If you know me well at all, you know I love hurricanes and hurricane coverage. So when weather people start saying this is the most amazing storm they’ve ever seen, I’m hooked. Right now Katrina is the 6th strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, and is very close to being #4. I get most of my tropical updates at Weather Underground. They have two very good blogs there as well as tons of information. Jeff Master’s is excellent and Steve Gregory’s has lots of aweseome pictures as well as analysis.
Archive for August, 2005
Katrina
Sunday, August 28th, 2005Music Chart
Sunday, August 28th, 2005Trying something, so let me know if its a keeper. Each week I will post my Top 10 Music Chart. My problem is that iTunes (or J. River) don’t support anyway of doing most listened to in the past week. So to start I’m going to do my most listened to songs overall that I have played in the past 7 days. Here is the first week’s list:
1. Straylight Run – Existentialism on Prom Night
2. MxPx – Silver Screen
3. Midtown – Empty Like the Ocean
4. Fall Out Boy – Chicago is So Two Years Ago
5. AM Radio – Stole the Show
6. August Premier – Fall
7. Autopilot Off – Chromatic Fades
8. Better Than Ezra – Sincerely Me
9. Blink 182 – Emo
10. Blink 182 – Time To Break Up
Fall Out Boy
Friday, August 26th, 2005 |
Picture of Fall Out Boy from Movin’ On. Why this? I’m going through my pictures again and thought this one was cool. Check out more from Blue-White Weekend.
Posted via flickr. |
IM Roundup 2
Friday, August 26th, 2005I can’t believe I wrote my original IM experiment entry on 12/4/04. Since then not enough has changed. If you read that one, I said that Google is the one to watch. Nine months later, Google Talk has been released.
Where they all stand now (the ones I follow):
AIM – Still the same old boring AIM. Simple away messages and profiles are the best features. The new version which is in beta offers conversation logging and tabbed IMs. There are rumors about offline messaging. Voice features should be easier and allow for conference calling. The beta is still too early to use regularly. It has potential but it makes you download so much extra junk it isn’t worth it.
Yahoo! – Version 7 offers the closest thing to what I want in an IM program. Logging, easy voice chat, and offline messages. Not just offline IMs but also voice mails.
MSN – Just downloaded 7.5 the other day. No idea what is new. I have never really liked MSN. It does all the basics well but nothing different to excite me.
ICQ – Apparently its still around. I tried using it a while back but it doesn’t work the way I like. To me it seems they never got the transition from tray to taskbar down. ICQ will always have a special place in my internet history.
Skype – The most popular voice chat program around. They have added all sorts of pay features that let you call phone numbers, get a phone number, and voice mail. They are attempting to make it much more portable. Skype Zones lets you use it at hotspots for a fee. My favorite thing about Skype is that it has a PocketPC version which lets me have the equivalent of a cordless phone. My Axim has a microphone so just plug in some headphones and you’re all set.
Google Talk – Based on Jabber, which I’ve always been curious about but never took the time to find out about it. The benefit of Jabber is that you can sign on using a number of programs including GAIM. There won’t be the problem of all the other big companies where they can’t talk to each other, Google wants them all to work together, even for voice. Right now it is very basic. I like all the ways you can dock the message windows to the buddy list. You can minimize them so that you can see the most recnt message from that person. You can also close the window and it doesn’t lost the conversation, this is a feature NotesBuddy had that I really liked. If you use Gmail has your main email I think it is more useful. For now I’m going to play with it and keep an eye to see what they add.
A look at my must haves:
Offline Messaging – Yahoo has it along with voice mail. AIM is rumored but nothing yet. I believe Jabber supports it, I’m pretty sure Google will have it not too long from now.
History – Easier to talk about who doesn’t have it. AIM will finally have it with the new version. Google looks to only save recent messages. Still nothing about having the history saved on a server, please Google.
Constant Away Message – Nothing on this one. Reading over what I said before is a little confusing. I think it should be changed to offline away message. With offline messaging the only reason to stay signed on would be so people can see where you are via your away message. I don’t think I’ve considered this feature since I wrote it last time but it would be really useful.
Most Recent Chat in Window – Yahoo! supports this nicely. Google appears to as well.
Conference Calls – A new one to add to the list. Voice wasn’t as big a deal when I last wrote about this. In fact, I didn’t use the term Skype in that article. Skype has conference calls. The new AIM has multi party voice chat. I just found that on the website, sounds very nice. Yahoo! and Google should have this soon enough, I hope.
What I should do now:
Skype is the only one with conference calling so that will be a go-to program when I need that, for fantasy drafts or a podcast perhaps.
As for IM with the features I need Yahoo! Messenger fits the bill. It logs conversations, even has a shortcut to display the most recent conversation in the box, in case you closed the box or forgot what the last conversation was about. The other big feature is offline messaging. No need to stay logged on all the time, wherever you sign on you will get any messages that were sent. Bonus features: talk is very easy to use and it has voice mail if you aren’t signed on (something I really want to try).
As for AIM, I will follow developments on the new version and use the current one to talk to all the people that still use the piece of junk. I’ll also keep using Google Talk to see where that is headed.
One final program I just downloaded, Meetro. There was a rumor that Google was going to buy this company and this would be their IM program. It would also integrate nicely with Google Maps. The idea behind this one is you can enter your current location and it will show you what people are closest to you. They have it broken down to ¼ mile, 1 mile, 5 miles, and locals (not sure if these can be changed). Signing on today I only had 2 people in my locals section, the others empty. The people in the locals where anywhere from 10-25 miles away. Not sure how much I personally like this idea but I’m sure there are tons of people who will enjoy it.
All the links:
AIM
Yahoo! Messenger
MSN Messenger
ICQ
Google Talk
Skype
Meetro
Real Sports?
Thursday, August 25th, 2005I attempted to watch Real Sports tonight, the one with the Randy Moss interview. I wound up only getting to see the last segment because Beau somehow lost his collar (likely Lady ripped it off him but it was too dark to locate). To wrap up Bryant Gumble did his little closing statement. He built it up as addressing all the sports heads of the various networks (ESPN, Fox, NBC, etc). It had potential, there are a great number of things to address at these networks. His problem … he doesn’t like the Gatorade bath. He says its old and not funny (was it supposed to be funny?). Claims that if these channels stop putting it on TV then it will stop. I don’t think the players do this to be on TV, its because they won. They are congratulating the coach. At least I know now, if I ever watch Real Sports again, turn it off before Gumble has a chance to speak.
Doom Trailer
Thursday, August 25th, 2005I was somewhat interested in seeing this just because its Doom and The Rock is a pretty good choice for the main character. After seeing this trailer I’m really excited. They should have done the whole movie in first person view like some of the scenes are in the trailer, really cool.
Jon Stewart Wired
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Jon Stewart is on the cover of this month’s Wired. Here is the article from the wired website, worth checking out, it isn’t that long.
Magic Numbers
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Last night I was looking at the baseball standings on Sportsline and noticed how they always denote at the bottom that a team’s magic number will be in (). However, they don’t bother to use the magic number until near the end of the season. I want to know this no matter how large it is. I did a search and the first site I found was very cool. RIOT lists the number of games a team needs to win to win its division or wild card as well has the number it needs to win to avoid being eliminated. For example, the Phillies currently 35 games left. If they were to go 34-1 the rest of the way they would win the division, no matter what the Braves or anyone else does. If they falter and go 33-2, they would still win the wild card. Another interesting note is that no team is eliminated yet. Even with the Royals 19 game winning streak they weren’t eliminated. It will likely happen next week, they only need to lose 5 more games. I’m sure I’ll be checking this page out almost daily.
Some other neat standings related sites:
Baseball Prospectus Playoff Odds Report – They run a million simulations each night. Here they show the average final record of each team and the probability that the team will make the playoffs. As of today the Phillies have a 10.6% chance at winning the division and a 16.5% chance at the wild card, making their chances of making the playoffs about 27%.
Pennant Race – Graphs each team and their record throughout the season. You can browse by division or make a custom graph. Really interesting to see the Astros and A’s climb back to the top.