Another day, another cool desktop wiki. This time it’s a macosx implementation of moinmoin that’s been bundled up and runs like a desktop app. It’s as easy to get up and running with as instiki is, but moinmoin is a more feature-rich wiki and the OSX gui that’s been wrapped around it makes it a bit easier to manage than instiki does and it comes with a handy data export/import feature. If you’re running OSX check it out, it’s a small download.
Archive for February, 2005
What’s old is new again. Recent research shows that consumption of a beverage that contains the herb Salacia Oblonga, which has been used as medicinally in India for ages, helped folks reduce their post-prandial blood sugars by more than 25%. That would easily bring me into ‘human normal’ range. I’m going to try and acquire some to test on myself.
[edit] So I’ve been looking for sources of this herb on the net and not finding anything, aside from an indian import/export site where you can bid on bulk lots of the raw herb. I’ve already been burned once importing a bunch of stuff from india so I’m a bit leery, on the other hand the idea sort of intrigues me. Anyone want to go in on a lot of Salacia that we’ll then process down into extract for ebay sales? We’ll make a killing, I promise! (mostly kidding, though Andrew, you’re a likely candidate!)
Imagine running around in a 3D world building stuff out of legos. Then go download blockland and have fun playing around. This is actually pretty cool stuff and is perfect if you’re looking for something non-violent for your kids to dink around with on the computer. It’s also free and built on garagegame’s Torque engine, so in theory should work on all platforms, though for now the main developer is only releasing win32 binaries. There are links in the forums to OS X binaries that others have put together. I’m testing this on my home windows box, I might pop up a server for folks to play with during the day while I’m at work.
Check out Aquafold’s aqua data studio, an sql visualization and editing tool that’s free for personal or educational use. Folks pay $$$ for tools like this in the commercial environment, it’s cool to see a company offer up a tool like this for free. If you’ve ever tried tinkering with mysql and struggled on the command line you will find this tool’s a godsend. Works across all platforms via java and also has binary downloads for Windows and OS X. If you’re running OS X these days there’s actually been a proliferation of these tools - YourSQL is my favorite but cocoamysql is also quite good. Any of the three is worth checking out if you’re interested in tinkering with mysql.
Regular readers know I’m obsessed with wikis. I have a new favorite desktop wiki that’s already displaced my last pet favorite (voodoopad). This one is cross platform compatible and free. Check out instiki. It couldn’t be easier to install, it has a clean simple interface, and you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes.
Check out everyvideogame.com, which lets you play a ton of old school arcade and 8-bit console games right in your browser using client-side Java. Who can resist 10 minutes of ms. pacman action on their lunch break? I just wish the graphics window was a bit larger.
I’m going to let this one speak for itself aside from noting that it is Soolin and I this Sunday at Andrew Bruning’s mom’s farm. Oh, and it was as awesome and fun as it looked, and despite the apparent concern, Soolin liked it too. Check it out (.avi file)
I just did my taxes. The move to a new job cost me just over $7k in lost wages this year. I was shocked. I knew I had lost a good bit of income, in fact I was beating myself up over the fact that I ended up depleting my savings by $5k while getting established in New York. Now I don’t feel as bad about that, but damn! And to pour salt in the wound, my tax return is below my average for the last 5 years or so by like $800. Note to self, change jobs as infrequently as possible.
Wow. Wow! Mediaportal is like the answer to my media box prayers. I’ve played around with a bunch of different front ends for my home-brew tivo (things like Meedio, Beyond Media, and Xlobby), and nothing has come remotely close to mediaportal. It worked with my remote, my favorite DVD/movie file player (immatrix’s zoom player), my ancient copy of winamp, and it recognized my network shares and my album cover art collection, all without me having to do any configuration. Or almost none anyway. I’m completely impressed, and it’s completely free. If you’re on a PC you should check this out. Between this and hauppauge’s new sub-$75 mpeg encoding card you can build a home-brew tivo on the super cheap. Mind that I haven’t tested the tv recording module yet since I already have Beyond TV and it works great, but the rest of the modules are fantastic.
Remember writing out calculations longhand on a piece of paper when you were in primary school? One wouldn’t initially think that a calculator that mimics this process would be anything other than a novelty, until one actually tries such a thing - go get longhand and decide for yourself. It’s Mac only. I like it lots, it’s replaced the built-in calculator on OS X for me. Oh, and it’s free.
Work is finally starting to settle down and I have a few moments to post here. Apple announced the mac mini while I was too busy to comment. I love the thing. We got one in at work immediately and I’ve had a chance to tinker with it a good bit. I’m going to dump linux as my hosting environment at home and swap over to OS X, after about 6 years on the same hardy little linux box. I’m also going to switch over from winamp to itunes for managing my music collection. That’s the cool news. The bad news is this will delay me fixing my weblog such that comments work again. I’m going to wait to pick up the mini until after the next OS X revision (Tiger) ships, presumably sometime before the end of March. I have to hand it to Apple, they’re really firing on all cylinders right now. Most folks didn’t notice but they’ve grown back to the annual revenue they were seeing at the height of their success during the last 2 quarters. If they keep it up for the next 2 quarters they will have their largest annual revenue ever. It’s well deserved. I love my ibook after having loathed the last one, the mini is just brilliant (yeah, it’s the Cube again, just rationally priced this time), and they’re the only company to really figure out how to handle digital music and DRM that works for both consumers and the content companies. Want to lay odds on the mini being the gateway device to them making the same deals with hollywood they have with the music industries? I’m not sure but I sure hope it turns out to be true.
I selfishly like to think someone’s paying the price for their complete failure to recognize that by bending over for entertainment industry they’ve sunk their chances at keeping their market (see my numerous previous posts on the subject), but the company that invented the PVR is actually more likely to be paying the price for market commoditization (is that even a word?) coupled with some poor business decisions. What am I rambling about? Both the President and the CEO of Tivo have announced they’re leaving the company over the last 2 weeks. Good riddance, they appear to have steered the company into dead end. Maybe new leadership will help them get back out again. I’m not holding my breath, but anything is better then what they had been doing. My guess is someone is going to be owning Tivo at a bargain price pretty soon now, one of the cable companies is my completely uneducated speculation.
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