Saturday, May 14, 2005

11:27:47 AM    comments

B. F. Skinner. "The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." [Quotes of the Day] 10:17:26 AM    comments

Saturday, April 9, 2005

Accenture-ating the Positive. One of the biggest names in consulting disappoints the Street. But should investors be upset? [The Motley Fool] 12:42:02 PM    comments

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Blaise Pascal. "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." [Quotes of the Day] 9:26:01 PM    comments

How To Make a Podcast. Yesterday I posted my first podcast. I thought I'd take a minute to write down how I did it for anyone else so inclined. Equipment After asking some friends for advice (like Doug Kaye, Thanks Doug!), I used the following equipment: Behringer Eurorack UB802, an inexpensive 6 channel, 2 mic input mixer. Behreinger Eurorack UB802 mixer. This is an inexpensive mixer with two mic inputs. Both have phantom power, which is needed to power the mic I used (see below). I spent about $45 on this. There are other options, like the UA-25 USB Audio and MIDI interface which goes direct to USB, avoiding lots cable woes. Its much more expensive and is not a mixer, but its also compact and runs off USB power. Perfect for mobile use. I may pick one up yet. Griffin Technology iMic USB Audio Interface. This is not strictly needed if your machine has a line-in port. In any event, I like it because I use USB as a poor man's Powerbook dock and this eliminates two cable plugs. Behringer B-1 Studio Condenser Mic Behringer Studio Condenser Microphone. This is a great mic at a great price. I picked mine up in Orem for less than $90. Its not portable, as you can see from the picture. It comes with a case, shock mount, and wind sock. The stand, I picked up at Radio Shack. I was a little worried about noise from the floor and desk through the stand, but it doesn't appear to be too big a problem. A more portable option would be something like the Shure Sm58. Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones. I already had these. You don't need noise reduction for this application. I do think that closed air (i.e. covers the ears) do better at preventing feedback and are more comfortable. An Apple Powerbook (1 Ghz with 1G of memory). All in all, I spent about $150 on equipment I didn't have. You could get by with a cheaper mic that plugs directly into the computer, but I tried that and you can definitely tell the difference. I figured it was worth the $150 to sound a little better since I sound bad enough as it is. :-) Software The software set up that I used was Dave Slusher's recipe for OS X podcasting at Evil Genius Chronicles. Dave's recipe is good. I had a few comments: Soundflowerbed seems to be very touchy. You use it to get the audio from the Soundflower channel you've set up as a sound bus out to the headphones. I had to start and stop it multiple times to actually get it to route sound and it crashed at times. There was a delay from the mic to the headphones that made speaking difficult since you don't hear yourself until a little while after you speak. Consequently, I turned off the headphone feedback when I was speaking. This was OK for soliloquy, but wouldn't work for an interview on the phone. Audacity works well, but has a steep learning curve. For someone who's never edited sound before, it was an interesting experience. I'm not above paying money for something if its easier to use. Suggestions? The one thing I used that's not on Dave's recipe was my hacked version of ListGarden. I used that to create an RSS feed with the enclosure. I could have just put it in my regular RSS feed using Radio, but I decided to create a separate feed for podcasts and ListGarden makes that really easy. Technique Here was my technique. Feel free to critique if you've got suggestions that will help be do this better. Load the full Gillmor Gang into Audacity. Listen to it and make comments to myself on a label track. Go back and re-listen to interesting bits based on my comments. Record the response to them right there on a separate track. For each clip (I had 4 or 5), duplicate the original Gillmor Gang track and then cut out the right piece. Order the tracks vertically in the order I want to put them in the finished piece. Audacity makes reordering tracks difficult unless I missed something. Move them in time so that they follow each other. This is easier to do my compressing time a lot, getting them mostly right, and then expanding time to fine tune the placement. Delete unwanted tracks, edit the ID3 info, and export as an MP3. As I mentioned yesterday, recording this took me about four hours. Dave Slusher took me to task in response to me saying "Recording is hard because when something goes wrong, pretty much the only choice is to start again. You can't easily go back and change one sentence or remove a mispronunciation (at least I can't).": What the? I do this every time I ever record one. In fact, in tonight's episode I removed about 4 minutes of coughs, stammers and false starts into topics that I decided to abandon. That's over 10% of the final result. This suggests that the real core is in the last part, the "at least I can't" bit. I'm curious to find out what Phil's setup is. Is he using a tool that doesn't have a waveform editor? If so, he could easily use Audacity for free anytime and would have that capability. Or, is this just a case of failing to RTFM? Folks, you can in fact edit the audio, remove mispronunciations or even insert new sentences in place of burbled or erroneous ones. I do it all the time... From Evil Genius Chronicles - No Honor Amongst Systems Referenced Fri Dec 03 2004 10:28:27 GMT-0700 I'm sure Dave's right, but its just felt like I was swimming in molasses and faced with the prospect of inserting some material in the middle of another clip and removing and repairing several verbal bobbles, it just seemed easier to rerecord it to me. Certainly, as I gain experience with Audacity, that wouldn't be the case, but I don't think you can argue that its as easy as cleaning up text. Text has some very nice properties. That said, audio has other properties. Doug talks about IT Conversation's ability to give you back bookmarks on audio clips so that you can reference them in a blog. That's nice for somethings, but I wanted to say what I was thinking, not just write them. That's the beauty of podcasting. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog] 6:40:04 PM    comments

Saturday, July 10, 2004

Provinces I have visited create your own personalized map of Canada or write about it on the open travel guide 4:32:40 PM    comments

States I have visited create your own personalized map of the USA or write about it on the open travel guide 4:30:35 PM    comments

Countries I have visited create your own visited country map 4:27:25 PM    comments

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Costs of Warming on the Rise. Scientists say climate change is upon us, and the longer we wait to do something, the more expensive it will be. Also: New York air is getting worse.... Coral reefs gain protection. By Stephen Leahy. [Wired News] 1:00:34 PM    comments

Controversial Accenture deal moves ahead. An effort to block a homeland security contract awarded to the company, whose parent is based in Bermuda, stumbles in the House. [CNET News.com] 12:41:58 PM    comments

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Bertrand Russell. "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." [Quotes of the Day] 4:54:42 PM    comments

Saturday, December 13, 2003

Magnetic Field Is Fading, but No Dire Effects Are Foreseen. Geophysicists increasingly wonder whether the magnetic field has begun one of its occasional reversals that, over time, might lead to compasses pointing south instead of north. By Kenneth Chang. [New York Times: Science] 12:37:49 PM    comments

A lazyweb request after reading this:  Someone should register the domain "phoneswap.org", and build a quick website (no - not a business) that does two things:  1) acts as a clearinghouse where you can post the phone/technology (and carrier if it's locked) that you have, and the carrier/technology that you're switching to, and 2) has a community-supported "how to" on helpful hints for swapping contacts - perhaps even technology-assisted.  If you just want to get rid of an unused phone or other device or pda, you could be offered the option instead to formally accumulate whuffie. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog] 12:29:56 PM    comments

Friday, November 28, 2003

First Impression. "Compliments have more power when they're delivered directly." -Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey , Harvard Graduate School of Education [Fast Company] 10:59:33 AM    comments

Sunday, November 23, 2003

George S. Patton. "Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." [Quotes of the Day] 7:01:57 AM    comments

Saturday, September 27, 2003

Nokia Nokia Leaps into the Future. Nokia Stuns Everyone "Well, much to our surprise and delight, that Nokia phone we reported on yesterday turned out to be real. But it's not called the 7800, it's the 7600. And further stunning everyone, Nokia's also coming out with about a million other new products today. Besides the 7600 Imaging Phone (which is a WCDMA/GSM phone with a 65,000 color display, Bluetooth, and a built-in digital camera), Nokia also unveiled a new line of "Imagewear" products for displaying and viewing digital photos, including two medallions with tiny LCD screens, two digital picture frames, and a digital photo kaleidoscope. Read - Nokia 7600 Imaging Phone Read - Nokia Medallion I Read - Nokia Medallion II Read - Nokia Image Frame SU-4 Read - Nokia Image Frame SU-7 Read - Nokia Kaleidoscope I" [Gizmodo] Some very cool stuff here that, unfortunately, I don't have time to delve into deeply tonight. Alan Reiter handles some of it for me, though. [The Shifted Librarian] 11:26:32 AM    comments

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Mozilla search plugins. Mozilla search plugins Don Box notices a cool IE feature. The view-source: protocol is supported. I tried it and it worked. Even cooler, I wasn't in IE at the time, I was in Firebird. I guess we should call it a browser feature :-) ... [Jon's Radio] 4:56:53 PM    comments

Test Post from NetNewsWire It would be better to use Word for Linda? 4:19:50 PM    comments

Meteor Impact Is Linked to an Extinction of Fish. Just as dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago when a meteor struck the earth, many fish of an earlier era about 380 million years ago may have been similarly killed off. By Kenneth Chang. [New York Times: Science] 3:46:39 PM    comments

Sunday, May 18, 2003

Google and the Visible Web. Dave Winer reinforces Doc Searls' important point about the "Googlewashing" debate: He says, "If you want to be in Google,... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 7:48:09 PM    comments

Sunday, May 4, 2003

New Software Gauges the Size of Imminent Earthquakes [New York Times: Technology] 8:56:32 AM    comments

Saturday, May 3, 2003

Dailey quote Robert Heinlein. "The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive." [Quotes of the Day] 2:36:48 PM    comments

Sunday, April 20, 2003

upside down maps. A fresh perspective on world maps. Francis Irving writes about his fascination with upside down maps, "It needn't be a Eurocentric world." Why haven't more upside down maps made their way into our daily life? [MetaFilter] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 6:01:28 PM    comments

Andy Grove on the confident leader. Intel's chairman discusses decision making, intuition and corporate governance in a conversation at Harvard Business School. [CNET News.com] 5:49:53 PM    comments

Saturday, March 29, 2003

Carl Zwanzig. "Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...." [Quotes of the Day] 6:18:28 PM    comments

Changing World Technologies.  This company is about to open the doors on its first commercial plant.  It is working with ConAgra to turn turkey offal (a byproduct of Turkey processing) into light commercial quality oil, natural gas, purified water, and commercially valuable minerals (all at very high quality levels).  Amazingly, this same plant can process just about anything (from plastic bottles to sewage) and turn it into commerial materials without any nasty byproducts.  Economic analysis indicates that the plant will produce oil at an estimated price of $15 a barrel (which is commercially competitive).  The process involves changining the waste products at the molecular level.  This could mean that landfills may become valuable sources of raw materials for reprocessing and that recycling will become a thing of the past (no downcycling of plastics for example).  Very cool and seemingly credible.  If the claims are correct, we should see these plants become ubiquitous in the next ten years. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 6:10:58 PM    comments

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Protecting and Improving Democracy: Canadian Style. The Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chretien, recently submitted Bill C-24 to the House of Commons entitled Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act(Political Financing). He then delivered a speech about Democracy and how it has been corrupted in the United States and how it will be improved in Canada. Mr. Speaker, democracy is a living thing. The history of the world teaches us it is a fragile thing, as well. To be nurtured. To be encouraged. To be promoted. And to be defended. I know philosophers say that there is no such thing as a "perfect democracy". Of course that is true. Any society is a work in progress. But the truest test of a living, growing democracy like Canada is the extent to which our institutions strive to live up to our ideals. For it is in continuing to measure ourselves against our ideals that we reaffirm their power to inspire....In the United States the fitness of a candidate for office is judged first on his or her ability to raise huge sums of money. Rather than on his or her brains or ability to lead. They call it the "money primary", Mr. Speaker. And it takes place in the shadows. Long before an idea is expressed. Before a speech is given. Before a vote is cast.1 [kuro5hin.org] 10:04:18 PM    comments

Timothy Leary. "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." [Quotes of the Day] 10:03:42 PM    comments

Blogstreet presents Visual Neighborhood. Visual Neighborhood helps you to see the inter-connectedness between blogs and is a way to map the social network of blogs. It's indeed a very cool service, using TouchGraph visualization tools and Blogstreet neighborhood system. Definetly worth a visit. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog] 10:03:08 PM    comments

Why Nerds Are Unpopular [Slashdot] 10:02:32 PM    comments

Terra-Cotta Army From Early Han Dynasty Is Unearthed. The Chinese have raised another army of remarkable dimensions, hundreds of foot-tall terra-cotta warriors that come from a tomb site south of Beijing. By John Noble Wilford. [New York Times: Science] 9:41:46 PM    comments

Thursday, February 6, 2003

Herbal Remedies: Natural Does Not Mean Safe. The popularity of herbal medicine and other alternative treatments has sharply increased. But they continue to remain unregulated. By Jane E. Brody. [New York Times: Health] 9:24:20 PM    comments

Groove upgrades collaboration suite [InfoWorld: Top News] 9:23:16 PM    comments

Male Biological Clock Starts Ticking in Twenties [Scientific American] 9:22:13 PM    comments

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

GVO - A New Year and a New Kenya. After a two month hiatus the Geek Volunteer Overseas series returns with this fourth part. Since college closed for the Christmas holidays, my social life in Tala has improved with strengthened friendships with locals. The elections held in late December and the reverberations (still being felt as I write) left in its wake have made this a new Kenya - one that is different from the one I landed in four months ago. [kuro5hin.org] 8:42:36 PM    comments

Saturday, January 11, 2003

365 days of mp3. For the entire year of 2003, the 365 day weblog will feature one mp3 file (every day) to download. The content will be focused on musical pieces, but will also include spoken word.   If only there was an RSS feed with enclosures to accompany this... [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 3:22:46 PM    comments

A conversation with Ray Ozzie. Ray Ozzie, founder, chairman, and CEO of Groove Networks, has been a creator and harnesser of disruptive technology since the dawn of the client/server age. In a conversation with InfoWorld Test Center Director Steve Gillmor and Lead Analyst Jon Udell, Ozzie discusses the unique nature of disruptive technologies, the role of collaboration tools in the workplace, and the emerging law of unintended consequences. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio] 2:13:56 PM    comments

Monday, December 9, 2002

United bankruptcy weighs on EDS. Electronic Data Systems says its fourth-quarter earnings will drop 5 cents per share due to aircraft-lease deals with United Airlines. [CNET News.com] 9:11:19 PM    comments

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Approval of Park Drilling Angers Environmentalists. The Bush administration has approved drilling in Texas along the nation's longest stretch of undeveloped beach. By Blaine Harden. [New York Times: Science] 9:51:16 PM    comments

Earthweb on weblog software for IT managers. [Scripting News] 8:45:19 PM    comments

Sunday, October 13, 2002

MacCritic.com: I just learned about MacCritic.com. Pretty cool. It has an RSS feed. [inessential.com] 5:44:47 PM    comments

How Africa Landed Motherlode of Gold. Scientists have debated for more than a century why so much gold accumulated in the Witwatersrand Basin. By Kenneth Chang. [New York Times: Science] 5:42:57 PM    comments

Euripides. "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." [Quotes of the Day] 5:37:07 PM    comments

Slowdown on U.S. Visas Stalls Business, Science and Personal Travel Plans. A global slowdown in the issuing of American visas to foreigners is forcing some people to postpone medical treatment and weddings and stranding others away from their homelands. By Christopher Marquis. [New York Times: International] 5:36:13 PM    comments

Bombing at Resort in Indonesia Kills 182 and Hurts Scores More. A car bomb that detonated in front of a nightclub on the Indonesian resort island of Bali was one of the worst attacks on civilians in Southeast Asia in many years. By Raymond Bonner. [New York Times: International] 5:34:07 PM    comments

A Fitness Guide for the Brain. "Saving Your Brain" offers a number of steps to fight against the decline of brain function. By John Langone. [New York Times: Health] 5:28:34 PM    comments

Monday, July 29, 2002

Harlan Ellison. "The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity." [Quotes of the Day] 9:31:44 PM    comments

Microsoft serves up Palladium details. Technology to create 'trusted space' where apps run [InfoWorld: Top News] 9:30:39 PM    comments

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

BlogRoots BlogRoots The BlogRoots authors are publishing their book on the Web, in its entirety. Chapter 8, Using Blogs in Business, is online now. Excellent. 10:28:54 PM    comments

Apple details Mac OS X Up-To-Date program [The Macintosh News Network] 10:21:52 PM    comments

Sunday, June 30, 2002

Steve Yost on ubiquitous collaboration tools. Steve Yost, inventor and proprietor of QuickTopic, disagrees with David Weinberger's assertion that collaborative software fails to thrive because companies are afraid to "hyperlink the hierarchy." The real problem is more mundane, Steve says: ... [Jon's Radio] 6:59:08 PM    comments

Sunday, June 2, 2002

One of tomorrow's innovations. More links for Radio weblogs. It's going to point to the blogroll OPML, if it's present; and to mySubscriptions.opml, and a change in the format for the link to the RSS feed. We won't release the code until tomorrow, to provide a very brief comment period. My Radio weblog already has the three types of links in its head. View source to see what they look like.  [Scripting News] 6:39:09 PM    comments

Tired of strategic planning?. Many companies get little value from their annual strategic-planning process. An in-depth examination by McKinsey finds that it should be redesigned to support real-time strategy making and encourage "creative accidents." [CNET News.com] 6:07:22 PM    comments

Friday, May 31, 2002

CSG Strategy 9:28:45 PM    comments

Sunday, April 7, 2002

Risks Are Allowed. The author of this article finds that people often stay in a place they think is safe, even though they're miserable. And she says that's a terrible way to live. By Carole Black. [New York Times: Business] 11:12:33 AM    comments

Saturday, April 6, 2002

Tools for web browser editing on the fly 1:37:49 PM    comments

O’Reilly: Tips for Building Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL. [mac.scripting.com] 1:36:46 PM    comments

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

New Satellites to Map Gravity More Precisely. Minute variations in gravity around the globe can tell us about the Earth and what's going on beneath the surface of the land and the oceans. By Warren E. Leary. [New York Times: Science] 9:04:18 PM    comments

Monday, March 18, 2002

10:15:02 PM    comments

Olympus introduces new 2MP camera for $200 [MacNN] 9:46:45 PM    comments

Saturday, March 16, 2002

Ernie: Blogging towards Knowledge Management.  [Scripting News] 5:29:58 PM    comments

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

desideratum desideratum: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. desideratum [Dictionary.com Word of the Day] 8:07:53 PM    comments

Sunday, February 10, 2002

Daniel Berlinger: "I discovered a huge scary limitation in OS X TCP/IP support."  [Scripting News] 1:34:48 PM    comments

Wednesday, February 6, 2002

Alabama 5/14/05; 12:28:25 PM Hello Dave! 8:19:49 PM    comments

South Carolina 8:17:38 PM    comments

Monday, February 4, 2002

Hello Dave! 8:48:48 PM    comments

Saturday, February 2, 2002

exiguous: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. exiguous 8:06:29 PM    comments

Sunday, January 27, 2002

Intel Chairman Grove talks roots. It is a rare book by a corporate CEO that isnät either a trumpet blasting his visionary insight and strategic brilliance or a dramatic and mawkish retelling of his climb to the top. Grove avoids such cliches in his new book. [CNET News.com] 8:40:58 PM    comments

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Palm's wireless i705 hits shelves [IDG InfoWorld] 7:13:46 PM    comments

Must Do Investment Checklist. The checklist is just a part of what you get in our Choosing Stocks seminar. Enjoy this complimentary lesson. [The Motley Fool] 7:06:20 PM    comments

New Radio 8 feature. Now you can post to categories without posting to the home page. If you have categories enabled, there's a new checkbox, the first one, called Home Page (it effectively becomes a category). By default it's checked. Now you can easily publish multiple weblogs, going to lots of different locations, from one edit box. Screen shot.  [Dave Winer: Radio UserLand] 9:04:35 AM    comments

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