Kevin Minnis

Okay, I thought I’d give it a try. I bought a 30 Gig Zune and took it for a drive. I owned a 20 Gig iPod before the Zune purchase, but it didn’t have video. In deed the Zune has video but in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom all video is converted to the wmv format instead of just supporting the major players (mpeg4, divx). There used to be hacks, and maybe they still work but I didn’t try it, to force the Zune to “use” the other formats. But again, the Zune software will convert it to wmv instead of keeping it in the original format.

Okay, now for the real pain with Zunes. Microsoft did update the Zune software and underlying firmware which is great. I do like the fact that they can upgrade the Zune to be a newer version, but in my eyes, it was a PR stunt and they wanted to get something, anything no matter what it consisted of, out there for the Christmas shopping rush. They may have upgraded the whole thing, but they left out the critical pieces (Forum Entry). Unlike the iPod, the rating system is limited to a heart, a broken heart, or not rated. There isn’t a smart/auto play list, only the playlist that you create by dragging the song to the playlist. For some people, this may be enough.

For a power user like me, having the smart play list found in the iPod is a must. I have 6 smart play lists which excludes songs from other smart playlists and includes into a playlist based on the rating of a song. For example, I have one name 1-No Kids. It’s the primary one that I use and as you can probably guess from the name, it excludes Kids music. It also excludes slow music (that’s in another playlist – 6-Good 4 Soul). The reason I use a number is that it sorts the playlists so that I can easily go to a play list while on the road with the iPod. I also have playlists based on ratings. 2-Best Stuff, 3-Great Stuff, 4-Good Stuff; each having songs included based on the 5 star rating scale.

One thing that I got used with my iPod using it as a hard drive. I didn’t store a lot on it, but it came in handy when I wanted to copy something from my work computer to take home and work on. The Zune doesn’t give you an option to even try and access it as a hard drive. Yes, there were hacks out there, but why fight it. The iPod just worked right out of the box. Who cares how you market a device, you shouldn’t restrict a user in the use of the device.

Lastly, the odd thing about the Zune website is that you have to go to zune.net instead of zune.com. You’d think Microsoft could at least buy zune.com and forward it to zune.net.

Welp, off to listen to my video iPod that I traded the Zune for on Craig’s List.

So you probably…
didn’t even realize that you are reading this blog from a different location than you usually do. I pulled up roots and moved from shieldhost to a new host, Site5. How do you like the new location? haha. You may notice the page load faster as I think the servers have more umph than shieldhost did.

I’m glad…
I made the move as it will give me an opportunity to get more for the money. Most notably, I’ll again have SSH access (Shieldhost turned it off saying, “It isn’t secure.”). FTP is about as open as you can get and is the only alternative they gave for accessing your files online. For those of you who aren’t computer savvy or know what I’m even talking about, it’s about equivalent to sending a pay check in the mail without the envelope. Whereas, SSH everything is encrypted (Sending the check through Paypal). In addition to the whole SSH access, Shieldhost has been lagging on support (see Cedric’s article). It takes them a while to get back to you if you have problems. I am fortunate that I didn’t have the problems that Cedric did, but I did have some issues with Shieldhost (but, they are cheap…that’s one point that I’ll give them).

Some other features…
of Site5 include the ability to setup source control with either cvs or subversion. I’ve been working on some free lance web projects and having source control on the web server is something I’ve wanted for quite a while. I’m used to having source control at work and it would be a nice to have feature. Additionally, I am also pleased that they support RubyOnRails. I’m very new to it, but from what demos and documentation I’ve seen, I think it will speed up my web development and maybe organize things even further. I currently develop mostly PHP sites(outside of my real job which consists of Java, .Net, and a few other languages/environments). For PHP I’m using an open source framework called CodeIgniter which is based on the MVC approach, as is RubyOnRails.

Now for the good stuff…
Here’s the kicker part of the whole Site5 deal. I can get a MultiSite account (Yes, more than just a domain pointer). You can have up to 6 domains on the first MultiSite plan and they all have an independent “control panel”. You can add users to each site and they won’t be able to see the other sites that you have on the main account. You can also maintain all sites from the main account. All this for $8.25 a month if paid annually, or $6.21 a month if paid in 2 year increments. This is all through their promotion and after the time you pay for (1 year or 2 years), the price goes up, but you can always switch to the shared account. More details can be found at their MultiSite Webhosting Specials page.

I know…
this sounds like an advertisement, but I’ve done my research in hosts and Site5 has to be the best one that I’ve found. They are truly setup to succeed and in turn help you succeed. They have a ton of support listed through-out their FAQ pages as well as their knowledge base and forums.

Well, here I am again. The good thing with wordpress is that you get to change whatever you want to make your site look different. You’ll also notice another change to the gallery link. It now pulls my flickr pictures and creates the albums from my site. It makes use of a pretty cool wordpress plug-in called falbum and the nifty flickr api. The reasons I’m using the plug-in are two fold. One, to see how search results change. I like flickr, but search results don’t always show the true meaning of the picture in google. The next reason is because Pioneer’s filtering software blocks all of flickr so I wanted a work around.

I’ve also been doing a kind of social experiment at work. We use a multitude of chat clients and such and decided to try and live without the main one used by our “little” group, namely, IRC. I decided to do it in part because sometimes the conversations get a little heated. Communication in a chat program is entirely different than that of person-to-person. You don’t really get the true feeling of a conversation (missing body language and the vibe that you get from talking with someone in person). It’s understandable why parents are worried about their kids being bullied from online sources. So, without the IRC client going, it’s been rather quiet. It’s hard to believe how much a person can get tied to modern technology (although IRC has been around for quite a while). Yeah, I could just go 5 steps and talk to the rest of my co-workers, but seems like social experiences are different these days. People don’t talk one-on-one like they used to, or at least it seems that way. Without IRC, I can be working and not even talk to my co-workers all day. I may have to go back and join the IRC chat. I feel alienated from the rest of the gang.

Anyway, enjoy the new look and hopefully you won’t find too many things broken.

Haha, catchy title huh? Last week after shopping at our Ankeny Wal-mart we were driving up the parking lot to leave and I saw some green stuff on the road so I pulled up by it and had Kim get it. Sure enough it was a dollar. Wow, we thought this is cool Kim will be able to get a dewski. Well, we continued up the lane and we couldn’t believe it. We found another 4 dollars. haha. It was probably a funny thing to see us running around the parking lot picking up money. But, hey, I’m sure you’d do the same if you had the opportunity. Saturday night we went to Wal-mart again to get some food for when Kim’s brother came to town. While there Kim was pushing the shopping cart and on a “blind” intersection (most intersections are blind corners in Wal-mart) this man in his 60s comes powering down the aisle. Kim stopped to see if anyone was coming and he almost ran into her. He proceeded to stare Kim down and if he could shoot flames from his eyes she would have been toast. We were all saying something to the extent of “What’s your problem” to the guy. Needless to say we made it out alive. I really do hate shopping at Wal-mart. I always feel pissed off whenever I go there. I told Kim they should take your heart rate before and after visiting. I’m sure mine would indicate a heart attach coming on. Stupid cheap.

With this small fortune that we found at Wal-mart, we went to some garage sales with Kim’s parents this weekend. I managed to find a computer for a dollar. It’s not much of a computer but I thought I’d play around with it. Jayden was all excited he got to ride in Grandma’s Avalanche. We’d ask him if he wanted to ride in the car, but he’d shake his head and say in his little voice, “No.”

Baby number two is making Kim’s life miserable. It seems that it’s already started to drop some as Kim was feeling less then great over the weekend. Hopefully it stays in the oven at least another 2-4 weeks so it’s not born too early.

Oh yeah, and I still have a job and haven’t been “re-assigned”. Hopefully it’ll continue that way. We’ll all find out more after another meeting this morning.

It’s been a while since I changed the theme for my blog, so last night messed around with a new design. It’s not mine, but I like it so I’m using it (it’s released under GPL) and it’s easy to get implemented without a lot of time. You’ll notice two different views depending on if you are using the better browser, Firefox, or the crappy non-standards compliant browser, Internet Explorer. Firefox does a great job with transparency while IE lacks any easy work around (1 2 or 3). So, you’ll have to put up with the not so fun view with IE till version 7 comes out…but don’t hold your breath for that one working either.

In other news, Jayden’s been getting more teeth. He’s been working on getting his molars in the back already. This weekend when he was eating it looked like he was trying to swallow his food with-out even “chewing” it. Kim figured out Tuesday that he’s getting his back teeth and rather than feel more pain he was swallowing the food almost whole. He’s also now walking with us holding one of his hands…so won’t be long and he’ll be tearing around the house on his feet instead of his butt.