So I was doing my usual morning scan over at digg and caught this article: Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future and one of the comments led me to the original Slashdot post regarding Apple's announcement of the iPod back in October of 2001:

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday October 23, @12:20PM
from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.

The BrownFury writes "At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4" wide by 4" tall by .78" thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates". No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Some of the better comments:

Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners), but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product.

A total waste of time.

Here's one that could've been posted a few weeks ago after the iPod HiFi and iPod leather case announcements:

Apple is being distroyed by the rumors that are being created. When they announce that they are going to have a new product, everyone thinks it's going to blow their worlds. Rumors start flooding in about even the most outragous products ( I even heard a few "sources" mention teleportion) This is getting plain stupid.

Apple is a normal company. Why does the public constantly expect them do the impossible?

My favorite:

Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...

Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...

Raise your hand if you have both ...

Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...

There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.

To be fair, I initially viewed the iPod with apathy, but I didn't take the time post my thoughts. Maybe I was too busy coming to terms with the impending death of the BeOS which I had predicted several years earlier would be the next big thing. I'm not so good at predictions myself.

technorati:
• predictions
• apple
• ipod
• nostalgia

Posted by Casey at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I replaced my aging 3rd generation iPod (O touch sensitive buttons! Why did you torment me so?) with a newfangled 5th generation iPod, I naturally had to test out its video capabilities. And so I wandered over the to video podcast section of the iTunes music store and downloaded the first thing that caught my eye: French Maid TV, naturally.

Then I discovered the joys of Diggnation, though it only took a couple episodes of watching Kevin and Alex sitting on a couch to realize that I really wasn't missing much by subscribing to the audio only feed.

For whatever reason I did not immediately subscribe to Ask A Ninja which was my loss. I've been watching for about a month now and each week I look forward to seeing who the Ninja looks forward to killing soon next. And I've learned so much. I had no idea that only Ninjas were able to make truly black clothing and everything else is just really dark blue or green, or that podcasts are like pie factories for whales or what sort of gift I should buy for a Ninja.

This week the Ninja describes in detail How To Kill A Ninja. It involves kidnapping Chris Rock, putting goats in a blender and some other details. I think I got the gist. Take a look for yourself.

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• video
• podcast
• askaninja
• humor

Posted by Casey at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For the first time in a long while I took some time over the last week to devote to my on and off again genealogical study. The result is the addition of a great deal of information about my Coppinger kin. The database has grown by well over 100 in the last week so if you've any interest in the Coppinger line or really anyone from the southern middle Tennessee area (Warren, Grundy, Marion, and Seuqatchie counties) you are encouraged to take a look. A tip of the hat to the riosmith website which was very helpful in furthering some of this research.

Next up: possibly fleshing out the Nunley branch and also, as a sort of side project, going back over the Tate branch and adding supporting information where possible. Or maybe I'll just go play some WoW, I dunno.

I also took the opportunity to update the genealogy software I user here on SGnTN. It hadn't been updated in a while and it looks like there have been quite a few bug fixes, tweaks, etc. So I've got that going for me... which is nice.

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Posted by Casey at 2:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A cute 'lil Lost Widget aviable from skia.net. I wonder what happens when it hits 0:00? :)

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Posted by Casey at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some time ago George Warner created a handy little set of utilities for simulating various key presses and it can still be found on his .mac file sharing page along with all sorts of other goodies. Really worth a look.

However I noticed a little wrinkle in the HIDPostAuxKey function (MediaKeys project) this morning which is listed as:

static void HIDPostAuxKey(const UInt8 auxKeyCode )
{
	NXEventData		event;
	kern_return_t		kr;
	IOGPoint		loc = { 0, 0 };

	bzero(&event, sizeof(NXEventData));
										   
	event.compound.subType = NX_SUBTYPE_AUX_CONTROL_BUTTONS;
	event.compound.misc.S[0] = auxKeyCode;
	event.compound.misc.C[2] = NX_KEYDOWN;

	kr = IOHIDPostEvent( get_event_driver(), NX_SYSDEFINED, loc, &event, kNXEventDataVersion, 0, FALSE );
	check( KERN_SUCCESS == kr );
}

This is great on a big endian machine, but really the misc data wants to be written as a long or it won't be interpreted correctly on a little endian (Intel) machine. You probably want to do something like this:

static void HIDPostAuxKey(const UInt8 auxKeyCode )
{
	NXEventData		event;
	kern_return_t	kr;
	IOGPoint		loc = { 0, 0 };
	UInt32			evtInfo = inAuxKeyCode << 16 | NX_KEYDOWN << 8;
	
	bzero(&event, sizeof(NXEventData));

	event.compound.subType = NX_SUBTYPE_AUX_CONTROL_BUTTONS;
	event.compound.misc.L[0] = evtInfo;

	kr = IOHIDPostEvent( get_event_driver(), NX_SYSDEFINED, loc, &event, kNXEventDataVersion, 0, FALSE );
	check( KERN_SUCCESS == kr );
}

Anyway, thought someone might find that useful.

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• apple
• development
• universal
• endian

Posted by Casey at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I haven't been doing a very good job keeping up with lists.apple.com...

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• email

Posted by Casey at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I could already get Lost and now that Apple has added The Daily Show and the Multi-Pass option I really don't have any pressing need for cable or a Tivo, except perhaps for the occasional special event such as the Super Bowl, though I could put one of those old-fangled whadayacallits on my roof.... antennas? Yeah one of those. Of course the wife and kids would probably have something to say about that. There may come a time, however, where the iTMS could satisfy all of our television viewing needs. Did I say needs? OK probably not as important as eating or sleeping, I'll go with: wants. The question is, will they be able to do it affordably? I wouldn't have thought so, but with Tivo raising their prices and my cable bill inexorably creeping higher and higher, maybe so. I figure I could spend $70 a month in video at the iTMS and be better off than the current arrangement with Tivo and Comcast.

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• television
• tivo
• dvr
• comcast
• cable
• itunes
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• itms

Posted by Casey at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)