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The SciFi channel is introducing a mini-series starting December 2nd called "TinMan". Picture to the right shows you their "reimagining" of the OZ story. Some really (!) good actors in this one, and the concept is pretty high-brow also.

While I've pretty much stopped watching Battlestar Galactica, I still have some love for the SciFi channel. And this is one of the reasons why ;-)

Ran across a UK site for creating personalized number plates while trying to help someone who is planning to move back there (not me).

After checking the site out, I have to say that I found it quite easy to use, and wish that Texas had a similar site for creating personalized plates. Of course with all the interesting plate styles available here, that would probably be a bit complex.

So, if you're looking for personalized plates - in the UK - you should give this place a good look.

Post sponsored by Northumbria Numbers.

Downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 live CD, and I can't say I'm as in love with it as I had hoped I would be. The first system I tried it on was my work system - a Thinkpad T60p with a Centrino Duo processor, ATi graphics, gig of RAM, and 120 Gig HD. The live CD booted up ok, but by default did not recognize my Wacom mouse/pen which I somewhat expected. However it also didn't recognize the touchpad on the laptop. It would only work with the little red nub pointer and buttons.

Also, couldn't get the version of Firefox on the live CD to use the profile I have on my USB drive, which would mean a LOT of copying settings and form information to get started. Would also make it difficult (at best) to stay in sync with my home machine.

Home machine was up next, and it's an HP tx1000 CTO laptop with an AMD dual core, nVidia graphics, touchscreen, two gigs of RAM, and a 160 gig HD. Not surprisingly, it didn't recognize the wireless keyboard and mouse, and didn't recognize the touchscreen. Same problem with the USB drive of course.

I suspect that given some time I could do an install of Ubuntu and get some of these problems worked out. But I wish there were a live DVD version that had more of the drivers on it so I could be sure. In the meantime, I don't think I'll be switching either machine anytime soon...

As I've discussed previously, I'm rather fond of furniture - particularly hardwoods when it comes to home furniture, and metal and glass for the office. So you probably won't be surprised that I found this website selling Oak Beds to be of some interest. Below is one of their offerings:




Pretty nice, wouldn't you say? Of course I'm almost as impressed by the setting as with the bed :-)

They have quite a few more offerings than just this one, and it's a great place to get ideas for your own bedroom. The styles are generally warm and somewhat modern, and the selection is pretty good. So give the place a quick look when you have the chance.

Post sponsored by Time4Sleep

Well, I've unplugged my Tivo's from both TVs after the 9.1 software "upgrade" made them more like boat anchors than like PVRs. I understand that the upgrade actually makes the Series 3 HD models work better, but having played this game before, I'm not investing another several hundred dollars to have a slightly better interface than my Time Warner PVR.

That still leaves me needing a way to get video from the computer to the TVs. Enter SanDisk's new "TakeTV" which works pretty simply. Copy the shows you want to the special USB stick (pic on the left). Put the USB stick in a docking station connected to the TV. Use the remote that comes with it to play the videos on the stick.

Simple, easy, and not a bad way to take stuff with you when you travel either. I'll probably be getting a couple of these "Real Soon Now"!

PayPerPost has been the one thing that so far has been very (!) reliable at both helping drive traffic to the blog, and making me a little money at the same time. So I was more than a little excited to find out that payperpost is going to improve their current system with a new statistics and reporting package they are calling Argus.

The package is designed to make it easier to look at results across multiple blogs, as well as to look at things that are related to particular posts, as well as the standard visitor and page view stats. While you can get some of that in a separate stats package now, it will be nice to have it in the same place you're already visiting to look at what opportunities are available.

Of course there will also be changes to help advertisers such as an easy way to identify bloggers who are writing on a particular topic, or who might be located in an area they want to target. While that is possible in the current system, it's not as easy as it could be, and Argus will be a big help.

Finding additional opportunities to write about, and ways to further increase traffic will also be part of the overhaul. Basically, it all comes down to making the system work better for everyone involved, and getting a somewhat slicker UI as part of the process.

As the system rolls out, I'll be sure to let y'all know how it works!

Was looking to find a long range forecast for my road trip around the Rocky Mountains next year, and the only thing that was reasonably affordable was the 2008 Farmer's Almanac.

According to that, it looks like it's quite likely going to be clear and hot on the 4th, but kind of turbulent the next couple of days, with some chance of precip and storms for most of the week. That's not totally strange for that time of year, but I do hope the chances stay fairly low on the days I'm going to be out...

What do you use for long range weather planning?

One thing I try to keep an eye out for are unique ways of getting a message out. I've recently learned about banner stands, and some of the interesting ways those can be used.


Types of banner stands include retractable, rod-tension, hanging (as seen in the picture to the right), adjustable, wall mounted, counter top or free standing, outdoor & indoor, motorized and more. Guess there are a lot more to them than I had realized. There's a design for use anywhere an advertising message needs to be displayed effectively.

If you're looking for a new way to get your message out, this might be worth looking at!

This post sponsored by CamelBack Displays

As y'all have probably picked up from my earlier postings about my T-Mobile Dash, I haven't been particularly impressed with the Apple iPhone - even though I'm already an AT&T customer. One of the BIG reasons for that is that I'm a touch typist, and when I'm using the phone to message or browse the web, I need that tactile feedback.

Well, I've just found the HTC Advantage X7501, and this looks to me to be the IDEAL smartphone. It is a GSM quad-band phone, and so will work on the T-Mobile and AT&T networks. It runs Windows Mobile 6, so it's up to date software wise. It also has built-in GPS and comes with a nice software bundle for using it from Tom-Tom, and also features Bluetooth and WiFi in addition to EDGE and GPRS.

Like the iPhone it has 8GB of internal memory, but it also has a microSD card so you can add even more storage if you want. AND it has a 5 inch touchscreen (bigger than the iPhone) as well as a 3 megapixel camera.

I know that if I had the $900 (yes, it's also more expensive than the iPhone), this would be my gadget of choice since it appears to be a true laptop replacement option. If anyone has already bought one of these, I would LOVE to hear how it's worked out for you!

News this morning about a major addition to the San Antonio Riverwalk. Unfortunately, the reporter gets a a couple of facts wrong.

First off, while the "main" portion of the Riverwalk is one mile through downtown, the current Riverwalk is actually closer to three miles from the southern end at the bridge by the mill to the northern end.

Second, it was announced earlier this year that there will be an addition of a couple miles at the northern end as well to link up the Riverwalk with the development going on at the Pearl Brewery. It is the OVERALL northern AND southern additions that will add thirteen more miles to the current Riverwalk.

Of course, it's not like reporters are PAID to check their facts, right?

In this final article in my series on BitTorrent, I want to take a look at the future for the protocol.

BitTorrent is essentially designed to solve two problems. The first is to make a lot of bandwidth available for file transfers without costing any one node a large amount of traffic, and therefore saving a lot of financial overhead for media and data providers. The second, although not discussed as often, is to ensure an error-free transfer. Before BitTorrent, most P2P protocols did not ensure that a transfer would not be corrupted. Instead it was up to the user to use a file compression/protection protocol such as ZIP or RAR to give the transfer some chance of surviving the trip. With BitTorrent, a decent level of corruption protection is built-in.

If we look a few years down the line, do the same problems remain? The corruption problem is unlikely to disappear as long as the net is built on top of a transport layer that does not guarantee delivery, or order of delivery. While IPv6 gives some capabilities in this area, it is not by itself able to "fix" this problem. So there is certainly still a need for error-free file transfers.

The more "slippery" question is what the economics of transferring bits will look like a few years in the future. As long as access is generally flat-rate, and serving bandwidth is what is charged at a varying rate, then being able to share the load is going to remain important. Assuming that is the case, then where you would expect to see BitTorrent improve in the next few years is in areas where it can more effectively spread out the load. This could involve allowing for some type of geographical/network topology "sensing" to make the protocol give weight to seeds and clients that are "nearby" to others. It could also involve adding in capabilities to cache packets along the way in some type of bit store that would not necessarily require that file to be currently transferring from all the seeds or clients currently connected. It could even involve having packets for unpopular files hitching rides with packets that are popular to spread the traffic even further in a load balancing fashion.

So, that's my thoughts on the possible future for BitTorrent. I hope you've enjoyed reading this series on BitTorrent as much as I have writing it.

To the right is a picture of the current uTorrent interface for Windows. For many folks who use the BitTorrent protocol, this is not a new sight. Which is the point of this article in my series on BitTorrent. As I discussed yesterday, the open source nature of BitTorrent allowed a number of good UIs to be developed for the protocol. However, it seems that on the Windows platform, more and more of the traffic is handled through this one interface.

Why is that? Why is uTorrent popular? Part of the reason is certainly that it has always been a UI that made it easy to tweak. Many of the earlier UIs for BitTorrent either assumed you had a full understanding of the protocol, or that you didn't care about tweaking, or both. uTorrent has always tried to make the settings easy to get at, and provided helpful information within the program itself as to what those settings will do for you.

Even little things like incorporating the Speed Test button can be very important for folks who just want to get the latest copy of Ubuntu and not worry too much over how they're doing it. Certainly there are enough gamers out there who want the latest public demo who want to minimize their non-gaming time :-)

By making BitTorrent easy, and by making tuning it easy, and by making MANAGING those torrents easy, uTorrent has done a pretty good job of making BitTorrent popular. I think those are at least some of the reasons why BitTorrent Inc purchase uTorrent.

One more posting in my series on BitTorrent tomorrow - some thoughts about the future of BitTorrent and mesh transfers.

One of the supposed perks of my current job is the opportunity to travel. The reality is a bit different in that most of your trip is often spent in meeting rooms rather than actually visiting the place, and that you often don't know where your travel office is putting you up for the night.

So it's been nice to find a Hotel Reservations site that gives you not only discount prices, but also has fairly comprehensive listings and reviews. The site is called (big surprise) Hotel Reservations.com. Logo below in case you think I'm making this up:



I was able to run some searches for Denver, Colorado as well as here in San Antonio, Texas. I was pleased to see that they had an extensive listing of hotels for both locations (as opposed to some sites that only show the places that advertise with them), and that their ratings agreed with my experiences at the places that I have stayed at. Including being honest about some locations you would pick only if you were on a limited budget :-)

Of course, having ratings doesn't help if the prices are unreasonable. Their prices seemed very good, and the savings also extend to their deals for Flights, Cars, and Vacation Packages. It is also convenient that they have city guides for international and domestic destinations. I might know that I want to stay in North Denver if I have a client in Broomfield, but I'm less likely to know where to stay in Orlando if I want to be able to swing by Disney World after my meetings. It also gives me a chance to try and find good destination that will fit within our corporate per diem, and then suggest those places directly to my Travel Department rather than play hotel roulette.

Next time you have to travel for business, or pleasure, I'd suggest giving these folks a try. Decent prices, good reviews, and travel data - what more could you want? :-)

Note: This post sponsored by HotelReservations.com

As part of my series on BitTorrent, I want to talk about some of the things that have allowed BitTorrent to avoid the kind of legal problems that doomed Napster, and to a lesser extent Kazaa and Limewire.

I think one of the smartest things Bram Cohen did in starting up is that he began as an open source project. All of his code was available, which meant that anyone considering trying to shut the network down would have to go after ANYONE developing a compatible technology. While the RIAA has shown a willingness to go after tens of thousands of people at once, it might pause when considering going after developers in other countries. Heck, the folks at Pirate Bay would have been likely to release their own protocol called something like Baywatch as soon as such a lawsuit began.

However, being open source meant that something even MORE important occurred. Folks who were developing other open source projects were willing and able to use BitTorrent to be their main mechanism of distribution. This means that for the first couple of years that there was at least as much legitimate and "non-infringing" use of the transport as there was use for doing things like trading music or video files.

As most folks know, part of the reason for the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Sony for video tapes was that there were significant non-infringing uses. Napster by it's design was almost exclusively for audio files, and at a time when there wasn't nearly as much of an independent music scene as there is now. Kazaa and LimeWire had the capability, but never saw a business case for advertising such use, and so did not develop the "non-infringing" uses as much as they should have from a legal standpoint.

The third advantage of the open source decision was that other folks could make compatible front-ends who were more talented at doing so. While the original BT client was "ok", the clients that were later developed by Azureus and uTorrent made the use of BitTorrent much simpler for beginners while providing powerful tools for more advanced users.

To answer the original question, BitTorrent has never been sued because such a suit would have a hard time identifying all of the likely defendants, would be difficult to win dues to having significant "non-infringing" uses, and because of the difficulty in preventing multiple variations being quickly developed that could not be effectively prosecuted.

Tune in tomorrow for more on my series on BitTorrent.

TorrentFreak has an intersting artcile about the collecting aspect of BitTorrent. It seems that for some people "gotta collect them all" isn't just for Pokemon cards.

Of course, as the article suggests, a lot of what BitTorrent can do for you involves getting to understand the protocol and the tools using it. I'm planning to do my next series of posts on this subject, and I look forward to telling all of you more about this fascinating topic!

Picture to the right is of the Nissan Pivo 2, an electric concept car that got a write-up today at Jalopnik.

In addition to being all electric, the wheels and the cabin can all rotate. This means no reverse gear is necessary (which simplifies the transmission among other things), and that parallel parking becomes much simpler.

The design looks a little funky, but for the kind of commuting I do, my only complaint would be the fact I still have to drive it myself. Hopefully it isn't TOO many more years before I can get a self driving car and sit back and browse the web while the car deals with traffic jams and the like.

I belong to a few programs online that pay in points, or help you find coupons. But recently I found a place that is an actual clearinghouse for online coupons. The name of the site is CouponChief.com.

They have agreements with all the places you're likely to shop, which makes it easy since you go to just one place for your coupons. For example, you can go to their Best Buy Coupons section and download a bunch of electronics deals, and then go to the Target Coupons section for that grocery or clothes shopping trip that you need to make on the way home. And those are only two of the many stores they have coupons for. I would definitely recommend stopping by and picking up several of the savings opportunities yourself.

Many of you have noticed that I, like a number of other bloggers, have signed up for the BlogRush service. So far I can't say that I've seen any indication that my traffic has grown all that much, but it actually HAS helped me find blogs with similar posts for me to read when I have time.

While I know that isn't necessarily the prime motive for creating the service, I have to say that I'll probably keep the panel up for that use even if the traffic levels don't grow that much. Of course, I wouldn't MIND getting a few thousand hits a day...

The office is slowly coming together after the move, although a lot of the effort is in finding a place for everything. Of course, I keep finding myself thinking I should just knock out a wall and do a serious redecoration.

You know, add a kitchen with some bar faucets, maybe a nice tub and sink, that sort of thing. Of course if I'm going to do that, I'm going to want to get the best prices for the supplies, and online is the only way to go there.

That's why it's nice to find a place like Faucets.com where I can get some decorating ideas, as well as decent prices for bathroom and bar fixtures. Of course I think the kitchen options would be much more conducive to having meetings than a sunken bathtub :-)

If you're looking into doing some remodeling yourself, it's probably a good idea to check this place out.

Post Sponsored by Faucet.com

Given my recent personal interest in learning about gluten-free diets and celiac disease, I was pleased to find out that Newsweek recently did an article about both called "Waiter, Please Hold the Wheat".

While I somewhat disagree about the ease of finding food and restaurants suggested in the article, I certainly believe that it's gotten easier than it was even a couple years ago.

Of course, the one thing that still gets me is that I'm the rare sufferer who gained weight even having celiac disease. Evidently I was making up for the lack of nutrients by bombarding myself with enough food to make up for it. Just switching to a gluten-free diet has so far helped me lose five pounds - although that's hardly enough to suggest going out and writing a book about it yet :-)