All Narfed Up words and photography by Bryan Villarin

Archive for February 2006

Yay for multisession disc support!

In Electronics on 13 February 2006 with no comments

On my spiffy Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player, I just found out that multisession discs are supported. So why is that cool? Because if you have some videos you want to watch on your TV, but they won’t fill up the CD-R (in my case), I can add more later. I’ll probably put a circle and fill it in according to how much space is left on the CD, and that’ll help with the mess of CDs around the DVD player.

I wrote this because I’ve got three episodes of “Beauty and the Geek 2″, and my mom and I were catching up on them. Each of them are 350MB/episode.

GTD at work

In GTD on 10 February 2006 with no comments

This is the morning of camp (where I’ll be gone from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon). I’m in charge, panic hasn’t ensued, and I hope it never rears its ugly head.

As I complete these tasks, I’ll either cross them off or rip them up. I’ll be a good feeling once we’re moving.

Thanks goes to Charlie Parsons at Mount Kare, because he’s been very positive and supportive towards me. Well off I go! (This was posted here because it’s GTD, but the other stuff will be back at Bryan Off Topic.)

Initial thoughts about 30 Boxes

In Calendar, Review on 9 February 2006 with no comments

I’ve been messing with 30 Boxes for the past couple days, and it’s not too shabby. The web integration with other sites is pretty cool, such as my local weather and upcoming.org. Adding new items is easy, too. In my opinion, it’s simple elegance.

However, my main gripe is that I can’t import my calendar from my Tungsten E/Palm Desktop program. Synchronizing it would be even better. But, I’m pretty sure the developers (Julie, Narendra, and Nick) will get there eventually. For now, they’re just trying to get the bugs worked out, and I’m okay with that. At the moment, I’ve got two weeks entered into my calendar and I’ll just go by that for now.

It’ll be awhile until I pass this onto my friends. But, I have faith in these developers. Things seem to be moving along quite nicely, so as long as they’re plugging away at bugs and features, I’ll keep trying to find things to say in the 30 Boxes forums. If you’re trying it out, you better do the same…

Accidently nuked songs off my iPod

In iPod on 9 February 2006 with 2 comments

Each day I go to work, I plug my iPod into my office PC to listen while I work. I use iTunes, but change iPod options to “Manually manage songs and playlists“. Why? So my iPod doesn’t get wiped out, and the iScrobbler plugin can update my listening habits to my Last.fm account.

This morning, I accidently changed the iPod options to “Enable disk use“, and left it to “Automatically update selected playlists only“. The problem with that is that on my office computer, there isn’t any! Fortunately, I brought my external hard drive, which also has all my music backed up onto it. After changing my iPod options to “Manually manage songs and playlists” (the way it should be), I’m copying most of my music back onto it. When I get back home, I’ll just resynchronize it. At least I won’t have a quiet commute, right?

Edit: Oh yeah, while it’s been copying, I’ve been listening to music off my external HD with Coolplayer. I haven’t used that program in awhile. Ah, memories.

Nebraska professor uses iPod for lectures

In School, iPod on 6 February 2006 with 4 comments

Psychology students and fans of Apple’s popular iPod can now listen and learn at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Calvin Garbin is one of the first instructors at the university to harness iPod’s versatility and use it as an educational tool. (Full story)

After reading this, I’m really excited that this professor gets it. Isn’t it worth the extra time to help the auditory learners? For me, I wouldn’t skip class, but instead use the recordings to listen to it again, in case I might’ve missed something.

Edit: I should elaborate. The “getting it” part is sort of against professors that don’t allow people to record their lectures. Personally, I think this hurts the majority of students who are trustworthy. It’s the 2% of dishonest students that mess it up for everyone else, and I don’t even know what that means!