So I’m not really huge on the internet, or internet-related tests and whatnot, but this made me pretty happy, as I am a huge fan of the ol’ Achewood.

Your result for The Achewood Character Personality Test…

Roast Beef

Take The Achewood Character Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

As mentioned on the previous entry, I’m hard at work getting the 2.5 version of Schrodinger’s Blog put together. A lot of cool features coming up, and also just some book-keeping/housework type of things too. It’s still a ways off though.

However, part of the process I did feel like sharing with everyone. I mentioned a while back getting prepared for a visual overhaul of the site. I even went so far as to prepare some material for that:

The plan for the overhaul was to simulate the look of a nuclear launch console. I based my design roughly off of this picture. However, the barrier I keep running into is my Adobe PS skills are only what they are. I’m no whizz at the thing, and I don’t really have any training/talent in artsy things.

You can see different manifestations I played with; the leftmost button is “pushed”, and lit up red. The second one I tried for a more realistic backlight, with a textured surface and a washed out yellow light color. The second two have a different orientation of the text, and are “unlit” or “unpushed” buttons. So. That was the first idea.

I showed this to Ethan though, and his comment was that he liked what I had now. And so I thought to myself, ‘I should just polish up the current design.’ What better to make something look fancy than adding brushed aluminum.

You can see my stab and making an aluminum textured surface on which to place the buttons. The leftmost is “pushed” with a red ring around the edge. This and the aluminum were attempts to make the style similar to a real elevator, which the design is patterned off of. In the end though, I dunno. I really like what I have now, and to change it just for the sake of seems silly.

Brak Blog had one major visual overhaul in its day, but that was when we went from Blogger to LandingClouds, and so it was out of necessity. This would just be “’cause,” and I’m not confident it would be a change for the better. (Though I do like the aluminum!)

So ultimately, I scrapped the idea to do any major graphics work, but I thought I’d share some of the failed drafts with you guys.

Not a whole lot else to mention, besides my thoughts on Thunderbird as an RSS reader. Long story short? It’s not bad. It’s way better than my current method, which was to use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks utility:

This is pretty useful to follow like, maybe one or two blogs or webcomics. The problem, at least for me, was that I started to want to keep track of too much stuff. That bar is only as wide as the browser, and then things trail off into side menus, and it’s not nearly as convenient.

Running it through Thunderbird isn’t bad though. Postings to an RSS feed are basically handled like an e-mail. Everyone does it differently, so a lot of times they look a little rough before you get to the content you need, but it works more or less like basic e-mail:

The one thing that helps is an add-on called ThunderBrowse. This allows the message pane (where the little dog is in the above picture) to function like an internet browser. So when your feeds come into the program, they look like little e-mails with links in them; ThunderBrowse allows you to click that link, and visit the page inside the e-mail client itself! Which is pretty cool.

I know maybe that sounds a little complicated, but the alternative is visiting the sites you see in the panel at left constantly, multiple times a day to see if they’ve updated, which had started to become a problem for me. Now, I just open up my e-mail, and it tells me exactly how many times each site has updated. However, if using Thunderbird seems to daunting (and I’ll be frank, the add-on is a little difficult to install), try Google Reader. Ethan uses that to sift through hundreds of updates daily, and he really likes it. Plus, it’s web-based so you can always read it, and it’s pretty simple to set up.

Regardless of which you pick, there’s a whole world of RSS out there. If you haven’t really made an effort to put some of it to use, I really recommend it. It makes your internet time a lot more efficient, even if that just means getting to your weekly webcomics that much quicker. If anyone’s got questions, I’d be happy to field them. I’m a huge RSS fan, and would love to get other people into it too. (In fact, one such planned update to the site is an index of everything that I get RSSed to my Thunderbird, as a sortof “next gen” version of the old concept of a “Recommended Links” page!)

Hey kids.

SO yeah. I am slacking on blogging, and just about EVERYTHING else too.
Here’s the cool thing though: This week, what I lack in one creative medium, I make up for in another!

My big news of this week is that I just finished my first program as a Radio Disk Jockey.
Dobson Radio is a super-small operation that reaches barely most of the Truman campus, but they let you play whatever you want, and they let a bum like me on the airwaves! I’d been fretting over this for the past week or so, and wanting to do it for much longer than that. Suffice to say that when 4 PM on Saturday rolled around, I fulfilled a bit of a dream of mine.

It wasn’t anything flashy, and I need to work on cutting down on dead air and verbal pauses, but it didn’t suck. And the music was good. I won’t elaborate much more, except to say that you can check out the online archive of the first (and following) shows at radio.schrodignersblog.com. I finally settled on the radio-person name that Ian came up with, and so henceforth I shall be “DJ sHogun”. Get it? (Let’s hope so)

The name of the program is still being determined, but tune in next week at 4 to find out!

In other news, the internet is a delightful place of wonder and magic, but with it comes some perils and pitfalls. I tend to complain a little too much about these things, particularly to Ian and sometimes Lizz, and so I thought I’d make it official:

Tom’s Official List of His Most Hated Things on the Internet

1. Adobe PDF Files-
   “But why Tom? How can you hate these useful image-documents? Haven’t you seen that cute commercial where they look like presents? [NOTE: I tried to fine YouTube video of this, to no avail. There was this ad a long time ago that had all these people opening up the same little gold-wrapped-red-ribbon present, and at the end the ribbon turned into the PDF logo, and it was supposed to be like 'everyone loves getting PDFs'. ...]

   Well guess what! I HATE THEM. Whatever little mechanism that has to gear up for my browser to read PDFs always causes it to hang, nearly to the point of crashing, which is a bit of a feat with Firefox. And plus, people slip them in everywhere like it’s no big thing. I’m cruising through my google research, havin’ a terrific time of it, and I click the link, and suddenly there is a whole manner of slowness about my browser.

   “Damn you PDF, DAMN YOU TO THE ETERNAL FIRES!” I scream with such fervor that Ian makes in inquiring face. Perhaps the shaking of the fist is what confused him. Perhaps it was that I do this on a nearly-weekly basis. Suffice to say, I hate PDFs being all big and everywhere and everyone pretending to love them when they really just make my life more complicated.

2. Real Player-
   Congratulations, Real Media. You’ve successfully created, maintained, and perpetuated an audio format that NO ONE ASKED FOR AND NOBODY WANTS and everyone just wishes would leave the party because it is becoming hell of awkward for the cool kids (MP3, MOV, even WMF for heaven’s sake) that are supposed to be there because they are popular.

   I just get really mad that this file serves like… no purpose. Windows has the filetype for its media player. Apple has one for its. MP3 works for everyone! Happy day. And suddenly *.rm shows up, as if to say, “Alright! Let’s ROCK THIS!” and everyone just kinda stares.

   What’s the point? What magical substance has RealMedia laced these files with that makes them so much better? For years I was able to avoid these, but finally I needed to watch some lectures, and they only format they were available for was Real Audio. I downloaded RealPlayer. It was like purchasing a prostitute, in that I felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards. Gross.

   It’s just another way to get me to download some thing that will throw advertisements at me.
   NO! [In a fit of rage, I literally took five minutes here to uninstall RealPlayer right now. I hate it THAT much.]

3. Streaming Audio-

   Why is streaming audio and podcasting done in seven thousand different ways? There seems to be some consensus that videos are done via YouTube/Google, images are .jpg, or .gif, and if you want to stream audio, you write your own code, poorly, and invent some protocol by which to deliver it.

   That’s silly. And it confuses me.
   And it’s also taught me how to truly loathe the gerund “buffering”.
   If I have to wait longer than the length of the media clip for it to load and begin playing, that makes a streaming audio clip LITERALLY pointless. You might as well just download it at that point! Madness.

4. Win a Free Blank-

   Once a year I try one of these things becuase I think I may have finally found a way to outsmart them and get free stuff. And once a year I hate myself so much that I almost download legacy versions of RealPlayer as punishment.

   I’m sorry. A free iPod nano (lame!) does not equate to me purchasing a year of satelite TV, three metric tons of microwave popcorn, and vinyl siding for the home I don’t have. [That's how they work: you have to buy all this stuff from their sponsors, get some confirmation code for it, and with enough codes, you get a "free" thing] It just doesn’t make sense. And that’s the worst of it. I always tell myself at the end, when I fail, that if I’m going to make a big purchase in the future, I’ll remember this, and get a special code for something I was already going to buy.

   But you can’t do that, becuase it means you have to buy a years worth of flowers delivered to your home weekly, a new muffler and set of break pads, and three seasons of Dallas on DVD. I can think of no such situation when I would need all of those at once, and so no matter how you spin it, it’s a scam.

I’m at the end of my quick list off the top of my head, but I know there’s more. I’ll keep you posted if I remember any more. Geez. I really get bothered by this stuff. Probably because computers are kindof my thing, and I get upset when I feel like they’re turning on me.

That’s it for today.
Keep checking back for updates on the radio program, and life in general.

P.S.: Sorry for going rage-blackout on you there. I’m even more sorry that it was over something as esoteric as file types and internet scams. Oh well. It’s been a weird day.

I’m working on something kinda new.

It’s always been my dream that people could here the songs which I name the entires after. The problem’s always been that embedding audio is a royal pain, as Real, Windows Media Player, and Quicktime never came seem to agree on a happy medium.

So screw that. I found a stat which says that 97% of web users have Macromedia (Now Adobe, I believe) Flashplayer. Odds are that you are one of the 97%, and so I found a flash-based solution. Originally, I had tried XSPF Web Player, which was a small, simple player that actually uses an open source architecture for the structure of the playlists, which is rockin’, but it was too hard for me to get the hang of. [I couldn't get the *.xspf files to behave correctly.]

A much simpler solution was the Audio Player for Wordpress Plugin. It integrates directly with WordPress, and has a lot of customization without me needing to learn any crazy programming stuff. Which is neat.

So without further ado:

I think in the future I’ll just stick these right at the top. You can listen to the song and read the entry concurrently. Any feedback on this little feature would be stellar. Right now I’ll upload some legacy tracks to the entries on the homepage. I’m not sure if I’ll be leaving them there forever, but we’ll see.

I don’t want people munching up my bandwidth just listening to MP3s and not reading the posts, so it might be a “only 10 audio files online” at a time thing. We’ll see. For now though, enjoy!

I should also say: I got so distracted working on this little tweak that I neglected to study for a German test I had Wednesday until like… 2 AM on Wednesday… Which was dumb. But this thing’s really cool, and the test was a joke, so I guess it’s all good.

That probably was my latest college night this year, clocking in at 4:30 AM before I was in bed and turning off the light. I was fine the next day though, which is encouraging; though sleep-fest of this semester has made me soft, I still got it where it counts, you know?

Oh iPod.

They’ve revamped it yet again, much to my chagrin. Every single category experienced changes:

• Shuffle: Received the new color pallet of white, seafoam green, sky blue, the (PRODUCT)^red Red, and periwinkle. Short of that, it’s basically the same, most insubstantial-feeling MP3 player on the market.
• Nano: Has once again been retooled (as with each past incarnation), now into a chubby/stout/more-poorly-proportioned version of its older sibling; This is due largely to the included video screen. This basically makes it the same as the previous video iPod, but with more limited capacity and a goofier looking click-wheel. I dislike it. Additionally, and tragically, it is not available in the new periwinkle color, but instead the added option of not black, but dark grey.
• Classic: This is the standard model, which really isn’t a lot different from the previous iteration; they appear to have just softened the edges and extended the battery life. Same color options: light or dark.
• Touch: The newest member of the iPod family, it is essentially the iPhone, sans phone. It is also not full-blown OSX so far as I can tell either. The issue here is that all the guts of it are wasted on the screen, and so its capacity barely outpaces the Nano, though it costs double. It is WiFi capable though.

So there you have it. Apple has graced Western consumers with yet another slew of gadgetry to waste their money on. I guess I’m just a little bummed because I don’t really feel like any of these changes were for the better. The Shuffle is still too small, the Nano is too ugly, the Classic wasn’t really changed at all, and the Touch is useless; for me. That’s not to say these are bad products, they’re just awful for me.

In truth, I think it’s time to merge the Nano back into the Classic line. They are the same thing, one is just an inch shorter than the other. You can’t stick that video screen in there and still try and bill it as the slim-and-sexy member of the line. A better improvement would’ve been to skip the video screen, and work on improving the volume of data it could contain.

Why I’m not so keen on the iPod Touch: I don’t see the utility. It’s caught in this terrible limbo of devices; you can surf the internet, but you can’t read an e-mail or make a word document. It’s not a computer! However, you can also only cram 3500 songs onto it, which is hardly a robust music library in most cases. I guess what I’m saying is that when you pit it against a MacBook, it sucks, and when you pit it against the iPod classic, it sucks. Maybe I’m the only one that doesn’t pee themselves with excitement at the sight of that multi-touch screen though.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just bitter that my ‘Pod is finally obsolete.

I’ve been caught up in a number of technological things. First and foremost, I finally made some headway on the Student Senate’s new website. wooooo. (In truth, it actually looks pretty good; link later once it’s up) In that vein, I also found out that Senate is funding my early return! Which is bittersweet, and means that my summer officially ends on Friday, August 17th.

While I was working on the Senate site, I started getting booted from the server. While I was on ITS’s site checking that it was their problem, not mine, I found a pretty cool link. It’s called Zamzar. What it does is convert a vast number of file types into… another vast number of file types. For instance, say I downloaded one of those cool vector graphics from wikipedia, and wanted to edit it in an older version of Adobe PS or stick it in a powerpoint without worrying about its fancy properties messing things up.

Zamzar claims to be able to turn that PNG into a regular ol’ JPG no problem.
I’ve yet to try it, and I’m mainly blogging about it so I save the link in case I find myself needing it in the future.

Additionally, I’m thinking about adding SnapShots to this site. Just toying with the idea, really. I like the blogs where I have a TON of links, just becuase a la wikpedia, getting distracted in reading the exact back-story of several little references is something I have a lot of fun with. SnapShots is a tool that makes a little preview pane of all those links pop up.

To check out exactly what I mean, I’m going to refer you to Ethan’s Xanga. Xanga started using SnapShots a few months ago. Initially, it irritated me, but I’ve sortof grown to like them and recognize the utility. Not that anyone really reads this, but if you do, and you have an oppinion on SnapShots, I’d like to know.

It wouldn’t be over-kill, it would only be links to stuff off-site that got the little preview pane, and it’s supposed to load really quickly. So I’ll see. It could be more trouble than it’s worth, but it could also be kinda slick.

Finally, I just wanted to comment on one of my favorite webcomics: Ctrl+Alt+Del. I really do enjoy this comic, but it can be a sortof love-hate relationship. The author summed it up best for me, placing the two extremes of the dichotomy of the comic back-to-back:
I hate these…
But this is incredibly funny.

If you see the SnapShots start popping up, it means I’m tooling around with them. Even if I decide that they’re gonna stay, there’s code I can put up that allows you to turn them off, so fear not.