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Zune 30 Pandemic

Olaf — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:03:19 +0000

Oh, good grief! I awoke this morning to find my Zune in a less than pleasing way. I was concerned that the number of times I’ve dropped the device had finally caught up with me and I was paying the ultimate price. However, I decided to check out what was being said online about this problem – perhaps it’s something Microsoft can service. What do I find? A pandemic of global proportions effecting only Zune 30 users. It sounds like it’s related to a date bug in the device, but it has yet to be answered by Microsoft. Some have hope that normal operation will resume tomorrow, when the date resolves firmly to day 1 of 365. I’m not holding my breath. The timing couldn’t be worse as we’re heading off for a short vacation tomorrow. If neither mine nor my wife’s Zune won’t work, I’ll be sorely disappointed.

I had thought this might be a good excuse to buy an upgrade to the newer generation Zune 80 or 120, but I’d have to find my place all over again in the current audiobook I’m listening to (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”). Arrrrgh!

Search around on the net and you’ll find no shortage of complaints and Microsoft bashing surrounding this recent development. It’s a sad day, and ironic one too. I had just poked fun at a friend recently who bought an iPod without thinking of the alternative. To be fair, however, had she bought a current model Zune, she’d be unaffected by the problem.

*UPDATE* Microsoft has released a statement regarding the Zune 30 bug that hit all of us this morning. They’re essentially telling everyone to wait until tomorrow morning to turn on the Zune. As of 7:00am for Eastern timezone folks, your Zune will magically begin working again; almost ass mysteriously as it stopped.

Though it’s not in their official release, the problem is most likely due to a bug in its ability to handle a leap year, which 2008 qualified. The idea being that a leap year has around 366 days instead of the usualy 365. As of January 1st, Greenwich Meantime, the device will be back on 1 of 365 – and working. It’s a logical solution, but a very unfortunate goof for the Zune hardware team. Maybe we’ll get a coupon toward the purchase of a new generation Zune in the mail for our trouble (ahem…are you listening, Zune team)!

A Baby Changes Everything

Olaf — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:48:20 +0000

Remarkably, the biggest change at the Gradin household is simply in our perception. There are all sorts of things that change when a new child is born into your family. Your free time dries up, your bank account empties, you become more selfless. But when you already have an older child, the thing we noticed was that the older child stopped being a baby in our eyes. I never realized how big he was – how big his hands were. It’s harder to carry him sleeping into his bed at night. This new addition, so small and defenseless, makes us realize in ways you can’t truly convey to anyone that she’s the only baby in the house. Perhaps Balthazar became “our first child.” Even though he’s only five years old, I sense that he’s more in charge of his destiny and in self discovery now. Sorscha, on the other hand, seems to have so much more malleable potential tied up in her.

I’m doing my best to ensure that I don’t lose sight of the treasures still to come in our first-born while our attention is diverted to this little girl. It can be a struggle keeping up with everything at home while still making time for me and Balthazar to play the games we used to play. Easing that, he’s recently really gotten into board games. I can keep an eye (and ear) on Sorscha while we play board games without being too distracted to give him my attention. It’s also easier to allocate this time, as our outside time has been cut short for the coming winter.

This experience of having our second child – some 5 years apart from our first – has given us new wisdom that I feel one can only gain through life.

One cannot fully appreciate what happens to the being at the birth of your first child. You undergo a transformation unlike anything before or after that moment. I remember seeing a baby born vaginally when I was an adolescent, and the experience gave me some spine-tingling chills that hinted at this fact. When we had our first child, the internal shift from my awareness of self: man, husband, child, protector, supplier, etc., went spiraling around and may have momentarily just been forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. The thing I remember most – and perhaps something that sums up a great deal of this feeling – is that I lost my sense of invulnerability. Perhaps it’s passed on to the next generation – much to a parent’s chagrin.

Now at the birth of our second child, we see the real development of our first. Less of the initial surge of fatherhood that fills you, though a new awareness of everything that can’t be ignored.

I really mean to say that there are some lessons in life that we’re taught, but can never be appreciated until experienced. You were told that you’d one day look back at your school days and realize you were having the time of your life. You’re told that a child will change you. I’ve heard that time flies as you get older. “One day you’ll understand…” All of these things go unheeded as our elders press them into our heads. Being at the crossroads of naivety and understanding, I want to impart a sort of enlightenment to those behind me on the path. But who am I kidding? I’m just saying the same thing…

Lennart Green Magic Amazes TEDrs

Olaf — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:55:10 +0000

Lennart Green, the foremost close-up card magician of the world, dazzled the audience of TED 2005. I caught the video today on my Zune and was thrilled. His show is very entertaining, quick witted, and his foreignness is close to my heart (Green is from Gothenburg, Sweden). The TED video is around 30 minutes of goodness. Green had me laughing often, and his hand work is second to none. If you ever wanted to be a magician, watch this video and give up on your dreams. You’ll never amount to anything!

Where’s “My” Community?

Olaf — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:00:20 +0000

I am imagining a better WordPress. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the engine behind Gradin.com, as well as countless other blogs on the Interweb. I have been using WordPress for several years now and I really enjoy it. Its many features have grown, and grown on me. Now that I am expectant of the plugins and updates provided by WordPress and its community, I find myself wanting even more.

Upgrading to Web 2.5
The Web 2.0 movement brought, among many other ideals, the concept of a truly “communal” Internet. We saw the entrance of communities such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and of course, the blog, emerge. I maintain a regular blog and dabble in these other Internet communities, but ultimately find that they are not my thing.

What MySpace, for instance, did for me was to create a social community of friends and people with related interests. It’s a great concept, if only simple. I encountered two main problems with these solutions – set aside your particular opinion about the communities. The first, and most immediate, problem I had was that the site distracted me and my potential audience from my own blog. The other problem, something that took a little longer to become apparent, was that I was stuck into a much larger community than I was really interested in becoming “buddies” with.

My solution to these problems involves the maturation of Web 2.0 – perhaps to Web 2.5. I have heard of Web 3.0, but I don’t think the industry can make such a leap without some smaller steps in between. Web 2.5 allows the blog proprietor like myself to become part of these communities without stepping out of their home base.

The Case Study
My imagined solution looks simple at first glance. I maintain a blog. My friends maintain blogs and/or social networking profiles. I have other blogs/services out there to which I would like to drive attention. Now think of each of these things as containers to which I can subscribe, sometimes in a granular fashion. I build a collection of “friends,” “family,” and “interesting people” that I would like to have a reference to on my site. Today, you have blog rolls or even RSS feeds doing this. But what if you could access a container having someone’s profile and avatar, their blog articles, twitter feeds, and MySpace posts. From that container I can choose what I want to see, and how often I want to see it. Perhaps I just want digests. What’s more, the originator of that container can actually validate my request to subscribe to this data. They can also choose what they’ll allow me to see using templates (e.g. friends, family, co-workers), or define a custom rule just for me. The data continues to remain available through conventional means – say the RSS feed, a MySpace account, etc, but the personal container has controls.

I can extend it beyond the profile containers. Say you want to interact with your email or IM system through your blog. Think about having a single entry point to your personal web experience. The personal blog transforms into a personal dashboard with both public and private views. On the public side, you present your audience with your blog, some profile data, contact information, and perhaps a friend’s blog. Privately, you see your email, all your friends’ blogs, address book, and a calendar with your upcoming events.

There are ways to achieve most of this through conventional means, but there is no “solution” to it all. It takes a fundamental shift.

Back to WordPress
At the beginning of this post, I referred to my need for more in WordPress. WordPress utilizes a model of communal sharing already that leads me to believe that it is one of the strongest contenders to make my dream a reality. I’m jaded, of course, because I use WordPress a lot. However, I’ve also read about the WordPress.com Multi-User (MU) extension making its way to the public domain, BuddyPress. BuddyPress will make WordPress.com (and any other WP MU implementation) a community blog with integrated social networking a la MySpace. This is exactly what I’m talking about, if only on a very small scale. WordPress may have the framework to get where I want, but I still have to reach further for the over-arching API that allows WordPress to talk to social communities outside of itself. I believe WordPress has made the first move in my imagined Web 2.5.

The Solution
In brief, I imagine the final solution as being a web service that handles a centralized API for the OpenSocial, or something similar should the industry choose a better standard. Blog systems such as WordPress would have to utilize plugins to communicate with the API, but MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others would fit into the picture by being a part of OpenSocial. The custom web service would handle the “mash-up” of these different systems into a personal container. And of course, the user would manage their own container; permissions and contents.

In the end, I’d have my blog, my friends, and my choice. Web 2.0 moves forward and brings together the biggest social community ever on the Internet. Our personal sites become personal dashboards and launch points to our other interests. I think the way to Web 2.5 is clear, and someone out there is surely already working on it. You heard it here, first!

The First Day at School

Olaf — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:58:12 +0000

Yesterday was Balthazar’s first day of school. It started early that morning and the whole family was up for the affair. We drove him in and walked him to his class. It’s one of those “big steps” in a child’s life. I am excited about the idea of him becoming independent and beginning his formal education. He’s growing up and I look forward to all the things we’ll do together in the years to come. Amy, on the other hand, has a distinctly different take on her little baby’s first steps in the big world. Her experience was miserable as a child, and didn’t apparently get much better in later years. She hated school, and she doesn’t want Balthazar to have a hard time either. Balthazar began his journey into the world with a brave heart. I was proud of him for being so courageous in the face of the unknown – I had very few worries.

After school, Balthazar was to take a bus over to his after-school care with some friends – apparently more like 20. We knew it was a lot to manage in one day, so we agreed to pick him up early from there. He barely managed to get out some vague details about his day before he passed out completely in his car seat. The guy was worn flat-out by his adventures. It turns out his day was a mixture of fear and fun. We weren’t able to convey the amount of time he’d spend at school, though technically it was less than what he spent in pre-K and after-school before. He got scared and cried a little bit early in the day. After some lunch and recess time, it sounded like he came to better terms with it.

As parents, we hate to know that our child was upset and afraid. You’re completely helpless when they’re away and having these feelings. I guess that’s what it is that parents really get upset over when their child gains some independence. You really feel the need to continue helping them and holding their hands when obstacles arrive, but you just have to let them make a go at it themselves. You do everything you can to ensure that they’re going to do good in the world and that they’ll have every manner of protection at their disposal, then you send them out the door to see how you did. It surprised me a lot that he had an emotional break-down at school. Not that that’s unordinary by any means, I just thought that he would have such a great time.

Today is Friday and he’s off on his second day at school. As a testament to his courage, he said yesterday that he wanted to go again. Even though there were some rough spots to contend with, Balthazar has stood back up to give it another try. I believe that he’ll have done much better this time, and he may even begin doing the things that we all loved at school; making friends.

Tastey Nuts

Olaf — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:19:59 +0000

I’m a fan of the seed and nut family, as many can attest. I maintain a supply of them at my desk at work for the occasion of snacking, which comes regularly. There are also infinite jokes to be told that never get old:

Hello everybody. I have brought my nuts for everybody to enjoy. They’re oddly shaped, but salty and satisfying. Don’t be shy, there’s more than enough for everyone to get their hands on.

That’s not crude, that’s generous. A 27oz. container of cashews will cost me $10.00-$12.00. Anyway, the cashew caught my interest this morning. From whence did it come? Were its travels arduous? Who were its parents? How has it come to be?

From the ~~Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy~~ all-knowing Wikipedia, we read:

The cashew (Anacardium occidentale) is a tree in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The plant is native to northeastern Brazil. Its English name derives from the Portuguese name for the fruit of the cashew tree, caju, which in turn derives from the indigenous Tupi name, acajú. It is now widely grown in tropical climates for its cashew “nuts” and cashew apples.

Ann’s House of Nuts® may very well import theirs from India, which has the largest Kaju farms in the world. What interests me most if the variety of uses of the tree (especially those of a medicinal quality), as well as the parts of the fruit we do not see. The cashew apple is apparently used as a raw fruit in places where they grow, but because the skin is so fragile, it is not feasible to ship it. I had originally looked up the nut to see how it looked on the tree. I had imagined thousands of crooked, walnut-like shells dangling from a tree. The truth is even more bizarre! The cashew apple is actually a false-fruit, psuedofruit, that develops between the peduncle and the drupe. Unless you’re a botanist, there are a couple of new words for you. The cashew nut we all know actually dangles off the end of the pseudofruit, presumably until a creature eats the psuedofruit and drops the seed to ground where it can germinate. What’s even more bizarre is that the seed is actually encased within a shell containing urushiol. That’s the stuff that makes you break out in an itchy rash on poison ivy! Who in the world decided it was worthwhile to pick apart this shell to eat the small, fleshy nut inside? Why wouldn’t they have just stopped at the cashew apple and been done with it? Just another example of how one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure.

Dear Cashew Nut Harvester,
Though your spreading rash and insistent itch must be a grave burden to bear, the world appreciates the labor in your continued efforts. Like your father, and your father’s father, you pick at your nuts endlessly only to endure the torturing discomfort of its rash. I, for one, do not take these measures for granted and recognize the pain and suffering you must endure. From your hands you render great swollen nut sacks and feed salivating mouths everywhere. Thank you.

Zune 2.x

Olaf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:43:18 +0000

You may recall that I had written up the Zune Wish List a couple of months after I received mine in December of 2006. I took the time to assess my needs and what the Zune hardware and software could do to meet those needs. It has now been nearly a year since that list and it’s time to update it.Microsoft released their 2.0 Zune Marketplace software with the newer Zune hardware made available for Christmas of 2007. The new software addressed some issues with the older software, but more than anything I think the new version was an aesthetic shift for the product team. Maybe they’ve completely replaced the creative group in favor of a sexier image. At any rate, with a good number of users and a year or more on their belt as Zune users, there were clearly going to be some polarized debates about the change.Refresher: Here is the old and new iteration of the Zune (Marketplace) Software, respectively…
Here are my original ‘wants’ for the hardware and software after 2 months of use:

Zune Hardware:
- Alphabet ToC Navigation in addition to click-wheel
- Ratings categories (so I can play 4-star or 5-star music only, for instance)
- The ability to remove songs from my “quicklist”
- Setting EQ attributes to a song or album uniquely
- Inline normalization
- New category…or put a recently added link at the top of each category
- Make playlists of video files
Zune Software:
- Faster *My software has long periods of unavailability, though I realize I have an over-sized library
- Automatic playlist creation
- Support for OGG
- Insight into the folder monitoring – some sort of progress or status on this
- Better album art application – album art isn’t always displayed immediately after you add it
- Without knowing any better, I wish the album art was embedded within the ID3 tag of the file rather than being added as a hidden file in the directory
- Perhaps support for a real database back-end – I feel the need for enterprise class media management

There were also some real problems that needed attention:

Crashing…the software crashes, the hardware crashes. Sometimes it’s solid, but then it goes into a fit and crashes consecutively all to often. **UPDATE – I found out that the hardware is most likely crashing due to an electrical protection feature. Static electricity is not the Zune’s friend.
Renaming/hiding MP3’s. This could be related to crashing – I’m guessing that MP3’s were being indexed and something went wrong. Then, the Zune software went and renamed a *lot* of MP3’s to their cataloged GUID and hid them. The files won’t play until I rename them back to a .mp3 extension. It will annoy me when it comes up – so far only a few of these songs have come up in my shuffle list.

In the hardware category, Microsoft did exactly zero to fulfill my wishes. The closest they came was to introduce sorting by “date added” to the software. That’s actually very helpful, but it doesn’t help me find new music on my device after I’ve left the computer. The Alphabetical ToC thing would still be cool, but I will say that the click wheel seems to be spinning songs by faster than it used to. It hasn’t bothered me as much that I can’t jump to a letter in the alphabet quickly, though it would probably make me a safer driver if this feature were added. Depending on your attitude towards the “Ratings” debate, the new software either decimated your organization, or has drug you from Ratings procrastination. I’m somewhat in the middle on this. I’m adapting quickly enough, though I had finally figured out a decent way of rating my music along the 5-star basis that helped me managing my music. The new Zune uses only a “Heart” to signify the emotion a given song lends. You love, hate it, or are indifferent. Despite the change, there is still no way to play music on the device that you’ve “Hearted” unless you create a playlist first (static). Microsoft took away the “Flag” option in the Zune hardware. I was using it a little bit, but it was so unnecessarily slow and useless that I had stopped altogether. I had hoped that the new firmware would add much needed functionality to the flagging option, but now we find it missing in action. No love lost for the old function, but I would like to see the ability to flag a song for my review back at the software. I would primarily use it as a reminder to do something with that song (e.g. add to playlist, look up artist, etc.).

The Zune software; that is, the part installed on a Windows machine for interaction with media and the device itself, is a piece of work. I mean that in two very polarized ways. Piece of Work: 1) Quality craftsmanship, exemplary; 2) opp. The worst, poorly demonstrated – syn. Piece of Shit. I may sound a little harsh, but this new software encourages me to use Microsoft’s new “Heart” ratings to express my emotions. This brings me to my earlier comment regarding the product’s shift in direction. I really get the feeling they threw the old software out and started fresh. On the love side of things, I really like the new look. While I prefer the technical features of an app to let me do all matter of evil to it (i.e. preferences, customizations, tweaks, etc.), I really do like the slimmed-down simplicity of the new Zune software. The previous software left me feeling like I should see more options, but didn’t. This software, on the other hand, gives me the impression that what I see is what I get. It took a little while to get used to – I’m still a little unfamiliar in its kid-gloves aesthetics – but I’m gaining proficiency. I also like the fact that this software appears to be running faster with fewer crashes. I haven’t had any MP3′s get renamed (and hidden) to GUID replacements. While file monitoring still doesn’t lend any insight as to the percentage complete, it does seem to run faster and more consistently.

On the negative, the functionality of the software has been grossly gimped. I am no longer able to do something as simple as edit my own ID3 tags in a simple form-based interface like before. I can’t seem to update an album against a web lookup – it happens automatically, but I don’t have finite control over the process as was given in the previous software. While I love the addition of the podcast category, I don’t much care for the level of experienced interaction given to users here. I prefer the more technical feel when it comes to podcasts. They tend to vary wildly in format and compatibility, so it seems best that I have the option of modifying URL’s, identifying what URL’s are being used, and possibly see the actual error message for a given RSS URL when the Zune software rejects it.

Ultimately, the Zune software direction has the potential of being good. I feel more like I’m using an Alpha product than something released for public consumption, but the good stuff is really good. With the negatives going against my my expectations of software for this type of work, I would actually rather use a third-party application to synch to the Zune. As I’ve stated before, MediaMonkey is my favorite (in case their developers are reading).

World of Wheels

Olaf — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:11:07 +0000

We attended our first ever World of Wheels show in Atlanta this year with friends. We are largely unfamiliar with the “World of Wheels,” as it were, though it was actually cooler than I had imagined. Balthazar had a time running from brightly colored car to Hot Wheels-inspired dream. We enjoyed the fantastic detail put into the artwork in the show. I didn’t realize that the pros painted pin stripe details by hand! We watched a guy doing some work on a Power Wheels truck. The highlight for the boy was a Lightning McQueen replica and a cameo appearance of SpongeBob and friends. While the Nickelodeon cartoon stars don’t exactly say “World of Wheels,” they did entertain the children.

Reading Boy

Olaf — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:54:30 +0000

My son, at nearly 5 years of age, is big into the whole good vs. evil concept. He loves superheroes, Star Wars, and nearly every incarnation of fictional character one can imagine serving one of the aforementioned roles; good or evil. We played “superheroes” most of the day, Sunday. I was “The Oxidizer,” or “Flame Boy” as Balthazar preferred. Mommy had a lot of work to do, but she was “Shower Girl” before leaving that morning for the studio. The boy is apparently schizophrenic, and went between a lot of different characters and roles. One such role was “Hanger Boy.” It’s not what you think – it could have been a gruesome depiction of a nefarious creature that can perform a lynching with jerking hand motion. But no. “Hanger Boy” had the wonderful power of shooting hangers out of his hands at you. They could hurt you, what with the dangerous hook on the top. His hangers were particularly useful in that their internal dimension was apparently discontiguous with our own. Getting caught by one of these weapons would very likely remove you from this plane of existence. I presume that it deposited you into a random closet throughout the Universe. You could end up in Narnia, a stinky foot locker, or the deniable state of homosexuality. It’s a tricky weapon, really. There was another interesting personality in that little head of his too. “Reading Boy.” Amy was impressed by this one. She thought he might have the power of absorbing Great Expectations with joy and fervor. Able to recite drab poetry into the numbed minds of his foes! Alas, “Reading Boy” was not what we thought. Balthazar says, “I read you, buddy. Do you read me?” with his hand brought to his mouth, Dick Tracey-style.

Fido: The Movie

Olaf — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:58:27 +0000

I spent the evening with Jeff and Amanda and friends watching a zombie flick. We saw “Fido,” a selection brought to us by Ted. The movie isn’t your classic zombie flick, but it’s a classic of another sort. Carrie-Anne Moss played the mild-mannered house wife, typical of our 1950′s. The whole movie was a bit of Pleasantville meets Shaun of the Dead. It was also chock full of allegories and anachronisms. Spazzmanda explained best as what the world might have been if, when we were supposed to begin the Information Age after the 50′s, the world was suddenly side-tracked with a zombie invasion. The invasion becomes a full-fledged war effort, with surviving heroes and legends. Because the zombie invasion never really stops, it is instead harnessed for the good of humanity. Zombies are captured and “tamed” for use as mindless helpers around the house. Life is good inside the protective areas between “The Wild.” Cities have erected fortifications to protect against the continued threat of another zombie invasion. They also use The Wild as a prison, but one of definite consequence!

It’s a totally different kind of zombie thriller, so regardless of whether you’re a zombie fan or not, it’s a good show to see. If you *are* a zombie fan, on the other hand, this will be a deviation from your preferred norm.