Goodbye, Singin’ John?

NY Times: Attorney General and Commerce Secretary Resign from Cabinet. Can it be? Are we at long last free of this encumbrance on our liberties? Might we once again see breasts at Justice Department press conferences? Might we once again see due process in criminal cases?

Well, probably not the last one. But now we’ll find out how many of the abuses of the Patriot Act are coming from Ashcroft the man and how many are inherent in the law. Unless of course we get a more conservative attorney general.

Jones does it again

MSNBC: Mashed potatoes, green beans — in a bottle? Apparently last season’s Turkey and Gravy Soda from Jones Soda Co. was so good inexplicably popular that the company came up with new holiday flavors: Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Potato & Butter, Cranberry, and Fruitcake, as well as returning the original offender.

Oh dear.

Well, pardon me: I need to slip off to our local Target to see if they’re in stock…

Joining the 21st century

I just lost my hacker cred: I opted for Comcast’s DVR over TiVo. Ah well, at least we’ll have the capability to record and pause TV. Or at least we will once I:

  1. Figure out how to run the cable box into the amplifier. I used to run our cable box in Kirkland through the VCR, and then into the amplifier, using composite cables. When the VCR moved out of the main setup, things got screwy. For some reason, I was unable to get video flowing through the same jack I had used in Kirkland, and had to switch to a different video terminal, but I haven’t tried to reprogram the universal remote and now things are kludgy. I think the solution will be S-Video; I just need to pick up an additional cable to run from the DVR box to the amplifier.
  2. Re-program the universal remote to add in the DVR functions—fortunately basic things like power and channels seem unaffected.
  3. Investigate the Ethernet port to see if it works. (Very important.)

Not too bad. Plus the cable guy moved our prior box downstairs to the hookup in the media library. So now in the basement I have our 21″ with digital cable and a VCR. Before you say “But the VCR is redundant!,” I note that we still have quite a few VHS releases, including the original Star Wars trilogy. I don’t think we’ll be doing any recording on the VCR, though.

Still unresolved: whether I take a step back and re-run the cable into the structured wiring box. Right now we have two coax lines coming into the house from the street, through an outside splitter. The one in the basement comes in through a hole drilled in the basement window frame and down directly into the cable box. I’d ultimately like either to drop it into the wall and out through a jack, or to fish it across the ceiling and into the structured wiring box for distribution. However, I know that’s going to be a real pain: I’d have to fish it all the way across and then back, as well as running it up into the living room. But at least doing that would remove the outside splitter. I don’t know. Option B is probably not worth the hassle until we add more rooms with televisions.

The importance of being Delicious

I just found a new must-have application for all rampant media consumers like me: the Delicious Library. It’s also a killer app for the iSight. Delicious Library is a media management application that allows you to inventory your books, music, videos, and games, and to manage check-in and check-out. The killer app part: it can scan your item’s bar codes using the iSight and look up all the information from Amazon, including cover art and reviews, and there’s a drag and drop checkout system.

Issues: Getting the hang of using the iSight to scan was a little tricky. (The FAQ includes some tongue in cheek instructions for using toothpicks and a rubber band to set up a distance gauge on your iSight to speed up the process.)

More importantly, not every item has a bar code, and not every item’s bar code is in Amazon. I tested the scanner with 11 DVDs, 10 CDs, and a CD boxed set. It had no problem with any DVD that I tried, but it only managed to scan four of the CDs and the CD boxed set correctly. Of the other CDs, the problems included:

  • No bar code on CD case: a single cd from the Miles Davis Columbia boxed set didn’t have a bar code.
  • Music club CDs: both Columbia and BMG, who built the majority of my CD library from 1990 to 1996, replace the bar code on CD art with their own bar code or a message from the club.
  • Wrong release found: John Coltrane’s Lush Life scanned as a Count Basie CD.
  • Nothing found: one indie label release, Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley, turned up nothing in Amazon’s DB (probably because it was subsequently reissued by a bigger label).

In these cases, I used the title search feature. While this was much more convenient than other release lookups that I’ve used, it required a bit more work. Still, a very cool library management tool and a killer use of the iSight. This solution sure beats the hell out of the CueCat.

Almost forgot: A major wish list item would have to be scriptability. The application has no AppleScript dictionary at all. I’d love to be able to grab an item and output HTML. I’d also like to be able to substitute my own Amazon Associate ID rather than the company’s for doing lookups.

Blogger for hire

When I relocated to the east coast in August, I left Microsoft’s employ. I’ve been doing some contract work for them off and on over the last few months, but that’s finished and I’m looking for a new full time opportunity.

I believe that somewhere in the greater Boston area there must be a software or Internet focused company that needs a software product manager who’s been at Microsoft, worked in a CMM Level 3 organization, has been a developer, technical architect, tech support team lead, business intelligence analyst, and sales support engineer, and is an authority on corporate blogging and content syndication. (See my resume for more details.) Anyone want to call me on that bet?

(By the way, it was the hardest decision I ever made to leave Microsoft, but I needed to come east and they don’t do software product development too many places outside Redmond. I have a lot of respect and admiration for my former team members and wish them the best.)

What disappearing iTunes releases look like from the other side

I’m obliged to Christophe Abric, who’s on a mailing list with me, for pointing to an interesting case study of why albums appear and then disappear on the iTunes Music Store. The case in question is King Crimson, and the story is made a bit more transparent through the online diary of Robert Fripp, the band’s constant anchor. Apparently EMI snuck King Crimson tracks into the online stores after the band’s contract with them expired at the end of 2003, in spite of ongoing royalty disagreements—the band would have received 6 cents per track (Apple gets 4) vice the 69 cents kept by the label for “technology investments.” Riiight. More info in this Blogcritics post.

This sort of hijinks probably also explains the appearance and quick disappearance of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks… in the store over the last few months.

(I thought I posted this on Friday, but it seems to have disappeared.)

Radio Free Connecticut

I have officially decided to make my claim to fame by finding a trade route between Boston and the Jersey Shore that does not include Connecticut. For the second trip in a row, we were deluged by rain non-stop for the four hours it took us to get through this ridiculous state. For a good two solid hours, I thought we had taken a wrong turn and were driving through the Atlantic Ocean. Also we’ve tried all three east-west routes, all with unsatisfactory results: I-84 to I-91 to I-95 is a disaster through all the states on the southern coast; taking the Merritt Parkway is somewhat better but adds a good two hours to the trip, most of that due to rush hour delay getting on the parkway through Hartford and New Haven; and staying on I-84 all the way through to 684 to 287 means going through rush hour and nasty construction. Pfui.

Anyway, we’re here, we had no recurrence of womitin’ dog, the sun is shining, and I have a day to work all the kinks out of my body before we head into the city tomorrow.

Frick it.

Lisa and I are headed down to the greater NYC area in a few minutes to drown our post-election sorrows at the Frick and spend some time with her folks. I’ve never Fricked, so I’m really looking forward to the visit. Keep your fingers crossed that we don’t experience Return of the Womitin’ Dog on the way down.

Sorting through the rubble

While I still await the results from Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa, I’m not optimistic. Sorry, Matt, but I don’t see a lot of hope out of this election; if we couldn’t beat this administration in a fair fight after the last four years, we need some serious overhauling. I’m thinking about what I learned last night about the last four years, and the next four.

First: it’s pretty clear that the rhetoric about “election stealing,” regardless of what happened in 2000, does not apply to the 2004 election—at least not yet. Turnout increased on both sides and so far their side had more than ours.

Second, the country as a whole is much more conservative—socially—than I think anyone on the left dreamed. Gone are illusions of isolated backwaters of Bible-thumping bigotry; with results like these elsewhere in the country, it’s clear that there was a major group of voters for whom protecting God from the Democrats was much more important than worrying about nuances of the reasoning to invade Iraq, the economic health of the country, or the lives of our boys.

Third, I think this election dramatically showed the strengths and limitations of the blogosphere in the political process. While information was flowing freely, there was a whole class of issues and voters that never showed up on the blogosphere’s radar, but which turned out to be pivotal. (See my previous post about blind spots in the blogosphere.)

Fourth, while we were making logical arguments, people were falling into a reality distortion bubble in which Iraq was involved in 9/11 and had WMDs, John Kerry shot himself to get medals that he then threw away, and the rest of the world likes us for our efforts in Iraq. Not just a few people—a lot of people. We may want to start thinking how we reach people who have voluntarily disconnected from reality but who vote in large numbers—or, failing that, make sure that the people who are still living in reality have all the facts.

Fifth, we may just have been handed 2008, given that the president now has to clean up his own Iraq mess and deal with his own budget deficit. But we can’t win an election if we handle it like we did this one, and we won’t win it if we don’t start shifting the ground against the “loyalty oath” people and start making people think.

Finally, there is some comfort in seeing that I’m not alone in my anger: Fury, AKMA, Doc, and Larry Lessig all make interesting points.

Waiting for the miracle

Lisa and I voted at about 4:30 pm. There was no line at our polling place, but the Scantron indicated that I was ballot # 1067 for the day. Now we’re sitting (after cooking dinner: chicken filets sautéed in lemon, butter and parsley (a la Siena) and risotto with prosciutto and peas, with a French Chardonnay—sue me) watching the election returns and waiting for the miracle.

(Incidentally, that would be my addition to the election mix tapes that are floating around.)

Shout out to Fury for putting Fury’s money and time where Fury’s mouth is (ah, the challenges of pronouns for an anonymous blog!).

Note: even voters in blue states have trouble voting. See George’s abbreviated story.

Resources for Voting

First, if you haven’t voted yet, go do it. Lisa and I are headed out later this afternoon once she finishes her conference calls.

Second, if you have trouble voting: Election Protection Hotline: 1-866-MYVOTE1 to report problems, 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for immediate legal assistance.

Third, quick compilation from around the Internet of useful links: