Brad Kozlek

Technolust momentarily satisfied

This weekend I picked up a Sony Ericsson T616 with service from AT&T. I have a month to return it no questions asked and cancel my contract. So, I am trying it out. I am very impressed with the phone. Bluetooth and iSync work flawlessly. The phone itself is very stylin'. I am trying out AT&T's mmode stuff. I haven't reached a verdict on that yet. I have heard lots of people dis the quality of AT&T's voice service. So far it has worked well for me. We will see how it works as I travel over the course of this next month.

And if that wasn't enough, today I walked in to work to find a new toy on my chair. An Apple 17" studio display and DVI to ADC adaptor. Let me tell you, nothing could have prepared me for just how big that adaptor is.

And so, thanks to my new phone, I can share with you pictures of this momentous day:

My new display arrives






The mother of all adaptors

What if DRM creates an incentive?

Well the common wisdom of many folks is that consumers aren't going to put up with crippled drm-ladened machines. Well, let me tell you a little story. I have a coworker that was getting ready to take the linux plunge on her home computer. I was going to help her install and configure. I was thinking it would be a great opportunity to see first hand how linux can work for a less technically inclined user. Plus, It would be help spread the gospel of open source.

Well, today, I find out that she is no longer interested in linux. Why? iTunes for windows. She has been buying up music at the iTunes music store. She loves it. So, you see, for her, the DRM software is the killer app.

Maybe people will love their DRM, because it will allow a much more richer world of content to be made available to the average user. Maybe the lack of a DRM system for the RIAA and MPAA to deliver their content on linux will be yet another excuse people will have for not wanting to migrate.

Many Songs, Played at random.

Well, I am planning a long road trip down the coast in the not too distant future. I do not have an iPod. I do have a CD player in my car. One of my favorite features about iTunes is the ability to play songs randomly from my entire library. So, Captain Connector has a plan. I created a smart playlist in iTunes. I set to pick songs whose length is longer than 0:00 (effectively all songs), and limited the list to 80 minutes selected at random. I also checked live updating.

Now I have a list of songs totally 80 minutes in length. I just click burn, and viola, I have an audio CD. Now I just select all the songs in the list, select clear, and I have another 80 minutes of music. Repeat about 20 times and I have got 26 hours of random music to listen to.

I am currently importing a lot of the wife's music into iTunes, so the stuff she likes can be incorporated into the mix as well.

RSS Aggregator

If you are not using an rss aggregator to help with the reading of the many blogs and news sites you should be keeping up with, then you, sir, are behind the times.

I prefer NetNewsWire Lite. I have been experimenting with browser based service called bloglines. It isn't bad, but I prefer NetNewsWire if for no other reason than it stores whether or not you've read each individual item in a feed. In blog lines, when you click on a feed, it marks every item in that feed as read. Although bloglines does have the advantage of being browser based, so I am not tied to my powerbook to read the latest news.

In conclusion, if you haven't already, find yourself an rss aggregator, you'll thank me for it.

West Wing

As "Angel" is on at the same time as "West Wing", I end up taping West Wing to watch later. As this season of The Wing has been progresing, I have found myself waiting longer and longer to watch the tape. I finally got around to watching last wednesday's episode today.

"West Wing", as one would expect, totally sucks without Sorkin writing for it. No more intellegent dialogue - Everyone now just screams or whines at everyone else, including the President!! And everyone was way too hard on Josh this episode, especially Leo. Contrast Leo flying off the handle with Josh to Leo's attitude to Josh's job in the episode where he brings in a counselor for Josh's post-traumatic stress disorder. Peter David echoes these thoughts and sums up it nicely: "The series hasn't lost its way; it's lost its mind." I think this may be another example of a show getting new writers who don't know or dont' care what has happened previously in the series.

I wonder how much longer I will even bother to tape "West Wing" while I watch "Angel". And for me, that is saying a lot. Before this season I would only speak of West Wing in the most superlative terms.

Yet another blog...

Well here I am with yet another blog. I also have this blog, which I will use to post things visual.

I also am one of many posters to the teamforce blog.

I think I will be posting politics and strange links to the teamforce blog, and other things will be posted here - mostly things dealing with technology, media, and my rampant materialism.

Revolution OS

Getting all the digital cable channels finally paid off tonight as I got to see "Revolution OS" on Sundance West. It was an enjoyable watch, even if I did already know everything it aimed to teach. This viewing came at the right time, as I am going though another one of my bi-monthly linux mini-revivals. I used my linux box to install moveable type on this server yesterday, and I am currently using it to type this entry.

How is this for poetry: linux makes me smile.

Another posting

this is yet another posting.

Test

this is a test.