Recently in Web/Tech Category

Looking for a fun way to make your Friday afternoon work day go by faster? Give this little flash based dance music sequencer a shot. Sure, it's a little on the cheesy side, but it's all in good fun.

After a long hard day at work launching a series of web sites which were the culmination of 6 months work, it was nice to come home to find this little treat over at Make Blog (The music reminds me of an episode of This Old House). As some of you know, I've been taking glass blowing classes over at Urban Glass in Fort Greene to get my mind of the daily grind of software and web development. It has been an excellent diversion which helps calm, relax, and put my mind on other endeavors.

I've been considering how I could apply my new skills with other things to create some interesting art projects. One of which is a handmade Nixie clock. Nixies are vacuum tubes which were used for display purposes before LEDs became the standard. They have a very pleasing analog look to them. I figured that it would be possible to roll your own vacuum tubes.

This video has inspired me to look further into some of the fringe classes offered over at Urban Glass which deal in lampwork and neon. I'm sure both of those skills could apply here.

Did you notice--we've migrated, from Typepad to Moveable Type, which should totally excuse my lack of posting. O wait, I didn't actually migrate the blog ... hmmmmm. Thanks, Dennis, now the blog will totally rock and I'll stop being such a slacker!

I don't know what the other 129 bloggers were expecting out of the NBC blogger summit ... in fact, I don't know what I was expecting. But to recap in as few words as possible: WNBC TV wants to work with bloggers, they want to trade stories, links, photos and video. Interesting. Though a relatively early move for the local TV news industry, possibly in some ways too late. Also, I think they were sad when they heard most people don't watch local news. I wish them the best on their collaboration efforts. Now, on to more exciting things. What I learned at the 2007 NBC Blogging Conference:
1. The assistant editor at Gawker has a killer British accent. From now on, whenever I read Gawker, it will be out loud and in a British accent.
2. Rich of fourfour showed himself to be as smart and intelligent in person as in his blog. If only he had brought Winston.
3. Cityrag, probably the first blog I ever read and fell in love with after coming to New York, is run by ... a girl! For some reason, I always assumed boy. Not that it matters, but did throw me for a loop.
4. No blogger in the world likes Perez Hilton (the only time the audience audibly booed at the mention of anyone).
5. The Media Bistro editorial director takes lots of notes.
6. The Conan O'Brien set is tiny, and he sits on a midget chair.
7. What do you get when you put seven bloggers on an elevator in NBC Studios? The wrong floor.
Here's a photo of me by the drum sets. For some reason I really got a kick out of this.

Silly, silly me. I thought I could just waltz right into the Apple store, wait in an abnormally long line, and get a new ipod. O dear me, no. Turns out spots at Apple's genius bar (it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this thing is broken, I might add) start going at 6am on the website and are usually gone by 10am. Although for an extra $99 (!) , you can reserve a spot up to seven days in advance. Does this seem wrong to anyone? Apple, I love you dearly, but OPEN UP ANOTHER FREAKIN' STORE IN MANHATTAN! It just doesn't seem right that I have to wake up early just so you can replace my lemon of an ipod.

Thank goodness for AppleCare. My ipod of five months has eaten itself (metaphorically, of course, although the sound it's making is rather like the crisp crunching that only comes when biting on a truly fresh Granny Smith). Tomorrow I'll take it into Apple Soho, where I'm assuming they will give me a new one. Any one else have an ipod self-destruct in such a short period of time?

So now that I have a laptop, I've gotta get a bag for transportation purposes. And so I'm soliciting advice from my faithful readers. ManhattanUser'sGuide recently did a feature on laptop bags, which got me started. (Check out this bag blog that MUG featured.) I would love comments on the two I found below or suggestions of better options. Basically I'm looking for a very lightweight bag that's not too bulky with a semi inspired design.

Timbuk2 (It comes in red, orange, blue, black and the kelly green below. The Apple site shows it in silver, which is cool.)

Sumdex NeoMetro (It also comes in other colors, but this is the coolest. The website says it has a shoulder strap ...)

STM has two designs: Medium Alley and Medium Wave

Sometimes when we lose something, we gain something else, and that something else is often better. Let's all take a moment to reflect on this deep and profound truth. <moment> In my case, my new f&$king awesome Powerbook is waaaaay better than my old iMac (God rest its soul). It has quite the personality and insisted on posing for its first photograph in a rather provacative way. And you thought I was getting all deep and spiritual ;)

RIP iMac 2000 - 2005

(Note: This is not a picture of my computer, as that would require my beloved computer to actually be working, but it is the correct model and color.)