My Life - My Travels

Totally rad rap video. I knew I should have been a rapper. Nerd rap is a totally untapped market.

“Wanna burn a disc? How bout’ a DvD?”

That’s right boys and girls. I have not been a good little boy. I guess I know what I’m getting for Christmas. Nothing but a lump of coal. I guess the good people over at HBO don’t take to kindly to people taking full advantage of their high speed cable connection.

I recently spent about a month living down in California and just couldn’t go without a decent cable connection. I did what anyone would do and ordered internet from Charter Communications. Since they are so kind as to not limit how much bandwidth I use (unlike the nice people over at Bend Broadband) I go crazy. Downloading anything and everything I might like. By that I mean all the latest linux distros, watching shows on Hulu, and many other various forms of LEGAL bandwidth consumption. (continue reading…)

I ran across Zoto in quest to find a decent and cheap online backup for my all my photos. I love to take photos and a lot of my photos are in in RAW format, so they can take up a lot of room.

I started reading about Zoto and it seemed like it might fit the bill for all my JPGs and I was ok with that.

Turns out that Zoto wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it turned out to be pretty cool never the less. Some say a Flickr wanna be but I say so what…who cares?

Zoto allows you to create folders and upload as many photos as you like. Share or make them private. They can handle photos up to 20mb in size and they offer a pretty cool interface. There is a lot of technology that you’ve seen before like a lightbox but they do it well and it looks good.

There is also a simple uploader you can put on you computer and all you have to do is drag and drop the individual photos or a whole folder. I would have liked to seen the folder structure be keep instead of just uploading into a “all photos” folder. It creates a lot of extra work in the name of organization.

All in all I think Zoto is a fair opponent to Flickr if you take into consideration the unlimited storage.

Zoto gets a thumbs up for me if I want to share photos with friends but as photo backup it just doesn’t cut it.

Then again, it’s not trying to be a backup service.

I’ve been reading a lot about bigger web companies laying of 10% or 25% of their staff in both reactive and proactive strategies to lower costs to make up for bad economy. This brings up some interesting questions, one of which tends to make me worry.

Are all these free web services we use everyday going to make a jump to paid services?

Things like Gmail, Pandora, Mint, etc, etc. (continue reading…)

The T-Mobile G1 is the best phone in the history of the world! Have you not seen the video reviews and seen the specs? GPS, 3G, Touchscreen, WiFi, etc, etc.

That’s what I thought until I started to delve deeper into what it can ACTUALLY do. Sure it has a built in compass with a nifty gyro thingy but it lacks a few key features.

From what I’ve seen on the net I was ready to drop my Blackberry Curve and pre-order one of these bad boys. Until I found it can’t do UMA, no 3.5mm headphone jack, and can’t be used an a modem for a laptop. All very key features that my Curve currently has and I use on a regular basis.

Android, what are you doing! I’m willing to over the 3.5mm jack but no UMA or dial up networking for my laptop? My HTC Dash had that later of the 3 and that was 2 phones ago for me.

Get it together boys and I’ll reconsider dropping my hard earned cash on your gadget.

The Microsoft Zune Music Marketplace, also known as just the Zune Marketplace is boasting that they have something like 6 million songs. I know the name is long and isn’t as catchy as “iTunes” but hey, what do you want. It’s Microsoft.

I have recently purchased a Zune 120GB (which I will be reviewing later after some more use) and have been playing with the marketplace. Microsoft have put together a nice little music collection which is available at my finger tips. All I have to do is download this little program and I’m set to go. Ohh…I also forgot to mention the $15 a month charge for the Zune Pass which allows me to listen to more than a 20 second preview of each song.

You can however sign up for a 14 day trial and grab as much music as you want.

The way it works is, once you have pass you are able to browse and listen to full length songs and albums. You may also download and sync with your Zune so you can have it with you. This is great for me because I can get bored with an album in no time. Downloads are super fast and only takes a few minutes to get an entire album. You can search by song, artist, album name, etc.

There are a few drawbacks however. One of the major ones is that the music you download via the marketplace is DRM encoded. Therefore, if you don’t pay your monthly dues of $15 your music will go bad and you won’t be able t use it. There is one way around that but I might just leave that for later on in the post. Another thing that really bothers me is once I finally find an album I like. I think…SWEET and click the download button. Only to find out that I can’t download a few songs on that album for whatever reason and i have to buy them. Granted the songs only cost about 79 Microsoft points but I’m already paying $15 a month! I don’t want to buy 2 songs just so I can have a complete album. This also happens with entire albums. They have it…you just have to pay for it and then you can download it.

Overall, I think that it is a great system and is an alternative to anything that starts with a lower case “i” *cough* iPod  *cough* iTunes

I say give it a shot. I personally will pay for one or two months just to find some new music.

As for getting around the problem of DRM encoded music. Two words put together. Sound and Taxi. I would not however, recommend this as it is probably illegal. Because a program that would take DRM encoded music and strip the DRM so the the songs don’t expire would be bad news for everyone. I for one will be paying my dues each month and if I don’t pay my music will expire.

On the other hand…there is always TPB.

Aww yes. The old classic. The NES. It was a favorite as a child for me and acted as one of the best babysitters I ever had. It kept me busy during the day and warm at night. I had a ton of games and hours and hours of pure frustration.

Fast forward to today and I have an anger problem. Not just a regular shake my fist at other drivers anger. I’m talking about unadulterated anger. Yell at people out of my window when they are being retarded. Make comments to people who are looking at me funny in the store. Ya know…things of that nature. I think that I owe it all to the NES.

All the house spent in front of that TV getting pissed because I can’t pass a level and then throwing the controller, trained me at a young age for anger. (continue reading…)