Happy Father's Day....To ME!

The Newest member of my Digital family is:
The Canon Powershot A580 and a 1GB memory stick.

I'll get back to you shortly. I'm still reading the manual on this Beauty.

Wingman out.

Books Open, Virtual and Online

Remember when Google started digitizing all the library books it could get it's hand on?

Well in the mean time Microsoft and Yahoo have jumped into the fray with loads of Money to kick-start this worthwhile endeavor.

Well just this last week, Microsoft has cut the purse strings, and unlocked it rights to project and the copying hardware. Very nice thing.

Leo, at TWiT had Special Guest: Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive talk about the status of this free online library, and it's Legal ramifications.

Check out these sources at:

http://www.archive.org/index.php

http://www.fullbooks.com/

http://audible.com/

Wingman, in the Reading Room.

Linux and WIFI

http://binarywolf.com/249/hotspots.htm

Finding Hotspots and Tools to Access WIFI


ACS American Constitution Society
For Law and Policy
Jennifer

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In many respects, WiFi on Linux is not quite Ready-For-Primetime.

Even the latest Fedora 8, which Yashamaru is testing on a laptop before installing to his main machine Could Not find the WiFi signal running in our house. I've had similar setbacks with Fedora Core 6 and WiFi.

Ethernet cable works great on FC6. Even my Sony PSP catches WiFi like a champ, making my homebrew enabled Internet Radio very enjoyable, with rarely a drop in the signal to interrupt the music (a good way to test the wifi connection).

Another detail Yashamaru, found working on a Windows XP powered laptop he was converting to run Linux, was XP's lack of driver support for SATA (serial ATA) harddrives, the New Standard.

More to come, on WiFI and Linux.
Wingman out.

If You Knew Suse Like I Know SuSE....

Yep, I'm back for a brief visit to SuSE land. It's called openSuSE now.

This is only temporary. 10.2 has problems, which I'll talk about at my MediaCircus2 blog. No need to rehash that here.

This is for workarounds that really work.

First up, Setting up a XEN Virtual Machine.

I need to install a XEN Virtual Machine. So I visited openSuSE 10.2 website for information.

The ground work.

Mine's is bigger than Yours

Get your mind out of the gutter, we're talking Movie ticket sales records here.

And Sony and Disney just want to set the "Record" straight. The studios NEVER screw with the numbers. RIGHT?

Right.

It really doesn't matter, does it? The main numbers to remember are:
When does 3 become 4?

That's when the third and final movie of the series for Spiderman, Shrek and Pirates of the Carribean, become 4.

When the receipts exeed 200,000 dollars in the first 10 days

Well, when it does, and the series becomes such a "hit" that it crosses over into JAMES BOND LAND, it takes on a "life" of its own.

The 3 megahits released this May have, for better or worse, reached that stage.

So expect a Fourth offering of each.

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Heck, even George Lucas wants to add a couple of new stories to the Star Wars Saga.

Probably for TV though.
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When was the last time you said: Uber-kool and Microsoft in the same breath?

Yeah, sometime before the Jurassic Period, if memory serves.

Anyway, this new Microsoft "Surface" touchscreen tabletop for $10,000 is sweet.

And very Un-Microsoft Like.

But the BIG news was that they kept it QUIET for five years. They must have had something else on the Front Burner (on low heat), distracting our attention. Hmmm,

I wonder what that could have been?

Link to my Media Circus 2 Blog on MS's Surface

Full News story at Popular Mechanics.com
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Under: Wait till Next Year DEPT.

Good chance at some Good Movies in 2008.

Yeah, I know summer 2007 has just barely started, but these recaps of upcoming fare begs a little Blog space.

Of course, for Christmas 2008, there's the Next Star Trek Movie.
That seems right on schedule. The other two "iffies" are:

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks, together again for another Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code, author) story. The prequel to Da Vinci called: Angels and Demons, from the book of the same title.

That, I read a few years past and it was a page turner. I hope they do it right.

And the Third Movie, based on a book I also read, is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Due out in the later part of 2008.

From the Director that gave us Harrion Ford in Witness. Good movie.
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The last chance for lightning to strike, is the long awaited pairing of Chris Carter, Gillian Anderson and Fox Mulder, I mean David Duchovny.

The NeXt X-files Movie. They're Still at the talking stage.

Chris, if you're still having problems on a story, I'm working on a script right now.

In it, Scully meets up with Mulder in Vegas at a Hacker's Convention.


You remember me.

I was at that X-Files convention in Pasadena many years ago.

I was the guy that didn't ask Steven Williams what Johnny Depp was really like.

I'm still cool. Call me.

A Daily Bucket of FRESHMEAT?

The First Site I go to when I'm on the Fedora CORE 6 machine is visit that fresh repository of new cooked programs (mainly for Linux) called Freshmeat II.

Once in a while, instead of software, an article or editorial appears, like the following:

The Case For Java-Based Scripting Languages
by Subhash Chandran, in Editorials - Sat, Apr 21st 2007 00:00 PDT

Scripting languages are ubiquitous. They are used everywhere: in log parsing, triggering applications, or performing volatile operations which require frequent changes in logic. Shell script was one of the most popular languages through the end of 1980s. Then came Perl, which revolutionized the world of scripting. Later in the day, we have Python and Ruby, both pretty popular. In an organization having primarily Java skills, is it worthwhile to have your developers learn these languages?

Remainder of the Script Language Editorial is HERE.

But most of the time, the juicy-MEAT stuff is a Fresh New LINUX program, like the following:

Evolution RSS Reader Plugin 0.0.1
by Luci Langa - Sat, Apr 21st 2007 03:43 PDT

About: The Evolution RSS Reader Plugin enables support for RSS feeds in the Evolution mail reader.

Changes: A feed setup dialog and error messages were implemented. A progress window for reading RSS was added along with automatic folder creation.

This latter posting is MAINLY the reason I visit the site on a semi-daily basis.

On this day, Sat. April 21, 5:32 AM 2007 there were 25 fresh programs posted.

Yum-yum. Fresh Meat.

Even for vegetarians...

Mapping Data

Data is more useful if you can see it from different angles. Because you can't see the forest if you're standing with trees in your face.

It sometimes helps to step back and get a broader perspective. An Overview if you will.

An often forgotten tool for doing this is a simple map. A picture is worth a 1000 words kinda of thing.


Here's a few of my favorite Perspective Changers:

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10X10: It maps the most frequently 'buzzed" words and pictures that define time in a 10 by 10 grid. 100 pictures, 100 words.

Google-Maps: An open API for personal use, so you can make use of maps on your Web Page. (also see Yahoo Pipes below:

Technorati: A pulse keeper on what Bloggers are yapping about.


Twittervision: Leo Laporte said on the TWITs this week: If you need a quick explanation on what the latest craze in message twittering is, check this site out.

Yahoo Pipes: An online implementation of Mash-ups. Connecting open data from different websites and creating a new View of that Data.

Google Maps is often one of the building blocks, as is Flickr, the online picture hosting website.


Before Blogging went nuts, there was RSS (real simple syndication) feeds that kept you up-to-date on the latest info on the technology, news and media scene. Then with the aid of INCLOSURES in the HTML script (The Idea suggested by MTV Jock Adam Curry), mp3 audio became playable from an rss feed. This brilliant Idea was given the Nothing-To-Do-With IPODS name of Podcasting.

Later, another ENCLOSURE allowed Video to be enbedded in the HTML script.

A New Media delivery was born to give us Radiocasts and Videocasts.


RSS OWL A RSS feed Reader.

How do you see your Data? Let me count the ways.

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