« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
June 30, 2006
The World Is Flat
Just finished Thomas Friedman's opus on why nothing is as it used to be and never will be again.
It was good, if a bit alarmist. The alarmism would probably be justified, if there weren't so many other, probably more important, things to be alarmed about.
Continue reading "The World Is Flat"
Posted by dberger at 7:20 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
BumpTop
If you haven't seen it yet, check out the BumpTop Prototype
Posted by dberger at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2006
First Week on the job
This is fairly geek heavy, I'm afraid...
Continue reading "First Week on the job"
Posted by dberger at 7:36 PM | Comments (0)
June 8, 2006
Strike 2
It took me an hour to get from the Bellevue office to the ferry.
Continue reading "Strike 2"
Posted by dberger at 8:52 PM | Comments (2)
Way To Make a 1st Impression...
I'm supposed to be on a ferry right now - on my way into the office to meet some folks over lunch and take care of pre-hire paperwork.
Instead, due to my own poor planning, I'm sitting here hoping that the battery charger can put a workable charge into one of the bikes before I miss the next ferry.
I shouldn't be surprised - I walked into work my last week, and that was two weeks ago, so the bikes have been sitting without starting for at least three weeks (I don't remember which one I rode last, so it could be closer to 4 or 5 weeks, really).
Don't I feel like an idiot.
Posted by dberger at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)
June 5, 2006
No LASIK
After meeting with the actual eye doctor for the first time, I've pretty much decided not to go ahead with LASIK at the moment.
Continue reading "No LASIK"
Posted by dberger at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
Observations on MTP
I decided to take the plunge and load the MTP-based 2.x firmware on my new Creative Zen Touch. The libmtp project seems to be doing a respectable job of implementing the protocol feature-set, and gnomad2 is a usable transfer tool.
Since gnomad2 doesn't support the sort of inclusion/exclusion patterns I had been using with rsync, I ended up using lndir (1) to create a mirror directory structure with symlinks to the actual mp3 files, and a simple shell loop to remove files from the exclude list (still in rsync format). I selected the toplevel, pressed transfer, and ignored the machine for most of the day. By late afternoon it had (finally) transferred all 6000-odd tracks to the device.
Continue reading "Observations on MTP"
Posted by dberger at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
June 3, 2006
Whadda You Mean, No Downgrade?
My new Creative Zen Touch arrived yesterday, and I've just finally gotten a moment to sit down and play with it a bit. My first thought was to upgrade it to the most recent 2.x firmware, which supports PlaysForSure (i.e. Rhapsody ToGo), but running the installer informed me that there's no way to revert to the 1.x firmware.
WTF?
Continue reading "Whadda You Mean, No Downgrade?"
Posted by dberger at 2:33 PM | Comments (0)
Unexpected Guest
It turns out that due once again to organized sports (they're evil, I say, eeevvviilll) Donna missed her flight back to CA last night. The ferries were running 40 minutes late, and despite a valiant (and likely illegal) effort to get to the airport on time, she missed her flight by a few minutes.
So she re-rented a car, turned around, and came back. We sat up chatting last night 'till around midnight, and this morning went to Doc's for breakfast and wandered around the farmers market for a bit before she hopped on a ferry to make her 1:30 flight.
Around 2 pm Dawnise got a call from (you guessed it) Donna saying that the plane hadn't taken off yet due to some small issue with the plane.
Sheesh.
Anyway, turned out to be a pleasant - if unexpected - visit.
Posted by dberger at 2:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 2, 2006
Home Stretch
I now have the last 16 CD's waiting for ripping sitting on my desk - the flac archive is about 195G at present, and thanks to someone else's work, the mp3 versions are coming along nicely (it's on "The Cure" and already there's 36G of mp3's.)
The remaining problem is Genre. I hate Genre. What I want is keyword tagging, so I can say things like, this song is "80's" and "Dance" and "New Wave".
Genre sucks.
I haven't tagged anything with Genre yet - and I'm trying to decide if there's something I can do with the Genre field that will make it useful. (Suggestions greatly appreciated.)
Posted by dberger at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
Vacation Update (Part I)
Friday the 26th was my last day at work, and Saturday morning Dawnise and I left for the airport, destined for LA to attend a wedding. I had hopped to pop in on the Reverend Doctor Old Man Winters's doctoral party, but between the general business that accompanies renting a car, and the act of getting from LAX to the hotel in Burbank, I burned all my spare time for the day, so I sent my regrets (Titus, if you're reading this - I really do regret it) and Dawnise and I rested briefly before heading over to the site of the pre-wedding family-and-out-of-town-friends party thrown by the groom's aunt and uncle.
Continue reading "Vacation Update (Part I)"
Posted by dberger at 1:29 PM | Comments (0)