Tsaot's Blog

Three hundred words is not a lot to say. In fact, one can say very little in three hundred words. So why does it take so long for me to write out one paper so small? The only reason I can think of is a concept discussed by Anne Lamott in bird by bird. That would be the s**ty first draft (a.k.a. the crappy first draft).

Waking up is a hard thing for me to do. That isn't the problem though; it is merely a symptom. The problem is my bed. I love my bed. It is a gunmetal gray loft with the mattress five feet off the ground and the ceiling three feet above. The enclosed space makes for little to do but sleep or read. It is a cave where nothing can disturb me. The mattress is firm to the point that it gives only slightly under my weight, making it bounce whenever I move.

After much adventuring, I have managed to snag a beta key of Windows 7 and boy is it ever worth the effort. The user experience in the new OS is greatly improved over XP and Vista. Windows 7 makes Vista look like a sandbox of failed ideas in comparison. From the new Windows Explorer interface, to the greatly improved Windows Media player, Windows 7 works! [caption id="attachment_79" align="aligncenter" width="524" caption="The new task bar. Firefox, Windows Explorer, and Windows Media Player are all quick-launch.

Once a year the Consumer Electronics Show rolls around and once a year I wish I were a tech journalist that could fly off to Vegas to ogle the new, the improved, and the outright ridiculous. Thankfully there are more than enough tech journalists there to provide me with the information I want. The first item this year that has caught my eye is the Asus Eee PC T91. It is a continuation of the Eee netbook line but with a tablet touchscreen interface. I've been wanting a netbook for a while.

Thomas wasn't always considered to be the wisest of the little people; one of the smartest for sure, but not the wisest. His inquisitive mind always led down paths that many would not follow, leading to many bruises and the occasional broken bone. His fall-stopper was a prime example of his intelligence overriding common sense. It consisted of a large amount of duck feathers, only one of which was obtained from the duck*, woven into a large sheet of netting.

A new semester has begun. This means new assignments. One of which belongs to my creative writing class. Write 300 words a day, 5 days a week, for 60 days. That's 12 weeks of writing with an end result of 18,000 words to be turned in at the end of the semester, not counting other assignments. Now, I'm not the kind of person to let 18,000 words go to waste. If I'm going to be writing them, someone better darn well be reading them and it's not going to be just my professor. No, that honor will belong to you, my imaginary readers.

The semester began on a high note. One bad semester was behind me and the classes I had signed up for in this one looked fun. The line to renew my parking pass was short and I was able to say hi to two good friends. I was able to get into all of my classes as needed, wait-lists be darned a sweater of the itchiest wool, and make it on time for my first class. Events in said class led me to the decision to go one class without my beloved laptop computer, Tsaoted, but that would be fine as I would use him for every assignment as my revenge.

Hulu is a wonderful central repository of TV shows. For fans, they can watch whenever they want provided they have a high speed connection. They can embed favorite episodes or clips in their own blogs (example after the jump). They can even subscribe to shows such that they have a queue ready and waiting for them. For content providers, there is ad revenue, copy protection, and even Buy It Now links! It's the best of both worlds one would think. So why does it look like Funimation is ignoring Hulu? I won't say they aren't using Hulu. They have tons of shows on Hulu, but if you go to the Funimation web site, you will find those same shows plus some more. For example: Hulu has 13 xxxHolic episodes while Funimation has the entire first season. Now I will admit, if I go to Funimation's site, I would expect to find Funimation shows. What I don't expect to find is Funimation shows with no ad revenue and no copy protection. Funimation is using their own custom version of the Flash flv player. All the episodes are freely downloadable to everyone. The only form of revenue Funimation can expect from fans is if they feel that they need to own the show on DVD. Funimation, while not one of my favorite companies, is fairly progressive for an old media company. They are competing with fansubbers by releasing shows as they come out in Japan (Shikabane Hime). They are making an active push into new media with their products with this online video. Now they need to make money on the new media side. Ad's aren't the evil and I will tolerate it when it doesn't interfere with the show (1/3 overlays do YouTube). I just have to ask, what is Funimation doing by offering up shows with no expected form of return?

UPDATE: Twitter greeter is dead. The API calls I was making really were somewhat of a security hole in the Twitter API, especially for people who had their updates locked as I could see all of their tweets and profile info if I wished (I did not grab this info in Twitter Greeter, but the possibility was present.) The API calls I made are now password protected regardless of your login status and unless I can trick suckers convince people to enter in their password on my site, Twitter Greeter won't work.

Thanks to @dacort of http://dcortesi.com/ I've been playing around with Twitter today. Here is the result (note: you must be logged in to Twitter for this to work):