Natebot

Magnetic Fields at Town Hall

2010-02-21T13:15:00.001-08:00

This week I'll be seeing The Magnetic Fields perform Realism at Seattle's Town Hall.

Searching the CI manual via Ubiquity

2009-05-24T20:34:00.006-07:00

Back in October, I mentioned Ubiquity - an incredible add-on for Firefox that allows you to use Web services without visiting their web pages. For example searching Google without going to google.com.

Back then I said I'd share more. Well here's my own small Ubiquity script for searching the Code Igniter user manual along with a screen shot of it in action.

Simply activate Ubiquity, type "ci" and the word or phrase to search and you'll instantly get back a preview of the 4 top results from Google. You'll also get links to search the forums or wiki for the same search terms.

Ubiquity keeps growing and changing as it snowballs its way to a full on 1.0 release, and I'm sure I'll need to update the script before long. If you are a Ubiquity developer let me know so I can follow your blog or use your scripts!

Where's the 'bot?

2009-05-24T20:01:00.002-07:00

Dear readers, if you're reading this I'm amazed. :) You see, it's been months, long, wintery, soul grinding months since I've posted here and for that I'm sorry. I can't really blame you for not checking back in hope that something may have appeared. But lo! A new post appears! A new direction is in the works.

I'd like to say that my recent flirtations with Facebook and Twitter are to blame - and that's true to the extent that it's just more convenient to post directly to those networks - but really the one-way channel that is blogging hasn't been on my mind of late. After leaving Privateer I've been pursuing contract work - no easy feat in this flat world - and ramping up my business knowledge to get back into the freelancer mode of existance. Nothing like reading the fine points of Seattle and Washington State business tax codes to pass the winter months.

But summer is on its way and so it's time for me to start posting again and to take things in a new direction. The initial purpose of the blog was to provide some context of my life here in Seattle to those back in Indiana. But I feel Facebook does a better job of that now, and Twitter does a better job of keeping you informed of my current life context. So for now I'll focus my blog on more technology-based stuff.

So my plan is to switch for a personal blog about my life to a blog about my current interests. I'll share my current love of PHP programming, jQuery goodness, and LAMP stack wizardry - with an occasional post on flying cars and fembots just to keep things real.

Until the next post, thanks for checking in!

Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968

2008-11-30T12:56:00.003-08:00

NPR is broadcasting the full concert of Neil Young's live concert at Canterbury House in 1968 which releases on CD/DVD on Dec 2nd. This show in Ann Arbor, Michigan is an intimate acoustic show of the then 22 year-old artists before his rise to stardom.

Growing up I remember the Neil Young self-titled album's cover in the meager stack of vinyl our family had. It was one of the albums I took with me to college. I saw Neil in Indy on his tour for Harvest Moon - at an awful outdoor venue for an acoustic show all full of loutish and loud high school drunks - and regretfully report missing him up in Everett last month's sold out show. At least you can avoid the hellishness of other people when you listen to this recording in the sanctum of your stereophonic living room.

BTW - If you decide you like it enough to purchase it, consider buying the album from my link below. If you do, I'll get a sweet kickback from Amazon.

Sugar Mountain-Live At Canterbury House 1968 (CD/DVD)

What's your (blog) type?

2008-11-23T19:15:00.002-08:00

Typealyzer analyzes blogs and types them apparently according to the Myers-Briggs typology. So what's the analysis for natebot.com?

ESTJ - The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they�ve made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.

I'll let you be the judge of the accuracy, but I will note that this blog shares the same analysis as the Cult of Mac blog. Heh. Here's an analysis for a few other friends' blogs:

The Beatnik Blog:

ESTP - The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow:

ESFP - The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don�t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Sounds about right for a blog about gaming. and the 80s. It's not like I'm asking the blog to do my taxes or manage my business. Sheesh.

Typealyzer found via Daily Dish.

Google's Street View rolls through Wedgwood, Seattle

2008-11-12T18:14:00.005-08:00

Google has rolled through our hood this summer, capturing photos for their mapping application's street views. Using the app I was able to find the Big Rock from down the street, aka the Wedgwood Rock which I discovered only this summer. The huge rock was deposited over 14,000 years ago by the Vashon Glacier.

View Larger Map

A few other highlights:

Ballard Featured in NYTimes

2008-11-10T22:36:00.003-08:00

The New York Times has a short article in their Escapes section about our favorite neighborhood Ballard. The picture above (taken at the great Sunday market on Ballard Ave) is part of a photo slideshow featuring some great shots of our old 'hood, including the windows of the fish ladder of locks down the street, and the Olympics-facing beach on the other side of Sunset Hill.

Sadly, novelty shop (or whatever you call a place that sells bacon floss) Archie McPhee's is leaving after the landlord decided not to renew the contract after years. McPhee's will be moving to Wallingford. It would be a pitty to see another condo going up on the property. When I moved to Ballard four years ago, at least five different condo properties appeared off of Market Street. Now with the housing crash effecting some areas - many condos are left empty - at $900K it doesn't sound that sweet of a deal. Ballard's growth doesn't seem to slow though.

The Young Folks

2008-11-05T17:44:00.003-08:00

For those of you out of town (or not in Chicago), you missed a heck of a party:

I was teaching class last night on Capital Hill. The Hill was alive with voices and honking horns as folks filled up Broadway and Pike as seen in the video above.
. But spontaneous celebrations also filled downtown, starting with The Strangers election party at Showbox that drew the most revelers.

Amazon Gets It

2008-11-03T21:20:00.004-08:00

I briefly considered entitling this "Naked Amazon" but reconsidered since it is stretching the metaphor. Anyway, as you may have heard Amazon is embarking on an initiative to reduce redundant packaging of products.

On occasion Jeff Bezo, founder of Amazon, posts a notice on the front page of the internet shopping site*. These usually regard some new product, like the Kindle, or a new service like mp3 downloads. Today Jeff, announced an initiative that I'm glad to hear and hope other companies pick up. We could all do with less waste, especially of the plastic kind, from packaging.

Responding to what Jeff calls "Wrap Rage" - the frustration trying to open those damn vacuum packed clam shells - the letter claims Amazon will be aiming toward replacing crappy packaging with easy to open and environmentally friendly packaging (aka cardboard).

While this is good news for the cardboard suppliers of the world, time will also tell how successful Amazon is in persuading manufactures to change their packaging techniques. Could this be a well timed initiative to drum up free pre-holiday press by the world's largest online retailers? Certainly. Could it have an effect. Possibly. Amazon doesn't have the swagger of Walmart, who isn't afraid to throw around its weight around in deciding what's best for you, but it's a start in the right direction.

BTW - the Lifehacker site suggests using a can opener for those pesky clam shells.

*If the letter is off the site when you read this you might find it here.

Seattle Webcam Flip Book Project

2008-10-18T20:19:00.003-07:00

I'm started a little long term project I am calling the Seattle Webcam Flip Book.

Every time you visit the site I'll save my web cam image of Seattle. Then in about a year's time I will have a gallery of web cam images that I can correlate with my site visit logs. The result being a nice flip book animation of the city built by my site visitors.

Typically the web cam is a shot from Queen Anne hill and captures the Space Needle but sometimes it points to the Marina. So the flip book may jump around a bit from location to location unfortunately. Also, I don't get a ton of visitors so it's unlikely the flip book will be anything like time lapse photography. To do that I'll start a new project that saves a picture via a cron job.

Also the image now changes it's text depending on the time of day in Seattle.

Becoming Ubiquitous

2008-10-16T13:10:00.007-07:00

If you are a Firefox power user and consume many Web services like Google Maps, Twitter, or, um, email, you are going to like what you can do with the Ubiquity extension for the Firefox browser.

This video does a good job explaining how powerfu and useful Ubiquity can be in mashing up various Web 2.0 services.

I particularly like being able to drop in Google Maps into my emails or emailing portions of web pages.

Being able to check the weather by simply typing 'weather seattle' is very nice too.

While Ubiquity is still in alpha release, it's pretty handy and there is already a great many third party developers extending it with their own scripts. In future posts I'll show how I use Ubiquity for PHP and Flash development using third party scripts, and introduce a couple Ubiquity scripts of my own.

Make Quicklook Better

2008-09-20T16:29:00.005-07:00

Unlike the snazzy but arguably useless addition of Cover Flow navigation to OS X, Quicklook is one of the best UI features of Leopard. You can page through Word docs and pdf's, preview images, all without waiting for their apps to load (a serious time suck for apps like Word, Adobe Reader, and Photoshop). This can seriously increase your productivity when trying to find that one file whose name your forgot, or quickly lookup info in a pdf or Word file.

However, for Web developers, it would be nice if we could Quicklook our javascript, css, and actionscript files too. It would be even better if it provided color coding to make visually parsing our html, php, and other text-based files even easier.

Now we can thanks to the one of the great Quicklook plugins listed on qlplugins.com. The plugin is hosted here on Google Code. If you develop on Leopard, drop in this plugin to your /Library/Quicklook folder and speed up your development time.

Even if you are not a dev, the Folder and Archive plugins are very useful - allowing you to preview the contents of a folder or a file archive (like a zipped file) without opening or uncompressing them respectively. I have found these last two plugins so helpful that I am surprised the functionality didn't come stock in Quicklook.

What sort of customization have you done to your Leopard install? Please share!

Bumbershoot cometh

2008-08-30T09:25:00.002-07:00

We are off to the Seattle Center (home of the Space Needle) to take part in Bumbershoot 2008. Tonight's main stage show is Beck. But also in our sites are Neko Case, Saul and Lucinda Williams (no relation) , Sherman Alexie, as well as the comedy shows. The comedy shows are always packed but worth the wait in line. We were saddened to hear Zack Galifianakis canceled but I hear David Cross is showing up so Huzzah!. And that's just today, Sunday and Monday promise a reading by William Gibson, music by Lee Scratch Perry , DJ Cheb i Sabbah, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Weatherman says 63 degrees and 30 percent chance of showers. I'll take my shorts and sunscreen. Weathermen, pftttht!

Glitter and Doom

2008-08-01T20:27:00.003-07:00

That's the headline for All Songs Considered's Live in Concert coverage of Tom Waits' concert in Atlanta. They are offering the concert, at least 2 hours 21 minutes 41 seconds, for download in mp3 format (at respectable 128kbps 130Mb).

Right now I'm listening to "Down in the Hole" the song used in the opening of HBO's The Wire. If you're a fan, even a little, you should download this. If you're not a fan then I dunno if we can be friends anymore. Just saying.

Netflix streaming to xbox 360

2008-07-28T23:08:00.003-07:00

Gizmondo is reporting that Xbox Live will support Netflix's "Watch Instantly" service beginning in the fall. [update: here's the press release from xbox at e3]

If you've been living in a cave for the past year or so, Netflix allows it's subscribers to watch movies (of its library of 10K movies compared to Apple's 1K) on their Windows PC. If you're in a particular deep part of the cave, Netflix is an internet (the thing you are using right now, aka a 'series of tubes') service that rents movies via the post (aka 'snail mail'), and as a subscriber you also get access to watch a select subsection of their library of movies.

This news comes on the heels of my purchase of the Roku player which streams my 'Watch Instantly' queue directly to my tv.

I'll prepare a review of the Roku for another post but I'll say here that I am pretty happy with it. It's easy to use, plays movies faster than using my laptop ( considering having to re-boot the Macbook into Windows), and the quality ranges from TV quality to a few pixelizations when traffic is high (I have 3Mb downstream and 802.1 n network but still sometimes things grind to halt). The library of available movies has grown recently but still is mostly b-rate films, old films, and documentaries. Thing is, I do watch ye olde British tv, the odd documentary, and Westerns so I'm happy with what they offer, including tv series that I've missed.

I am a bit suprised by this announcement though. I knew Netflix was trying to get on as many platforms as possible (the Roku being the first of many possible machines), and I've heard they even released some code for anyone to make their own player, but I thought Microsoft would treat Netflix as a competitor to their own movie rental service through Xbox Live. Still this is welcome news to me, as I would be happy to consolidate my media watching through one machine like the 360. Now if Microsoft would add support for Pandora and shoutcasts (like somaFM's) then I would be in media heaven.

Put a Geek into Office

2008-07-27T12:19:00.005-07:00

You can help put a geeky geek into office in all places, Kansas.

I first heard about this from Boing Boing like many of you, but the rest of you will read about it in the Wall Street Journal or the LA Times on Monday.

Political neophyte and Information Architect ( one of the important behind-the-scenes jobs of making information easy to find and use - say for example on a website ) Sean Tevis has launched a netroots campaign for Kansas State Representative in a small district just south of Kansas City.

According to his site, his call for 3000 donations of a modest amount of $8.34 to fill his campaign war-chest was answered in just about 35 hours. That's pretty impressive since supposedly no candidate in Kansas has ever had more than 644 donors. Though he may have gotten the bare minimum for running a campaign, he's still taking more donations. If you're a web-head check the source code of his site for an easter egg.

I wish Sean Tevis good luck and sent him a donation via PayPal.

Buzz Relocation

2008-07-26T14:54:00.006-07:00

The Consumerist blog is reporting the following Starbucks closures in Seattle

15th ave e 328 15th ave e
denny & aurora 620 denny way
met park ii 1220 howell st
23rd & madison 2201 e madison ave
45th & stone way 1218 n 45th st
northgate mall ii 301 ne northgate way
42nd & sw alaska 4704 42nd ave sw

As is the Seattle Times with this map. None of them impact me, as I treat the 'bucks as a last resort, usually only when traveling in lands where Americano has an entirely different meaning.

Another reason to avoid Starbucks, they might claim infringement of their trademarked logo by the Rat City Roller Girls logo . I have not heard a peep about this since it was reported in May, but the synopsis is that the local league of 80 some rollergirls were attempting to get their long used official logo registered as trademarked with gov'ment (you know the ® not the ™ ) and Starbucks lawyers asked to put a halt to the proceedings until they determined if Starbucks wishes to contest it.

I suppose the lawyers are just doing their job by being overprotective, so I wait to see what the suits at the 'bucks have to say. Will utter fear drive them to attack any logo with portraits and concentric circles? Or will they realize that roller derby and coffee are actually two different catagories - and their customers will never be so confused to go accidently buy tickets to a event at Magneson Park when what they really wanted was a Half Decaf - Grande - Quad - Half Non-Fat - Half Soy - Wet Whole Milk Foam - Two Splenda - Extra Hot - Nutmeg - Three Ice Cubes - Double Cup - Double Pump Peppermint - Single Pump Mocha?

If you want to be down with all the Starbucks gossip then maybe you should subscribe to the, er, Starbucks Gossip blog.

Bedford Indiana 2535 AD

2008-06-13T21:45:00.001-07:00

Mudding, Teenage Werewolves, all the things I miss most about South-central Indiana.

What to do when not watching your favorite reruns of Bedford Indiana 2535? Why not catch up with a day in the life of the most evil man on the planet:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YilbhCOzKo4
The Skeletor Show with Skeletor (as Skeletor) remixed by B'ton's own Daniel G.

Hey, I'm updating my...

2008-06-02T20:54:00.003-07:00

Hey, I'm updating my blog by speaking into my phone. I'm using a new service called Jott. It's awesome. Also, I just downloaded a new album by M-Seven called Activate. Actually, it's only new to me, it's been around since 2003. You can find it on Amazon, in their mp3 download section and you can hear it on SomaFM. listen

Powered by Jott

Vancouver Photos in Gallery

2008-04-22T22:15:00.004-07:00

Huzzah! There was much rejoicing! A few images from the trip made it into the gallery.

This is one of my favorites that Amanda snapped:

Trip Pics on Facebook

2008-04-16T23:41:00.003-07:00

I've posted a handful of pics of our trip to Vancouver BC on Facebook. They'll show up on the Natebot gallery soonish. Maybe this weekend.

Overall a great trip, spent the day in Gastown and Stanley Park. Finished it with some excellent French toast at Fergason Point in Stanley Park, and a couple rather nice rye Manhattans on Robson street.

Whoa, It's When?

2008-04-11T22:39:00.002-07:00

It's April already? I haven't posted since when? What have I been up to? Hibernating? Well, yes, I think so.

It's been a tough winter. Amanda lost both her beloved cats - Sister Eartha Kit, age 16 , and Carlos, 15, to congestive heart failure and kidney failure respectively. They had a long and happy life though and they will be missed.

I've not touched the blog and every time I think about writing I tell myself to wait for something significant to post...and so nothing... So I'm just going to keep this short in hopes I can get back into the rhythm of posting again - it's mere presence after a long absence ought to be significance enough, yeah?

Soon we'll be taking a trip up to Vancouver BC. Amanda's first trip to that city and my second. We haven't decided what to do, maybe a bit of kayaking, or maybe Stanley Park and the Aquarium, or Gastown. I think sushi is on the dinner menu and a Rye Manhattan.

Yo La Tengo

2007-11-06T00:05:00.002-08:00

Yo La Tengo rocked Town Hall last Tuesday night.

Am and I saw them at the Showbox earlier this year on their tour for I Am Not Afraid Of You, And I Will Beat Your Ass. They rocked their more loud electric stuff for the club, but on Tuesday they got to bring out more of their mid-range and quieter fair.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in other than an evening with my favorite alt rockers in one of the most intimate settings one could wish for. We got great seats in the old church-style sweeping wooden benches of the Hall even though I was late showing up (stupid Bellevue busses! Thanks to the driver of the 550 who didn't dally in the shiny new bus tunnels downtown)

Things kicked off with one of my favs: "Big Day Coming" the lead song from 1993's Painful - the year I really started getting into them. They didn't have a set list but instead played on a whim, chatting with the audience whilst tuning between songs, even taking requests from the audience. Ira solicited questions from the audience, saying they were their to "correct any misconceptions" about their 20-some year musical career. The result was a nice interactive conversation with audience between some of my favorite Yo La Tengo tunes of the last score years, like "Tom Courteney".

Buy It For a Song, But How Much Is The Song?

2007-10-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

As you might have heard, independent rockers Radiohead released their new album In Rainbows lately. I've never been a super huge Radiohead fan but I'm diggin' on this album. It's holding up to multiple listenings and you can't beat the price.

Radiohead allows you to name your price for the downloaded album on their site. So if you are total cheapskate - or maybe just radiohead curious - and want to pay a $1, well go right ahead. Warning though, I was charged a transaction fee of about $0.45 and likely you will be too. Also be aware that many credit card companies don't actually allow charges of $0.01 (because criminals use that amount to test stolen cards).

I decided to pay $7 for the 10-song album, well under the 99 cent per song pricing found on iTunes, and less than half what I'd play for a CD. The mp3's are coded at 160 kbps which isn't the best but honestly isn't bad at all. Amazon charges 89 to 99 cents for DRM free tracks at a slightly better quality.

I suppose you've already read about this scheme in the New York Times, heard about it on Morning Edition, or Marketplace, or elsewhere.

What I didn't know, was the idea was not entirely novel. The Freakanomics blog (I recommend picking up the book at your library) at the New York Times informed me that an artist in Seattle has adopted the 'pay what you will' method for some time.

In 2050 you can marry your vacuum.

2007-10-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

A researcher in the Netherlands thinks Massachusetts will be the first state to legalize marriage to a robot, as reported in this MSNBC article. This topic comes on the heels of recent findings that Roomba users have emotional attachment to their vacuums. Don't miss your chance to vote on the topic.

Assuming that robots, that's androids and not vacuums, become so sophisticated in 40 years time that they are recognizably human in both intellect and emotional capacity, I don't see what could be considered so 'icky' about hardware to wetware legal bonding. I think by 2050 not only could robots have something resembling human free will, that brain science will show human free will is a lot less free than we think it is now. The conversion of these two factors might lead to some very interesting debates in the middle of the century.

Notice the researcher is not being as radical as all that. He's not predicting same-tech marriages of robot to robot. Maybe we can expect that for 2101? Or how about the eventual meaninglessness of the concept entirely? Now I'm not arguing that expanding the definition of marriage to the non-human will lead to it's demise, only that profound technological change, such as in the health field, will lead to institutional changes. If humans begin to live happily for 150 to 200 years, or have the ability to live on indefinitely (in the body of a robot?)- would you so easily enter into a vow of unending marriage at age 18? 24? even 35?