lyle e dodge

Zoundry looks like a pretty cool blog editor for Windows. Lately at work I’ve been charged with setting up a blog system for one of our company divisions. I’m tempted to switch it back to Wordpress but we’ll see how it goes.

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This is seriously a random 5am rant, but I just couldn’t help it. As if freedom.istheshit.net wasn’t funny and just a bit ironic on it’s own I found a very disturbing video (video should auto-play below) on Google’s latest step-child, YouTube. (If you don’t know what YouTube is, check your calendar…it’s 2006, are you still using Checks too?) Now, onto the video:

Totally awesome, huh? I’m so excited about the future—aren’t you?!? BTW, if you’re mystified by the meaning and purpose of all that you might find enlightenment from the ABCNews.com article about the situation.

Green Day & U2 have teamed up for an interesting song to benefit New Orleans. I typically loath seemingly selfless acts like these but after reading the Rolling Stone article on it, I’m convinced it’s cool. I’ll let you use your superior search abilities with YouTube to find the video. Suggested keywords: green day u2, it’s that easy folks! Sure…251 hits but 80% of the ones on the first page are the right one, but enough out of me.

What do you think?

There isn’t much I can say about this, just watch:

Edit: Well, Ted actually took the time to explain this and you might want to give it a whirl. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I first saw this video.

(If the embedded player doesn’t work for you just visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXre7MDT0bA and see for yourself.)

Upgrades all around! I just upgraded Wordpress which powers this blog from version 1.5.1 to version 2.0.4. It took less than 10 minutes and appears to have gone very well. That and I recently upgraded MythTV on my Media PC to the latest version that came out a week or two ago. It just highlights how I need a better video card, one capable of doing some OpenGL acceleration. The card I have now is not Scottish…and we know if it’s not Scottish, it’s KRAP!

So, I upgraded Wordpress in the first place hoping it might spark an interest in me blogging on a more regular basis. I don’t know what accounts for these bursts of attempts at spouting my opinions to the world. In a sense, maybe it’s about leaving some sort of legacy behind, something to show the future generations. Yeah, right.

MythTV is pretty swanky, but I need to get remote-control support going again now that I upgraded the kernel and such. Nerdy talk…

Have a peaceful fall, and check back here often enough to keep me interested…ok? Deal?

I support an open society.  I believe that the more open people are and the more they share with the world, the better they become.  Of course, it puts one in a vulnerable place by exposing too much.  On the flip side of being "open" I also support personal privacy.  I think the direction the internet is going will allow more people to intercommunicate in a semi-free and semi-private environment.  Self-expression is important and this latest artform is really exciting to me.

As part of this open concept and something that’s exciting to me is that I’ve accepted a position with Terra Resource Group in Everett, WA.  I’ll be reviewing a formal offer letter in the next few days and negotiating the finer points.  My work with Terra will include pretty much everything related to Information Technology. At this point it’s part-time but I plant to continue working part-time for WWC remotely. 

Using an alphabet soup of technolgoy like VPN, VoIP, IM, Email, and Video Conferencing I can virtually be on campus.  In addition we make extensive use of BaseCamp (for project management) and Eventum (for issue tracking) so we can more easily mange a workgroup spread across the globe—we even have a student working from Moscow. 

Lots of work to do to get ready for this move…some of which I enjoy other parts I loath.  All the best,

Hate is a strong word, but I loath the concept of a "first post". I read Slashdot a fair bit and everyone thinks they’r so cool when they make the illustrious "first post". Rah rah. And sure, this is my "first post" using a blogging client that’s integrated into a new "web browser" (Flock, which you really should checkout: http://www.flock.com/).

The term "web browser" should be used loosly here, as I consider Flock to be a "hybrid browser" combining the best of weblogging in the form of photos with flickr, blogging (several flavors) and a really advanced RSS feed and agregation system along with a really neat way of managing favorites. Oh, and slick integration with del.icio.us—I guess the list goes on, and I’m especially happy to see this browser come from the Firefox codebase. Rah rah.

Ok, so this "first post" was really just a weak attempt at having something to say. I post so rarely here that I’m not sure it’s worth it. But maybe antrhopologists will find these old blogs on old crashed hard drives when they dig us all up hundreds of years from now and wonder what in the world we were blathering on about. Speaking of blathering…good luck, and good night.

My latest fun project was setting up MythTV which is a really neat system for managing all your media right on your television. Basically, a TiVO on performance enhancing something-or-others. Allows me to watch, pause, rewind, and record Live TV through a tuner card in the computer. It also features a very easy-to-use scheduler for recording shows you like and it handles all your pictures, music, arcade games, weather, news, etc. It’s pretty swank. I hope to add multiple tuner cards so I can record 2 or more shows at once. We’ll have this moved into our swanky living-room soon so we can actually watch it on the TV. Right now it’s just on the computer cause I’m testing and have been for the last day or two. It’s fun.

For the curious, I installed Redhat Linux Fedora Core 4 to one of four 120 gigabyte hard-drives, so I’ll have at least 450 hours of video storage and that’s before any sort of tight compression. If you’re ever around my place, ask for a demo—it’s cool.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of "VideoBlogging" lately…basically a megamedia convergence of text, video, audio, and pictures.  Maybe fun, maybe lame but we’ll see how well I can put it together and if I can come up with any compelling content.  And this is the key.  PodCasting is fun…but not when the content is lame, and there’s plenty of that. We’re on the verge of a redefining of what is media as we know it.  The landscape is changing and it’s good to at least stay aware.

To that end I’m tinkering with a WebCam and would like to place it here on the site…but I need some better tools so this is just for fun experimentation now.  Add me to your IM and ping me if you have a comment on any funny face I might be making.

live.lyledodge.com

So, I love my linux experience. Frankly, Windows and Microsoft in general can go to hell. But…in all my forays into Linux I’ve come to understand something I’ve intuitvely known. As each new operating system “innovation” (for which Microsoft deserves no credit) there is a push-pull that just makes them all better.

So far now we’ve said “there will be no mainstream desktop linux” which is bull, but the pressure from Windows and OS X is certainly making all the linux systems more palatable. Anyhow, I’m rambling so i’ll conclude with the note that Mac OS X is “darn tootin cool”.

I took a 6 hour ‘nap’ tonight, it was great. But it reminded me that I’m not getting rest like I should. I’ve often tried to aim for an early enough bedtime to be functional the next day. And it seems the older I get, the more sleep I need to be useful. That stinks, but hey—it’s reality. Of course improving my health helps in that regard so we’re working on that too.

But this nap got me thinking about the concept of “sleep deficit” so I googled it and found an interesting article, albeit 5 years old, that you might like reading. It gives slackers everywhere hope!