Category: Pointless Ramblings

Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007

Posted on by Nimgimli

When I think back on it, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time probably was the one book the set me on this life-long path of loving speculative fiction. Even if I didn’t call it that at the time. She and H.G. Wells. And from my love of sci-fi and fantasy came my love of computers and gaming, both of which very strongly shaped the path my life has taken.

Madeleine L’Engle died this week, of natural causes. She was 88. Her books will live on, hopefully forever.

Her website holds a list of her books.

CNN reports on her death. A good read for the impatient and the curious.

The NY Times reports on her life in Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead. This is a much better read for anyone who loved her books.

Sony’s Connect music service going bye-bye

Posted on by Nimgimli

This came in the email today:

—————————————
August 30, 2007

Subject: Future of CONNECT Music Service

To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Music Customers:

Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.

We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format.

In the coming months we will keep you informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your region. Periodic updates will be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Electronics customer service site, http://esupport.sony.com/EN/news/article215.

Please note that the CONNECT e-book service for the Reader in the U.S. will not be affected.

Thank you for your business and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible.

Sincerely,

Sony CONNECT Music Team
—————————————

For more information, check out this faq.

First Google Video, then Urge, now this? How many other services with no customers must die before this madness ends!!?? 🙂

Spirit House

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of my various ways of keeping a roof over my head is editing TechDispenser.com, a technology blog aggregator. If you’re into tech, it’s a great place to keep up with the blogosphere’s reaction to technology-related news.

But some of the blogs that are a part of the TechDispenser network include off-topic posts. I reject those posts; it’s what makes TD special. The reader doesn’t have to sift through posts about a blogger having a runny nose or that someone stole his lunch out of the company fridge today.

But sometimes, there are real gems that have to get rejected for being off-topic. And I just feel compelled to pass along these posts in whatever way I can. Which finally brings me ’round to the point of this post. Andy Updegrove of the consortiuminfo.org Standard’s Blog is on vacation, hiking around New Mexico and Utah, and he’s blogging about his adventures.

And damn, the man can write.

Please check out his post, Preserving Our Past to Help Us See Our Future: A Reunion with Spirit House and if you enjoy it as much as I did, pass word of it along to your friends.

So what is Spirit House? In Mr. Updegrove’s own words:

Why all the interest in this one site? As cliff dwellings go, Spirit House is hardly the largest, nor the grandest, nor the most dramatically situated. With 49 rooms spread along a quarter mile of ledge in a pleasingly sinuous, but otherwise unremarkable canyon, it is for the most part typical of the hundreds of other ruins scattered throughout the Four Corners area. And yet it remains perhaps the best loved, if not the best kept secret, among Anasazi ruins.

Windows Live Skydrive enters beta

Posted on by Nimgimli

The title pretty much says it all. Microsoft’s Skydrive service has entered beta. It’s free and you get 500 megs of space for uploading files. You can set folders to private, public, or shared (as best I can figure, public folders anyone can read, but not change, and shared folders can be read and changed by a selection of friends).

I’m not often one to beat the Microsoft drum, but it seems like a handy way to keep a small number of files backed up remotely, or to collaborate/share with friends. To be sure there are other similar services* out there, but for me this is an alternative to gmailing files to myself. I already had a “Live” account, so it was just a matter of clicking a button to sign up. 🙂

* Here are a few that offer free plans:
http://www.box.net
http://www.snapdrive.net/
http://www.xdrive.com/
http://www.mediamax.com/
http://www.omnidrive.com/
Caveat Emptor: I have no experience with any of these. I wouldn’t store anything very private in any of these without doing some research first!

MRI tale from Jason Slater

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve never had an MRI, and neither had The IT Manager’s Journal blogger Jason Slater before today.

After reading his tale, I hope I never have to have one!

MRI Scan

I wasn’t ready for the face clamp as it shall henceforth be known nor was I ready for the tiny hole they were rather optimistically hoping to stuff me through. To get an idea of my plight imagine trying to push a plucked, but rather fat and juicy, chicken with an american football helmet on through the holes of a series of polo mints.

Read the whole entry.

Chore Wars

Posted on by Nimgimli

Thanks to Penny Arcade for pointing this out. Chore Wars has to be the geekiest idea I’ve seen in a while. Ok, maybe since yesterday. Here’s how it works (I surmise, personally I’m much too lazy for something like this). You and your fellow house or office mates sign up. You create lists of household or office chores and assign experience points to each one. Then as you do chores, you mark them off on the Chore Wars site. Rack up major experience points and level up!!

I mean really, who needs World of Warcraft when you have Chore Wars!!?

A new one for Websters

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m pleased to announce a new word that I just invented: editoring.

Editing, as we all know, means to edit something. But an editor does a lot more than just edit things, right? Editors – in particular magazine editors – manage freelancers, create and maintain editorial calendars, discuss layouts, plan issues, and so forth. None of this can be considered ‘editing’ really. So what is it? It’s editoring.

Please help spread this term around by using it at least twice a day in casual conversation. Thank you.

I’m pretty sure I’ll end up wildly rich and famous thanks to this contribution to the English language. But don’t worry, I’ll remember all the little people when I’m on top of the world.

20 must-have Firefox extensions

Posted on by Nimgimli

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I haven’t been doing much worth posting about. I’m in a big gaming phase right now. 🙂 And I’ve been digging through huge piles of backlogged magazines rather than reading books.

I did get another article published, though: 20 must-have Firefox extensions. I’m told its doing well and the editors at CW seem pleased with it, so maybe I’ll get more assignments out of it.

A friend of mine made me a new logo. Like it?

Gamesroundtable.com

Posted on by Nimgimli

Hopefully some of the GRT regulars will think to look here…

OneWorldHosting offered to move GRT in light of all the problems we’d been having this week. I was told downtime would be 10-15 minutes. So I said “Sure, let’s do it.”

That was about 4 hours ago. As of now, the site isn’t back. I called OneWorld and spoke to the person who offered to move it. She said there was a problem with the script that moves sites, and that she’d handed it off to an admin who is supposed to be working on the problem now. She said she would *like* to get it done today so the site is up for the weekend!!

End result…I have no idea when the site will be back up. If it isn’t restored by OneWorld by the end of the day I’ll try and get a new host for it, but that’ll mean DNS changes which will increase the amount of time it’s down. The worst part is, I’m going away on Sunday, so if it isn’t back by then, it won’t be for another week. And at that point I don’t know if it’ll be worth bringing back online, as people will have gotten out of the habit of visiting.

If anyone ever asks your opinion of a quality place to host a website, PLEASE tell them to stay far, far away from OneWorldHosting. They used to be excellent, but it appears that times have changed.