Why have I never noticed that before?!?!?
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Happy Pi Day!!
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Google is killing off Reader - No More RSS For You
According to this blog post, Google Reader is going the way of the dodo bird in their latest round of spring cleaning. I understand that development and maintenance resources are limited commodities, and they should be focused on those applications that are growing or heavily utilized. I find it highly ironic, however, that I read about the impending shut-down using the very tool that they are killing off.
The D-Day for Reader is July 1, 2013, or just under 4 months from now. The one good thing is that Google provides the Google Takeout tool (part of their data liberation initiative) to export all of your Reader subscription data. It also includes files with all your starred items, bloggers you follow, etc.
The only trick now is finding a suitable replacement RSS tool. One of the things I liked about Google Reader was that it was "in the cloud" and was browser agnostic. Most of the previous RSS tools I've used were plug-ins or add-ons for specific browsers. Either that, or they were thick-client installs. Reader allowed me to maintain one RSS subscription list that I could access from a multitude of devices. Granted, the Chrome browser is available on almost every device I use, and it has synchronization capabilities for its plug-ins, favorites, etc. I don't know how that plays with RSS readers, and I still don't like the idea of my RSS feed being tied to another piece of software. When it was in the cloud, I could use any browser to access it, so I was only halfway tied to the Google ecosystem.
So, does anyone have recommendations for an RSS reader that works across multiple devices and OSes, will synchronize item state across all of them, and is not a pain to manage?
I'll share anything I find and let you know what I settle on, if you care.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
The D-Day for Reader is July 1, 2013, or just under 4 months from now. The one good thing is that Google provides the Google Takeout tool (part of their data liberation initiative) to export all of your Reader subscription data. It also includes files with all your starred items, bloggers you follow, etc.
The only trick now is finding a suitable replacement RSS tool. One of the things I liked about Google Reader was that it was "in the cloud" and was browser agnostic. Most of the previous RSS tools I've used were plug-ins or add-ons for specific browsers. Either that, or they were thick-client installs. Reader allowed me to maintain one RSS subscription list that I could access from a multitude of devices. Granted, the Chrome browser is available on almost every device I use, and it has synchronization capabilities for its plug-ins, favorites, etc. I don't know how that plays with RSS readers, and I still don't like the idea of my RSS feed being tied to another piece of software. When it was in the cloud, I could use any browser to access it, so I was only halfway tied to the Google ecosystem.
So, does anyone have recommendations for an RSS reader that works across multiple devices and OSes, will synchronize item state across all of them, and is not a pain to manage?
I'll share anything I find and let you know what I settle on, if you care.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
Jeff Gordon's "Test Drive" - Who is in control?
This Pepsi MAX/Jeff Gordon "Test Drive" video has been making the rounds on social media lately. If you haven't seen it, take a few minutes to watch it real quick.
All done? Good.
It's hilarious. There's are several visceral reactions going on at once. You see, we are in on the prank, so we can laugh at the sales rep's expense. His exclamation such as "You are liable for any damages!" and "Sir, please take us back now!" are belly-slappers because we know who's driving the car. The sales rep is naturally freaking out because all he knows is that he's being driven around by some sort of psychopath.
But did you catch what happened at the end?
Watch those last 15 seconds or so again. Jeff reveals himself, realization dawns on the face of the sales rep, and then he says "Can we do it again?!?!?"
Once he knew who was in control, what was a horror show became a thrill ride to be experienced again.
How many times in our lives has this same dynamic played out? How many times have we stressed out because we felt out of control. Once we realize who is in control, we can actually sit back and enjoy the ride.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
All done? Good.
It's hilarious. There's are several visceral reactions going on at once. You see, we are in on the prank, so we can laugh at the sales rep's expense. His exclamation such as "You are liable for any damages!" and "Sir, please take us back now!" are belly-slappers because we know who's driving the car. The sales rep is naturally freaking out because all he knows is that he's being driven around by some sort of psychopath.
But did you catch what happened at the end?
Watch those last 15 seconds or so again. Jeff reveals himself, realization dawns on the face of the sales rep, and then he says "Can we do it again?!?!?"
Once he knew who was in control, what was a horror show became a thrill ride to be experienced again.
How many times in our lives has this same dynamic played out? How many times have we stressed out because we felt out of control. Once we realize who is in control, we can actually sit back and enjoy the ride.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
Monday, March 4, 2013
LG HDTV UI Fail - OTA Program Information
I must admit, this has to be one of the most confounding User Interface/functionality design gotchas I've ever seen. And in 15+ years of doing IT, I've seen (and perpetrated) and lot of bad UI designs.
I own two LG HDTVs. Neither of them are network capable, and they are not "Smart TVs". Both of these TVs allow you to set the time on them. It is generally displayed when the devices first turn on, but there are a few other times it will display the time. You can also use the time feature to let them turn on and off automatically and different times. The time feature has two modes: Automatic and Manual.
When I was on digital cable, the Automatic setting didn't work. I'm assuming there is a standard time signal that can be embedded in the broadcasts that the TV uses. In the IT world we have NTP servers to automatically set the date & time on our computers, so I imagine it's something similar. As I said, it never worked, presumably because my digital cable provider didn't embed that signal in their repackaged broadcasts.
As I mentioned previously, we finally cut the cable. I had noticed that the Info button just displayed "No Information Available" on the OTA broadcasts. I was mildly frustrated that I'd lost program guide info, but just assumed it wasn't part of the OTA signal. Well, last night I noticed that the Info button wasn't displaying the current time even though it was set on the TV so I went into the settings to poke around. On a whim, before manually resetting the time, I toggled the setting over to "Automatic" (hope springs eternal, right?). Imagine my surprise when it actually showed the correct date & time!!! Obviously, the OTA broadcast has some sort of NTP signal embedded in it.
Once I exited the configuration menu, I hit the "Info" button again. Imagine my further surprise when it displayed the current time, the current program name, the current program time slot (including a bar showing how far into the program it was) and the description of the current program.
So riddle me this. Why does changing the Time setting from Manual to Automatic control whether or not the OTA program guide information is displayed? The only thing I can come up with is that all of this information is embedded in the same side-channel of the broadcast. Disabling automatic time control tells the TV to not read that side-channel at all. When you're on digital cable, which provides its own program guide functionality, it's not a big deal at all. You never use the TV "Info" button anyway. A better design, to my mind, would be for the TV to always consume the program guide side-channel, and only set the time automatically if that option is turned on. There is no logical connection between program guide and the time setting for most casual consumers.
I'm just happy I accidentally stumbled across this, so I don't have to grab the TV Guide app to figure out what's currently playing.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
I own two LG HDTVs. Neither of them are network capable, and they are not "Smart TVs". Both of these TVs allow you to set the time on them. It is generally displayed when the devices first turn on, but there are a few other times it will display the time. You can also use the time feature to let them turn on and off automatically and different times. The time feature has two modes: Automatic and Manual.
When I was on digital cable, the Automatic setting didn't work. I'm assuming there is a standard time signal that can be embedded in the broadcasts that the TV uses. In the IT world we have NTP servers to automatically set the date & time on our computers, so I imagine it's something similar. As I said, it never worked, presumably because my digital cable provider didn't embed that signal in their repackaged broadcasts.
As I mentioned previously, we finally cut the cable. I had noticed that the Info button just displayed "No Information Available" on the OTA broadcasts. I was mildly frustrated that I'd lost program guide info, but just assumed it wasn't part of the OTA signal. Well, last night I noticed that the Info button wasn't displaying the current time even though it was set on the TV so I went into the settings to poke around. On a whim, before manually resetting the time, I toggled the setting over to "Automatic" (hope springs eternal, right?). Imagine my surprise when it actually showed the correct date & time!!! Obviously, the OTA broadcast has some sort of NTP signal embedded in it.
Once I exited the configuration menu, I hit the "Info" button again. Imagine my further surprise when it displayed the current time, the current program name, the current program time slot (including a bar showing how far into the program it was) and the description of the current program.
So riddle me this. Why does changing the Time setting from Manual to Automatic control whether or not the OTA program guide information is displayed? The only thing I can come up with is that all of this information is embedded in the same side-channel of the broadcast. Disabling automatic time control tells the TV to not read that side-channel at all. When you're on digital cable, which provides its own program guide functionality, it's not a big deal at all. You never use the TV "Info" button anyway. A better design, to my mind, would be for the TV to always consume the program guide side-channel, and only set the time automatically if that option is turned on. There is no logical connection between program guide and the time setting for most casual consumers.
I'm just happy I accidentally stumbled across this, so I don't have to grab the TV Guide app to figure out what's currently playing.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)
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