I’ve got a long list of things to dump from my brain. If you have time, go on and read them… using the handy Extended Entry feature that I finally got around to implementing (it wasn’t hard).
Social Networking Websites
Like Becky, I’ve been playing around with some of the social networking web applications such as ***Friendster|http://www.friendster.com/***, ***Orkut|http://www.orkut.com/*** and most recently, upon invitation by ***Nikkiana|http://everytomorrow.org/***, ***Multiply|http://www.multiply.com/***. Social networking is basically the practice of signing up for a site where you can list your name, location, interests, and other personal attributes. You can then invite your friends to join or search for new friends who have similar interests. It’s an interesting way to find and keep in touch with people. Multiply is the most featureful – in addition to the standard person directory, it provides a journaling service, photo album, personal website, recipe sharing, buying and selling services, messaging, and reviews. Kind of everything to everyone. However, I’ve already spent considerable time getting friends set up on orkut, so I think I’ll mostly be sticking to that service. Orkut is an invitation-only service, so you can’t just sign up for it like the other two. If you are interested in Orkut, and I haven’t already invited you, just drop me a line and I will send out an invite. They can take from one day up to seven days to arrive, so be patient.
Olympics
Becky and I have been watching the ***Olympics|http://www.athens2004.com/*** quite frequently, with particular interest in the gymnastics and swimming events. I enjoy cheering on the American swimming team. Last night’s relay, with the split-second win over Australia, was awesome. I also enjoyed seeing Tomas Berdych serve up a major upset to Roger Federer in mens tennis third round last night. Amazing, since Federer is ranked 1st in the world and Berdych is ranked 74th!
Apple Versus Open Source
I have recently been comparing open source versus Apple applications. In particular, iChat versus Adium, Safari versus Firefox, and Mail.app versus Thunderbird. Apple’s native Mac OS X applications are quite slick and nice looking, but they often lack the features of the open source clients. For example, Thunderbird provides robust support for IMAP folder subscriptions, USENET newsreading capabilities, and RSS feed aggregation. Firefox provides a plugin architecture that allows you to extend its features with, say, a plugin to manage your ***Bloglines|http://www.bloglines.com/*** subscription, or a WebDev toolbar that has all sorts of tools to work with webpages. And Adium is perhaps the best example of an app that has an advantage over Apple’s own solution. ***Adium|http://www.adiumx.com/*** is an instant messaging application which supports multiple instant messaging protocols, including AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, and Jabber. You can be signed on to as many of these accounts simultaneously as you like, and you can even merge your buddies so that one contact in the buddy list represents that person’s IM names for every service they have available. Adium also arranges multiple IM sessions into tabs in one window, to help avoid screen clutter. ***Give it a try|http://www.adiumx.com/*** if you’re a Mac user. You can see all six applications in question in the screenshot below:
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Screenshots
Speaking of which, you can see from the above that I’ve created a new screenshots section in my photo gallery. They’re not really photos per se, but I wanted a convenient place to stick all of that sort of thing. So you can ***check it|http://gallery.prwdot.org/screenshots*** periodically to see what sorts of things I’m taking screenshots of.
Oldschool ADB via the iMate
Also tech related, I recently purchased a used ***Griffin iMate|http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imate/***. This dongle hooks up to my USB port and allows me to plug in my old ‘ADB’-based input devices, in particular the ***Adesso|http://www.adesso.com/*** TruForm contourted keyboard which I had to give up when I purchased the Sawtooth G4 last year. Now I have the joy of less fatigue and proper hand positioning when I type at home! It is also nice to use a contoured keyboard both at home and at work – previously, I’d use the contoured keyboard at work all day, then come home to a plain old flat keyboard, and it was just awful. Now it’s not. Yay! It also enables me to once again use my Kensington TurboMouse trackball, which is also ADB-based.
Films by Peter Wood
Finally, I’m not sure I’ve ever posted these on the website, but in any case… I have in the past year created a few “music videos” using ***iMovie|http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/***. These include footage I have shot using the movie feature on my digital camera, set to music of my choice. Here are the links:
***Driving In Boston|http://prwdot.org/mov/DrivingVideo.mov*** – 25.3 megabyte QuickTime movie, featuring footage of the Zakim Bridge and Central Artery Tunnel in Boston. The musical backdrop is “Insensible” from Mandalay’s album “Solace.”
***The Ice Is Tossed|http://prwdot.org/mov/IceTossSE.mov*** – 10.4 megabyte QuickTime movie, featuring footage of Jeremy tossing a piece of ice into the frozen waters of Cape Cod. The musical backdrop is “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.”
I hope you enjoy my music video creations. Warning – if you’re on dialup, they’ll take a while to download. Also, be sure you have your speakers turned up or headphones on, as the music is really half of the appeal of these movies.
In Closing
Ok… I can feel that space in my brain finally freeing up now that I’ve got all of this stuff out on the web. I promise, some day I will take the time to implement the ‘extended entry’ feature of ***MovableType|http://www.movabletype.org/*** so that this whole entire long post doesn’t need to show up on the home page. A project for another day…
(Obviously, I have done the above…)