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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com
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Fri, 15 Jul 2005
django
blog
Something similar to Ruby on Rails for python was just announced. I took a quick glance at it and it seemed pretty cool... maybe I should check it out instead of migrating to ruby. I've heard great things about ruby, though... I also need to figure out a web app to write, as well as figure out how to expand the day to 27 hours so I have time.
And since I always kind of feel like I'm whining whenever I say I don't have time... it's not that I couldn't make the time... I could. I make the conscience choice to do other things. So really it's more of an excuse for my procrastination. So there we have it. Sometimes I'm lazy. For some of you that's not really a news flash :-)
So this is kind of funny... I signed up for Amazon Associates the other night... I don't know why, really. It's not like I'm going to make money off of it. But originally I had signed up for it for the web site Mystique and I maintain for daughters. So in the "Web Site Title" field I entered "The Haslup Girls".
Well, 'lo and behold, they use that to generate your unique "associate id". The bad part is that it's truncated to a certain number of characters... which in the end created our associate id as "thehaslupgirl". Yep... just my luck, it knocked off the 's'. So now my associate id makes me look like a girl. Which is rather ironic since I'm so sappy on my girls' site since they're such awesome babies. Oh well. Boo hoo.
Thu, 14 Jul 2005
This Just In...
blog
Thanks to this articlea letter written by Senator Clinton
to the FTC, sales of
Grand Theft Auto
Ok, not really, but it might be true. I had a lot more to say about this but since it's my first attempt at using my new Amazon Associate link I better just keep quiet for a bit :-)
Mon, 11 Jul 2005
Lexar LDP-200
blog
While reading Yahoo Music Engine's plug-in developer's list (guess what I'm writing?), someone mentioned a new portable device from Lexar that was less than $50 because it didn't have any internal memory. Instead of built-in memory it uses an SD card. Sounds perfect!
So I checked it out... sure enough, buy.com and some other places have it for $41. So tempting... I've got a couple SD cards I could probably use, but a new 1gb or 2gb card would be ideal and those go on sale quite a bit these days, although usually requiring mail-in rebates to get the full discount. But, it does seem like a nice alternative since it supports the DRM required by Yahoo Music.
Hmmm... I think it also functions as an SD Card reader, so I wonder if I could hook it up to my Zaurus. That would be awesome.
Fri, 08 Jul 2005
Blogs on Blogs, Podcasts on Podcasts
blog
I noticed this when blogging really took off, and it's actually still going on a bit: lots of blogs just talk about blogging. It's strange... a whole new phenomenon is created but it's feeding off itself. After a while, though, the signal to noise ratio gets better and folks actually blog about what they're supposed to.
So now podcasts are doing the same thing... I've subscribed to the "Digg Nation" podcast and am listening to their second episode. I literally just sat through five minutes of them talking about boosting their ratings on the podcast tracking sites and a really funny (not really) story about how they first messed up their application to podcast alley. Haha. Shut up. Get to the real stuff.
One thing I'll be adding to my Zaurus podcatcher... scripting and an audio analyzer so I can easily skip around podcasts. Right now I can skip forward and back 10, 30, or 60 seconds at a time, but I want to be able to say something like, "on startup of the daily source code, skip ahead 30 seconds." This will skip the intro which is nice, but I've heard it a lot, thanks.
The audio analyzer would display a picture of the audio levels so you can kind of guess when things change in the podcast. For example, if your podcast is talking about something boring, take a look at the audio levels and look for the next large pause. Click on it and you're there, hopefully after they've moved on. Good for songs, too... mashups on Curry's podcast are ok, but I really don't listen to the whole thing.
Ahh, yes... more development to do. Great.
Speaking of development... I watched a great movie showing of ruby on rails development. It's called, "How to build a blog engine in 15 minutes with Ruby on Rails." Pretty darn cool stuff... I used something similar using python to create a quick website so we could track our girls' feedings, but this looks a lot slicker. I might just have to sit down and learn some ruby.
Final thought: digg.com - good. Diggnation podcast - the jury is still out. I might give 'em one more shot...
Thu, 07 Jul 2005
WSOP Updates
blog
Live updates here.
Podcasts
blog
As you can tell from my previous posts, I'm climbed aboard the podcast train a bit... while I'm not quite the podcast super-evangelist yet, I do think that it's going to be popular for some time to come as well as yet another catalyst for the all-new-media we're in the middle of.
Through a "blog-pointing-to-a-blog" entry, I read this guy's comment about podcasts. Basically he doesn't get why someone would want to listen to a podcast when you can pretty much read a weblog entry in less time than it takes to download the podcast. That's true... given the choice of reading or listening to the same content, I'd always choose reading.
But podcasts are much different than blog entries, or at least they should be. And because they're different mediums, you have to approach them differently. The model isn't to go about surfing podcasts and listening to episodes as you discover them. It's about subscribing to that podcast and utilizing the ever-growing number of applications built around podcasts and portable devices which do all the hard work for you.
Podcasts can be a time sink... it's definitely much harder to scan through a podcast than it is to scan a blog posting. But again it's a different medium so it requires a different approach that doesn't necessarily fit everyone's life. I see podcasts as a great way to pass the time when you're on the go, whether that's on the road to and from work, at the gym, out on a run, on a plane, etc... It's for times when you're doing something else (driving, for example) that doesn't necessarily require all of your available brainpower.
Personally I don't have much time like that since my commute to and from work is all of 12 minutes each way. I've tried listening to podcasts at work, but depending on what I'm doing it's sometimes difficult since I need to apply most of my brainpower (limited as it is) to the task at hand. It's hard to listen to Phil Gordon talking about a hand at the World Series of Poker while I'm trying to figure out how to write an xpath statement to find the correct nodes in an xml document.
Because of my limited time I have to choose podcasts wisely... I'll still stay subscribed to a number of them, but I listen to just the ones that I truly enjoy. They are:
- Phil Gordon Near daily updates from the world series of poker... has some good interviews with folks in the poker world that you just couldn't translate into a blog post.
- Adam Curry's Daily Source Code Nice blend of chat, music and podcast information. This guy's a pro which truly makes a difference.
- Lance Armstrong Tour de France Updates Daily updates on how the race is going, sometimes from Lance himself. Short and to the point... usually under five minutes.
- This Week in Tech Basically listening in on a good group of tech guys chatting about what's going on. Subtley moderated in order to keep the pace up... runs a bit long, but it's nice to have playing in the morning when you're fixing breakfast or taking care of your wonderful daughters.
- DVD Weekly These guys are just funny while providing good info on movies coming out on DVD. Another good one for the mornings since it usually runs over thirty minutes.
- iTunes New Music TuesdayA show in its infancy, but the first episode was nice. Clocking in at under seven minutes I had it on while making coffee and enjoyed hearing about what's new on iTunes. It even almost got me to buy something... maybe next time.
There are all sorts of podcasts out there... find something you like, recognize that it's different than sitting in front of your RSS Aggregator and see if you like it. It's not for everyone, that's for sure, but it could be just the beginning of something huge.
London Attacks
blog
Horrible blasts in London. London's mayor, Ken Livingstone made a great statement:
"In the days that follow, look at our airports and seaports, and even after your cowardly attacks, you will still see people from around the world coming to London to achieve their dreams." Interesting use of flickr: a collection of photos from the blast. How we get the news is changing radically... from using flickr like this, podcasts, wikipedia, and downloading tv shows, we're definitely entering a new age of media.Fri, 01 Jul 2005
Oh, that's why...
blog
Mystique reminded me why we might actually need a phone line... Tivo and DirecTV. Yes, even in day and age of broadband internet access, my Tivo still uses a phone line in order to check-in with headquarters to make sure everything's ok.
It actually doesn't download the guide data anymore via the phoneline, though... thankfully it pulls that from the satellite stream. However, after a month of not calling in, our Tivo will start complaining each day that we haven't had a successful phone call.
Unless... I install my ethernet card I've had for a year and run a daily call script that fakes out Tivo. We'll see how annoying that message is before I go through that fun.
The other thing we won't be able to do is subscribe to such things as NFL Sunday Ticket or NBA League Pass. Oh well... they're too expensive, anyhow.
So we're still going ahead with the switch to wireless-only... the phone should arrive today and it'll probably be the end of next week before our home phone number is switched. Pretty cool, though... I hope we like it :-)
Now playing on Yahoo Music: Queensryche, Empire. Classic 1990's rock that takes me back to college. Gotta love subscription-based music services! (although I actually do own this CD, just not sure where it is)
Played some more Battlefield 2 last night on a clan's server... wasn't a great turnout for the clan so it was pretty much just like playing on a public server. That means less teamplay than I was looking for, but that's ok. I did just ok, so maybe it's a good thing that I wasn't a recruit. Just couldn't get a good start on things, died way too much, etc... our team initially was losing each round, but after three or so rounds we finally pulled it together and started winning. I had to quit around 11pm but it was nice to get a good two hours in.
On wednesday I went upstairs to play a bit of BF 2 but just before I sat down I noticed there was a card and a little present sitting there. Mystique had bought me a new set of Smith sunglasses since I had managed to lose my oakleys a couple weeks ago. What a nice lady... they're awesome, of course...
If you haven't done so yet, be sure to check out Phil Gordon's
podcasts which are available from his web site,
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