Now Preening on the Coffee Table: The TiVo Remote Control

Now Preening on the Coffee Table: The TiVo Remote Control

A very interesting article on the design of the Tivo remote control.

So you Wanna...

www.soyouwanna.com is a very interesting site.

"SoYouWanna.com teaches you how to do all the things nobody taught you in school."

Don't ask me why, but I read the entire "So you wanna be a sitcom writer" article.

Steve's Ant book

Someone at work just got a copy of Java Development with Ant, written by my Apache Axis co-committer Steve Loughran. It rocks. If you use ant (and if you are using Java, you probably should be) you need to be getting yourself a copy.

Support for Atom in FeedDemon

Nick Bradbury just added support for Atom feeds to FeedDemon 1.10 Beta 1. So not only do I have a blog, but people who have purchased FeedDemon (and only those people) can read my blog without coming to the web site.

XML feed for Tom

Well, great news Blogger has decided to add a feature which will generate an XML feed of the content of their blogs. The bad news is that this is an ATOM feed, which many readers don't handle yet, but will be adding support for soon. In particular, FeedDemon does yet support it but will in its next version.

A list of tools that support Atom is at AtomEnabled.org

Blogs that I like

Interesting BLogs that I am enjoying reading:

• Rory Blyth http://neopoleon.com/blog/ (a guy living in Portland Oregon, my hometown)


• Don Box http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/dbox/default.aspx (lots of .NET/Longhorn/Indigo info)


• PVR Blog http://pvr.blogs.com/pvr/ (great Didigtal Video Recorder news)

And of course FeedDemon (on Windows) is a the only way I can keep up with the 26 blogs that I read regularly.

Happy New Year

So its a new year and Blogger(tm) still is in this neverland of not offering BloggerPro for sale and not providing anyway to publish an RSS feed of a free web log.

To say I am frustrated is an understatement. I really should spring the money for a Radio UserLand account, but do I really have enough to say that I would be willing to keep thing up to date? I don't know.

Still here

I am still alive, I just don't see much point since I don't have RSS yet. Have to scrounge around the blogger site and see if they have gotten their act together yet.

No feed yet

Still bummed that blogger does not offer any way for me to publish
my blog as an RSS feed. The help does at least mention that they are thinking of turning on an RSS feed for the free version.

Don't know how long I am going to have to wait for that. Don't expect much in the way of postings till I have a way to get people to read them.

:-(

Tivo Upgrade Success!

TiVo update: Went over to Bob's house when I got my new drive. After only a few minutes plugging and unplugging IDE hard drives in to his computer, my Series 2 is now looking good with 140 hours of storage. Of course I only ever record on "Best" quality, but at 35+ hours, this is just fine.

I used the 9th Tee bracket, and did not upgrade the cooling or get the power-up delay kit that are available. The Hinsdale HowTo says you don't need them, and I trust him.

Empire Strikes Back better than Start Wars?

At least one web critic agrees with me that Empire (his #28) exceeds the original Start Wars (his #51). From James Berardinelli's All-Time Top 100.


"There are many times when the sequel to a beloved movie fails to live up to the hype. Such was not the case with 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, which didn't just equal the excitement and derring-do of its predecessor, Star Wars, but exceeded it. Regarded by some as the best sequel of all-time, ..."

Can I supersize that?

Good news for my new TiVo Series 2:
"Your drive has been shipped via UPS. Your tracking number is [deleted]"

Sched. Delivery: Sep 17, 2003
Shipped to: ARLINGTON, MA, US
Service Type: 2ND DAY AIR

Background: My upgraded Phillips 30 Hour TiVo, upgraded to 135 hrs with a 2nd 80 Gig Maxtor drive) started giving me all kinds of trouble and I believe it was the 80 Gig drive that was failing. I filled out the form at the Maxtor web site and got an RMA number. They got the drive on Friday and sent my new drive out Monday. Lesson: always get a drive with at least a 3yr warranty.

Limbo

Blogger seems to be changing their product lineup, so I think I am stuck in limbo until they get it worked out. I have a message in to their technical support people, so we shall see what happens.

No RSS Feed?

Unfortunately Blogger doesn't seem to offer an RSS feed, which makes a blog sorta not useful. But now it seems that Blogger Pro features are included for free. Does this mean I will get an RSS feed? We shall soon see.