cygweb

I had neglected to back up my Zope database in a while and it finally bit me. It had gotten large and corrupted to the point where I couldn't extract this site from it. I've restored my last backup (from May) and I'm going to re-post some of my older articles from HTML copies. Sorry if you wrote a manifesto of a comment and it got whacked.

Besides increasing my backup regimen and splitting off another Zope instance for my family photo albums, I'll be looking into other platforms and seeing if they might be a bit more resilient in this type of circumstance. I'm currently looking at Geeklog(Win2K/IIS5/PHP/MySQL) and Movable Type (Win2K/IIS5/Perl/MySQL). Both look neat.

Back to the show.

Originally posted by Alex, on Friday May 09, @02:50PM.
Alias and Enterprise are two of my favorite shows right now,
but both are beginning to get on my nerves.

Originally posted by Alex, on Tuesday May 20, @08:56AM

Don pointed me to AmphetaDesk a while back and it
was my first introduction to RSS (Remote Site Summary) aggregators. Many weblogs
and news sites are publishing RSS feeds of various flavors, including this site. I recently started using
AmphetaDesk again, and was disappointed with its update capabilities. Once a
particular site's feed was read, the program would not update the site properly
when it looked at the feed again later and the feed had changed. It seemed to
work on some sites, but not on others. AmphetaDesk doesn't appear to be
maintained right now - it's been at the same pre-1.0 version for quite a
while.When I was setting up the RSS 2.0 feed for my site, I started
looking at different aggregators. I've finally found one I really like, and it
works great. It's called SharpReader. It runs on the .NET framework, so it
requires Windows 2000/XP and the framework installed. Once unzipped and run, it
provides a three-pane interface similar to an email reader that has the
subscribed feeds on the left, the items for the selected feed(s) on the top
right, and the contents of the currently selected item on the bottom right. I've
been using it for about a week and it's already saved me a lot of browsing time
for about 12 websites I frequent. It's currently under development by Luke Hutteman, and he's releasing
pretty regular updates.Thanks for the great tool, Luke.

Originally posted by Alex, Wednesday May 21, @02:10PM

I really enjoyed this season of 24 - I thought it started off shakey, but it
was really good at the end. The final episode was last night, and the last scene
was absolutely shocking. If you are waiting for the DVD set to watch season two
of 24, you might not want to read further... ;)

First off: Kiefer Sutherland makes this show great. I can't think of any
other actor I'd rather watch as Jack Bauer. The supporting cast is great as
well, especially Dennis Haysbert as President Palmer. I'm really looking forward
to season 3, and I hope the actors behind the continuing characters return. I've
heard that Kiefer and Sarah Wynter (Kate Warner) are signed for season 3. If
Elisha Cuthbert returns as Kimberly, I really hope they make her scenes more
bearable. Some of the Kimberly plotline was OK, but some of it (the part with
Kevin Dillon's character) was a waste of time. I don't think the writers used
Kim particularly well this year.Yes, the show has unbelievable parts,
such as Jack's permanently charged cellphone, his amazing PalmPilot, and his
"god clips", but the overall plot structure and storytelling is top-notch. The
uniqueness of the real-time storytelling method makes up for much of the show's
fantasy. I actually thought they did a pretty good job of trying to make Alex
Hewitt's computer and method of constructing the Cyprus audio believable. And I
was thrilled to see a Minidisc recorder in the portable audio uplink rig in the
final episode.I'm not the kind of fan that watched the episodes more
than once; heck, I don't think I taped that many of them. My wife and I watched
many of the episodes "live" and taped anything that conflicted. I just wanted to
give my overall impression of the season.I liked the fact that Sherry
Palmer (DS9's Penny Johnson Jerald) was playing both sides, but was in the dark
as to Kingsley's overall plan. In the last episode I think Sherry started to
redeem herself.The last scene of the last episode was truly chilling. I
didn't realize it when watching it, but the woman who shakes the President's
hand is the character "Mandy" from the beginning of last season. She was one of
the assassins hired to kill then-candidate Palmer. When Palmer looks at his
right hand and realizes the flesh is being eaten away, I couldn't believe it!
What an ending!It will be very interesting to see what's in store next
season. I should be watching FOX's digital widescreen (anamorphic 480p) feed by
that time, which will make it even better!

Originally posted by Alex, on Thursday May 22, @08:45AM

I tuned into the Enterprise season finale, "The Expanse", hoping to be
spun into excitement for next season. It didn't happen. Rick Berman &
Brannon Braga (the producers of the show, and main writers for this and many
other episodes) appear to me to be determined to use time travel as the main
plot device of the show. This is disappointing. Two of my favorite Star
Trek shows and movies, "City on the Edge of Forever" (ST:TOS) and Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home, used time travel to great effect. The difference
in those cases were that the time travel itself was an isolated incident and
took a backseat to the story. The whole notion of the "Temporal Cold War" story
arc in Enterprise has bugged me. I think "The Expanse" does set up some
interesting times for the crew next season, but I firmly believe B&B aren't
really interested in keeping continuity with previous Trek works.I may
post a more detailed Season 2 analysis later.

Originally posted by Alex, Friday May 23, @03:50PM

Rush.com is saying that the live "Rush In
Rio" DVD will be relased in "early fall" (fall=autumn for my non-US readers).
Previous reports had been that it would be out in July, but this announcement
implies a late September/early October release date. Here's a press
release.I can only assume CHS and the band are taking their
time to make it perfect before releasing it. Good for them.

Originally posted by Alex, on Sunday June 08, @07:56AM

Well, I'm working this morning but the server I'm supposed to be rebuilding
isn't cooperating, so I'm waiting for an onsite service call. I figured this
would be an excellent time to issue my rant against the current state of
commercial air travel.

I picked up a new pair of contacts yesterday; my first new pair in 4 years. My vision isn't degrading as fast as it used to, but the new contacts are very welcome. I notice the additional clarity most when I'm driving. The one thing that stood out this morning on my drive into work (besides being able to read signs from farther away) was the definition in reflections on other cars. I guess it's the little things that get me, sometimes.WCYG is now sourced from Winamp 2.91/SQRSoft ACF 1.75/Oddcast v1 (Feb Build). Turning metadata off, this is the most stable and best-sounding config I've had in a while. Please check out the stream if you're interested by plugging the WCYG link into your streaming Vorbis player. Foobar2000 and XMMS are the most stable clients I've found.

We recently purchased a 32" JVC HDTV (AV-32P903) and I'm really digging it. DVD movies in progressive-scan mode look great. My wife and I watched "The Fast and the Furious" together Friday night and really enjoyed the movie. I was worried that she wouldn't see the difference from our old setup, but she assured me that she did. I'm getting an HD box from Comcast on Saturday that will give us some additional second- and third-tier digital stations, plus our local HD versions of CBS, NBC, and PBS affiliates. It's going to be great, but I just wish our local ABC affiliate was planning on going digital before the fall; I really wanted HD Monday Night Football this year. I just did some digging and found out that Super Bowl XXXVIII will be broadcast by CBS! CBS is committing to one HD game per week, and should have some good HD coverage in the playoffs. Excellent!

My son's class had a Fathers' Day party for the dads this morning. It was cool.I'm really enjoying the new KX album. My last few new CD purchases (3 Doors Down, OSI, KX) have all been really enjoyable.

Originally posted by Alex on Monday June 23, @10:30AM

I was able to see "The Hulk" on Friday with my father-in-law and was
surprised at how cerebral it was. Another home run for the recent string of
Marvel movies.

Originally posted by Alex on Tuesday June 24, @10:01PM

My buddy Jim taped an hour-long Our
Lady Peace live "Music Choice" concert the other day off of CN8 and loaned
it to me. I just got through watching it - pretty cool. It turns out they have a
live album that's out in Canada and will be out in the US next Tuesday (July
1st). I've never taken the opportunity to see OLP live, so the video was a great
glimpse for me at what they're capable of. They put on a great show."Are
You Sad?", one of my favorite OLP songs, is on the CD, but wasn't on the video.
Talk about bait! The OLP MC show's footage made me think they might be releasing
a live DVD as well; according to the news here they will be releasing
one later in the year! The show was letterboxed, so I hope that means the DVD
will be anamorphic widescreen. And I hope it's longer than the album; a full
concert would be great.Two more things to add to the wishlist...

Originally posted by Alex on Thursday June 26, @08:42AM

I make my living supporting these darn servers, so it's always nice to get a
new major release to chew on for a few months. Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 is
available for download here.
It's about 130MB. It includes 675
fixes. Hat tips to Microsoft Watch for the scoop and NeoWin for the poop.

I reposted some of the more significant articles that were lost due to my Zope problems. Things are caught up for now.

I'm going to go buy the OLP live CD today - I'll post a review within the next few days.

I'm trying to play with my test Geeklog site today but it doesn't seem to be working right. I'll have to get Don on the case. ;)

Update @3:35PM 7/7: I did new installs of MySQL, PHP, Geeklog, and phpMyAdmin on my WinXP laptop and saw a few things that I should have done differently on my first attempts over the weekend. This time the Geeklog site is working properly.

I haven't found a definitive set of install instructions for what I'm doing here, so I think I'll create some and share.

Thanks to Steve, who posted this earlier. According to Amazon.co.uk, Rush - Live In Rio is due for release on August 25th. It can't come too soon, that's for sure.

I did a similar search on Amazon's US site and didn't get any hits. However, my friends at TRI-Net pointed out MelodicRock's Release Dates page that lists a US release date of September 16th for both CD and DVD versions of Live In Rio. It should be interesting to see if the CD will include enough different material to warrant purchase along with the DVD set. Dream Theater's Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York DVD and subsequent Live Scenes From New York CD version are a good example of how this can be accomplished. However, the DVD didn't include a full concert, as Live In Rio is supposed to.

I spent my lunch hour dissecting Geeklog. It's a very impressive (and complex) piece of work. I can only assume Don has spent quite a bit of effort on customizing his site, as it looks great. Geeklog is definitely much more structured than Squishdot, and I still need to determine what benefits I might realize by moving to it. For the time being, I think I'll clone some of this site's features into my test Geeklog site for comparison. One learning curve I've already encountered is the implementation of Geeklog's blocks. Looks like I'd have to learn some PHP to make that happen, but probably no more complicated than the DTML I've learned to implement stuff on this site.
Is anyone missing WCYG? I've been using Maestro for my MT/Geeklog testing and haven't bothered to bring up the stream. I'll probably add the new OLP Live CD to the mix, as well as some other music. If I could pick the stream up at work, I'd be more likely to care about it.
I was searching for "cygweb" on Google to see where my site is referenced in the outside world. It reminded me of my listing on EatonWeb, so I recreated the "Rate Me" rightbox that was present before the recent server problems. Please rate and/or review my website if you're tuning in. (1="this site sucks!", 5="this site is cool!")

Saw this tidbit over at AVS Forum. The FOX Network appears to be committed to getting HDTV programming going by January 2004. It'll be interesting to see how soon they have programming ready, what it will be (24 and NFL games are what I want), and when Comcast Harrisburg will begin providing the WPMT-DT feed.

I received a note from Ross yesterday saying that he noticed this site and is including my feed on a site he's created called HarrisburgBlogs. Check it out! There's a few other sites listed there now as well that I'll have to start reading.
I'm going to give this site a facelift soon and will add a prominent link to HarrisburgBlogs to show my support for Central PA bloggers! If you're one and aren't listed there, let Ross know.

For One Actor, No More Chicken Parts
I've always loved Jason Alexander's "George Costanza" on Seinfeld. But I didn't particularly care for his KFC ads. This is an interesting read.

Ever since I started using SharpReader, I've followed the weblogs that the product is subscribed to by default. I've also added many others, including some of the ones written by programmers who've been involved with the development/implementation of RSS. Relations can get a little testy, based on what I've been reading.
Two entries I read late yesterday amused me:

My recent rant about air travel is here. I caught a reference on Comcast's news feed that the TSA has relaxed and unified their stance on passengers needing to take off their shoes at security checkpoints. This would saved us a little frustration at the airports during the experiences I described in the rant. The TSA press release is here.

Our Lady Peace has been one of my favorite bands ever since I first heard "Starseed" from their album Naveed. My favorite OLP album is Spiritual Machines. Even though that album's not well-represented on their new Live CD, I think it's a great sampling of their catalog. And I have an additional reason to appreciate the CD (and the upcoming DVD); I've never taken the opportunity to see an OLP show.

One cool thing about living in Buffalo was the close proximity to some great Canadian bands. I was just checking up on The Tea Party and saw that they are doing some light touring this summer and are playing shows in Buffalo and Rochester. Tea Party concerts are cool; they play many of their songs with arrangements that are different than the studio recordings, so it's a pretty unique experience.
A major note on their website about their upcoming album:

the band has finished about 15 new songs for the new record, tentatively titled "the seven circles". [...] recording will take place later this summer for a release sometime this winter.

Cool! It's been a while since The Interzone Mantras came out. It will be great to have some new TP to listen to.

DVD Release date

Jim and I took a trip down to Baltimore's Inner Harbor to see the Dream Theater / Queensryche / Fates Warning show last night. The weather turned out great, and so did the show. I'm going to spoil some of the show for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, so read on at your own risk...

I should put an anti-airline category on this site, I guess. This story on CNet bugs me: Orbitz Raises Ticket Fees. An online ticketing agency formed by the major airlines has to raise its per-ticket fees? I think they're trying to milk their customers for as much money as possible.
Trying to "psych out" customers by keeping a main cost the same while adding separate, non-optional fees is nothing new. The most notorious example of this I experienced was at my alma mater, when they started charging a transportation fee for the shuttle busses that ran between the North and South Campuses (which are about 5 miles apart). At the time, the campuses were treated as one with respect to dormitories, undergrad & grad class locations, and departments; the shuttle busses had always been considered the University's way of legitimizing this union. Then they created the transportation fee and charged it to every student, for use of the busses and the parking lots (which you needed to get a hangtag to use), regardless of how one transported themselves to school.

I've had Rush's Greatest Hits CD in the car since I bought it. My son's first favorite Rush song was "Limelight". Now he asks for "Mean Mean Stride". ;)

Interesting news this week. A company named FineArch has announced an Ogg Vorbis hardware platform for portable players. I wonder what might set it apart from the hardware that drives the Neuros player, which now has beta Ogg Vorbis support and appears to be feature-laden.

I've been following some of the discussion about a successor to the RSS 2.0 format for weblog syndication (as well as a complete API for interacting with a weblog). At this point, it looks like it will be called "Atom", and a draft specification has been made. Based on Sam Ruby's comments, I've created a beta Atom feed for this site, based on Dean's work on an RSS 2.0 feed for Squishdot. I'm currently reviewing the Squishdot code to see if I can provide the most accurate values for the different Atom elements. Once I'm happy with where I'm at, I'll publish the code I have. I don't know that anyone else has jumped on this - if you have and you're reading this, let me know and we can share the work.

Seeing a great concert always inspires me to pick up the guitar or bass and make some noise - I'm glad the weekend's here so I can take some time to do that. Have a good one.

I was pointed to this article at Declan McCullagh's site by Lawrence Lessig's blog. I haven't even finished reading the article yet, but I felt I had to post about it. Apparently airline captains (indeed, their crewmembers as well) are politically motivated in determining who may or may not be allowed passage on "their" plane. Disgusting hypocrisy at work here on the part of the airlines. Go John Gilmore!

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is going to start an advertising campaign to illustrate the dangers of copyright law: News.com: MPAA warnings hit the big screen. I think someone should warn them about the dangers of always being late, subjecting customers to more advertising and higher prices year after year, and labeling customers as thieves.
The entire movie exhibition/distribution system could use a swift kick in the rear. DVD rentals and occasional DVD purchases are about the only fairly-priced options the industry offers.

According to this thread over at AVSForum, Comcast recently signed a deal with Disney (I presume) to carry the HD version of ESPN. Supposedly it will be added at no additional cost for current Comcast HDTV subscribers, and is scheduled to be available starting September 1st. I really hope this pans out, as ESPN's Sunday Night NFL games will all be carried in high-def.
Update 25-Jul-2003@3:09PM: It's been confirmed! -a
Update 31-Jul-2003@12:24PM: Here's the official press release. -a

Both of these nuggets come from Slashdot. First the RIAA targets customers sharing on peer-to-peer networks, now they've decided to subpoena family members as part of their plan. And Bob Cringely has a diabolical plan to beat the recording industry to the punch in providing legal, affordable music on the Internet.

To further diversify my site, I'm learning about CSS by creating new web pages for this site, with a slightly different layout. I'd like it to look a little less like Slashdot and separate the content and the style to the point that I can easily change the look and feel of the site. This, of course, is what CSS is all about. My first go-round will be a pretty simple solution, but I hope it will look nice.

I'm making some headway with the CSS-ification of the site. Cygweb v2.0 will feature nicer fonts, a more "traditional" blog layout (can I use the term "traditional" when referring to a relatively new trend? ;) ), and more focus on core topics. I'll still ramble from time to time, though...

Today the Daredevil DVD hits the streets, and I'm going to make a lunchtime trip to grab a copy. I've heard that there might be an additional DVD release this winter with an extended edition of the film; it definitely could have been longer - there were some plot holes that could have used filling.

I think I'm going to pick up the latest Pearl Jam live CD as well and see how those guys are doing. I'll tell you, I must have listened to their first CD thousands of times back in my college days. What a great album.

The "Toronto Rocks" SARS Benefit Concert was held yesterday in Downsview Park, Toronto. If I was still in Buffalo, I would have considered heading up for the show. Two of my favorite bands, Rush and The Tea Party, were on the bill. I'm still trying to find out what they played. Here are links to some photos and articles about the show:

• Jeff Martin
  
• Geddy Lee
  
• Alex Lifeson
  
• Neil Peart
  
• "Close to 450,000 spent the day at a Toronto airfield..."
  
• "Did Toronto Make History?"
  
• Jagger: "Toronto is back, and it's booming."
  
• Search Google News: "Toronto Concert"
  

Thanks to Mario for posting a link to a BlogCritics.org article about the official release date of the "Rush In Rio" DVD and CD sets. It refers to this article from Reuters: Rush Roars Back to 'Rio'.
September 23rd can't come soon enough for me.