As you probably already know Apple is releasing a new set-top box in February dubbed the Apple TV. I'd love to stick with my current setup for watching iTunes movies on my TV, but as you know iTunes 7 performance is so pathetic on a pretty beefy laptop that I need to find a new solution. Instead of buying a new dedicated machine, I am considering the Apple hardware.

A huge feature that would clinch the deal would be AirTunes support. The AirPort Express is the only hardware so far that currently supports AirTunes. I have done an extensive amount of testing and AirTunes is the premiere synchronized streaming protocol for unwired, distributed music. The Express sells for $129 retail and I have been wanting to get one more in order to add music to the garage. For roughly the price of two AirPort Expresses, I could upgrade both my iTunes-on-TV solution and move the Express from the living room to the garage.

So far no mention of support for AirTunes for the Apple TV, but if this changes I will post it here.




technorati: apple, tv, apple tv, airtunes, airport,

Created 261 weeks, 6 days ago

Whoops, seems like there was something wrong with my installation instructions and the compression script to get the TinyMCE Editor Adapter working with dasBlog.

I have now updated the instructions and added a new download for a modified version of the TinyMCE Editor asp.net compression script required to get this working with dasBlog.



technorati: dasBlog, add-on, editor, adapter, tinyMCE

Created 262 weeks, 1 day ago

If you are tired of using the FreeTextboxAdapter or standard html textarea to edit your posts through the integrated dasBlog entry editor, you now have another choice in rich-text editors. I have completed an adapter that gives you access to the Moxiecode TinyMCE Editor.

a small example of the tinyMCE editor and some of the tools in the toolbar

The TinyMCE Editor has advanced support for xHTML compliant markup and accessibility minded markup. It supports all the features of FTB or even FCKEditor and supports almost all modern browsers and platforms. I have added support for most of the common button types, and if you feel particularly adventurous, you could add support for the image browser or file browser into your site.

Installation is a snap (copy some tinymce files, copy the .dll I provide, copy some caching files) with no need to compile any source. If you think you would like to try it, head on over to my new dasBlog add-ons, extensions and patches project page to get your copy.

technorati: dasblog, tinymce, freetextbox, fckeditor, rich text, editor, adapter

Created 262 weeks, 3 days ago

I have decided to include a few more bits of dasBlog code on my site. These are the easy-to-install add-ons and extensions or the more difficult to apply code patches that I develop for dasBlog.

I am including here the items that don't make it into the dasBlog public release as they are either too specific to a solution or else too wild for all installations. As someone once said to me, take them or leave it.

You can find the new section linked from my project page or at this direct link to dasBlog add-ons, extensions and patches.


technorati: dasBlog, extension, patch

Created 262 weeks, 3 days ago

I lost my Canon SD400 camera in the San Francisco Bay today while sailing with our friends Carl and Pam. While I was helping set the jib and the mainsail, my camera fell out of my coat pocket, over the side of the boat and plunged into the depths along with any pictures that were on the memory card. That marks the fourth important thing that I have lost in Poseidon's waters in this lifetime. At least it is less frustrating than the time I dropped the keys to my car into the ocean.


Despite the loss of a fine digital camera, I enjoyed a great sail. The wind was blowing solidly from the East which means we could cut up the bay from Brisbane at about 6 knots and we only once had to tack across to reach Golden Gate. We had a quick lunch at "The Ramp" before we headed back.

I posted a few pics that I took with Ashley's SLR but you will have to wait for her to post her other pictures to see how fun the trip was.

Now what camera should I get to replace the SD400. I loved the size and the speed, but the quality was not quite what I wanted. Anyone? Suggestions?

technorati: sailing, San Francisco, camera

Created 262 weeks, 5 days ago

Enough with the referral spam! I don't even display referrals publicly on my Web properties. You spammers are just succeeding in making my own narcissistic tendencies to check my site traffic difficult by polluting my data with your filth.


No doubt about it, the Web needs to grow a more secure referral system.

Until then I think the Technorati folks have come up with a great way of sharing referral information outside of private web logs. They call it "reactions" and even have a little widget for it.


It works on the principal that Technorati scrubs web and blog content in order to find links back to your content and thereby become the intermediary provider of 'approved referrals'. They hardly scan the known Web let alone the unknown, but I suppose it is better than the raw spammy world that exists today.

I was thinking of a way to remove all of this spam from my logs but instead I have decided that my web host needs to approach AKISMET to have them start scrubbing web traffic log files to remove all this spam for me.


technorati: referral, spam, links, technorati

Created 263 weeks, 1 day ago

I didn't realize that Gravatar.com was down for upgrades until I had read it on a forum I moderate. The service continues to serve the existing registered-user icons but the entire new user registration and account settings pages seem to be down.

A little research turned up that MyBlogLog and whooiz.com might have some kind of JavaScript solution that I will look into over the week.

The security and moderation behind Gravatar.com was the best thing about it. I might have my own solution for avatars and dasBlog soon enough. Stay tuned!

technorati: gravatar, mybloglog, whooiz, avatars, dasblog

Created 263 weeks, 2 days ago

Adventure Time from Nickelodeon. This is sweet, thanks Brad.

Sorry folks. According to Google:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom.





technorati: video, Adventure Time

Created 263 weeks, 2 days ago

So you know Ashley has been sick. It had been a week of coughing and the last few days she couldn't shake a 99-100 degree temperature. Her cough had turned from dry to productive (I love that term) so it was time to seek out a health care professional.  We went to the urgent care center on Sunday to find out what kind of infection she has. Turns out it is the lovable respiratory system infection: Bronchitis. I had warned her not to get any of that spa water in her lungs from the resort in Tahoe.

Add to this drama the dog just had his ear-stitches taken out today. You might remember that he had his ears canals reconstructed about a week and a half ago. I was under the impression that there would be a smaller, lower ear canal created in order to clean the ears but it turns out that the stitches were to close up the entire thing. The doctor assures us that this is the best way to treat his chronic ear infections. I know Winston can still hear us, I just have not yet determined if he can hear us as well.

And poor Mercury hasn't had to endure days of people at home in a very long time. Cats supposedly get about 17 hours of sleep a day, so I think this can explain his recent cat-crankiness. With Ashley working from home all day watching Soap operas, he is being denied his beauty sleep.

I think I am going to stay at the office as late as I can before I head back home.

Created 263 weeks, 4 days ago

This weekend-of-backups (~20 DVDs) makes it an annual tradition for me. I performed a similar backup last year around this time and it saved my butt when I moved from San Antonio to San Francisco.

It turns out a few of my hard drives didn't travel as well as I had. They were totally unrecoverable. To my credit, I was diligent in performing a full digital-life backup last year around this time so recovery was quick and painless.

Before last year, I was not as meticulous as backing up as I should have been. I also made some poor decisions on hard drive manufacturers. I had three Western Digital hard drives critically fail and I lost a significant portion of a music collection and some newer builds for projects I was working on.

There was also an incident years ago where I was helping Brad with his computer and we(I) accidentally formatted his hard drive. Trust me, performing a restore is a thousand-times easier than recovering a formatted or faulty disc.

I also supplement this once-a-year backup with several incremental backups on my most important data throughout the year so I don't have 12 months of loss if I do have a failure.

If you haven't backed up in a while, I urge you to backup your most important data right this moment. You might also want to read this article reviewing the quality of different blank DVD media by digitalFAQ.com before you purchase any more blanks.




technorati: backup, DVD, annual tradition

Created 263 weeks, 5 days ago

This is great. Enjoy this video that perfectly captures the spirit of the article "Holy Shit -- Man Walks on Fucking Moon" :



My favorites:

"The moon, for Christs sake, the moon. Over."

".... ahhhh.    (long pause)          Holy shit Tranquility.."

technorati: comedy, YouTube, moon, the onion

Created 263 weeks, 6 days ago

Our December 2006 San Francisco energy bill from PG&E was unbelievable. Being home roughly 1/3 of the month through some pretty cold weather sure takes a chunk out of your skrilla.

technorati: san francisco, energy, bill, PG&E

Created 264 weeks, 11 hours ago

I created a new dasBlog macro that displays content based on different page types. 

Example syntax to target the homepage:

<%ConditionViewType("homepageview", "<strong>Welcome to my blog</strong>")|jforsythe%> 

An example of the output of the ConditionViewType macro for dasBlog

The total conditions are:

commentview = viewing comments on a post
dailyview = a historical homepage view
monthview = all posts for XX month
yearview = all posts for XX year (only from monthview.aspx)
currentmonthview = default monthview.aspx
categoryview = all posts filtered by category
searchresultsview = internal search results page
homepageview = the homepage only, no filters (default.aspx)
edititemview = Editing a post
loginview = Logging in
defaultview = Everything else (experimental)

You can get this macro as part of my macro collection from my dasBlog project page.

technorati: dasBlog, macro

Created 264 weeks, 13 hours ago

The RSS feed for the last 10 comments posted across your entire blog is:

http://[yoursite]/[blogdirectory]/
SyndicationService.asmx/GetCommentsRss



The RSS feed for all comments made on an individual post is:

http://[yoursite]/[blogdirectory]/
SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=[POST GUID]



technorati: dasBlog, RSS, comments

Created 264 weeks, 1 day ago

Please enjoy my new theme for dasBlog: DirectionalRedux.

My friend Jon helped with the creation of theme based on my older Directional theme. The date-flags are now inset to make the page work better with a full screen liquid layout. The comments have been adjusted to allow for a wider display. The admin view has all new icons and a separate homepage template.

This theme has been tested with most browsers (thanks Lee). Please let me know if you find anything wrong with the code or have feedback or enhancements.


Preview Screenshots:


technorati: dasBlog, theme, blog, design

Created 264 weeks, 2 days ago

I got back late last night from Tahoe. During the two-day trip we skied Alpine Meadows and Homewood. Here are some of the pictures I took that I liked.



technorati: Skiing, Tahoe, Homewood, Alpine Meadows

Created 264 weeks, 4 days ago

I am waiting for the sports store next door to open as I post this from a little coffee shop in Tahoe City. I drove up to Tahoe last night to stay at this house that one of my coworkers rents every year for her friends and family to stay. I got in about an hour late (there was very heavy traffic up here) and everyone was already asleep. I turned the door knob on the front door to see if it was unlocked and sure enough it was. I brought my stuff in, saw that there was a couch that no one was sleeping on and I crashed out on it.

I was the first to wake up this morning. I didn't recognize anyone as they started to wake up. I started introducing myself and made sure that I had slept in the right house. Turns out all is well, I got the house number right.

Well, the sports store is about to open. Ill post more pics from "Alpine" tonight where we are going skiing.

Created 264 weeks, 6 days ago

Winston is back after the surgery to fix his ears. He is in for a long recovery. I particularly like the bald head they gave him at the vet . Thanks everyone who stopped by to wish him good luck and good health.



technorati: Winston, dog, surgery

Created 265 weeks, 8 hours ago

I created a document outlining how to use the dasBlog built-in template <%macros%> and what to output to expect from each one.

The document is linked from my project page. Let me know if you have feedback or if I missed anything.

technorati: dasBlog, macros, templates, documentation

Created 265 weeks, 14 hours ago

Winston had to go to the ER vet last night because his weird ear tumor decided to go into necrosis. We have been putting him through several medicinal regiments to treat his ear conditions such as infections and a tumor/wart that had been growing on his outer ear; and we were having some small success with the medicine until last nights discovery. The thing "outgrew its blood supply" and is now a source of a major infection.

He is at the vet now waiting for his turn with the surgeon at SFVS to have some reconstructive surgery performed on his ear and ear canal to remove the damaged and infected tissue. We should be able to pick him up tomorrow morning if everything goes well. The surgery is around $2,500 per ear and luckily for everyone we only need to get one ear taken care of at this point.

According to ThePetCenter.com: 'Through years of breeding, the Cocker has evolved an ear canal that is rather long and often even folds upon itself before reaching the ear drum'. What a suck that these breeds are born into ear problems. If you want to see something neat, ThePetcenter.com has a great walkthrough on the reconstructive surgery he is about to receive.

Good luck Winston, we are thinking about you.




technorati: dog, surgery, winston

Created 265 weeks, 1 day ago

This will not be a post concerning resolutions and things I want to get finished this year. I did that last year; some good that did, bleh. Instead a fun little post and a list of "first in 2007".

The year started around 10 AM. A hangover from NYE celebrations made me sleep in a bit later than I thought I would when I set the alarms for the ungodly hour of 8 AM the night before. We watched TV pretty much all day; football and movies. I wanted to get some mowing done in the backyard but it never happened. I think the dog is eating the mushrooms growing back there because he was a bit sick today.

Without being too infomercial, I want you to know I am SO EXCITED for these next 365 days. I have some big things planned in my life that will come to fruition in 2007 for I have seen it in the bones.

I urge you to stay tuned to me this year; for my initiative is high, my armor is repaired and my mana is fully restored. Also, I am thinking of renaming my blog this year, the current one is too 2004. First candidate - John Forsythe : Eats, Shoots & Leaves.


First in 2007

First song I woke up to in my head in 2007:
Know what I'm doin' - Birdman & Lil' Wayne


First 'cognisant thought' of 2007:
Shit, the dog needs out.

First beverage in 2007:
Martha Bros. LBC (large black coffee)

First food in 2007:
Potato crisps and Ash's homemade dip

First DVD to watch in 2007:
3 Kings (I hadn't seen it yet)

First illegal download of 2007:
MP3 : Evan Dando - Misfits cover : Skulls



technorati: 2007, firsts, awesome, future

Created 265 weeks, 4 days ago