About
jason's weblog, jason typing stuff

Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

Subscribe
RSS: Subscribe

Links
These are a few of my favorite links.

Thu, 30 Jun 2005

Bye Bye Qwest
blog

We're gonna take the plunge and get rid of Qwest. I don't understand why we're paying so much for a land-line phone these days when wireless is so cheap. So, through a deal at RightNow, Mystique and I are moving our home phone number from Qwest to Verizon wireless.

Yes, I know, I wrote about how I wouldn't go to Verizon when we first moved to Bozeman, but it's just about our only option. As soon as my current contract with Cellular One runs out I'll add another phone to our plan for $10 and jump on the "IN" thing since my parents are also Verizon customers.

Anyhow, it should be interesting to see how we do without a land-line. One thing is for sure... it'll be cheaper which is fantastic.

Still enjoying the heck out of my Zaurus and podcatcher app... I recently installed python + pyqt into my debian pocketworkstation installation and now I can run my podcather in both Opie and in pocketworkstation. Pretty cool... I'm tempted to switch everything to PW but I can't quite pull the trigger since I'll probably miss Ko/PI (organizer app). I might be able to compile that for X, though, so switching is still possible.

The other nice thing about PW is that I can actually use Python + Qt 3.0, not the older 2.x version that I'm stuck with in Opie. That gives me a lot more flexibility widget-wise, as well as the chance to use TrollTech's UI designer application. But once I do that I can't run it in Opie, so I haven't made that leap yet, either.

I've started playing Battlefield 2 recently... what an awesome game. Load times are slow and there are still some other quirks (it was just released), but if you get on a good server with good squads working together, it can't be beat. I really enjoyed the original (BF 1942) and I'm having just as much fun playing the new one when I can. I'm actually looking into joining a clan primarily so I always know I'll get on a good server with good teamplay. Hopefully this weekend I'll get a chance to play on some clan servers and see how they are.

The new iTunes has podcasting now, which is pretty cool... this morning I listened to the ESPN podcast as well as Apple's New Music Tuesday podcast. Pretty easy to subscribe to things in iTunes, plus having the iMac in the kitchen makes it handy to listen to them. I still like using the Zaurus as my mobile listener, though, but maybe when I get my non-iPod music player I'll switch to it.

Wed, 22 Jun 2005

Going Mainstream
blog

Well... mainstream for me, at least. I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I've actually switched off of emacs as my RSS reader. I know, it's hard to believe, but I'm giving liferea a chance as my RSS reader. It's a reader for linux built using gtk as its widget set. So far it seems alright... the thing I'm worried about is how well it might run on my Zaurus but we'll give that a try tonight. The nice thing about doing everything in emacs is that I can use X if I want or just a plain old ssh session if I'm remote (or on my Z).

But, the nice thing about using a dedicated app is I get a few more features, such as easily reading things that are linked to in a blog. Using emacs (especially when i'm not at home) takes a few clicks and keystrokes in order to fire up a tab in the browser. So, we'll see how I like it...

I almost bid on an MP3 player yesterday that supported Yahoo! Music... came real close but decided against it. I'm still sort of in the market for something since I think I'm missing out on one of the coolest aspects of Yahoo! Music -- the ability to take any song with me on my portable device. One thing I was thinking about recently was whether or not the Dell Axim or any other PocketPC device had the correct DRM support to function as an approved player. I think that would be pretty cool... in fact, it'd be great if a device with a wifi card could actually run the main Yahoo! Music engine. Then I could just stream instead of downloading if I were at a wifi hotspot. Not that I ever am... although the AC at work isn't working very well so I'm very tempted to bring my laptop and work from a coffee shop tomorrow.

I haven't done much work on the ol' Zaurus podcatcher (just learned that term). I think it's working well enough for me that I've lost a bit of the motivation I had before to "finish" it. Ah, well, maybe that will come back soon... maybe when it gets a bit cooler here. I miss air conditioning.

That's about it... all is well in Bozeman. The girls are doing great, my job is fantastic, Mystique is even more fantastic, and each morning I wake up and I'm excited about the day.

Thu, 16 Jun 2005

Zaurus Podcast Client
blog

Yes, I'm still around, my loyal reader... lately, in addition to spending time with my wonderful wife and awesome daughters, I've been hitting the podcast scene. There's some pretty good stuff out there... also some crap, but I've managed to avoid most of that.

Since I am a techno-junkie and I still enjoying the heck out of my Zaurus C1000, I decided to write a podcast manager/player for the Z. Here is a screenshot of its current incarnation.

There's still much to do on it (bigger font, make all the buttons actually work, actual error handling, etc...) but it does actually download and play podcasts. I've been working on it/using it for a couple weeks now. It's actually supposed to be a part of my other application that was just letting me play mp3 files easily, but I haven't done that integration yet.

It's written in python + py/qt which is kind of nice since you can also run it on your desktop machine. It also uses plain old files for maintaining its history so theoretically you could do some smart sync/merge between the Zaurus and desktop if you're interested in sharing your podcast history. I haven't done that, though... it's actually pretty easy to carry the Zaurus around with a mini external speaker and use only it for podcast listening.

As soon as I clean it up a bit I'll be releasing it as GPL... right now I don't like how the code is organized. Mainly because it isn't... I started this out as a quick hack but over time it's morphed into a quick hack with some structure. Python's great for this app but I'm still getting the hang of it and Py/Qt especially. There's still some funkiness happening in the interface (resizing of panels when I don't want them too, etc...) but overall it hasn't been to difficult. After the first release I can see myself doing an almost complete rewrite of it, though, now that I've got the hang of how it should work.

I'm still cruising along with Yahoo! Music... actually, I pretty much have no choice anymore since I went ahead and paid for the full year. There's no telling how long the $5/month will last, so I went for it.

Still pretty happy with it... the interface is still a little slow, and one of the things I really miss (from Rhapsody) is the ability to quickly add an album to "My Music" with just one click. Yahoo makes me click that artist to go to their page from which I can add them to my music library. Not a huge deal, though...

One cool thing I've been using lately, though, is their "Create playlist like *" where * is the current artist you're listening to. I did that to a band that I hadn't heard of and so far I've enjoyed the playlist that was created for me.

That's it for now... more later when I get closer to releasing the podcast client (for which i'm still looking for a good name).

2008 : January (2) February (2) March (5) April (1) June (1) July (2) October (1) November (3)
2007 : January (3) February (1) March (1) June (2) December (1)
2006 : February (4) March (4) April (11) May (5) July (7) August (5) September (4) October (3) November (6) December (2)
2005 : January (1) February (6) April (2) May (4) June (3) July (8) August (5) September (3) October (3) November (1) December (1)
2004 : January (9) February (5) March (6) April (3) May (2) June (1) July (6) August (10) September (1) October (4) November (3)
2003 : March (6) April (3) May (1) June (18) July (9) August (4) September (5) October (2) November (7) December (2)