Goose Droppings

After 5 years with Racknine (some good, some not so good), I’ve decided to move my web hosting to Blurstorm. They rank completely off the charts at Web Hosting Jury, a “web hosting reviews site with a difference. All the hosting reviews on our site are reviews submitted by past or present customers of that particular web host.” Wish me luck!

For my birthday last week, my family gave me one of the gadgets I’ve been drooling over, a Creative Zen PMC. What’s a Zen? What’s a PMC you ask? You can look it up on the Wikipedia, but the shortest, most succinct description, would be a “Video iPod” (though Apple currently lacks such a product). As my wife likes to point out, I’m usually a little too far ahead of the technology curve in buying things, and better, less expensive versions usually come out not too much later. Guess what, she’s right. But who cares!

Why did I want one (Besides the obvious “because it’s there”)? Well let me start out that even though I think that this device is perfect for me, I’m the first to realize that it’s not for everyone. My commute to NYC each day is by Metro North commuter train, about 50 minutes each way. (anyone reading this that’s not from the NY tri-state area deserves to be appropriately shocked). I use the morning commute to read the paper, and have until now used the return trip to read books or magazines (or now that I’m 40+, to nap!).

Though my wife and I agree on many things (Like most good husbands, I usually like the things that she tells me to like), one area that we don’t often agree upon is movies. My taste tends to go to movies that are just a bit “different” (i.e. movies I like include those by directors Tarantino & Shayamalan, or films such as The Usual Suspects, Memento or The Shawshank Redemption to name a few). My plans are to use this PMC to record movies (and TV Shows) to then view on the train. I figure that can probably watch 1/2 a movie each day.

So how does this differ from a portable DVD? Well, to keep up the first analogy, it’s the difference between a Walkman and an iPod. A portable DVD player requires you to not only bring the media (DVD) with you, but like a CD, it’s not great at remembering where you last left off. The Zen has a 20 gig hard drive, which at first might not sound like much. However a full length movie (1 1/2 to 2 hours long) when converted to 320x240 (the size of the Zen screen) in WMV takes up about 512MB (that’s right, only 1/2 Gig!). That means I can store just under 40 full length movies (assuming that I don’t fill it up with music or photos). Am I going to get rid of my iPod? No way! This is too big to carry around on my belt, but perfect to keep in my briefcase.

I recently came across several sites that either describe how to create your own “iPod Ad Silhouette” (Jennifer Apple, SV Designs, MacMerc & Sitepoint) or others that have a service where they’ll even do it for you (ipodmyphoto & podapic, though it appears that you get what you pay for. ipodmyphoto costs more, but there is no comparison in the quality).

MacMerc’s entry, Attack of the iPod People, appeared to me to be the most detailed, so I used it as my guide. One additional step if you want this to really look authentic is to get the Myriad Apple font used in the ads. This first attempt, iWill (My 7 year-old William), was admittedly a rush job (My wife and daughter were watching “American Dreams” on TiVo, so I only had about 40 minutes to get it done!). The edges are not as clean as I would have liked (it’s the first time I used Photoshop’s Extract Filter), and even the photo was chosen without much thought (though it was posed explicitly for this purpose). However, despite these self-critique’s, I think it came out quite well. I’m going to try a few more (I do have 2 other kids that want one of their own!), and perhaps I’ll either blow them up to poster size for their rooms, or maybe I’ll frame a set together for the family room.

I’ld also like to give it a try in The Gimp, stay tuned…

- The Goose

Mike Davidson, an art director from Seattle, has a well written, comprehensive and informative article on “How to Snatch an Expiring Domain“. He offers details on how a domain expires, compares the services of three firms that automate the “snatching” (Snapnames.com, Enom.com, and Pool.com) and shares some lessons learned. For anyone that has been coveting a seemingly abandoned domain name, this is a must read.

Amex Gold (and Platinum, but not Green) has a program called “Best Value Guarantee“. Under this program, they will guarantee you the lowest price on most any item that you purchase using their card, up to $250 per item or $1000 per year. (more…)

I’ve added the ability for you, the reader, to select the theme for viewing goosedroppings. I’m curious to hear back which ones are preferred. The “original” is called “goose“. I’ll need to customize some of the graphics on the ones that allow it, to get back with the goose frame of mind.

I’ve done a manual upgrade from 1.2 to 1.5 (Strayhorn). It’s been out for a few weeks, and I wasn’t sure if/when my webhost provider would make it available. It appears to have gone well, though I’m not sure I’ve added back all my customized plugins. Stay tuned for possible style changes.

Now I do realize that not too many people are reading this blog (at least for now). However, I’ve always wanted to know what info on this site people find interesting (as opposed to simply getting enjoyment from reading my eloquent prose). i.e. What links to external sites are people interested in enough to follow? Obviously I find all the stuff I post noteworthy, but what about you? (more…)

AutoStitch is an amazing piece of software that automatically stitches together your photograph’s into great looking panorama’s easily. (more…)

Here’s a cool piece of software from Krazy Dad Jim Bumgardner (How does he have the time?!?!). MetaScope is pretty cool by itself, but Jim’s built in a fun Mind Reading Trick too.

Tech Support Alert has a nice article on the 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities. A quick review show’s that I’m already a user of the following:

• Best Free Web Browser
• Best Free Anti-Virus Software
• Best Free Popup Stopper

However there’s a ton there that I either hadn’t heard of, or never even thought about! Time to start downloading…

- The Goose

http://www.funnyhub.com/ - A collection of some very funny pictures and videos (some off color). They have a take-off Mastercard video on the Red Sox that had me LOL (I’m a Yankee fan!)

Way cool!!! Add an RSS feed to your bookmarks in Firefox, making them update/change “live”. I’ve added the top site’s that I look at daily (Currently Slashdot, Lifehacker,Gizmodo and del.icio.us) You’ll probably want the RSS link for Goosedroppings .

Four Gates
Originally uploaded by The Gates @ Central Park.

Flickr is turning out to be a wonderful place to view different photographers interpretations of Christo and Jean-Claude’s “The Gates”. Shooting “The Gates” on Flickr Central is a nice introduction to how this event is being captured by Flickr users. The easiest way to find all the Flickr photos on “The Gates” is to search for the tag thegates (though christo, gates and saffron all seem to work well too). In addition, a Flickr Group “Central Park” has been set up, that you may find to be a little less overwhelming.

- The Goose

P.S. Who knows, you might even find some of my photo’s there too!

Stopping SPAM is clearly an enourmous task. However there are some sites out there that can help you do a reasonable job avoiding some of it. I say “help”, since there are many reasons that you and I receive SPAM that is simply outside of our control, even if we follow the best practices (i.e. Don’t post messages to USENET, Updated anti-virus, etc). (more…)

It really burns me up when I see an Ad for a business (any business), and they include an @aol.com email address (or some other “generic” email provider).  It is really quite simple (and inexpensive) to own your own domain name (and all the email addresses that go with it).  This way, you own it forever (assuming that you pay your bills), and control your own email destiny.  Now I realize that it’s no longer 1996, and you may think that all the good names, like goosedroppings.com , are already taken.  But a little creativity and a few helpful websites can help you come up with a good domain name that you might even be able to pass on to your children.
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OK, if you’ve gotten this far I guess that either I convinced you to join fotki or at the very least I haven’t driven you off. Or perhaps you’re now so worried that you’re going to lose all your family photo’s, or more critically, you’re afraid of what your non-tech spouse will do when that happens.   
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For $9, Fontifier lets you use your own handwriting for the text you write on your computer. It turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a handwriting font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica.

Too bad my handwriting is terrible!

Using bittorrent client software, and sites like tvtorrents (RSS) or btefnet (RSS), it’s easy to grab a copy of most popular shows hours after (or sometimes before!) they air.

Hey everyone… fire up the TiVo this month, because Turner Classic Movies is running their annual “31 Days of Oscar”. Many, many, many great movies to record.