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Windows Media Player 10

With my recent computer troubles I ended up visiting Windows Update a lot. I noticed Windows Media Player (WMP) 10 is now in production, so I decided to give it a whirl. The UI got some little tweaks: now the menu is impossible to find, the background is a nice blue and they’ve started emphasizing some things that were always in the product, but were previously hidden. I’ve never used iTunes, but I assume a lot of the tweaks have to do with iTunes’ success. MS is at their best when they’re trying to crush a competitor to a pulp; and the only way for them now is to make a better product, rather than strong arm tactics.

The feature I wanted to talk about, though, is the ability to sync music to my Pocket PC right in WMP! Before I had to use, um, my backup copy, yeah, of Plus! Digital Media Edition for that feature, and even then it was poorly implemented. But the new Media Player has integrated it superbly. That one feature isn’t good enough for me to switch to WMP for everything: I am still a tried and true Winamp fan; but it’s nice to see competition has improved things.

I also hear that WMP 10 has a better .NET Primary Interop Assembly, so I’ll add that on the list of things to look at.

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Finally the world is back on its axis

My computer has been fixed! I ended up replacing a power supply, a motherboard, a processer and a power supply in that order. Now my dev machine is back up and everything is right with the world. Now that it’s up, I can start concentrating on some projects including this crappy website. I’ll discuss this more later…

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Oh! My babies

I’ve written before that I’m scared of heights; not so scared that I won’t rappell off an 85ft. cliff or go para-gliding, but scared enough that I get nervous going right to the railing on my third-floor apartment balcony. I also get nervous for others who aren’t scared to do so: my girlfriend’s stupid cat has no fear of the balcony and will jump on the one inch-wide railing and look out, thinking the repeated cat thought: maybe there’s food over here.

Anyway, every time I see him jump up there I get anxious for him to get down. I’d like to point out that it’s not for the cat’s life that I’m concerned, but that I have to comfort the cat’s owner if it falls over the side. The point I’m trying to make is the anxiety I feel; probably compared to a parent who sees her kid playing too close to the road or eating marbles.

I recently got a new video card (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, if you care (to play Doom 3)), but unbeknownst to me, my computer didn’t have enough power to let it run (I swear the guy that sold it to me said it was 300W). So I ended up frying something on the machine: still haven’t found what. At the same time as the video card, I bought enough components to build another machine, so I have been rescued. But until I got that new machine up and the data from the fried one, I felt that same anxiety. It wasn’t as severe of course, but I couldn’t really think of anything else until it was fixed.

Isn’t that pathetic? I am such a nerd!

I think I’ll go back up my code now.

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I’m so hip with my new gmail account

Adam Kinney had a ton of gmail accounts to give away. When I first read his entry, I figured it would fill up in no time flat, but then I read the comments. Don’t people read directions!?!? 

Anyway now I’m jasekemp@gmail.com. So email me. Even spammers can. Hell, I got 1 GB of storage right? I don’t know if I’ll keep it going: I have way too many email accounts already and I happen to like having my email offline. Plus, there are those that think gmail is creepy.

But now I’m part of an elite group of super-nerds. Finally, <sniff> I belong.

While we’re on the topic of google. This is how Google became the Jennifer Lopez of the Internet.

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I’m “back”

I have been out for about a week and a half with an injury: I hurt my back working out for the second time in three months. It’s amazing how quickly one forgets how debilitating a lower back injury is. I’ll spare the details, but this time was worse than the first for a two reasons:

  • 1) couldn’t sit for a week; and
  • 2) didn’t have access to a laptop or internet

The first time I hurt my back, it was a “sort-of” blessing because I had a laptop generously loaned to me from Microsoft Canada to develop our Imagine Cup entry for the world competition. So I could lie down with my knees up, put the laptop on my, um, lap and code away.

No such luxury this time: I had that smug asshole Brian Williams tell me how shitty Canada did in the Olympics to pass the time. I also read the entire Dark Tower series by Stephen King but that’s a different blog entry.

Anyway a few things since I last wrote:

  • the time on my back gave me time to reflect on what I want to do with this website of mine. I’ve been wandering without a purpose on this site; over the next few days, weeks and months I’m going to change that. Hopefully. I might just play video games for several hours a day instead.
  • for the past two days I have been a full-time employee at NewHeights Software here in Victoria. I did my last co-op workterm with them: I liked them, they liked me; so we decided to make things more permanent. I’m pretty excited to work there. An all .NET shop that’s close to my house. What could be better?