stuff

Thank you to my World Champion Boston Red Sox!!

I'm so happy, I could just die right now!

Sweet Caroline! Good Times never felt so good!

Red Sox Nation pulls Reverse Sweep on Astonished Yankees

The Red Sox Nation is happy today. We're going to the World Series. And we beat the Yankees. In Game 7. At Yankee Stadium. On Mickey Mantle's birthday. Back from an 0-3 hole. Pulled a Reverse Sweep on them, something that had NEVER been done in Major League history.

So I wonder, will the Reverse Sweep reverse the curse? WE BELIEVE!!!

YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!!!

You Gotta Believe!!!

We did it! The Red Sox are going to the World Series, becoming the first team in baseball history to come back from an 0-3 deficit. WE BELIEVE!!!

Pedro Martinez enjoys the bubbly:

Theo Epstein, extraordinaire:

Celebrating in the house the Ruth built... and Johnny demolished:

A.L. Champions!

Red Sox Nation, Congratulations! And congratulations as well to the New York Yankees for a memorable series.

Slide Rules are Fascinating

Have you ever used a Slide Rule?

Wired News: Slide Rule Still Rules

The Oughtred Society home page

Eric's Slide Rule Site

Enjoy!

NewsGator Online v. Bloglines

I've been trying out NewsGator Online and comparing it to Bloglines.

First, the good:

1. It looks better...
2. It loads faster...
3. It seems to be updated more frequently...

than Bloglines.

The bad:

1. No favicon makes it hard to locate when using tabbed browsers.
2. Organizing subscriptions into folders is much easier using Bloglines (select subscriptions, click on Move to folder...). In NewsGator you must move each feed individually.
3. When reading a feed within a folder, marking all items as read will close the containing folder. To read the next feed inside the folder you must click on the folder to open it and select the feed. Awkward at best.
4. When clicked, posts open in the same window. They should open in a new window/tab so you can continue to check your subscriptions.
5. No Firefox integration. Bloglines' Firefox integration is as good as it gets.
6. Folders containing subscriptions/feeds will close when you click on any feed. Why can't folders stay open for easy access to their contents?

The I don't know yet whether it's good or bad:

1. When reading a feed you must either individually delete all posts or click on "Delete All Posts on This Page". Otherwise the posts will stay there. Bloglines will consider all posts as read once you close the feed, only displaying new posts when you return to the feed. Bloglines lets you display all posts within your login session, 12 hours ago, a day ago, etc... in case you wish to see something old.

In bloglines you can click on a post to make it "sticky" so it won't go away once you close the feed. I like this approach better because it requires the least amount of work from the user. You normally look at all new posts in a feed, open those that interest you in a new tab, once in a while keep a post you find interesting, and then move on to a new feed.

I suppose I could get used to clipping whatever interests me and deleting all posts before moving on to the next feed. But it's a lot of unnecessary user input if you ask me.

All in all, NewsGator Online has lots of potential. In speed and looks it wins easily. Now if they would just address some minor UI issues... it'd rock.

NewsGator Online, now free

NewsGator Online now offers a free version. I suppose this will compete head-to-head with Bloglines, which is what I currently use.

I'll give it a try and see how good it is.

UPDATE: I set up an account at NesGator Online, exported my subscriptions from Bloglines, imported them into NewsGator Online, and recreated my folder structure (this could have been easier/automatic - and NewsGator could use larger dropdown lists to show my folders - I have a 1280x1024 screen, so why show me only 4 folders and make me scroll-select everytime I want to assign a subscription to a particular folder?).

Anyway, it seems to be much faster/responsive than Bloglines and it's definitely much better looking. (However, first one could be due to a smaller server load or user-base & second one could be due to poor taste on my behalf... so YMMV).

Bloglines, however, wins on Firefox integration. I don't see any (except a bookmarklet) for NewsGator. At least not on the NewsGator page.

Taming Your E-Mail Inbox

Michael Hyatt has a wonderful post on his Working Smart blog about dealing with your e-mail.

Working Smart: Taming Your E-Mail Inbox, Tip #2

Taming Your E-Mail Inbox, Tip #2

Read Once, Then Decide

X1 desktop search - Better than Google Desktop?

Jason at theUnofficialGoogleWeblog seems to really like X1 search software.

In fact he likes it so much that he's arranged to give us bloggers some free copies. I've tried X1 a couple of times and have always ended up uninstalling it because -as most desktop search software- it consumes too many resources (i.e.: it takes over and makes my computer really slow while it's indexing).

But I'll give it another try. You can't really beat free stuff. I'll try and post some of my impressiones with it. So far I haven't seen any adverse effects from Google Desktop Search, but I only installed it yesterday.

Here's the link to Jason Calacanis' post:

Free *full-version* version of X1 software… much better than Google Desktop search. Value=$74.95!!! - The Unofficial Google Weblog - google.weblogsinc.com

Google Desktop Search is out

Google has released Desktop Search today. Download it at:

Google Desktop Search Download

From Google's About Google Desktop Search:

Google Desktop Search is how our brains would work if we had photographic memories. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop Search puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails, and bookmarks.

More info at "The Unofficial Google Weblog" and "Search Engine Lowdown".

Major Bug in Creative's Zen Touch MP3 Player

I've found a nasty bug in Creative's Zen Touch portable audio player. I'm surprised to find a bug like this one in a third generation product (at least).

Suppose your music library has a few songs that you don't really know which album they came from. Let's say you write-in "<Unknown Album>" in the song's ID tag.

Now suppose you decide to clean up some songs from your Zen Touch. Perhaps you don't want all those Nirvana songs playing when you hit "random play". Now, if you go to "Artists", select "Nirvana" and choose "Delete Artist" then great, all your Nirvana songs will be erased from the Zen Touch.

But if you select "Nirvana" (or any other artist, it doesn't really matter) and select "Show Albums" and then select the "<Unknown Album>" and "Delete Album", ALL THE SONGS IN YOUR ZEN TOUCH THAT COME FROM AN ALBUM NAMED "<UNKNOWN ALBUM>" WILL BE DELETED... REGARDLESS OF WHICH ARTIST SINGS THEM!

This happened to me this weekend with songs tagged as "<Unknown>" and "<Unknown Album>" in the album field. I have yet to try with other album names (i.e., what happens when two or more artists have albums with the same title?), but this is really unacceptable behavior from a seasoned product.

One other thing really bothering me lately is the "CTPdeSrv.exe" process launched by Creative's software once you connect the Zen Touch to your computer. The process will hog all resources even after you disconnect the player from your computer. I'm checking to see if there's a conflict with Redchair's Notmad Explorer, which I've also installed.