BrainWyrms

Is it just me, or is the dice rolling mechanism amazing?

My last adventure, my dice rolls were as follows:
2
1
1
5
3
15

Two natural ONES! Aaargh. That’s even worse than my normal real life dice rolling luck.

Juice 2.2, an open source rss media aggregator, seems to work fairly well. However, it is open source… which in my experience, typically means that the user interface is a bit quirky. Wonky. Strange. Obtuse.  It is kind of like the difference between an actress and your sister. Both are pretty, but one isn’t quite as polished.

Sorry, no offense to your sister.
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I have this funny niggling feeling that I did this more than once already.  That I tried out a whole passel of rss aggregator with varying media enclosure capabilities, and that I found nothing worked sufficiently well to replace iTunes or Zune.

First off, my criteria.  I want to be able to plug a feed in and have the media content found immediately. I want the option to determine how many files to download, where to store them, how long to keep the media, and one of my kickers, I want to be able to automatically change the ID3 information to match the feed and the fact that I am downloading PODCASTS!

Rant time.  I am listening to podcasts and you are putting out podcasts.  They are podcasts, not “blues” or “voice” or “audio drama” or whatever the frog else you deludedly put into the genre description.  If you are Leo Leporte, then you can call it a “netcast” but that’s it.  Other than that, it is a freaking PODCAST!! Why in the world is this so frelling hard for PODCASTERS to understand?  HUH!?! Argh. Rant, off…

Still more criteria. I want to be able to control how many feeds are scanned for new content, how many files are being downloaded contiguously, and how much bandwidth is being consumed. And I almost forgot that it has to be able to import AND export OPML files.

That’s pretty much it for requirements, at least for now.  I’ve got more items on my wish list, but since I cannot even find a single podcatcher/rss aggregator that can handle my criteria I should probably not be greedy.

Next time we’ll start with a look at Juice, formerly known as iPodder. Which is merely to say that is has a pedigree.

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First things first, the Zune is actually screwed together, unlike the iPod (or at least the older generation iPods I’ve ripped apart.)  Do not attempt to simply pry the case apart unless you really don’t intend to put it back together again.

The little piece of black plastic surrounding the docking port pops out to reveal two very tiny philips type screw heads.  Remove them and then pry the case apart, lifting it apart from the butt first. Watch out for the head phone plug - it extends through the shell and will catch on the case if you just pull it apart.

Be aware that the battery is not mounted to anything and will simply fall out. The battery rests at the top of the Zune, just under the hold switch. The flat ribbon cable runs down the body, over the hard drive casing, to a small plug at the bottom of the mainboard. The weight of the battery will crease the ribbon cable and pull the plug out if you are not working on a flat surface and allow the battery to tumble out.

On my Zune, the hold switch is malfunctioning and the audio jack fluxes between mono and out.  If I can find someplace to buy a replacement audio jack, I am going to attempt to replace it. At this point, I have wasted 90 minutes trying to find any 3.5mm stereo 6-pin jack. So far, nothing that looks remotely the same or would fit in the space provided.  I think I am still going to try removing the hold switch… hopefully that won’t do anything worse than the permenant hold that I already have going on.

to be continued…

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• Slice of SciFi 175: interview with Director Stephen Zimmer
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• 1UP Yours 09/12/2008
• Space Casey: U-N-I 2.0!
• Space Casey: You win! Teaser 4
• Space Casey: Promo
• Space Casey: Teaser
• Space Casey: Teaser 2

I typically try to avoid things that hurt me. So when 9/11 rolls around every year, I don’t pay any attention to it. This worked out pretty good for me. In fact, I had forgotten that Thursday was a special day in any way until my Twitter feed started referencing it.

I don’t remember why I did this, but at some point I decided to read the Wikipedia entry for the 9/11 attacks. Wow. A goodly number of interesting things jumped out at me from this. One is that the page is locked. Another is that no mention is made of Iraq and the mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction. Most interesting was just how strongly I still feel freaked out and sad about something that didn’t even happen to me eight years ago.

I like to romanticize myself as an emotionally cold bastard, internalizing my feelings, but I honestly feel scared and sad and just confused by … I don’t even know what it is specifically that affects me, or if it is the cumulation of the whole bloody thing.

I was online, playing around, probably in a chat with Hart or Shape or Shadow or DID, when strange status messages started popping up on Yahoo! Messenger. Eventually I checked the news, which was confusedly reporting that something was wrong, that a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers. It was shocking and I turned on my TV… just in time to watch the second plane crash into the other tower.

I couldn’t rationalize that one. One plane crashing, fine. Two, the world has lost all boundaries. It was practically unimaginable.

You know what really strikes me now as I think about it? Eight years later, an event remotely viewed still continues to fuck me up… Imagine what it must be like for the poor suckers who live in places like Iraq. The explosions and violence and sheer insanity are right at hand. The animals inside must be that much closer to the surface and that much more ready to go nuts.

photo by Mohamed Azakir/Reuters and is of a car bombing in Lebanon from January 2008.

“What’s New Now” the video blog covering tech news highlights replays a video segment on the DL.TV set where Jeff Green of 1UP talks about the new game Spore. Mr. Green is pretty upbeat on the game, though honest about its shortcomings. However, the gods seem to disagree with him and express their lukewarm reaction by pissing all over.

And everyone reacts so professionally. It’s really amazing, actually.

• The Signal: Season 4, Show 1, January 22nd 2008
• Shadowdance 5: Magick on the Edge of Science
• Der Geek 16.75: Almost a real show
• Skepticallity 85: Why Magic is Important
• Geek Radio Daily September 11th 2008
• Buzz Out Loud 807: Hey! Price cuts work!

Shadowdance 5 is a doozy, weighing in at a 1UP Yours type length of over two hours long. That lasted me practically all night long.

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• Role Playing Public Radio 20: Random Character Advice Generator
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• Buzz Out Loud 806: Battlestar Monk
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• PodCastle Metacast 1
• Radio Isopod 1: Things from Another Dimension
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• Pulp Gamer Out of Character 57: Friends and Fans
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• Pulp Gamer Out of Character 55: Table Tips
• True Blood: Alan Ball POV
• True Blood: In Focus: Shedding The Light on Vampires
• MAKE Magazine: Weekend Project: The Bullwhip
• Geek Radio Dialy September 9th 2008
• Polyamory Weekly 171: But Cheating is in my Genes!
• Pulp Gamer Inside Track 54: Corey Konieczka of Fantasy Flight Games
• Scott Sigler: Made of awesome: Ninja talks to Junkies
• Buzz Out Loud 805: See you all… tomorrow?
• PCMag Radio Sep 9, 2008: New iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iTunes 8.0
• Chasing the Bard: Will Shakespeare on the stage…
• Prometheus Radio Theatre 2006-1