My Little Corner of the Net

Blogging from Flock

Written by Kodiak on 04/01/2006 — 1 Comment

I discovered a cool new browser while browsing through the March issue of Computer Link magazine: Flock. Flock is built on the Firefox core and is designed to allow easy posting to blogs. It isn’t even in beta yet, but I decided to download it to see what its all about.

So far, so good. All I had to do was run Flock then choose “My Blogs” from a menu. Then I entered the URL to my site and clicked a button. The browser did some thinking and then prompted me for a login. Next I was looking at a list of all of my articles and a big fat “+” button that I clicked to start writing this post.

Flock has a clean interface with a WYSIWYG interface (apparently powered by TinyMCE), the option to edit raw HTML, the ability to add my post to categories or tag it on Technorati, and the ability to save a draft or post outright. Perhaps the nicest feature for me is the spell check, since I am notorious for hitting “Post” and then finding my mistakes.

Flock is NOT stable yet. It isn’t even in beta yet. There will be bugs. Nonetheless, it looked cool, so I downloaded it. Personally, I like being on the cutting edge and I’m not so serious a blogger that I can’t live with a lost post now and then. But if you aren’t like me, you’ve been warned.

Edit (04/13/2006): My first impression of Flock was that it didn’t work–my message never showed up on the blog. I finally noticed, however, that it’s been here all the time. It just had a post date of December 31, 1969. Wow, I’ve been blogging since before I was born! (The current April 1 time stamp is an estimate–I don’t recall exactly when I posted this, but that has to be close.)

Posted in Cool, General, Site News, Websites

I’m the Master of PHP

Written by Kodiak on 02/28/2006 — Leave a Comment

Brainbench Certified Master PHP 4Last week I noticed that RIT’s E-Learning Zone offered a Brainbench certification exam for PHP 4. I had a little time to look at it today, so I started the test not knowing what to expect. As it turns out, I know PHP pretty well—I scored 4.40/5 and became a Brainbench-certified Master of PHP 4.

Posted in Cool, General, RIT, Websites

I Have No Friends

Written by Kodiak on 02/24/2006 — Leave a Comment

Screen Shot from facebook.com: Jason's Friends--Jason has no friends at RIT
So I signed up for Facebook the other day. I haven’t done much with it beyond search for a few people, so I can’t really comment on it yet. So far it looks pretty cool, though.

I noticed, on my profile screen after signing in for the first time, that Facebook declares I have no friends. So much for my self esteem.

If you’re looking for me I’ll be with my therapist.

Posted in Cool, General, RIT, Websites

Only the Goverment Could Get Away with This

Written by Kodiak on 01/27/2006 — Leave a Comment

I have a PO Box that I use to receive mail for my business. I got it because I thought the PO Box address would look more professional than my home addresss (with an apartment number) and because it would be more secure–I don’t have a locking mailbox so anyone walking by could easily go through my mail looking for checks.

Every six months, on or arround the first of the month, I get an envelope in my PO Box in which I can send my renewal. I had a payment due this month, so the process was no different: I got the envelope saying that I owed $35 and that I had until January 31 to pay.

Normally I pay the renewal fee within a day or two of receiving the envelope, but because I had a lot of other things going on this time, my payment got delayed. I payed it sometime around the 15th—well before the deadline. A few days later I was quite shocked to see that, instead of a receipt in my box, the post office had returned my check, along with a new payment envelope that contained a hand written note “Your box rental rate is now $37. Thank you.” You see, on January 8 the post office raised the price of postage and, evidently, the price of PO Boxes as well—but they didn’t bother to tell me this. At minimum, they should have attached a note saying that the price would go up if I didn’t pay by the 8th.

Maybe I should try this approach–charge my clients one price and then, when they pay, say “oh sorry, I just raised my rates.” How long would I stay in business, then?

Posted in General

Digital Music

Written by Kodiak on 01/13/2006 — Leave a Comment

I’ve always been a far of buying CDs over downloading music. It is partly because I’m often not very good about backing up my computer files and I fear loosing my music collection, partly because I haven’t wanted to give up valuable space on my computer for storing those files, and partly because I’ve always liked the portability of having CDs—I can use them in my car, with my portable CD player, my home stereo, office radio, computer—where ever.

Now that I have an iPod that’s capable of holding more music than I know what to do with I’m starting to rethink my reason for buying CDs. Storage these days is dirt cheap and its not hard at all to back up my digital files to CD or DVD. The iPod is even more portable than carrying around CDs and I can access all of my music at any time—not just the 10 or so CDs I decided to take with me. Plus, with digital downloads I can buy just the tracks I want. Several of my CDs have songs I don’t really ever listen to anyway. Downloads are generally a little cheaper, too–iTunes, for example sells, full albums for $9.99 vs. $13-$20 for a CD.

Of course, with downloads you don’t get the album art, lyrics, and bonus features that you get with the CD, but how important is that, really?

So now the big question is “what’s the right music service for me?” There are several options:

  • iTunes—which works seemlessly with my iPod and has no monthly fees, but I can only sample songs before buying. When I play I song I got from iTunes on the iPod I get to see the album cover on my color screen (cool but not necessary), but iTunes uses a propriatary format with DRM, so it is hard to use the files with anything except the iPod.
  • Napster—the original file sharing network, with access to unlimited downloads and online play for a monthly fee. I haven’t used it since it went “for pay,” so I don’t know how well it works these days. Napster offers a 7 day free trial, then it is $7.99-$14.99 a month after that.
  • CDigix CTrax is a service offered throuh RIT for studnets, faculty, and staff. The cost is $5.99/month for unlimited Windows Media DRM-enforced downloads and 89 cents per song for MP3s.
  • EMusic offers a 50 free download trial, after which they charge various montly fees, depending on how many downloads you expect to make–starting at $9.99 for 40 downloads.

So what’s best? I have no idea. I’m thinking about signing for for a few trials and going from there. I’ll post my findings right here.

Did I miss your favorite service? Any mentioned that I should avoid? LEave a comment and let me know.

Posted in Cool, General, Websites
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