s for sure.  I want one, for no real reason other than the ability to make cochicken whenever I want.  Yum.
I saw this first on Gizmodo