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Orcmid's Live HideOutI don't really need a place like this, but it is apparently inescapable as Windows Live struggles to innoculate us with Live virus. I think of this as a science project.
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May 23 Friday's Uncensored Jukebox
Ed Bott has published a pre-holiday Random 10 and a new Uncensored Jukebox Challenge. Ed reports that it is Judy's birthday so this seems like a great way to wish Judy happy birthday. In celebration of all things romantic, tomorrow, the Saturday of U.S. Memorial Day weekend 2008 is the 13th anniversary of my meeting Vicki in a parking lot and asking her to coffee. We will go out to coffee again. Our 13th wedding anniversary will be this New Years Eve.
I'm liking this. I think I'll stop logging and just listen. Let's make it a mellow and cool overcast evening in Seattle. Cripes, George Michael duet with Elton John, ... mellowing out for sure ... February 22 Podblogging: Because I Can? ... Well, Maybe Not
I was sitting quietly in the local Starbucks, jacking into T-Mobile Hot Spot from my brand new T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile instrument. It took me the bus ride from my favorite Barnes & Noble Starbucks to my local one to figure out how I was unable to log on to Windows Live though. I was eager to try logging in again and doing my first blog post from a phone. I was able to get through the Windows Live ID Logon the second time. I specifically wanted to see what this blog looked like when accessed via mobile.windows.live. It takes a lot of navigation, but the post texts show up all right. There are tiny versions of the pictures, too. So it is a nice feature. I haven't tried looking at any of my web pages yet. I'm apprehensive about that. Well, this is not the post I made on the phone. Somewhere around clicking the Publish button the post disappeared, never to be seen again. My thumbs were too tired to figure out how to correct it. So I didn't frustrate myself with a do-over. The Dash has a tiny QWERTY keyboard. It was amazing to learn that even my thumbs know their way around QWERTY, but it is a painful process just the same. I have been watching my fingers, because the keys are easy to miss, so the automatic word-completion suggestions are often wasted on me (and I have to take my thumbs out of QWERTY position to select one). I will practice more and see what improves. I compose my web pages and blog articles for reading from full-up PC displays. It is way over my head to figure out how to target my sites to mobile devices. If I was going to the trouble to make all that work, I think the time would be more valuable invested in accessibility. Now that I think about it, maybe making web pages and blog posts amenable to mobile access is a way to approach having the material be accessible. OK, I'll look at that then. Meanwhile, I'm grateful that mobile.live.com and the MSN counterpart (even better, actually) do present fairly nicely. CNN has some work to do, but MSNBC has it figured out. I just installed Yahoo! Go also, and there is a special MSN install, but I am yet to explore those too. I'll try another post from the phone, some day, but for now I am happy to be home and keyboarding away in Windows Live Writer. I figured I'd attempt to upload pictures and also blog posts from the new phone because now I can. This is the first phone I've owned that could take advantage of those features of my wireless service. Last week at ODC2008 I lost my Nokia Communicator. It was on T-Mobile wireless but unsupported for their Internet access and other goodies (ring tones, MP3s, photos, videos, and all the other silliness). Fortunately, the phone was off and I lock my SIM cards as well as the keyboard. There has been no attempt to use the account and I have kept my number. I also had no unfulfilled subscriber commitment, so I could do a phone upgrade at no penalty. I have set up my new Dash with the same precautions. I also don't keep anything on the phone that I am worried about losing. My contact list is synchronized with my Outlook and there are no secrets there. And yes, I signed up for the insurance too. The deductible is more than I paid for the phone after discounting, but much less than buying a full-price replacement. When I complete my two-year commitment I can cancel the insurance because the upgrade price will be less than the deductible anyhow. I have resisted three whole days without adding the data plan. The T-Mobile Total Internet plan, which is what I apparently need, also bundles T-Mobile Hot Spot. I already have about 18-months of free T-Mobile Hot Spot left to use as a promotion for buying my two Give 1 Get 1 One Laptop Per Child computers. It irks me that I can't buy a data plan that doesn't bundle Hot Spot (and I don't need access to an Exchange server either). I am throwing in the towel though. I do want the GPRS/EDGE capability that some features require. As much as I like hanging out in libraries and coffee shops, it is even nicer to be able to access the Internet wherever I happen to be sitting at the moment, even at home. I can't resist. I think of it like buying a couple of premium channels on cable TV, but cheaper. This may be the beginning of something terrible ... January 31 What Birds Are These? I asked
Every Winter there are swarms of birds outside of my basement-office window. They arrive suddenly, pecking the heck out of my lawn (but leaving the sprouts of my late-season re-seeding alone) and making off with various bugs and worms. Suddenly, the dense flock will take flight and land somewhere else in the yard, repeating the process until they disappear until the next year. The entire episode is just a few minutes. This particular visitation was on December 1, 2007. All I know about the birds is that they are speckled and about the size of robins but sleeker (and my robin sightings happen in the Spring and early Summer). I was reminded of this phenomenon on seeing the similar birds photographed out Doug Mahugh's window on January 26, 2008. I asked about these on Doug's post and I now know they are newcomers to this part of the world, European Starlings. That explains why they are a novelty for me. I also remember seeing smaller versions of these getting tipsy on some berried shrubs outside a local McDonalds. I suspect they were juveniles out on their first toot. Although we are still having unusual occurrences of snow, without accumulation, at the end of January, there are more active birds than I would expect with this unusual incidence of freezing conditions. You can understand that when I saw these fellows hanging out in the neighborhood earlier this week, I couldn't help but think of the Pixar video, "For the birds." (The "sneak peak" is definitely for the birds, but the old postings of the full Pixar short with the correct audio have been ordered taken down. This YouTube mashup may serve better.)
January 27 Gaming Pandora
Although I was excited when Pandora began to provide classical selections, I was quickly disillusioned. The biggest problem is that classical pieces don't break down nicely into radio sound-play excerpts. When I hear a movement from a symphony, concerto, or other suite, I usually long to hear the rest. It is not equivalent to different tracks on an album. The situation seems to have improved but I find that I am spending more time on other stations on my Pandora Custom Stations list. That's Pink Floyd?Occasionally it is very difficult for me to establish a genre on a Pandora station. I first learned this when I set out to create a David Bowie station. All I learned was how much David Bowie material there was that I didn't like. I woke up to Bowie, as it were, with Ziggy Stardust. I obtained a few other albums and I Bowie perform on the Serious Moonlight Tour at the Carrier Dome. So there is a Bowie sub-genre that is what works for me. I despaired of training Pandora to find the spot for me and I haven't visited that station in some time. Another station worked quite differently for me. I am also a Pink Floyd fan. There is also Pink Floyd that I don't like. I now have my station trained to play practically every version of Another Brick in the Wall they have recorded. That's great, although I would really like more on the Distant Sound of Thunder groove. No, the problem with my Pink Floyd station is that Pandora keeps suggesting songs by other artists that I do like but that I don't associate with Pink Floyd at all. I can see what might be the connection, but the associations are not what puts me in a Pink Floyd state of mind. Billy Joel, Steve Perry, Tom Petty, and Genesis just don't fit for me. Pandora allows a selection to be moved to a different station. That was a problem. I liked these non-Pink suggestions, but I didn't have a station that was always appropriate but I didn't want to lose the recommendation. Finding Classic Album Rock ... My Number, at LastSo far, I have solved my problem in having Pinkness on the Pink Floyd channel with two smart moves. First, I added some artists to my Pink Floyd station that I figured would give me more-likely Pandora Picks. The first artists that I added are Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, and Yes. You might be starting to see my warped musical background at this point. Secondly, and this is a terrible disclosure, I created a Classic Album Rock station. That title doesn't work with Pandora, so I created an REO Speedwagon station (really) and renamed it to Classic Album Rock. Pandora does a kind of training by playing a song from the selected artist. I gave "Can't Fight This Feeling" a thumbs up. Next, Pandora offers a different artist that has a strong genre match. I gave Boston's "More Than a Feeling" another thumbs up. So far I have not put one selection on the Thumbs-down list. Here is the subsequent play list that Pandora offered up:
Wow, it's like listening to Philadelphia's WMMR in the 60s and, later, to Brother Weez in Rochester, without the commercials and the chatter. What a win for a peaceful Sunday noon while I prepare to take my OLPC XO-1 out to play. I wonder when I'll hear from Foreigner and Jethro Tull. D'ya think Motown is unlikely? Heh. I hate to confess that Pandora now has my number. January 25 Friday Cat Pictures: Come Closer Kitty
I was not set up for nature photography from some remote-controlled blind. I happened to have my camera at my desk, and I used the opportunity to grab several shots very quickly without moving around much and shying the cat away. Teh's arrival was also sudden and unexpected. I wasn't sure how long he would stay on the narrow window sill. I shot very rapidly and did not adjust the exposure or focus at all. I was never sure when either cat would bolt from the window. With CaptureNX,I now know to go through the basic setting first, thanks to the second day of Nikon School. Because I use Nikon's RAW format all of the time, I was able to over-ride some of the exposure adjustments that were made in the camera. I changed the exposure compensation to over-expose the images and bring up the shaded foreground as much as was safe. The white balance was adjusted for cloudy daylight. This was all after the fact. To rescue the Teh Amor pictures, I also needed to be extra-creative with brightness and contrast. Seeing them together I see that it would have helped to take the contrast down some more and dull the back lighting to match the first image. I may try that again just to see how much better I can do. I still don't have an efficient workflow, but I notice that I am learning to avoid experimenting with adjustments that won't be useful in a given situation. That picks up the pace, but there is still a great deal of trial-and-error, as you can see.
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