Since I am in the computer industry, I get to use different software. I will write about my experiences here.
February 26, 2007
You Tube audio and Macs
Every once in a while I lose all audio on my mac when surfing youtube videos. I keep forgetting the solution, so I am posting it here for all:
Open up Audio MIDI Setup, which is an app in your /Applications/Utilities folder. Verify that the Output sample rate is 44100 Hz, and that all the other settings are correct.
thats it.
Posted by pmadsen at 08:54 PM
February 14, 2007
Windows Media 11 and WMV files
I installed WMP11 and suddenly my wmv files stopped playing audio. The video worked, and all other audio files worked with no problems.
I have been trolling for a solution, but did not have much success. I tried reinstalling both drivers and wmp11 but had no success. I was about to give up when I found a post that suggested a tweak to the registry. I hate these types of fixes, but since I was desperate, I decided to try it, and it worked. So if your wmv files suddenly stop playing audio, here is the tweak.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\NodeCLSIDs\{95037DA1-6ED9-4B27-8CFF-9AD3DFB0B2F2}]
"Priority"=dword:fffffffb
"AutoInsert"=dword:00000000
"Name"="WMPlayer SRSWow DMO"
I found that mine was set to "AutoInsert"=dword:00000001"
Changing that to 0 fixed the problem.
Good luck - and please be very careful whenever you are in the registry.
Posted by pmadsen at 01:55 PM
September 07, 2006
curious about when and where your mac was built
Check out this software. It is a stupid little app that you will run once, but still...
I tried it.
Posted by pmadsen at 07:48 PM
August 26, 2006
speedtest.net
Speedtest.net is a pretty cool web site. If you want to test your access speed, give this a test
Technorati Tags: software
Posted by pmadsen at 08:13 PM | TrackBack
August 10, 2006
Google RSS Reader is not ready for prime time
My buddy Rob was telling me yesterday about how much he likes Google Reader. I had taken a look at a while ago, and pretty much wrote it off. But, Rob is generally spot on when it comes to these types of things, so I decided to give it another look.
After, using it for a little while over the last 2 days, I can tell you, I don't think it is ready. Yes, Rob correctly stated that it is still part of Google Labs, and so it is not an official release yet, and yes the keyboard support in a web app is cool also, but frankly I think it stinks.
I read my blogs this way:
I subscribe to blogs a, b and c - each one about totally different things. When I am ready to troll through the hundreds of entries that are clogging my rss reader I like to do it by category. For instance, if I want to read about the latest automotive news I will look through Autoblog or BBC Formula 1 news. I use Newsgator and in one second I can quickly see how many unread items I have in a particluar blog - can't do that in Google Reader. Google Reader lets me tag my supscriptions (more work) but still does not let me know how many unread entries I have.
I also like to keep some blog entries for future reference - can't do that in Google Reader.
In its current state Google Reader seems to not understand when I have entered a new subscription. Rob suggested reading the Creating Passionate Users blog. In under 1 minute I had subscribed in Newsgator. Not so in Google Reader. I subscribed, nothing appeared, I re-subscribed nothing appeared, tried a third time and got a message telling me I was already subscribed, yet no postings, and nothing in my subscription list would indicate that this is true.
Finally, why does Google Reader insist on keeping all the unread blog entries I have for subscriptions that I deleted? I have dozens of unread entries that I now have to process.
So in summary, having a web based news reader that is accessible any where is a cool idea, but until it can easily manage my subscriptions, and let me read entries the way I like to with minimal effort, I will not be using it.
Technorati Tags: google, rss reader, software
Posted by pmadsen at 12:58 PM | TrackBack
August 06, 2006
Google Analytics
I recently installed Google Analytics on my site. It is a very interesting (FREE) tool that shows me in a variety of formats how pathetically a small audience I have reading my postings, not that the readers (and you know who you are) are pathetic.
If you are running your own site I strongly recommend you install this tool, but don't blame me for any poor results you may also be experiencing.
Did I mention that it is FREE?
Posted by pmadsen at 11:52 AM
August 05, 2006
A new arrival and experiments in video
My friend Nick and his wife have adopted a 6 month old girl from Korea. Congratulations to both of them. I have never had the pleasure of working with Nick, but most of the guys I work with have, and everyone calls him brilliant. His blog is always full of interesting information. He has recently gotten his first mac (about time if you ask me). In a recent post he sang the praises of ecto which I also did way back when. It is interesting to read about his challenges as he learns a new operating system.
Nick and I both have HI-DEF sony video cameras. My mac is a 17" G4 powerbook, Nick's is a new Dual Core Block Macbook. Nick is going to blog about his experiences in video editing, which I am eager to follow. On my G4, it is absolutely pointless to play with HI-DEF. It takes 4-6 seconds to pull in every 1 second of video. Yep, 4 to 6 seconds. Then actually manipulating the video is painfully slow, and so I have completely given up working with video on my mac. It is a shame, because I have done some work with standard video and actually had a lot of fun doing it. It gives you a great stage for exercising the creative juices, and every time I did play with video, I would learn new tricks.
So, I have an unopened copy of Final Cut Express HD waiting to be installed on a faster computer, and I look forward to reading about Nick's experiences.
Posted by pmadsen at 09:10 AM
New Blog Update
My friend Rob has decided to take advantage of his domain name and has moved his blog. It can be found at robherbst.com. In addition he has started working on his Ruby on Rails project. Follow along and learn.
Posted by pmadsen at 08:51 AM
August 02, 2006
New blog
A good friend of mine who is both a brilliant developer and teacher has started a new blog.
If you are into software development at all you must check out my friend Robs new blog.
Rob is starting a new learning experience in Ruby On Rails, and I promise you, you will definitely learn something.
Posted by pmadsen at 09:50 PM
May 16, 2006
Day 2 In Seattle
Today was day 2 of the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2006. The day started with everyone talking about the weather. It was absolutely perfect. It was in the 80’s with zero humidity. Like I said perfect.
At the conference the day started with breakfast and an interesting conversation with 2 guys from England. They are using Groove for sharing SharePoint document libraries with their clients. Cool stuff, that I played around with tonight at the labs. Unlike last night when the labs where packed, we pretty much had the run of the place with the Microsoft guys wanting to know if we wanted to play xbox with them (we said no).
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After breakfast we packed into a room and listened to the keynote address by the Nerd King. It was fairly bland, and while I am certainly a fan, the man is no rock star. Here he is the richest man in the world, and yet he looks and acts like any of the hundreds of geeks sitting in the audience.
After the keynote it was time to hit the first seminar of the day. Charlie and I have gone through the list several times, and we have done our best to make sure that we hit different events. So I went to an overview of Web Content Management, while Charlie went to Designing and Developing Composite Applications. |
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After that seminar it was lunch time. Now, supposedly there are only supposed to be a 1000 people at this thing, but I think it is way more then that. In fact, there where so many people that several hundred of us went across the street to the Bellevue City Hall where we were treated to a southern bbq style lunch. The food was ok, but the lines where horrible. The building and surrounding park where really beautiful, and there is something relaxing about sitting in this park, the sun shining and looking at snow covered mountains in the distance. | |
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Crappy picture of the snow covered mountains behind the best buy |
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After lunch, Charlie and I both attended a seminar on Blogs, Wikis and RSS – it was not the greatest. The presenters were young, and nervous and they spent way to much time on what blogs, wikis, and rss is and not enough on how it is hooked into SharePoint. Our experiments in the lab, seem to indicate that they are fully hooked into everything – especially RSS. After that it was time for the final seminars of the day. Charlie went to a search technical drill down, and I hit records management and compliance. Now I know very little on this subject, but it was actually very cool to see how MS has this all hooked up and running in SharePoint. I played around with it tonight, and I can see where a lot of clients may want this. | |
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So the day ended with a stroll back to the office and then dinner at a Mexican Restaurant. |
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I immediately recognized it as the restaurant we (Brian, Greg and I) would park in while Brian would run into this Starbucks. |
Posted by pmadsen at 12:36 AM
May 15, 2006
Seattle and Sharepoint
I am going to be in Settle for 5 days at a Microsoft SharePoint Conference. I decided to just jot down random notes from the trip.
Sunday May 14, 2006
The car service picked me up at 4:30am. The driver is Jim – he is a good guy, and it is nice to see him. We get to LGA with plenty of time of time to spare. I am bumped to first class, so the trip should be pleasant
Flight down to CLT is uneventful, and I have slept almost the entire way. CLT is packed out, and it is only 8:30am. There is a posting for my flight to SEA that all passengers must check in. I still have first class, but instead of 4A I am in 1A, the crappy bulkhead. When I get on the plane I instantly see there is an equipment change, and we have gone from a 321 to a 319, so I am no longer mad about the seat, and am just happy to still be in first class.
I sleep, I read, the trip again is uneventful, and I get to take a couple of photos of the mountains. The last (and first) time I was in
I am staying at the Hyatt Regency in
Charlie and I ate a late lunch at a local restaurant. I had a good Hefenwiezen and a burger.
At 5:30 we walked over to the convention center. We are two of the first people there. Cool stuff – a briefcase, and a nice pen and binder. We go into the main meeting room, and there are row after row of computers.
There is a lot of beer (Alaskan Amber – very good) , wine, water and soda is available and some really nice food and cakes. Charlie and I grab 2 diet cokes and fire up a couple of SharePoint labs running on virtual machines. Our first reactions to the new version are mostly positive. The app is clearly still in Beta, as we 
both cause crashes very quickly. We are talking to the guys sitting in front of us. They are from
Some Microsoft guys stop and ask us if we are coding. We look up, and decide to be honest:
US: Yes
THEM: Cool
Tomorrow is keynotes from Bill Gates, and then 3 lectures. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Posted by pmadsen at 08:59 PM
February 01, 2006
I have a lot to say so stayed tuned...
I have a lot of catching up to, and will try to do it this week. I have been quiet because of the ineptitude of apple technical support, but after 30 days I am back online.
I started to play around with the new iWeb feature in iLife 06. If you are curious visit the site here
Posted by pmadsen at 11:22 PM
November 26, 2005
Frappr
It is stupid and pointless, yet strangely addictive.
Please add yourself to my map
Posted by pmadsen at 08:35 AM
November 18, 2005
The Music Genome Project
So my buddy Dan turned me on the music genome project. Basically a group of musicians have listened to the music of over 10,000 artists, broken down their music into components - melody, harmony and rhythm, instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and singing and vocal harmony. They refer to these components as genes, thus the music genome project.
Pandora groups music from the same gene pool, and presents it you. This gene pool is based on an initial selection you make. You can enter either a song or a band. In my case I selected Led Zeppelin, and Pandora fed me Hendrix, Motley Crue, Poison, Dio, and Ted Nugent. Each time Pandora feeds you a song, you can vote on whether you like the song or not. It uses these votes to further refine the list of music presented to you.
I have to be honest, I think it is crap. Poison and Motley Crue is in the same gene pool as Zeppelin? I don't think so. When I selected The Beatles, I got the Kinks, the Turtles, and some band I never heard of.
Here is the problem. Both bands (Zeppelin and Beatles) crossed a lot of different musical styles. So, when I say I like the Beatles - is it the yeah yeah yeah Beatles of 1963 or the Tomorrow Never Knows of 1966, or the come together, Beatles of 1969?
Now, lets look at another issue with Pandora. You can only enter a single band at a time. I cannot tell it that I like the beatles, pink floyd, led zeppelin, oasis, yes, neil young, queen, coldplay, metallica, etc. at one time, and then have it derive a list for me. I think most people are like me. They like music that crosses a fairly broad range of styles and types.
Finally the bigger issue is the whole idea of quantifying music into components. While I can appreciate that this was done by musicians, music is about feelings and emotion. I admit that I tend to like music with “changily guitars” as my friend Rob says (major chords), but as I stated earlier I like music from a broad range of styles.
So is there a solution. What I would like to see, is an application that would allow me to upload my itunes library file. The application would parse the songs, bands, genre, year, and ratings and upload those into a database. It would toss any songs that do not have a rating. It would then compare my entries, and ratings to those that other people have uploaded, and then present me with a potential list of songs that I would like. You would have to build in some rules for the matching process, but I think that this could give you the best choices. After all if I like bands A, B, and C, and you like bands A, B and D, there might be a good chance that I would like D and you would like C.
Anyway, give Pandora a look. You might like it, but I didn't it.
Posted by pmadsen at 09:22 PM
November 11, 2005
Trackback Pings
Unfortunately an explosion of trackback ping spam has forced me to turn that feature off. A new version of movabletype is available, that is supposed to cut down on this.
I have downloaded the upgrade, and will try and get it in over the weekend.
Posted by pmadsen at 03:07 PM
July 26, 2005
Pretty cool FLICKR mod
Check out the Flickr mod here and start creating your own unique banners or something with it.
Posted by pmadsen at 06:02 PM | TrackBack
April 20, 2005
Podcasting, Blogs and Copyrights
I have started to explore the world of copyrighting material. Most Podcasts and Blogs today are licensed under the Creative Commons license. I use Movable Type as my blog engine, and they have a Creative Commons engine built into the administration screen that allows you to configure the Creative Commons license for your site. In fact, you will notice that I have added a Creative Commons license to my site that allows you “to copy, distribute, display and perform the work”. Of course their are conditions. You must give me credit, you cannot use the work for commercial purposes, and you can’t alter, transform or build upon the work. It took me about 2 minutes to add this.
Okay, so now I have a copyright on my site. If you are a regular visitor to my site, and you scroll down through the page, you will see the Creative Commons tag on the right side. If you then click on the icon, then you can read my license. What are the chances of all of that happening – slim to none, but it is there, and it is published, so my work is theoretically now protected. But what if you just subscribe to my feeds, with an aggregator like Sharpreader or FeedDemon. According to a nationwide telephone survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in November 2004 over 6 million people are now using aggregators. Since, I publish my entire “article” in my feed, you really don’t need to visit my site. If you never visit my site, then you will never see the copyright notice.
I looked at the RSS feed that Movable Type generated and there is a blanket <copyright> tag in the header of the XML.
<copyright>Copyright 2005</copyright>
This copyright does not appear in the reading pane of any of my aggregators. In addition this copyright does not accurately reflect the copyright that I have placed on the site. I quickly (for all of 2 minutes) looked over the RSS 2.0 specification. Nothing jumped out at me, so I think I will have to dig a little deeper to see what I can find on this matter. So you may ask yourself why does Pete care about this? After all, how many readers can he possibly have? Well, those are valid questions. I did a quick search and found that some of my stuff is being re purposed, and I am not sure how comfortable I am with that.
As more and more people write Blogs, and begin Podcasting I see copyrighting becoming a bigger and bigger issues. I have friends who Podcast, and they could care less what people use their Podcasts for, and so for them copyrighting is a non-issue. On the other hand, I have friends who want to get involved in Podcasting, but it is critical to them that they own and control the content and its distribution. So to these people, copyrighting and even (dare I say it) DRM (digital rights management), is very important to them.
I am going to have to dig into the RSS spec, see what they say about it. Stay tuned, I will let you know what I find. If anyone out there has anything to add on this, please do.
Posted by pmadsen at 08:52 AM | TrackBack
April 04, 2005
pocket blogger test
Testing pocket blogger software on my pocket pc (hp4700). There doesn't seem to be anyway of assigning a category to this post.
Update: There is no way to assign a category to the post, but I was able to create and upload the first part of this, so it might be useful.
Posted by pmadsen at 12:54 PM | TrackBack
April 01, 2005
this can't be true - but it is...
I am not trying to turn this into a love fest between me and Nick C, but I thought this was very cool. The two squares labeled A and B are exactly the same shade of grey.
Nick’s site has the links to the proof and explanation. I wanted to see for myself. I have an application on my windows machine called eyedropper that allows me to examine graphics at the pixel level. I fired it up and sure enough both the A and the B squares have the same exact RGB value.
The B Square values – 
The A Square values – 
By the way, the artist toolkit that comes with your mac has the same eyedropper tool functionality built into it.
Posted by pmadsen at 07:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Trying out a PC Blog Editing application
Nick over at Primordial Ooze recommended a blog editor called BlogJet for Windows PC’s. I am currently using it to edit this posting, and will run it through it’s paces over the next couple of days. Stay tuned, I’ll let you know what I think.
Posted by pmadsen at 04:11 PM | TrackBack
March 19, 2005
The New Computer Is Here
Well, it actually came quicker then Amazon said. My new 17“ Powerbook actually arrived on Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, I was going to Charlotte for 2 days on Wednesday, and had to be up by 3:15 am in order to catch a 6:50 am flight out of LaGuardia. That meant it was straight to bed after eating, paying bills and packing. I was home around 11 pm on Thursday, and had an 8 am dentist appointment the next day, so no time for the new toy then. By the time I got home on Friday, I could barely stay awake, so the computer would have to wait until Saturday (today). Can you imagine how mad I would be if I had paid for next day or overnight shipping, and then let the thing sit unpacked for 5 days. I would not have been happy.
Anyway, here are the requisite unpacking a new computer picture.
Posted by pmadsen at 02:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 12, 2005
New computer on it's way
I am getting more involved in the podcast community, and so I find myself in the position of needing some updated hardware. I currently have a 15“ 1.25 GHz powerbook (the titanium version). I love this thing, even thought it has been in the shop 3 times in a year and half (bad display, broken bluetooth, and a bad usb 2.0 port). However, there are times when I just find using Windows software easier. So, the workaround for that is I am running an old Dell tower in the spare room. It has Win XP SP2, 512meg ram, and a 40 gig hard drive. I run it headless, and I use terminal services and RDC on my powerbook to connect to it. Running wireless (802.11g) in the house, I am always amazed at how great this works. If you are a mac person, but find yourself needing the occasional windows app, I strongly recommend that you look into this as a possible solution. I had tried virtual PC and lets just say, it was painful - and the $250 I paid for it could have gone to better things.
The only problem, is that using the 15” screen on the powerbook is a little limiting. in addition, Debbie, has been wanting to learn how to use OS X, she wants to surf, and email, manage her shuffle, and stream xm radio and her old g3 333MHz woth OS 9.2.2 just isn't cutting it anymore. So I decided to upgrade to the latest 17“ powerbook.
These things pretty much come loaded out of the factory, and the latest 17” is about $800 cheaper then the 15“ I have today. I decided to shop around, pretty much knowing that everyone will have the same price. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found the computer on Amazon. Why was I surprised - well first no sales tax, so there is a $250 savings, and secondly, Amazon has a $200 rebate on the computer (ending on March 15). So, by buying it from Amazon I saved $450. That my friends, is amazing when you are talking about buying the latest and greatest from Apple. There prices are controlled and locked. Some places will throw in an ink jet printer (no thanks), or a memory upgrade, since I am going to swap the single 1 gig chip in the 15 with the 512meg in the 17 so I don't need that either. But saving cash - sign me up.
Oh by the way, I joined Amazon's Prime program, and paid 3.99 for overnight shipping. Now the hard part - waiting.
Posted by pmadsen at 09:32 AM
February 20, 2005
Image Upload Test in Ecto
If you read my previous post, you know that I have been playing around with this blog content creation tool called ecto. So far I have been pretty impressed with its capabilities and extensibility. For example, I wanted my url links to target a new window. I was able to go into the tag template editor and add target=“_blank” to the template. So now whenever I highlight a word and click on url, the tag will include the “_blank” target. Pretty cool.
But, I wanted to test the image upload functionality, and so I created this posting. I clicked on the file upload icon (not clearly identified) on the bottom of the window. On my MAC it started right in my pictures folder. I selected a photo, and was able to resize the image, change the amount of compression on the jpeg, and build a fully customized image link. Very cool.
So, now I am going to post this, lets see if it works. Oh by the way I am currently listening to 2 Minutes To Midnight from the album “Rock In Rio” by Iron Maiden. Love that itunes integration.
UPDATE: The image upload functionality worked exactly the way I had hoped. The image is embedded into the posting, and a hyperlink was created to view the image in a separate window. I checked the pricing today on ecto's site. Get this, buy the mac version for $17.95, you get the windows version for $8.95. I have 7 days left in my trial. If anyone knows of a different tool that has the same functionality let me.
Posted by pmadsen at 08:11 AM | Comments (1)
February 19, 2005
Publishing articles in a blog
I am currently listening to Porpoise Song from the album "Doorway To Norway" by Oranger
Like that tag above? I put it there with one click. How? Simple, I have stumbled on a tool called ecto. I have been putting it through a trial run today, and I have to say I am pretty impressed. For $17.95, you read that correctly - $17.95, you get a tool that allows you to easily create, preview and publish blog entries from your desktop. I am using the MAC OS x version, but a windows version is available for the same low price. Since, I am brand new to the world of moveabletype, I am not sure if the tool covers the full breadth of what you can do, but I have found it to be very feature rich. It includes text/html editing, spell checking, the ability to save drafts, preview what you have written, and of course publishing.
It can be configured to warn you if you have forgotten to apply a category, keywords, and titles. Overall, I am pretty impressed. it seemed insane to me that the only way to publish a blog was by logging into an admin section of a site, and then writing up my brain dump. I figured there must be a tool that allows you to do it from the web. A google search later and I was trying out ecto. You can edit tags, so if you want the a href tag to pop in a new window, edit the tag and your done. I added the "I am currently listening to" message on the itunes tag you see in the beginning of this article.
One thing it can't do is create Categories. I have seen this other tools, so I am assuming it is a limitation of moveabletype itself. As far as images and binaries, I have not tried to upload anything yet, so I can't speak to that. Once I have tried it I will post a follow up.
By the way I am currently listening to A View Of The City From An Airplane from the album "The Quiet Vibrationland" by Oranger
Pretty cool ain't it!
Posted by pmadsen at 05:08 PM
