So today's the last day of Analog TV... NOT

The U.S. Congress set the TODAY as the deadline for broadcast TV stations to no longer send their signals across the analog airwaves; however, that deadline has been adjusted and the true and new deadline is now June 12th 2009.

What's that mean? It means that some of the full-power broadcast television stations have the option to terminate their analog broadcast, while others will execute their transition throughout the rest of 1st half 2009.

I'm spoiled having cable, so I never really kept tabs on the whole DTV thing. I do, however, enjoy fun and neat things that come as a result of change.

Included, herein, is The Simpsons New Main Title created in response to the HD change over.

Can you catch the subtle and fun little differences?

(Here's the link to the video.)

Drawing... with your voice

Here's a fun distraction, check it out. It's Zefrank's voice driven drawing tool.

It's a little flash application that allows you to control a brush with sound. A low volume sound guides the cursor counterclockwise; a medium-volume will straighten the line; and, a high volume sound will lead the cursor clockwise. It's actually kinda neat.

Eventually the whole family was howling at the computer trying to do our own vocal etch-a-sketch-like artwork.

Here's Vivian's masterpiece as it developed.

Here's what you get when you play Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter" to the tool.

You know, if you don't know Frank, you're missing out.

Follow him at http://twitter.com/zefrank and visit his site often for some happy distractions.

I make a lot of Internet waste.

Between twitter, flickr, and last.fm (this is just to name a few) I generate a lot of internet trash.

How do I know this? Well, I "re-stumbled" across this site, Dipity.com.

What's the site about? What's the site do? Well, Dipity.com documents all social network activity that I've made it aware of and puts it on an interactive timeline.

To be honest, I forgot I signed up with it. It's neat that I did because rediscovering it has given me pretty interesting insight on what I've been doing throughout 2008 (which was pretty much nothing). What's crazy is that it has every little twitter I've made and references all of the images I've put up on flickr. I mean, a lot of internet trash. Really, it's a stalker's dream site.

Seriously, it's actually kinda cool. Here's my timeline:

Knight Diver's Timeline on Dipity.

How annoying am I?

Ever wonder how annoying you are?  Or, more importantly, how annoying that person you are following (or going to follow) on twitter is?

Well, thanks to followcost.com you now can have a definitive answer. 

According to the site, my overall average is 2.74 updates/day.  That's 129.0 milliscobles a day. 

What's a milliscoble, you ask?  Here a description as found on the site:

One milliscoble is defined as 1/1000^th of the average daily Twitter status updates by Robert Scoble as of 10:09 CST September 25, 2008. At that time, Scoble had tweeted 14,319 times in 675 days, for an average tweets per day of 21.21. Thus, one milliscoble is defined as 0.02121 tweets per day.

So, moral of the story, feel free to follow me, since I'm not all that annoying (at least right now...  I'm sure it'll all change since I've been using TweetDeck...  which is way cool, btw). 

Technorati Tags: twitter,followcost.com,milliscoble,tweetdeck,how annoying am I?

I want an Android...

Back in November of 2007 I mentioned some eventual changes in the mobile phone industry with the introduction OHA's (Open Handset Alliance) goals for the development of open standards for mobile devices and, specifically, Google's release of Android's SDK.

Well...  the time has come. 

T-Mobile is providing the "world's first Android-powered phone." 

Here's a youTube video highlighting all your favorite google apps on one mobile device.

If you want more information from T-Mobile, check out this site:

http://www.t-mobileg1.com/

If you want to get one...  sign-up for an update... the people who'll get first dibs are the saps that are currently T-Mobile customers.

If you want to learn more about Android, check here:

http://www.android.com/

Technorati Tags: Android,T-Mobile G1,Open Handset Alliance,Google

It's super sexy... it makes me drool.

I bet you were thinking that I was blogging about some beautiful gal singing some crazy pop song, or some good looking actress doing something super hot like SCUBA Diving the Andrea Doria...  but nope.  I'm blogging about this clock.  I love time pieces especially if they're "different".

Here's one at thinkgeek.com that celebrates math and all it's confusing glory. 

When you look at it, doesn't it remind you of those fun high school days?  (At least for you old folks, b/c now a days it's all white board and dry erase markers)

No, don't be alarmed...  all the math "foo foo" as the Fem Fog would call it is all for show...  you could actually calculate 198 / 66 or just know that it lives in the "3 o'clock" position.  I mean, we're all number numb anyway.

I'm getting this for the kids to teach 'em how to tell time. Or just to annoy Sher... haven't decided yet. 

Pick it up at ThinkGeek.com.  You know you want to.

Technorati Tags: clocks,not ColdPlay's Clocks,ThinkGeek.com is where you should by my Christmas Gifts,math clock makes wife go coo coo

For all you guys who like...

to put protective skins on your iPods, iPhones, etc. check this out.  It's BMW's GINA Light Visionary model.  What is this beast?

GINA stands for "Geometry and Function in 'N' Adaptations".  What's all that mean?  Who knows... all I know is that it looks cool.  Essentially, a skin is wrapped around the car's skeleton, which is a carbon fiber and metal frame.  With this you achieve an exterior more fluid and less "rigid" than what we're so used to seeing with vehicles.  So, the door bends open... just like our bodies, when we lift our arms our skin follow naturally.

The headlights are especially cool, instead of a pop-up lamps or a constantly exposed lamp cavity, this BMW's headlamps are hidden behind skin eerily resembling eyelids.

Check out this video as well.

All it needs now is a hydrogen fuel cell, wings, underwater capabilities, a hot brunette in the passenger's seat... and I'm there. 

Technorati Tags: BMW Concept Car,GINA,Car Skin,Pretty effin' sweet ride.

This makes me sad...

In spite of what http://www.istwitterdown.com/ says, I say it *IS* down!  <<sigh>>

Technorati Tags: The Twitterverse is SLOW!,twitter

If you're feeling generous...

... I wouldn't mind finding this under my Christmas tree, this year.

Technorati Tags: Optimus Maximus Keyboard,Gift Ideas for Knight Diver

A Thursday Night Post...

The following pisses me off:

1. DTS is NOT automatically included with SQL Server Express 2005
2. My unhealthy addiction to alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and oxytocin.

Actually, I don't mind item 2, so much.  I just needed something else to put on my list.  Really, there's not too many things that pisses me off.

I'm mentioning Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 only because I'm still at the office knee deep in databases that have no user documentation to it and, frankly, are designed in such away that I thinkknow the original developer just wanted to make life a living hell for his/her replacement.

It's now 11:30pm, which is about the time, I finish up my diet pepsi, crack open a beer, light up a cigarette and throw the laptop out the window.

For those of you looking for a DTS alternative...  there really is nothing out there.  You could use SQL Servers 2000 DTS Wizard via the 2005 ToolKit and tie it in as an external tool to the manager or use Microsoft Database Publishing Wizard with is compatible with MS Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer 2005.

Neither option is ideal, but definitely better than BCP.  Sigh...

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Sucks,Database,Microsoft Database Publishing Wizard,DTS,SQL Server Express 2005

There's a lunar eclipse tonight.

Hopefully, the clouds will clear up so the kids could see it.  If not, here's a YouTube preview.  The next time we'll see a lunar eclipse will be sometime December of 2010.

Technorati Tags: Lunar Eclipse

The Beatles in Space.

February 4th was a big day in terms of Anniversaries.

It was the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 

Also, 50 years ago this week, The United States' first satellite, Explorer 1 was sent into orbit.

45 years ago, an international network of antennas were put together, marking the establishment of the Deep Space Network.  A network designed to help support missions to explore the universe.

And, 40 years ago, the Beatles recorded a song written by John Lennon named "Across the Universe".

To celebrate the anniversary of all these things, NASA has exchanged their standard Morse code message into space with "Across the Universe" by the Beatles.  The transmission is being directed towards the North Star and is traveling 186,000 miles a second.

How cool is that?

Check out the press release from NASA back in January.

Fiona Apple does a beautiful remake of "Across the Universe" for the movie Pleasantville.

Technorati Tags: NASA,Deep Space Network,Explorer 1,Beatles,Across the Universe

My Visual DNA

imagini has put together this little tool which allows you to describe yourself through pictures, they call your visual DNA.

Basically they ask you a question, have you finish a sentence or do word association with sets of pictures... based on your response they evaluate your personality from four different aspects: Mood, Fun, Habits, and Love.

Here's mine:

Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

Technorati Tags: My Visual DNA,imagini

hulu

I finally got my invite into the hulu beta site. 

And, I'm so happy I did.

What is hulu, you ask?  Hulu is a company/website, based out of Los Angeles.  They have partnered up with some big name networks to provide access to premium content "across all genres and formats - television shows, feature films, clips and more."  Their interface is slick and sharp and finding content is nice and easy.

Basically it's nirvana for the television/movie junkie. 

The big plus is that its content is not limited to current shows...  for example, I'm currently watching the first season of Roswell and have Doogie Howser and Airwolf (w/ Ernest Borgnine) next on my playlist.

Now, how can I talk Santa in getting me both a vacation to Belize and a new multi-screen display set-up for "work".

 

Technorati Tags: hulu,web 2.0,videos,media

a blast from the past...

So, I googled myself today and found a posting I did over eight years ago. Yes, I googled myself... just wanted to make sure you guys can't find my super secret double life site. Sorry, let me get back on track. So what did I find? Apparently, back in 1999, I was researching mysql performance and it's ability to handle large data sets... it's funny to see it now. Why? Around the time of the posting, almost all of my clients were using Microsoft SQL server or Oracle... mysql was still a big "I dunno". Today, the majority of database clients are on MySQL and only a handful are using Microsoft SQL Server and only one of our clients uses Oracle. We develop for smaller, price conscious clients, so it's to be expected. Here's the post? http://www.listsearch.com/MySQL/Message/index.lasso?169625 2 million rows? puh-lease... I just got done bulk inserting closer to 5 times that amount for one of our bigger clients. My how times have changed.

It's official. Google wants to play.

Google announce yesterday that they will participate in the FCC's auction of wireless spectrum in the 700 MHz band.  This is 3 days before the FCC's deadline to file an application to participate in the auction.

See their press release here: Google Press Center: Press Release

What's that mean if they win the C Block?  Only Google, really knows...  either way, regardless who wins, we as consumers will be seeing a lot more flexibility with our wireless Internet service. 

The auction starts on January 24th...  and it'll be interesting to see the outcome.

Check out this blog on DailyWireless.org, which has some good hypothetical situations, concerning the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: google,fcc,700 MHz band

Good things come in threes, right?

So, why not give you a third post today...  really nothing out of the ordinary, I'm testing out Windows Live Writer. 

Live Writer's Overview Page

I've been shying away from Microsoft if you couldn't tell.  I was worried that Live Writer would push Microsoft's Live Spaces on you, but it didn't.  I was worried that it was a large bulky app, but it doesn't seem to be.

It's actually pretty nice...  considering this is my test drive.

This is super way cool...

I'm a big shutter bug... I love to take pictures... I've rolled over the counter on my Rebel XT twice in less than 2 years. (i.e., over 20,000 pictures) Not to mention how many pictures I've taken with my cell phone, Jeanne's camera, video cameras. and the four digital cameras I've had prior. Anyway, check out this new toy... It's a wireless SD card that auto-magically uploads your photos to whatever destination you configure it to when it's reaches a known wireless hotspot. How freaking cool is that? More info here at http://www.eye.fi/

Inspiration for an Android Application...

Here's some inspiration in case you're wanting to develop an Android based mobile application. It's an application/service/network available in the Japanese market designed to help Japan's economy by providing businesses a more dynamic labor pool. At the same time it keeps part-time workers abreast with available jobs in real time. Otetsudai Networks is utilizing mobile phones with GPS capabilites to address labor issues in Japan. The service allows employers and job hunters to have real time access to workers and jobs, respectively. Here's one way it would work. If a shop owner is looking for someone to help with a lunch hour rush, he could survey the network for employees within his general vicinity and offer 'em a job. Another example. A student has some free time between his classes and is in need of some cash. He can search for quick jobs that may be of interest to him... mowing a lawn, washing a car, etc. He can then answer that "WANT AD" for a job that fits his current mood. In case you're wondering, both employer and employees are rated e-bay style... So, after a while employers will be able to tell who the slackers are and workers can avoid the pushy boss. Obviously, in order for this to work you must be servicing a densely populated areas... but think about the other applications for the technology: Speed dating, Sporting or Entertainment events, etc... yowsers! Joi Ito told me about it, so you should learn more about it from him. Also, here's something from Thomas Crampton, who interviews Joi about the Twitter style service.

It's here, it's here!!!

"zzzz-puzits.. human! download the SDK, possibly win money"

Early version of Android's SDK is located here: http://code.google.com/android/download.html And, yes... there's an Eclipse plug-in.