Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

T minus 2 hours and counting

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Happy Halloween!

November is almost upon us. As I’ve mentioned a couple times previously, this means that rather than the usual babble about whatever random things cross my brain, either ‘net- or life-inspired, my blog may very well be somewhat neglected.

Instead, I’ll be turning off my PC, closing down my web browsers and newsreaders, leaving my instant messaging programs off, and focusing on diving into the wierd and wonderful world of becoming…

(Drum roll, please.)

…a Novelist.

I’ll be posting my progress as I go, so feel free to stop by and keep track of how I’m doing. Hopefully, it will at least be interesting. ;)

Kung-Tunes upgrade

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Just upgraded to Kung-Tunes 1.9.0. There’s now a bit less information displayed for the currently playing track, but it displays a history of the last few tracks I’ve listened to. Cool stuff!

Small updates

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Finally grabbed some time to do some small updates to the site I’d been meaning to do for a while now. There have been a few updates to Untitled as I prepare for NaNoWriMo, I’ve (finally) posted a new picture to WudiVisions, and I re-enabled the smiley hack that’s been broken since the upgrade to MovableType 2.5.

‘Bout damn time! ;)

Mac fun and games

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Heave Ho!

Amsterdam Mac users certainly come up with entertaining ways to amuse themselves — creating Mac porn, having an Ellen Feiss Lookalike Contest, and tossing PC’s across a parking lot.

The picture shown here was by far my favorite of the PC-tossing pictures. While it’s most likely just an ‘elephant picture’, it looks either incredibly fey, or good ballet form.

Or both. In any case it made me laugh.

(Thanks to this Wired article about the lookalike contest.)

A reminder

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Just a quick reminder — NaNoWriMo kicks off in just over a week. For the month of November, posts to The Long Letter may be pretty sparse, as I’ll be spending the majority of my free time from work either fighting my way through my NaNoWriMo attempt, or huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth and quietly gibbering to myself when I actually realize what I’ve gotten myself into.

Also, a quick word of warning from the NaNoWriMo website:

You are an arteest, and no longer have time for things like cooking and grocery shopping and laundry. Start demanding favors and treats from friends and loved ones now. That way they’ll be fully acclimated to the new you once November rolls around.

Valid RSS

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Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby have just created an RSS Validator. I’ve run my feeds through, and can now ensure that I offer valid RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds for use with newsreaders/aggregators.

I even managed to get my own little addition to the feeds going without breaking them — yay!

Admittedly, I can’t honestly say I really know or understand the difference between RSS 1.0 and 2.0. But hey. They’re both there.

Microsoft switchers – oops!

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So Apple‘s had their ‘Switch’ campaign going on for a while now, touting stories from ex-PC users who have switched to Macintosh computers. Apparently the campaign is doing fairly well — at least well enough for Microsoft to start a similar campaign of its own.

Unfortunately, since they (apparently) couldn’t find any customers that had actually made the switch from the Mac to Windows, and were happy about it, and willing to talk about it — they had to combine fictional accounts a hired freelance writer’s story with stock photography, as pointed out on /. earlier today.

Apparently, this isn’t a rare practice, either. I especially like the page where the people in the photograph are using a Mac 6100.

Methinks Microsoft’s marketing folks need to work on their game a bit.

Thanks to Scripting News for this one.