ePortal.com

Michigan Hydro History

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 02:57:00 +0000

James R. Bernier recently gave a presentation on the history of hydro electric power in Michigan (he works for Consumers Energy). He was generous enough to provide the presentation for posting.

Please take a look at the LyonsMuir.org for details!

Hot Cocoa Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 02:54:00 +0000

This is a new web site, about a short that I made to send off to Sundance. I need to flesh out the history more, but I plan to chronical the events (good and bad) surrounding my first short film.

The name of the film is Hot Cocoa.

Google Desktop 2.0 Beta

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:46:00 +0000

So, there's a new revision of Google Desktop, now version 2.0 Beta.

They have this sidebar thing which is kind of interesting. I guess it could be compared to Konfabulator (recently purchased by Yahoo) or Dashboard on the Mac -- although not as pretty as either of them. It is extensible by 3rd parties with a plug-in system. Even though it's not as pretty, I think it is much cleaner and I'm sure it uses a lot fewer resources.

Anyway, if you're already using Google Desktop, and maybe especially if you are using Outlook e-mail, you should give it an upgrade and check it out. For Windows XP and 2000 SP3+ users only.

There is also an Enterprise addition, also free, but premium support can be purchased.

Google Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:45:00 +0000

You just knew this was coming, right? I'm sure that Google Moon is just the beginning of the universe. Google Mars will probably be next, but it's only my guess.

This is in honor of the first Manned Moon Landing on July 20th, 1969.

What happens if you zoom in, way in? You have to find out!

www.dontclick.it

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 18:49:00 +0000

Can you imagine a web site where you don't have to click on a button? Try www.dontclick.it to try it out!

This is something very clever. I'm not sure, but it just feels nice to be floating around from menu to menu without clicking on anything. It seems more intuitive or something. You'll just need to try it out for yourself!

Mac OS X Migration Assistant

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:42:00 +0000

I just bought a new iMac for home, to replace an old iMac, primarily because of running out of local hard disk space, but also to have more speed and memory and so-on. So, for the first time, I tried the Migration Assistant.

Wow.

Whenever I buy a new Windows computer, I literally spend several days loading software and copying files. Getting this new Mac going took about 3 hours, and that was just time data transfer time, not my time loading CD-ROMs.

It's very simple, just connect a firewire cable between the Macs, turn the new Mac and old Mac on, and the Migration Assistant will prompt you for what pieces of information that you want to migrate. I chose them all (default) and simply waited for everything to get done. When I was finished, my new iMac was configured just like my old iMac, desktop icon clutter and all. It was really amazing.

I don't know of a utility that does this kind of thing in the Windows world, other than ghosting a hard disk, which is sort of a brute force approach. I'm not even sure if it would be possible in the Windows world, with all of the registry settings that every program might use.

One thing is for sure, it's pretty painless to buy a new Mac and use it right away!

G8 Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 19:37:00 +0000

This is the 31st G8 Summit, and this year it's in Scotland, hosted by Tony Blair. It started today.

I chose to link to the Wikipedia page on this event, because I think it's one of those topics where it's handy to be able to click around and read about aspects of the conference.

The G8 is a conference by the leaders of 8 countries, which are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States. The President of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament will be attending as well.

I've recently read a couple of books about the European Union. One of the interesting things, I think, is how sometimes the member countries are part of a world group, and sometimes it's just the EU itself. In this case, 4 of the 8 are part of the EU. Even though I'm sure that the 4 EU countries do not agree on everything, they are part of a common state, with similar ideals.

This year's topics include the financial well being of Africa and it's citizens, as well as global climate change.

Keynote 2

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 18:56:00 +0000

I've recently started working on a presentation, about Ephraim Shay's diary during the civil war, and I decided to use Keynote 2.

Keynote is part of Apple's iWorks Suite, which now just consists of a word processor called Pages and the presentation program called Keynote. There are strong indications that Apple is working on a spreadsheet program that will be part of iWorks in the future.

I don't do many presentations, and I've never used Powerpoint, so my experience is limited. So far, I've found Keynote to be extremely intuitive, and similar to Pages, which I've just been using for a couple of months. I'm pretty sure that Steve Jobs has had a lot of input into the Keynote design, because he said he's been using it for his own Keynote presentations for quite a long while before it's release.

Just like Pages, there are a lot of themes available, and I chose Parchment, as I am doing a historical presentation. Within a theme, you can choose from several masters, for each slide, to have bullets or pictures or whatever. You can add music from iTunes to any slide, drag & drop a photo onto a slide, and add transition effects when switching from slide to slide. I haven't actually hooked up to projector yet, but I'm using a notes feature that I can read from, that will only display on the primary monitor, while the secondary monitor only shows the slide.

Last Thursday, I started with a blank slate, and now I have 25 slides. More work needs to be done, but I don't feel like I'm spending much time learning software. I'm spending time digging up information for my presentation, as it should be.

One more thing, I'm becoming a very big fan of Wikipedia. Not only do I use it for research, but I also modify and improve things, as needed. What a wonderful invention...

Google Video

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:04:00 +0000

Google Video now has their own video viewer, for those with Windows 2000 or later.

So now, you can search for a string of text, that is contained in the audio portion of a video. When you see a picture of a video, you can click on it. You can then look at "snapshots" of the video, and on some videos, you can simply play the video. The video then plays right inside of your browser, without using Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media Player.

I mentioned earlier that you can upload your own videos to Google, and you can put a price on watching that video as well. I think, in the very near future, Google will have a system in place where anyone can load a video and decided what to charge to play that video. Google will handle the financial transactions, as well as serving up the video, which can be difficult from a speedy server perspective.

So, right now, there are many searchable videos that can not be played, because they are probably waiting for the financial piece to come into play. For example, there are C-SPAN videos up there, but you can't play them yet.

This is probably the beginning of something big, being able to purchase an old TV show to watch, or news broadcast, or even a movie. I've often wondered why Google has not yet gotten into the web site hosting business, but perhaps the video hosting business will be even bigger and more profitable.

Google Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:27:00 +0000

If you have Windows 2000 or later, and a high speed internet connection, and you wanna have a little fun, try Google Earth. If you thought Google Maps was fun to play with, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Google Maps is sort of built into this, a little bit. You type in an address, and yet get satellite imagery of that location, and you can zoom and pan and everything. This is all done with an external program, not within your browser. Then, you can overlay roads, restaurants, banks, etc.

Although it's really fun to play with, I'm not sure yet how useful it will be. It might be nice when deciding to buy a house or something. And I think cities might have a lot more detail, than the locations I looked. So, depending on the address you type in, it may be more useful than other places.

Google Personalized Search

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:00:00 +0000

A while back, I wrote about Google now having a search history. Well, now, they are experimenting with tightening up an individual's search, based on what they have searched for before. This is called Google Personalized Search.

This is kind of a grand experiment, and I'm not really sure if it's a good idea. I have a search history going, and it's all over the map, searching for all kinds of different things over the last month or so. But, when I search, do I want my search limited by what I searched for before?

If I was researching with books, would I want to keep looking for my information in the same isle? Or would I want to search the whole library?

I don't think anyone really knows if this will help someone have a better search, but without some serious testing, how does anyone know? As always, I'm impressed that Google keeps trying to make things better...

iTunes 4.9 with Podcasting

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:12:00 +0000

iTunes 4.9 has just been released, with podcasting support. Apple's take on it is "Radio reborn".

There has been a lot of talk in the TV world about "TV on demand", which is kind of the niche that Tivo and other DVRs went after. Podcasting is sort of the same thing, but for audio only. Anyone who produces any kind of sound file, can publish a podcast on their web site. In a nutshell, you are downloading audio content to play on your iPod or other digital music player.

Read more about podcasting on Wikipedia.

Now that Apple is endorsing it directly in the iTunes software, I expect that more people will become aware of what it is, and why it's important.

Bagelized!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:47:00 +0000

This was just a cute little short, about 4 minutes long, called Bagelized!. Here is what the Waterfront Film Festival booklet said:

"A comedy about a Brooklyn bagel maestro reluctantly compelled to share the secrets of his craft with a pretty and mysterious trainee."

I know that I should probably describe this short, in my own words, but it is only 4 minutes long! How do I do that without giving away the punch line? It's very funny, and unexpected...

Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:19:00 +0000

Yes, this is a very long movie title, and I apologize that I can't seem to find the official web site, so I linked to the IMDB page.

This movie was the best movie that I watched at the Waterfront Film Festival. In fact, it was the last movie that I watched, because I felt like I wanted to leave the festival "on top".

The script was good enough to attract many big name actors, many of them with very small roles. The actors are Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Danny DeVito, Sean Astin, and Donnie Wahlberg. The director was at the film festival and told us that many of these actors worked for free, because of the script. There is actually a short by the same name, same director, that was incorporated into the new feature as a historic flashback. One of the child actors in the flashback also had a role as an adult in the bigger movie. He was also at the film festival.

I'm sure that this movie will be playing on the big screen sometime this fall, so please look for it. It was a really great film!

Tacklebox

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 19:52:00 +0000

One of the great things about going to a film festival are the amazing shorts. I don't understand why more shorts are not played on cable television, or even network television. Although, I guess it might be hard to squeeze a commercial into 5 minute movie. I know the Sundance Channel does have short programs, so at least there is one place.

Anyway, probably the best short at the Waterfront Film Festival is called Tacklebox. As I recall, there are no words spoken, the entire story is told through visual only. From a technical point of view, I can appreciate how much easier this might be, to simply play music for the audio track, but it really works well for this story. It works well for the Road Runner too. OK, maybe I'm getting off track.

Now, the problem with a short, is that I can't really tell you much about it, or it would give away the story. So, I'll just quote exactly what was in the Waterfront Film Festival program:

"An elderly woman's passion in life is passed on after her death through strange circumstances to a group of unsuspecting young thrill-seekers."

I know that this maybe doesn't sound too exciting, but visit the web site and look at all of the awards. It's really a great little short!

Novem

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:56:00 +0000

One of the cool movies that I saw over at Waterfront Film Festival this year is called Novem. I've always been a fan of nearly any movie with a great soundtrack, and this movie falls into that category.

Basically, a college kid buys this box of stuff at a garage sale. Inside is an old movie reel about some kids in the 70s cutting some songs, along with the actual music recordings. The band is composed of 9 college aged kids, who go to a studio in the country, sit around campfires, practice music, and of course, record it.

The whole movie is set up like a documentary of an actual event, which completely caught me by surprise. The music is good, and the entire movie idea is very original. The music is all free on the web site, which is really setup to promote the indie film.

So, download and enjoy! It's even legal!

Waterfront Film Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 19:54:00 +0000

I recently attended the Waterfront Film Festival, located in Saugatuck, Michigan. This year was the 4th year that I've attended, and the festival started 7 years ago.

I have to say first that the festival just gets better and better. This year, it was a little humid at times, which was tough in one of the venues, but otherwise the weather was really pretty nice, much better than rain.

If you live in Michigan, Indiana, or Illinois and you like movies, you might want to check out this festival next year. I even met someone who flew up from New Mexico, and it was her 3rd year of going to the festival. Saugatuck is a very nice little town, with lots of restaurants, shopping, and B&Bs to stay in.

You might see a celebrity or two, and better yet, you might see a really good movie! I'll review a couple of the best, in my next posts...

Killer Angels

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:03:00 +0000

Lately, I've been reading about the Civil War. I started with the book, Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, and a very excellent book. It was written about 30 years ago, and was the basis for the movie Gettysburg.

Michael's son, Jeff, wrote a prequel and sequel to Killer Angels. The first book is named Gods and Generals. The sequel book is named Last Good Measure. I read all three of these books. Although Killer Angels was the best book of the three, the others were pretty good. Gods and Generals has been made into a movie, and I believe Last Good Measure is supposed to be made into a movie as well.

The books focus on only parts of the Civil War. These books are fictional, about real events, but giving the reader an insight as to what a General or other character may have been thinking about at various times during the way. So, these are not history books. They are a fun read, even when we pretty much know the outcome, there are surprises along the way.

I'm interested in reading Gone For Soldiers as well, which is about the Mexican War, having many of the same people involved as the Civil War, but in their younger days.

Serenity and Firefly

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 19:04:00 +0000

For those of you who enjoy science fiction television and movies, I'm pretty excited about the new movie Serenity.

This is a real movie, spun off from the series called Firefly, by the creator of Buffy and Angel. If you haven't seen this series, check out the full DVD set. It was only on for one season, and 3 episodes never aired. It's a Western, set in the future, complete with settlers, civil war veterans, saloon shoot-outs, and so-on. It is a pretty cool vision, and now it's coming to the big screen!

Also, the series is coming to the Sci Fi Channel, so if you missed it the first time around, and you don't want to rent/buy it, look for it there very soon! There is a lot of speculation that the movie might spark a new season of the series...

Sorry about the big gap in my posts, by the way. I guess writing in a daily blog is sort of like trying to read every day or excercise every day -- once you stop, it's easy to stay stopped. But, now I've got a few topics building up in my head, so the writing should be easier, right?

New Google Home Page

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:38:00 +0000

Google has a new feature, over in Google Labs, called Personalize Your Home Page.

Now, you can have various things on your home page, like the first few e-mail's in you gMail inbox, various news items, the weather, movies, and so-on. Think of this as little widgets to display when you hit your home page button (if Google is your home page).

Now, I have a little Google menu showing up across the top right corner, with my e-mail address (after I've logged in), Classic Home, My Search History, My Account, and Sign Out. This is all pretty good, but I'm a little surprised that this menu is not tighter, with simpler wording.

The e-mail address is good, but if it's a gMail account, then I should be able to click on it to get to my gMail page. Instead of Classic Home, I think I would have a switch down below, next to the personalized news, weather and so-on, that simply reads "turn off" or something. History would be better than My Search History, Account is better than My Account, and I guess Sign Out is OK.

It just strikes me that for a company that used to stay within a certain number of words on the home page, that they are getting pretty wordy with the menu. But, of course, this is all in beta right now, so I'm sure it will get better.

Check it out!

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Mon, 16 May 2005 19:39:00 +0000

This is my first book review, I think, so maybe I'll need to change my page title. I like books, movies, and music just like everyone else, so I might as well write about stuff I like, right?

I'm kind of into history lately, working on historical web sites and so-on. I try to read every day, so after hearing a review of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell on NPR, I decided to give it a try.

Most history books are kind of boring, in some way, but this book is a really fun read. Sarah takes us on a road trip will willing friends and relatives to all sorts of places where Presidents were assassinated, what happened just before and after the event, what lead the assassin to do what he did, etc. There are a lot of strange facts and artifacts all wrapped up in these things, and it's really kind of fun to find out what she discovers.

I've been a fan of Sarah's for quite a while, as she occasionally does an essay on This American Life. She's also quite the kid pop star now, doing the voice of Violet on Pixar's "The Incredibles". Pixar is one of my favorite companies...

Anyway, if you like American history, or if you're just a little bit curious, get this book! And maybe it will put in the mood for a road trip to New York or D.C. -- that's what happened to me!

Automator

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Fri, 13 May 2005 19:35:00 +0000

One of the new features in Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) is called Automator. This is a great concept, but not really very new.

For those of you who know me, I was part of a team at ICOM who came up with the idea of a feature called Action/Reaction. It was sort of a visual scripting that was built into a product we worked on called WinView. An Action might be a button on the screen, and a Reaction might be to switch to another page.

With Automator, every program running on the system can potentially have Actions. That Action probably has an output, where you can string another Action to it. The result of one or more Actions strung together is called a Workflow, which can be saved. I noticed that you can even download a workflow. Apple has had something called Applesript for a long time, as a way of getting programs to talk to one another for automating tasks. This goes a step farther, being more visual and less "programmatic". This is a great feature for an operating system. Even if you don't use this feature, it's really nice to know it's there.

A long, long time ago, Windows had something called a Macro Recorder. But, it's long gone now. It provided something similar, but not quite as precise.

Systernals Freeware

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Wed, 11 May 2005 20:22:00 +0000

If you work in the Windows world, like I do, there are times when you need some little utility to help you get over a rough spot. That's not to say that you might not need the same thing in Linux or on a Mac, but most of us use Windows. That's where Systernals Freeware comes in.

These guys are real Windows gurus. They have found legitimate bugs in Windows, telling Microsoft the details of what is going on. They actually teach Microsoft employees!

These tools can be pretty advanced, so I'm guessing that the audience would be people in your IT department, or someone in computer programming. The utilities help you find out what is going on, and can be very helpful in finding a problem.

Why freeware? Well, I think it's kind of like advertising for the software that they sell, over at Winternals.com. Systernals gives you a taste of what these guys can do, and Winternals gives you the packaged products that your boss can buy for you.

Take a look!

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Tue, 10 May 2005 20:02:00 +0000

From the MAKE POVERTY HISTORY web site:

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY brings together a wide cross section of nearly 400 charities, campaigns, trade unions, faith groups and celebrities who are united by a common belief that 2005 offers an unprecedented opportunity for global change.

As such MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY is not affiliated to any political party and does not comment on the individual records OR manifestos of different parties during the period of a general election.

Political parties and political organisations are not part of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY however members of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY are asking candidates from all main political parties to back the demands of the campaign.

Anyone wishing to examine the record of individual parties should evaluate their commitments and actions alongside those called for by MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.

Individual members of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY may issue statements commenting on the parties in their individual capacity only.

The aim of the coalition is to encourage all political parties to adopt the policies that the coalition advocates and to build an ever greater movement committed to tackling world poverty.

Good Morning Silicon Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Fahey) — Mon, 09 May 2005 12:43:00 +0000

This is a web log that I read just about every day, via an e-mail message. Good Morning Silicon Valley recently launched a new blog site, that is much more of a real web log than before.

If you are interested in high tech news, this is the place to go! John links into articles at San Jose Mercury News, as well as various news sites all over the internet. He also links back to previous stories about a given subject, enabling a good read on something you might be interested in.

In addition the blog, you'll also find great links to other news bloggers on this site, such as Dan Gillmor's, who used to work for San Jose Mercury News.

Check it out!