Category: Uncategorized

I’ve updated my WordPress version and did some cleaning up of the site…

I need to add back in some stuff but everything should be working.

Well,

I really want to take on a side project (read, distraction from work) that gets me back into my theatre / acting background.

Thinking about doing an IPTV sitcom pilot.

Just need a concept, script, film crew, lighting, mics, actors, editing capabilities, distribution network, sponsors and what ever else I’m missing…

So, if you want to work with me on a yet to be thought of concept for IPTV sitcom that has no script, crew, or much of anything else, let me know!

Ok, in all seriousness…? I have access to lights, a decent camera, wireless mics, full Final Cut Studio editing suite, a couple of under used webservers to host the bandwidth…? So, just need a concept, a decent script, some actors and a few crew to make this all work. Of course a sponsor or two wouldn’t hurt to help fund this project.

So, if you are interested and in the Minneapolis area, post a comment and let me know.? I really want to do this.

You can find my twitter.com info at http://www.twitter.com/pstuart

What is twitter?

It is a way to update what you are doing/thinking at a moment, limited to 140 characters. Think of it as mini blog posts. From a phone text message or IM client. Plus you can link in your friends to twitter so you can see their twitter posts as well.

So join twitter, invite me, and lets have some fun.

The rss fead is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/3271611.rss

Well, another year and another April Fools Day.

Nothing really to prank. Nothing really good online for prank announcements either.

Was hoping for a decent April Fools Day prank on WWE Wrestlemania 23 with Donald Trump vs Vince McMahon, but to no avail… HINT: Vince lost his hair, Trump walked out with his.

And on that note, yes, once a year I get WWE Wrestlemania.

 I’ve been watching Wrestlemania now for 23 years!!! I still remember the first one.

 Man where has time gone.

I remember going over to Tony Smith’s house and watching the PPV with his dad, and that was 23 years ago. Boy time flies.

Well, Nancy and the girls are visiting her parents this week so its solo this week.? Gonna watch the NCAA Finals tomorrow night and try to get a bunch of work stuff done.

With that, Happy April Fools Day.

I get asked this question all the time since owning a Zune. As soon as people see it, they ask me if they should buy the Microsoft Zune or an Apple iPod.

The question is not an easy one to answer. Here are my takes on the two:

• Device Capabilities – Zune (has FM reciever and slightly larger screen, other then that they are virtually equal, besides the gimick of wifi sharing)
• Music Store – Apple (wider selection of music, podcast downloads, audible books)
• Subscription Model – Zune (since Apple has no such option, but this can be a negative if you don’t want to “rent” your music)
• Video – Apple (mainly due to the fact Apple actually has a way to buy / download videos whereas the Zune you have to find it on the net and convert it to wmv)
• Content Sharing – Zune (share with Zune, computer, xbox360 although Apple makes this almost virtually equal now with the AppleTV and Airport Express)
• Accessories – Apple (they own the accessories marketplace, two words, BOSE Sounddock)
• Battery Life – Apple (they win, the Zune has good battery life but the ipod just beats it hands down)
• Hardrive Access – Apple (Zune you have to hack, and still it really isn’t a harddrive to the system)
• Guest Mode – Zune (apple can’t access content without 3rd party apps from foriegn ipods to iTunes, have to delete content and resync)

So there you have it, the points, all being equal means 5 to 5. So its a split decision. Apple wins some, Zune wins some. No doubt the Apple Marketing machine wins in advertising, although the Apple iPhone sure has some folks holding off. Can’t wait for Microsoft’s version 2 of the Zune or maybe they won’t forget the early adopters and unlock some of the potential the Zune actually has. Of course this is comparing the Apple iPod and Zune with equal sizes, if diskspace is a must, Apple wins due to their larger available size.

My recomendation to anyone looking to buy a music player… Hold off till this holiday season. If you must have one, either buy someone’s used iPod cheap or get a Apple iPod nano until the new models come out, if size doesn’t matter, if it does, buy the bigger iPod 80gig otherwise wait and see what comes out this fall.

I’ve been doing a lot of PHP coding lately for work. We are putting up some really fun stuff soon, but its taking its toll on me. I need to find a few good PHP coders that are willing to work cheap. Ideally, if you are in the Minneapolis, MN area and looking for a nice part time job, let me know because I might just be able to hook you up with a nice resume building job.

On the other hand, I did figure out how to do personalized URLs (PURLS) using about 5 lines of code. I’ll share the “secret” soon, but basically the answer was right in front of me. Heck its built into WordPress 🙂 Just not called personalized URLS, but called something else :). Anyway, its been a lot of fun getting back into coding, but the reality is, I’m not a coder. Any coder who would look at my work would have to agree 🙂

Anyway, back to the grind. (and watch Purdue take on Arizona)

Cool,

Finally got the Zune working with my Mac via Parallels, I am free of my PC laptop and no more booting into Boot Camp to make it work.

Kudos to the guys (and gals?) at Parallels for making some amazing strides to keep competitive with VMWare’s Fusion Beta which works with the Zune.

This is great news, until Microsoft (or some crafty hacker) comes out with a Mac client for the Zune.

Time for my annual predictions for 2007

-Apple will launch a cell phone with iTunes built in via their own carrier network and feature data services
-Apple will launch a tablet like laptop, possibly preloaded with Windows Vista
-Apple will launch iTV not as a cable box / tivo replacement, but as a IPTV video on demand / subscription model
-Microsoft will launch a Xbox 360 to Zune video transfer service, allowing Zune owners to transfer movies and TV shows easily to their Zune and back.
-Microsoft will launch Vista (duh!) and it will be very popular as you will not be able to buy a new computer without it installed (ok maybe linux will be on the desktop this year)
-Microsoft will launch a Zune enabled cell phone based on the windows mobile platform
-Microsoft will update the Xbox360 to include an HD-DVD player or atleast bundle the usb accessory at the same prices.
-Cable modem and DSL speeds will increase dramatically in 2007 without the price going up significantly
-Someone will offer al-a-carte TV download subscription model to compete with cable and satellite service
-Blue-ray will die off or at least become the betamax to HD-DVD
-Sony will write off the PS3, potentially selling it to Apple (wouldn’t that be great)
-Wall Street will hit all time highs
-Google will launch an Operating System will all google applications
-We will finally find Osama bin Laden, probably in Pakistan
-Terrorists will try to attack us, but lets hope we are able to stop them and not drop our guard
-Mozilla Firefox will double its userbase and become the “standard” browser for all web based applications.

Never would have found this one on my own…

Make sure the Illustrator Appearance tab is visible and not closed.

Open Illustrator file with compound shape on an intel mac in CS 2 Mac OSX 10.4.8.
Select all, use pathfinder or type in a coordinate to move all.
Illustrator should crash… (not on powerpc’s it doesn’t)

Open Illustrator again, this time, close the Appearance tab… Relaunch Illustrator, and use pathfinder or type a coordinate on your compound shape and it won’t crash…

Also, copying a compound shape and pasting into a new document will crash Illustrator as well when teh Appearance tab is opened on close of Illustrator.

Wierd, wierd, wierd bug… Rule of thumb on intel macs running Illustrator CS2, don’t use the appearance window, and if you do, close it before Illustrator crashes, err you close Illustrator.

Found via http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-60705.html

Thanks!

Per per use models are doomed to fail. They have one goal, to simplify the costs of buying or paying for the incremental costs of a product or service. There isn’t a single successful pay per use model that consumers are unanimously supportive of.

Take music for example, would you pay $0.01 / song you have played on your mp3 player? Would you pay $0.32 / mile you drive your car? Would you pay $0.005 / time you shave your face / legs? What would you pay per use? We do it for electricity, water, sewer service, even long distance.

But aren’t these all doomed to fail? Long distance seems to be the next victim in this capitalism gone awry model, due to competition that allows unlimited long distance for flat rates. Cell phones now offer more minutes then people use for flat rates (even though the overages are still signficant).

But how about paying a flat rate for power or water? Will that happen? We don’t pay per pound for garbage pickup, even though the guy down the street might put out 10 times as much garbage as I do.

In the digital print world in which I work, 2 of the 3 major manufacturers of digital presses offer pay per click models in which you pay for every impression off the machine at a fixed rate. The 3rd offers a program in which you buy your parts and supplies and they rebate you the difference over your agreed cap.

Lets look at price per use models. They thrive on a “Las Vegas” model that represents the fact that you can’t beat the house. Vegas gambling brings in millions if not billions of dollars a year, banking on the fact that people believe they can beat the house and win big. The fact of the matter is you can’t beat the house over time. You might win big once in awhile, but the law of averages kicks in and you will ultimately lose money gambling in Vegas.

So why do we choose price per use models? Probably the most significant reason is simplicity. It is easy to price and understand your costs. They are fixed, or at least we assume they are fixed. In my world of digital printing, one manufacturer negotiates the click price so that different owners of their product pay different rates. There is no published click price, in fact you almost need a degree in accounting to understand what your click price actually is. So is that simplification?

Would you pay a fixed price per mile for your vehicle, if it included gas? Lets say you buy a $20,000 car (the average price of a new car today) and lease it over 5 years. Your monthly payment would be about $360. If you drive the average 12,000 miles a month, your cost per mile would be $0.03. Now, add the price of gas on average right now is $2.20 / gallon. Assume the average car gets 20 miles / gallon and your additional cost per mile for gas is $0.11 bringing the cost of driving your car to $0.14 / mile. Now, throughout the 5 years you are going to own the car, you will need to put new tires, brakes, shocks, windshield wipers, and carwashes to keep the car clean. Lets say you spend $5,000 a year (probably really high, but go with me) on these items which would cost an additional $0.034 / mile bringing the total cost of operating your vehicle to $0.174 / mile.

Why all the math? Well, lets say the manufacturer spells out the cost of a vehicle at $0.34 / mile. Which will cover all the costs of owning, maintaining and driving a car. If your cost is $0.174 / mile and the manufacturer is saying it should cost $0.34 you are saving alot of money paying for your gas and parts. But what happens when you don’t drive an average of 12,000 miles? or gas prices jump up or down? or you spend way more on brakes? These numbers start flying all over the place.

Now, would you pay for a new car, without having to pay for gas, maintainence or anything else, for the flat price of $0.34 / mile? Knowing that the car manufacturer was statistically making almost a 50% profit off the average person? This is why pay per use models are destined to fail over time, especially when competition offers non-fixed pricing. Pay per use models are closed ecosystems, disallowing you to use any parts not part of the model or to manufacturer spec.

Pay per use models will ultimately lose to competition and logic. You wouldn’t buy a razor and pay per shave, as the razor blades don’t have fixed lives. If you can get more out of a razor blade, you will. Take the internet for example, can you imagine if you had to pay per byte for every website you view? What if it cost you $0.000005 / byte for viewing this page? Would you accept this model? We want flat rate pricing, or we want to buy our supplies and utilize them the way we want. That is called freedom. In the end, pay per use models will fail in almost every case, once someone offers a reasonable alternative. Had Gutenburg charged a click for every impression off his printing press, he might have not died broke, but then again, someone else would have come along and offered to print for a flat price.