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Isaac’s in a mode where he latches onto something and sticks with it for days at a time. His latest question is to ask while we’re driving around town: “Daddy, are we in the desert?”

That doesn’t get old at all, 50 times a day.

In our organization of 178 people, the 3 people that make up our programming team are all right next to each other, alphabetically. That seems quite odd, statistically speaking.

I was smart and brought in some 6 packs of soda so I didn’t have to hit the vending machines. But I’m dumb because I almost never have one cold when I want it. I need a robot that can go from my cubicle to the fridge, check if there’s one in there, and put one in if not. On a schedule.

It takes me 8 extra clicks if I want to print something duplex. I could have it set to duplex by default, then it would take me 8 extra clicks to print something single sided.

What computer things annoy you?

I almost forgot to mention Battlestar Galactica, the one podcast I go out of my way to listen to every week, when there’s a new one. It’s basically an audio commentary track of the most recent episode, by produce Ronald D. Moore. It’s completely engaging for any fan of the show.

I forgot to add these tidbits to my podcast post, but forgot. These are some things that stuck with me today.

From Today’s Podcast: Serendipity is one of the 10 words in the english language that are the hardest to translate.

From an interesting NPR piece on aphorisms was this great one: “Trust in God, but tether your camel first.”

More of the geek stuff I’ve been getting in to, or by now am well in to, is podcasting. Since it was rolled into iTunes a few months ago it’s not just “geek stuff” anymore, but it certainly leans that way.

Podcast is a catchy term but suffers a little bit from the (probably purposeful) assocation with ipods. You certainly don’t need an ipod, or in fact any portable audio, to listen to them. They are simply audio shows that are distributed through RSS. So someone records an audio show, puts it on their server, and a few hours later you have a copy on your desktop. Having that copy make it all the way to your iPod is awfully nice, but not necessary.

For me, though, that’s how I always listen to it. The majority of Podcasts are talking, and I’ve always enjoyed talk radio. I listen to music a lot during the day at work and OD on it to an extent, so having some content to listen to on the way home is a nice change.

Should you decide to check out podcasting, the easiest way to go is certainly getting them through itunes. And actually the automatic nature of podcasting isn’t necessary either, most (all?) podcasts let you download the mp3 from the site.

Here are the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis, in no particular order:

• Coverville. The show comes out about 3 times a week and is about 30 minutes of music, all cover songs. Everything played is ASCAP approved, or by the band directly, so that’s cool too.
• Today’s Podcast. It’s not quite daily, but when it does come out it’s 2 or 4 minutes long discussing a word or a quote. Some definition, entymology, usage, whatever.
• The Bitterest Pill. This is pretty close to an audio blog in content. He sort of talks about whatever is going on. He’s a stay at home dad with two kids though, so there’s usually something amusing going on.
• The M Show. 10 minutes of news, talk, and entertainment.
• The Roadhouse. One hour weekly of the finest blues you’ve never heard.
• IT Conversations. Some IT related interviews as well as a lot of presentations recorded at various IT conferences.
• Various NPR shows. Science Friday and Justice Talking are the only regular shows I get. The other stuff is “repurposed” for the web, like Story of the Day, which is one story the editors release each day.

Obviously I’m not listening to every minute of every podcast listed here, but it’s a good amount of stuff to have handy on my iPod whenever I’m in the mood.

I was finally going to get into the game. After using all the great new tools available, I was going to contribute one of my own. I was going to write a utility that analyzed XMP info in a photo and added them as Flickr tags. But Flickr already does it! Damn Flickr and its yummy goodness!

XMP is cool, I only wish I had learned about it a few months ago. XMP is an Adobe extension to JPEG header information that attaches meta data about a photo to the photo itself. It’s like EXIF, but instead of the boring technical crap you can add keywords, photographer, location, etc. Mostly I use it for keywording. There is an excellent app, pixvue, that works entirely as a shell extension, that let’s you edit the XMP data.

Most importantly, the data is attached to the photos, not stored in whatever proprietary keyword format you have been using. Unfortunately a lot of our photos are already keyworded in Paint Shop Photo Album. The biggest drawback there is that the keyword database stays on the machine you created it on. So if I’m browsing the photos from the laptop and I want to see all photos marked “jane”, I’m SOL. But not anymore! Thanks Pixvue. :)

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Me, 10 years ago
It’s 5a and I’m already up, so I might as well double check that thing at work. *checks* Oh well, they still didn’t fix it, I better take care of it. *tinker tinker* There we go.

Me, now
Crap. It’s 5a and I want to go to bed, but I better double check that thing because I know damn well they didn’t get around to doing it, or if they did they did it wrong. *checks* Damnit! How hard would it have been to do that one damn thing? *grumble grumble tinker tinker*. It’s fixed, for now. *sends off nastygram*