Has it really been that long?
New theme, other cleanup on the way. Personal blog has been updated too.
More later.
Originally uploaded by cartwheeld.
Mme Les Pantyhose made this for me. It’s what I might look like with muscles. I love meeting cool, talented people like her.
UPDATE: Sadly, the image is gone. Should have archived it locally. Hindsight, ya know?
One more for tonight.
I’d been checking out Digg since just before version 2.0 dropped. It’s a ton of fun, and a great place for blogging fodder. To save time, I decided to subscribe to the front page feed, and I check out the long tail stuff when I have some free minutes.
My beef: the RSS feed lacks a lot of the good stuff.
For one thing, there’s no link to TFA (the fucking article) in the RSS. I have to the Digg story, and then jump off from there. Let me read it first, then decide if I want to Digg it and discuss it later. Slashdot has this issue also in their feed. Maybe I’m spoiled by MetaFliter and BoingBoing.
A feature of the website that I like is the Blog This button, as previously mentioned. It would be cool if they could drop that button into the RSS feed, seeing as how I don’t have that ability in my aggregator (see previous rant).
Now, say I’ve already seen the story elsewhere and haven’t been to Digg yet to vote on it. I should be able to digg it right from my aggregator. Nope, no digg button. That needs to be dropped in also.
This is probably the least complicated thing I’ve whined about tonight. I’m sure that the reason that the RSS lacks the stuff I want is to drive page views and increased monitization opportunity. I can’t fault the cats at Digg for that, but it would be a nice concession. I do visit the site, guys. No, I haven’t done a lot of digging recently. I’ve been busy. Maybe I’ll hit some later tonight.
And thus ends my planned software rants. I’d been wanting to start these since June 3, according to my notes. It feels good to catch up.
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Two down, two to go. This is the last Mac-centric one for now kids.
I’ve been using Vienna to read my blogs and other feeds since getting the PowerBook. It’s nice. Open source, simple interface, nothing silly. I used to use BlogBridge, but using a Java-based tool is resource intensive as it is, and I leave my aggregator up all the time. So I found Vienna.
And as much as I like it, I still need it to do more. And I’m not a programmer, so don’t tell me to fix it myself. I’d love to, but plugging new features into an existing application is far beyond what I can do.
I’ve noticed this in other aggregators also, as I’m sure that most people who read blogs don’t also write one. But I want a button that will pull up a blog editor of my choice (or the Wordpress bookmarklet) and allow me to blog the entry I just read. It would be a really nice touch, and the Blog This button on Digg kinda has me spoiled.
The other thing I want isn’t specific to Vienna, but is an overarching thing that will probably never get done will take a long time to build and implement. I want a free, open API that will let hang on to my OPML and remember what I’ve already read.
Yes, I know I’m crazy.
A few applications already have this. I know that NetNewsWire has some thing that syncs between all the applications and websites in that family. Great, but not free. BlogBridge syncs to other BlogBridge clients. Great, but not open. At least not at the time of this posting.
I’m a bit surprised that this wasn’t part of the original RSS revolution. Maybe it just never came up. I hope someone is building this now, complete with some drop in code to interface with it. I want to be able to check my feeds in Vienna before I leave for work, catch up during the day on Google Reader, and then not have a few hundred posts I’ve already read still sitting in Vienna when I get home.
Anybody know how to make this?
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Here’s another one that stems from my newly acquired Mac addiction. After seeing how Automator works and what one can do with it on MacBreak TV, I checked it out for myself.
I’ve set up one workflow for adding new tracks found in the Music folder to the iTunes library. It’s handy, as iTunes doesn’t do this on it’s own.
I also wanted to make a workflow to add all my recently downloaded audio podcasts to a playlist for easy listening in the car. My head unit doesn’t understand the special Podcasts list on the iPod, so this makes life a bit simpler.
It worked, but it has a few limitations. Unlike the Library in iTunes, where adding a track that already exists there does nothing, you can add duplicates to a standard playlist. As there was no way to look for tracks that weren’t touched in the last workflow run, I have to tell the action to grab tracks that are from "today." Unless I only download podcasts once a day, at the same time every day, this falls apart. I check for them all the time, as I never know when I’ll be on the PowerBook.
So, that workflow gave me a bunch of dupes on my podcast playlist. Ugh. No way to tell the action to not grab stuff it’s grabbed before. I could see what was on a playlist, but no means of telling it NOT to do something if the file already existed on a playlist.
Ugh again.
Thus ended my work of improving iTunes with Automator workflows. I want to start again, but I need updated and better actions. And I don’t know AppleScript, which I think is the language which actions are built with.
I heard rumblings of an Automator update for Leopard, but that’s not until next year. Hopefully they’ll drop in more crazy actions to can make my music management even more pleasant.
For those who do know AppleScript, is it worth learning just so I can do this? Or is it a lost cause until Apple does their updates?
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This is the debut of a new feature here on TomTostanoski.com: Stuff I want. These are desired additions to software I use on various platforms that could alleviate things that piss me off greatly improve the application.
Our first of four rants tonight is something I want in iTunes: tagging. Not audio tagging, which it already features, with a lot of great stuff, but Technorati-style tagging. I know it sounds odd, but hear me out.
Tagging is one of the more useful things I’ve seen to come out the whole Web 2.0 thing. Hell, even dating sites are starting to use tagging. It’s become a neat way to search for things, especially when others can add their own tags too.
Now, iTunes has a great Smart Playlist feature. The problem is, there’s all kinds more stuff I want to say about my music for use in compiling those playlists. Like how it makes me feel. Stuff it reminds me of. Other musicians the artists are similar to (sorta like Pandora).
If there was some kind of built in support for tagging, I could tag up my music at will, then just make a smart playlist based on tags. I could make playlists that remind me of high school, or summer. I could roll up all my bands that remind me of Weezer, DL Byron and Kiss.
Damn, that sounds like an awesome playlist.
For all I know, there’s a plug-in out there that does this, but I want built in support. iTunes needs an overhaul as it is. The app was built for music, so the video features are a bit wonky. So it wouldn’t surprise me if (especially with the rumors of a more video-focused iPod) that a new iTunes is in the works. Toss some tagging support in Apple! Please?
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Well, they’re not really undead, but you can’t fault them for trying. Some cuties too 
Check them out here.
Fake zombies with fake “zombie weapons.” Real jail. Gotta love the flyovers.
By the way, do zombies really need weapons? Any pig with half a brain should know that zombies don’t carry weapons. In general, they don’t need them, or have the capability to utilize them. Some do, but they’re able to grab a dude and eat his brains without the need for clumsy weapons, like sticks in a bag, or whatever the cops found them carrying.
Zombies rule.
