I thought maybe one of the throwaway announcements at today's "event" might be some info regarding WWDC 2006. Unless Apple decides to move it further into the summer, then we've only got about 3 months until the conference would typically begin. It would be nice to start making arrangements... unless... maybe Dvorak is on to something, maybe Apple's going to start using Windows and there'll be no need for a developer conference in San Francisco anymore!

Bwahahahahaha!

Seriously guys, when's the conference?

technorati:
• apple
• wwdc
• dvorak

Posted by Casey at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A while back there was an idea for a device that, without getting into much detail, needed a little software written to push some information to it. The scope was pretty narrow and it started me thinking that perhaps if I wrote something to broaden it's scope, and yet still satisfy the requirements of the project, that that might also broaden the appeal. I also started wondering if perhaps it made sense to try and manage the configuration of some of our other peripherals in one unifying application. Rather than writing code to, for example, adjust the volume in iTunes for both the AirClick and PowerMate software, why not consolidate that code and and define it as some sort of task that can be triggered via a button press on an AirClick remote, or turning the PowerMate knob? There are several obvious benefits.

So that was the genesis of the idea behind Proxi, the forthcoming software currently in the early stages of beta testing. What I ended up with is an application that allows you to configure these triggers not only using the AirClick and PowerMate, but also such things as key presses, new email, iTunes track changes, incoming Skype calls, speech recognition, RSS feeds, etc., etc. When a trigger is recognized, a task or series of tasks are conditionally executed. These tasks can include such things as simulating a key press, executing an AppleScript, displaying a message on screen, controlling iTunes, iChat, or Skype, launching or activating an application, writing data to a file, and so on.

Of course that's the just the highlights... perhaps it would be easier to explain if I just tossed out a few screenshots.

AirClick trigger volume up controlling...	...System volume up	PowerMate trigger button controlling...
...iTunes Play/Pause	Letting the Boss know...	...that I'm hard at work
Using speech recognition to control Skype	Adding extra data to a trigger	Adding pre-configured triggers / tasks using the Blueprint browser

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• proxi
• powermate
• airclick
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• beta

Posted by Casey at 2:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I tried watching some of the Olympics tonight and the experience was as it has been the last several times I tuned in to try and watch some of this years games. It went something like this:

Click. Ooh... bobsledding. Bobsledding is good. One minute later: commercial.. hmm I wonder what else is on.

Click. PBS has something about neutrinos on... hmm yes, 3 "flavors" of neutrinos... OK, I can't take anymore, and I eventually wander back over to NBC.

Click. OK, I guess they are doing a back story on one of the athletes. Something about a kid that was disfigured and had surgery or something. OK, that's sad, but ooh X-Men 2 is on FX.

Click. Have I seen X-Men 2? This looks vaguely familiar... Bleh, a commercial. Curse you Tivo for not getting The Daily Show last night. Lemme check the Olympics again.

Click. Oh look more commercials on NBC. I'll try and wait it out... a lot of commercials... whatever, X-Men is back on.

Click. I'm pretty certain I've seen X-Men 2. Why are the good mutants teamed up with the bad mutants again? Wolverine pumps a chick full of adamantium. Wicked. Commercial. Time to check on the Olympics.

Click. Oh look more commercials. I'll wait... ah 1500m skating. Lot's of talking about who is expected to post a really good time is order to put the pressure on who... oh for God's sake, please skate or something. Two guys skate for a minute and a half. It was apparently a disappointing time for the American guy. Looks like they are going to cut to another commercial. Yeah, this is riveting. I'm going upstairs.

I'd really like to watch the Olympics. I even like Curling. Sadly, I have yet to see 10 consecutive minutes of any event without the interruption of a commercial, or the touching story of how some athlete made it to Torino against all odds, or being promised that the really interesting bit will be on during our "prime time" coverage later tonight. I don't really care enough to suffer through 2 hours of B.S. so I can experience the 10 interesting minutes of coverage. I'm funny that way.

technorati:
• winter
• olympics
• torino
• nbc
• television

Posted by Casey at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Numbers

Much to Apple and ABC's delight, I recently decided to download a couple episodes of Lost and see what all the fuss is about... then I downloaded a couple more.... then I downloaded all of season 1. And then season 2. I'm pretty sure I like it. :)

Not only is the show intriguing in it's own right, but I'm having a blast with all the easter egg hunts. For example, the fictitious Oceanic Airlines website. It doesn't take much digging to find the seating chart and Michael's letter to Walt. And of course the numbers are there...

The numbers. Now, this has been the most fun. I knew that these numbers (or portions of them) seemed to come up from time to time in back stories and so forth, but I had no idea how liberally the creators have sprinkled references to them until just recently. I've made a little flickr set with just a few of the references to the numbers in the show. Most are obvious. Some not so much.

Anyway, I'm going to have to watch again. This time looking more closely for clues about The Dharma Initiative and The Hanso Foundation, the symbolism (black & white), and literary references and all the other goodies that this show is chock full of.

The trouble is I know that when (if) this show ends that the solution to the mysteries of Lost can't possibly live up to my or most anyone else's expectations for it. And also I imagine that as long as the show's popularity remains pretty constant, the network will want to drag it out as long as possible, inexorably entangling it in so many intricacies that it collapses in on itself. Hopefully not. Hopefully the solution/s will unfold themselves in a nice timely fashion. I wouldn't bet on it, but I hope so.

Now then, back to the clues... let's see Sayid Jarrah is an anagram of... Sad Hairy Jar.... that's it! ... brilliant!

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• abc
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• 4815162342
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• dharma
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Posted by Casey at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was beginning to lose faith in the little project I mentioned here a while back. Though I was pretty vague in my description and SGnTN isn't exactly a terribly popular site, my expectations were a little higher for the number of people that might be interested in the closed beta. So, only a handful of people so far, but that was ok because I figured a small group might be easier to communicate with.

But then, I really wasn't getting any feedback either, so I started to wonder if maybe I was on the wrong track. Maybe people didn't like it? Maybe they installed it and it was too bewildering so they ignored it and moved on? Maybe they were abducted by aliens!? Well, that's starting to change.

Last week, a comment showed up that included this:

Overall, this is a really cool concept. And I look forward to finding more ways to use it, and also breaking it some ;)

and then yesterday:

Wow this is excellent! I've set it up to control front row via the airclick and to monitor itunes track changes. I wasn't expecting such i nice ui. I can't think of too many things to improve but i'll try to think of as many as i can...

Yippee!

This morning I noticed this mention on Nowhere Man's blog (he doesn't seem have permalinks so you'll have to search for iNotify). He mentions using it to trigger spoken announcements when an RSS feed updates or new email arrives. Awesome.

So I'm cautiously optimistic :) And of course, if anyone else is interested in checking out (the soon to be renamed) iNotify just let me know.

technorati:
• powermate
• airclick
• clipfiler
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• griffin
• beta
• development
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Posted by Casey at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So for some reason I sat down and watched the new Survivor with my wife the other night. And it's kinda interesting what they've done. Basically they are starting with four tribes, each representing a different age group and gender. So we have the "older women", "younger women", "older men" and "younger men". I think these little social experiments are the most compelling aspect of Survivor. There's already a basic blueprint for succeeding in that game, so observing the psychology of the competitors is the only real interest I have in the show... ok I admit I kinda like when they are forced to spiders, grubs, rotten fish or whatever other nasty "food" the producers can dig up.

But anyway, as I was watching the other night I started thinking. Would it be possible in this day and age to have a Survivor with each of four tribes composed of a single race? For example: White, African-American, Asian, and Hispanic tribes. I'm pretty sure this season the show's producers are just trying to mix things up and not necessarily decide which gender or age group is superior. But have we come far enough along to have this hypothetical scenario pitting tribes of different races against one another? Would it still be considered just entertainment, and if not, why? How would it be different than the battle of the sexes that is being show this season?

Well, I expect battle of the races would be taken much more seriously than battle of the sexes. A shame really, I think it would be interesting. I'm looking forward to the day when racism is behind us and we can lighten up enough to look at our differences objectively yet still realize that we are all equal.

technorati:
• survivor
• reality
• television
• racism
• sexism

Posted by Casey at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)