I had a chance today to fiddle around with yet another Google beta product: Picasa Web Albums. It is the best demo yet of a blend of local (PC based) applications and web site integration with AJAX.
What this all means is that you can add photos from a web page, from an application, or from an email to your photo album any time you want. It’s pretty nifty. Take a look at the progress so far.
After some initial problems it seems that the web site is all fixed up and working again. This is a nice change of pace from the previous few days where everything just wouldn’t seem to work properly at all.
Strangely, many of the problems were due to “unsupported directives” in an Apache htaccess file. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it doesn’t matter now. Things are working again and I’m glad to have it done.
After having spent a few days on the new service, Bluehost.com, I can say that I’m having some problems that don’t allow me to say that all is well.
First off, all of my scripts that do site redirection are broken with an Server Error 500 page. The reason, according to the logs, is that the headers (hidden stuff at the front of all good web pages) aren’t being sent. But I’ve checked things out and they are being sent. Wonderful, another set of problems to track down.
On top of that the host has been down twice in 2 weeks, not a good start. This is why I am leaving my old web host, Infinology. I’m not buying into bargain basement fees here, so I have to wonder if this is what the web really is all about these days: advertise heavily, get the customer’s data and credit card, bill them, then hide away and let the service go to hell. Sounds like some late 90′s business plans if you ask me.
Could I be so fortunate as to have this post be the defining moment of the domain transfer from one host to another? We shall see. If so, welcome to the new site!.
It was warm out today so I decided to take the car out for an extended spin. Little did I know that I would get to experience all of the following:
All that for a few pictures and some driving around town (and then some). Sometimes I wonder why I bother getting up in the morning.
It is with some sadness that I must write today that my PSP’s analog joystick has died. Quite simply, it separated itself from the main body of the device and ceased working. This was proceeded by the joystick becoming stuck, spinning my character in circles for the better part of a game, and the other players in the game using me as easy target practice.
Given that I work for the company that makes this device, it seems well and truly sad that such a spot of bad luck would befall my purchase. The PSP is only a few months old and already its headed to the RMA depot. I can only hope that the refurb unit they send me lasts longer than this one did, lest my thumbs again gain feeling and my days become longer with the extra time spent away from GTA.
As the ski season has drawn to a close, I switch my attention to aircraft again. This past weekend saw both of the airplanes up and flying again after the winter weather kept them indoors. I was a little rusty, but quickly found my skills coming back after some circuits around the field. That is good news, to be sure, since it means no need to quickly replace another airplane (or all the parts that go with it) in the fleet.
On the down side, my under sink disposal unit decided to go belly up. For those who have not had to replace one of these devices let me just say that its a hard, ugly, and smelly job that you really should pay someone else to do if you can afford to. Me, I thought it would be cake, so I opted to do it myself.� Half a day after I started I finally had all the parts and tools needed, minus about $120 for the disposal unit. It works now but I certainly don’t want to have to replace something like that again any time soon.
I just had another of those experiences where I kick myself for knowing better, but then I go ahead and do something anyway. I convinced myself that it might be OK to allow someone to valet park the C6.
The guy who took the keys could barely speak English, and he couldn’t tell me how he was going to park the car (yes, the vette requires a special shutdown and park procedure) and he had to summon someone over who spoke a little English to notify me that yes, he had parked “one of these” before. I would later learn that he had not.
So, with that pain behind me I went in to eat, trying not to think of that fateful scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where the valet’s fly out the back of the garage at full speed.
When I exited to retrieve the car, a new set of valet’s were around, and sure enough, they had problems. First, they tried to bring the car around with another car parked directly in front of the C6. Once they woke up enough to realize that wouldn’t work (and moved the other car) one of them hopped in my car and proceeded to wave his hands around frantically, starring at the dash for what seemed like minutes, only to exit the car and say “I need some help.” Yes, the C6 managed to befuddle him to the point of not being able to find the start button.
In the end, I took my key back, hopped in the car, fired it up, and got out of there before someone else took a swipe at the vehicle roulette wheel. Lesson learned, again.
Here I am, trying to recover from time off, spending just 4 days up in Tahoe and coming home feeling the most sickly I’ve felt in quite some time. Ear and head congestion, ringing in the ears, and a general feeling of unbalanceness (is that even a word?).
Serves me right for trying to take time off while at the same time dealing with the aftermath of work and the complete lack of outside-of-work issues. Save for the taxes. This time of year is oh-so-much fun thanks to taxes.
I recently became the owner of a new smart remote control, the Logitech Harmony 880 via a friend of mine who will remain nameless (he knows who he is). After months of pain with the previous remote, the Philips Pronto NG (I think the NG stood for “not good”) I was ready to switch to something better. The Harmony 880 looked to be the ticket.
To be fair, I was warned that the setup process for the 880 would be a little, um, rough. The warning was correct. It was an unholy terror to setup the remote due to a few factors, which I will now dutifully list:
If you get lucky, like I did about the 99th time I tinkered with the web site settings (their “software” evidently hates my Sony AV receiver) when you detach the remote from your PC, things work and you are in happy, happy entertainment land. If it doesn’t, be prepared to spend a long time on the web site changing settings.
Once this remote gets working its actually quite nice, with a large set of hard buttons and a fairly nice (though narrow viewing angle) screen. The market that Logitech seems to be aiming this at is the do-it-yourself home theater owner who knows next to nothing about PCs and remote controls. I’m not sure the overly simplistic approach they take with the on-the-web setup is the right one, but perhaps I’m just used to more control.
When you think about it, that’s what remotes are all about: control. And when it gets taken away from me for the purposes of ease-of-use I just cringe. Perhaps as I spend more time with this remote I’ll grow to accept its “features” but for now I’m a bit grumpy over the whole experience.
