october

Some brief updates, since I know I haven’t written anything lately. What I’ve been up to.

College Side:

I’m one of three Pledge Educators of my fraternity’s new 20-strong pledge class. We hold their meetings, study sessions, team building activities, and organize social functions for them. Thus far it’s been a great experience.

I started volunteering with about three other guys at the local Boys & Girls Club for a few hours every Monday. We help with homework, play outdoor games with them, play pool with them, etc. One of my DU brothers is an Elem. Ed major and is hoping to either get a job or actual volunteer position with them, which would be nice, so he could plan better activities for us when we go. I don’t mind it as it is, though. I’ve learned a few things already – such as the ‘Chinese’ rules of playing pool (you hit any ball into any hole at any time… along with a few other rules) and that what looks to me like a firing squad with gym balls (one kid hurls a ball at a bunch of kids maybe 6 feet away up against a chain link fence) apparently passes for dodgeball nowadays.

I go to the gym with a bodybuilder brother several times a week – it’s rough getting back into weightlifting when I can do half of what I did as a Junior in high school.

I’ve volunteered to register students for the Students for Obama campaign a few times here. The deadline to register is the 6th. Here’s hoping we turn Indiana blue for once.

Rest of the time is class/homework/video games.

 

Technology wise-

I’m kind of wanting a 120gb Zune. I’ve heard nothing but good reviews for the new interface, and I like the widescreen video format.

I think the new Windows commercials are great. I think they counter the Mac ads perfectly. Honestly, I didn’t think the Seinfeld ones were that bad – they put more of a human face on Bill Gates than has been done previously, which is a shame. And you can’t exactly say Mac has a hold of the ‘new age thinkers’ demographic when Deepak freakin’ Chopra is advertising your product.

I’ve been using Google Chrome since it came out and only use Firefox when some Javascript  things (mainly Facebook-related) don’t work. It’s by far the best browser I’ve ever used, and it raises a lot of questions about the open source format. Mozilla is by and large funded by Google (for having Google as the default search engine) for several years now – but when that runs out, what will happen? They’ve been the greatest success story of the OSS market, and I hope they can manage to continue – I use Thunderbird for newsgroups and would love to eventually be able to replace Winamp/Foobar/iTunes with Songbird.

I also really enjoy Google moving into the philanthropic world and proposing a timeline to end nonrenewable resource use – yes, the search engine company. They have not bothered to wait for legislation to pass, instead they’ve gone out and spent their own money to make things happen. That’s the right kind of capitalism.

Also I wish I had an Android phone. Not the G1 – maybe the HTC Touch Pro or Touch HD.

Politics-

I have few words. McCain is running a travesty of a campaign. Palin is the worst VP candidate he could have ever picked. McCain has a disconnect with the reality around him, Palin has a disconnect between her brain and mouth. If I said the same sort of incoherent gibberish she’s given during interviews, you’d rightfully suspect me of being inebriated.

Economy-

is not good.

 

I could expand on most of these issues, but I have some homework to do.

chrometastic

I can’t help but think that my excitement over the release of a new web browser is probably not something to be proud of.

 

But man oh man, is it going to be sweet.

songbird

I hate Windows Media Player and iTunes with a passion, never found much benefit in Foobar2000, and only really use Winamp because I haven’t found the same skin in another player. But I wouldn’t say I’ve found the perfect audio player in my searches, but why not give another one a try.

Songbird is the newest creation of Mozilla Labs, the same company famous for gifting Firefox to the world. It’s still in a beta state, but I can see a lot of potential in its future – mainly the same potential Firefox had at the start. Allowing users to create add-ons improving the original functionality, and offering all of these to the public for free. Add-ons are limited right now, and they’re still working out some bugs, but I have optimism that a free open-source audio player will eventually surpass the ram-hogging giants and proprietary players offered up in the past. If you have some free time, give it a try. Most people I know use Firefox regularly now, so maybe it’ll be a year or two from now and Songbird will have made some inroads. Either way, props to Mozilla for branching out.

Mojave vs MobileMe

Two points of interest -

1) Microsoft’s Mojave project. Basically, someone at the MSFT pr firm saw those commercials where Pizza Hut tricked people into thinking their bargain bulk pasta was real Italian food and had quite the epiphany – let people use Vista without knowing it under the guise of ‘the next MS OS: Mojave’. Their results were overwhelmingly successful – even more than they anticipated. Surveyed beforehand, most people were adverse to using Vista – the average score was 4.4 / 10. Afterwards, ‘Mojave’ received about an 8/10 – in fact, not a single person rated it lower than their initial score for what they thought about Vista (many of whom had never used it, of course). Why is this important? All too often, we let perception and public opinion direct our own thoughts, rather than taking the time to actually research and decide for ourselves. People walk into Best Buy and demand that they would never use Vista without the smallest amount of understanding of what the pros and cons to it are. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but in most areas (security, stability, speed) it’s superior to XP – so long as you aren’t buying a $300 bargain-basement PC.

2) Steve Jobs admitting that the release of MobileMe didn’t go smoothly – which is an understatement, but more than I was expecting. Once again, public perception has been that Apple is above the possibility of mistakes – hopefully this will get at least some devotees to realize that at the end of the day, they are just another software & hardware giant capable of the same bugs and problems as everyone else. Will this happen? Of course not – Not when I see comments on gadget forums saying “Oh give them a break, it takes a lot of time and work to roll out a project this big, of course there will be a few hiccups” – I’m sure they were just as understanding during the Vista rollout.

In other news, I now have 4 more computers. I’m thinking either openSUSE 11 with KDE 4.1 or Linux Mint, and I might try to make at least one into a Hackintosh. We’ll see how it goes. And as gaudy as it looks, I’d really like the ASUS Vento 3600 case. Looks like a Gundam Motorcycle Spaceship or something.

Tech Briefs 7/08/08

Today : the three major processor powers, whose areas of expertise are quickly beginning to overlap – an eventual benefit for you and me.

AMD, nVidia, Intel.

Tech Briefs 07/02/08

Today: Sun, Dell, Canonical.

Tech Briefs 6/30/08

I’d like this to be a recurring topic – my thoughts on companies I consider important, which most people wouldn’t really care about. Today I’ll go with some big names – Microsoft, Google, and Apple.