11.28.06
Posted in Life at 10:36 am by wfrantz
It seems that I won a “battle of wits” on another website and I didn’t even realize it. I posted a comment back in May, 2005. It wasn’t until today that I discoved Chris Dye later recognized my winning contribution.
The way I found out is thanks to Google. I regularly search for other websites that link back to my website just to see who is citing me. You can do this easily with the following Google query: http://google.com/search?q=link:williamfrantz.com
Another lesser known feature of Google is finding pages similar to my own. You can do that with this query: http://www.google.com/search?q=related:williamfrantz.com
Oh, my winning entry went like this:
Invent a cheesy line of dialogue that thankfully was dropped from a movie. Name the movie, the scene, and the line.
“Luke, I’m your father and I built C3PO so he’s your half-brother.” — Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back
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10.05.06
Posted in Life at 11:59 am by wfrantz
Last year, Angela and I dressed as Team America World Police for Halloween. We spent a lot of time collecting the pieces and creating the jackets. The final result was pretty good and the costumes proved to be a crowd pleaser.
We can’t very well use these again this year, so they are up for sale on e-Bay. Please bid on them if you are interested.
UPDATE: The Team America costumes were sold to some gent in Canada. I hope he had fun with them.
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10.03.06
Posted in Technology at 7:24 am by wfrantz
Here’s an interesting post from a Microsoft employee called “Zune Sharing explained”
http://www.zunester.com/2006/09/zune-sharing-explained.html
I still have a few questions.
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09.18.06
Posted in Software, Technology at 11:10 pm by wfrantz
This started as a simple task. I wanted to convert some cassette tapes into MP3 files. I have a shiny new iMac that I thought would be perfect for the task. Then I ran into lots of problems.
I used GarageBand to record the audio. I thought I could simply save it as an MP3 file but that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? GarageBand only creates AAC encoded audio in M4A files. Unbelievable! Eventually I got a solution.
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08.04.06
Posted in Technology at 12:25 pm by wfrantz
binocular222 at experts-exchange.com asked
How do I know the rank of my site?
It seems that there’re some tips to make one webpage get high rank in google search where can I have reference?
I use the Google toolbar to find the PageRank of my site. When installed, the toolbar indicates the PageRank of each URL you visit. BTW, “PageRank” is not the same as your search result number. Let’s look at an example…
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07.18.06
Posted in Life at 10:57 pm by wfrantz
The Politics of Paranoia and Intimidation article by Floyd Rudmin tries to show how futile the NSA domestic surveillance effort is by throwing around a bunch of math. To the casual reader, it looks impressive, but if you take a closer look at the math, you’ll realize that Floyd demonstrates the program can actually be pretty effective.
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05.18.06
Posted in Software, Technology at 8:59 am by wfrantz
Tools, Tools (Ad Nausium) [sic.]
“There are problems with the many-tools-hacked-together approach that adds an odd balance to it.”
Bruce Alderson and I have a common vision. I wish that there was a stable platform for PHP applications that provided all the common stuff like database abstraction, user login and account management. I just want to seamlessly combine the best of MediaWiki, WordPress, Gallery and PHPbb. I don’t want to have 4 different logins and spend weeks trying to make templates for each so that they all look alike. Somehow these Open Source packages need to cleanly separate the functional engine from the application presentation layer. Then I could mix and match them.
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05.17.06
Posted in Technology at 1:34 pm by wfrantz
Ashlee Vance wrote an anti-subscription rant for The Register
Customers do not, as Napster suggests, pay $10,000 to fill their iPods with 10,000 songs just because the capacity is there. They take their existing music, CDs and MP3s, and put that onto the device first, then later add iTunes songs as they go along.
This is a narrow point of view. OK, Ashlee might have a pile of CDs and the patience to collect over years, but my 14 year old little brother has about a dozen CD’s and the attention span of Rain Man. Now, he could go buy another disk for $14, or he could buy 2 months of Yahoo Music for the same price. What is the better value for his dollar? 10 songs or 1 million songs?
If you ask me, a $60 subscription to Yahoo Music is a much better graduation gift than 4 new CDs. Here little brother, for $240 I will buy you an entire high-school lifetime of music. You can worry about starting a CD collection after you graduate.
Why does everyone think that consumers care about the long-term value of their purchasing dollar? Has anyone seen the national credit card debt statistics? People buy on impulse and worry about the consequences later.
As I said before, looking at my collection of about 300 disks, I could have bought 60 years of Yahoo Music for less! Am I still listening to Cindy Lauper when I’m 75? What was the point of owning all this plastic?
What’s the advantage in paying for all of the tethered music on the planet? That’s pointless gluttony and nothing more.
Well, it’s cheaper than buying 300 disks I like.
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01.26.06
Posted in Life at 4:05 pm by wfrantz
I recently sold a 2006 Pontiac Solstice. I had been advertising the car here so you may have stumbled across this page looking to buy a roadster. Sorry, it’s gone. However, if you are lucky enough to own a Solstice, you should look at some of the great accessories available from KappaSphere
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12.02.05
Posted in Technology at 4:02 pm by wfrantz
I had a disagreement with Russ Beattie and Jim Hughes a while back about camera-phones. It went something like this:
William: Camera phones are a solution looking for a problem. Camera phones are like sofa beds. They aren’t very good beds or sofas. They just take up less space. I’d rather have a seperate camera, PDA, and phone; each optimized for their primary task. The other problem is security. Many companies are banning camera phones yet it’s becoming impossible to buy a high-end phone without a camera! The carriers are going back to the OEMs and asking them to remove the cameras from some business oriented phones! My wife has a Treo 600 PDA/camera/phone. The phone has lousy reception, the camera takes lo-res pictures, and the PDA is slow with a tiny display. My T608 gets great reception. My iPAQ 1945 is fast with a beautiful display. My Canon SD110 is 3.2 Megapixel. I can take photos on my Cannon, drop the card in my iPAQ, and e-mail them through my bluetooth T608. All the devices are pocket sized and far better than any converged device I’ve seen.
Jim:… sure your phone, pda and camera are all pocket sized. But, that’s three devices, three pockets. A smartphone with camera does all this (and more) whilst filling just one pocket.
The three step process to shuffle your pictures from device to device might be technically possible, but that’s a pretty tedious process for a bunch of quick snaps.
William: A smartphone cannot do more than I can do with my separate camera, PDA, and phone. I believe it does significantly less. In particular it’s not a very capable camera, PDA, or phone! Maybe it’s “good enough” at those functions to satisfy most people. Maybe I’m just a “power user” that expects more. A bagel only takes up one pocket but I wouldn’t use it to take pictures either.
It’s not all that difficult to shuffle pictures from device to device. If my camera had Bluetooth then I would barely even realize the shuffling was taking place. The most tedious step right now is moving the memory card from the camera to the PDA. After that everything is pretty similar to sending photos from my Treo. In less than 20 seconds, I pick a recipient, add a note, attach the photo and hit “Send”. With Bluetooth I don’t even have to take my phone out of my pocket. Some custom PocketPC software could make it even quicker.
I believe connectivity (ala. Bluetooth) is far more valuable than convergence.
I decided to come back now and revisit the issue.
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