Well, I tried to write once a day every day for 30 days and I was only able to do one week’s worth of posting. It’s certainly not for lack of want; I really tried to get one substantial post in every day. But I am not on a schedule because I’m out of work and my wife is on vacation. I’ll still try and write as much as possible but when this 30 day period is over, I can’t say that I accomplished the goal I set a week ago. 
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
Modern Marvels is one of my most favorite shows on television. It’s up there with The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, (the original) Law & Order, Nature, Nova, and Smallville. And while I don’t rush home to watch the show or record every new episode like I do my prime time shows, I watch it more often than I do those other programs - in fact, I’m watching it right now as I type. And although the format and topic vary, the true subject matter is always the same: technology.
One of the reasons why Modern Marvels is in the list of my favorite shows is number of shows they produce under the series. You can watch the show several times in a day and still not see a repeat. There are so many shows that I’ve only seen two or three topics replayed. Now, I know there are repeats but there are so many shows that I don’t ever feel like I’ve seen an episode before - very different from the programs (especially those with limited runs).
Another reason I love the show so much is the wide array of topics they highlight. For example, tonight they are showing the world’s fastest; the fastest air craft, car, boat, and train. Soon, they will air an episode on the space shuttle. They have also broadcasted shows on stealth technology (some devoted to air craft only and others that talk about stealth for boats). But the also talk about historical accomplishments and not just about the latest and greatest that we enjoy today.
Modern Marvels has talked about major achievements like bridges (Golden Gate Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, etc.) and dams - Hoover, for example. They also highlight intellectual accomplishments like the assembly line, construction techniques and materials, and skyscrapers. They review past technology and speak about how it shaped present or future inovations. They even review the tools used to create the world’s inventions. But what keeps the show interesting is how they show how technology (and the humans that create and use it) fails us.
There is a regular recurring series called Engineering Disasters that catalogs many of the mistakes - and lessons learned - from bad design and poorly implemented technology. Some of my favorite disaster shows talk about an accidental lake draining, the Great Fire of 1906 in San Francisco (after the earthquake), and sinking bridges. There are at least 17 different episodes that follow this theme and it makes for some interesting television. But disasters aren’t the only thing that keeps the show interesting.
The show also reviews common household items and food like candy, hot dogs, pizza, snacks, and all types of desserts. They also talk about drinks like coffee, soda, and spirits. They even go into the history of paint, exterminators, ice, glue, TNT, map making, Las Vegas tech, leather, sex, oil, sewers, sport technology, towing, and torture devices (useful with the leather and sex episodes ;)). The list goes on and on… there are 325 DVDs available on the show’s website and each episode is on one DVD.
There are a lot of great shows out there - especially on the History Channel - that I really enjoy watching. But Modern Marvels is one of those shows that always entertains, informs, educates, and amazes me - I even laugh sometimes at the disaster shows. And because they are shown frequently on the History Channel, I can always be comforted that when there is nothing good on the networks or they are full of repeats, I can always find something cool and new on Modern Marvels.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am an impulse kind of person - well, when it comes to technology, anyway. Those who make gadgets call people like me ‘early adopters’ and are often the ones that first supply reviews of a product to the community (besides those in the media). Early adopters are usually the ones that offer the most profits to be had per unit. We first users the ones who get to brag at the newest, shinny cell phone or MP3 player. But I’m beginning to feel rejected by my own instinct and I now finally feel that I can wait before picking up the latest and greatest – but it’s not a good thing.
I think it started with my MPx220. Against my better judgment, I picked up the Windows Smartphone two days after it came out. I went to three different Best Buys after calling four or five of them yielded nothing but ignorant clerks transferring me around to virtually every department in the store. When I got the phone, I was so excited and immediately turned the phone on and tested out the web browsing, the speaker phone, and ring tones. I loved it for its synchronization with Outlook and its familiar Pocket PC like interface.
But soon after I got it, I found that it wasn’t what I expected. Not only was it slower than I had anticipated, it wasn’t built well at all; I found that the phone’s battery would come loose and the phone would shut off. I had to stick a wedge of paper in between the battery and the casing to force a tighter fit. The software also had problems and I found myself rebooting the phone just to speed things up and clear the errors that occurred. Sometimes the phone wouldn’t ring and freezing was a weekly event.
The next gadget I remember rushing out to get was the SLVR. Not only could I not get some of my songs on the phone, the artwork got damaged and they never displayed properly. Sometimes, incoming callers wouldn’t be able to hear me and I’d have to hang up and call them back. Forget using IM on the phone. Even though it had the software built in, it never connected half the time and messages in and out of the system were delayed. I gave up on the phone after two months and didn’t get much use out of it because of all the problems.
I’ve had so many problems with operating system upgrades, patches, and new releases that I don’t bother to do it anymore; I can’t list them all. And with all the recent articles on the blogs, I’m not sure I want to get the Blackberry Pearl or a new Mac Book. I’m afraid of paying for an expensive piece of equipment only to be disappointed at what might not work right. It’s holding me back.
I think my wife would be pleased to hear that my impulsive spending habits would be altered - and it is - but it’s also a negative thing too. Because I am still not sure of my purchases even after they’ve been tested by the other early adopters. And it affects my non-technology purchases too. I don’t want to second guess myself but that’s what’s happened. My early adoption has burned me so much in the past that I hesitate to purchase anything in the future - the ultimate burn.
Ever since Microsoft came out with their Live Writer, I’ve been turned on to the blog publishing applications out there on the interweb. I’ve before Live Writer, I tried Performancing and, of course, Flock’s built in writer. And while I think Flock is my favorite 3rd party blogging system, the browser ins’t mature enough for me to use it all the time. When Live Writer came out, it was fantastic - it had all the features I wanted: WYSIWYG, and a spell checker.
But there is one major flaw in Live Writer. It is Windows only. I know, its a Microsoft product and you expect that from them but its a good product and many other people think so too - especially being a beta (and we all know how Microsoft’s production code is let alone their betas). I wanted to find a similar application for Ubuntu so I can blog with a spell checker and not always be connected to the Internet; writing off line is great when you are traveling.
So I was recently reading this article on LifeHacker and thought of trying w.Blogger as an alternative. and while it wasn’t for Linux, they kindly pointed to an app that did what they were doing but for the Gnome interface. That leads me to the application I’m using to write this Post A Day, BloGTK.
So far, this it is looking really good. Installing it was new to me because I’ve never ‘made’ a file using a make script before but it wasn’t hard; I mean, how hard it is typing sudo make install? The software supports the old Blogger API as well as MovableType and seems to be everything a person would want. It supports HTML tags, tables, images, links, categories, and includes a spell checker - something I’ve always wanted out of my WordPress web composition windows.
One of the things that brought me to Linux was it was new. Ubuntu make it easy and offered a noob like me an easy chance to learn what was always foreign before. Before, I never saw the appeal of OSS and free software but I’m beginning to see it now. Applications like BlogGTK are free, OSS, and have many more variants like it available to the community. There isn’t really anything a person can’t do with Linux and this is an example of how I haven’t really felt without after switching. And while I miss my iTunes, I really don’t feel that I’m lacking. In fact, I often feel that I can accomplish anything because of all the support people freely offer those who need it and supply software to accomplish virtually any task one would want to accomplish on a computer.
It is really hard to write a post every day. I could just write for the sake of writing but I’m not sure I want to do that. If I just wrote a paragraph just to cover the hope of writing at least once a day, I’d just write fluff like this.
To help prepare for the task, I wrote drafts with the title of the topics I wanted to write about. I currently have something about censorship in China and a topic on Modern Marvels - the TV show on the History Channel. I’ve got a few other ideas but haven’t committed them to, um, paper yet.
But I’m not giving up on this idea, though. I really want to use this as practice for the writing exams I’m going to take. I’ll probably need some topics presented to me since that’s what the test will be like. That way, i only have to worry about the response and not the topic or question.
Does anyone have something they want me to write about?
