06.15.07

Moving on from QuickPlayer

Posted in life at 5:10 pm by mridley

I wrote a month ago that I have been evaluating the Blackberry media player QuickPlayer. I think I’m going to cancel my subscription, as I don’t see the point. From what I can tell the content available on QuickPlayer is not really “premium” - it’s just a few selected podcasts that happen to be aggregated in their interface. I’d rather listen to podcasts on my iPod.

The fact that the audio content is available on my Blackberry I like, as I have my Blackberry with me more frequently than I have my iPod with me. Unfortunately the user experience with QuickPlayer is just not worth paying for. It’ s a streaming podcast system (along the lines of TiVo’s podcast functionality), but there is no rewind or fast forward. If I am interrupted in my listening and inadvertently close the application, I have to start listening to the program again from the beginning. Also, since the content seems to be arbitrary podcasts that the QuickPlayer programmers have selected, why can’t I add my own podcast playlists?

I like the concept behind QuickPlayer and I’m willing to pay for media on my Blackberry, but unfortunately this product is not yet mature enough to warrant my continued subscription fee.

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06.14.07

Frustrated Listening to the Daily Source Code

Posted in life at 10:06 pm by mridley

With my new job requiring me to spend some time on public transit each day during my commute, I finally have time to listen to podcasts again.  Mainly I have been catching up on the last several episodes of Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. I was a daily listener to this show for a long time in the early days. I found, and continue to find, the show to be a great way to keep on top of the major developments in the world of podcasting.

I like the show but listening to it is a little hardf for me. I can’t listen without thinking of shownotes.info, my old podcast show notes wiki site. I started it around the time I started working for Amazon and had great ambitions for the project.

Unfortunately just as the site was taking off I transitioned to full time status at Amazon and got sucked into their culture of 24×7 work, leaving me no time to sleep much less work on side projects. As I stopped being involved on a daily basis the site went downhill pretty fast and got overwhelmed with spam and crap.

I had hoped to go back some day and get it all fixed up but then somehow the domain expired last fall and I was too busy with work to even notice until January.

I feel like I let down those folks who were using the wiki to host their show notes and listening to Adam’s podcast is a reminder of yet another failed side project. It’s frustrating. But since the content is good I’ll keep listening and hopefully get over it.

06.02.07

Continuing Education

Posted in life at 9:48 am by mridley

While I have had a fairly successful and varied career, one of the things that I never did was complete my bachelor’s degree.  When I dropped out of Virginia Tech back in 1997 the economy was quite good and there were plenty of jobs so my lack of a degree wasn’t a huge issue.

Over the years I’ve developed a strong resume and my lack of formal education doesn’t ever really come up on the job or in interviews.  I’ve thought about going back to school a few times over the years, but undergraduate work doesn’t really interest me and it doesn’t impact my career, so I have never found the motivation to make the large time commitment to return to school.  I think would enjoy grad school, but it hasn’t been appealing enough for me to make the effort to complete my undergraduate in order to get there.

Now that I have started working for a school I think my attitude is changing.  It’s starting to bother me that I’m the only one in the room without a graduate degree.  I’m not sure if this is just a transitional pain associated with being in a new job environment or if this is going to actually motivate me to go back and continue my education.

Time will tell.

06.01.07

Second Life Content Moving to Alt 300

Posted in tech at 5:45 pm by mridley

I have been writing a lot recently about Second Life, but this isn’t really intended to be a Second Life site. At least not exclusively. So I’ve decided to start a group blog called Alt 300 (the name is an inside joke) with some of my Second Life friends. Future content regarding Second Life will be posted there.

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