So much for “April showers bring May flowers”… Here in Everett I think we got the latest snow on record since 1972. Pictures are of Ellie playing in the snow in the front yard and the backyard/neighbor’s house. There was probably another 4 inches added to what is in those pictures by the next morning.

After 12 years of riding sportbikes (with a couple years of racing at the club level) I’ve decided to get rid of my sportbike and make a change of pace. My reason for doing so is three-fold:

• After a separated shoulder (my fault) and a totaled bike (not my fault) it was just a matter of time before my number came up again and who knows what the result would be. In addition to the fact that I never got a speeding ticket and Lord knows I deserved about a million of those.
• Next year I’ll be taking the kids to and from school, so I won’t be able to commute anymore on the bike and the only riding time my bike would get would be on the weekends. After all these years I’ve found its pretty hard to ride in a group of guys with sportbikes without something happening on any given day (less likely a wreck, more likely just general hooliganry). So rather than have my bike sit and depreciate I thought I’d turn it in and get the most cash out of it that I could.
• Finally, I was out of shape and spent way too much time at home. With the kids getting older (4 and 5) I needed to move back to a more outdoor and active lifestyle.

So, what I decided to do was trade in my 2001 Honda 929RR for a 2004 GasGas TXT Pro 300 Trials bike and a 2006 Kawasaki KDX-50 for the kids. For those that don’t know what a trials bike is (not trail - its trial) it is a highly specialized dirt bike that is designed for going over obstacles. Mine has a 300cc 2-stroke motor that has a very low 1st through 4th gear for obstacles and a much higher 5th and 6th gear for higher speed travel. The bike only weighs 146lbs without gas where a standard 250cc motocross bike weighs at least 225lbs if not more. A motor that repsonds well at all rpms, very soft and sticky tires and a very precise suspension make the bike very easy to ride. Although it can go 55mph, overall it doesn’t have the speed of a motocross bike but it’ll go over most anything with a heck of alot less effort than a dirtbike in any other class.

The sport of observed trials is much bigger in Europe and Japan, but it does have a decent following here in America as you can find a club operating near most major cities in every state. In my case, I joined the Puget Sound Trialers club. The goal of the sport is much like golf; there are sections (holes) you ride through where you try not to touch your feet to the ground (use fewer strokes) while you go through the obstacles presented. You do 9 or more sections on a loop and you’ll do 3 loops per event. Person with the lowest score wins.

I’ll updated my Motorcycle Gallery with my new bike and I’ll also create a new Trials Gallery to hold photos of me and the kids messing around on our bikes.

Here’s a bulleted list describing the Digital Rights Management (DRM) from an insert in a new Coldplay CD.

Before using, please read the following:

This CD cannot be burnt onto a CD-R or hard disk, nor can it be converted into MP3 for file sharing. So much for an ipod eh?

Thank you very much for purchasing this CD and helping the cause of “Anti-Piracy.” The recordings in this CD have an anti-copying function. They cannot be copied into a PC. In order for you to enjoy high quality music, we have added this special technology. Yeah right, DRM is necessary for high quality music. LOL

This CD might not play in the following CD players: Get ready, this is a good one…

Um…whats left? Maybe they should just say thanks for spending $8 to $17 on this peice of plastic that isn’t guaranteed to do anything useful. Oh, and thanks for saying that I’m totally screwed and can’t take the disc back unless its manufactured incorrectly. Unfortunately this insert is inside the CD case, so you don’t know what you’re getting until you’ve bought it. Don’t worry, someone has figured out that you can copy it anyway.

Apple’s video ipod is the second portable media player I’ve owned, the first one being a Neuros. Since I’ve had it for a couple weeks now, I think its time to write about my thoughts on the device. For the most part my comments will be in contrast to my experience with my Neuros…

I paid $270 + tax for my video ipod as I got a $30 discount for being a teacher. Note for the interested; Apple’s process for verifying education status is nearly non-existant. All they ask is for an address/zipcode to match the school you claim to be a part of, to what is in their database. Here’s what you get for $300: an ipod, a usb cable and a flimsy little pouch. I suspect you wouldn’t have even gotten that little pouch if it wasn’t for the scratch problems the new generation of ipods have been experiencing (class action lawsuit in process as we speak). The pouch is a token gesture, and isn’t enough to keep the device free from scratches - heck the pouch itself creates small abrasions on the surface. Of course, the black ipod does make scratches easier to see in comparison to the white model.

The ipod both charges and synchronizes off of the usb cable. This could be seen as a handy double feature, but consider that your computer must be on for the charging to occur. This issue is quite annoying as my most common mode of operation is to listen to my player during the day and then charge it while I’m asleep (when my computer is usually off). In comparison, my old Neuros came with a wall charger and a car charger. I’ll have to spend another $50 to get the same flexibility in charging if we buy from Apple. Thankfully, you can just spend a handful of dollars for a wall powered USB hub and use that to charge your ipod when your computer is off.

The ipod also doesn’t come with any sort of FM radio support, have a built in mic or have a line-in as my Neuros does. All three can be achieved via 3rd party devices for, of course, more money. The biggest loss is FM, as I use this mostly in my Saturn, which is ancient and has a stock stereo (it has had its aftermarket stereo stolen twice now). I also use this feature in my classrooms where I often have access to a boombox of some sort. In addition to the $50 FM transmitter, I would have to pay another $20 for an audio/video-out cable, but I have found that my camcorder A/V cable works. This is a bonus as now I can plug the ipod into my Auxiliary DVD input in my mini-van.

Being able to display video is a nice new-tech bonus. I think you need to have a very particular lifestyle, like sitting on a bus for a daily commute, to get any consistent benefit from the video side since it requires you to pay attention to the screen. Battery usage is premium, so if you watch a TV episode while on the bus, expect to need some charging to make it through the day if you listen while working etc.. Where I use video playback is when I want to show friends crazy movie clips (Ebaumsworld - Not work safe), a few classic music videos or gameplay clips from upcoming xbox/pc games. The 60GB ipod does seem to be more geared towards video display (more hard drive space and a bigger battery) but it is physically larger than the 30GB version and costs $100 more.

Its obvious that video is a secondary (or incomplete) feature for the ipod (even though its probably a primary marketing point). It takes some learning to get videos on the device, the ability to categorize the videos is limited once they are on there and there are a number of firmware (operating system) bugs in relation to videos. For example, after playing a video you may not be able to turn off the device (by pushing play). It also assumes all videos categorized as music videos have the song itself attached to the video (so you can play the song without the video). If you get your music videos from any other source than iTunes you’ll get audio garbage when the ipod tries to play the song by itself rather than with the video. Although you can tell the ipod to skip the video when it is song “shuffle” mode, if you do so then iTunes wont synchronize any changes to that video after you turn that feature on. Videos are also lumped into your “library” in iTunes even though there is a separate Video section. You can drag videos into the Library, but you can’t drag them into the Video section (now that makes sense right?). Even though you may have videos that are TV show episodes, unless you bought those episodes from iTunes you can’t categorize those videos as TV shows. Rather, you’ll have to make separate playlists or scroll through the whole video list to find what you want to play.

One feature I do like alot, which predates video by one generation for ipods, is the ability to display album art. Although there are free programs out there to scan the web for album art (mostly from Amazon.com), I purchased a shareware program called iArt that does album art (with tag correction for missing album tags) and song lyrics. The nice additional feature of iArt is that it connects with iTunes (music synching software for ipod) and your songs will automatically update to your ipod if you make changes to them. Otherwise, if you use a different art/lyrics program, you’ll have to manually remove and re-copy over the songs you updated, which can be a serious pain when you have thousands of songs.

The clickwheel the ipod uses is quite the innovation (and unique to the ipod). It has its ups and downs though. For example, although it is easy to scan through alot of songs it can be a real pain to make that final selection as the scroll wheel is so sensitive. In comparison, my Neuros uses a stick to go through songs and even though it isn’t as quick of a navigator, one can make easier discreet adjustments to select that final song. Also, the stick and three navigation buttons (FW, RW, Play/Pause) on my neuros does not take up any more room than the click wheel yet it gives me two more buttons.

The only way to bring up a “context” menu (right-click type menu) for the ipod is to double click the central button. Although this does work well enough, the context menu leaves alot to be desired for the information it provides. You can navigate through the song (fast forward/backward), see the rating you’ve given the song, see album art or song lyrics. What the context menu lacks is additional display of song tag information (encoding method/bitrate, comments, composer, genre, whatever) and system options such as the equalizer. For example, with the Neuros it is possible to do what is essentially a “right click” when playing any song and get a submenu of options. To get access to the equalizer on an ipod you need to jump from the “now playing” screen to the main menu and then drill down into the settings menu. In comparison, on the Neuros you just “right click” on the song and choose equalizer. Although the ipod’s equalizer is better (more bands) it isn’t customizable like the Neuros.

Music file support is average at best with support for AAC and MP3 files. This means if you have songs in the windows WMA or the open source OGG format you’ll have to convert them (Neuros supports MP3, WMA and OGG but does not support copy protection on those formats). Personally, I keep all of my music in non-copy protected MP3 format. It is the most widely supported audio format out there and I am guaranteed that my music will work on any player and any computer whenever I need it.

With the complexity of video encoding, it is no surprise that you’ll be re-encoding (or transcoding) most videos you want to put on the ipod (into mpeg4 or h.264 format). Video conversion will be the biggest pain for most users (unless you buy every video from Apple iTunes). There are a number of converters out there that have a variety of success and failure stories. The best I have seen is Nero “ReCode” which is a part of their Nero Digital package when you get the Ultimate version of Nero DVD burning software. The free transcoders out there (Videoera, PSPExpress, etc.) do a decent job but they dont support every format nor have the editing options of Nero.

Next we have the syncrhonization software, iTunes. If anything, iTunes does one thing very well, it integrates the whole media purchase and categorization process. There are other free and shareware type programs you can use to get music onto your ipod (with a variety of features) but in any case you will always be balancing the media synchronization features versus the online shopping options provided by iTunes. I think iTunes balances both of these features well for most users. Other than that, you can find better media managers like MediaMonkey (heck even Windows Media Player does a better job in my opinion) and more consumer friendly shopping experiences. Napster offers higher bitrate songs, has better song browsing with Billboard quarterly charts (back to the 1960’s), user download charts and better genre browsing. Emusic gives a better outlet for independant music and the purchased songs are free of copy management. AllofMP3 has the cheapest music (you pay based on the amount of data downloaded not the number of songs), no copy restrictions and a massive number of format options (although artist compensation is zero or next to zero since it is in Russia).

My final thoughts on the ipod are that I like the size and form of the device, but I sometimes wince at the “form over function” decisions Apple made in designing it. If you look on any ipod forums (like those at ilounge.com) you’ll see nearly 2/3 of all comments are asking what color is best to buy, or about scratches on the ipod, how to remove said scratches or how to get the device exchanged for a new one after scratches have occured. Its form over function on a device that is thought of more as a fashion accessory than a digital media player.

The New York Times is running a story about a debate between astronomers who both claim to have discovered the same object beyond Pluto. Apparantly the US Astronomers had been tracking it for quite some time, but chose to not report it yet. They also claim the Spanish Astronomers stole data to make the find.

A very interesting discussion of this yet to be named 10th planet can be found at Michael E. Brown’s website. Michael Brown is a Professor of Planetary Astronomy Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and is one of the US astronomers that discovered the planet. His page answers questions such as: How do you find planets? How can you tell how big they are? How do you determine what planets are made of? In addition to topics relating to publishing scientific discoveries, which relates to the NY Times article above.

We recently picked up a new Boxer puppy. We decided to name him Max. Once we send in the AKC paperwork we’ll add some crazy latin or something to match the other fruity names registered dogs get. We got him by referral, we originally called Candy Kisses Boxers and Terri, who’s been breeding boxers for over 25 years, gave us a referral to BoxEra Boxers run by Scott and Melody. They are trying to produce their first champion and are working with the Boxella line managed by Joe Heine, who is an AKC judge.

Max has an excellent temperment, is almost housebroken (he is crate trained), and sleeps quietly all night in his crate. No, he doesn’t have a droopy left eye, its just that his inner eyelid on his left side is pink rather than brown like the right (so it gives the appearence of being open wider). In addition to the eye coloration, his nose is too long for showing, but that will probably make life easier for him in terms of breathing. So far he’s been a great addition to the family (although the cat may disagree). Click on the “more” link to see the full photo gallery I’ve uploaded so far.

Tug o' War Max playing tug o' war with Ethan using a similar Scoobie Doo stuffed animal that Max had before we got him.	Flying for Tennis Balls You'd think, with ears like that, you'd be able to fly.
Eating a Clover Hopefully clovers aren't poisonous. Keeping him from the backyard foliage has proven to be quite a job.	Dad Max's dad: "Champion Boxella's Master Key"
Mom Max's Mom: Barbie (a.k.a. Boxella's Ebony Bell)	Mom Another picture of Max's mom "Barbie."
Max and Bella Max playing tug o' war with his sister Bella. Notice the stuffed Scooby. Ethan had a Scooby too that he nicely donated to Max after we got him.	Max Max at 8 weeks of age, when all of his brothers and sisters were photographed for sale.
Max Max...1 day old. He looks like a little hamster.	Max Max at the top of the stairs. It took him nearly 4 days to go down the stairs in our house. He went down our 2nd story deck stairs the day we got him.. Go figure.
Lounging Around - 1yr 4mos	Small Bed - 1yr 2mos
1st Halloween - 6mos	Max and Hardy - 1yr 7mos
Max and Jewel - 3mos	Backyard Flowers - 4mos

My most recent annoyance has to be web hosting. My previous web host Manlius went out of business. No notice or warning. I just woke up and the website, email, and domain was dead. Apparently they hadn’t paid the data center and thus the data center pulled the plug. I don’t imagine there will be any refunds without a lawsuit, and who is going to sue for around $50? They served me well for 3 years but I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall. Thankfully, somehow a customer was able to pay the bill ($650) and get the data back online long enough for some (including myself) to get a good backup. I have now moved myself to Site5.com.

You see, being a web host means you are a part of a pyramid scheme. A person can buy a lot of bandwidth and disk space from a company and then fraction them off and resell them at whatever price they want. As evidenced above, this “host” can go out of business overnight taking the money you’ve paid (and your data) with seemingly little recourse for the average consumer (as they host your site in some far away state and possibly live in yet another state, each with their own laws). So the goal as a customer is to buy your way up as high as possible in the pyramid (as those companies will be more financially stable and solvent). Of course, the higher you go, the more expensive it is.

As a first time buyer there are a number of things you should be doing to help your search. Your first step should be to visit a forum like Web Hosting Talk and get a feel for the providers out there. There will be many people offering services and reviewing the qualities of hosts they’ve been with. Web Hosting Talk slants toward the reseller side for discussions as opposed to the single website (shared host) type customer, but what is good for the reseller is usually good for those that only need a shared host. Here is a list of things that I have learned over the past 3 years:

• Start with checking the age of the company on their “About” web page. The Internet didn’t get really big for consumer web hosting till the late 90’s so a company that has been a web host since 98-99 is actually on the “old” side. Use a “whois” (like BetterWhois) and look up the domain of the host and see when it was registered. Does its “Creation Date” match when their company was said to have started? When does the domain name expire? A decent company would pay ahead as it doesn’t cost all that much to do. (Manlius created 1999, registered to 2006 — Site5 created 1999, registered to 2012) If the “About” page focuses more on what data center the company is in rather than about the company then look elsewhere.
• Sometimes things are simple. Look at the design of the website. Do all of the pages work? Are there obvious ways to contact support and sales (preferably a phone number)? Do they pages look like they are a design template or are they custom? (Manlius was based off of a templated structure, Site5 has in house web designers) Most pages with Macromedia Flash banners and music are templated or based off of a template. I think a web host should know how to make a web page or at least have a good design company hired for such a task, templates just smack of a cheap reseller in my opinion.
• Sometimes things are a bit more complicated. The price of the package is one example. It is common for inexperienced hosts to oversell their allotment of bandwidth (or server resources) yet larger companies can afford to risk it. The expectation is that even though they give you 50GB of monthly transfer, they hope you will only use about 3GB. But what if you use all 50GB? You’re eating into their profit margin (as they have to pay for any bandwidth overages). For example, Network Solutions offers 10GB a month @ $10. So thats $1 per GB of transfer. Manlius was at $0.83 and Site5 is at $0.14! To be honest, this data point scares me for Site5. Its a good deal, yet it means a lot of new customers with some possibly overloaded servers. So Site5 doesn’t seem to be worried about bandwidth but if you get some resource hungry websites on their servers you could run into service interruptions (which they have had). In their defense they have in-house engineers that have designed a loading system that is supposed to load balance the servers. Of course the basic plan doesn’t qualify for this service, so if things go bad the only options are to beg for the server to be checked on or be up-sold to the next account package.
• The servers being up does not mean you can access your website. Take uptime percentages with a grain of salt. Sure the server is up 99.9% of the time, but are your web pages accessible that often? Nearly all hosts have access to amazing data centers.. Air conditioning, multiple backbone connections, gas generators, backups etc.. Just realize, regardless of how clean the place is or how well it runs, if your server has too many clients on it, or the host can’t configure the server and your package well, then you’re still in for a world of hurt. So some hosts try and shove home the uptime and data center qualities, at the end of the day these aren’t the important qualities that make a good web host. In fact, the uptime of 99% should be expected and a good data center just goes with the territory. Site5 uses a 3rd party to monitor their servers and show their uptime statistics. Bonus points here as they put their money where their mouth is.
• Test the response time of the company. Start with a pre-sale question to their sales department (make note of sales hours first though). In the event you get the service, try a simple support request (turning on telnet access is usually one easy thing to ask for, it isn’t always on by default and I find it a very handy utility for web work) and see how long it takes to get a response.
• If you don’t already have a domain name (www.blah.com) then when you get one go with a “top” level registrar. Top level registrars are the company’s at the top that handle the domain name registrations. Being a “registrar” can also be resold. I can purchase rights to resell access to domain names as a stand-in for some top level registrar. What this means, is that the top level registrar may not know about you directly as a customer, and thus if your host/registrar goes out of business you have to go through some support hoops to get access to your domain names. This is what happened to me. Manlius (and their registrar company Becomeadomain) are gone. So I have no way of updating the info for my domains (to point to Site5 for example). My only recourse was to contact Directi.com (who sold the registrar rights to Manlius) and get the domain control switched over to their service. I decided to forego this option though and just transfer the domain registration to a different top level registrar (Go Daddy). Network Solutions and Enom are also good options for big top level registrars.

Well, thats how I went about it this time around. Will add more as I see it…

While a bit heavy on the colorful language, there is an interesting article at Pointless Waste of Time on the state of console/computer gaming in the form of a 20 point manifesto. Its a funny read and gives you a few things to think about. For those that just want the bullet points:

1. Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then.
2. Give us a genre of game we’ve never seen before. Something that’s not an FPS or an RPG or Madden NFL or…
3. Don’t BS me about your graphics
4. Nipples?
5. And on the opposite side of the nipple coin…
6. All of the new consoles will have hard drives. Use them.
7. Loading… …
8. I understand that John Madden was raised by wild boars…
9. Immersion and the invisible hand of God
10. And while we’re at it…(more on arbitrary barriers)
11. And while we’re still at it… (breaks in immersion)
12. Don’t BS us on the difficulty
13. Don’t BS us on the game’s features
14. Seriously, get rid of the crates
15. Stop the Short-Sighted Business BS
16. Don’t use the online capability as an excuse to release broken games
17. Don’t let other features distract from gaming
18. Don’t use online play as an excuse to bleed us dry
19. NO MORE JUMPING PUZZLES IN FPS GAMES
20. Horizontal consoles have been a curse for as long as gaming has been around. I’m not playing another game until I get a machine I can stand on its side. My entertainment center only has three inches of free space and flat consoles are the backstabbing Judas in my life.

In any online medium you run into the problem that internet anonymity and attention of others cause people to show their true colors. This isn’t news to the gaming community at large, Penny-Arcade even made a cartoon about it back in March of last year (warning: strong language). Occaisonally, developers take their game community seriously enough to do something about it.

Bungie (developers of Halo) banned a few thousand players for poor behavior on Xbox Live. If anything, thats the most annoying feature of Xbox live - since so many people are on it and the only communication is via voice - you hear alot of worthless dribble quite often. One choice quote from the developers in that banning notice in regards to racism:

If you’re one of those slack-jawed troglodytes who uses racism as his main form of discourse you probably won’t even understand this sentence, but note that you should keep your vile, bilious crap sealed up. Nobody wants to hear how stupid you are.

Last month the developers for Dark Ages of Camelot posted some comments (via a Q&A) on some of their recent bannings (players cheating in the game):

Q: I think your announcement was all talk. You didn’t ban anyone.

A: Not according to the forums associated with the cheat programs. Reading all the whining was great fun. CLASSIC comedy of the internet variety. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.

Sure other games have banned thousands of people before, they were doing so in World of Warcraft not too long after launch. What is new here is the developers slinging a little mud the other way, makes for good reading when you’re bored surfing the internet I guess.

Ok…I’m a part of that generation that was at the right age to start gaming on computers and consoles when they were first invented/developed. Well, I’m not talking Pong age, more like Atari/Commodore. Anyway, one of the most annoying features of modern gaming is the spillover of instant messenger - AOL chatroom speak. You know, replacing you’re with “ur.” Recently on a visit to one of the message boards I frequent a person created an account to ask for help on where to find some games to download (illegally most likely). Here’s a modified excerpt of the conversation:

i love ff11: yo im new 2 this sit me name sean n i love ff11 n i wanted to know if there was any gd rpg downloads out there i always look on google but there is none. can any one help me

Sky: u nid 2 lern engrich

Noel: Ironically, Sky, his location is listed as England.

Sky: ya i no

RhyssaFireheart: I think I got a headache trying to decipher whatever the hell it was this..creature.. was trying to say. Why the fuck do these idiot kiddies type like that? It can’t be for speed, because I could probably type correct English just as fast as they can type garbage. And if they think it’s cute… I pity their employers once the brats have to get jobs. Habits are hard to break and all that.

CmdrSlack: (who is an attorney) I saw “ur” for “your” in a legal document last year. I shit you not.

AFFA: n teh opinion of tihs cort all u pety rouges are now KoS.

CmdrSlack: w3rd…teh h0n0rabl judg

Ahhh…good times.