Old information

Keeping with my usual trend, NetNewsWire added support for Atom feeds just after my last post. I also found an RSS feed for Robert Cringley's column in a non-blog related fashion - it's good stuff. Still no "hot ham and cheese" though.

Everybody's a winner!

Ethan and I were discussing blogs today and I found out that NetNewsWire doesn't support Atom feeds yet. Proving that anything is just a Google search away, Ethan found a solution.

The quick recap is - now people with RSS-only readers (like NetNewsWire) can get Atom feeds by going through this translator. For instance, getting an RSS feed of my URL is as simple as this:
http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/rss1?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcflake.blogspot.com%2Fatom.xml


Enjoy!

Saving humanity by clicking really fast

I just got done with my first evening of playing Halo. 7pm to 12:30am - it was a good run. After playing multiplayer (and getting my head handed to me) for the first 5 hours, I played the single player campaign for a little while. I quit that pretty quickly and left feeling kinda depressed.

I think there's two reasons for it - first, my girlfriend doesn't get home until tomorrow, and I miss her. Not much explanation needed there. Second, I don't think my mind likes the idea that I'm the one person who can save the world (in the video game). I had the same sort of thing happen when I played Enter the Matrix - I got really tense and swore at the game a lot when things went wrong. For some reason the whole "humanity enslaved/on the run/in some other trouble" genre really seems to get my emotions going.

Maybe I should just stick to games like Frequency and Amplitude, which just remind me that I want to be a rock star.

I'm mature?

I'm a changed person these days. I used to be a rabid consumer of anything new in technology, especially anything related to the Mac. I would get my copies of MacZone, MacWarehouse, ClubMac, and others once a month and pour over every single page. I loved making a list of things for my dream machine - the rumored "Power Express" that was going to be the next great model of Macintosh (in my eyes anyway) - and figuring out all the great software that I couldn't afford to put on it. Strata Studio Pro 8? Never mind that I knew nothing about 3D modeling programs - I _needed_ it. Today I get fewer catalogs in the mail (along the same lines as my magazine rant), but it's something more than just seeing out of date information - I'm reacting to that information differently as well. Mainly, I just don't care about as much of the content as I did before. Part of it is the fact that I no longer spend time thinking about building a dream machine - I have computers, and even though I can't use them to play Halo, I'll probably keep them for a while. I also find myself focusing more on things I actually use, since the volume of information out there makes it difficult to be an expert on everything.

I see the same thing happening to my online viewing habits. Macsurfer has long been my main source for getting tech (mac) news. It still is, but now I spend at least as much time going through blogs and forums every day. I guess I'm tired of seeing the exact same information presented the same way over and over - when Apple announces something it gets repeated on the main sites within the day and smaller publications within a couple of weeks. It's tedious to sift through all of them, especially since they usually contain the same boilerplate marketing information from the original press release.

I see myself spending more time reading people's opinions about a headline in their blogs. It feels like I'm getting more "value added", thought-provoking information. I also enjoy seeing (and occasionally interacting with) the community of users that surround various blogs and topics. The same sort of thing has gotten me interested in forums recently - a focused group of users that care about a specific program or topic.

This all makes me wonder if it's just me changing, or if we're in a different stage of computer technology... for instance - do kids still get as excited about the new stuff as I did back in the day? Even if they aren't, this change makes me feel like more of an old man... hrm.

It's like magic!

It seems like all I need to do is complain about something on my blog for it get fixed. Last time the atom syndication wasn't working until I posted my note, and a day after my rant about my cell phone number not switching over - it happened.

So to really test this theory:
- I wish I had more money
- it's impossible to buy a house in silicon valley
- Arby's needs to bring the "hot ham and cheese" sandwich back

Well see how things turn out.

Januwha?

Wow. I missed the entire month of January on this site. Seems like it's time to catch up on things - and look! While I've been napping the blogger folks have added Atom support to the site! I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds exciting! Well, I kinda know what it means. Supposedly this will allow people to subscribe to my blog using things like Bloglines, but I haven't gotten that to work yet. I'll keep trying I guess. UPDATE - now it works. I guess it just needed some time to think about it.

My crappy Sprint phone that was once known as "my cool new cell phone" 3 years ago is in the process of being replaced. I ordered a Sony Ericsson T610 which arrived the other day, but I'm still waiting for the number to change. Supposedly the change can take up to two weeks, which seems a bit longer than the 2 hours everyplace quotes. Still, having two phones isn't that bad, especially when the new one's OS decides to freeze. I seem to have offended the Bluetooth gods at some point when I removed their precious 'paired object' without sacrificing something first.