Apparently I'm verging on running out of titles. I'm writing earlier this time because I'm think about finally making the transition over to WordPress for this blog. I don't know that this will be successful or if it'll really happen but I'm going to attempt it. So if all goes to plan I'll be writing the next entry under WordPress.

I did actually go to the flea market today. Although this is a rather strange flea market because I still associate things like this with "having to show up early" and yet this particular flea market doesn't seem to even get started until 9:30 or 10am. Which is like I said quite strange. Between that and apparently this being too early in the year for flea market season there really wasn't any thing interesting to speak of. 

I did notice the apparent theme for this year: those toddler toys with the tiny monochrome LCD screen that are other-wise shaped quite similarly to a laptop. I have started to notice patterns ya see. And one pattern I have noticed is that each year there seems be an incredibly common occurance of one particular category of item. Whether that's 8-bit nintendo games/systems or sports games for SNES, there always seems to be something common between vendors. It's like they all went to the same self-storage auction or something. It can't be a coincidence that three or four apparently unrelated sellers all seemed to have ten or more of these little toddler laptop things. Right?

Anyway I did see some SNESs but they were charging too much so forget it. It was kind of fun walk around down there though in any case.

The only thing else that might be defined as a change is my dry-erase pen board: specifically I was using it to check off a list of tasks for each day of the week, one of those entries being a blog entry. Well I've been doing that consistently for six weeks now anyway so I don't think that really matters so much. I would actually put a check mark next to each thing after completing it. Well that wasn't really working any more. 

So I came up with a new way of organzing this. Well it's still a work in progress actually. The main emphasis really is trying to get through all these various books. Trying to do them one at a time obviously isn't working so I've split them up: two of them per day (7 days a week) and none of them two days in a row. Which as it turns out came out to having two of them be alone on a day. Which is fine really. Don't want to get burn out. So I think splitting them up like this is going to help a wee bit. Kind of breaks the tasks up into peices although I guess I won't get through any one of them very quickly. But getting through them at all is more than I'm accomlishing now.

The tasks include:

I think I'm just going to go straight into my thoughts this time 'round. Except for this little blurb here at the top explaining how I'm going straight into my thoughts. Ya. Besides that I'm going straight into my thoughts. So, without further delay, my thoughts.

I was thinking about my post from last night. Amazing how I'm not 100% remembering everything that I wrote yesterday, since it's only been 24 hours. I know it was largely about the "iPad" and the many reasons I won't be buying it.

But it also occurred to me at some point else this could be turned into. Or some other similar device if not the iPad. What I have in mind is some kind of integrated dock, similar to the dock for the Motorola Droid but with the added benefit of component video outputs. At that point you could pair it with any number of devices including a game pad.

Actually I was thinking about this in the context of the iPad but was dismissing it in my own thoughts on account of all those buttons required for a game pad. Then in occurred me there are already all those iPhones and iPod touches floating around, so the only real task would be some how pairing the iPhone/iPod to the iPad and then you had a touchscreen-based gamepad already available. 

In other words it's a highly portable game console. Or with the right sort of docking features I suppose it could be a DVR or any number of things.

Alright so I just bothered to actually look up information on my own blog and yes and did write about the idea of connecting the device to the TV and using iPod/iPhone as the game pad. Some times I have really intense thoughts for an extended period of time and I can't remember if I wrote it or if I merely thought about it really, really hard.

Actually there will eventually be Android-based tablets with the "Tegra" graphics chipset and there's already touch-based devices like the Droid and NexusOne out there so something like this really could be rigged up. I mean it would have to use some kind of wireless technology like Bluetooth or similar but this really could be rigged up. I have no idea of course if a controller with no sort of tactile feedback wold actually work. I guess people would adapt to it eventually the same way people have adjusted to first person shooters with game pads.

I was some-what proud of myself today in that I did actual jogging for a large portion of the five mile route I enjoy taking so much. I also did some extensive stretching before the jog. I think you're actually supposed to do all the stretching after the jog not before. I think it helped though.

Tomorrow, assuming I can get a decent amount of sleep, I am planning on going down the flea market. Seems early in the year I know for thinking about flea markets. But it's supposed to 62 or so degrees tomorrow. That's right, while pretty much the whole of the rest of the country has lots of cold and record snow fall it's going to be in the low 60s where I am. I don't know what I'll look for. Maybe I'll finally buy an SNES after all this time. I mean I bought a multi-tap-like peripheral, several game pads and Bomberman II several years ago. I just never bought an SNES to actually play it on. Not one that worked anyway. Never willing to spend the $40 or $50 on a 20 year old console I guess. It's kind of funny really. There's consoles like the Dreamcast that sell for about the same price at flee markets as the SNES. And there's Genesis consoles in stacks going for super-cheap. But the SNES has been a very consistent $40 to $50 for like ten years now. With so far as I know little to no chance of decreasing in the near future.

Other than that I can't think of anything I would like to buy. Perhaps I'll just see something I can't live without and buy that tomorrow. Just have to see what they have.

The other decision of course is whether I will go for another five mile jog/walk tomorrow. Maybe that's a big excessive doing that two days in a row, maybe the old bones can handle it. From there it would before or after. I think since the whole thing has kind of started to wind down noon I would probably do the jog after the flea market. Well that's pretty much the whole day isn't it. I will have to go back into my PHP book and learn more WordPress.

In fact I'm writing today's entry while sitting in a Border's with a couple of WP books beside me. I can't quite decide which one I would like to buy. They're both fairly highly regarded by the readers of Amazon and they're both relatively recent. One is a "24 hour trainer" so it's obviously a beginning-to-end type of deal while the other is a "cook book" so there's more of a bite-sized how to do certain tasks.  Of course there's probably an even more up to date web site out there with all the information I'll ever need that would be much better.

Alright so I just looked up the current iPad information: there's no 720p video output but fairly close to that. There's already a dock for connecting it and there is in fact bluetooth. Whether or not the iPad could be some how connect to the iPad is still an unknown detail to me but at least I'm learning some stuff here.

I think it's dinner time so I'm going to publish this now and go home.

I thought that was an interesting headline. Record cold as a result of warming. Really. Really? 

If only I had called this whole every possible weather pattern can be pointed back to "warming" several years ago. Oh wait, I did do that. Yes, in a previous post on this very blog from YEARS ago I expressed my frustration that every imaginable weather pattern no matter the temperance or extremeness or which end of the spectrum the temperture happens to land it all leads back to blaming warming. It does. And that's because it's kind of scientology-ish psuedo-religion/political thing. I've known this for a while. Then also several years some body hand said something about climate change being a form of terrorism or global warming being like "several 9/11s" or something to that effect. That's when I really knew.

You see there's only so much resources and the media and populace and therefore big money can really only be focused on the one thing at a time. The resources can be put into things like homeland security or it can be put into things like global warming initiatives which coincidentally involves furthering left wing agendas and passing "global taxes" and whatever else. The same people who seem to not be particularly fond of things like national defense and gun ownership.

Okay, so glad I got that off my chest. This was another wasted day. I don't know what happened to me. Well I have a fair idea what happened to me. The events of Febrary the first combined with a a very consistent lack of any ability to fall asleep. And that last part doesn't seem to be getting any better. So I guess I have to force myself to get up at 6 or 7 am and be tired for a whole day then finally go to bed at an early time. Then perhaps I can start to re-adjust my sleep schedule just from sleep deprivation if nothing else. I don't think that's terribly healthy but I don't feel like I really have that much of an option at this point. I do need to get sleep after all. Even if it's sleep deprivation derived sleep. I'm not sure that made sense. 

On the bright side I got to watch one of my very favorite shows: Damages. In the past six weeks or so of blog posts I don't think I have yet gone and on and on about this favorite show of mine. It really is a novel in the form of a TV show. Not in a PBS master piece theater sort of way. I mean it's like it IS a novel that just so happened to have chosen the medium of TV. I don't know any other way of explaining it. It does this dual time line thing sort of like what Lost does only Damages actually has once long cohesive storyline for a given season. Since some of the last scenes of the story arc are shown at the top of the first episode the storyline for the season really does have to be written all the way out ahead of time. Which may sound similar to Lost but in Damages it works so much better then LOST!! Seriously. 

It's about a private practice lawyer who uses some questionable tactics to manipulate certain parties and win the cases she takes. In this case it's more about big pay out from one or more corporations or conglomerates or whatever. It's very fast paced and they never stop and explain things or slow down to work in a summary of the season's goal for any late comers. It's just go-go-go. In other words it never feels like even a single scene could some how be filler or for the benefit of new-comers who need to catch up. Everything you see matters and is relevant to both that episode and the over-all arc of the season. 

The show should be a lot more popular than it seems to be. I mean Nip/Tuck and Always Sunny are mentioned off-hand in different popular sources. But outside of the various awards it is always nominated for I rarely ever hear it mentioned. And it really does have a perfect track record. I don't think I could name a bad episode in the two seasons plus three episodes I have seen so far. Flawless. Every one of them. 

If there was one downside, if that's the right word for it, I would say it's that I don't know that it's the kind of show I would want to watch over and over again. It doesn't have re-run potential in other words. Or the kind of show I would watch the DVD of more than once ever three years or whatever. I would like to buy the DVD set actually. One of those things that will have to wait for a job. Okay now I'm depressed again.

Well I think this is a long enough so I'm going to stop.

Wasn't sure what to title this one.The only thing that really differentiated today from any other day was the successful trip to the five-mile-trail for the walk/jog. I decided pretty much that I'm going to do the five mile thing every day it's projected to be sunny. Which according to iGoogle the last time I checked is at least through Saturday...well i just checked and now iGoogle says it's going to rain Friday. I wish it would make up it's mind. In any case every day that it seems to be sunny and possibly warmer than 50 degrees or so I'm going to try and do that five mile jog/walk. That means I should probably do a lot more stretching multiple times a day as well. So I don't injure one or more parts. As they say in Zombie Land: limber up. And not just in case of zombies either. For like other stuff as well. Like jogging.

I wonder if it's really a trend my posts are getting shorter and shorter. I don't know if I've really run out of stuff to write about, when I had so much before, or if I'm just putting off the enevitable dive into "current events". I don't know If I'm really interested in posting about current events. Maybe I'll just start with the iPad.

Yes, technically the iPad was announced several weeks ago. I guess I'm thinking about it more now than before on account of I am still a couple weeks behind in my podcasts so all those podcasts I subscribe to are just now talking about it.  So it's kind of fresh on my mind.

Anyway with all those grand-grand-grand-rumors and mock-ups and whatever the announcement comes and it's pretty much just an iPod Touch with a larger screen. Well I don't even have any interest in an iPod Touch so the double-sized screen iPod touch doesn't exactly excite me any more than that.

I mean I thought the main reason the few people that like tablets/touch screens liked them was becauase there were things like pressure sensitivity so say sketching in whatever application was that much more effective.

Well obviously you can't do that with the iPad: it's not the full Mac OS so no Photoshop or whatever else and it's designed to be used with fingers anyway so it's wouldn't really be an option. 

Of course what I thought would have been really cool before it came out, when I was just imagining things, is that it would be some kind of touch/tablet but also have 720p video put and be able to pair with bluetooth game pads. In otherwords it would be a psuedo games machine. 

Of coure there are several problems with this wish or prediction or whatever it is: first and foremost that Jobs guy I don't think has ever been a big games guy. That was always Woz's bag. Secondly Jobs has never been a big buttons guy. Take a look at the Pixar movie Wall-E to see the fatnasy computer interaces of "that Jobs guy". Not buttons. Unless iPod Touch/iPhones could some be paired and used as a controller. Hmmm. That'd be ane expensive game pad I think. Might actually work though. 

Anyway I knew it was a long shot but it certainly would have been crazy unexpected, wouldn't it. I mean it wouldn't be a real console, it would be less of a console then the Wii is now, I'm just saying it'd be pretty cool. I mean have this tablet you carry around with you, can play against people both in the same room with you and over a network/Internet and hook up to a TV and connect with game pads for full screen gaming on the big-screen? 

Well I guess so many people have iPhones anyway it's not really that far out there. The only thing preventing it would be the ability to pair iPhones with the iPad, the two of them interacting with each other in real time and the iPad's ability to out put video to a TV. Which it can probably do actually I just don't feel like looking it up.

Anyway I'm not really that interested in an iPad for the same reason I haven't purchased an iPhone or iPod touch: the things it does other stuff does better and the other stuff also does the stuff the iPad doesn't. 

Let me translate...myself...my netbook can run a real OS, has tons of software, can multi-task, and best of all for me doesn't handcuff me to that horrible horrible mess known as iTunes. 

Have I mentioned I hate iTunes? Well just in case lets go over it again for the first time: it installs back processes and services. I once tried disable some of the services only to find them re-enabled upon reboot. Unless I don't remember correctly. I'm pretty sure that's right though. I actually went out of my way to disable services in Windows. Not just stop but disasble them. Rebooted. The services were re-enabled. It really pisses me off. 

Also, and I'm much more confident of the accuracy of this one, it defaults to have the apple browser Safar checked by default with their update iTunes feature. That means I get a browser I don't care about or want, another attack vector for viruses and best off all I get to wait through all the subsequent updates that now come down for Safari. Which I didn't want in the first place. That was years ago they started attaching Safari to iTunes updates and that was the day I removed iTunes and haven't installed it since. And is also one of many reason I will not be buying an iPhone, iPod touch or the iPad.

Also, and I haven't checked this recently, those devices have never really played the Divx/Xvid formats have they? So many devices are able to play the universe of video formats beyond H.264. Don't get me wrong, that's a terrific format, I just would like the option of something more.

Now apparently at CES there was a new device announced with the follow features: a full regular laptop with keyboard and screen and all that and....the screen detaches and is a tablet device in and of itself. It has it's own battery and wifi and whatever on which to browse. And while it's out the laptop portion can still be connected to an external monitor for use. Then you can simply re-attach the table to the laptop base and continue using it. The laptop a regular Windows 7 type device whilst the tablet is some kind of Linux thing. Don't remember if that was Android or something else entirely. Anyway if I was going to get anything I would probably want to get that. It sounds like the best of both worlds although waiting for the second gen of that particular product probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

There's also supposed to be some "convertible" netbooks coming out at some point. You know, the kind that are regular laptops and then the screen swivels around and attaches and there's a whole touch screen to interface with. That'd be about the same screen size and work around the same way. 

The few times I have attempted to use tablets in a real-world sort of situation the thing seemed overly heavy after a couple of hours of using it. Seriously. So a netbook, screen size not withstanding, might be preferable.

And here I thought I wouldn't have anything to write about. I guess I didn't need to worry too much, eh? I guess I'll end this post here. Oh and this is Post number 41 by my count (31 days of January plus 10 of February...probably 41). I hope I'm getting better. Still.

Like the title? Ya, I thought it was clever. Isn't it clever? Well I thought it was apt in any case. Because I did beyond nothing today. I mean if I do so little I may as well be playing a computer game at least. You know have fun whilst wasting time and doing nothing? Ya that.

Well I did go to the local hardware store to see if they had a couple of different torx drivers so I could finally open and attempt to repair the hard drive of my Xbox 360. I mean I've had it long enough the warranty is expired anyway so I don't exactly have a lot to lose by my count. Well the hardware store didn't have the one size, a torx size 6 or whatever. So instead I ordered one of those multi-tool things from Amazon. The funny thing is I don't actually play 360 very often even when it works. Still, nice to have the option. Right?

Actually I ordered a little gadget called a ZipIt as well. It's a little device, I think roughly the save size as the older GameBoy Advance with the same sort of clam shell form factor, but it has a full QWERTY keyboard along with a little joystick/nub-like thing on the front of it. And the display is a convenient 320x240 resolution. Oh, and it has an ARM cpu, similar to the iPhone's CPU, and runs Linux as an OS. So really it's like a really, really tiny laptop that's too small to do anything on. Except maybe host a web server, web browse and everything else you can think of that a Linux distro can do but on an extremely small screen. 

Strangely enough I really only have the two things in mind for it: a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (e.g. LAMP) setup, for prototyping web sites or whatever, and using it as an MP3 player because Linux is bound to have at least one MP3 player that can keep track of where a sixty minute long podcast left off from.

I'm sure there's some other stuff I could use it for. I mean there's basically an entire debian distro that can be installed on the thing. Well not an entire distro. It's probably limited some what by the limited storage. But then a lot of distros try to keep the size down to 650 Megabytes so it will fit on a CD I guess. An old school re-writable CD, I think that would be. Oh, and the ZipIt is only $50 on Amazon right now. I probably should have bought an SD card with it. Too late. If I really need one I'll buy it later. I need some kind of convenient device that plugs into USB for accessing various SD cards anyway. I'm not sure but from what I've read I don't think there's a direct USB port and cable to allow a ZipIt to be plugged into a PC. 

Maybe I could use it as the host for some PXE images. Finally get that up and going. Like I had planned before. Only eight months ago. What? It could happen. 

Other than those two exciting things I just watched a lot of Hulu TV shows. I just started this morning over breakfast and before I knew I had spent an exaggeratingly (I'm declaring that a word) large portion of the day watching TV shows. The good (or bad) news is that I think I've possibly watched anything and everything I could possibly be interested in now so there's very little chance of wasting more time on it. Except tomorrow tonight's stuff will be on Hulu and there's a few shows I'm looking forward to. Caprica, perhaps LOST...and probably others I haven't thought of.

Oh, and I got some junk mail, the physical kind, from Google. Apparently I have a $100 redemption toward some AdWords ads. So, you know, if I had anything worth advertising I could probably maybe get a lot of traffic to that site. I don't really have anything to advertise though. And I'm a little unclear on the conditions. Do I have to actually redeem and spend the money before the end of March, or merely redeem it so the balance is on my account? I have no idea. Maybe I'll look it up and find out, maybe I won't.

I'm pretty sure I am in fact going to be moving. I've been at this same location since 2004, roughly 5 1/2 years as I write this, and I've been getting sicker and sicker of it for at least two of those years. A combination of things have finally prompted me to take this whole moving thing a bit more seriously.

For one thing when I first moved it was just me and my landlord/roommate. It was his house so he got the larger room with the private bath. After a couple years he lost his job and has strange requirements about where he's willing to work so he remained unemployed for over a year. At which point he moved into the loft area and rented out his room to another room mate. It's his house and he can do what ever he pleases with it. Of course the possiblitiy of me moving into this larger room with the private bath never came up. I assume because a room for rent with a private bath would be that much more likely to attract a renter. 

Fast forward a couple years and there's now been two different renters that have inhabited the other room, the most recent having moved out within the last couple of weeks. Again the possiblity, of me...the guy who has been in the same stuipid small room for 5 1/2 years loyallly...moving into that room was never discussed as even a possiblity. 

I'm saying I'm necessarily entitled to it, all I'm saying perhaps maybe since every one on earth apparently is open for possibility of moving into said room maybe, just maybe the possibility of me moving in could have been entertained or something. But what do I know.

Maybe that's just petty bitterness talking and maybe I should just grow up or something. Still, I'm a renter same as everyone else who would be responding to the ad, why am I excempt? What did I ever do besides pay rent consistently for all these years? 

Of course there's also this condo and the state of the condo. It's kind of falling apart, ill-maintained, dirty, filthy stained rugs, and a bathroom I'm currently sharing that the haz-mat team may have to come in and visit with special breather apparatii. 

And of course frankly I would like more room. For the same or roughly the same price I could rent an entire place with my own kitchen, bathroom and everything else with that muc more room. So really I can't think of that much reason for staying in the place I'm in.

Of course having just found out I didn't get that salaried position today I probably won't be moving closer to the city as I would have liked. I'll probably be moving further away ironically. But I will be closer to some family. So it'll be easier for me to visit them, for them to visit me and...if and when I run out of unemployment and savings I can simply move my stuff across the freeway into my Mom's house. I am not actually looking forward to this of course. No 31-year-old with any ounce of pride looks forrward to moving back into a parents house. 

Of course, it may be a better plan to simply move in to my mother's house now, thus saving that much more money on a month to month basis with the reportedly lack of rent charged. Assuming that part really happens.

In other news I have decided to try out some other content management/blog engine software that isn't WordPress. I mean I do love WordPress I just thought perhaps I should try out some other solutions and see how I like them. Maybe there's something that better suites my requiements that WordPress out there, I don't know. 

The main problem of course is having to upload all the files to my FTP space. Apparently although my download speed has apparently been upgraded by the ISP recently my upload speed still leaves something to be desired. 

The first CMS I'm trying out is one I had never even heard of called SilverStripe. I extracted the archive I downloaded which resulted in roughly 23 megabytes of files. I have been uploading these files for over an hour at my count and it looks like it won't be done any time soon. I am using that feature of the old school IE 6 to also be an FTP client to upload them. So far as I know there is no way to make the Windows CLI FTP client upload both files and the directory structure auto-magic. Which would I think make it easier.

The other one I will eventually try is called Pixie. I had never heard of this one either but it looks kind of promising to me. The emphasis on it seems be for small, simple sites. Of which I have a few so maybe it will be quite nice. 

For reference I actually found a Wikipedia page listing all the various content management systems and linking to the individual page for each one. I didn't realize there was such an incredible number of them. A majority of which run on PHP/MySQL conveniently enough.

I suppose at some point I should figure out how to get something running with Ruby On Rails. Perhaps. Maybe.

Like everybody else today I watched the Super Bowl. I don't actually watch football at all. Well technically I don't watch TV a whole lot in general but especially any kind of sports. Just never really appealed to me for some reason. Anyway I didn't have any particular emotional attachment to either team and had no idea going in which was the favorite to win. It looked like to Colts were going to walk all over the Saints in the first quarter then something happened and the momentum shifted and the Saints really did a steamroll number didn't they?

I watched and enjoyed the ads and did a little bit of work on the HTA project. I'm getting pretty close now to needing to some how covert the DOM-virtual generated table to some kind of XML. I suppose I should consult one of the many books I have on the subject and make sure it's possible. I'm pretty sure it's possible.

I guess I'll mention, even if I don't want to, I never heard anything one way or another about the interview last Monday. Maybe that's normal but more likely they've already selected someone else and they're waiting to make sure that person has successfully signed everything and it's all gone through before they inform all the people they didn't pick. At least that's my operating theory at the moment. Or perhaps I'm overly cynical due to some certain traumatic experiences in my recent past.

Apparently I'm writing rather short entries the last few days. That's only because I don't really have much to write. I did apparently have a bad time trying to sleep last night which made me sleep rather late this morning. So even though I've felt tired all day today I'm probably going to have the same thing happen tonight with the lack of sleep and tomorrow with the sleeping too late. Although I think tomorrow I'll be able to go for the five mile thing so maybe I'll be able to sleep tomorrow night. That'll be nice.  There see? A whole paragraph about nothing.