Shooting at Virginia Tech  

I'm 7 years removed from being at VT, but I've still got a huge pit in my stomach. If you're away from Blacksburg and trying to keep up with what's going on, here are some resources:

Collegiate Times

Roanoke.com

Techsideline.com 

Umm .... seriously ... enough with the rain  

I guess it's better than getting like a foot of snow, but this miserable 3 day long driving rain storm is starting to annoy me. I don't really mind the rain, generally, but I'd love it, you know, if the sun came out. And maybe if it got warm enough that I could run outside. That would be fantastic.

The only good thing is that everyone who has today off and was going to enjoy the whole Patriots Day festivities of watching the Sox and the Marathon are going to be stuck inside like the rest of us suckers. Serves them right for taking off a fake holiday.

Twitter  

I didn't know what to make of Twitter. If you've sort of missed out on what it is, figure a cross between blogging and updating your IM away message. It's all about sort of micro-updates about what you're doing. It's limited to 140 characters, which forces you to stay concise, and allows you to do updates via a text message, or the web, or any sort of app you want to build that interfaces with Twitter.

Then, people can "follow" you or "friend" you, just like on pretty much any social network, and get updated to what you're doing. People can have updates sent to their phone, IM, or just over the web (HTML or RSS). It sounds so egotistic and silly: who would want to know what you're doing all the time? Do people care that much?

It sounded so stupid. I checked out some of the more famous Twitterings (?) online and I wasn't sold. Then, I went to Vegas. I wanted to send notes back to people at home--you know, just silly stuff. I signed up for Twitter and gave it a shot. I really haven't stopped using it since. The ability to just send a text message off to a phone number and have it update a little blog is pretty powerful, and can (depending on how many people use Twitter in your little network) be pretty helpful if you're looking for some quick info from your friends.

I can think of a whole bunch of other uses (some of which I'm going to try to implement at work ... we'll see how that goes), but, fundamentally, it can be a useful way to get some information out when you don't have enough in your brain to do anything too big (like update your blog ...).

I'm guessing it'll fade out, but Twitter is a handy fad. I'd almost like to sync my Twitter status to my IM status/info, so people can sort of follow me however they'd like.

The other good thing about Twitter is that it's one way. It's only outward communication (though you can use it to sort of carry on a conversation) which is nice, particularly these days when there's just so much data flying at you (for instance, at work, I'm on 4 IM networks, plus two email accounts, plus normal web stuff). Twitter's unidirectional (monodirectional?): I just spew and I don't have to listen back. Not very friendly, but sometimes it's what you need.

I'm going to try to add my Twitter feed to my blog (look that way ---->). We'll see how it goes.

Wow ... Slashdot's Playing April Fools  

I poked over to Slashdot this morning before I ran off to basketball. I saw this:

Holy crap. That's ugly.

Clicking the little link to vote takes you to a Thank You screen that says that voting will help ensure the best stories are presented. I would have expected something more interactive, more (dare I say it) Web 2.0-y.

Then I actually read the Thank You message:

"Thank You for participating in the Slashdottit Rating System

Your vote in the Slashdottit system will help insure the best stories are presented to our readers, with hyper accurate numbers to indicate their relevance and general awesomeness. Only by requiring the contribution of every random user of the internet can we guarantee the most scientifically perfect numbers will be generated. These numbers will guarantee that every story that appears on Slashdot will be interesting, insightful, and flawless. Vote early, vote often."

Ha. Clever. April Fool's. Well played.

So Far Behind  

For whatever reason, I've been busyish lately. Work got crazy, then I had jury duty which made work crazier, then I went to Vegas for my boy's bachelor party. I made it through it alive, and probably only gained like 10 pounds eating burgers and drinking beer. And I would have made some money in Vegas if Kansas didn't suck.

But, I'm now back a week and I still feel behind. I tend to collect a lot of media -- podcasts, stuff on my DVR, Netflix movies, books. I'm usually pretty good about working my way through stuff, but I just haven't been able to get caught up. I still think I've got 5 or 6 unheard podcasts that I'll probably get through over the next few days of work. I've got a couple of Netflix movies that I've had since January that I ended up ripping to my Mac just so I could get some new ones (really, I'll delete them when I watch them!). I'm midway through a couple of web-dev books (Perl and CSS) that I'd hoped to be done with by now.

I'm at least caught up on the DVR, which is good, since most of the shows I like are off for a little while.

Hell ... I bought the new Kaiser Chiefs CD on Wednesday and only started listening to it today (I like it so far; not sure why PopMatters and Pitchfork shit all over it).

So, if I can make it through all of this fun media in the next week or so, I'll probably finally get back in gear and do some of the stuff I've been meaning to do (new podcasts, a new website I've had mocked up for about a month now, writing more here). Which will be good, because I'm far more energized when I'm doing something productive.

More on TiVo + Amazon Unbox  

Last week, I tried out Amazon Unbox downloading to the TiVo for the first time. The experience went pretty smoothly, though I'm pretty certain it won't replace Netflix or OnDemand in my usage.

I finally had a chance to actually watch the movie, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. The quality wasn't too bad, and I was able to even stretch it out to fill my 16:9 TV. The quality was about what you'd see on digital cable, which is better than what I normally get on TiVo, but obviously worse than DVD. But, for a movie like Idiocracy, it was perfectly acceptable.

Given that I've still got some money left on the initial $15  credit, I'll probably keep grabbing cheap movies where visuals aren't important. There's still slow download times (I've got an older TiVo and an older wireless adapter, so I don't get great transfer rates) that mean this isn't instant gratification. But, it's not a bad thing to grab a movie every now and then to watch when I have some free time.

Honestly, the worst part about the service is probably the Amazon end, where the search and navigation is nauseatingly bad. It's impossible to quickly browse and easily distinguish TiVo-compatible movies from those that aren't available for the TiVo. That's going to be something that needs some refining if this is going to catch on with more than the early adopter crowd. The iTunes Movie Store interface is far easier and significantly more attractive.

iTunes + Apple TV are probably going to defeat Amazon + TiVo in the long run, as the Apple combo has better quality, faster downloads, and a nicer interface. But, since I'm not shelling out another $300 for Apple TV, I'll probably stick with Netflix and BitTorrent, which, for me, is the best of all options.

Phew! VT Pulls It Out  

My Hokies played a horrible 32 minutes, followed by a pretty solid 8 minutes, to pull out a 54-52 victory over Illinois. I hope to hell they work on free throw shooting all evening.

The good news (besides the victory) is that they got a game under their belts and got a bad game out of their system. They'll need to bring it when they play the second round game against either Southern Illinois or Holy Cross.

Champs!  

EA calls it! Virginia Tech to win the NCAA Title during March Madness. Go Hokies!

TiVo + Amazon Unbox  

One last thing tonight: I'd been reading about the integration between TiVo and Amazon's Unbox service, where you can download a movie or TV show from Unbox and have it delivered to your TiVo. TiVo has sort of lost me as a user, as their HD DVR is way too expensive, and as bad as the Comcast/Motorola DVR software is, I can record HD and do pretty much everything I need to do. The TiVo has been relegated to backup recordings and occasionally streaming some music.

However, TiVo and Amazon are offering a $15 credit, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I signed up for it today--it was very easy, you just sign into Amazon, then type in your TiVo account info, and you're done--and scanned through for something to download. I didn't want to get a TV show, so I grabbed a rental of the recent Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. It cost about $4, which leaves me a good amount of credit to rent a few more movies or TV shows. The rental last a few days after download.

Now, after about an hour, it's only downloaded about 1/3rd of the movie (I've got an older wireless adapter), which means this isn't going to replace On Demand for instant gratification. On top of that, it's not in HD, so I'll probably never use it when I could use On Demand or Netflix.

But, for stuff that I'm not worried about being timely or high quality video, it'll be worth playing around with. Frankly, I doubt that this will take off. I just don't have much of a desire anymore to watch stuff in crappy TiVo quality. I've got a laptop that I can download movies/shows in high quality, or watch them online in high quality, and I can access them faster than the TiVo can get them from Amazon.

So, it's sorta cool technology, but I think it's a little bit of "too little/too late" from the TiVo camp. I don't think this will compete with Apple TV; I don't think this will compete with BitTorrent and a laptop; I don't think this will compete with On Demand. It doesn't win on price, quality, or convenience.

Well, at least I don't think it does, since I haven't had a chance to watch it, and it won't let me start watching it until it's fully downloaded.

My Small Impact on the World  

I went to check out my Evite To Google Calendar script page at Userscripts, since I like to poke in every once in a while and see if anyone is actually using my script.  Last I had checked I had about 4 downloads.

Today: 64! 64 people have installed it. That's pretty cool. Granted, that's not a ton, but it's a lot more than before! I left a comment, since I'm hoping someone will follow up and let me know if anyone really finds it useful.