Daags's Blog

Ah slipping back into my old bad ways of few posts. I do have an excuse this time though, bloody busy. Working on a big software project at the moment, as usual, too little time and too little resources. Also this is a completely new product and technology for me so I'm the weakest link in the team at the moment which can be very frustrating for everybody including me when there is a deadline looming. We have even got some guys from one of our European offices out here at the moment giving us a hand as well. These guys are really smart cookies. As are many of the other Europeans that I have worked with in the software game over the years. Even though our head office and main code shop is located in the States, often some of the most exciting product enhancements come out of the European development efforts.

So this post is going to be relatively short, did some Applescript coding of iTunes tonight. This is in addition to the automatic podcast updater I wrote in Applescript for iTunes. Now that I have discovered that I can mount my IFP-795 as a USB drive rather than use the IFP Music Manager app to put content onto the player, I should be able to script the whole process now, making the moring updates fully automatic with no intervention from me and hence getting me out the door quicker, can only be a good thing!!!.

Hi all, yep I promised an beta cast, its still in the can awaiting some post production to reduce the amount of shit, now thats going to be a big job!!. Did another audio feedback for DSC today so keep an ear out on the DSC as it may see the light of day this week.

So whats the title of this post all about??. Was over on Jan Polet's site today, the producer of the HitTest heard on the DSC. Jan made an interesting comment that he does not receive many comments or emails but gets a lot of hits on his site when he posts a Hittest. This got me thinking, it appears people are more than happy to download his great productions but dont provide much in the way of feedback, which if it was me, would at least let me know that people were interested in what I was producting. So, anybody who has every dowloaded or heard the HitTest get yo asses over to Jan's site at www.janpolet.nl and give him some feedback and encouragement fot the massive effort that is involved in producing his sensational work.

On a broader front, we should be putting back as much or more that we take for free and granted. A wise man once said that was involved in sailing that he feels a duty to help kids in sailing as he has taken so much enjoyment from the sport that he should put back the same or more that hes take from the sport. We should all take this view and the world will be a nicer place. We take for granted so much that we have in our western democratic lives. I'm not saying that we should all become saints, just put back evern a little bit of what we have received. Whether it be a sports club, our communities etc. Just an hour every now and again doing some volunteer work and we can all benefit.

So there's my rant for the day, we're all in the same boat so lets get about making it even better for ourselves and our fellow man. 

Told you I was going to get better at this blogging stuff, look another entry in under a month...weee.

Had a really good interaction with the support guys at Podshow after I lodged a trouble ticket, see my previous entry. They got back to me within a couple of hours, I supplied some logs and they were again back to me very quickly and resolved the issue. Nice to see some great customer service. I've logged trouble tickets by email with other software companies and if you get a reply in under 2 days you are doing well. So great work Podshow support monkeys!!.

Been thinking about a lot of the scripts I have written, especially Perl in the last couple of years, and man I would have been screwed without other people posting stuff on the web. So I have decide to make available a lot of my scripts on the web, kind of putting back some of the knowledge that I have used over the years. Most of the stuff I write is relatively simple, however some other newbie may get some use from them on how to do certain things. So watch this space for a URL, hopefully coming soon.

This brings me onto another topic, changing ISP's, I've had an original ISP that dates back over 10 years now. I've kept the account on the minimal dial-up just to keep the email address and the web site going. They have come in handy on occasions when I have changed cable providers, screwed the configuration and managed to get on the web with good old clunky dialup and find a resolution. However, the old accounts days are numbered. I have discovered that I can now longer down load email into a mail client such as Outlook from other providers and they are now using enhanced passive mode for FTP. Again this means I cannot FTP to my web account from another provider, so so long baby. Part of this seperation will mean moving the web site onto another provider, probably my cable provider. I'll probably end up dialing up and doing a mget to down load the site as it currently is and uploading it up to its new home. Again watch this space for a link.

Talking of links, if you are a Mac OSX user, check out http://www.thelittleappfactory.com . I'm a huge beleiver in Independent Software Vendors (ISV's). They are little 1 or 2 man type software shops writing software to sell. I can honestly say that some of the coolest apps I have used have come from these guys. Its software I actually dont mind spending money on because its just good and supporting some code monkey trying to make a living out of this great industry. So get behind these guys, dont rip off their apps, pay your $20, $30 bucks whatever and support these guys. I hope to post some more links to ISV's as I find great stuff. You do the same and give them some PR.

So, that was nother decent post. Hopefully my ramblings may be of interest to somebody. Ciao for now.