My all time favorite comedians

Stephen Wright
Gary Shandling
Emo Phillips
Richard Jeni
Jeff Foxworthy
George Carlin , YouTube Obitiary 
Paula Poundstone (She is SO good on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me)

Assigning software tasks

Joel wrote an article for Inc.com titled "How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail".
The issue that I have gnashed my teeth over the most is distribution of work which Joel describes as Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equally.    If you have the luxury of being able to find and hire what Joel desacribes as "the superstars that are 10 times more productive than even excellent developers", by all means do it.  But that is not realistic in most situations.  You can build a great team with a mixture of talent.  But if you don’t use the talent effectively and find a way to get the most out of each member, then you are squandering your resources.  Writing functional specs, documenting algorithms, documenting code and writing self-documenting code is the framework for ever having a chance at
having another developer be productive with code that he did not write himself.

Joel knows how to stroke the programmer with statements like this:

"Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best
programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a
day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always
seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them."

Inksmile, my online ink replacement company

Back in June I wrote this post sharing my research on ordering replacement ink online.  I chose to try InkSmile. It wasn’t the cheapest but with other factors taken into consideration (money back guarantee, discount coupons, referral program, free shipping, reviews) it felt like the best choice.  I’m happy to report that my experience has been excellent and I highly recommend it.  If you give it a try and need a referral number (I get 5% credit) use mine: 52786.

Maker Faire

So we attended Maker Faire yesterday.  Jane called it Geek-orama from what she saw on the website.  We entered through the indoor venue and walked down to the floor of the show arena.  After taking in a few "booths" Cassidy said "You paid $25 dollars for this!  What a rip-off".  Granted the large indoor building, housing many science booths and robotics and such may not have appealed to an 11 year old girl.  It actually did but you had to find the interesting exhibits among some mundane ones.

Once we ventured out to the outdoor area, the kids perked up and got more excited.  We first watched the Live Size Mouse Trap (replica of the board game), and hooked-up with Jim afterwards.  The artistically decorated cars were interesting.  There was a real good magician, fire-breathing, sword-swallowing performer.  By far the favorite activity was the Cycle park.  There were a dozen or so modified bikes that we ALL enjoyed riding around.  We all wanted one!  Many of the bikes were provided by Cyclecide

By the time we walked out everyone was saying how much fun Maker Faire was.

Dirty Car Art:

Camera Car:

Moving Windows Media Player Ratings into iTunes

Here is how SteveX does it.
I’d like to know how to transfer Windows Media Player ratings from one PC to another as well.

Graphics License Cards

Interesting take on license "keys" [via Dave Batton]

Yahoo Online Status

My Online Status for Yahoo IM is suppose to display along the left column of my home page here.  It has never worked.  I finally wrote TypePad technical support but the response did not lead me to a solution (make sure you aren’t logging in as invisible, make sure your status is available to all).  I investigated further and came across this post.  I viewed the source of my weblog home page and compared the code that is suppose to show status with the example in that post.  I recognized that the screen name that was being used on my weblog included @yahoo.com and it should have only been the screen name.  Updating my Typepad profile with only the screen name did the trick.    Another example of how computers are still way to hard for a normal person to navigate, and how great technical support is hard to come by.

I’m starting to provide technical support for DVFilm.com.  Hopefully, my experience on the other side will help me provide the type of technical support I have come to expect.

Understanding Video Recording Framerates

Here is an excellent explanation of framerates and when you might want to use them.  A summary table follows:

Andy’s work

I work with Andy here at DVFilm.  He's a budding director.  He recently showed me a music video he shot in California. It looked great.  I guess I can say I helped a smidgen.  Before he shot the video, he practiced on me to try out some new equipment.  Click HERE, right click on burning.mov and download the file before playing .  I'll just sit back and wait to be discovered now!

Check out Andy's Braveheart 2000 Trailer which did well in the Unnecessary Sequels contest.

Inno Setup

I haven’t written an install program in a while.  I used InstallShield briefly a long time ago, and I have used Nullsoft System Install System (NSIS).  I downloaded and tried out NSIS recently and it left me feeling the same as with the first experience.  I found the scripting language somewhat cryptic.  Although there are ample examples, I don’t enjoy working with it, much as I didn’t the first go around.

I found and downloaded Jordan Russell’s free Inno Setup program and am very pleased with the program.  I can say I actually enjoy working with it and found the script syntax easy and straight forward.  The documentation and support material on the website is helpful and easy to navigate.  Hopefully I won’t hit any snags and we can standardize on Inno Setup at DVFilm.com

BTW, Inno Setup writes a log file during installation to the user’s temp folder. On Vista this is hidden.  I used ProcesMon to help me find it at C:\Users\RAK\AppData\Local\Temp\Setup Log 2008-02-02 #001.txt

On XP it is C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Temp\

InnoSetup Tips and Tricks