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I’ve got a couple of questions for Carl Franklin about the latest DotNetRocks 90. They popped into my head while listening on the way back from the airport while stuck in traffic. The only recorder I had was my Sony Ericsson t616, so I apologize for the quality of the recording. By the way, Quicktime seems to play the file well, so I figure it’s kosher.

Update: You can find the DotNetRocks themesong on their website.

Update 2: Oops, I thought it was episode 90, guess it was episode 91.

A bit late, but here’s my entry for the latest Photo Friday. This week’s subject was “Patterns”.

Last night I met up with Lorin and Rachael (sp??) to go see Ray, the film about… well… Ray Charles. Here’s what you need to know about the movie.

• The music is hot. Not a suprise, but easily the best thing about the movie.
• Cinematography was beautiful, and I enjoyed the look of the movie very much.
• Do not expect a narrative proper.
• Do not expect a documentary proper.
• Expect to see an hour and a half long music video and 45 minutes of disjointed narrative, both of which are salted with 15 minutes of documentary.
• All times are estimates.
• I enjoyed parts of the movie, but as a whole, I was dissapointed.
• If these facts sit well with you, you’ll probably like the movie.

While waiting for the movie to start, Lorin and I were talking back and forth about his dillema posting between friends.brainscat and his livejournal. In the end, I don’t see the reason for him to split the two, as it only makes it harder for his readers, considering that the topics he posts about are commonly present in both versions of his blog. I really truly believe that there’ s no point to making a spinoff blog, unless you are going to write enough content for muliple sites and you’re going to follow through on segregating the content between them.

Joel on Software blows my mind.

Did you know… you can Ctrl+C to copy the text of a Windows popup error message box to the clipboard?

This post’s been sitting in my queue for some time because I didn’t quite know how to verbalize my frustration over the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find valuable primary content relating to new technologies from Sun and Apple. Today, Steve Gillmor gave me the final moment of clarity needed to solidify what I’ve been meaning to say. Steve opened a piece, stating that Robert Scoble has done a lot to give Microsoft the visibility and innovative face that it needs to project in order to be successful.

Combine Scoble’s evangelism with the great content that Channel 9 is providing and it’s easy to see why Microsoft technology is dominating the developer’s blogosphere. Channel 9 consistently pushes great content that showcases how easy it is to do specific cool new things with the Microsoft toolset whereas Scoble serves as an aggregating demigod. With two easy rss feeds, I get the best of what the MS blogosphere has to offer at any given moment.

Contrast this model with Apple. Almost everything technical is centered at the Apple Developer Connection which has only one RSS feed. Sure, Apple’s content is concise and relatively easy to keep tabs on but that’s only because of the paltry amount of content. Furthermore, the ADC model has no transperancy, no trust, and no conversation about their development. I wouldn’t know if Apple has something great down the pipe at all, and it’s extremely hard to get excited about their platform when their developer site is merely a feed containing code samples. It’s the conversation that gives Scoble and Channel 9 so much authenticity and Microsoft a higher degree of credibility. Conversely, everything on Apple’s site is sterile and restricted, and thus hardly engaging at all.

Sun’s relatively recent unveiling of Sun Blogs is a great step because the conversation is very real, but it’s deficient because it’s a free-for-all and impossible to digest. Tim Bray used to do a decent job of this with his Sunbeam posts, but that hasn’t been updated in forever. To be fair, it’s not Tim’s responsibility to provide the development face of Sun as Ongoing is his personal blog. Sun Bloggers has a signal to noise ratio that is extremely low and I wish they’d get their act together on this and create some mechanism for letting the cream rise to top. What does get passed around the community are things like Schwartz’s latest insights and sure, Schwartz has a great blog, but it’s about the business strategy of Sun. They need to focus part of their PR strategy on pushing the upcoming technologies that are going to persuade developers like myself to use their platform.

Right now, Sun and Apple need to get their act together and evangelize the technology that’s going to give their respective entities an attractive carrot to developers. I refuse to believe that they aren’t developing something that is revolutionary and can only chalk the silence of the blogosphere up to the fact that their public presence is so low. Please, reclaim part of the developer mindshare with great demos and engaging interviews. Let us know you have a pulse.

A ZDnet blog that Matt recently pointed to asked the question, “How can we maintain the cleanliness of the commons against those who don’t share its ethics?”

The answer is simple and has been working since the dawn of collaboritive technology. Give everyone equal access to the commons.

The true implementation of a commons gives all the security needed to a community, because every individual is equally empowered to protect themselves and the community’s content. Power to protect the community as a whole is derived from individuals allying together since no one man is powerful enough to encite change without the approval of others.

A perfect example of this is the Wikipedia. “Offensive” changes on the wikipedia are quickly overturned because many people are more powerful than a single user. To deal with special cases the Wikipedians have elected a body who has the power to ban individuals, but this power is still granted by the whole of the wiki community and may at any time be revoked.

The Internet as a whole is hardly any different. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, has repeatedly stated that the Internet is merely a tool that allows our existing society to communicate. Because everyone once connected to the Internet has equal access, excepting China, the Internet is simply a mirror of ourselves. The Internet isn’t dirty/smart/cluttered, it’s perceived that way because we as a people and individuals are [insert your adjective here].

The only way to protect the commons of the Internet, the commons of the people, is to make sure that netizens never relinquesh their collctive power to any authority.

Isn’t it funny how this mirrors democracy?

Pardon me, while I burst through alien enemies. I’m playing Half-Life 2, and save work, nothing else matters. Sure, I’ll post a review (probably on Monday) but given that I’m one third of a way through the game already, I’m confident enough to declare that this is easily the most engrossing game I’ve played ever.

Don’t expect emotional swings on the scale that movies can evoke, but be prepared to consistently and frequently notice that you’re empathizing with characters in the game. Prepare to be influenced by a characters furrowing brow, or pleading eyes.

Make sure you busy yourself by playing the game and reading Gamespot’s Final Hours of Half-Life 2. The article gives a ton of insight into decisions regarding HL2 but more importantly illuminates a lot of nuances in successful game and software design.

Last night, I finished Halo 2 on Heroic Co-Op mode.

• The pistol has been mega nerfed.
• Dual-weilding is a godsend when you’re surrounded by crap weapons.
• I am the sniping God. You must snipe in Halo 2.
• The spectre is a terrible vehicle.
• I never once used the gauss canon Warthog. Bummer.
• The sword is easily the best weapon in the game.
• Super dark levels aren’t fun, and are annoying.
• Production values in Halo 2 are amazingly higher than the first game. Huge exposition of the Halo universe.
• Single-player cutscenes have more info than Co-Op cutscenes.
• David Cross is the best scared marine you’ll ever hear.

Tonight, I embark upon Half-Life 2…

Check out Billy Harvey’s website. It’s a great example of simulating 3d effects in Flash with simple scaling and volume manipulation. Oh, and it’s really cool too. That’s why you should check it out.

The individual songs from the Wired CD are now available for download at high quality. Previously, you could only download one large track containing the whole disc.

Go listen to Brad Sucks. I can’t remember what podcast uses the guitar riff for “Dirt Bag” as their intro music but it prompted me to download it a few weeks ago. Now, Adam Curry’s giving him some airtime.

All of the work by Brad Sucks is free to use and redistribute, remix, and broadcast for non-commercial purposes. Oh, and he uses WordPress as well.

An anonymous wife confesses about her husband’s mistreatment at Electronic Arts. By way of Brandon who got it from Jason Olsen.

Get Steam so you can download the Source Engine SDK. Here’s the Valve announcement.

Regular readers of brainscat know I’ve toyed around with the idea of building a better aggregator. Instead of writing the whole damn thing from scratch, I’ve decided that it would be best to add-in some of these peer-to-peer features to iPodder.

So, in an open request to the illustrious Dave Winer and Adam Curry, I’m throwing my voice on the web, praying that these guys hear it. I’ve sent emails through their respective weblogs to them, but if you see this and you have their ear, kindly pass it along and ask them to listen to my iPodder peer-to-peer proposal.

My latest PhotoFriday entry is up. This week’s theme was “radiance”.