FeralBlog

I had a thought last night. I should write a plug-in for Microsoft Word that kids can use for paper-writing when they have to have some sort of arbitrary length for their submission; like 5 pages or what have you. This plugin would automatically shrink the margins, double-space and increase the font size, but only up to the upper limits of acceptability; no logic in making it 50 point. That would just give it away. It would have a thesaurus attached, so you could find the longest and most cromulent words to substitute in. Word already has built-in grammar checking, so you can probably make sure that everything still makes sense after you’re done. Of course, if I could bring in a bunch of 18th century slang, I could just have it be a Mr. Burns filter for all the little ragamuffins out there.

The only problem as I see it would be marketing. Any sort of email with subject lines like “Increase your size by 50%” and “Rip your teacher’s emotions apart with your massive paper” are likely to get picked up by spam filters.

My bill payment service seems to have let their domain registration lapse. I just called to confirm that they’re not going bankrupt or anything like that, and apparently they’re not. They better hurry up and get their domain info renewed and propagated… I got bills to pay, yo!

Update: Everything seems to be back in order. Domain registration screen has been replaced by the regular home page, and bills have been paid.

My work machine has been pretty slow as of late, and after running a spyware scan I concluded that it’s because I’m a little low on memory (only 1GB). So, just for an experiment I cannibalized my home machine and threw some more memory in the work one. Now, with 1.5GB it seems to run much faster, so I went online and found another 1GB (2 512MB modules) for $80, shipped. It’s a wonderous age in which we live.

Airplane graveyard, as seen by Google Maps. This is only a few miles from my house. Found via jwz.

Google Maps coverage of Area 51 is redacted! They’re hiding aliens!

Google Maps has now added seamless satellite photos to its already stellar map service. I guess when they bought KeyHole last year that it was bound to happen, eh? So far it seems to be pretty cool, and makes finding pictures of addresses a whole lot easier than that Microsoft Terrawhatever site from a few years back.

In other news this afternoon is my followup appointment to find out what’s going on with my poor belly. I’m sure it’s not going to be anything bad, but of course I’m completely nervewracked about it.

News from yesterday shows that TiVo has signed a deal with Comcast, which is a huge boost for the company, especially after it looked like that deal wasn’t going to get done. I think that being able to get their product out there in front of everyone for a low monthly fee (based on what other cable companies are doing with their rentable DVRs) we are going to see a lot more converts to the cult of TiVo.

The head of the Feral Marketing Department and I were chatting this morning about TV and shows, and he mentioned that he’s probably cancelling HBO at least, perhaps until the Sopranos are back on. I’ve been thinking for awhile about my own TV-watching habits for awhile as well.

When I moved here I put the bulk of my crap (including amazingly oversized TV) into storage. I did pick up a small-ish set for PS2 playing in the guest house, but for the most part I haven’t missed my TV at all. Part of the reason is that not having DirecTV installed here has made me watch a hell of a lot less television. Another reason is all the “stuff” that I have going on as well; relationship, biking, climbing, poker, etc. I’m house-shopping now, and giving serious consideration to not getting any sort of pay service when I find a place.

Right now there are 3 shows that I try and watch on a regular basis: 24, The Daily Show, and The Simpsons. I’ll catch the occasional CSI or L&O with Kim at her place (with her huge rabbit ears and no cable), but for the most part that’s it. I’ve found that all my TV needs can be met by the Intarweb, even with my woefully crappy connection. I have Azureus running with some filters set up, so when I get on the computer Tuesday through Friday mornings, I’ll have last night’s Daily Show sitting and ready for me to watch. 24 I can either catch at Kim’s, or I’ll have that downloaded (with very good quality, I might add) a day or so after it airs (it’d be faster if my connection speed were better). When the new seasons of Sopranos and SFU air, I’ll be able to add a filter for those and see them next-day as well. I’m not alone in doing this, either. You can just take a look at any of the big TV Torrent sites and see all the popular shows pop up within hours of airing, sometimes sooner if they can catch a wild feed.

All that combines to mean that I’m not sure I feel like forking over the extra money every month. Granted, my TiVo has been sad and lonely in storage, but since they’re on deathwatch anyway I don’t know how relevant that is. I’ve seen the idea elsewhere, but I really think TiVo needs to allow you to do something similar; have an internet connection and act as a BitTorrent aggregator to bring you down long tail shows.

One reason to get cable might be to be able to bundle high-speed web access in the package, making both more affordable. Another could be for HDTV, although I would have been more inclined to go for an all-HD service like Voom, which apparently is about ready to take a dump. I’m not even sure what sort of OTA HDTV is being put out by the local affiliates, but I don’t have high hopes for that either.

Update: Hey, I just saw that a new season of The Shield has started, so time to add that to the Azureus list. The only problem with being so unconnected from prime-time schedules is that I don’t know when new shows are airing, like American Chopper or The Shield.

While reading this Slashdot blurb about floater ads (heh, I said “floater”) I realized that people on /. looooove to bitch about the NYT’s “soul-sucking registration”, and will do so at every opportunity in an article intro. Do they just want to remain willfully ignorant of the NYT permalink generator and continue to rage against the machine? You would think that something like that would spread quickly among the nerdarati.

(Imagine the title sung like The Cure’s “The Caterpillar”)

I’ve been so impressed with the Flickr photo service that I plunked down some money to open a Pro account there last week. It finally got turned on earlier this week, which has let me upload some of my backlog of photos to my new photo page. It’s a great application, even with just the free account. I’m trying to get Paul and April to get an account as well to put up all those fabulous climbing shots; and with all the neat tagging and Set features, we could have everything totally organized and searchable. Wanna find all the pictures of April at Hueco? No problem. Want to get an RSS feed of all photos tagged “boobs”? Knock yourself out.

I think I convinced my dad (who visited this past weekend) to open an account, and I’ll get him a Pro account for a belated Xmas present, and I might do the same for some certain roomies if they want to open an account too.

Robin has also opened an account, and has started putting up pictures too, mostly of her cats. I like that you can go in and put annotations on people’s pictures (if they let you)... sort of adds to the whole community feeling, as well as all the photo groups.

Sites like Flickr and Google Maps make me think that innovation on teh Intarweb isn’t quite dead yet.