TechgnosisWeb Prime

It’s the end of 2004, last day of a very eventful year, and to top off the year, I’m introducing a whole new side to this blog: the very first installment of The Katsu Show!

That’s right, the podcasting bug has hit me hard, and I’ve decided to experiment with a podcast of my own. It’s basically a comment and review show where I talk about some of the themes I mention here on the blog, and where I take a few minutes to discuss and often review the games and books I’m currently reading/playing.

This being both the inaugural show and the last day of the year, the show is a little different than it will usually be, but I don’t think it turned out too badly either. I’m not sure what my posting schedule for podcasts will be, but it will generally not be longer than one week between podcasts, and possibly often a daily occurrence (yeah, I’m having fun with this). Every time I post a podcast, I’ll post up the ’show notes’ here too so you can get a feel for what’s gonna be on the show. Here’s the show notes for this show:

• Intro: Welcome to the Katsu Show!
• Podcasting: what is it?
• Tsunami: Quick note to call people’s attention to tsunami relief efforts.
• Today’s Rant: The year 2004: a look back
• Video Game Talk: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
• Book Talk: Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series
• Farewell and a happy new year’s!

Links to sites mentioned in today’s show: iPodder.org, WikiNews’ Tsunami Relief Page, TheDarkTower.net.

So, how do you listen to the podcast? Well, good news: despite the name, you don’t need an iPod to listen. All you need is something that can play MP3’s (the computer that you’re reading this entry on will do)! There’s three ways to listen. The first, is to hit the little Play Button below the title for this post, and it should start streaming and playing almost immediately right on your browser. The second is to click the link below and download the MP3 file to your computer, and then either listen to it on your desktop or portable MP3 player. And the final, and easiest way (at least, once you set it up) is to download podcasting software, such as iPodder, and then subscribe to the rss 2.0 feed of this site, by copying and pasting this link into the software: http://www.techgnosisweb.com/feed/rss2/

Doing this will ensure that this and future podcasts automatically download to your computer when they’re done without you having to do anything. You basically subscribe to my podcast, and it gets delivered to you as soon as I post it up without you having to do anything else. Once it’s downloaded, you can listen to it anywhere that you can listen to MP3’s. Neat, huh? Let me know what you think of this first podcast, I’m looking forward to your feedback!

Link to MP3 file of podcast: Katsu Show - Annual Recap - 31 Dec 2004

… to wrap my head around numbers that big.

Hey all. Short and maybe not so sweet tonight. You may or may not have been wondering why I haven’t mentioned anything about the tsunami in southern Asia that has claimed over 100,000 lives at last count. I’ve been wanting to say something, but, it’s like they say, after a certain number, your brain just refuses to accept that much death, it becomes a statistic. I try to think about it and I guess me self-defense mechanisms kick in and I just go numb, rather than try to process a disaster of this magnitude. All I can do is point you to folks who are giving much better coverage of all this than I ever could:

Link to Google search for all of BoingBoing’s impressive coverage of the tsunami and its all-too-human aftereffects.

Lastly, if you have anything to give, then, please, give:

Link to WikiNews’ Tsunami Help Directory, where you can find all sorts of way to help and donate.

I’ll try to be back tomorrow with more techie news and maybe a podcast-related announcement. Might even try to do something special for the last day of the year. But for tonight, this is all.

So, since I got GlitchX that new 512MB SD card, I’ve been doing a lot more stuff with it. One of the things I’ve taken to doing is listening to podcasts. What are podcasts, you ask? Well, the term comes from a combination of broadcasting/webcasting and the iPod, which is the listening device of choice for digerati with more money than me. Boiled down to its simplest terms, it’s an MP3 file of whatever the person who makes it wants: talk, music, commentary, whatever. Sort of like web radio, but with a twist: instead of having to tune in at a specific time to listen to the show, the show itself is uploaded as an MP3 file in a blog, and you download and listen to it whenever you feel like it. So what’s so revolutionary about it? Well, not much, really, until you combine it with the RSS Feed capabilities of most blogs, and then it gets cool: by subscribing to the feed where the podcast is posted, it gets automatically delivered to you without you having to seek it out, but you can still listen to it whenever you feel like, instead of having to listen at a specific time. Best of both worlds, really. There’s some cool stuff out there, too, currently I’m enjoying Engadget’s weekly rant on techie stuff.

So here’s the deal, now that I’ve been putting audio in my weblog posts, with the whole little Play Button on top of my posts, I’ve sorta gotten an itch to do a little weekly podcast of my own. I used to tape little ‘radio shows’ for myself obsessively as a kid, and I can feel the urge to do it again rising. I could probably tape them while I’m on the move, too, with the Resco Sound Recorder app on GlitchX, which allows me to tape in pretty high-quality MP3 sound without having to worry too much about file size. Good stuff. Of course, I do wonder if anyone would bother to listen, but really, not having too many people reading my blog in the first place hasn’t stopped me from posting random shit like this, so why should I let it stop me from podcasting? I’ll think about it in any case.. if I do it, it would probably be a weekly thing, to give me enough time to come up with something to talk/discuss about at least. On the plus side for those of you with slow connections, since podcasting generally involves only voice, you can fit a lot of show in a tiny file: a 30-minute show can easily fit in a 7MB MP3, and my podcasts would likely be much shorter. So you should be able to download them, or even stream them, fairly easily from even a dial-up connection. We’ll see, I’ll think on this one for a bit.

Missed me? Sorry, I’ve been sick. Well, that, and busy with the holidays. Coming home exhausted after dealing with all sorts of family over the holidays doesn’t lend itself very well to blogging. Couple that with the fact that I’ve spent the last 3 days or so with the Cold To End All Colds, and you can see why I haven’t been around too much. My apologies.

Anyway, getting back on track, I bet you’re all just itching to know what goodies I got for Agnostica (X-mas to you poor superstitious fools), aren’t you? Well, here goes:

• SanDisk 512MB SD card for GlitchX (I had to hard-reset Glitch and rebuild it, so it earned the X after the name) - This is actually the present I got for myself, and I bought it a few days before the 25th, but who cares, I’ve gotten so much use out of it since then that it’s become one of my favorite presents. I have to post an updated GlitchX profile with all the new stuff that having 512MB of storage on it allows me to do…
• Kingdom Heart: Chain of Memories (plus hintbook) - Natalie was kind enough to get me this one, and it rocks. I’m a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, it’s one of those games that just completely devoured my soul back in the day, and I’d been lusting after this one and the upcoming PS2 sequel ever sicne I finished the first one. I’m having a blast with it so far, and the storyline on this one picks up exactly where the first one left off, and from what I gather, the storyline for the next one will pick up where this one leaves off, so it’s sort of Kingdom Hearts 1.5. The card combat system is surprisingly good, and I love revisiting the worlds from the first one (it’s been long enough since I played the first one that they feel fresh again, plus building the worlds as I go along with the Map Cards makes it interesting as well). Oh, and for those of you who will undoubtedly bitch about having to revisit all the old worlds and how it’s just a rehashed version of the first one, shut the fuck up. The line to suck my dick starts here.
• Green ‘Hug a Pug’ shirt - Another gift from Natalie, this is a big green shirt with a picture of a pug and the caption ‘Hug a Pug’. Pugs are, of course, the epitome of all that is dog-like in the universe, and are to be worshiped and revered as uberdogs, ergo, this shirt rules all.
• White long-sleeved t-shirt - Natalie’s grandparents actually sent me this one, and it’s a good fit, looks nice. I’ll use it for special occasions, methinks.
• New Shoes - Mom got me a pair of new brown leather shoes, just in time too, as my old pair was starting to fall apart. Of course, I always do that: wear a pair of shoes until they fall apart, then buy a new one, and wear that pair until they disintegrate, ad infinitum. The concept of having multiple pairs of shoes is lost on me. Brown leather shoes go with everything, anyway.
• SpiderMan 2 DVD - BEST. SUPERHERO. MOVIE. EVAR. ‘Nuff said.
• Lord of the Rings - Return of the King: Extended Edition - Actually, this one was a gift to Natalie from her dad, but I’m gonna go ahead and claim it as my own. 4 hours of movie and like a bazillion hours of special features. All I need is a colostomy bag and I’ll be set to watch the Extended Editions of all three in one sitting.

That’s pretty much it, methinks. So, what did y’all get for Agnostica/X-mas?

… who I can’t afford to buy presents for this year.

Because I hate you all, here’s a video of geeks singing ‘Last Night I stayed At Home and Masturbated’. Enjoy.

… feared across the seven seas for how fucking hard it is to configure me!

So, those of you who’ve been wondering what my excuse is for not posting the past couple of days, you can go and blame Jancelot. It is thanks to him that I now find myself the possessor of a CompUSA-brand Bluetooth USB Dongle (with an effective range of 100 meters, natch). So, of course, as with any shiny new tech-toy, I’ve spent the past couple of nights going to bed late playing with it.. or trying to play with it, at least.

You know, I remember when Bluetooth first came out, how it was supposed to be this amazing seamless technology: two Bluetooth-enabled devices would just come within range of each other, and automatically be able to communicate and share services, with no messy configuration or messing about. It was supposed to be like plug-and-play, but without the plugging. Reality, however, is a cruel and unforgiving mistress.

I’ve spent 2 nearly sleepless nights trying to get the Bluetooth dongle and my iPaq 2215 (which has acquired the affectionate nickname ‘Glitch’) to communicate wireless.. and they do talk. They can find each other anywhere in the house, they can establish a mutual partnership, they can tell each other what services they have, they can even connect.. for a few minutes, anyway. And then the few minutes of joy are over, and one of them (I’m not sure which one of them it is yet, but by golly, I’ll find out) drops the damn connection, and it’s time for resets and reboots all around before I can get them to talk again.

I’ve tried most everything: tutorials, finding roundabout ways to connect, even re-flashing Glitch with the latest ROM image, and downloading hacked versions of the latest Widcomm Bluetooth software for the dongle, but with no noticeable effect on the stability of the connection. Connect, start doing anything halfway useful, watch it fall down, go boom. I have noticed that the connection almost always spazzes out on me when attempting to move data to Glitch, not from Glitch to the PC (I was able to download a 1.5 MB eBook from Glitch’s File Store to the PC’s desktop.. but attempting to move the same file back into the store ’caused the connection to fry). Likewise, Activesyncing over Bluetooth works fine.. for a short while, and so long as I don’t try to transmit much data at once… but as soon as Activesync starts trying to download all 500 pages of my AvantGo updates to Glitch, the Bluetooth connection dies again.

Anyway, I’m still trying to figure it out.. but it’s been a bitch and a half.. still, i won’t give up.. for those few glorious moments when it does work and I can sit in the living room and wirelessly stream pr0n to my PDA while everyone else is watching Crappy-ass Reality Show X, it’s so totally worth it.

It’s December 14, the anniversary of Quantum Physics (On December 14, 1900, Max Planck presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets, which he called “quanta.” Thus, the field of Quantum Physics was born.), and that means it’s the start of this year’s Agnostica celebrations!

What is Agnostica? Well, for those of you not paying attention the past couple of years that I celebrated Agnostica, here’s a quick rundown straight from Agnostica.com:

Agnostica is the only truly secular winter celebration. It is a celebration for the scientist in all of us, celebrating not some contrived story written thousands of years ago and translated seventeen times over until the Hebrew word for “rope” gets turned into “camel,” and then inexplicably the whole deal is replaced by consumer-frenzy dictated to us by a fat child-labor mogul in a fur-lined red suit, but rather of ourselves, the perfect self-defining nature of the universe, and of being proud of the human intellect.

So, hang up the Mobius Strings, deck the halls with Schrodinger boxes, and remember that, this holiday season, “in all things there is science”.

Agnostica proclaimed:
“An agnostic?” I asked him, “So what’s up with that?”
“Belief in ourselves!” he said, “Pure logic and fact!
“But what about us who have no religion?
“Who celebrate science? Don’t we get a smidgen?”
“Yes! We’ll celebrate science, not some `god’ in the sky!
“And declare that Jesus was just a nice guy.”

Ask, and ye shall receive (and click on the Play button above to get some more cowbell goodness!)

… but to celebrate.

So, yeah, it’s been a bit, again. Sorry. I do have something to make it up to you folks, though, and I’ll get into it in just a moment (the more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed it already).

I must apologize profusely for being mostly MIA for the past couple of weeks. Work has been.. odd. There’s been several shakeups at work, and, to make a long story short, there’s only two of us left, and I’m trying to strike out on my own. I don’t want to, but they’re kinda forcing my hand, what with not paying me what I’m worth and making it so I can’t afford a health plan when I really need one. I’m trying a few posibilities out, hopefully I’ll get to expand on them soon, but in the meantime, if anyone out there has a lot of experience writing business plans, I could use your help.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks in a lot of ways, and I wanted to show that somehow.. so I got a bug up my ass today about putting one of those ‘What am I listening to right now’ thingies here on the blog so you guys could associate a general musical mood to each post. But of course, me being, well, me, just putting up the title of the song I’m listening to isn’t enough. So I fucked around a while, and came up with what you should see at the top of this post: the Play button. There’s a bit that says (Current Music), right, and a song title? Well, right before the song title is a little play button. Click it, and the music will starts straming and playing. No, you don’t need to install anything, and the streaming is just about fast enough for even folks on modems to make use of it. Try it out, tell me what you think. And yes, the song up there currently reflects my general mood pretty well.

PocketPC with WisBar addon

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro.

Okay, I know this is a total cop-out on writing a real blog entry, maybe explaining why I haven’t blogged much lately, all that fun stuff… but instead, here’s a new and updated screenshot of my baby, the iPaq. I installed WisBar on it and a gadget-y theme, and it certainly looks spiffy now, don’t it?

Notice the little thing at the bottom counting out 8 contacts online, BTW? That’s AgileMessenger.. a really nice multi-client IM program, sort of like a Trillian for the PocketPC. And it’s tiny, and free! So for free, i can connect to Yahoo!, ICQ, MSN and AOL with one program, and the entire thing is still smaller than the update required to get Microsoft’s own built-in IM client working with their own service. Sweet.

ninjabeg

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro.

Allright, so I know I haven’t been blogging much lately.. allow me to make it up to you with this, the most beautiful picture I have seen in a very long time.