BrainWyrms

I ran across a posting from the Steam Punk Home about Holly Black’s Hidden Library yesterday. I definitely recommend checking out the photos of Ms. Black’s wonderful secret library. Read the rest of this entry »

To quote Readernaut’s description of themselves:

Readernaut aims to be the best book sharing site on the internet.

Our website is made with which is built with . We’re running while keeps track of our dataz. is proxying to where Mod_WSGI does its magic on our server at . is our source for book information and rocks!

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FeedReader is pretty. It is slick and it gives off the feeling that it should be everything that I want it be. In fact, it looks so much like it should be what I need that I wasted a significant amount of time trying to find missing functionality just because I believed it should be there.

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Yesterday:

iRiver H10… on malformed RockBox… might have been wonderful if I hadn’t deleted the vital files from the H10… in an aborted attempt to remove a botched install. Of course, I wasn’t wise enough to have backed up the original files on the H10, so now the whole thing is just a funny looking protable hard drive.

What really bothers me is that no one else seems to have backed them up either. And iRiver doesn’t seem to have the repair thing available anymore.

le sigh.

Today: Read the rest of this entry »

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…

Muxtape was this weird little online analog (digital analog?) of the old mix tapes that we used to make with the dual decks.  But it is gone now.  At least for now.  The mafia side of the music industry is working on making them die now.  ”Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

But from the ashes, something must rise… right?  This time, it is a new opensource software program that enables practically anyone to -be- Muxtape.  It is called Opentape and pretty much all it takes to get running is a web host with PHP5 and an FTP client.  

So instead of everyone hosting their analogous mixtapes at one central location, now anyone so inclined can host their mixtape on their own site.  To see it in action, check out my BrainWyrms mix… Right at this moment, I’ve got Nine Inch Nails from Ghosts I.  I’ll probably add some other “open-source” music as I find it.

Yesterday, ctumaven tweet’d me that I had made the WOOT! blog.  It turns out that they had caught my tweet about WOOT! addiction from Tuesday and linked it as a (small) part of their daily blog.  They said, “Aw, come on, one purchase isn’t going to hurt you. And you can quit anytime you want.”

Oh, if only that were the case!  I’ve been looking at the current sale and thinking about it… but then there will be something else cool tomorrow and I will want that one too.  And the shirt.woot is a really cool green on black design and sellout.woot is a good deal for a name brand 22″ LCD Monitor.

Crap.  Back to my dungeun.  WOOT! is too dangerous for the weak.  Like me.

• Subscribed: Totally Rad Show

I’ve been listening, slowly, to each episode of Subscribed, starting from the very first one and I’m really impressed with how far they have come from simply being ballsy to actually having some nice polish. This time, Simon and Luke opened up with an intro that was nearly spot on in mimicking the Totally Rad show. I thought that it was great.

• Dragon Page Cover to Cover 315B: Reading Everything in Sight
• Dragon Page Cover to Cover 316A: Rob Kutner
• Dragon page Cover to Cover 317A: Peter David
• TGTMB 6: Twelve Steps to Mick-n-Rich

My first time listening to Mick on his own podcast and unfortunately, I chose it as my “falling to sleep” podcast. I certainly gave it a fair chance though because I only went to sleep about 4 times today. I did think the child interruptions were cute.

• East Meets West 125

As is typical, most of the conversation was a bit over my head and was simply amazing. These guys are (sub)brilliant and not only retain an awesome amount of information, but they combine and use that knowledge… I’m jealous, quite frankly. One of my favorites, I look forward to EMW every week and wish that it was just a wee bit longer. Like… twice as long.

• Buzz Out Loud 760: 100 Penny Challenge

Ts… erm. I forgot her name. She’s not a ditz! She has my official blessing to visit again sometime.

• Geologic Podcast 72

This is my first time listening to the Geologic Podcast and I don’t quite know what to say. I think I am going to snip the talkie bits out and burn the element songs to a CD for my kid. Very nice.

• This Week in Geek Reviews 04

Fast and painless at only 9 minutes long, I find myself bored with TWiG and may soon de-subscribe. To be fair, I think that I came onto it just after it fell apart.