Pickabar Blog

I was really excited about Adobe’s free online version of Photoshop/photo sharing site. I knew it was in beta, but I immediately gave it a try. I found the tools pretty easy to use and very responsive. My band is promoting a show at Knitting Factory, so I used the site to adjust the flyer so that it would be appropriate for posting in MySpace comments. I used the image url provided for sharing the photo in all of the comments that I posted.

Then, a few days ago, I noticed that a comment I posted had a broken image. I checked out the site and saw the cutesy service down message, “Hi, we’re making a few adjustments. Check back in a few.” I checked the next day; same thing…and the next. It’s still down and now I find that cutesy message down right enfuriating. There’s no way I can edit all of the comments I’ve posted, so now 1. my show isn’t being promoted and 2. lots of people think I’m an idiot for posting a broken image on their profiles.

I realize that this service was labelled “beta”, but for better or worse that term has changed in the post-Google era. No longer can people release web based services as betas without providing at least some level of support and reliability. Even a message indicating the reason for the outage and an expected ETA for returning would be helpful.

At this point, it seems like Adobe just isn’t ready to run a service business.

I posted previously about the lack of vista drivers for my Tascam US-122 external soundcard. The soundcard worked in my DAW (Cakewalk Home Studio 6) without WDM drivers, but the card couldn’t be used by standard programs. Well, it seems like Tascam has finally gotten their act together and released drivers for the US-122. The drivers work great and I’m now able to use the card with programs like Audacity. Nice!

This was an especially unexpected turn of good luck since the US-122 has been replaced by the new US-122L model. I was fully expecting to either never get working drivers or to have to hack the drivers for the US-122L.

Cool!

I try not to shill for the man by re-posting every Microsoft announcement that comes my way, but this is too good to pass up. Windows Live just shipped the Linked IDs feature! If you have multiple Passport Windows Live accounts this is a great feature that finally allows you to switch between those accounts without logging out and back in every time.

For example, I have three Windows Live IDs. One I use for work related stuff, one is my throwaway account for site registrations and what have you and then a third is my pickabar email which is hosted by Windows Live Custom Domains. In the past, switching from reading email in one account to reading email in another meant having to sign out of Hotmail. An unintended consequence was that I had therefore signed out of any other Windows Live ID based sites I happened to be using at the same time. Annoying!

Anyway, one less minor frustration in my life. Windows Live commercial over!

On several occassions your friendly koolaid drinking blue badge wearing Microsoftee host here at pickabar has been accosted by Mac zealots eager to lampoon me for daring to work for the “Great Satan”. These folks assure me that everything would be better if I only saw the light…

I’ve been planning on writing a little response on the subject for a while now. It was going to begin:

Crest is a much better toothpaste than Colgate. I just don’t understand why anyone would use Colgate instead of Crest. The marketing folks at Colgate must be amazing, and people must be stupid, to buy anything but Crest. Most influentials and creative folks use Crest. Crest just makes it easier to create and is more enjoyable…you don’t ever run into dental problems if you use Crest.

Sound silly? I don’t use either brand, I’m just trying to make a point. Isn’t it silly that so many people use their choice of Computer to improve their self-worth?

Today I ran into a post by Coding Horror, “Because They All Suck”, which is like a better version of the post I was planning:

Your screwdriver rocks, and our screwdriver sucks. So what? They’re screwdrivers. If you really want to convince us, stop talking about your screwdriver, and show us what you’ve created with it.

Highly recommended post from a highly recommended blog.

I’ve been a big fan of memory since the first time I added another stick to one of my diy built pcs. Upgrading CPU’s always boosted my benchmark numbers, but it never made normal computer use feel much different. Maybe if I did more video editing, of PC gaming. Adding memory, on the other hand, always lead to a drastic improvement in the responsiveness of the system. Paging is slow.

Part of that dramatic impact is undoubtedly due to my work style. First off, I almost never turn my computer off. I also rarely close programs. What if I needed them again? As I write this blog post I have six or so IE windows open (w/ who knows how many tabs), Firefox, RSS Bandit, Windows Media Player, FL Studio, Outlook, OneNote…ugh, I’m tired just listing all of the running apps! Why create favorites when you can just leave the IE window open? I need RAM, and lots of it.

The official memory requirement for XP Pro is 128 MB, which is hard for me to believe. We’ve been running at 1GB. The Vista Premium Ready experience requires 1 GB, so I decided to bump our physical memory up to 2GB. 3GB is the limit on 32-bit Operating Systems, but I think 2 should meet our needs until we’re ready to upgrade to a 64-bit OS and a new motherboard.

I wasn’t sure exactly what type of RAM to purchase…DDR? DDR2? I wasn’t even exactly sure what type of motherboard we had, even after the assistance of SiSoft Sandra. Luckily, I had heard good things about Crucial.com. Their site includes a handy tool called the Crucial Memory Advisor. You enter the manufacturer and model of your pc, and they give you a list of compatible RAM sticks. A few clicks later and I was done.

Three days later the stick arrived, and about 45 mins later the upgrade was complete. Of course, 35 of those minutes were spent trying to remember how to open the annoying Compaq case. My old DIY boxes barely stayed closed!

It’s only been a day, but I’m already happy with the purchase. Fast-user switching definitely seems much faster, although it’s still not blazingly fast. WMP seems to open much more quickly, but I would have expected that to be more CPU bound then anything. It’s hard to judge the system overall, since we’ve only been on Vista for about three weeks, but thing seem much snappier.

On Friday I got the new Time Warner DVR/PVR cable box. The guy who came to install it was a great evangelist for the service; he explained how he had had Tivo, but was completely delighted by his time with the TW service. I’m not sure why exactly a technician was required though, TW is generally big on self service and this install wasn’t any more difficult than a non-PVR box. Actually, it seems like everyone wasn’t required to have a technician install their box.

To be specific, the set top is the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000. It’s larger than the normal digital cable box, which was in turn larger than the old style analog boxes I’d
had before that. I guess that’s to be expected considering the DVR case also has to contain the hard drive. Time Warner says the drive can hold up to 30 hours of programming, but the Scientific Atlanta site claims the device is capable of 50 hours. I’m not sure if some of the drive space is being used by TW, or if the technician just misspoke. I’ll post more information once I’ve hit that limit.

I’ve only had it for a day or so, so I’ll post in more detail once I’ve had some time to play with it. At this point, I’ve only hit a few snags (in no particular order):

• The menus, etc. don’t seem very responsive. I expected this as both of the guides that came with the device specifically mention patience. Hopefully software updates will improve this.
• The reminder feature, which allowed you to schedule on screen reminders for shows you wanted to see, seems to have been removed. I guess the thinking was that you’d never need to set reminders since you can record shows. That’s wrong, and the feature should be restored.
• It’s a linux box, and if I’m not mistaken it runs on Sun hardware. shiver
• The cable companies have turned off the commercial skipping feature. I guess I should have expected that.

I’ve heard rumbles about some other bugs, but as I mentioned my experience has been pretty limited so I can’t chime in.

All in all, it’s been great. The first time I was able to pause a baseball game (last night’s crushing loss actually ) and rewind to see the play again I felt like I’d moved ten years into the future. Or at least caught up with the present. Now I just have to force myself not to be glued to the sofa.

I just joined Friendster, a kind of networking community. No, not networking in the Cisco will eat your lunch sense, networking in the “here’s my business card” sense.

I could argue that I did it to try and learn more about social software, and the new behavior patterns that arise due to new technology. But this isn’t a Groove blog, so I won’t bother lying. I just want to see if I can once again use the internet to improve my sorry social life.

I actually met a previous girlfriend on AOL. It was really cool, she’d checked out my old band’s web site, and was interested the first time we bumped into each other in a chatroom. Yes, I used to chat on AOL. More than likely, you did too. If not, I’m sure you posted prodigiously to at least one newsgroup or Message Board. No? You must have used IRC then? Ok, maybe I’m just a dork.

Let’s not have a repeat of my High School years! Do me a favor and join my network of friends. Make me feel good. I have the feeling that I may be the only member of friendster who is really looking for friends and not dates, so I don’t want to wind up “playing the wall as it were”.

Ok, no more posts earlier than 10:00.

Before Morgan left for vacation, he posted his thoughts on the Wired article about the MS DRM initiatives before he left.

Here’s my novel idea. Screw the consumer. I hope that MS’s Digital Rights Management technology takes off, and more than that I hope they provide the movie studios with whatever content crippling technology they want. Am I a lunatic IP zealot? A corporate apologist? Anyone with access to my hard drive will know that’s not the truth.

Let’s say DRM finally convinces the major content producers to provide their IP libraries in digital formats. Major Pabulum Records allows you to download any song you want, but won’t allow you to copy that song to your devices. Obscure Indie Records allows you to download any song you want, and do anything with it you please. Isn’t it likely that the freedom Obscure Indie Records provides to their customers, the value add of being able to re-use the content you purchase as you see fit, will lead to increased sales for Obscure Indie Records?

My friend Lori will one day be a major artist who sells millions of CDs. Let’s say she decides to cut out the leech in the middle (a record company) and sell her music on the web. She’s concerned about piracy, so she decides that she’ll only allow people who download songs from her site to copy them to machines they own. As her relationship with her listeners develops, she realizes that her biggest fans are really pissed that they can’t listen to her music on their new 1000GB personal media devices. What is she going to do?

If DRM let’s us be free of the need to distribute physical media, if it convinces the content producers to stop blocking the hardware and software necessary for the digital future we all envision�who is to stop us from deciding to support only the content producers and distributors who have good fair use policies? Don’t like the DRM included with the hardware you were going to buy? Don’t buy it! Let’s speak with the only vote we still have left�the almighty greenback.

This consumer society had divided us into art producers and art consumers. Digital technology has the ability break down that artificial distinction by getting the businessmen out of the way.

Then again, maybe I’m being overly optimistic…

One of the things I like about WinXp is the ability to use the Thumbnail View in folders that contain image files. However, my system has been really slow in rendering the thumnails, and occasionally Explorer itself has crashed. I have a pretty souped up machine (or at least it was six months ago), so I really couldn’t understand it.

Well, today I accidentally searched google (I meant to type in an IM window) and bumped into a thread called Windows XP slow to display folders with images. Long story short, Photoshop 7′s Thumbnail feature seems to not behave nicely with XP’s similar feature. If you’re experiencing this issue, right click a file whose type is registered to Photoshop (say a JPG or GIF) and choose properties. You should see a tab called “Photoshop Image”. Just un-check the “Generate Thumbnails” checkbox and you should be on your way.

I just tried it, and my folders load as fast as google on a T1. Why didn’t I google this months ago?

p.s. As always, this is completely my own opinion and you’re completely to blame if you choose to follow the instructions listed here and your dog dies.