You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2006.
Albert Faber, the developer behind CDex (my favorite CD ripper) is active again; he’s started releasing beta builds of version 1.70. Thanks to my friends at Hydrogenaudio for the heads-up.
My oddsock swag. The worthy will receive a bumper sticker. Thanks, Ed!
Melissa and I finally got out last night to celebrate our anniversary and we went to see the Sandra Bullock/Keanu Reeves film “The Lake House“. It was a decent romantic movie if you buy into the plot device, which is fantasy. It was set and filmed in Chicago, and I think the cinematography was excellent. I liked the way they unfolded the story, although near the end of the movie it was unclear how much time was passing between scenes. I figured out the twist a bit early, but it didn’t take away from the ending. It’s probably the best date movie I’ve seen in a while.
Scott and I have been discussing the start of the upcoming Brutal Deluxe Football League podcast season and improvements we can make. I’m going to try to clean up the audio even more this season by making the recording less complicated. We’ll probably still use Skype, but probably only with the two of us, to try to keep levels in check. I’m going to do a little bit more in post-production as well. I dislike spoken-word podcasts where different speakers are at different levels, and I’m going to do my best to make sure my podcasts aren’t among them.
I’ll also avoid publishing the BDFL podcasts through more feeds than just the official BDFL website feeds. I don’t want us to waste bandwidth by publishing the same podcasts on my feeds. I will still post pointers to the episodes and encourage anyone interested in listening to subscribe to the BDFL website.
I’m also thinking about doing a little bit of underwriting this year, so that we can get a little bit back for the time that we spend producing the content. I estimate we will probably produce about 26 episodes at 40-60 minutes a piece. We’re thinking about making the show more formatted as well. Any suggestions in these areas?
Sam reports that Bloglines has announced they’re now parsing Atom 1.0 feeds. The first thing I’ve done as a result was to unsubscribe from Tim Bray’s RSS feed (which Bloglines forced me to) and subscribe to his Atom feed. Looking great. Thanks, Bloglines.
I’ve been using oddsock’s Oddcast for years now to stream music around the house and to friends. He (Ed Zaleski) is also the guy who’s maintained the Win32 port of Icecast for a number of years (and I believe he helps with the core programming as well). Soon I will be able to proudly promote Oddsock’s site and wares in convenient t-shirt format; I won a mail-in contest that Ed held recently.
Thanks to Ed for maintaining free, quality streaming tools for us audio nerds for all these years.
We’ve had quite a weekend here at the Harden house. Melissa’s parents came in Thursday and will be here until tomorrow. Ryan is turning six tomorrow and had a party with 9 of his friends yesterday. It was his first birthday party that was exclusively with friends he’d made at school as opposed to just family (and close family friends). The boys were a bit “spirited” but the party was fun. Melissa had a great slate of activities lined up: decorating aprons, making pizzas (starting with unbaked dough), playing pin-the-pepperoni-on-the-pizza, eating said pizzas (not all the kids did, but they tasted great), going on a treasure hunt, and opening gifts. We just sat down and watched the short bursts of video I took. Those are some cute kids. What made me proudest was how gracious Ryan was.
We watched the US hold Italy to a tie with a man down in World Cup action, and watched Edmonton bury Carolina 4-0 to force a seventh and decisive Stanley Cup playoff game. Good stuff. I’ll be rooting for the Oilers again tomorrow.
Today we headed over to HACC’s Harrisburg campus with rollerblades and Ryan’s bike. On the weekends it’s a great place to go to scoot around because of its long, wide, flat walkways and lack of people to bother. Ryan is getting more used to his bike and is starting to understand how the training wheels are holding him back. I hadn’t skated in a while but got my legs back pretty quickly and had a great time making a few laps around the campus with Ry. He stayed with me pretty well and didn’t want me to get too far ahead. We moved at a fun pace. We’re definitely going to do that more often.
After lunch we went to Hershey Gardens for the first time in a few years. They have some large wooden bug sculptures on display that are quite good. The flowers were in full bloom. It was quite hot today, and those strategically-placed water fountains could’ve used a little more pressure.
Just like last year, we decided to go over to ABC for our Fathers’ Day dinner. Service was slow but the food and beer were good. I got one of my three favorite ABC varities, Water Gap Wheat. My other favorties are Mountain Lager and Purist Pale Ale.
After we got back, I received a nice light-blue, ribbed t-shirt for Fathers’ Day, and Ryan’s “big gift” from his visiting grandparents is a starter electric guitar! We’re going to have fun with that.
Happy Fathers’ Day to my Dad and all the dads I know!
I decided not to wait for Amazon to ship me the copy of Rush’s new Replay x3 box set since Best Buy had it for $3 cheaper than my pre-order price and I was heading by there anyways. Get this: it was $27.99 when I ordered it, now it’s $25.99. Guess it may not pay to pre-order. I picked it up yesterday and quickly put the Exit… Stage Left and Grace Under Pressure Tour DVDs in and thumbed through them. It was only on my 20″ TV setup, but the transfers look fine. The sound was good. I haven’t seen these videos in years. I’ll be checking out the new surround mixes sometime next week.
Also included in the package are the A Show Of Hands DVD (sans “Lock And Key” from the original laserdisc version), a CD of the GUP Tour show, and three booklets, one for each show, each with a reproduction of the tourbook for that show’s tour. These concerts were all before my Rush-going days. I got into Rush around the time of Hold Your Fire and have seen them on every tour since the release of Presto. At $26 bucks, this is one heck of a deal for even the casual Rush fan.
Well, I made it through the TDC 2006’s metric century (62 miles). I knew I hadn’t prepared enough for the ride, but figured I could manage. And I did, although not without slowing my dad down a bit during the last 20 miles. One problem I never encountered during Bike Virginia last year due to adequate training was cramps. Yesterday at about the 40-mile mark I started feeling some cramping in my upper left leg. I made sure to keep hydrated and made use of the more-than-adequate rest stops to take a break and recharge. That last rest stop at the Agway was well-placed, that’s for sure. 
If the course had been more hilly, I wouldn’t have been able to make it. The views along the ride (in Scott’s and Chuck’s area) were spectacular, and the ride through Carlisle was interesting for someone who hadn’t ridden through on a bike before. My dad and I communicated effectively, I with the cue sheet and he with the map, and we didn’t miss a turn. The route was pretty well marked, but there were a few turns that I wouldn’t have been prepared for if I was just looking for the painted pavement markers.
Once we headed back home, I was pretty darn lethargic, but I did help with dinner and was a little more lively later. Today I just have a sore seat.
Now that I have the routes, I may head over that way and ride them outside of the TDC. Obviously, that’d be the best way to prepare for the ride next year, especially if I want to have a time goal. My dad and I started at 8AM and arrived back a little before 2PM. I believe we averaged 13mph while in motion. I can do better!
I will definitely do the Tour de Cure 2007 ride, and now that I have a better feel for the fundraising I should be able to raise more money for the cause.
Looking ahead to later this season, I’m now planning to ride in the Lancaster Bicycle Club’s Covered Bridge Metric Century ride on August 20, 2006. My dad has already planned to ride this with one of his other cycling friends. It looks like a fun ride. I have enough time to properly train for that one so that I can enjoy myself a bit more if I decide to go for the long ride again.
Chuck finished the TDC’s 31-mile course, and agreed with my assessment that he could have done the long course. Perhaps we can team up for the metric century in ‘07.
Webcam on? Check.
Cut-out “Microsoft” logo taped onto screen back? Check.
Logitech Internet Chat Headset put on backwards? Check.
Toothy, goofy grin? Check.
All systems go!
Just another classic Steve Ballmer picture.
By this time on Saturday I plan to have biked 62 miles (100 km) in support of diabetes research. Please consider sponsoring my ride; it’s a great cause and I think you’d be surprised at the number of people who live with diabetes. I can accept donations until the end of June.
Of course, the ride will benefit my health as well by getting me out of the house and active for a good portion of the day. And I’ll get to hang with my dad during the ride. I haven’t prepared for this the way I probably could have, but I know my legs will be up to it even if my lungs slow me down.
I’ll probably change into my Cygweb shirt after the ride; if you see me, say hi! I’ll probably be the only one riding a white Giant Sedona SE (mountain bike) with road tires that has a Porcupine Tree sticker on it. (Thanks, Don!)
One of the things I was able to do while on vacation was watch a good portion of the Sabres-Hurricanes games that were on while I was there. I was psyched when Buffalo forced a Game 7, and disappointed when they were defeated on Thursday. The defensive injuries finally reached a head; the Hurricanes were in the Sabres’ zone for a good portion of the night and it showed. I think this year’s Sabres were a class act and I can’t wait to see them in 2006-2007.
As for this year’s series: GO OILERS!
We had a great time out west. We’re decompressing and unpacking now. I won’t be riding tomorrow morning unless I start feeling a lot better; yesterday I picked up a cold or I’m having an allergy attack. It made the flights fun, but Sudafed helped.
We visited all of the places we’d planned to, and yesterday we even squeezed in visits to the Numismatic Society’s Money Museum and Manitou Springs. It was a great week off with Melissa’s grandparents and the weather cooperated nicely!
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