Laptop love song

One of my friends asked me if I was going to get one of the new MacBook Pros.  Even though I would love to, I am happy with my 800Mhz PowerBook Titanium G4.  Then I heard "A Laptop Like You", and it sums up my feelings pretty well.

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Coulton

iCarPlay

I mentioned how the the TuneBase FM for iPod didn't fit my iPod when it is in my case.  When I returned it to Fry's Electronics, I picked up the Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus for iPod.

I was unsure about how well this, or any other FM transmitter would work, with the interference from radio stations.  But it works very well.  I can hear the audio clearly, without much interference.  In addition to letting you listen to your iPod, it also charges it.

The one thing that I need to get now is a cup holder stand for the iPod to keep it in east reach. I am sure that someone make something like this, but I didn't see one at Fry's.

Technorati Tags: iCarPlay, iPod

Mac mini / Front Row suggestions

We have been using our Mac mini as a media center for a while, and even though I love it, there are some things that I would like to see added/changed.

1. To be able to change the ratings of tracks.  On the iPod, which has a very similar interface, you can press select to get to a screen that will rate the song.


2. To have a way to delete shows from a podcast, from within Front Row.  I often listen to an audio or video podcast on the train coming home from work, so I don't want to watch it again.  With out going into iTunes to delete that track, the only way for it to be removed the next time iTunes updates podcasts is to play the whole track.  (You can fast forward through it though)


3. Just like iTunes downloads podcasts, I would love it if iTunes/Front Row would download all of the trailers into a local cache.  Our kids love watching trailers, and it is pretty frustrating when network bandwidth is not keeping up with the bitrate of the the high resolution trailers. 

Technorati Tags: FrontRow, iTunes, Mac mini

NSStringRegEx

A while ago, I mentioned that Cocoa doesn't have built-in support for regular expressions.  Johnathon S. sent me an email about NSStringRegEx (header, code), which is a method that performs regular expression matching.  I like this better than a separate framework, as that seems like a lot of overhead.

The code itself has a Creative Commons Public Domain license, so you can use in all types of projects.

Technorati Tags: Cocoa, NSStringRegEx, regexp

Forced TV Ads

Episode 124 of the Digital Experience podcast, mentioned that Philips has filed a patent that would force users to watch commercials.  Essentially, this means that there would be a signal in the video stream, that when sent a TV would prevent you from changing channels.  With a PVR, this signal would prevent you from fast forwarding past.

Even if other companies license this technology, I don't think that this will be an effective means for saving advertising.  I, as I believe most consumers, would explicitly not buy any TV or PVR that used this technology.

Technorati Tags: patent, Philips

Firefox Flicks

I saw this video on del.icio.us, and I thought that it was pretty funny. 

http://media.revver.com/broadcast/19542/video.mov

This is a user submitted video for Firefox.  It looks like the Firefox team has setup Firefox Flicks where Firefox users can submit videos and compete for $5000.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Firefox Flicks

Code Monkey

I just heard this song yesterday, and I have to say...  I am a Code Monkey too.

Technorati Tags: Code Monkey