I went to see Any Given Sunday last night. I loved it, but I'm into the whole football thing. The Flash on the site is pretty good too. A friend of mine had told me earlier in the week that he thought it was Al Pacino's best performance to date. There were some great cameos in the movie, including Oliver Stone, the director, posing as a television announcer during the several games that were featured in the movie and Johnny Unitas as an opposing coach. A great cast including, besides Pacino himself, James Woods, LL Cool J, Jamie Fox, Matthew Modine, Cameron Diaz, Lawrence Taylor, and Bill Bellamy. A North Dallas Forty for the nineties with better undertones.
A beta version of Macster , a Napster client for the Macintosh, has been released.
My brother and his girlfriend just arrived from New York to celebrate the new year. Should be some fun going on here over the next few days. He's the first family member to visit me in Atlanta.
Watch out Apple, there' some powerful looking PowerPC machines coming down the pike for running LinuxPPC. This one , the RioRed, looks pretty badass.
Many others are pointing to it today (I found it at rc3.org), but the origin of a browser , about Netscape's evolution, is worth pointing to nonetheless. I remember all of it almost, except for the first couple of beta versions. It's amazing that this was only a few years ago because it feels like forever. I actually still have the retail boxed version of Netscape 1.1 with manual in original packaging. i've been hanging on to it for nostaligia purposes. Perhaps I'll scan the box and manual covers and post them. Any interest in seeing that?
I'm really struggling with the installation of an Ethernet PCMCIA card on my Linux Laptop.(Red Hat) Anyone care to help me through this? The whole story: I've got a 3com Cardbus 575BT card, and the default PCMCIA support in Red Hat is installed. I added the card driver and the Card driver binding to the PCMCIA config file, and the notebook doesn't recognize the card at startup.
They've updated the site for The Lord of the Rings movies. It's even got some shots from the movie that look fantastic. I'm really hoping that they do this epic story justice.
You can pretty much(not surprisingly) forget about getting any decent domain names based on Lord of the Rings characters.
I installed Corel's Linux OS on my Intel box at home this weekend. It's definitely the easiest to install version of Linux that anyone's come out with yet, and it's almost completely appropriate for a novice user. I like the default install of Red Hat 6.1 better, but I had Linux installed in about half an hour.
If you have a color printer, this gift box PDF from lindkvist.com is neat for holiday gift giving.
I ventured out to the mall today after yesterday's really mixed Internet shopping experience. Man, people are out of control, fighting in the parking lot over spaces, running right into each other inside the mall. Really into the holiday spirit. I'm pretty much done with my shopping.
Virtual Plastic has to be the best site I've found that covers customizing and tweaking your Windows based PC's GUI.
I went into some sort of Icon frenzy tonight. You'll find an extensively updated ICON section on the links page.
First, where I think they are the same. Both provide a Web based editorial environment from which to update your site. Both allow you to do this within an HTML framework of your own choosing. Blogger allows you to edit and upload regardless of where you are and where your site is hosted. Manila, today, is strictly limited to editing pages that are on a Manila server, but you can do that from any Web connection just like Blogger. I’m sure that Userland plans to add the ability to use Manila to update sites served on non-Manila servers from static HTML, or even possibly other types of dynamically served environments. Both editing environments are compelling, but Manila’s supports as many pages as you create, where Blogger is focused primarily on pages that contain Weblog entries. This ends up meaning that Manila has much wider reaching applications and can be used for every page of a site rather than just the actual Welog page. The entry interface on blogger is seperate from the actual page of content you are posting(see screen shot above.), and I think that it makes it a more friendly interface for the daily entries that it is focused on. Both environments support multiple author sites.(Which I won’t be using, but others might want to know about.)
The editorial environment on Blogger 2.0 is also more mature.(Thus the 2.0 in its name.) It features a search engine that allows you to pull up your entires with certain strings in them. When I have two hundred daily entries in this new site, it would be really useful to have this feature. Manila provides the same functionality, assuming that you have the search engine turned on and indexing your site. Blogger also allows you to preview and then edit your posting before actually publishing it to the site. I would like to see more customization of the editorial environment in both apps. I would like to have one place as a site editor with all of my links to frequently visited sites and the edit interface for the site. This is possible with Manila through some template customization, but I haven’t gotten to that stage yet.
My recommendation right now is determined by your situation. If you have an existing Weblog type site and already have a hosting environment and space, you’re better off using Blogger. It will take far less reworking to get things up and running, and you won’t have to sacrifice any other server side stuff you currently use such as PERL, Cold Fusion etc.. If you don’t have these things, the space on Userland’s Manila server offers you a chance to set things up from scratch and benefit from Userland’s ongoing improvement of their offering. If you have your own server box, you can buy Frontier and set up your own Manila framework for your self and others.(I have a retired desktop machine serving 9 sites) It’s worth mentioning that Userland has been improving their software on an almost daily basis. I have my copy of Frontier automatically update itself over the Internet every night, and those new features will appear in the interface seemingly out of nowhere. I love that.
Now, my dilemma. I like both environment’s, but I have more content on my site than just the Weblog entries, and I have some plans to add to that content so I like the fact that Manila offers me the full site editing functionality. I’m not currently using anything server side with my site, so that’s not an issue. Bump has been hosted by Mindspring since before I even had the domain name, and the hosting includes mail and dns. In order for me to move Bump to Manila, I’ll either have to bite the bullet and build that stuff for my Manila server or continue to pay Mindspring for the space without actually using it. Another issue that I haven’t touched on are my legacy Weblog entries. There is no easy way to move the two years of entries that I already have into either system’s framework. I could do this with Manila by doing it by hand in the Guest Database framework that Manila is built from, but the amount of labor that would take seems pretty monumental. So I remain undecided, but leaning towards using Manila.
Well, I've let this site slip again. I've been cleaning up the remains of a long running project at work, and playing with Manila, the BeOS, Red Hat 6.1, and Yellow Dog Linux. I miss being able to spend a lot of time playing around with technology. This site will be back in full force starting today.
I've also put a little time in with Blogger, and have two redesigns of this site to choose from now. I built one in Manila and another with Blogger. They are really similar in some ways, but way apart in others. I have the apartment to myself this weekend with Kate out of town, so I'll try to clean them up and point to them for your feedback.
One of the surfers who is a long time source of material for this site solved my shoe buying issue by pointing me to MO . They've got all the Simple shoes I could ever want.
This site has a bunch of tech support phone calls. You may have heard some before.
This excellent editorial piece explains why the current standard set of thinking about Web business models as either Business to Business or Business to Consumer is to simplistic. I think most forward thinking Web strategists have realized for a while that this hybrid approach is where things are going.
What this site lacks in usability it makes up in having links to hundreds of Web Development resources. I'm going to need a few hours to take it all in.
Please ignore my link to Bookit. Upon installation, I discovered that it's crippleware, making it impossible to tell whether or not it would really be useful without first paying a $5 fee. However, the crippled version managed to crash my machine twice before I trashed the whole thing.
I've never mentioned it here before, but I have trouble with my feet. it seems I was born with some extra bones in them(which means I have more bones than you so ha.) I break these extra bones if I'm not careful, so I have to wear special inserts in my shoes. Anyway, what I'm getting to is that Simple makes my favorite shoes and sneakers because they are wide enough for my huge, extra boned feet. They have a good loking site too. Although they haven't figured out yet that they could actually sell their shoes online and make it easier for people to find them.
A couple of years ago I used to use a universal bookmark manager on my Macs named Webquick. It disappeared and ceased to work with current versions of the operating system. In the time since then, I haven't found anything that was easier than using my links page to keep track of things. It makes sense for things I visit all the time, but what about "the big list" ?Well, Bookit looks like it might be the answer to my need.
Userland launches http://www.editthispage.com . If you registered on their site as a user prior to December 1, you get a free manila Web site for 60 days.
Bump Design (which I am not afilliated with in any way.) has a really well designed Flash site.
I haven't written about new Weblogs that I find useful in quite a while, mainly beacause of a comment that somone made in regards to this site being primarily about Weblogs. However, there have been so many new ones created in the last couple of months that I like that I wanted to take a minute and tell you about a few of them that I'm impressed with.
Backup Brain is hosted by two people, and it makes for an interesting mix of content. One of the authors, Dori Smith, and I met last year at a Web conference when all of the Frontier people at the show went out to lunch. I like the tone and content of this blog.
Megnut is maintained by a member of the Pyra posse. They seem to be a real special bunch considering how good Evhead and this newer(to me) site are.
Lake Effect has grown on me over the last month. I take back my earlier comment that I don't like the color scheme.
I like TurlyMing's simple design and strong content. Also based in the Weblog capital of the world, Atlanta.
O'Reilly, by far the best technology book publishing company, is finally coming out with a book about the Mac OS . I swear they get about 5% of my salary every year.
A Day Without Weblogs may have come and gone, but what is important is that you remember what it was about in the first place.
Userland Software started marketing Manila yesterday. They have a nice pull quote from me listed on their release announcement site . It's strange to see my name associated with the others quoted. My manila server is moving along, and I added two new sites today. I am finding all sorts of ways to use the software that I wouldn't have thought of just knowing what the feature set was going to be. It's changing the way I write a little because it's so easy to update. When I find something, I don't hold back, I write it into the site then. Before I would hold things until one moment of the day and then update. It's a good change.
After almost two months, I finally feel like I'm hitting my stride at my new job. It feels great. It's a lot more compressed than any of my previous jobs, and it feels good to be squished.
PayPal.com offers an interesting micropayment service between friends, co-workers etc that is email based and also hooks up to your Palm OS Device. This would really come in handy when it's time to split up those lunch tabs.
Manila Update: Server now has 7 sites running on it. No performance complaints at all.
I'm not digging the new Industry Standard redesign. It looks to me like it was done by committee, and I think it lacks cohesiveness. The other design fit the personality of the magazine and site content better IMHO.
The little guy wins? Am I in the right place? I thought the big corporations and their fancy lawyers always won these sorts of cases. Will wonders never cease?
I've started a Manila based log site that will be aimed at people interested in Gadget technology named GadgetLand . it's the first public Manila site that I have worked on. I expect the template to change quite a bit as time allows me to customize it.
The people who brought us the Powerpage and Nobeige.com have started a Palm oriented site at Palmlounge.com
I had a great Thanksgiving. I traveled home to Connecticut and spent it with my family, some of whom traveled all the way from California. We ate way too much, and had some great talks. Thanks Mom and Dad.
The trip also made me realize that there are a whole group of people that read this site that don't read other Weblog sites every day. I leave things off here assuming that everyone will have already read about them somewhere else, and that's just not the case.
Userland released Frontier 6.1 today. I've been using the betas for a few weeks now, and have set up a server running their Manila framework. It's really, really, easy to set up and configure. It's also really easy to use to build sites. I expect to chronicle my experiences, and those of the others who are using my server to create sites, right here on Bump. Someday soon, Bump will be a Manila site. Update: I'm up to five sites on the box now. People are digging it. I'll post a list when people have stuff up and want to be pointed to.
Omnisky is offering a special deal to people interested in beta testing their Palm V wireless modem and service that includes unlimited usage and a lifetime discount. Unfortunately, there's no coverage in Georgia.
I went to see Sleepy Hollow tonight. I didn't leave disappointed. Tim Burton creates a beautiful, spooky look and feel for the movie and Danny Elfman's score added the perfect touch. I won't give away any of the plot elements here, but I think the screenplay did a good job of dressing up the classic tale for modern audiences. Johnny Depp was both dramatic and comical, and Christina Ricci was splendid in her role, better than both, however, were the supporting cast of characters that really made the movie.
Lots of graphic straight on shots of people being beheaded in this movie. The Web site is basically the standard marketing fare I've come to expect from Hollywood. Even post-Blair Witch, I don't think the studios get the power of the Web. The site does have some great Wallpaper/Desktop Pictures from the movie.
Wes over at Hack the Planet has some comments today about Wired sudden growth in size. You can add Fast Company, Business 2.0, and The Industry Standard to the list of magazines that have exploded in size over the last six months. I wonder how they manage the amount of editorial that has to go along with the amount of ads they are selling. I haven't seen as much of a decline in focus in the other three as in Wired. All of them are getting to the point where I don't want to carry them with me when I travel, it's like carrying around a phone book.
Here's a milestone. This is my first update to Bump via the wireless access via my Airport card and Base with my iBook. It's nice to be cable free!! I set the whole thing up in less than 10 minutes. It's as fast as any of my Ethernet connected computers or even faster.
Userland's Weblog Monitor is pretty useful, but I don't see any advantage to it over Linkwatcher's similar feature. Of course, I wouldn't mind syndicating either here on Bump. I'm searching for some new features.(Of course, if I updated once in a while that might be a good start towards having some content up here:-)
I bought a new Windows machine for my house. It's a 600 Mhz Hewlett Packard. I wanted to have a desktop to experiment with and do Windows specific development on. My office is getting crowded. In an unrelated story, I hit a high curb while rounding a corner in a parking garage and put a huge gash in the runner underneath the right door of my New Beetle. The kicker: the parts cost only $57, but the labor to install them will be $588. Is it just me, or does that seem to be a bit unreasonable?
Speaking of High Bandwidth and Flash, check out Pixelon. Their full screen video is the highest quality streaming video I have ever seen. (Registration Required/Windows 95/98/NT only)
I was in Los Angeles last week meeting with some clients about a pretty exciting project. Not an excuse for not updating, I just didn't have the extra mental energy I needed to get to it. It seems like I have been traveling way too much over the last month and a half, and Bump has definitely paid the price as a result. Things will get better, I promise:-)
Sony takes Palm OS in hand This is very exciting for two seperate technologies, the Palm OS and memory stick. Looks like Sony is very committed to making it one of the storage standards in every industry. I'm glad I haven't invested in a new Palm or Visor now. Palm is reaching critical mass and proving that you can compete head to head with Microsoft and win if your product is good enough and you have the savvy to fight them from a partnership perspective.
Well, today marks the two year anniversary of this site. Later today, I hope to have the new design posted in honor of this fact, but I haven't had the time to get this task done I wanted to have. It's been an interesting two years, with the emergence of sites like this one as a movement of sorts.
It's hard for me to take the celebratory stance I see elsewhere on the Web about the findings of fact in the Microsoft Anti-trust trial. It's good that this document recognizes that there is a problem with Microsoft and the way that they as a company have chosen to conduct themselves, but this case is really so far from over that I'm amazed by the decisivness of reporting. Most likely, Microsoft will try to settle so they can have some input into the resolution rather than having one forced on them. If they don't settle, they will drag whatever verdict they get through a series of appeals until they get closer to what they think is reasonable.
I've been using the new Mac OS 9 for a few weeks now, and I'm pretty happy with it. Initially, before Adobe had updated their type tools, I was unhappy. I like the ability that I raved about with my iBook to program the function keys which is now built into the operating system. It seems considerably more stable on my G3 Tower than 8.6 was.
I went and bought a console MiniDisc recorder yesterday to match the portable MD player and recorder I've had for a couple of years. It's a great format for recordable music, making masters of mixed tapes(which I have a 20 year history of making), and taking music on the go with you.
Waferbaby offers cool pixel based serial comic animations. Worth a look.
Uptime is a free Web based server monitoring service that sends email to you at any address you specify if it can't reach your Web server for a specified amount of time
I think the last three weeks constitue the longest gap in Bump's almost two year history.(I will hit two years on November 7th.)
Some good reasons for the gap. I switched jobs, and I now work at Arthouse . It's a great, young company. I work with, among a really talented group of people, Jack over at Saturn. My next reason was a trip out of the country. I visited St. Martin for ten days just after Hurricane Jose blessed it's shores with 24 inches of rain. Even though it wasn't the perfect vacation I had planned, it was good to disconnect myself for a time. I'm now slowly returning myself to my normal schedule, surfing and posting.
Dave seems to be posting more content to Scripting News on a daily basis than he has as long as I can remember. It's an indication that there is a lot going on in the Weblog community and in Frontier development. I welcome it, but it's taking me forever to get through all the days I missed while I was away.
Sony launched Trivial Pursuit on the Web this week. I used to love playing the board version. Too bad I don't have enough free time right now to explore the Web version more.
On October 5th, DMOZ.org passed the million site mark.
The Beastie Boys are releasing an anthology named The Sounds of Science on November 23rd. You can also build your own two disk anthology and choose from 150 songs at this site . Ever notice that they don't ever sell their music for television commercials?
I read the newest issue of Discover Magazine on the plane on the way back to the U.S. The cover story was a terribly scary story about Mt. Ranier's inevitable eruption and the destruction in the greater Seattle area that would follow it. I didn't know there were magazines still so afraid they didn't post their whole stories to their Web site, but Discover doesn't. Here's a link to the one paragraph they do have up.
I've posted a live one page copy of my redesign in progress here . I would love to hear comments and opinions. It's just a single page right now. If you do email me, please let me know what platform and browser you are using.
Symbian, Palm Combine to Outflank Microsoft. This is huge for both of these platforms. It also should advance both quite a bit and we should see more vendors offering Palm compatible devices.(The article mentions Nokia licensing the new products.)
kottke.org has been both redesigned and personalized. The new main design is a bit bandwidth intensive, but is quite good. Unfortunately for me, I had a yellow backgrounded incremental redesign in progress, and I don't think I'll bother finishing it now. There shouldn't be too many yellow Weblog sites.
I was interested in this new Nokia 8800 phone, but this review from FreshGear makes me think otherwise. It's still a cool looking phone.
Always the sucker for any kind of science fiction television, I tuned into Fox's new series, Harsh Realm , last night. As you may know, it's the new series from the creator of the X-Files. I really enjoyed it and saw a lot of potential for it to be an amazing series. It reminded me somewhat of the concept that The Matrix was based on. I found myself wishing that it was longer, but it's on again Sunday so if you missed it you have another chance.(Baseball may be on instead if the series don't wrap up by then) It is loosely based on a 1993 Comic Books Series , but seems like it has been a little more limited to keep the budget down.
Someone mailed me yesterday asking why I don't choose to include all of the things I post here in my RSS syndication file. I look at it in two ways: I only want to include stories in that flow that I think would be interesting to a broader audience. I think the rest are for people that come here on a regular basis. I find that I get more hits from what I actually post that way.
It appears from the light rebuttal/clarification in today's Hear Ye! that I misunderstood/overreacted to what was written. It's worth mentioning that I do like the site, and I went back and read several months of the archives. We actually seem to have a lot in common interest wise.(With the exception of the platform thing of course.) I have been taking myself a bit too seriously recently. Well, it happens, and a wake up call isn't a bad thing. As a result, I'm endeavoring to check out more pages in the Everything/Nothing set this weekend. Aside from the name difference from the "Weblog" group, there doesn't seem to be that huge a difference in the type of sites that populate the community.
It's funny though, because he actually wrote about much the same topic in relation to Linux zealots on March 7th. It's the same attitude that he is talking about and that he is frustrated by. Even if he didn't have that attitude in his original post, there's no shortage of it on the Net.
Rafe over at RC3.org mailed me about an essay he wrote in 1997 that's relevant to my mini-essay. I remember this time for Apple quite well. The company was at a point where it could have gone either way. For people who are primarily Mac Users, it was a dark time. It's a good explanation of why he feels the way about the tools he chooses to use. "I want to use the tools I love." I read Rafe's site every day. He finds good technology stories and tidbits on the Web, and he talks from a knowledgable and opinionated standpoint.(Windows lovers tread gently, He doesn't care too much for Microsoft.)
Anyone who regularly reads Jesse Berst's columns will be shocked by this one. Think Different? Why Jesse Wants an iMac . I think this is just an attempt to get more people to read his column by being controversial. Here's some news for you Jesse: Macs crash about as often as Windows machines. Maybe not for everyone, but people who really push their machines will have problems no matter what they are using. The bottom line is that there isn't the attention to quality that there needs to be in the software industry. As a side note, my new iBook has only crashed twice in the week I have had it. Both times, I was using beta software that caused the problem.(Mozilla M9)
This CNN article has the phrase "'They're just luscious,' Jobs purrs." in it. What kind of writing is that? He purred? I somehow doubt he actually purred. Later in the article, he also "gushes."
While I'm in a critical mood, here's a pet peeve. Why do people who put their press release online on their own site leave the phrase at the bottom that says "For more information see (insert link to site you are already on here)?" Here's an example . To me it says "our publicity firm doesn't get the Web."
One really cool thing about my new employer is that they have agreed to let me put a Web server for my personal use on their network. I still have to decide what platform I want to use. It's a tough decision.
