Hooray for NPR and IPTV!

You gotta love my fellow freedom-loving Iowans:

Earlier this year, we announced that Iowa Public Radio and NPR will partner to produce two live national presidential debates in Des Moines on January 9-10, to be offered on public radio and online.

Debates are a core part of our public service mission, and our goal is to give the broadest audience the widest opportunity to use the candidates’ ideas and words. To achieve that in today’s media environment, NPR and Iowa Public Radio have decided that we will make our recordings of these debates fully accessible to everyone, without license restrictions, following each of our original NPR Member station broadcasts/webcasts.

The issue of full, non-exclusive public access to debate content is currently a subject of discussion among media organizations, with varying viewpoints. NPR believes that placing these recordings in the public domain will help raise public awareness and bolster civic participation in the election process, and will serve as a natural extension of our mission.

This conveniently follows hot on the heels of NPR’s previous declaration supporting the protection and freedom of internet radio. The two of these events occurring so closely together is not a coincidence. NPR and PBS are trying very hard to demonstrate that they support freedom of information. It just happens to be a bonus that this all begins with Iowa Public Television and the upcoming presidential debates.

Fantastic news! My favorite radio station and favorite television station — together for information freedom!

Does anyone actually like Meebo Rooms?

Ordinarily, I only talk about things on this blog that I like. When I come across a cool video, a nifty web utility, or a slick piece of software, I like to talk about how great it is. I don’t usually complain about something I encounter, unless it’s something that means a lot to me.

That said; I don’t really care for Meebo Rooms.

Granted, I don’t have to care about Meebo Rooms. I can just leave it there, down on the bottom of my Meebo chat screen, and ignore the functionality completely. But it just seems so anti-web 2.0, there’s just something about it I feel compelled to comment on. I don’t really know how to explain it. Or, maybe I do.

Consider Twitter. Twitter is the direction the web is moving these days: dispersion. Each person exists in their own little world, and content is brought to them via RSS, SMS, IM, email, etc. Friends create content, and the content is distributed to each connected member’s miniature universe via the various channels of the internet. The web world is dispersed, and that’s how everything is moving.

Chat rooms — and especially video chat rooms, like Meebo Rooms — are not web 2.0. They are web 1.0. They are a part of the 90s (well, video isn’t, honestly, but the rest of my point stands). Gathering people in one place to interact isn’t how things are done these days. And that’s part of why I don’t like Meebo Rooms. It’s anti-web 2.0.

Plus, all it’s managed to do is make an already somewhat slow-moving system move even slower. Slow to the point that all day today, every time I have received an IM from somebody on one service, two or more of my other IM services automagically disconnect. It’s extremely irritating, especially when I have multiple conversations going on multiple channels. I expect that to get cleared up as things get more stable, but since it’s occurring due to the implementation of a whole new set of features that I don’t want, it’s a bit frustrating.

Somebody out there must like the new Rooms, right?

Relax – I play a surgeon on the Wii

Ok, I am officially really, really happy that I got Trauma Center instead of Prince of Persia. This game is an absolute blast to play. It’s painfully difficult at times, but the process involved in performing operations is so enjoyable, that you can’t help but play the same episode over and over again until you finally save that patient.

The story — and it’s surprising that there IS one at all — is enormously entertaining. The over-the-top drama really drives the action forward, and it’s amazing how involved you can get in the story. The characters are perfect reinventions of classic ER TV drama stereotypical characters, only blown up to about 10 times the proportion you would imagine they should be.

It’s a truly phenomenal game. If you have a Wii, you might want to consider removing Super Paper Mario for a few minutes, and giving this title a try.

Word from a rehabilitated former WYSIWYG hater

I just now, today, about a half-hour or so ago, discovered Nvu. All I really wanted was a WYSIWYG editor that could help cut the amount of time I spend updating my HTML-based Wii game tracker “database”.

Right now, when I have an update to a game on one of my pages, I have to:

  • Browse to the file folder
  • Right-click to edit
  • Make the necessary edits
  • Save file
  • Open FTP connection to evilavatarcomics.com upload center
  • Copy file to server

It’s an annoying process, and if I have more than one change to make a day, it gets tedious to the point that I just stop updating it for long periods of time.

Enter Nvu. Not only is it a WYSIWYG HTML editor, but it also has a built-in FTP utility. So, instead of the process I outlined above, I now:

  • Load up Nvu
  • Connect to site
  • Make the necessary edits
  • Publish updated page

Done. Yeah, loving it.

With so many people moving to blogs and MySpace/Facebook for their personal sites these days, the time of having to manually edit your own webspace is quickly drawing to a close. But it’s nice to have these tools available for those of us that like to have more control over their design and content.

Who aspires to be the host of an NPR radio show?

Evidently, I do.

NPR recently started looking for a new host to create their own radio show on NPR. They made it into an American Idol-type contest called Public Radio Talent Quest.

I’m not overly thrilled with my entry, nor am I hopeful for my chances. There’s already almost 600 entries, and still four days until the deadline.

Go ahead and have a listen, and let me know what you think. If you like it, vote on it! If you don’t, then just quietly step away from the computer.

I don’t know why I put myself in situations like this.

So, I guess I’m playing a surgical sim next

So, I sent back TMNT this past weekend, and was looking forward to playing some Sonic and the Secret Rings, which was next on my GamezNFlix rental queue. However, I checked my queue yesterday morning and noticed that Sonic was still listed with a low availability, which meant the game might not ship for a while. So, since nothing had shipped, I decided to switch around Sonic and place Prince of Persia: Rival Swords at the top slot. So, what do I see when I check out my queue this morning? I see that Trauma Center: Second Opinion has shipped. Trauma Center, which was fifth on my queue.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still interested in playing a wacky surgical simulator. I just wasn’t expecting to play it so soon.

So, did I screw something up on my queue by moving things around while they were getting ready to ship something? Or is GamezNFlix just not as reliable as I had been led to believe?

The xFruits of my labor

On Lifehacker’s recommendation, I’ve been playing with the RSS mixer tool, xFruits, lately. My goal was to create what I call a LifeFeed, which is a combination of (a lot of, but not nearly all) pieces of content that I am producing/tracking on the internet. This is essentially an aggregated RSS feed containing the following contributions:

I really like working with xFruits so far, although, admittedly, I haven’t done much except play around with the RSS aggregator. It’s fairly quick and easy to use, but I have just one complaint. I can’t label my feed sources. I’d like to see in the feed the ability to label the individual content feeds as “Nerdflood”, “Flickr”, “Ficlets”, etc. so it’s obvious where each entry in the feed was generated. But this is a quibbling nuisance, as you can see the sources in the URL when you hover over the links. It’s a “nice to have”, not a “must have” feature.

All in all, it’s a fun product, and I look forward to seeing new features added as time goes on. I plan to create a few more xFruits in the next few days, including one based on the Evil Avatar network content.

Oh, and can someone please tell me what you would use “RSS –> PDF” for? I can’t think of a reason for its existence, and it’s driving me nuts because I KNOW it has to be there to serve some purpose.

Surviving no TV week

It’s TV turn-off week, and though it isn’t affecting us greatly, it is having an influence. We aren’t overly dependent upon the televisions in our home, but it is nice to take this opportunity to unplug and show our boys that every now and then, you have to have something else be the focus and/or background of your life. It’s both rewarding and painful, but mainly rewarding, and I think we can all agree that’s a good thing.

There’s several consequences to TV turn-off week. One, it means I’m also not playing games. Which isn’t necessarily bad, especially given the fact that I played through a couple hours of TMNT over the weekend and came away less than impressed. Although Super Paper Mario is sitting on the shelf begging me to begin chapter four, and that’s difficult. The draw of Nintendo properties is still as powerful as it ever has been.

But, this week has also afforded me an opportunity to rip through A Clash of Kings, the second Song of Ice and Fire novel by George R. R. Martin. It’s a phenomenal book, and a quick read if you’re already deep into the story. I’m nearing the end, likely I’ll be able to finish in time for a quick trip to the city with the family on the weekend to pick up book three.

Of course, it also means I have to miss this week’s Thank God You’re Here! That will be a testament to pure willpower.

But Caleb is learning something valuable: that TV isn’t the center of the living room. It is an object of entertainment that is no more or less important than other objects of entertainment in our home, such as our library of books, mountain of toys, and plethora of art projects. He’s well entertained, that one is. Alex seems, as always, largely unmoved by the whole thing. He prefers to toddle about the house pretending to dance to silent music anyways. The lack of TV doesn’t appear to have affected him in that regard.

Now I know how my wife feels

There’s probably a bit more detail to go into than to just simply say I’m cleaning house on side-projects. There’s more to it than that. I’ve recently discovered that I have high blood pressure. My doctor has been monitoring my stats over the past few weeks, and it hasn’t dropped below 130/90 (normal pressure is 120/80). It’s not overly worrying, but it is elevated, and I’ll probably have to go on medication.

Today, though, was a worrying day. The doc scheduled me for a morning ultrasound of my kidneys. Not knowing how long I’ve been dealing with my problem, we had no way of knowing if there had been any damage done to my kidneys through long-term high blood pressure.

While the situation certainly isn’t Virginia Tech bad, this is the only body I’ve got, and I’d like to make sure it lasts a while longer.

Turns out the kidneys are fine, and I’m due to go on some meds sometime early next week. Everything should be working out all right. It’s just been a trying time since I have no control over this particular aspect of my health, and I’d really like to continue living. I want to do anything I can to reduce stress and minimize the possibility of an unhealthy lifestyle. I’ve got a family that needs a healthy dad and husband.

Back to the “cleaning house” thing. It’s two things, really. It’s reducing stress and clearing off the plate. In one way, I’m taking away the things where I don’t need undue pressure from imaginary deadlines. In another, I’m cleaning up time that can be spent on family, friends, and hobbies that bring me enjoyment and value.

So, there you have it. Not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but a big deal to me.