Theo Moore

...now I will be Headblader. Thanks to a buddy, I now have on order a starter kit to get the old head shaved. I figured I'd totally embrace the inner convict look. With tats and goatee, shaved head was all I was missing. :-)

Sheri randomly checked with the Marriot last night about rooms for next year's D*C and they were available. This was total surprise as they weren't supposed to be available (per our last call to the Marriot) until December. We were determined to be in one of the host hotels, so we've been carefully monitoring the situation. As soon as they were available we grabbed them. Chances are they'll go fast as the Marriot is usually the host hotel where you can actually get sleep (if you want it), as opposed to the others which are usually too busy.

DragonCon is September 4th through the 7th of next year; only 336 days left.

Turns out I talk too much and post too much in my blog. :-) I won 8th place last month (September) at Community Credit. It's a pretty cool way to get credit for just being active in the community. It's nice to be recognized. :-) 

I recently updated a handy function for our QTP library. It is a handy function that will extract the query string from the URL in a current displayed browser, parse it, and store it in such a way that the user can call for the value by name. It is also pretty smart that it stores and only parses it one time. It remembers what the last browser was, and if the URL changes, it re-parses the string. Pretty handy. So, if you wanted a value out of the query string for say, lnkey, you'd simply call it like:

myVar = Browser("MyBrowser").GetQueryStringValue("LnKey")

It's made extracting such values infinitely simpler and provides a standard interface for use by the whole team.

Handy.

RealDvD is now available for a 30 day trial and reduced price ($30 compared to $50). This basically makes a licensed copy of your DvD on your hard drive to "protect your DvDs" and allow you to easily take your collection with you. It will rip to portable drives as well as hard drives. However, the ripped copy is locked down to your specific license on your specific machine.

This is interesting for many reasons. It won't allow you to burn the DvDs (I don't think), but it doesn't prevent you borrowing your buddy's DvDs (or renting them) and ripping them. I am not sure how this is 100% legal as the company claims, but I suppose it is no different than using any of the fly under the radar ripper software packages to make an illegal copy except that it locks the copy to one specific machine.

I think I may give this a try and will report more once I have.

Picked up a new toy over the weekend (I love gadgets, the gods helps me). I was going to dinner for a friend's birthday and had to miss my turn. We found the place ok, but I was reminded how much I don't like being lost. As a matter of fact, I hate it. I decided I'd had enough of this (after ending up in what I refer to as "Banjo, South Carolina" the week prior for the mud run), so went a found one.

I decided on the 260. It's sweet. It has none of the extra features (like phone bluetooth or MP3 player...stuff I call "fluff"), and does a great job. I considered the 205 (cheaper), but the 205 might say "1.0 miles, turn right", the 260 says "1.0 turn right on First Street North". The combination of voice prompt with the visual cue of a road sign greatly contributes to my send of well-being. The 260 also has a full size SD card slot (apparently the map updates come on them) rather than the microDC as supported by the 205. 'Course, the 205 does come in red (which matches my car), and the 260 in grey only.

I considered the 260 wide screen, but ultimately decided that if I am driving, I ain't lookin' at the screen anyway...or I shouldn't be anyway.

If yer looking for a good, reliable, easy to follow GPS without the extra fluff features, the 26o is a nice option.

CNET has an interesting teaser article describing a "black box" feature for VS2010. As a developer/tester, I can tell you this would be excellent! Imagine having all the details of the application state on a crash or error. As the article describes, it should reduce the "works fine on my box" approach to defect resolution. As a developer, it will reduce my feeling of helplessness when a defect pops up that I can't reproduce. As a tester, I will be able to provide additional information about the problem that will allow better communication between me and the developer. Apparently, there's not much more being said about VS2010 at present, but this feature alone sounds most excellent.

Sheri and I have been switching off between BSG and Torchwood. We heard people raving about TW at DragonCon this year, so we figured we'd give it a try. Heck, we started watching Firefly and BSG on recommendation; would TW be as good?

Sadly, no.

So far (and we are on disc 4 of the first season), we are honestly underwhelmed. I keep hoping that it will improve, so we watching the episodes. It's just not catching me as I had hoped. I don't find the characters particularly compelling and the interactions between them don't seem genuine. Just my two cents; spare me the flames if you disagree. We actually liked the X-Files, but this seems like a lukewarm attempt to catch the X-Files feel and audience. I understand that people absolutely love this show, but I can't for the life of me understand why.

Most recently episode to disappoint me was "Countrycide". If there was ever a worse rip-off of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I've never seen it. It was so brusingly unoriginal that I practically sent the other DvDs back to Blockbuster un-watched. I am going to give the series to the rest of this DvD (3 more episodes) and it it doesn't improve I think we're done.

I don't like TV (if you've read my blog lately you'd probably not believe that) normally. I do like to watch some shows, but I tend to try to avoid the whole TV experience (commercials, etc). I like to rent DvDs from Blockbuster for shows that are several seasons in (BSG, for example). Sheri has been a big fan of Hulu for watching "her shows" (Dancing with the Has-Beens, Project Aufwiedersein, So You Think You Can Faceplant, etc.), but I've never really found a compelling reason to check it out much.

That has changed for all eternity.

Sheri showed me FULL NHL GAMES on Hulu!!!! I was watching Red Wings vs. Penguins Game 6 for the Stanley Cup finals. Given I am still a few weeks from the new NHL season, it was a wonderful, excellent way to get a taste of one of my favourite pastimes. It has also fired me up for the season to come...

You know, I look a lot like those guys when I play my weekly game, too....

If you have DRM music from Wal-mart, they are apparently suspending their support (i.e., shutting down the DRM servers) as of Oct 9th.

While this is interesting information is very interesting and important, I found the discussion stream for it most interesting as there is some intelligent debate over whether DRM music "renting" is good or bad. I find myself occasionally buying CDs I like even though I have a DRM player for Napster.

interesting.

I recently purchased Game Jackal Pro, and frankly, I think it rocks. Basically, I hate carrying tons of CDs or DvDs around with my laptop for my games (my laptop is my main machine); they take up space, they get scratched, and I don't really like operating the internal drives in laptops (they always seem flimsy to me).

Game Jackal does a great job of storing game profile information on your machine and creates what amounts to a virtual drive on your machine (it even hijacks your physical drive while running). So far, I've no problems with any of the profiles I create and use. It really makes having multiple game installed and playable very simple. I only had trouble with Diablo II of all the games I have. It will also create a complete copy of the disc on the drive if it has to do so (that might resolve the Diablo II problem, but I've not tried it yet).

If I have on complaint it's that the software upgrades by completely reinstalling itself. So far, it's not been a problem, but I could see it being one in the future.

Overall, super good software!

I always wondered why there was so little AC/DC available on Napster (I assume their reasoning is similar to that for iTunes), and this article discusses their point of view. Basically, they aren't allowed to "lock" a full CDs worth of tunes that have to be purchased instead allowing for singles...so I want the hit song, I buy the hit and avoid the filler stuff. They feel this sort of cheats them as artists and breaks the integrity of their art. AC/DC's new CD, Black Ice, is due out on the 20th of Oct. and is expected to be the largest release of the year. (BTW, I have my tickets for the show in Charlotte on Dec 18th already. Yay!)

Ok, let me get this straight...I am the customer with the money, and you won't sell me what I want, instead forcing me to buy stuff I don't to get what I do. I've never been a fan of this approach to marketing, and I love online music for exactly this reason. There are tons of CDs out there with one decent track on it. I don't particularly care if the artist in question thinks the whole CD rocks; mine (to me) is the perspective that matters where my dollar is concerned. This mentality of "buy the marginal along with the great because I get more money" approach seems to rip off the fan in some way. Online music has drastically reduced the illegal file sharing (although it does continue to this day) we saw a few years ago; take it away, and it will simply come back. People don't want to buy crap to get good tunes.

I will be very sad if the online music model dies (if iTunes goes can Napster be far behind?), but how can it survive if the artists insist on selling whole CDs? I also find it a little odd that AC/DC refers to their "art" in one paragraph as an explanation of why they don't want to see individual tracks, then comments on how much more money they make if they sell CDs. It just doesn't wash.

PC World is providing some great info on changing out your 20 GB hard drive with a 120 GB version on the cheap, doing the work yourself. Pretty slick, and apparently saves about 120 bucks. I've not modded mine (heck, I am considering selling it for all the use it gets), but I think it's pretty cool how many people have found good, cheap hacks to get the most out of their console. I am pretty sure this voids your warranty, though, so best be sure you know that going in.

Nice!

Among other things in this article, the MS CEO discusses Google and states that MS is likely the only company who could give them any competition in the web search arena. There are also some comparisons to Apple, Hp, etc in their respective technologies. I thought it a pretty concise statement of their position.

It also got me thinking about Goo. You know, I remember the first time someone asked me if I'd tried Google and then stated that is was a great search engine. At the time, seems like InfoSeek and Yahoo (and maybe Dogpile if you were edgy) were the search engines of the day. Yet, here comes this completely new search engine company with the very plain main screen and POOF! In what seems a ridiculously short amount of time, Goo becomes the preferred search engine on the web. Pretty amazing, dontcha think?

Seems to me I once heard that too much of a good thing can be bad. Does that apply when considering how much connectivity can be achieved on your phone? VISA is apparently trying to get apps that allow for all sort of transactions to be performed on the Android-based phones. This seems like a security nightmare waiting to happen....

Read more here.