Sunset after the rain…

Originally uploaded by DJ Enigma.

just writing a quick post to update the blog.  keeping incredibly busy with work these days, both with the day job and also interesting side projects.

hope you all are well.

… so it seems the regular layout has some major problems which don’t show up in all browsers and only show up on some pages.  until i can resolve this, i’ve changed the blog to appear in a layout that actually, well, WORKS.  when i have time (which may be never, bwahahahaha…) i will fix this.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled trip through the blogosphere (god, i hate that word…)

that’s it. i’ve had it. i’m finally unsubscribing to chris pirillo’s blog. why? the reasons are numerous, but here are the most important ones:

• last night, i got an instant message from him on google talk. keep in mind, i’ve never actually talked to the guy on there… i had added him way back when google talk first started because he promoted it on his blog and listed his screen name. what was the instant message he sent, you ask? linkspam, basically… promoting the incredibly lame web comic that he and brad fitzpatrick (no, not that brad fitzpatrick) collaborate on.
• just a few minutes ago, i’m reading his rss feed and there are two posts in a row (one on his actual blog, and one from flickr) promoting the same aforementioned lame web comic. if you want to post it to both places, fine, but then don’t include your flickr stuff in your main rss feed… duplicate content is annoying.
• i started reading back to older posts, and i see several more posts about this comic.
• prior to this trend, it seemed like 80% of his posts were about how great tagjag (formerly gada.be) is. i know i’m probably a minority here, but i’m gonna say it anyways: i don’t think it’s that great of a site. and it’s not because i don’t “get it”, either. i just really don’t find it useful. therefore i don’t care to read about it constantly.
• and last, but not least, up until very recently, the rss feed was malfunctioning completely and the same content would show up as new over and over again… sometimes to the extent of having the same post show up as new multiple times within an hour. i tried multiple rss readers and had the same results, so it was definitely a problem with the feed. as i said, this seems to have been fixed now, but it was an annoyance of mine for quite a while. i even went so far as to post a comment in his blog about it, but never heard back and the problem continued for quite a while after that.

so yeah, i’m just… done. sorry, chris… you were the first blog i ever read, and one of the first i ever read regularly via rss… but i can’t take it anymore. when i read a blog, i want to read something of substance… of value… and reading about the same old sites repeatedly (most of which are run by you) is annoying. and the fact that they ARE run by you (or that you are, at least, a major contributor to their existence) just makes you come off as a kind of dot-com door-to-door salesman, for lack of a better phrase. i hope you’ll consider this feedback and use it to improve your blog for the benefit of your other readers.

hmm… maybe it’s time i switched wireless carriers.  sprint apparently has a huge flaw in one of their so-called “identity verification systems”:

the sprint blunder-number is an automated identify verification service to check international calling permissions on a sprint account. the purpose of this automated service line appears to be: customers call this number to verify that the account should be set up with the ability to make international calls, to prevent fakesters from racking up huge fraudulent phone bills on other people’s accounts.

but the verification voice-bot first *gives out* personal data, then asks the caller to verify whether it’s correct. security experts have a word for this: “stupid.”

[via boing-boing]

i wonder if i can use this to get out of my contract. *smirks*

despite what you have heard, there are times when you really should sweat the small stuff.  in a recent post on his blog, robert scoble was asked “what would you say is the biggest flaw at microsoft?”  robert’s answer, while simple, rang very true with me because it’s one of the things i have long seen as the greatest flaw at my own company:

“[microsoft’s greatest flaw is] its inability to see small things when those things are still small. did microsoft see rss eight years ago? no. did it see blogging five years ago? no. did it see search eight years ago? no.

it’s the small things that’ll do a big company in.”

i couldn’t agree more.  the problem lies in finding a way to take the blinders off of the executives we work with and make them understand the dangers that lie in being short-sighted when dealing with a technology company that makes its money on being innovative.  robert, i’m sure you have a few suggestions… and i’m sure some of my other readers do as well.  drop me a line and let me know what your thoughts are.

i posted a breakbeat mix of mine online that i did about 3 years ago.  a few goofs, but overall it turned out pretty well i thought.  hope you enjoy!

download dj enigma’s “i break for love” mix (75mb)

okay, well not really. i actually have a lot of respect for google and would probably go nuts if i was forced to use another search engine. but seriously… how long is it going to take them to index this site?! i’ve been creating websites for years now and i’ve never had it take them this long. i know they’ve crawled the site repeatedly, but it’s not getting indexed… despite being linked from numerous places, and listed in technorati. what gives, google?

i’m actually starting to wonder if my domain has been delisted for some reason. it certainly isn’t because of anything i’ve done (knowingly, at least) but perhaps somebody else previously owned this domain and used it for nefarious purposes? i’m seriously at a loss here. any google experts have any insight? this is driving me nuts.

update: i wonder if me titling this post “i hate google” will have a negative effect on my efforts to get indexed? heh.

new update: i just checked today (july 2nd, 2006) and i now have 2 pages indexed in google!  (the 2 pages they picked up were the main page and my post about scoble leaving microsoft.)   yay, progress!

everyone else can’t seem to stop talking about it, so why not? i guess i may as well go ahead and contribute my own opinion to this business of robert scoble, well known and self-professed “geek blogger”, leaving his current employer (the world’s biggest and most well-known software company) to go to work at a startup.

i think most of the people who find this to be shocking or surprising are missing the big picture here. people like robert scoble are, very much like myself, early adopters of technology. the very reason why scoble is so well-known is because he started out in the world of corporate blogging well before it was commonplace. he saw a whole new way for microsoft to reach out to their customers, as well as the rest of the industry, and continue to evolve their product offerings by gathering much more “realtime” feedback. this is, in my opinion, invaluable to any company… but the fact that a large company like microsoft just “gets it” when it comes to blogging is only going to continue to help them. as scoble said in his blog today, microsoft’s executives know and understand the importance of constant innovation — and not just in their products, but in the way that they communicate with their customers and thereby evolve those products.

so yes, it may seem a little nutty to leave a company like microsoft, with seemingly unlimited resources and an amazing corporate culture (especially for a company its size) to go work at a startup. startup companies, especially those based in silicon valley, have a long and not-so-glorious history of being unstable, ill-conceived, and short-lived. but i don’t think scoble would have made this move had he not considered all of the possibilities and decided that this was what was best for his personal and professional growth.

i’m working to build a podcast of my own soon and i think that the podcasting industry is only just beginning to take off. so best of luck to you, robert. and i, for one, will not be unsubscribing.

so my friend dave told me about this great piece of software from a company i’d never heard of, circus ponies. the software is simply titled “notebook“. i have to admit when i first downloaded it i wasn’t expecting much. boy, was i ever wrong…

notebook, from circus ponies price: $49.95 (mac os x)

i have used a number of information managers and notekeeping tools in the past; most recently was stickybrain. none of them, though, have even remotely captured the simplicity (and as a result, the sheer power) of notebook.

some of the features include:

• divider tabs (sections), as well as subsections
• “writing” pages, meant for journaling or plain text type content (although i suppose “plain text” is a bit misleading, since it does allow for some formatting)
• “outline” pages, which allow for multi-level, collapsible indenting
• to-do lists with due dates
• integration with address book and mail
• file attachments
• voice annotation
• export to several formats, including .rtf and .html
• page data encryption

in conclusion… if you are looking for a single app to store everything from project plans to grocery lists and everything in between, look no further.

overall rating: