Friday Night Party Line Episode 2 is up! Here’s the link. It’s more of a party of two tonight, but there can’t be a big crowd every week. A big thank you to David for participating!Here is the RSS feed and as you know it’s on iTunes and Yahoo as well.
I got some good news about possible guest stars in the future, but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out more about that.
I've been pretty excited about saving up for and ultimately buying a Scooba robotic mop. Some people get into football, basketball or NASCAR. I really don't. However, robots appeal to me about the same way as sports appeals to most guys.
Many of my friends think spending $400 on a mop is, well, crazy. But look, I'm never going to buy tickets to go see LaBron James, despite the fact that he regularly holds court 15 minutes from my house. Consider the Scooba to be 7 or 8 Cavs tickets. 
I know that other people have made Scooba videos, but I also had a strong, nerdish desire to play with YouTube as well. It's interface is extremely easy. Uploading takes time, but we are talking about seriously large files here. Some people have criticized YouTube for being a vehicle for copyright infringement. To me, the most enjoyable stuff has been the original footage that people create and post. From a business perspective, assuming it can survive people calling it Kazaa for video, it seems to be designed to be bought by a larger company for the purpose of making some pretty nice money. It's taken off with such viral intensity, I imagine it's creators will reach their goal. Good for them. In my next life, I want to be an internet mogul!
But I digress. Here is the Scooba video, commentary provided by Thing 1 and Thing 2.
The iTunes feed for the podcast came in. It's here. We are going to try to do another show this Friday night. Subscribe now!
Scooba
I ran my new Scooba all day yesterday. The key is apparently not to let it bite off more than it can chew. It does about 200 square feet at a time. I guess my kitchen is three times that amount, so to get a good cleaning, I’m going to have to section it off into threes and do three separate cleanings. Add the foyer, the mud room and 4 bathrooms and this sucker has its work cut out for it. I shot some video but that’s going to have to wait as I’ve got other stuff happening right now.
Podcast
My podcast got booted off my favorite forum today. Ostensibly, the reason is content control. Posts can be moderated, an external program such as a podcast cannot. Of course I'm disappointed, but I've said many times that it's his show and he can do what he wants; like it or lump it. It's going to cost me my signature too b/c I promoted the podcast in my blog.
I could be dejected and give up, but I have the podcasting bug now. It's just fun. Plus, it's a big internet out there, full of controversial content. The blog is getting a lot of hits and there are many many forums in which to frolic. I'm going to keep podcasting even if we have to retool a bit before we continue.
The weird thing is that controversy is sort of foreign to me. I'm not very used to it. I think I only had detention once in my entire High School career.
Plexi-PCs.
I build computers as a hobby. I’ve done it since the 80s and it’s a lot of fun. This page shows you how to build a clear plexiglass computer case. You can then add LEDs or neon or whatever you want! It occurs to me that you could put 4 motherboards in one of these and have a computer built for KVM. The potential of this thing is amazing. It goes on my lists of projects this summer.
With the help of a few friends, my first foray into podcasting is finished and available for download. It’s the perfect thing for a long drive as it’s nearly an hour long. But for your time, you’ll get to hear several interesting people talk about the new TiVo Series III, home improvement projects, domestic versus imported beer, hybrid cars versus electric or hydrogen, internet social gatherings and the delay of Microsoft’s Vista OS. It’s certainly better than listening to a cattle report fade in and out on your car’s AM radio. It can be found here.
I have submitted it to iTunes as well and it’s now under review.
The RSS feed can be found here.
Thanks again to Droobie, Ilana, Nathan, Allie and Doug for making this so enjoyable. We really could have talked for several hours more!
There is a ton going on today.
First: The Scooba is here!!! But, it’s charging. I have to charge it overnight so no Scooba video today. The goal is to shoot some video of it and then try to upload it to google video or something like that.
Second: My first foray into podcasting is scheduled to record tonight. If it is successful, I’ll be editing that and uploading that somewhere as well. I’ve spent most of the day working out technical problems. Cross your fingers for me.
Third: My blogviews have gone through the roof thanks to blogmad. I’ve also met some really neat people as well. It’s definitely addicting to surf through tons of new blogs every day.
So that’s it. More to come!
I’ve seen the Chris Pirlillo effect in action and I want to try it too. I love CPU magazine and I’ve seen call for help and I’ve not mistaken, Chris Pirillo has also been on TWIT. Wikipedia says you have to say his name three times for this to work (hmmm, isn’t that also like summoning the Devil? :)). My blog has been blessed with a comment from another well known tech person, so here I am shamelessly fishing for another.
I honestly debated about blogging about gadgets I want to buy. It seems superficial, materialistic and of little purpose. But then again that describes most blogs anyway, right? Blogging is definitely a what-floats-your-boat enterprise. It’s the long tail blah-blah where many one hit wonders (or monkeys in a room full of typewriters) occasionally find success. At least that’s what I learned on Rocketboom.Ok, onto the good stuff. The Scooba has shipped. I’m hoping I get it this weekend. And, even though it’s already been done, I’m going to make a video, dammit. I want to preserve my Scooba wrought joy for the ages! This brings me to the first item on my gadget desires list.
The Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1.
This puppy has been getting a lot of press lately. And no doubt! It’s sleek, it’s cook and it freakin’ puts HD recording in the palm of your hand! Granted it’s “only” 720p, but I don’t even have an HD set! I’d have to watch it on my computer or on the little itty bitty screen it comes with. Something tells me that HD editing is a gigantic pain in the keister, but even if I didn’t edit what I shot, I suspect it would be cool.
Next on the list is the Pleo.
Now I already blogged about my robot fetish. I fear that this much hyped robot companion might be just a glorified Furby. For these robots to really hold their entertainment power, they are going to have to have behavior variety that only serious microprocessing can emulate. We’ll see, but I’m sure I’m a big enough sucker to plunk down $200 bucks to see.
After that, I really like the Fossil Frank Gehry watch.
I know, it’s nerdy and honestly there’s two more watches after that that are going on the list, but I’ll wait to discuss those. If you are really curious about them, check my del.icio.us links to see what I’m looking at. The Gehry watch uses this negative/positive display that is so very cool to me yet still passes for a dress watch. I am definitely getting one.
The rest of the stuff on my list I find I have blogged about before. There’s the Alesis mixer, the iRAM card, an Origami device and the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2006. I’d better get crackin’ on putting that spare change in the ol’ piggy bank! I only have a limited budget for toys and the Scooba has taken a chunk out of it. If you want to donate to further my materialistic desires, I’m sure I can send you my paypal address. J
17 person skype conference call
Originally uploaded by Thaed 3.
I have a thought experiment to run a 17 person Skype conference call where all individuals can hear and talk at once. It would require 4 computers with a KVM switch, 4 separate Skype accounts for each computer, broad band access for all 4 computers, a mixer and a headset/microphone. It’s a thought experiment at this point because I haven’t bought a mixer yet, so I’m not going to be able to try it until I get one. I do have one in mind, the Alesis MultiMix 8USB with USB Audio. At around $150, it fits in my budget. So I will have to do a follow up to this post later after I get the mixer.
The conference call operator would call 3 people on each computer using the KVM to switch between the computers. Once the call is up, the operator should not have to worry about switching any further and should be able to handle running the meeting. Or the operator could be the tech person and someone else could run the meeting as everyone should be able to hear each other equally well. The operator should be able to adjust sound levels to ensure this.
I used Freemind to graph how I think this would look. I am a little worried about feeback, but I’m hoping that’s either not going to be an issue or I’ll be able to work around it.
Now you might ask, why on earth would you do this? Why for podcasting, of course! Now yours humbly has never done a podcast of any sort. With a little luck, that will change shortly. I’m hoping in the next month or so to try to turn this from a concept to a reality. I didn’t see that anyone has tried this on the Skype forum, so if I’m successful, I’ll post there too.
I thought this was kinda cool:
It’s a PCI card that hooks up to your SATA input and acts like a hard drive. You can boot off it too. You use normal memory in it and it has a lithium ion battery that will keep what you have on it for 10 hours if the power goes out. It keeps itself charged even when your computer is off (but your power supply is on).
This review had some great benchmarks for the card. It’s SATA controller is limited to 150MB/s transfer rates so that makes it slower than it could be, but it’s still sweet!
This is one of those gadgets that makes me want to get one and put it in a box just because I can. The idea of booting off one of these suckers is arousing, even if it is only a little more than 3 seconds faster to boot than a Raptor WD SATA drive. I’m still drooling though. Watch me. I’ll probably buy one and stick it in a 1 GHz Pentium III… as its only hard drive… running linux… MMMmmm.
Mental Interface 