Month: November 2004

The importance of being Delicious

I just found a new must-have application for all rampant media consumers like me: the Delicious Library. It’s also a killer app for the iSight. Delicious Library is a media management application that allows you to inventory your books, music, videos, and games, and to manage check-in and check-out. The killer app part: it can scan your item’s bar codes using the iSight and look up all the information from Amazon, including cover art and reviews, and there’s a drag and drop checkout system.

Issues: Getting the hang of using the iSight to scan was a little tricky. (The FAQ includes some tongue in cheek instructions for using toothpicks and a rubber band to set up a distance gauge on your iSight to speed up the process.)

More importantly, not every item has a bar code, and not every item’s bar code is in Amazon. I tested the scanner with 11 DVDs, 10 CDs, and a CD boxed set. It had no problem with any DVD that I tried, but it only managed to scan four of the CDs and the CD boxed set correctly. Of the other CDs, the problems included:

  • No bar code on CD case: a single cd from the Miles Davis Columbia boxed set didn’t have a bar code.
  • Music club CDs: both Columbia and BMG, who built the majority of my CD library from 1990 to 1996, replace the bar code on CD art with their own bar code or a message from the club.
  • Wrong release found: John Coltrane’s Lush Life scanned as a Count Basie CD.
  • Nothing found: one indie label release, Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley, turned up nothing in Amazon’s DB (probably because it was subsequently reissued by a bigger label).

In these cases, I used the title search feature. While this was much more convenient than other release lookups that I’ve used, it required a bit more work. Still, a very cool library management tool and a killer use of the iSight. This solution sure beats the hell out of the CueCat.

Almost forgot: A major wish list item would have to be scriptability. The application has no AppleScript dictionary at all. I’d love to be able to grab an item and output HTML. I’d also like to be able to substitute my own Amazon Associate ID rather than the company’s for doing lookups.

Blogger for hire

When I relocated to the east coast in August, I left Microsoft’s employ. I’ve been doing some contract work for them off and on over the last few months, but that’s finished and I’m looking for a new full time opportunity.

I believe that somewhere in the greater Boston area there must be a software or Internet focused company that needs a software product manager who’s been at Microsoft, worked in a CMM Level 3 organization, has been a developer, technical architect, tech support team lead, business intelligence analyst, and sales support engineer, and is an authority on corporate blogging and content syndication. (See my resume for more details.) Anyone want to call me on that bet?

(By the way, it was the hardest decision I ever made to leave Microsoft, but I needed to come east and they don’t do software product development too many places outside Redmond. I have a lot of respect and admiration for my former team members and wish them the best.)

What disappearing iTunes releases look like from the other side

I’m obliged to Christophe Abric, who’s on a mailing list with me, for pointing to an interesting case study of why albums appear and then disappear on the iTunes Music Store. The case in question is King Crimson, and the story is made a bit more transparent through the online diary of Robert Fripp, the band’s constant anchor. Apparently EMI snuck King Crimson tracks into the online stores after the band’s contract with them expired at the end of 2003, in spite of ongoing royalty disagreements—the band would have received 6 cents per track (Apple gets 4) vice the 69 cents kept by the label for “technology investments.” Riiight. More info in this Blogcritics post.

This sort of hijinks probably also explains the appearance and quick disappearance of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks… in the store over the last few months.

(I thought I posted this on Friday, but it seems to have disappeared.)

Radio Free Connecticut

I have officially decided to make my claim to fame by finding a trade route between Boston and the Jersey Shore that does not include Connecticut. For the second trip in a row, we were deluged by rain non-stop for the four hours it took us to get through this ridiculous state. For a good two solid hours, I thought we had taken a wrong turn and were driving through the Atlantic Ocean. Also we’ve tried all three east-west routes, all with unsatisfactory results: I-84 to I-91 to I-95 is a disaster through all the states on the southern coast; taking the Merritt Parkway is somewhat better but adds a good two hours to the trip, most of that due to rush hour delay getting on the parkway through Hartford and New Haven; and staying on I-84 all the way through to 684 to 287 means going through rush hour and nasty construction. Pfui.

Anyway, we’re here, we had no recurrence of womitin’ dog, the sun is shining, and I have a day to work all the kinks out of my body before we head into the city tomorrow.

Frick it.

Lisa and I are headed down to the greater NYC area in a few minutes to drown our post-election sorrows at the Frick and spend some time with her folks. I’ve never Fricked, so I’m really looking forward to the visit. Keep your fingers crossed that we don’t experience Return of the Womitin’ Dog on the way down.

Sorting through the rubble

While I still await the results from Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa, I’m not optimistic. Sorry, Matt, but I don’t see a lot of hope out of this election; if we couldn’t beat this administration in a fair fight after the last four years, we need some serious overhauling. I’m thinking about what I learned last night about the last four years, and the next four.

First: it’s pretty clear that the rhetoric about “election stealing,” regardless of what happened in 2000, does not apply to the 2004 election—at least not yet. Turnout increased on both sides and so far their side had more than ours.

Second, the country as a whole is much more conservative—socially—than I think anyone on the left dreamed. Gone are illusions of isolated backwaters of Bible-thumping bigotry; with results like these elsewhere in the country, it’s clear that there was a major group of voters for whom protecting God from the Democrats was much more important than worrying about nuances of the reasoning to invade Iraq, the economic health of the country, or the lives of our boys.

Third, I think this election dramatically showed the strengths and limitations of the blogosphere in the political process. While information was flowing freely, there was a whole class of issues and voters that never showed up on the blogosphere’s radar, but which turned out to be pivotal. (See my previous post about blind spots in the blogosphere.)

Fourth, while we were making logical arguments, people were falling into a reality distortion bubble in which Iraq was involved in 9/11 and had WMDs, John Kerry shot himself to get medals that he then threw away, and the rest of the world likes us for our efforts in Iraq. Not just a few people—a lot of people. We may want to start thinking how we reach people who have voluntarily disconnected from reality but who vote in large numbers—or, failing that, make sure that the people who are still living in reality have all the facts.

Fifth, we may just have been handed 2008, given that the president now has to clean up his own Iraq mess and deal with his own budget deficit. But we can’t win an election if we handle it like we did this one, and we won’t win it if we don’t start shifting the ground against the “loyalty oath” people and start making people think.

Finally, there is some comfort in seeing that I’m not alone in my anger: Fury, AKMA, Doc, and Larry Lessig all make interesting points.

Waiting for the miracle

Lisa and I voted at about 4:30 pm. There was no line at our polling place, but the Scantron indicated that I was ballot # 1067 for the day. Now we’re sitting (after cooking dinner: chicken filets sautéed in lemon, butter and parsley (a la Siena) and risotto with prosciutto and peas, with a French Chardonnay—sue me) watching the election returns and waiting for the miracle.

(Incidentally, that would be my addition to the election mix tapes that are floating around.)

Shout out to Fury for putting Fury’s money and time where Fury’s mouth is (ah, the challenges of pronouns for an anonymous blog!).

Note: even voters in blue states have trouble voting. See George’s abbreviated story.

Resources for Voting

First, if you haven’t voted yet, go do it. Lisa and I are headed out later this afternoon once she finishes her conference calls.

Second, if you have trouble voting: Election Protection Hotline: 1-866-MYVOTE1 to report problems, 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for immediate legal assistance.

Third, quick compilation from around the Internet of useful links:

Vote-For links

I haven’t gone to our polling place yet—Lisa and I are going to do that at lunchtime—but I’m going to do some voting right now using Vote Links: I’m voting today for John Kerry and against George W. Bush. View source to see how this works, then check out the tracking page at Technorati to see how it’s going.

By the way, this is the initiative that Dave Sifry talked about on my blog over a year ago; the spec is jointly written by Kevin Marks and Tantek Çelik. I wanted to see something like this implemented several years ago—but alas, I can’t find the reference (so much for my backup brain).

Thanks

With everything over but the voting (one hopes), I’d like to put a personal thanks out to a lot of people on the Internet for making this, the most important election ever (with the possible exception of the election of 1860), also the most discussed, most debated, most opinionated, and maybe most informed election ever. Special thanks to the Electoral Vote Predictor site and its Votemaster, newly revealed to be Andrew Tanenbaum; Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo and Oliver Willis; the Instapundit, anchoring the right hand side; Salon’s coverage; Eric Olsen and Blogcritics (especially this post); Tony Pierce for uncommon sense; Dave for focusing attention early on the role of blogs and the Internet in politics; Greg for being the deep-thinking gadfly he’s always been; Fury for coming in late but strong; Wonkette for keeping it funny; and a host of other folks I’ve forgotten but linked to before.

In case anyone has missed it, I endorse John Kerry for President, because he lives in the reality-based world:

Because he doesn’t have people on his side who so dramatically misunderstand the history of America that they try to claim the country was founded on principles that those who would seek to keep church out of state and vice versa are anti-American and anti-Christian. (Thanks to Christian Ethics Today for debunking this point of view, which has claimed several people I know);

Because he will admit it when he screws up;

Because he won’t need rigged voting machines built by a committed campaign contributor to get into office;

Because he will get elected in spite of help from the liberal media, who were going to run a slanted 45-minute attack against him for free but refused to run the ad of a bunch of Iraq veterans who are calling BS on the administration;

Because he will get elected in spite of attempts from the GOP to interfere with voters in Ohio, and Ohio, and Wisconsin, and Florida, and elsewhere;

Because his campaign cares about people who don’t have cars (see page 2);

Because his campaign wants people who think, not people who take loyalty oaths;

Because his campaign hasn’t promised not to use the greatest tragedy that has ever hit our country for political purposes, and then turned around and done it.

First real Halloween

I carved a pumpkin yesterday afternoon and lit the candles at 5:30. Then Lisa and I ordered pizza, sat back, and waited for the trick or treaters. We didn’t have to wait long. Over the next two and a half hours, we had about 45 trick or treaters—by far more than we’ve ever seen in the seven years we’ve been married. Lisa’s instincts were right; this definitely is a good family neighborhood.

This morning my neighbor told me last night was actually a slow Halloween—typically our block sees about 60 to 70 kids.