A new website has been set up to promote a "
Consumer Technology Bill of Rights
". Take a moment to read through their material and join in the fight to preserve
your ability to use content you purchase or obtain legally.

Well, today I left ChipData. I’m taking a couple of days off, but I’ll start my next
venture Monday. After I’ve been gone a while, I post more information, but I just
wanted people to know I’ll be at a new address starting Monday.

Believe it or not, I’ve finally converted to Moveable Type. It only to a couple of hours and now I have it spitting out the xml format I was using before. It is impressive how easy it was to convert. I still have a lot more work todo to incorporate archives and categories, but it will be much easier to add entries than it was before.

As you can tell from the time difference between now and the last
entry, I’ve been busy.

The other problem is the effort it takes to update the site. I’m
considering using
Moveable Type for web log entries. John has been using it for a while,
and it seemed to make it easier for him to add updates. If I can wade
through the documentation and figure out how to convert my information
easily, I’ll probably do it to.

Most of my time is being spent right now at work. We are trying to get
a product out the door on a really tight schedule. That is preventing
me from doing much of anything on the site right now, but I have finally
captured the last image from the flower bed project and will work to
get them online as soon as I can.

Frosted Hair Is In

My son has been begging to get his hair frosted so we finally gave in,
and Laura frosted it tonight. I snapped some photos for posterity. It
also really highlight the limits of the little Intel ProShare camera
that I snapped the pics with.

Believe it or not, the lack of updates does not signal my demise. Life has
been really hectic lately and getting updates to the website has just been
close to impossible.

I have ton of resource links that I need to get added, but I’m going to
hold off for a little while, until John finished is experiment with OPML.
I already keep my resource list in xml form, but I’m open to using a standard
that has tools available.

XML-RPC

Today I was reading on Meerkat and found an interesting topic on using
XML-RPC to manage your weblog on Blogger and another product called
Free Conversant.
I haven’t read through it, but first glance seems to indicate that it comes
in a open form that we could run on our own servers.

I also happened upon this XML-RPC accessible spell checker. This might make
it simple to provide spell checking on a website or with other tools.

The reason I found these interesting is that the main reason I don’t update
my page more is that it takes time to modify the source and publish it.
I would prefer an easier method of “posting” entries. John is tackling this
with a tools that he is specing out now, but it will be a while before
something big comes out of it.

I was searching around on Microsoft’s website looking for security patches
when I happened across this handy article "

Where to Find Microsoft Security Patches". The most interesting part
was learning about the existence of the

Windows Update Corporate Site. It allows you to download the patches for
installation on multiple machines. This could be a huge
time saver.

Father’s Day Goodies

USB Radio

Well I was surprised on Father’s day on a couple of fronts. The USB Radio
that I mentioned earlier was wrapped and presented as one of my gifts. I
brought it to the office on Monday to give it a whirl. Believe it or not,
it actually works well. The building I’m in is not really conducive to
good radio reception, but I do get several stations. There is a little bit
of background hiss, but I’m hoping to get better reception when we move to a
new location. I may take it home over the weekend and try it there.

The only real gripe I have is with the software. It is your typical GUI
utility from a hardware company. Some cool features are there, it has
terrible art, but the really useful stuff is several revisions away.

I did notice in their README, that they do have an SDK. I’m going to try and
find it and see if I can generate those additional features I want.

Harry Potter

It started innocently enough – I wanted a fun book to read during a
soccer tournament in Austin. Not wanting to purchase a new book, I thought
I’d just dip into my son’s Harry Potter collection and see what it was all
about. Not expecting much from the book or that I would have much reading
time, I only took book one.

Book one lasted less than a day. Desperate for more, I took a late night
trip to Target and found the one remaining paperback copy of book two. It was
finished before we got home.

For those of you who don’t know, I get up early,
5:30 am, to get to work. I have about a 30 mile commute each way and the only
way to not spend my entire life on the road is to leave the house by 6:00 am
and leave the office between 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm.

If you haven’t guessed already, following Mr. Potter on his adventures and
going to work early, really don’t mix very well. I didn’t sleep much the
next week having been compelled to finish books three and four. It really
was much more important than sleep.

This long winded explanation, brings me to the gifts. My son presented me
with several of the collectible trinkets (they look like hard gummies) and
a wand that he carved himself. I think he really enjoyed making it and I
know I enjoyed receiving it.

I ran across a very interesting article this morning on
XML.com –

"Transforming XML: Using the W3C XSLT Specification".
Written by Bob DuCharme, it explains
several key terms in the XSLT Specification and helps give you a fighting chance
when trying to plow through the spec.

Gadgets

While trying to find a way to record radio programming at scheduled times,
I ran across a USB Radio on AllUSB. Let’s hope it gets off backorder and arrives at
my door sometime soon.

It has been a long time since I’ve been able to post anything. It is amazing
where your time goes once summer gets here. Over the weekend I spent WAY to
much time helping fix my youngest brother’s computer. Not only did I have
to reinstall Win98 on it, the motherboard’s keyboard port freaked out
requiring me to replace the motherboard. As
with most hardware based problems, this one ended up costing me 8+ hours on
Saturday.

Agenda VR3

Ever since becoming addicted to using my Palm III, I’ve developed a stronger
interest in new handheld computing devices. I was an early
adopter of the Franklin eBookMan (I’m still waiting for the MS Reader
software if anyone from Franklin is listening) and still use it for
reading. It appears that one of the Linux contenders
Agenda is finally
getting a product out the door. A great review
The Agenda VR3: Real Linux in a PDA,
written by Chris Halsall, is available on the Linux Devcenter of the
O’Reilly Network. Not having played with one yet, this device sounds like it
might have longterm viability if the software quality can approach that of
the Palm platform.

Python

I’ve been slowly adding to my Python skills everytime I get the need to
write a new script. It is still slow going, but I do feel like I’m getting
better. As with most languages, the difficulty is in learning the libraries
not the language. While putting a script together I ran across a great
tool provided by ActiveState,
”
The Python Cookbook”. I was able to quickly find a couple of helpful routines
to accelerate writing the script. It also looks like a place to pick up
hints on using classes and cross-platform Python.

John posted a file for
HotSheet while we are
waiting on sourceforge to get shell access working again.

I’ve started a patterns section under links in resources.