Indeed

Things that seemed important enough at the time

Monday, February 16, 2004

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.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

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.

Sunday, February 08, 2004

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.

Saturday, February 07, 2004

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.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

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.

 
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