I little while back, i am jen posted a new idea on her website. She offered up custom hand made CDs for sale. You pick the tracks and the title, she creates unique artwork to go with it.
I have a thing for signed stuff, not so much as a collector, but more for the experience of connection and closeness to the artists whose music I love. So of course I had to jump on this. I agonized about the playlist and title for a long time but got there eventually, and here's the result:
I'm really jazzed. It's a one of a kind piece of artwork to go with a custom mix and a cool way to connect with an artist. I love it and I'm glad I did it. Jen posted a video on Youtube called "Each one is Unique." You can see mine here and there in the video, especially around 00:32.I have ben thinking of what to write about Ideajam since it came out this week. When I started thinking, I figured it would be easy, but it turned out to not be as easy as I hoped.
The idea behind IdeaJam is simple enough...it gives members of the Domino community to post ideas for projects, changes, improvements, etc and allows other community members to comment upon and promote or demote the idea.
With a bunch of smart, active users, IdeaJam could be really fertile ground which could grow great projects at IBM, various business partners and would-be open-source developers. From where I sit, it's a great way for the community to give feedback on what they want in a more direct way than normal.
For me, personally, it's a way to keep connected to the Domino community now that I don't work with Lotus software in my new job. I've been thinking of ways to contribute to the community over the last couple of weeks. I haven't had any great ideas on my own yet, but participating in IdeaJam is at least a small contribution in the mean time.
I hope IBM and the Business Partner community see it as the opportunity that it is.
I'm also really curious to see how the IdeaJam framework works outside of the Domino community when Elguji puts it out as a product. While I think it's a great idea, I'm wondering how big a population it takes in a corporate setting to reach critical mass for it to drive itself.
Manager Tools' latest podcast, "Getting Laid Off - Finances Rule" is a great illustration of why I listen every week.
This week's episode cuts through the BS straight to the core of the issue in Mike and Mark's typical direct style: Whether you get laid off or terminated, the state of your finances are what determine how well you are able to handle the situation.
Most folks reaction is focusing on the job hunt and totally miss the fact that if their finances are in order, and have a an emergency fund that they can live on while they search, they can afford to take the time and make better choices in resolving the situation.
In early 2001, the tech bubble was collapsing and I went through a layoff situation. One company I was in was collapsing, so I got laid off, but I quickly landed another job and thought I was set. Then I got laid off from that job a couple weeks later and spent the next few weeks without a job. I didn't have my finances together then and we suffered through that time. By the time I was able to land my next job, I was desperate and glad to drive 40 miles each way to get a paycheck.
If I was in a better financial situation at the time, I wouldn't have taken the job. On the flip side though, I spent the next seven years working there. Tomorrow's my last day there, actually, so I guess it wasn't all bad. I learned a lot and grew a lot and got to work with some really great people.
We've been working really hard getting our finances together...taking care of things, building that emergency fund, etc. I got lucky pulling out of my last layoff, but I'm not taking that chance next time.
This episode of Manager Tools comes at a good time. While I'm already working hard on my finances, but it puts financial issues in an atypical context that really hit home for me. Thanks, guys.
Next week will be the last week for me to work at my current employer. I have been working at the same org in the same billet for over six years. I've grown a lot since the summer of 2001. So has the environment I worked in. I'm excited and am looking forward to taking my career to the next level in this new opportunity.
While I'm excited about the future, there is one thing about the new job that makes me a little sad. For the first time in almost 10 years, being a Lotus Domino administrator will not be part of my job.
I really love the community that has come up around Lotus as much as I love the products themselves. There's a lot of passion and enthusiasm for the Lotus suite of products that you don't often see for enterprise software. It's almost like the cult of Mac, but I think they party harder at Lotusphere.
I don't know if I'll get to work with Lotus software in my career. Only time will tell.
In the short term, I'm going to be throwing myself into my new job. Once I get settled, I'll spend time figuring out what I'm going to do about Lotus software in the future. Bruce Elgort, with his work on OpenNTF, Taking Notes and IdeaJAM is loving proof that you can be a part of the community and not work with Lotus software in your day job. While I don't expect that I can make the kind of impact that Bruce has, I may be able to find a way to contribute anyway.
Last year, I posted a blog entry called: The problem with "mobile is that it wants to be more than it is
In it, I complained that the mobile providers are concentrating too much on gadgety, feature-bloated handsets and not enough on basic units that are just a phone and nothing else. Not long after that, I bought a used t610 on ebay. It's small, has bluetooth and the Mac can see it in iSync and that's about it. Lately, it's been blasting noise at me if I'm on a call and the signal starts to fade so I'm looking at possibilities for replacement.
What am I looking at? Helio Ocean, HTC Touch and the TMobile Shadow. You may notice that each of these is quite a bit more than just a phone. One's a custom media/smartphone, the other two are Windows Mobile phones with new clever UI's. They have decent cameras in them, and decent high-speed wireless connectivity. They're also right around $200 which is the only reason I'm considering them at all. If money was no object I would have already gotten a Nokia N95 a long time ago.
Why the change? Price, mostly. I have a hard time with the idea of spending $300+ on what a lot of the 'smart phones' go for but $200 is a lot easier to swallow. Since each of the three that I'm looking at are on different networks, I have to include the provider information in the decision as well (I'm on TMo, so I'll have to fight to get the new subscriber price, Margo's on Sprint and it's coverage is flakey for her, and Helio's poor customer service is the stuff legends are made of)..
The t610 isn't dead yet so I still have time to make a decision. I'm sure I'll post something here when the choice is made. I just wanted to go on the record as saying that, yes, I am a hypocrite before someone notices me fiddling around with a new fancy phone.
I love Freezepop and I love Guitar Hero. I love keytars too. Good thing they come together...even if it is a bit odd that a band with no guitar is in a guitar game.
Less Talk More Rokk is one of the bonus tracks on Guitar Hero 2. When I'm just playing around, it's one of my go-to songs behind Jordan. Freezepop just put out a video for it...It's watchable below. Fun stuff.
Freezepop "Less Talk More Rokk"
Also, the new album Future Future Future Perfect is up for pre-order at Newberry Comics
Technorati Tags: Games, GuitarHero, Music
or, How and Why I Switched to the serial cable.
Since we cut over to the Verizon FiOS video service this year, we have been having occasional issues with the Tivo. I have always used the IR sprayer for the Tivo to change channels on the cable boxes but for some reason, the box that we got for FiOS had trouble receiving the channel codes sometimes…especially on 3-digit channels. That caused the Tivo to record a different show that it meant to.
I decided to give the serial cable a try in spite of the fact that a lot of people out there in the world have been saying that Verison’s disabling the serial port on the Motorola QIP 2500-3 that I have.
I plugged in and in a couple minutes the config was changed. The serial port’s definitely working on my unit. Channel changing has been reliable so far. Will be watching it closely for a while. I’m pleased…I never really liked the idea of using the IR sprayer to change channels.
Interestingly, the Wii's Mii characters have a little bit of social netowkring built into them. You can allow them to mingle with other players' Miis on their Wii. I'm not sure how that affects setting up multi-player gaming sessions over the net yet, but it's an interesting idea.
In Wii Sports, apparently other players' Miis show up in the audience to watch. There's a Mii Parade feature that's supposed to show you what Miis are currently mingling on your Wii.
The only problem I have so far is that Nintendo added a request/authorize step that needs to be completed before your Mii can go anywhere and before anyone's Miis can visit you. The procedure seems a little complicated...I'm not going to repeat it here...it in Google.
For anyone reading this with a Wii, my Wii number is: 6517 4737 3499 4541
Technorati Tags: Wii
I have an odd fascination with the supply/demand surrounding the Wii vs the PS3. Sometime since Christmas it's become a habit of mine when I'm in a store that would carry them, I wander over to the electronics department and see how many PS3's are sitting on the shelf (usually several) vs how many Wii's are sitting on the shelf (usually none).
I was in a local Target yesterday afternoon when I made my way to electronics. As I approached, there were some people walking out of there with Wii boxes in-hand. When I got to the Wii aisle, there was a Treget staffer pulling a Wii box out of an otherwise empty box and almost automatically held it out to me. I didn't reach out to grab it right away. "Do you want the last one?" Initially, I said "No thanks" and he put it on the shelf.
I had second thoughts a couple minutes later, went back and bought it.
Setup was easy. I had a little trouble getting it on the wireless network, but it wasn't that big a deal.
It's an interesting little device. The nunchuk has a lot going on with it...a lot smarter than I thought it'd be. It's comfortable to use too. Bundling Wii Sports with it was smart...it's a fun set of games that very easily gets you up to speed on how to use the controllers.
Now I don't have to pay $500 to play Guitar Hero 3. In the mean time I need to find out what the good Wii games are.
Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Technology
Do you mark all of your emails with a High importance flag?
It makes the flag useless and makes kittens cry.
Please stop. Think of the kittens.
Much love;
Scott
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Current Events
We can put a robot on Mars. Why can't we put robots in a mine? We're in the future now and people still die in mine collapses. WTF?
Rescuers Dig for 2 Men After Mine-Wall Collapse - washingtonpost.com
Technorati Tags: Current Events
I'm not going to tag this as "Show and Tell Thursday" but it this post is somewhat inspired by the phrase.
Sometime in 1998 I got my first taste of working with Lotus Notes and Domino. I was the new guy in the IT department of a biotech services company. The development group was doing some final pre-testing before rolling out a new application, and they asked me to check it out as a set of fresh eyes.
It was an unfamiliar application and at the time I had no idea what the intended users were meant to accomplish with it but I was willing to take up the challenge to see if I could break it...and I broke it. I got a repeatable Red Box of Death error and was able to explain exactly what I did to get it. The developers were able to fix the error and were spared an embarrassing post-lanch showstopper. I was launched into a new career as a Domino administrator.
I think I got a spot award from the department which was nice and always appreciated. The developers gave me the Lotus Notes mug pictured below which I thought was a really cool expression of appreciation. They picked this much specifically because of the tagline under the Notes logo:
"...because information has no value until it's shared.
I still frequently use this cup for my morning coffee. I also try to keep the tagline in mind as I go about my days. I think I'm a lot more valuable to the people around me if I share my knowledge rather than horde it.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Domino, Lotus, Technology
In February, I made a post here asking that someone make an external laptop GPU. It was one of those things that make sense to me...allow part-time gamers like me to add high-power graphics cards to a normal laptop on gaming nights. I wanted to be able to play when I want without having to buy one of the big Alienware and Dell XPS laptops.
ASUS beat me to it by a month. The ASUS XG Station is exactly what I was looking for. An enclosure that houses a GPU and connects to the laptop via the Express Card slot.
Sweet. It's an interesting solution, since it doesn't require a custom connector to be built into the laptop. I wouldn't be able to use it with any new Mac laptop that I might have in the future. I might be able to pull off pairing it with a relatively cheap laptop.
It's a lot easier than lugging around a desktop and a 20" CRT. Blah.
via Engadget - Asustek's XG Station ripped apart
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Technology
I have a free idea for Dell or Gateway or Alienware or Falcon or whoever wants to run with it. It would be nice to see my name engraved on the chipset if it gets to market but I understand if it doesn't. I'd still like to see it happen.
I want to see an external PCI-X (or similar) connector on a laptop. Then I want nVidia, ATI and Ageia to make versions of their products to connect to that connector.
While modern CPUs can be throttled down to conserve power, modern GPUs and Physics cards don't so you end up with a compromise on laptops for gaming power. Either you get something something light and portable with no gaming capability or you get a gaming beast that weighs a ton and has no battery life.
External GPU and physics hardware would allow people like me game on our terms. 90% of the time, I want a laptop that is small, lightweight and portable (currently, I'm running a 12" PowerBook). But for that other 10% of the time, it would be nice to plug in some extra power and be able to play the games I want. It would also be nice to be able to upgrade without having to replace the whole laptop.
This came up from attending my first LAN party in about 8 years or so. All of the laptops I had access to had decent CPUs but way underpowered video hardware. It made for a very frustrating experience.
Technorati Tags: Technology
I didn't make it this year, obviously. I did try to keep up with what was going on in Orlando this week but life and work haven't been very helpful in allowing me to keep track of what's going on 862 miles away. I actually haven't seen the OGS stream yet either. Below I'm posting some of the thoughts I'm having about Lotusphere 2007:
Quickr looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on it and start testing. It looks fantastic. It looks like it's going to be a great answer to what Sharepoint gives out of the boxes (because it's hard to have a Sharepoint with only one box, no?). It's providing all of the Quickplace functionality plus blogs, wiki's, RSS feeds and some other stuff, all with a shiny new Web2.0 skin. With its integration into Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer, I'm wondering where Domino Document Manager comes in. I don't think that Quickr will absorb DDM but I can hope that using DDM as Quickr's repository will be easier. I'm glad to see that they're trying to make up for the fact that Quickplace hasn't changed much since 3.0 in 2003.
onnections sounds fantastic in theory, but I wonder about it in practice. It's probably going to be one of those things where some companies would use the hell out of it right away while it won't take in others no matter how much it's marketed. I'd be interested in seeing this in use outside the internal corporate sphere. Something like integrating it into the Notes.net profiles or something similar to allow the Lotus community to come together around.
I didn't see or hear anything about Domino Administrator, the Domino server or Domino Document Manager. They showed Notes and Designer 8 but no Administrator and there wasn't anything that I could find out about changes to the Domino 8 server. That's where I live when I do Domino...the server and Administrator. Lotusphere 2006 had a lot about R7. I hope we get more info before it comes out.
I really appreciate the Taking Notes and IDoNotes podcasts cranking it out at Lotusphere. Bruce and Julian and Chris did a great job at giving us a a good idea of the feel of what's going on at Lotusphere 2007 through their podcasts. With the madness that is Lotusphere, it's hard for those of us that aren't there to get an idea of what's going on down there. I know that blogging is hard down there and I can imagine that getting that many podcasts out with everything else going on has to be exhausting.
Technorati Tags: Jamfest, Lotusphere2007, Technology
I spent yesterday morning at the local Microsoft Technology Center today. F5 was using some of the meeting space there to host a discussion about PKI enabling applications using the Common Access Card. Specifically, they were looking for information on what challenges we were having as customers so they can work on figuring out how to get a more complete solution than they're currently offering. I think the discussion was helpful all around.
On the way to the conference room, I passed an Xbox kiosk that was playing Red vs Blue videos, which was actually what prompted this post. I just thought it was fantastic that someone decided to put up something funny and cool into a kiosk instead of just the expected demo versions of a couple of games.
Too bad I didn't bring my camera.
Technorati Tags: Collaboration, F5, Games, Machinima, Microsoft, Technology
Last year was my first Lotusphere. I had a bad plane ride over. Then I had the shuttle ride from hell over to All Star Sports where I was booked. The next five days were one heck of a ride. I learned a lot, walked a lot, had a lot of highs and had some exceptional lows as well. I had no idea how physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting it was going to be.
In the past, I always thought it would be interesting to go to Lotusphere, but never enough to really push to go. Now that I've been, I want to keep going back...I want to have another go and not be so overwhelmed like I was for Lotusphere 2006. This year's a bit different than last year for reasons I might go into later. I'm going to try to get out for Lotusphere 2008 but a lot of things can happen between now and then so I'll have to wait and see.
I'm hoping that more comes out about Domino 8 on the server side this year. A lot has been said about the Notes 8 client but the server is where I get things done. I don't think anything has been said about what's changed in the Admin and Designer clients either so it would be nice to have more information there. I haven't worked for an organization that deployed Notes clients to the end users in many years so, while interesting, the Notes 8 client changes aren't going to affect me much in the short term. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the updates Domino Document Manager and Quickplace which are at least in desperate need of UI updates.
I'll be spending time as I can in the Lotusphere Live site if the office firewall will let me out to it. Either way, I'll be keeping an eye on the usual sources for info of the new and interesting things that come out of Lotusphere 2007.
It's supposed to be an interesting year and I'm looking forward to it.
Technorati Tags: Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2007
Cox lost a customer today.
Last weekend a few Verizon guys stopped by to sign people up in my neighborhood I'd been thinking about it for a while anyway. It's easy when I already have the FiOS internet hookup. All I had on cable was the extended basic service. I was paying $70 a month. The same level on FiOS TV has a few more channels (BBC America! Yay!) and it's going to come in at around $45. Sweet.
Margo was home for the install. It went pretty smoothly. I wasn't expecting that that they were going to replace the DLink router that they provided when the internet hookup was done. In its place is a Actiontec MI424WR router....the ethernet line from the FiOS goes into one jack, then the video comes out a coax port that hooks up to the cable that's in the house. I had a chance to talk to the Verizon tech about the new router and he said that it increases available bandwidth to accommodate the internet connection and video when things like Video on Demand are coming down on the video side. Interesting.
The set-top box is a Motorola QIP2500-3. The TiVo controls it perfectly with the IR sprayer. I haven't tried the serial connection since I can't find the cable and I've read that Verizon has them disabled anyway. The video looks good. I'm already TiVo'ing stuff that I couldn't get on Cox. It's a good day.
Technorati Tags: FiOS, Technology, Television, Tivo
"Gizmodo iPhone Hands On Part Deux: Why Isn't it White and Other Questions" via TUAW
Gizmodo's reporting that, among other things, that the iPhone isn't really running OSX and that they're not going to allow third-party developer support. I guess that answers a couple of questions that I had about it.
That's kind of disappointing. I understand Apple's need to keep the platform pristine and seamless and that they tend to do that by strictly controlling what goes on it (like the way the iPod is controlled). I'm guessing that any applications that come out for the iPhone will be handled through the iTunes store like the iPod games are.
That's a little disappointing to me. Restricting third-party development support like this makes the iPhone a prettier but less flexible Windows mobile phone. The Cingular 8525 isn't as slick, but it's a lot more flexible and ultimately usable because I can go out and find (or potentially write) the software I need to do what I want with it.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Gadgets, iPod, iTunes, Marketing, Technology
