Nerdmonkey.com

Search away.

I just added a search engine to nerdmonkey.com. It is available in the left hand column on almost all pages on the site. I'm using Atomz search service. I wanted to use Lucene and roll my own setup, but in the end I decided to go with the free and easy choice instead.

Also, I moved the email notification signup form from the left hand column to it's own page. So far, no takers. ;)

Feed me nerdmonkey.com.

Lately I've been using AmphetaDesk which is a very useful program that does news aggregation. For example, almost every day I read what's new at The New York Times, Scripting.com, Daypop, etc. Now, instead of going to each site individually, I just launch AmphetaDesk and it gathers the news from all of these places and puts it on one easy to read web page listing all the headlines in a consistent fashion. Pretty cool! It works by reading the XML (RSS, RDF, etc.) version of each site.

Then today I read that a new standard is attempting to be started: auto-discovery of a site's XML content. So I did the required work to nerdmonkey.com so now you should be able to auto-discover my XML feed. (Makers of blogging software should add the required tag to the default templates so that people don't have to do this in the future.)

Green Iceland.

Yahoo News: "In the relatively near future [30 - 40 years], Iceland's cars, buses and ships will be driven by electric motors powered by hydrogen-fuel cells that produce nothing but water in their exhausts." Wow!

Evidence of Eminem piracy?

BBC: "US music database service Gracenote [also known as CDDB] had Eminem at number two in its Digital Top 10 before the album was officially released." When you play a CD in WinAmp or Windows Media Player, it looks up track name and other information on CDDB's databases. Basically what happened is Eminem's album nearly topped the charts for lookups on CDDB before the album was officially released. Yet I'm sure Eminem will still be a rich man.

Random Links for the night.

When do you think this will come to America?

Kevin Fox points out why the DMCA is rediculous: "It's important to realize that bringing CNN to court over its story sounds stupid and childish, and it absolutely is. Sadly, it's what the DMCA demands, and I dearly, dearly hope that it happens to show that the copy-protection-protection laws in the DMCA go far beyond what is reasonable for the protections they seek to provide..."

Baby-K is here!

Leah Audrey decided to arrive! She was delivered at 12:02 pm this afternoon weighing 6.5 pounds and at 21 inches tall. Congratulations, Hannah and Randall!

12 Years Ago.

My dad sent me this in an email today: my junior high ID card. Hilarious.

Creating a Winamp Plugin.

I've been spending the last few days trying to create a Winamp plugin. I'll post more about the plugin in a bit (I'm hoping it will really kick the llama's ass). Anyway, right now I'm just trying to work through my rust -- due to my unemployment and road trips it has been a while since I've done any programming. Plus, the plugin is written in C++, which I'm even rustier at. To top it all off, Winamp's SDK isn't very informative for a relative amature C++ programmer like myself. Hopefully it will all start making sense soon.

Going back to Salem.

A few days ago I went down to Jefferson, Oregon to visit one of my best friends from college and former roommate, Matt. It was great seeing him again. To continue my trip down memory lane, I stopped in Salem on my way back up to Portland and had a few beers with another college roommate, Travis. Travis is one of those brainiacs who is always fun to talk to. He's now working for Rep. Darlene Hooley, and it sounds like he's having a good time with it. After that I decided to walk off those beers with a jaunt around my old college campus, Willamette University. I haven't been to campus in over 2 years, so it was quite fun to look around and be reminded of all the good times you had there hanging out in some dorm room or playing frisbee in the quad. But everyone looks so young!

Eagle Creek Hike

Nikki, Ara, and I did a really cool hike at Eagle Creek which is located out in the Columbia River Gorge. It was about 13 miles round trip, which makes it the longest day hike I've ever done. I don't think we planned on going that far, but the terrain was relatively flat so we never got tired and kept going. The highlight is at the end of the hike at Tunnel Falls where there is a huge waterfall that you can walk behind in a tunnel that was chipped out of the mountain. Anyway, I think we all started to get a little tired on trip back to the trailhead. I know I'm wiped out today. Check out the photos if you'd like.

More on the Curry essay.

More comments on the Curry essay in response to a blogging "naysayer".

The monkey updates.

I just upgraded to Movable Type 2.11. So far, everything looks like it's working.

I also added a way for you to stay up to date without having to remember to point your browser to nerdmonkey.com every day -- you can enter your email address in the form in the left column and you will be added to an email list. I promise not to sell your address to anyone (unless the price is right). I probably won't send out email for every update, only when something interesting is posted and I haven't sent an email for a while. You can remove yourself from the list at any time by emailing me. I might switch away from Movable Type's email list management in the future -- it seems somewhat limiting. But for now I guess it'll work.

I also added an RSS feed of the content of the site. You can get to it by clicking on the icon located in the left column.

Bloggers do the news better.

We, as Americans, always seem to trust what we see on the news, and trust even more what we read in the major papers. Perhaps we should always be more careful to take everything with a grain of salt.

Here's a great essay by Adam Curry, former MTV VJ and now adamant blogger, about the lies told in the press about Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn after he was assassinated. It is an interesting read since Curry had the inside scoop -- he was getting information live from his friends on the phone who worked at the place of the assassination, while at the same time seeing false information spewed out on TV and the major news feeds.

Baby-K Day.

I just got back from the Klingelheber's baby shower. I can't believe the baby's "official" due date is just three weeks away. I really am excited for them. My sister just recently had a baby, but Randy and Hannah are the first of my good friends to have a child. It will be exciting to have a wee little tot running around!