Mens Rea

iDisk and iPhone maladies

You know I am a dotmac (.mac) user. I was for years and let it lapse for over a year and after this year's upgrade in storage I went back primarily due to the iDisk feature that allows me to have all of my files on all computers and even on remote computers. But there are problems.

1. You should be able to have a folder on your finder. I've done this before and it works if you simply drag the iDisk folder to your finder, but what happens is that it goes down at times and does not let you know.

2. The offline capabilities need to be more streamlined. If I have iDisk to sync automatically when I click on iDisk it should be immediate for it is actually synching a folder locally. There is always some lag.

3. The dotmac's new web 2.0 site is a welcomed change; however they failed to think about its use. For example if you have a folder with say 20 subfolders it is impossible to scroll down further. This is nuts. From a company that made the GUI palatable to the masses, this is plain idiotic. I tried doing this from my iPhone but thought the error was only with the phone's browser. When going to a PC I experienced the same thing. I had to download the iDisk utility in order to get it to work.

4. The website should allow you some basic features for your iDisk. For example today I had to send a file to another attorney. I sent it and left my office and apparently the PDF I created only had the last 2 pages out of 34 pages. Well I had the word file in my iDisk. All I needed to do is get into my iDisk and just email it. There is NO way to do this despite having all the components within the dotmac site (i.e. it is your online .mac email as well). There is no excuse for this. It would really help those with iDisks shore up the limitation of not being able to store docs locally (like you can on an iPod). How I wish there was a 16gb iPhone that allowed you to store files. I could keep my active files (1.5 gb or so) plus music and pics and movies and I'd be in heaven. Alas... just a dream.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iDisk, iPhone, .mac, dotmac

NetNewsWire

I love information. No... I crave information. Unfortunately, the web has a tendency to create a sinking feeling of being trapped by it. To be seduced by it. One needs only to get trapped in the countless maze of Wikipedia to know what I am talking about. If you let it, information mongering can consume hours on end of your precious time. Is the answer not to read what's out there? In my opinion that is just plain nuts. That is like wishing to remain blissfully ignorant. Sure, there are those times where it is a vital necessity to shut down in order to accomplish a goal. Also, I think it is imperative that people take a vacation... not only an actual vacation but also a vacation from the web. It is healthy. I will do that in July. I am trying to figure out how I can have a series of blog entries that will post daily while I am gone. If anyone knows how to do this, pass it on please.

I bring all of this up because I have discovered the beauty of blog readers. I have used NewNewsWire on and off (always the trial version) for about 3 years. I never could quite understand the utility of it. However, when my daily read of blogs started to consume hours of my time, I realized that this was getting out of hand. So... finally I see what its all about. I can quickly sift through over a hundred blogs in 20 minutes. I stop at about a dozen posts to read the whole entry, but I can see what is going on pretty quickly. There are some blogs that I think blog too much so that I tend to disregard it... like the Huffington Post, which I love, but which the RSS feeds are in warp drive. So I have, for the moment, taken that off.

Technorati Tags: Blog Traffic, Feedburner, Huffington Post, Mac, NetNewsWire, Blogs, puppy, Wikipedia

Increased Traffic

I posted this a few days ago indicating that my readership has exponentially increased. As I stated this is sort of like saying that a one year old has exponentially increased their vocabulary of 10 words to 20. However, in my feedburner subscribers, I know have 15. I wonder why? It seems to me that track backing to a site like Leftsetz may have done this. I leave comments often on the web, but I tend to forget to trackback on them. Perhaps this is a reminder to do so. Additionally, the technorati tags have been a little more detailed and I put in a lot more regarding the given subject matter. Lastly, I have been better about internally linking to sites, finally realizing that if someone stumbles upon this site for some inexplicable reason, they wont know what my rants of Daylite are all about.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: Daylite, Feedburner, Leftsetz, Blog Traffic, puppy, Technorati, Trackback

Why I'll never have real readers

So far this month, I have really started to write with far more frequency, and as my stats indicate there is a correlation between writing often and the number of visitors. But who am I kidding? The difference between 9 readers and 20 is only a lot if this were a political spin story. I can read it now "Mens Rea's readership grew over 110% in the past month, a terrific improvement." Garbage. Why wont I have readers? Because I do not write to an audience. I write for me. Thus, people really do not care what I say, or what I believe. Exactly my point. It is not about 'them' it is about me. Somehow I feel some cathartic release by writing. Am I a particularly adept writer? No. Again, who cares? That's the beauty of the web. Schmucks like me can write their thoughts down as a time capsule of their lives. I look at this more as a depository for my kids. I would have loved to have had something like this to read of my parents when they were my age.

So... back to the issue: I won't have readers because my subject matter is far too specific to hold any one audience. I write a lot of technology. But are the readers of my technology posts necessarily going to agree with my nutty political rants? Probably not. Are my musical posts going to jive with my posts on business and immigration? I doubt it. Thus, this is a blog about me and for me. If I gain readers, wonderful. If not, no worries.

A blog worth reading

All of you know my favorite daily blog is Fred Wilson's. He is entertaining and discusses my two passions: technology and music. He has an extensive blo-roll and every once and a while, I give some more a try. I have permanently added about 10 to my NetNewsWire RSS feeds. However, about a month ago, I caught his link to the Lefsetz letter. Unbelievable! This is one of the best music journalists I have ever read. It is artfully written from a first person account. He is nostalgic to a fault, but manages to take you into his own narrative, much like a well written novel. If he wrote this as a novel, I, for one, would most assuredly buy it.

I find some similarities to myself (not in ability to write, that's for sure). He is a lawyer (UCLA grad it seems). But hated being an attorney- he found it boring and did not like most in his profession. As my "about" page has always stated, I, too, have a utter disdain for most attorneys. I find them heartless and lacking passion. Leftsetz also shows haw music is utterly transcendent. How it becomes an appendage of your being. That, like the aroma of Grandma's apple pie (which never actually existed), it triggers profound memories and thoughts. Hell, for me, I can ever recall smells from certain music.

Leftsetz's musical leanings are a little too '70's progressive at times and he certainly enjoys pop more than I do. But, unlike many musical snobs, I do appreciate a brilliant pop song when I here it. It seems here, both of agree that the Backstreet Boys "I Want It That Way" is a bloody masterpiece of modern music. Thus, the bourgeois in me yields to pure pop bliss when it is taken to its highest level. So it was over-produced. So, they were created by Lou Pearlman- the modern day P.T Barnum. I don't care. In that one moment, they bottled magic and captured a moment that is indelible. When I hear that I have strong memories of being in the Philippines where pop music is the force d'jeur. But the Filipino's seemed to have an amazing knack at finding the ultimate pop songs- the infectious grooves that is the DNA of our modern music. If you go to any Filipino mall, one of the most striking things you will notice is how loud the music is. Every store cranks their own music. However, 9/10 times it is the same track that seems to be repeated continually so that it burns into your psyche. So, while I do not queue up Pink's 'Let's Get the Party Started' on my iTunes, when I hear it, my inner-self dances in a way that my pale white body never could.

The Leftsetz letter is now officially on my blogroll.

Technorati Tags: Backstreet Boys, Fred Wilson, Leftsetz, Music, Pink, NetNewsWire, Attorneys

iLife '06 and iWeb

I purchased the new iLife '06 for Mac about 3 weeks ago under the premise that the .mac integration was far superior and one would have significantly more control over our personal sites. Additionally, there were suggestions that iPhoto was improved. After installing it and playing with for about 3 weeks I have a few comments. iPhoto '06 is significantly improved. Load times are substantially faster- I would suggest that it is an exponential speed gain. Organization within the program is a bit better. Unfortunately some of the things that I would love to see are still not there. First, it still creates thumbnails in a labyrinth-like chasm of folder organization. It is so damn convoluted and well, un-Mac-like. Contrast this with Adobe Photoshop album which does not have create thumbnails within the pictures folder is far superior. It logically names the folders for easy reference. I have my folders named by day and time. Try to explain how iPhoto does this? I have not been able to figure it out, nor have many other people. Another feature that is just shocking that they don't have is a method, similar to what exists in iTunes, to have your photo's on an external drive. Related to that, there should be a mechanism to consolidate your pictures into one directory, another useful tool that is also in iTunes. Why, why why?

iWeb, just like its predecessor, .mac webpages, has remarkable templates that are professional looking and well done. Very tight integration with iPhoto allowing you to easily upload your pics to your .mac account. BUT, here's what is not great. It is still painfully slow. For example it takes approximately 3-4 times longer to upload pictures to .mac than it does to flckr and consider that flicker does not compress the pictures like .mac does it makes one wonder. Another idiotic aspect of it is that it is not intuitive to create subfolders (except for the blog template), thus all pages seem to go to the root, which is really stupid. Also, the mechanism to transfer our existing .mac pages to iWeb is not clear. I know I can do it, but I'll have to actually have to read about it and I am sorry but as bad as Frontpage was years ago, this was very easy to do. I would expect more from Apple. Perhaps I'll give them a pass as this is their first version.

I have not used any of the other programs, thus I cannot comment. Garageband seems neat, but I just don't have a need for it. Also, despite the fact that I have a video camera I have NEVER mastered a DVD of the footage. I will chalk that up to shear laziness!! Also, I think that once I did it, I would become obsessed like Brian Wilson on Pet Sounds. Unfortunately I have that in my blood and thus I would rather not open Pandora's Box! I have never watched a DVD on my PowerBook (don't know why, just haven't).

In conclusion, iPhoto's improvements alone warrant the upgrade. If you could ever merge Photoshop Albums intuitive file/directory system with iPhoto's slickness, you'd have a killer application. Oh, I forgot, it still pisses me off that when I toss my photos into albums that this data is not automatically embedded in the exif data. It should be. Oh, and while we're talking about that, id3 tags need to add more categories such as mood. Here's my suggestion. Like gracenote, why not license allmusic's data and have it download the mood and the genres as I look at that as the definitive of music organization. It would be a good way for almusic to increase revenue. Considering that is a local Ann Arbor company, I'd love to see them do that!

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, Technology

Offshoot blog

I will be spinning off the immigration section of this blog to be a counter to Michelle Malkin and the idiots that are publishing distortions. I don't mind someone disagreeing with me on a fundamental philosophy, but when you lie to achieve your goal it really call your entire premise into question. The immigration laws are what they are. They are flawed to be sure, but they are not as lax as those Lou Dobbsian folks would have people believe. If it were that easy, my job as an immigration attorney would be significantly easier. The immigration code is second only to the Internal Revenue Code in terms of its overall complexity; a complexity compounded by the rapid rate of legislation amending, adding or repealing statutes. It is an on-going struggle to be sure.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, H-1B Visas, Immigration, Law

1001 and Ecto

I figured out how to use iPhoto to post to Flickr using 1001 from the same creator as Ecto. So I have accomplished a lot of my blogging goals today. I figured out how to add the Last.fm last 10 tracks data in RSS. Was actually fairly easy considering that there is now a feed. One thing to remember TypePad is remove the Feed:// portion and it will work. With it it merely gave me a "O". I originally tried to pull the source code from Last.fm, it worked ok, but had too much information and when I changed it, it reformatted my entire site.
I still wish I could figure out how to upload pictures from Ecto to my TypePad photo album. Will have to play with it a bit more.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Ecto, Flickr, TypePad

Del.icio.us & Flickr

I am trying to figure out how to have a Del.icio.us add-in on the bottom of my entries such as with the Trackback. Thus far I can't figure it out. Perhaps I can merely add in the tag via hard HTML within the posting itself as with the Technorati tags. Additionally, my favorite blog A VC has his flickr pictures on the sidebar. I can't exactly figure out how he is doing that unless he is hard coding that. Now that Typepad supports HTML in the non-pro version, perhaps I can do it, but if anyone knows how, write a comment. Also, I am going to have to explore whether or not there is a reasonable method to upload iPhoto images to Flickr rather than via the web interface which I can tell is quite time consuming. There appears to be some mechanism within Ecto, but I will have to play around with it a bit.

As any reader of this blog will note, I have been blogging on a more regular basis. It is interesting to note that I get the most hits on my site when I go on about religion. I should devote my blog to that, but alas, I'd get bored if that was all I did. i would be the mirror image of "them." Consumed with only religion, while I have an entire life to live.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Flickr, TypePad

New Hampshire Test.

I have had some difficulty with the iPhoto and Ecto combination. I have an 8.0 Megapixel camera and my hunch was that the files were simply too large. I am attempting to determine if Ecto and Typepad autocompress the files for posting on the web. This photo was with my old Canon G2 4.0 mega pixel camera. Still one of the best in terms of feature sets and convenience. I miss the flip out LCD.