The Official Site for the Lackluster Goings-On of Michael Kaiser
Tech High
Galactic Surprise
Oct 13th
The Girl turned 30 this week. Or, as she puts it, she celebrated her first anniversary of being 29. We celebrated on her actual birthday with a little party at our house, so that The Kid could participate. My mom and in-laws were all in attendance. Then the plan was to go to Outback on Saturday, but (insert nefarious mustache twirling here) the REAL plan was for her mother and sister to take her out shopping so we could set up a surprise party at her sister’s house. Totally worked, and she got suckered. I was sure she was on to us, but I guess not, though now her hindsight is 20/20. Good thing I’m an excellent liar! (“Hi honey!”) And even though she has told me she doesn’t like surprises, none of us were maimed or killed, so I guess it worked out. This was my first planning of a surprise party, and while it was not my idea, and I did have help, gotta say it’s not all that fun! Found it to be a big source of stress, actually. Ultimately worth it of course, but I think on her 2nd anniversary of being 29 I’ll plan something out loud. The Girl handled turning 30 much better than I did. I had a real crisis of DC proportions, but she seems to have cruised through it. I guess it helps when you’re pregnant and have bigger things to worry about.
Next day, went to Star Wars: In Concert with my Best Good Friend at the San Jose Pavilion (home of the Sharks). The crowd was pretty good, though not sold out, which worked for us because we moved up a couple rows to give ourselves some elbow room. The music was, of course, amazing and it was great to hear it live. Sometimes the videos set to the music were equally amazing and moving, but sometimes it seemed like whoever made all those up was just mailing it in. But it’s hard to beat a stadium full of persecuted people all loving the same thing, cheering for all the same things that make you cheer. It’s very energizing! And unlike conventions, no discernible B.O. that I noticed! Aside from the concert itself, there were a bunch of Star Wars props in the lobby, but the crowd and lighting were too intense to score any decent pictures. What was really cool was, even though it was a 7-10 show on a Sunday night, many delinquent parents brought their kids anyway. It’s awesome to see that something I loved as a kid is still going strong for the next generation and it warms the heart to see a bunch of little dudes holding lightsabers and head banging to the Imperial March!
I created a site for myself called Desktop Geekery, so that I have somewhere to put the wallpapers I make for myself, instead of discarded them after I get bored. It’s also my first Wordpress theme. Even though it looks like the Default them (and essentially is from a style perspective), I learned all kinds of fun stuff about built in Wordpress functions to get it to automatically display the Wallpaper thumbnail and download links the same way for every post. Ginchy! Well I think so anyway…
Internet Explorer and Wordpress
Sep 21st
They both annoyed me today.
Internet Explorer
I don’t normally use it, but every so often Firefox is a big fat failure when it comes to printing (especially the transactions in my checking account) so I opened it today and decided to stick with it to see how IE 8 runs. Meh, about the same as what I remember. Every page I went to view caused some sort of installation request or gave me to Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner. The latter doesn’t seem to actually affect the page I’m looking at, but it’s still annoying to see the error, especially on my own site, which I decided to test while I had IE open, and yep, big fat failure. It also didn’t like the flashy social links I had in my sidebar. And you can’t right-click an image to view it! I must be wrong about this, it seems like such an obvious function, but heck if I could find that option anywhere.
Wordpress
I just wanted to swap out the images from my previous post. That’s all. Is there any easy way to do that? I couldn’t find one. I manually uploaded over top of the existing images, which works, except it doesn’t’ fix all the thumbnails Wordpress generates for each image too. So then I installed a plugin that is supposed to update all thumbnails, but it only updated some thumbnails, for whatever reason, so that didn’t work either. I ended up manually going through and reinserting all the images to that post (which I wouldn’t have bothered doing except I had broke all the thumbnails trying to swap out the images) and that of course wreaked havoc on Wordpress’s HTML Guessing Game program, so I pretty much redid the entire post, at least the table portion. Oh well. I decided to switch my theme to Default too, after encountering my site with IE, as mentioned above. No more Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner anymore, so that’s good. It manages to do ordered and unordered lists too. Kinda on the simple and generic side, but then so am I. It doesn’t appear to be W3C compliant, which makes me scratch my head (in confusion, not because I have lice), but I don’t think any of the other themes I was using complied either. Maybe I’ll keep shopping…
UPDATE: Actually now I’m trying the F2 theme. Whattya think?
Get To Work!
May 28th
Things I Worked On
The account for our wedding site through eWedding.com was going to expire, and rather than renew a site we do nothing with, The Girl asked if I could convert it to a family blog. I have done so, and she has not used it. Bug her. (Have I already plugged this? I feel déjà vu.)
Things I Am Working On
Running, running, running. Not sure what the next event will be, but something next month probably, and it will be a 10K. I can run that now, but I’m pretty slow. I’m currently at three days a week, hitting a treadmill across the street and following a program I found at Runners World. I was going more than three days a week, but my right heel kept hurting, and slowing me down even more, so the new schedule seems to be giving me the right amount of healing time for my aged carcass.
Worked on cleaning the garage last weekend. Got the garbage and donation stuff out, minus funiture. Have to borrow a truck for that. Now I just need to sell or organize the remainder. Almost there. I can see the ground, at any rate, so that’s a good sign. Hopefully The Girl will be able to park in there by the time the weather starts frosting up windows in the morning again.
Been updating the genealogy site more frequently. Love that new Family Tree Maker!
Things I Want To Work On
Drawing, drawing, drawing. God I’m lazy.
I want to make a Wordpress theme. I feel ready.
Feb 20th
It seems slightly more complicated than it needs to me. Or perhaps not so much complicated as user-unfriendly. It’s a status changer, I get it. But the reply function is just weird. Unlike Facebook, for instance, where you can click the little “comment” link underneath a status, and then it actually shows your comment (and everyone else’s) underneath the status, Twitter doesn’t really thread anything. You’re just supposed to follow who’s talking to who somehow.
You get used to it after a while, but I think it could look more intuitive on their site. It really helps to change the setting “@ Replies” to “@ Replies to the people I’m following”, so that you don’t see replies from the people you’re following to people you don’t care about on your main page. (You still see their replies on their main page, but that’s what you get for going there. Confused yet? I am!)
I was going to dismiss Twitter, but is seems like every site I go to has a twitter application option. And I can sync it to my Facebook status changes, so it’s not really going out of my way to use it. And John Cleese is on there, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. So anyone reading this got a Twitter page? I do! Let’s follow each other!
Learnin’ of the Day
Oct 17th
Did you know that if you press the middle rollie ball thingee on a mouse when it’s hovered over a link, that the link opens up in a new tab? Well I didn’t, and now I do, and I figure I just saved my self at least 3 minutes and 58 seconds a year. Score!
Random question: Does anyone out there reading this know of a current book, film, comic, television show that has to do with a government sanctioned group hunting witches? Or just someone hunting witches period? It doesn’t matter why, just answer the question! Geez!
Simplification by Digitization
Oct 3rd
Y’know what’s cool about Star Trek? Everything, duh! Okay even I don’t believe that’s true, but here’s what I’m talking about specifically: (Fun Fact: I pronounced “specifically” as “pacifically” up until 7th grade, when I said it in a sentence in class and everyone laughed at me. Learning through ridicule, my favorite method!) Everything in their world is on the computer.
“Computer! List all information on Orion Slave Girls.” BAM!
“Computer! Play Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, movement 2.” BAM!
“Computer! Open Holodeck Program “Mobey Dick”, chapter 15.” BAM!
Why the computer sounds like Emeril Lagassi on my journal, I do not know, but I want that! Everything is at the touch of their fingertips, or voice command, in this case. Ever notice their rooms? They own nothing! And why should they when everything is on their PADD? No dusty shelves full of CDs, books or Orange-Ray DVDs, (Blu-Ray of the future).
This appeals to me, which is somewhat weird, as ten years ago it definitely would not have. I liked owning things back then. I still like owning things, in a crazy, unhealthy fanatical way that I try to avoid as much as possible these days. At some point it started to feel more like I was trying to fill a hole in my empty soul over actually enjoying what I was collecting. Collecting for the sake of collecting. Plus the storage requirements were getting annoying, and if I had to move? Forgetaboutit.
Now I only collect “normal people” stuff, but even that takes up space and requires care and organization and dusting, oh god the dusting! And it occured to me that the output on all these THINGS are far more important than the package they come in. So what can I do to destory the package?
BOOKS
There are eBooks. I haven’t devlved into that technology yet, but I know they’re out there. I have looked into it a little and, at the time, every book I spot checked for wasn’t available in eBook format, so that makes it unlikely I could go completely eBook. Plus, Star Trek aside, I don’t know that I could read everything off a eReader, or whatever they’re called. Then again, I look at a monitor all day with no problems, is it any different? In fact, the eReader probably has magnification and lighting options that would be easier on the eyes than your standard paper variety. But the smell wouldn’t be there. I do love the smell of books. Sniffing a page often inspires me to read, in fact. (Duh, I’m weird.) But having no more use for bookcases and having every book you own in the palm of your hand might make up for lack of smell. Maybe I could just spray “Perfume La Book” on my eReader.
Of course, that’s just novels. I have a boatload of reference books as well, “How-To”, “Behind-the-Scenes”, “The Art Of…” etc. These probably wouldn’t translate well to eBook format. On the other hand, 99.99% of all my research these days is performed online, so wouldn’t that allow me to eliminate many a reference book? I’d have to look at what I have, but even if I can’t find an online equivalent, I can’t remember the last time I looked through one of these books, so how important could they be?
FILM & TELEVISION
I know you can download movies and TV episodes onto the computer. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve seen it on iTunes. And computers these days come with fancy 1080p montors and cable hookup, so lots of people are using their computers as televisions. Cool, but not for me. I like my TV and computer as seperate entities, for the most part. I watch YouTube type stuff on my computer sure, but I like laying on my couch, eating Doritos off my belly and watching a movie on my actual television.
I should have done some research before posting theories about this, but wouldn’t it be cool if there was a DVD player/hard drive that you could burn all your DVDs into and then manage it via your TV? Like an iPod, only bigger and for DVDs. There probably is such a thing, and if there’s not, there should be. I know you can plug an actual computer into your TV, but again, I’m not trying to integrate the two. I don’t want to boot up a computer to watch a movie. I don’t want my computer to have to be within reach of my TV. I’m just talking about a player that only exists to store and play my DVDs. I turn on my TV, switch to this magical player, browse the movies I have burned in it and click play. Doesn’t that sound good?
Throw all your DVDs into your garage, sell ‘em on eBay, whatever. Everything’s in this DVD player shaped box under your TV. Like I said, I haven’t looked into whether this technology already exists, but I’m leaning on the negatory side.
MUSIC
This one is easy, and already being done. I run all my music through the computer or my iPod these days. I don’t buy “real” CDs anymore, because everything is available in MP3 format. No cracked cases, no finding a missing disc, everything is run through iTunes, which easily filters what I’m looking for. As far as portabiliity, I use my computer as a stereo, for the most part. They also make portable stereos you can plug your iPod into. I haven’t bought one, but if I ever felt the need to, they are everywhere and cheap. The Girl’s car has a port I can plug my iPod into, and while my car is too old to sport this feature, my car doesn’t have a radio or CD player period (got stolen years ago), so it doesn’t matter what format I stick to. And if worse came to worse and I actually NEEDED to have a CD of something, I can just burn a CD of the something and not worry about losing it or getting it back or damaging it because it’s just a dumb ol’ copy. Yes, the music tech is good, and very close to Star Trek, though I still can’t get my iPod to take voice commands.
The only downside might be that MP3 format isn’t necessarily “high definition”, or whatever the musical equivalent would be. Personally I can’t hear the difference between a CD and a burned CD, but then my ears probably aren’t skilled in this regard. And maybe if I were using music in some sort of production capacity, MP3 format wouldn’t be good enough. But I’m not, so who cares?
CAPTAIN’S LOG, SUPPLEMENTAL…
The music is down. I have to do research on the movies, but even if it doesn’t exist, it will soon. The books still seem a ways off in terms of availabilty and interest, (everyone I know sneers at the idea of reading digitally), so who knows if that will ever take off. But maybe I could just stick to the library and still avoid the need for bookcases. I feel like we’re close though, to living in my Star Trek house. In fact, the technology is definitely there, and I’m sure more than one nerd as dropped a huge bundle to have their house computerize everything. Apple will get me there, I just know it!
