Okay, in the category of technology in search of a purpose, I see that Microsoft's Spot seems to be dead on arrival according to this story by the Register.

Spot was supposed to be this radio delivered news service for geeks wearing stupid watches. I don't even wear a watch! Apparently, neither does Steve Ballmer which may be the most telling. It always amazes me the stuff that gets green lighted at Microsoft. What is so compelling about this product? Don't we already have pagers, cell phones, text messaging, etc. If anything I want to be out of contact as much as possible.

My prediction is Microsoft Spot will never ship. Now, that's an easy one. Sheeesh!

Well I finally got motivated again to work on my latest family video. This one covers the graduation of my nephews and nieces from college and high school. I shot the principal video at their graduation party in June. I had worked out an approximate storyboard in my mind that would begin the video with the minute thirty bit of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. I would use this as bed for "Ken Burn's Effect" panned still images of the actual graduations. I had a lot of fun making cuts based on musical beats. I think people will be impressed. I then fade to black and do an abrupt change to the actual party. Overall, I've got about 9 minutes so far. I want to go back to the video to see if there are any more choice bits I can include. Once, the editing is done I can render to DVD Mpeg 2. Then all I have to do is prepare a new DVD menu graphic and write the new DVD with the previous "films" I've made. The whole thing gets that big debut on Thanksgiving. It's become a bit of a tradition to debut a new video every Thanksgiving.

I am thinking of sending copies of the completed DVD to other family members around the country as a Christmas gift. It might be fun.

I've been using Sonic Foundry's Vegas 4 for my video editing. This is another fantastic piece of software and is performing very rock solidly for me. For a quick check, I rendered straight to a VCD to look at on my TV. I wasn't expecting much quality wise but I was very impressed that things looked so good with this format. The DVD should be even better.

Oh, I also tried out my new leaf blower on Saturday. Now that I have so many more leaves, raking just wasn't going to cut it. The leaf blower worked really well. I just put in my ear plugs and fired it up. I got a real nice pile. Hopefully they will get picked up in the next week. I figure I've got at least one or two more leaf roundups to go.

I recently had a problem again with my Linksys Wet-11 Wi-Fi bridge. One day all of a sudden it was dead and the wlan and ethernet leds were dead. I fiddled with it but could not get it to respond. I don't know if this was a result of recent sun spot activity or what?

Finally, I unplugged it and installed my spare SMC USB Wi-Fi adapter and continued on. A day later I plugged the Linksys back in and it starts working again. Weird. I beginning to think that since this runs continuously that maybe it locks up after so many months? I did download an updated firmware just in case. It seems to be working normally again.

I went to CompUSA today to pick up a 256mb SD card for my new Palm Tungsten E. I thought I would allocate this card to just music. The player on the Tungsten is not bad. This has been an unexpected surprise and really increase the usefullness of the device. Of course CompUSA was out of stock. There may be a truck this week. The price was attractive and there was no rebate involved. Hooray.

I finally got around to installing Sonar 3. This went smoothly. Sonar 3 is really a great program and the Producer edition comes with some great add-ons including the Lexicon reverb. I recorded a quick little guitar, drum, synth test and got some good results. I uploaded the song as Film Cue No. 44. I hope to do a lot more recording this winter. I certainly have the tools now.

I continue to analyze my new computer build. I seem to be swaying towards the Abit IC7-G Max II Advance motherboard. It's got everything and has gotten great reviews. This will be the first Pentium system in quite some time. I've come to the conclusion that it's too early to jump into the Athlon 64 stream. I've got the Antec Sonata silent case so I'll have to decide when to make the next purchase which will be most of the hardware minus the hard disc and DVD writer. This next stage will run about $700. Let's see how the market does?

I'm also still considering a digital camera upgrade. Over the summer I had pretty much settled on the Olympus 750 10x zoom. I see now it has come down and is now about $500 at J&R. Now I see that the Nikon 5700 has also dropped to $799. I'm not sure about the Nikon but it now becomes more interesting. Also, the release of the new Canon Digital Rebel at $999 has generated some buzz. Not sure I want to get involved in that system. There's no rush although it might be nice to have in Hawaii in February 2004.

Sunny and cooler today. Nice after all the rain. I've been sluggish lately. Need to get to work on some projects but I've had trouble getting motivated.

Listening to Rush. My favorite fill-in host, Walter E. Williams, is on today.

I was watching CNBC this morning and they had on the apparently wacko leftist Rep. Pete Stark from California. If this is representitive of Democrat thinking then it's going to be tough sledding in future national elections. He actually called President Bush a "facist". Unbelievable! The name calling that Democrats often resort to is degrading to their cause.

The more I read about Longhorn, the next Microsoft OS, the more baffled I become. Couple this with a projected release date of 2006 and I am even more puzzled. Meanwhile, I also read that Microsoft has all but given up standalone Internet Explorer development. Add that to the growing list of Microsoft abandoware such as Outlook Express and things are looking pretty grim.

I've now switched to Mozilla 1.5 for my browsing needs. The tabbed browsing alone makes this a winner. Of course I switched to OpenOffice years ago and the current 1.1 version is very usable.

While I got Windows XP on my Dell Laptop this summer, I can't say I'm at all impressed with this OS. I can't find one thing that says this a real improvement over Windows 2000. I wasn't that bowled over with Windows 2000 initially either but time and four service packs later have smoothed the rough edges.

With a new OS release three years out, some effort needs to go into shoring up Windows XP with a significant Service Pack. This should be priority number one. This manhattan project style programming effort for the OS is becoming very tedious. If Windows 2000 and Windows XP are so great in the first place, why do they need to be entirely rewritten and take years to update? I guess the whole continuing Windows security fiasco has really hit home, finally. Microsoft only starts to respond when real money is at stake. I guess push back from customers is starting to have it's effect. I do not envy the Microsoft shlubs having to sell this stuff. I got out at the right time! Life was so much simpler.

The quote about Windows being just a bunch of debugged device drivers (Andreeson) seems to be more relevant than ever.

Long time since I blogged. Lots going on.

My nephew and his landscaping company completed the buildout of backyard. It now looks stunning.

Making lots of purchases lately. New Dell 19" Flat Panel. MadDog Nvidia 5200 graphics card. M-Audio BX-5's for the upstairs system. I also picked up on sale the Antec Sonata quiet pc case. I am spec'ing out a new downstairs system. I am considering an Athlon 64 but it may be premature at this point. Intel's Pentium 4's are getting more price competitive so I may go this direction this time. I'm going to build up this system slowly - no rush. I probably will go with an external audio solution like M-Audio's Fireport 410 this time around.

Hope to get into a more regular posting routine as I spend more time inside. Incredible weather today. About 80! This can't be November in the Northeast?

So far, the hunt for the elusive Palm Tungsten E pda has come up empty. Called all the local stores and everyone is cluesless. I still hope something will materialize by next Wednesday's official launch.

My couple of days of roving Wi-Fi was a success. I did try to find the free Wi-Fi in the Bethesda Ave area but there was nothing that I could find.

Due to the Isabel blackout this week, I've been testing the waters of roaming Wi-Fi. Yesterday, still without power since 9/18, I bit the bullet and bought a t-mobile day pass ($10) which is good for 24 hours. While I believe t-mobile's pricing is too high for the casual user I thought this as good a time as any to try it. Even though I got power back at 1 am today (9/24), I didn't have any food in house so I thought I'd keep up my wi-fi test and travel to another Starbucks for breakfast this morning and use some more of my day pass. After I leave my present location (Starbucks, Chevy Chase Lakes), I am headed to Bethesda Ave to try out the rumored free Wi-Fi at that location. My day pass runs out at 2 pm today.

As usual, the marketers have missed an opportunity. Business news reports have said the t-mobile subscriber rates have been very slow for their hotspots. This says that they have a poor pricing model. I already pay $60 a month to Comcast for cable internet and have a wi-fi rig in my house. I'm not going to pay another premium for the occasional starbucks wi-fi connection. Starbucks should offer a deal with a latte purchase of maybe $2 or $3 dollars extra for some wi-fi access. The $6 minimum for one hour of access is just not compelling unless you are desperate.

I'm also on the hunt for a new PDA. Palm is releasing a couple of hot new pda's on 10/1. I'm interested in the Tungsten E which will retail for $199. I went to Office Depot and CompUSA and both were clueless. I am anxious to nail this one down since I expect to sell out quickly. We'll see.

Got my new Dell 19" LCD for my upstairs pc rig on Monday. Of course no power, but I set it up and it looks real nice. I'll get a chance to use it this afternoon when I get home.

Been a while since I blogged.

I visited my brand new Starbucks that just opened last Saturday. I've been anticipating this for over a year. Yay!

I'll be walking to the Starbucks which should do wonders for my exercise.

I will also be checking out the free Wireless day sponsored by Intel. It will be fun to check this out with my new Dell Centrino laptop next Thursday.

Ordered the new Sonar 3 Producer today. Should ship in October. The new interface looks slick.

Hurricane Isabel dominates the news. My Mom has been calling me daily with things I should do to prepare. I am kind of indifferent. I think the MEDIA has overhyped this one. We'll see.

Received the Kensington LCD desktop monitor arm. Small issues with install but it works great and frees up my desk space. I can now also rotate my monitor 90 degrees and work in portrait mode. I set up some hotkeys in the Nvidia desktop manager to toggle between portrait and landscape. Very cool.

Ordered a new Dell 19 inch LCD for my den PC. Got a very good price - $490. This will replace the now 10 year old NEC tube monitor that is showing it's age. I may upgrade my video in this PC from the built in motherboard to an Nvidia or ATI.