Calendar Sanity

I'm in love with 30boxes.com. I don't know why, really. If I had to pin down a reason, it's because until this site, Becca didn't want to enter in all the birthdays and anniversaries she tracks into a computer. Every year I suggested she put it into Outlook or ANYTHING, just get it off paper.

She did what I guess a lot of people do: Every year, manually copy down all the notes and events to the next year's wall calendar/planner. I personally can't do that because my mind is always in "how can I do this on a computer instead" mode since about age 12. Just makes sense to me to have a computer handle remembering the things that repeat.

Plus her fear of computers doesn't help.

In her case, every year, it would get later and later into the year before she had this manual "upload" to the next calendar completed. If you were born between January and April, you might want to consider moving your birthday to about mid-May. Now that she's entered it, she doesn't have to do it next year.

So what did 30boxes have that Outlook didn't? It was a pretty calendar? That's one guess. Was it the fact it shows the forecast automatically on the calendar? Maybe. Was it because it has a natural language entry? ("Mom's Birthday, March 10" becomes a recurring yearly birthday). That's another guess. Text message reminders to her cell phone a day or two before? That's another good guess. I don't know really. Google Calendar could have done all this (maybe without the pretty calendar part?) but she just didn't like it like she liked 30boxes.

If you want to know why she likes it, you probably should ask her. I like it because "she can use it." That's all that matters to me, that a calendar exists that she will actually use.

From the nerd perspective, it even makes me like it a ton. It has the most options, settings, features, you name it, of any calendar I have tried online. It finds MySpace, LiveJournal blog, and shows them on my calendar if I want. It shows Becca's calendar on my calendar (cuz I want!) It shows my Google Calendar on my Calendar. It shows my Twitter.com on my calendar. I can email add @ 30boxes.com with a subject line of "Mom's Birthday, March 10" and it would add that to my calendar.

I donated some cash their way the other day, and received the shirt pictured. And just so you know, I didn't realize I was getting a shirt until after I donated.

If you sign up, and want to watch/stalk me, as always, I'm jeffdiogenes@whatever.

Yar Yar It's My Visual DNA

After reading a LiveJournal of a friend I did this silly VisualDNA thing. I'm still not sure why I did.

But their homepage does kind of creep me out.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

[Jott from Jeff Sieggreen] This is going from Jott to blogger.

Jott From Jeff Sieggreen

This is going from Jott to blogger.

Listen to audio Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

[Jott from Jeff Sieggreen] Instant Jott

Jott From Jeff Sieggreen

Instant Jott

Listen to audio Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

Trying to email to blog without accepting the link

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around

http://mail.yahoo.com



----

By the way, why would I use a free email service that puts it's crap at the bottom of my emails automatically?

Ahhhhhhhh...

Ahhhhhhhh...
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

Smoke Break!

Trip to Culver's

Before Culvers:

After:

In the waiting area waiting.




Just playing around with this stuff. Here's a GPS trail of our trip.

Center: 43.450596, -84.038334
NW corner: 43.4950770, -84.1143622
SE corner: 43.4061150, -83.9623058

Map type: US: USGS topo map (2m; 2000px)

Width × height: 2000 × 1612 pixels
Resolution: 6.14 meters/pixel

North-south extent: 9.87 km (6.1329219 mi.)
East-west extent, at center: 12.26 km (7.6179962 mi.)
East-west extent, at top: 12.25096 km (7.612379 mi.)
East-west extent, at bottom: 12.26904 km (7.6236134 mi.)


If you have Google Earth you can trace our steps in this KMZ file http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/1175456510-13405-66.188.39.82.kmz
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/kml_overlay/1175456720-14570-66.188.39.82.kmz


Tool used: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

Andy and Work

Andy and Work
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

Adopted.

Amero Article

Dear Mr Smith and Editors of The Norwich Bulletin

I read your article in the Norwich Bulletin (http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070328/NEWS01/703280344 ), and the following statement caused me to write to your organization directly:
"Amero never denied the porn appeared on the computer. She said she had done everything she could to prevent the children from seeing the computer screen that day. The examination of her computer showed she had accessed the Internet for nearly the entire school day, with porn sites accessed for several hours during that time."

I find that this is misleading to the average person, and any IT Support/Computer Guy worth his salt automatically knows the truth hiding behind your article. It is this paragraph that tells me that you, as a reporter of facts, are not aware that pop-ups and spy ware will run and use the Internet all day if a computer is left on. This would cause Internet activity, you know.

Said differently: If you, as a reporter, reporting on technology, are unaware that pop ups and spy ware can access the internet all day without you knowing or seeing it, how would a teacher know? How can her ignorance as a schoolteacher make her liable? Most people don't know that if you close a pop up, it could very well still be running;

People. like. you.

The real story you missed (I think) is why didn't the school district prevent access to those sites? I bet if you ask if there is an internet filter they will say yes. If you ask why did it let porn images come in via pop up on a classroom's computer? Are they just letting porn through their firewall and letting the teacher take the blame? The Information Technology administrator of that school district should get 40 years in prison for letting porn through to the entire school, not the teacher that tried to stop the pop ups. At least she tried to shield the kids from it.

My experience on this planet tells me somehow you won't care, you got "your story" out there, and more exposure to your publication has been obtained. At least I know if I ever come across another Norwich Bulletin article, I'll be skeptical that any important details are actually correct or fact-checked.

Regards,

Jeff

The Quest for Portable Music & Podcast Sanity

Oy.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my trusty 20GB Rio Karma music player hath passed away almost at the ripe age of 4. I mourned my loss not just for the music but the personal attachment I had to that gadget. It did everything I wanted, the way I wanted and the way I expected. You could throw any type of music file at it and it would never tell you you couldn't play it. iTunes songs? It played em. DRM'd (that you buy online that you can only play on 1 or 2 machines/devices.) Music Files? It played em. Wacky non-standards-compliant VBR MP3's? Played.

You wouldn't believe the amount of crappy music players out there on the market right now. I know people love their iPods, but they are pretty proprietary and add a extra layer of hassle (iTunes) I don't want. Everything out there seems to want to protect you from your own music by introducing proprietary music loading software on your PC. Everything I looked at made me cringe in one way or another. Example: Microsoft's PlaysForSure certified or Microsoft's Zune certified? Do I even want to choose one over the other, or these both over competing technologies?

No. In fact...HELL NO. I don't know what the music industry thinks, but it seems to think everyone's got time to dink around with their music collection handpicking songs to put on so they can listen to the same songs over and over until it's reloaded with more handpicked songs. Oh I know, you can have iTunes randomly pick songs and shuffle them on your player, but even then, iTunes would double or triple my music library file space when it imports my existing collection into a iTunes library. I still fail to see the point in that system...but anyway....

Also, whatever I did get would have to be able to interface with podcasts easily.

Music players on the market as it stands now, just plain suck with the exception of some iRiver hard drive products. There, now you don't have to go find out for yourself the hard way. That still left me with the problem of no music player for the car. I had to find something, or I was going to go with the iRiver units, but even that wasn't "Like my Rio" because there was no network jack on the iRiver units. Boy that was a nice feature, my Rio accessible from any computer on the network at my house....

Before I made my decision I thought it would be a good time to give the current PocketPC Music Player software market another look. Before the Rio I tried using my PocketPC to play music, and yeah, it worked, but not without it's own hassles. Things like choppy music on certain VBR MP3's, lousy Filename/Tag support, and very very limited space on the storage cards killed the novelty off quick back then.

This time around, there are numerous freeware and shareware music players competing for a PocketPC owner's love. Add to this that my PocketPC needs have evolved since then and I am now using a PocketPC Phone. How well can a music player work on this phone? Also, how can I get my Phone with it's proprietary 1/8" stereo/mic, headset jack to play on my car stereo?

Oy. At this point, I think maybe my needs are too complicated....

I spent some time on this, and after trying many many many music programs, I found myself REALLY liking Pocket Player. Like, alot. It can handle all the music I throw at it as well as has support for some formats I never heard of. It wins in that department. I can bore you with some more details but just know its hands down the most user-friendly, customizable, kick-ass PocketPC music program out there.

With one problem, it is kinda crappy about the way it handles podcasts over a slow internet connection like my mobile phone has. (You see we live in a 2ndary market which means I get slow internet and everyone else south of Flint, MI gets fast EV-DO internet.) Over my slow connection, the podcasts can't be "live streamed" unless I want to listen to a very choppy podcast that pauses every 5 seconds. Which I don't. Ever. I don't neccesarily need to have a streamed podcast, I'd appreciate it downloading the whole thing in the background so I can play it later, but thats not how PocketPlayer handles it's podcasts. So now we add to the list.

Where are we? This is what I need: "Something I can use to play downloaded Podcasts, that picks random songs from my music, picks new music I downloaded and haven't heard, have it all play thru my car stereo ,and automatically get music on this PocketPC Phone - without me thinking."

Yes, ok, I'll admit, I'm my own worst enemy on this one. But, it turns out, it can actually be done. And I will admit it's not super slick but it works the way I need it.

Recipe:
1 PocketPlayer (You may substitute the default PocketPC Media Player, it's not too bad)
1 PPCTechs.com - Sprint PPC-6700 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Adapter with Built-In Mic & Answer Button (P/N: PPCPADPT20)
1 Generic Radio Shack Tape Cassette Adapter
1 Juice (Formerly iPodder)
1 Windows Media Player (meh)
1 PodNova.com account (optional)


Heres how it works:
I setup a PodNova.com account and then tell it what podcasts I want to subscribe to. I download Juice (freeware) that reads my PodNova.com account and pulls in the subscriptions and begins downloading the latest episodes automatically. I could skip the PodNova account, but I like being able to add a podcast from home or from work while I'm thinking about it rather than wait until I'm at work to re-find them to add to Juice. These episodes are dumped into a folder in my music collection called !Podcasts. Juice also handles cleaning up old episodes. Then in Media Player I setup an Auto-Generated-Playlist that will add anything under a week old that is in the !Podcast folder. I then assign that playlist to auto-sync to my PocketPC Phone using the sync feature of Windows Media Player. I also assign another playlist to find any new music from that week that I downloaded but hasn't been played. And if that wasn't enough, there's a 3rd playlist that will randomly pick crap from my collection just to fill it up. So everytime I put my PocketPC Phone in the cradle to sync my contacts and stuff, it's syncing those 3 playlists.
When I go to work, lunch, or back home I hook the PocketPC Phone up to the PPCTechs adapter which is hooked up to the RadioShack Cassette adapter that then plays through my car stereo.

And it sounds great in case you are wondering. PocketPlayer and the default PocketPC Media Player will also both pause the music if a phonecall comes in, and then it will start playing again from where it left off. Nice feature. And because the PPCTechs adapter has the mic and answer button, when a call comes in I hit that button to answer and talk to the other person hands-free. I even found a nice minimalist "skin" for PocketPlayer that you see to the right. It's black. It's functional.

So finally, a music setup I can use to play music. I'll admit to two drawbacks, 1) 1gig memory card on my PocketPC is not the 20gig I am used to on the Rio, but that's ok because I'm constantly syncing the PocketPC anyhow so 1gig ends up being "just right". The Rio did have an automatic shuffle and sync option but the program would have to be running for it to do that. I didn't sync very often because of that. And 2) It seems I have to manually delete songs I no longer want from the PocketPC for it to put more stuff on. That hasn't been a real problem because most of the time I want to listen to it at least once before it gets pulled off the player.

And because I did it all on my PocketPC Phone, I didn't need to buy a separate $100-$400 music player.

Yay!

And just so you don't think I wrote this all the while thinking my audience cares, this is the aPathetic blog, don't think that I don't know that you don't care. :)

Billy In Action

Billy in The Butt Hutt

Claim Something.

Above you will see a banner from a new site (to me), not sure the usefulness, called Jyte. You sign in, make a claim like I did above, and people I guess agree or disagree with you.

I think votes up, votes down, or no votes, I'll win.

Drivemocion

I bought the 5-message one. Very happy with it, although if my VW Beetles back window was any curvier the suction cup would not be able to attach tightly. It fell down the first time I set it up, but I set it up again yesterday and it's still up there.

It's better than a picture of Calvin pissing on something. (Disclaimer: I had a Calvin Sticker that said "Internet Whiz" on my old Impala. Calvin was pissing on the Internet.)

Out of 5 stars I give it a 4.999995 Stars. I wish it wasn't infrared controlled, maybe radio would be better, but it still works great.

So start the bets, how soon before I get pulled over for giving a cop a SMILEY? Ok, now how long before I'm shot in the back of the head for giving someone the "Idiot" message for honking at me? Either way, fate will find me easier with a big red light like this in the back of my car.

Lol.

You can get it here.

My Rio Karma Is Dead

My Rio Karma Is Dead
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

R.I.P. April 2003(???) To Feb 08, 2007

You were a trusty hardy Mp3 player till the end.

-Emotionally involved, Jeff

CC Mike- Hey well I guess I won't be sending you this to replace your stolen iPod.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Look, I Sold Out

Top of my site has Google AdSense stuff there. I don't actually care about making money on this site though. I'm far too aPathetic to try. However even the aPathetic can dabble in something they really don't care about, and still not care about it in the end.

I was just trying the book thingy I added on the left. Again, I really don't expect money, I'm just trying all this out so if I'm ever asked I can say "I done that."

Twitter

So....from what I can gather...this is a site that allows me to do all the stalk-work for my friends. I can let people know what I'm doing! Wow! Who the hell would even wanna know that?

I'm already setting up a txt message template that will shoot off an update on what I'm doing. It will say:

"Nothing!"

STALK THAT!

One thing I would suggest they add is a way to tie multiple Instant Messengers into one account. I don't know about you, but I have to have them all because everyone I know wants to just use the one they have. The things I do for people....
Anyway heres my alibis/self-initiated stalking badge. I'm going to throw it into the gutter on the side of my site like every other little thing I tried out and forgot about.

Oh, back to Twitter. It will remind me when I haven't sent a self-initiated-stalk-me message containing my status. I'll use that to help remind me I have a blog I should update.

Useless Account

"You are Useless Account member #5129"

Woo!

http://uselessaccount.com/faq/

Instead of Watching What I Want....

I'll share some links since I can't find Prince's Super Bowl Halftime show on YouTube:

http://search.universalstudios.com/query.html?col=all&ht=0&qp=&qs=&qt=prince+superbowl

If this link works for you and says something let me know. I hit refresh 3 times and I get:

The connection has timed out
The server at search.universalstudios.com is taking too long to respond.

* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.

* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.

* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Which means that Universal Studio's Search is broken or lame.

But wait! You ask why am I even bothering? It's for my wife, and I personally don't care for the Super Bowl. But, even tho:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=prince+super+bowl+video&btnG=Google+Search

Shows like a million videos available on YouTube, I go to pages and I get:

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Universal Music Publishing Group"

So "Ahh" this is why I search for this video on Universal's Webpage.

The lawyers are quick to claim copyright on a public (commercialized) event that millions upon millions watched, loved, heard about, and hated.

But my wife can't see Prince on YouTube.

Break the law and go look for the torrent? Is that breaking the law? My wife wants to see it. Also, as I write this I think of going to NFL.com...maybe they own their SuperBowl BigGame TheGame Performance.

Sadly, no.

Hey I think someone just uploaded the first part of the performance....I better get this one before it dissapears too.

I think the answer to this all is just get more servers in the budget for whatever 2008's halftime show conglomerate is in charge. So this goes out to Univeral apparently, but basically to every other company where the lawyers are paid to find things to pay themselves with. Universal what I'm saying is you get the movie removed, a bad name, and a bill from the lawyers. But really this goes out not as a threat to Univeral, but as a promise for other Viacom-like entities:

Leave YouTube alone and we'll save you a query on your overtaxed servers. Or, if you don't stop we'll hold the whole internet hostage with Bittorrent downloads of the HD version. Don't forget to blame the consumer.

Thanks for making me hate the entertainment industry.,

Sincerely,

Time's Man Of The Year
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

^---- I think that's pretty cool. I now have a profile that contains all my profiles! Go get yourself one.

Jeffdiogenes' page about Jeffdiogenes' pages.

http://jeffdiogenes.googlepages.com/home

I was just playing around.