Tag Cloud

We decided to improve our post tagging and add a tag cloud.  The tag cloud is cool because you can click on a tag and see all the posts that have that tag.  Want to see all the posts that Coleman is in, just click his name in the tag cloud.  We still need to work out a few kinks for people that share names like "Andy."

The tag cloud will be ever present on the right sidebar.

Yes, She Has A Goatee

I was looking at Hulu (www.hulu.com) the other day and noticed that they posted the movie Moby Dick - that made me snicker to myself because every time I think about Moby Dick I remember this...


Yes, she has a goatee (that is no Photoshop job). Moby Dick was a reading assignment in one of my high school English classes. I don't remember reading it at all, though I know I read at least some of it, but I do remember this one image from when we watched the film in class after we finished reading the story.

Google is 10 - What were we doing 10 years ago?

In honor of Google's 10th birthday, they made it possible to get search results from 2001 (not quite 10 years, but it's still cool). On a whim, I searched for both Aimee and myself, discovering that we were both on the web 10 years ago - news to us. The results I found for us were from things 10 years ago, so here you go...


Aimee had just graduated from high school, but results from a 1998 CCS Gymnastics meet that she competed at were (and still are) posted on the web.


Glen was working for Potpourri (Which later became the Pennysaverusa. I think they should have made the change before I was hired, but oh well.), but he had worked at a scout camp over the summer and one of the guys he worked with created a website with stuff about camp (an archived version of the site still exists).

I have to admit that ten years ago when people said they had a website, I had no idea what they were talking about - I don't think my family's computer even had access to the internet yet.

If you want to see if you were on the web ten years ago, go to http://www.google.com/search2001.html and search for your name in quotes like this - "Angus Wilson". You might be surprised what you find.

I love it when a plan comes together!

The A-Team was a favorite show of mine as was MacGyver. Unfortunately, for years I have been limited to the episodes that my pop still had on VHS. It has been very exciting to see these great shows start showing up on DVD, but even more exciting than that is seeing them show up online for free. Yeah, FREE - my favorite word.

Surely, some folks will not be quite as excited as I am by the various networks making shows available online because:

1. They just never got why MacGyver's first name was Angus; or
2. They'd rather buy stuff on DVD than sit in front of a computer.
   

Ok, watching online is not perfect, but you can watch full screen and CBS has all the seasons of MacGyver available for streaming!

Aimee and I will probably never pay to get television programming (unless doing so is somehow cheaper when bundled with an internet connection than the internet connection alone) because all the shows we watch (which aren't many) are available as streaming video from their corresponding network.

Our favorite streaming video sites:
ABC (Lost)
CBS (MacGyver, Star Trek, Family Ties, The Twilight Zone, and loads more old and current shows.)
FOX (Nothing we watch, but you might so I included the link)
Hulu (Various TV shows and Movies, including Monk, Jonah: A Veggie Tale's Movie, and many others)
NBC (Heroes, The A-Team, and many more.)
(Are we missing anything? Let us know.)

The Inconvenience Factor
There are two main inconveniences we've run into. One inconvenience we've run into is that the media player (usually Adobe Flash Player) embedded into the network's web page won't recognize shortcut keys for play, pause, yada, yada. That means that the remote control we have for the computer can't control them, so you have to use a mouse and keyboard. Some remotes can act like a mouse - ours does too, but it is way easier to just use a mouse than to try to maneuver the cursor with the arrow keys on the remote.

The second inconvenience is that you can't skip commercials. In a world were DVRs are taking control of most peoples television viewing experience, it may be hard for some people to consider returning to watching commercials - most people with DVRs happily skip through them to get back to their show. Well, online viewing has commercials, but the commercial breaks are 30 seconds long. That's right - 30 seconds. That is one commercial each commercial break. I can handle a 30 second commercial break. Sometimes each break during a show has the same commercial - that can be rather annoying. Sometimes (usually) the volume is louder during commercial breaks - that can be really annoying.

Two final notes:

1. While writing this up and adding hyperlinks, I ran across this note at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for the A-Team:
   "A feature film based on The A-Team is planned for release on June 12, 2009 in the United States."
   All I can say is, "I pity the fool who doesn't go see it." The A-Team may have only lasted 5 seasons and most of the shows followed the same formulaic plot, but it's still fun.
2. I also ran across this and thought it was funny since it very much applies to shows like The A-Team and MacGyver - Principle of Evil Marksmanship.

Anyone else run tech support for their family?

When someone in my family needs tech support for something, they often call, email or IM me. Sometimes that means answering questions about video stuff, but more and more often I'm asked for computer help. I have been searching for some good, FREE way to connect remotely to other computers so I didn't need to explain how to do something or be physically present in someone's home to figure out the problem.

Windows has this great, built-in tool called Windows Remote Assistance that doesn't work a lick unless you are on the same network. That is partially a lie - you can set it up to work between computers that are on different networks, but that is a tech support nightmare because you have to first explain to the other person everything that they have to do to get it set up. Why waste time trouble shooting a way to trouble shoot?

Adobe (One of my favorite companies by the way and they don't give me anything to say so - though I wish they would.) now has released a beta of ConnectNow which you can use to view and control a remote computer, chat, web conference (with audio and video via a mic and web cam hooked to your computer), share documents, and more. Only the host needs to have an Adobe ID (which is FREE) and invitations can be sent as URLs. It's quite simple to use.

ConnectNow is the FREE youngest sibling of the Connect family of products, supporting up to 3 people, including the host. The bigger brothers cost money and support 15 or up to 1500 people. The only thing needed to use ConnectNow is Adobe Flash Player 9 which is also FREE. The first time you use ConnectNow you'll have to install a little Flash plug-in that installs super fast. I haven't tried ConnectNow with anything but a broadband connection and have no idea how well it would work over dial-up, but I wouldn't expect much.

(You'll notice that I love the word FREE and I love to find the FREE way to do cool stuff.)

Of course, you can use this for more than just tech support. Adobe sees this as an online collaboration tool and it is, but I have my own ingenious plan for it ("Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world.")

Check it out if it sounds interesting. It could just be what you never knew that you always wanted to use for something completely different than what I described above. I hope someone finds this useful because it is a great FREE tool.

To use ConnectNow, go to www.acrobat.com and select "Adobe ConnectNow", then click the "Begin" button. If this is your first time being the host, you'll need to select "Sign Up!" under "New to Acrobat.com?" in the lower left of the ConnectNow window - Signing up is FREE.