Monday, July 31, 2006

You do not know the power of the pink side of the Force!

I find your lack of cuteness... disturbing...

Via BoingBoing

Sunday, July 30, 2006

QuickLogger Plus

UPDATE 2007-09-26: Welcome again Lifehacker readers - it looks like a bunch of you have followed the breadcrumbs from the recent QuickLogger 2 article to the original QuickLogger article to get here. You may have noticed that QuickLogger Plus is a little stale to say the least - it's been well over a year since the last update. I feel like I owe you all an explanation for that, but I don't have the time to do that right now - I'll try to post something soon. Thanks for all your comments and suggestions, and if you haven't already, check out Joshua Tallent's QuickLogger 2.0 - it looks good!

UPDATED 2006-09-12: New features added (finally!) Read all about it here. If you still want a copy of the original, it's available as quickloggerplus.2006072801.vbs, but I highly recommend using the new version.

A few days ago, Lifehacker posted a neat little script called QuickLogger for keeping track of what you do during the workday. I downloaded, loved it, and immediately became dissatisfied with it. For starters, it didn't use the time format (ISO 8601) that I prefer, and it didn't automatically rotate the log file. So I made a few changes to make it work the way I liked it. Then, I started thinking of other things that I'd like it to do. One thing led to another, and the original 23-line script was now mutated into a 200 line monster (including comments and whitespace) that I dubbed QuickLogger Plus. The user interface remained the same, but under the hood there were a ton of configuration options.

I decided it was time to share my monster with the world, so on Friday (July 28 2006) I posted my changes to Lifehacker. So far, the response has been positive. According to my web server logs, it's been downloaded over 60 times since posting to Lifehacker - not bad considering that it didn't get posted until 48 hours after the original article.

I've got one feature request that I hope to implement in the next day or so - I could probably do it now, but since I can't really test it from my Linux system at home, I'll have to wait until I'm back in the office on Monday to test it under XP. If you've used it and have any comments, feature requests, bug reports, etc. please post a comment here, or drop me an e-mail (address in the script comments). I'll make this page the semi-permanent home of QLP - any updates, etc. will be posted here.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Music video Thursday: "1985"

All right, here we go - the second installment of "Music video Thursday". I'm actually looking forward to these - I've got a number of videos lined up for the next month or two already. And now... on with the show!

"1985" - a poignant examination of a middle aged lady, looking wistfully back at her life, at opportunities missed, dreams forgotten, the changes in the world around her...

Well, it could have been poignant, coming from someone other than self-proclaimed "drunk rock" group Bowling for Soup, but at least they manage to bring back the beauty and grace of 1980's music videos:



Ahhh, Video Hits - the memories come flooding back...

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Music video Thursday begins: "Technologic"

I've decided that Thursday is the day to post music videos to my blog. Just because. You got a problem with that? Oh yeah? Well come over here and say that.

And now, for your viewing and listening pleasure, we are proud to present our feature presentation: "Technologic", by Daft Punk. Don't try to understand what's happening, just sit back and... ummm... watch, I guess.



Buy it, use it, break it, fix it

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Llllllllllolipop Jones!!!

The Pig and the Box is a fun kids story, and a decent fable about the pitfalls of DRM - distributed as a free PDF download, with a Creative Commons license.

Officially kid-tested by three of our in-house story testers, resulting in smiles, giggles, and three thumbs up.