TechgnosisWeb Prime

… hope y’all had a good Memorial day weekend. Sorry about the lack of updates for a few days, but it’s pretty rare for me to get a long weekend, and I spent as much of it just chilling and recuperating as I could.

It’s tuesday now, back in the office, back to the rat race, so it’s time to start updating again. You’ll notice that the Flickr/TextAmerica comparison continues, now in its 2nd exciting week. This week, the Textamerica flashbox gets the star treatment over on the right there, so feel free to click on any pics there that catch your fancy.

Some of you guys emailed me over the past few days about the Flickr/Textamerica thing, as well as other stuff, and I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to any of you. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by email the past couple of days, but I promise I’ll get back to everyone tonight or tomorrow.

And of course, to start the week off on the right note, I just noticed that apparently I’m being linked to from this site: Provident 360. How exactly I ended up being linked to (and a permalink at that, on their blogroll) by an evangelical x-tian bible-verse-a-day blog, I may never know.

Vin Diesel can only be killed by a child born of strife on the summer solstice.

Well, the comparison continues, and while at first it seemed that Flickr was ahead, TA has surged forward until they’re neck and neck again. There were a few features that Flickr had that I thought TA didn’t, but thanks to a visit and comment by Chris, the *Founder* of Textamerica (Man, I really do get the best people commenting on my blog. Not some PR flunky, but the *founder* of the service I’m trying out. Dizzamn.), I was set straight. Turns out I was using an older template that didn’t have all the new features implemented yet, and that they do have a FlashBox like the Flickr one that’s over on the left there. So I went in and updated my template on the Techgnosisweb Moblog on Textamerica, and Chris was right, it’s much better, feature-wise. I kinda miss my little red robots, butthe look is nice and clean.. and I read somewhere about a CSS hack that I might be able to eventually use to put some robots up there anyway.

I also checked out their FlashBox, and this is it below, compare and contrast to the Flickr one on right. I can’t put up both FlashBoxen at the same time, I just don’t have room in the blog layout for it, but I’m thinking that, at least while I’m doing this month-long comparison, I might switch between them, the Flickr one this week, then the TA one next week, and so forth and so on, and see which one you guys like best and use more.

(There seems to have been some sort of weird glitch when I uploaded the latest pics this morning, I got an ASP error when uploading… they finally did upload fine, but for some reason the FlashBox is showing my latest 3 images as the same one. The moblog itself was doing the same, I went in and edited the entries to the correct images, but the FlashBox seems to be showing the old ones anyway. If you’re still out there, Chris, any ideas?)

So, here’s a quick rundown, after Week 1 is pretty much over, of what I like and don’t like about each service so far. Take notes, kids, there will be a test. Both services ave many features in common, including being able to upload pics straight from the camphone over email, accepting comments on images, being able to email pointers to my images through email, the ability to annotate parts of images using Flash rollovers, community moblogging (althought they do take slightly different approaches to this), etc. What follows are things that I think separate the two services:
Flickr:
Likes
- Nice, clean interface.
- Editing features are integrated nicely into the viewing interface itself, don’t need to hop back and forth between control panel and main moblog display to do edits.
- Love the way I can play with the URL’s to browse images, tags, and users easily.
- Slightly less intrusive ads (both have Google ads, which is much better than regular ads, but while Flickr puts them in a sidebar and out of the way, TA plops them a banner ad format up on top. I understand bills gotta get paid, but I still dislike banner ads. Either way, whichever service I stick with at the end, I might go ahead and plop down the cash for a paid account, which would make the ad issue moot)

Textamerica:
Likes
- The blog-like interface is very nice and has lots of features built in.
- Despite having to go into a separate control panel for most editing functions, once you’re in there, it gives you a lot of power. Very useful.
- Posting movies! This is something TA has that Flickr doesn’t, at all. My phone can take little 30 second video clips in the .3gp format (need Quicktime installed to view). Sure, they’re short, they’re grainy, they’re low-framerate… but they’re movies! And the viewer is integrated right into the page. I don’t take too many videos with the Motorola v551, but if I do start making more of them, then this feature alone might make the decision for me.
- Lots more options in the FlashBox area. I can select the latest 12, 9, 6, or 4 images, making the Flashbox a lot easier to integrate into this blog. And they have a FlashGallery thing that’s quite nice, I’ll have to play with it more and see how much I like it. First impression: I might have to redesign the blog around it!

So, both services have their things. Still 3 weeks to go in this epic picture-sharing showdown, and it’s anyone’s game. I am, of course, open to bribes from either camp.

I did a little experiment this morning. If any of you have listened to podcasts, especially Adam Curry’s and the like, then you already know about what they term ‘Soundseeing Tours’. If you don’t, here’s a quick rundown: It’s basically taking some sort of digital recording device, like an MP3 player/recorder, an iPaq, laptop, whatever, and doing a podcast, recording it, while you’re ‘on location’, as it were. Wandering and walking around, letting the background sounds of wherever you’re at come on through as well while you do your podcast, instead of trying for the usual sterile ‘complete silence except for my voice’ studio sound. Well done Soundseeing Tours can be quite an experience, especially if you’re wearing headphones. Close your eyes, and with the background sounds, it feels like you’re there.

Anyway, I’d never really done one because all I have to podcast with is my iPaq 2215, Glitch. And while it works fine when I’m talking directly into the mic, I didn’t think it would work very well with the iPaq sitting in my shirt pocket while I walk around and talk. But this morning I decided to go ahead and try to do it anyway. After I parked the car when I got to the office, I set Glitch up in record mode and put it in my front shirt pocket, then got out of the car and started talking while I walked towards the office. It’s nearly a 10 minute walk from where I usually have to park the car, so I had plenty of time to test it. I also did that old Sounseeing Tour trick so that people don’t look at you too funny for talking to yourself: I pulled out the celphone and pretended to be talking into it while I recorded.

After 3-4 minutes I paused the recording and listened back, and I have to admit, I was impressed. Glitch’s little mic is one hell of a workhorse. It sounded excellent. Sure, the volume wasn’t as loud, since I wasn’t speaking directly into the mic now, but that’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a couple of minutes in Audacity. But overall, the sound quality was great, the background sounds of cars occasionally driving by were just right: audible, but not so loud that they overpower my voice. In general, I’m hugely pleased with this first attempt.

I don’t think I’ll post up the actual test, it was nothing too exciting, but I will definetly be doing a Soundseeing Tour soon, now that I know I can. No idea where I should do it, though. Any suggestions, folks?

… weird graffitti guys around. You know, like the ones I’d found before? Go check ‘em out here, I know you’ve all been eagerly waiting for them.

(And in other news, found one cool thing about Flickr that I like better than TextAmerica: tags, and the ability to point you to my pics of certain things just by tagging them appropriately and putting the tag in the url. I’ll move the old weird graffitti guys pictures over there soon enough too…)

… the signs and portents all point to it, and the time has finally arrived..

Lord Absu’s birthday is here.

Burnt offerings, sacrificial virgins, and bachanalian orgies are all appropriate for the occasion, of course.

Happy birthday, f00!

How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. One to hold the giraffe, and another to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.

…

Anyway, as you all know, I have a moblog over at TextAmerica. But I’ve always wondered if maybe I should use Flickr instead: I like Flickr a lot, better for sharing pictures in general, and the RSS feeds make fun stuff like screensavers composed of my pics, possible.. but then again, TextAmerica has that moblog format down pat.. we’ll see. I just put up a special little Flash badge for my pictures on Flickr over on the right, and for a month or so, I’ll upload my phonecam pics up to both Flickr and TextAmerica. We’ll see then which one I like better.

On the plus side, the Flash badge over there is pretty cool, might get you guys to go on over and click and see the moblog pics more often.

OK, so I didn’t go see Episode 3 on Friday. Hooray for me!

…

Yeah, I know. But I really was in no shape to go out to the movies and deal with (shudder) crowds. So I went to hang out with Absu and Monster and the girlfriends instead, and a much better time was had by all. Maybe I’ll go see it tonight instead. Monday afternoons are great for seeing movies: no one goes to see movies on a Monday afternoon.

In the meantime, I’d like to point y’all to yet another one of the many podcasts I listen to daily: Stupid Church People. Now, those of you who know me, also know that I’ve become a fairly dedicated agnostic and humanist. Couple that with my general disdain for most churchgoers, which comes from having been part (unwillingly, for the most part) of both catholic and protestant churches for a large chunk of my life. All of this together means that I generally wouldn’t listen to one of the many so-called ‘godcasts’, religious podcasts, not even if you paid me. I’ll admit that I have a generally dim view of most religious folk, and while I do try to move beyond this prejudice, I’m not there yet.

Stupid Church People, however, has shown me that there’s a bit more out there than just the usual ‘god hates fags but loves your gun rack’ crowd. The hosts of this podcast, Steve and Josh, are christians, and both of them come from typical ‘hellfire and damnation, now pass the collection plate’ churches, and, thankfully, both are mostly recovered.

They do a weekly podcast where they talk about their experiences in their church, whatever comes to mind, and point out the huge amount of hypocrisy, blindness, and idiocy that pervades their church brethren. They curse, they gamble, they drink, they listen to 50 Cent, and that’s all right. These guys are hilarious, smart, and laser-accurate when they start dissecting the problems with the church and church people in general.

In the past couple of weeks that I’ve been listening, these guys have gone to an indian casino, compared going to church with sucking on God’s nipple, claimed that Jesus poops, taken Benny Hinn to task, and they’ve been consistently smart, funny, and brilliant all throughout. I’m a huge fan of these guys, and even when I don’t agree with their faith, I can still respect and admire them as humans, and I can only wish that more stupid church people were like them. Go check them out at StupidChurchPeople.com.

… at the midnight showing, if all goes well. I don’t have really high hopes for it, but the tickets are free, and frankly, as a geek, it *is* sort of my duty to see it. Absu saw it last night, and you can read his opinion here. As for me, I’m going with a heavy heart, not just because I dread what Lucas might have inflicted on us, but because, well, this is it. The last Star Wars movie. No more after this. As much as some fanboys are begging to see Episodes 7, 8 and 9, Lucas has no intention of making them, and he’s glad to leave Star Wars behind (and it shows). There’s really not that much more to look forward to. There’s no more Star Trek series on TV. After X-Men and Spiderman, they’ve just been churning out dreck like Daredevil and Elektra. And Fantastic Four looks Fairly Foul. Lord of the Rings was glorious, but it’s done now. All the Director’s Cuts are out, and nothing more is on the way. Is the geek era over?

Geekdom is a clique like any other, and there were those who felt things have gotten out of hand lately. Like a cult rock band that scored a top 40 hit, geek entertainment got too big, ruining the fun.

Only the truly dedicated will stick with it, Wheaton enthuses.

“There are so many geek poseurs. Putting on Weezer glasses does not make you a geek,” he says. “Until you have tasted the sting of a dodgeball on your face, you are not really a geek.”

Mikki Halpin, author of “The Geek Handbook: User Guide and Documentation for the Geek in Your Life, believes “there will still be comic book conventions and sci-fi movies, but the line won’t be as long.”

Which isn’t to say there won’t be a period of geek mourning. Halpin advises charity — nerd style.

“If you have a geek in your life, give them a project – they love projects,” she says.

To which I say: Anyone need their hard drive formatted?

That’s from a hilarious, if somewhat bittersweet, article by Stephen Lynch.

“X-Men” begat dreck like “Daredevil.” From the trailers, “Fantastic Four” looks like a dreadful hour and forty minutes. I’d say they’re making every comic book into a film now with the exception of Archie — except I’m sure some studio chief is trying to decide if the Simpson sisters would agree to play Betty and Veronica.

With most of the franchises on part three (never a good sequel), it seems like the geek age will end not with a bang, but a Binks.

Yet that’s exactly why some geeks welcome the implosion of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” Wil Wheaton, who starred as Ensign Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and wrote a memoir called “Just a Geek,” says we’re being put out of our collective misery.

“The end of ‘Star Wars’ is long overdue. The new movies are an absolute abomination,” Wheaton says. “It’s hard to figure out which sequel to ‘The Matrix’ was worse, and ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ had little in common with ‘Star Trek’ beyond the name. There was an explosion of geeky goodness in the last few years, and now it’s time to step back, and … well, thin the herd, I guess.”

As far back as the final season of “Next Generation,” Wheaton says Paramount was taking the audience for granted — believing Trekkers would watch pretty much anything. (And, based on the high-heeled Borg on “Star Trek: Voyager,” it’s not hard to see why).

“Enterprise” and its catsuited Vulcan was the final straw. The needs of the few were outweighed by the needs of the shareholders and Paramount unceremoniously pulled the plug.

“Star Wars,” meanwhile, has been on a Hoth-like cold streak since George Lucas decided to make a prequel.

I won’t keep quoting from it, go read the whole thing here, but while the article ends on a slightly hopeful note, it’s hard not to think that maybe the Age of the Geek is over… or am I just being pessimistic?

Well, if you’ve been keeping an eye on the blog, you know that my previous celphone, the Motorola v710, turned out to be a complete and total piece of shit, and the company that sold it to me, Centennial, a bunch of greedy lying bastards. So, after returning the phone and cancelling the account, the boss and I went over to Cingular and opened an account with them. I was iffy on buying another Motorola, but the Nokia ones they had were just fugly, and I wanted a flip phone with bluetooth. So I went with the Motorola v551:

(more…)

Okay, so brother-blog A Glint in the Void is covering the PS3 launch, so I’ll take over Nintendo duties. No one is covering that punk-ass XBox shit.

Well, what I’ve seen of the Revolution, the next Nintendo console, doesn’t really impress me much. All they showed off was a protoype, not a final design, and the games they announced were all stuff like “We’re going to be bold and break new ground, do things that have never been done before! So, the games that are coming out are Metroid, Mario, Mario Party, Pokemon, and Zelda!”

Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Zelda, Metroid, and Mario, but, honestly, it’s hard for me to keep getting excited over them. One interesting thing mentioned by the Nintendo folks is that the Revolution is designd to be a ‘virtual console’, whatever that means, and that it will be able to download ‘20 years of Nintendo content’. I’m assuming that means some sort of online download subscription service to buy classic Nintendo games. That’s right, they’re gonna make you pay for Super Mario Brothers *again*. Fuckin’ brilliant.

On the other hand, hey, online mutliplayer Super Smash Bros.

What’s *really* got me turned on, though, is the announcement of the Nintendo Micro. From Gizmodo:

just a “hair bigger than an iPod mini.” It plays all GBA games. Tiny, bright screen, coming in the fall. It looks tiny and awesome and wonderful and I want to have its babies.

Check it out:

2 inches wide and .7 inches deep. I could accidentally swallow this. Daddy wants.

Yeah, sorry about the lack of updates for a couple of days there. Didn’t really have much to update about, really. But there’s a couple of new developments brewing that might just give me some blog-worthy material.

In the meantime, you don’t have to to just sit there hopelessly waiting for me to get off my ass and update: you can always go visit the other blogs in my growing blog empire, and get your random ranting fix there.

I’ve ranted about how good A Glint in the Void is before, and the passage of several weeks has not diminished this in the slightest. Excellent writing, PG-13 pr0n, and occasional Mr. T references combine to form a subtle and intoxicating mix of flavours that makes you lean back, close your eyes, and say “Mmm.. that was good.”, at which point Lord Absu leaps out and kicks your ass.

Over on the girly side, Monster brings us A Hatred of Beautiful Things, where the ennui of post-grad life as a single mom, philosophical discussions on the nature of fetishes, and worship of Neil Gaiman all tug at your attention. Written by an Honest to Goodness Real Live Geeky Intellectual Hottie Girl, and it shows. Keep an eye on the visual design, too, it won’t always look like poo. Eventually there will be pictures on top of the poo.

And to both the authors of those blogs: just remember that, when you make it big and are famous and can’t remember the little people who helped you get there, I’ll be more than willing to sell all the dirty behind the scenes secrets to the Enquirer for $5 and a pint of Guiness.

…

My faith in humanity is now restored.

*sniff*… My god.. it’s full of breakfast…

Have you been wanting to hear some really pissed off guy ranting about how much he hates a cellular company? Then, boy howdy, are you ever in for a treat!

I’m sorry, but this is just one of those things where you really need to hear the voice to realize how incredibly fucking pissed off I am at Centennial right now. I recorded it in the car shortly after my last post, while the hate is still fresh. I was alaso drinking a bottle of Bawls while doing this podcast, so, hate and anger provided by Centennial, manic energy provided by the insane amounts of caffeine in your average Bawls. Enjoy!

Snag it here.

Just a quick note to let everyone who had my new celphone number know that I am once again celphoneless. I’ll be getting another one early next week, but for a few days at least, I’ll be unable to communicate.

I’ll post up or podcast later with the full sorry tale, but long story short, Centennial gave us the worst service I have ever endured from *any* phone company, and when we went to cancel the account, they tried to fuck us up the ass with a sharp, pointy, red hot stick. Neither I, nor the company I work for, nor any company where I have any influence over the decision, will ever, ever do business with Centennial again. I seriously suggest you folks avoid them as well. Their service is beyond horrible, their attitude towards it is abominable, and their actions and attempts to wring even more money out of us after all the trouble we’ve had with them is downright despicable.

Dear Centennial: Fuck you, fuck the horse you rode in on, and fuck both of your moms.

Just wanted to post up a couple of things to make your computer a bit more secure, since I know you all count and depend on me to keep you up to date on what’s gone wrong with your computer this week.

First off, if you have more than 2 brain cells to rub together, you’re using Firefox. If you’re still using IE, really, there’s nothing I can do for you. Just stop reading, leave this site, and go visit some spyware-ridden pr0n sites. If you are using Firefox, though, it’s time to update: the Firefox team just released version 1.0.4, and this version fixes some major security bugs that were discovered a few days ago. Swift response, huh? Go get the update here, or click on the little red arrow symbol on the upper left right corner of your browser.

Second, to those who might have downloaded the Google Web Accelerator due to my previous entry about it, I do apologize. Turns out that Google was on drugs when they let that beast out of the box. It was chock full of security holes, and had some major programming errors that could cause trouble in some dynamically generated sites and forms. Google’s allready pulled the page, and hopefully they’re working on fixing these errors. I still think the Web Accelerator is a good idea, but Google needs to clean it up and tighten it up before letting it loose again. So, if you installed it, please, uninstall it ASAP.

See, I own up to my mistakes. Now, kneel… kneel…

Well, here’s me ranting about the phone some more on my podcast, taped it a couple of days ago, so it’s kinda out of date, but it’s worth snagging and sticking through to the end for one thing: Lord Absu’s insanely funny Love Song 3.5. Just listen to it with your headphones on, ’cause both the ‘cast and the song at the end are most definitely NSFW!

Snag it here.

Well, it’s been a few days since I got the Motorola v710 from Centennial, and the honeymoon’s definetly over. While I still love the look, feel, and feature set of the phone, not to mention how neat the little Bluetooth headset is, I’ve grown increasingly dissapointed with the quality of both the phone and the service.

I’m still well within the 15 day grace period, in fact, I don’t think it’s been more than 10 days, and allready I’ve had to change the phone 3 times. First time, the phone turned off (witha fully charged battery) and refused to turn on again. Then, the next phone suddenly nearly exploded: drained the battery at an enormous rate, going from fully charged to nearly dead in about 20 minutes, heating up the phone to an unbearable level in the meantime. Seriously, the metal bits inside were hot enough to scorch skin. So now the third phone in less than 10 days is in my hands, and it barely has any reception. I can’t make outgoing calls, no incoming calls get through, I can’t even access my voicemail. Text messages sometimes get through, sometimes they don’t. And throughout all of this, it keeps claiming to have 5 bars of service.. except when it randomly and inexplicably loses service completely, only to regain all 5 bars 10 seconds later.

Centennial claims that they’re having some minor network difficulties in my area. Minor?! Anyway… if this is what the experience is like in the first 10 days, what’s it gonna be like 2 years down the line?

If Centennial doesn’t clean up its act by tomorrow, the boss and I are marching down to theie offices to hand in the phone, cancel the account, and then go next door to Cingular and open one with them. Sure, the Cingular Motorola v551 isn’t quite as sexy as the Centennial v710, but it’s got about 95% of the feature set, Bluetooth, camera, and 3G capability. We’ll just have to see how fast their network plan is.

I’d try and get the boss to spring for the Razr V3, which is *sexay*, but I figure if I go for the v551 there’s a better chance he’ll get me a decent data plan to go with it. ;D

This is the touching tale of a young man and his mother… a tale of lies, deceit, and treachery!

…

or maybe not…

In any case, it’s a story about my visit to my mom yesterday. I hadn’t seen mom since nearly X-mas, and due to being celphone-less for a month or so, hadn’t talked to her much lately either.

Now, I love my mom. Really. I just think she’s been horribly duped, and she’ll never really know how much. She’s a good woman, and she tried to do what she thought was best for me, and I guess you’ve got to appreciate that. Doesn’t mean I completely forgive her for the hell she misguidedly put me through years ago, but I’m workin’ my way up to it.
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Well, at the suggestion of digital over in the comments thread of my graffiti post, I’ve decided to start up a separate mobile blog, or ‘moblog’, right around here: techgnosisweb.textamerica.com. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing with it, or how often I’ll be uploading pics to it directly from the phone: it’s much more likely I’ll just upload any phonecam pics I take up to it at night when I get home. But it ought to be interesting seeing where it goes. And I decided, in case it blows, might as well keep it separate from the main blog. So, go, check it out regularly, and let me know what y’all think.