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September 22, 2006

Google Earth

Lots of flying these days, in Google Earth. It was an easy prediction: since Google announced that the greater part of Holland is covered in high resolution now, alarming stories appeared in the traditional media, and also in the newspaper were I am working. The silly season barely gone, and politicians too busy with the November election as well as the wake of the fire in the detention centre at Schiphol airport, that killed eleven people, no new questions asked in parliament yet, but they will come, later.

By the way: if you have problems with installing Google Earth, for instance because your corporate firewall plays for CIA, you can go to Google, click maps, and it's like you're in Earth.

The high resolution is not very high everywhere. If I zoom in on my own house in Breda, I run into the same blurred images that I saw a year ago, so the satellite or AeroData, that does the job for Google over here, hasn't been back yet.

They did cover The Hague right. I don't know when those shots were taken, but it was on a sunny day. On at least two spots in town you can spot naked people taking a sunbath.

There's really not much to see, because even in this high resolution it's not clear if the sunbather is a he or a she. But it's pretty easy to find out which house in which street, and so a camjo team from Editie.nl from the RTL Channel called at the door in question, but nobody answered. While Big Brother was pretty close to her or his door, another citizen of The Hague, who was zooming in on his house and his favorite pub found his neighbor naked on his rooftop terrace.

My guess is that Google is not going to change anything, like taking pictures only at around zero temperatures - which would be a problem in (sub)tropic countries.

Lets wait for the next association of Google Fanatics: a club that collects shots of nudists beaches and parks.

Gay or punk, be warned; your favorite sport is somewhere on Google Earth.

 Posted: September 22, 2006, 03:34 PM | Comments (0) |

September 21, 2006

Here we go: Writely

Another step into complete networking. This one is my first post written and published in Writely, the web based text editor from Google. My first looks are very promising; it looks exactly what I've been waiting for. As I am constantly changing, working either in OS X on my iMac back home, or in XP on the corporate Dell Optiplex, I was constantly switching, not only between systems and machines, but also between applications.

in Dutch at @ DutchCowboys

Sometime I used even Word on the Mac, as Word is the de facto standard in my working world, where the word document is synonymous for Word, and the word spreadsheet is synonymous for Excel. Even for my writing I sometimes used to work in Word on the Mac, though mostly in TextMate, as I have been using TextPad for more than ten years in Windows. TexMate and TextPad look at least a bit similar.

For the last couple of weeks I've been using Google spreadsheets to import the content management system error sheets that I have to comment on. Easy does the job: import then in the office, and open them at home, or vice versa. Signed up into my Google Account, everything is accessible from one spot; personalized Google start page, Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, RSS reader, Base, Alerts, Aanalytics, AdSense, and then some more Googlestuff I never use.


With Writely my way of working will be simpler again. For instance until now I used to start an article or a column either at home or at the office, to finish where I started or at another location. Unfinished versions were saved in Gmail as drafts, or saved on my web server. A new way of working from now on: everything I produce will be started as well as finished in Writely, and stay there, probably forever, of at least until published over here, on the blog.


Wikipedia has a comprehensive entry about Writely:

There is no overall storage limit for files. However, text files cannot exceed 500KB and images cannot exceed 2MB.

An important feature is the ability to save all files made in Writely as the following formats: MS Word (.doc), Postscript (.ps), Rich Text Format (.rtf), and ODF (.odt), files that can be opened, edited, and printed in many office suites, making interoperability easier.

• Writely's Blog on Blogger

Wow! Ten minutes later: I've found out (and I did) that I can publish from Writely straight into my Movable Type installation. This is a feature we've been discussing on my work as a possible future option for our corporate content management system.

Implementation in this case took less than three minutes: choosing Movable Type as my preferred API, checking if mt-xmlrpc.cgi was running in my MT installation (it was), providing the path to this upload module, and providing the right permissions.

One test run, another push at a publish button in Writely, and out of the blue this post was live on my blog. Beautiful!

 Posted: September 21, 2006, 09:43 AM | Comments (0) |

September 20, 2006

Clearing and cleaning

Our living room, after moving back to our little old house, is corresponding with my digital household: everything is for the time being. While in our real world water, gas and electricity are up and running, it's the same story in my little virtual planet. The iMac, the ISDN/ADSL, sound, everything is running like a greased lightning, but sooner or later a lot of things have to be taken care off.

While our new couch has been delivered in parts and has to be constructed according to the Ikea rules and drawings, a door has to be hung, a shed to be build, I still don't know what it's all going to be digital.

in Dutch at @ DutchCowboys

From the umpteen yards of different kinds of cables that I've fed into the walls during the renovation, prescient, only one is being used right now: the phone copper.

That cable is split - for the ADSL - and branched off - for the ISDN phones - under the new computer table, with the the advantage that the complete hardware kit and caboodle is in reach, in view.

In the meantime we're obsessed by cleaning up and clearing out, resulting in almost daily trips to junkyard and recycling center, and every time afterwards a very good clean feeling and more space.

Digital: the same. It took a while before I even thought about it and tried, but the internal sound card of the iMac is at least as good as the old external Creative Extigy. When I connected the iMac straight to my trio of Klipsch boxes the whole house was filled with deep warm bass, and crystal clear high tones.

The old Pioneer combo and the heavy jet black Aldis have been moved to the Internet desk now, where the Extigy has begun a new life as preamplifier for the Pioneer. Everybody over there - well, almost everybody - is happy with the new sound system.

More with less is my aspiration. Last week Steve Jobs danced upon attendance, presenting a little white box, that wireless streams videos en television shows form the iMac to my television set. This new gadget arrives in spring, so another question is more important right now: whether or not to buy a new iMac?

On Tuesday I've visited an Apple news conference in Amsterdam where they showed the new generation of Nano's, and gave a demo of the new iTunes, which I'd installed already last week.

Very interesting, but what really caught my attention was standing on a table in the back of the room: new 24 inch iMac, with the Core 2 Duo Intel.

Wow, my decision is not the problem, persuading the home office might be a higher hurdle.

First thing to do: check out what a G5 iMac with 2 gigabytes of memory does on eBay. Who's making a bid?

 Posted: September 20, 2006, 11:38 AM | Comments (0) |

September 15, 2006

New Numa - The Return of Gary Brolsma

Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa Guy, is back in his return video: New Numa! With the video comes a $45,000 worldwide New Numa contest where you can make your own New Numa video for a chance at the Grand Prize of $25,000 cash and a whole lot of internet fame.

Go to www.NewNuma.com to enter the contest, chat with Gary, check out the New Numa music and new music by Dan Balan (the producer/songwriter of Dragostea din Tei, the original numa numa!) Most importantly: Don't forget to laugh and have fun.

 Posted: September 15, 2006, 10:21 AM | Comments (3) |

September 12, 2006

Burning Man Festival

One of the trips we haven't been able to do yet: The Burning Man Festival, every august in the Black Rock Desert. Check out this video at YouTube! I would love to make things like this one :-)

 Posted: September 12, 2006, 03:33 PM | Comments (0) |

September 11, 2006

Moving ADSL

So we're back. Moving an household with a lot of help from some good friends is one thing, unpacking the boxes, deciding what to dump where, cleaning up, finishing a lot of small and bigger things is gonna take some more time.

In between packing, moving and unpacking I couldn't resist the temptation to knot some wires together. Curiosity may have killed some cats, but I wanted to know if KPN and Euronet had succeeded this time in quietly moving the ISDN/ADSL combo without too much hassle.

in Dutch at @ DutchCowboys

When we moved into our temporary living at Speelhuislaan (Playhouse Lane, there used to be an wooden play house somewhere over there in 1800) I'd simply left the ISDN/ADSL kit and connection at the Van Goor (Van Goor was an historian who wrote the book on the history of Breda) over there.

Originally the planning of the renovation was one year (!) and by the time there were lots of unsatisfied customers waiting for connections. In some cases, as I'd read in Internet forums and in computer magazines, it took out national telco five or six months to move an existing ADSL connection.

The renovation took more and more time, also because we didn't have to pay any rent for the last year, and because we made some long trips overseas. By the time I bought my iMac there were less horror stories about moving connections, so a year or so ago I took the gamble and told KPN to move my line. Within a fortnight, as promised, everything was up and running.

One year later they've performed even better. A couple of days before the arrival of tyhe moving van I'f filled in two forms, the first on the KPN website, the second one at the Euronet site. One day later printed conformations arrived through snail mail, telling me that everything would be okidoki on September 1.

Right they were! All I had to do was to connect two thin wires into a plug: one red, one blue. When I powered up the ISDN box and the ADSL modem, all green lights started to flicker and shine, and the iMac was instantly connected to the Internet. Blazing fast too, probably because my KPN switch is just around the corner, at less than 300 meters form my front door.

Casema, my cable television provider, cal learn some things from KPN and Euronet. It may be our own fault to begin with, cause I'd completely forgotten to tell them to move my cable connection as well, but in 2006 you'd expect another answer on Monday morning: 'No sir, that cannot be arranged before September 19'.

I mean, Casema has not only disconnected, but also really cut the line at our temporary house, because demolition has started in the meantime, so they could have, should have known, and could have asked me something at least.

And all they have to do is change a switch somewhere - be it soft- or hardware. I can;t remember they'd have to dig holes three years ago when we moved.

I think KPN digital TV has just won a new customer, while Casema has lost one.

 Posted: September 11, 2006, 11:29 AM | Comments (5) |

September 07, 2006

We're back!

We're back in our little old house, after three years and three months! After a couple of days packing stuff in cardbox boxes, moving junk to the junkyard, the whole operation went so smoothly saturday morning, with a little lot of help from some friends, that it took only four hours. Now another four weeks or so of Ikea trips, painting, finishing, and we're back on base in The Van Goor.

Photo Album: Moving Back

 Posted: September 07, 2006, 01:05 PM | Comments (0) |

September 06, 2006

Radio rediscovered

I've rediscovered Internet radio. At the beginning of the nineties one of the first things I started playing with when Internet began to grow. It wasn't really what it should be by then over a 24k4 modem, but it was fascinating to listen live to a major league baseball game, or to the Australian ABC.

in Dutch at @ DutchCowboys

Sometimes things went well in DOS, Windows 3.11, '95, or one of the different tastes of Linux that I'd sometimes more or less successfully got running, but ever so often it didn't work at all. Listening often meant waiting another minute or two while the box of bolts and nuts had buffered enough bits to produce some more sound, for yet another thirty seconds.

Over the years radio left my digital household. We play with with pics and video, while we had to get used again to the fact that you don't have to think about too many things because on the iMac Mac iPhoto is running. iPhoto is a video and/or photo database/programme that imports, indexes, en everything else that one should want, has been taken care of by Apple. Great application, but we're talking radio over here.

Rediscovered thanks to iTunes. While I started with WinAmp some years ago, iTunes became a logical choice, while still on XP, when I bought my first iPod. iTunes is still running on our iMac now, in which we've imported over 6000 songs now. Most of them ripped from our own old Cd's, or bought through a legal web shop, though maybe not in the eyes of BUMA (the Dutch RIAA) . Until the last word about allofmp3 has been spoken, as long as the website is still in the air, I am customer.

iTunes is almost always in shuffle mode, but, even though it's randomizing 6000 songs, after a while you get the idea you're listening to a tape you've heard before. So, out or boredom, clicked the radio button in iTunes, and browsed some of the available streams.

We're sold. Listening all day to a great American station, called radioio. Go to their website every two hours, click a button over there, and the next two hours you're listening commercial free. Becoming a member is also possible, but wait, there are much more stations.

Long live radio.

 Posted: September 06, 2006, 09:24 AM | Comments (5) |