tech ronin

Tips from a weblog beginner

I just sent out a 25-person email announcement of this weblog to some of my friends and colleagues - that's probably you right now since this is only day 3 of this weblog (let's call it blog for short). To my knowledge, most of you don't have your own blog. One of my clients in Switzerland (who shall remain nameless, see below), who saw this blog, had a comment and a couple of good questions:

• I would have to call my parents more often before being allowed to share my stories with the general public... ;-)

I know what you mean. I didn't have to worry too much about that because my Dad is my only surviving parent and he's 87 and not likely to be surfing the Net this lifetime (But...you never know).

• Is it hard?

Kind of - if you do it the way I did it. First, I needed to decide among the abundance of weblog tools and services - and I'm bad that way - I did a lot of research so I could pick the coolest one. As it was, I made two false starts, trying Radio Userland and Blosxom before happily settling on Movable Type (MT). Second, the set-up was a little tricky. However, they have detailed instructions, so if you can pay attention and carefully follow instructions - always difficult for me, you'll probably have about one glitch. Then it's merely a matter of looking around to see where you didn't quite follow the instructions. There's a support forum for Movable Type which jogged me enough to help me figure it out without actually having to post a question. Third, MT has a nice-looking, web-based entry screen that lets you enter and edit your posts. Fourth, I downloaded Kung-Log a slick little OS X app for MT that lets me prepare my posts on my desktop and adds some bells and whistles. Fifth, you'll wanna put in a little html here and there but Kung-Log has a pop-down menu to put it in easily as well as keyboard shortcuts.

• Is it just a program, or is there someone else hosting it?

Movable Type is a bunch of little programs (perl scripts) and templates that you download and then upload back to the ftp site where you have your website. The MT instructions (which are html documents on your hard drive) tell you where to put the files on your ftp site and how to change a few lines in the scripts to refer to your website and your folders. I have to say that my Transmit FTP program is the best I've ever used - it lets me edit files on my computer or on the ftp site directly in the FTP window - $25. I could have tried to host the whole thing from my Mac but decided that I didn't want to deal with the Apache learning curve before starting my blog.

iTunes: my expectations just went up

Don't get me wrong, the new iTunes music store is a great start and a bold and courageous move by Apple. I am hoping and praying this works. I love buying a song at a time without traveling to a physical store or waiting for a CD in the mail. I might even buy some albums this way too for immediate gratification and convenience. Now if I hear a song on the radio or elsewhere or learn about a new artist, I can get it instantly and effortlessly.

But, now that I'm thinking more seriously about buying music electronically, other considerations arise. I want to get everything I was getting with a CD and then some. Here's what I'm going to want to make the *iMusicStore* my preferred music source:

• CD-quality or higher. I am not sure these AAC-encoded songs are recorded at a high enough quality. Maybe the buyer should have a choice between 128 kbps or 192 kbps or even 256 kbps. Some buyers will not want to fuss with re-encoding to 128 kbps later for their iPod and will happily buy 128 kbps. The sticklers like me are going to want the 256 kbps - I have a fast internet connection and I want the high quality for the times when I play the song on a high-end stereo.
• lyrics - and can they scroll across the screen while the song is playing in iTunes or on my iPod as an option? - I like to sing along.
• access to all the art and info on the CD. I want the cover, liner notes and additional pictures. It only seems fair that I should be able to download that stuff as well - it's fine if the pictures are at a lower-pixel depth.
• have a place to put that extra stuff. It's by album, not by song - can you store it once rather than once per song? A refinement that I would like to see as the amount of data increases.

I guess the floodgates of desire are opening up... That's a good thing – I hope. Meanwhile, I'm getting even more excited about playing my iTunes playlists in my car and on my home stereo. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...

iTunes 4 - lovin' music again

I go in and out of my love affair with music. (My taste runs mostly to easy listening singer-songwriters - a great beat helps too - the Puff Daddy version of Missing You is incredible.) Last night, the affair got fired up again.

Step 1 - download iTunes 4. Step 2 - download Clutter, a tiny, free-for-now OS X program that grabs album cover art off Amazon when you play a song in iTunes OR when you type in an artist or album name. Album covers are fun and, in this case, the little 2"x2" pics are free.

I found myself going through my 1629 songs and pasting in covers. This not a scheduled task. I'm loving it. Playing songs, copying some hot and some not so hot album covers into the "get info" area, album by album.

There is a TON of room for us to like our music more, to discover what we've already got. To find new music. All this facilitated by good software and the Net. Steve Jobs is onto something. And, I haven't even gotten into the new music store yet.

Gibson blog ending?

One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, started blogging on January 6th, gained a huge following, loves it but fears that blogging won't fit with his novel writing process. His topseller, Neuromancer, is a classic and I can't put down his latest, Pattern Recognition. Fellow Gibson fans will enjoy this Wired story and should check out his blog while it's still available. [Wired News]

Drum Roll, Please

This is my first entry into my new movable type weblog: tokerud's technology treats. Woo Hoo! I tried Radio and got one entry and a story into it but had trouble figuring out how to customize it. I tried Blosxom and almost got it going but wound up with many, many posts all on the same date. And now, I'm trying MT (which is free if used non-commercially or $150 for business users). Just read about the new easier MT offering coming up- TypePad - kind of an instant MT. But it doesn't officially beta until June. I like the way MT sites look. I'm a design snob. What's a geeky girl to do? You'll be seeing information about wireless, mac, os x, high-end mobile phones like the Sony-Ericsson P800, pdas like the new Palm Tungsten-C and the Palm Zire 71 , ryze - my fun new business networking playground, social software (the meme where my m.a. in sociology meets my 20 years of software development), blogging and more. I'll be doing lots of captures of relevant links of my choice. Plus my own commentary and prognostications. hello world, I'm comin' to get ya!