life, and a little more

Social Networking Apathy

May 18

metalman777tech, www facebook, myspace, social networking, twitter 4 Comments

I’m not quite sure when it happened.  Maybe it was the week I was on vacation and didn’t have Internet access for most of the time.  Maybe it’s just been building up un-noticed for the past few months.  I have Social Networking Apathy.

Which is very unlike me.  I’ve been twittering for quite a while, even using a ping.fm chat bot in Google Talk to update my statuses on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace all at the same time.

But some how my interests have changed.  I no longer want to tell everyone what I’m doing all the time, and  I don’t want to know what everyone is doing at any given time.  I love technology and web 2.0 and all that it gives us, but I think I’m getting information overkill.

I like to follow people I know on Twitter.  Following businesses or tech gurus has been enlightening as well.  The instantaneous access to information is very nice.  The question I must ask is this:  how in the world could you follow over 1000 people?  Do you really need to know that much stuff?  I have people starting to follow me that are following over 3000 other Twitter users.  What the frak?  Why add me to your list when you don’t know me?  Sigh…

So, I’m not tweeting so much anymore.  I might tweet once in a while, but for the most part, I think I’m done.

I almost feel the same way in regards to Facebook.  Almost, but not quite.  I like the fact that I’ve reconnected with a bunch of old high school friends.  I like seeing everybody’s pictures and shared items and links.   I just don’t want to spend so much time on it as I used to.  Life is too short to be on the computer so much (says the Mac Addict!)

Adium X Giants Ducky

Mar 05

metalman777apple, software, tech, www adium, apple, chat, mac, software No Comments

Just wanted to share this picture.  I use Adium X as my chat client on my Mac and just found this SF Giants Ducky Icon for it!  Awesomeness!

If you are interested in Adium, it supports many different chat protocols, including Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk, Facebook, Myspace, AIM, MSN, Jabber and more!  I’ve been using if for quite a while and love the way I can customize it!

Ubiquity and Wisestamp – Firefox Essentials

Feb 10

metalman777software, tech, www firefox, gmail, tech, ubiquity, web, wisestamp No Comments

No, I’m not talking in another language.  Ubiquity and Wisestamp are two plugins for Mozilla Firefox that I have been playing with this week.

If you have ever used Quicksilver or Butler or Launchbar for the Mac, then you will be familiar with Ubiquity right away.  For those of you who are even further confused, just watch the video below:

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/1561578]

Ubiquity really does make your web browsing so much easier, especially if you use a laptop with no mouse.  I’ve been using it for a couple of days now and it is so easy to find something from the internet and send it to a friend via email or twitter.

Download it, play with it, and comment back and let me know how you like it.

Wisestamp is a very cool plugin that allows you to insert html signatures into your gmail, aol mail, hotmail, or yahoo mail account.

My custom signature is above, but you can customize it however you want!  If a custom, linkable signature for your email is something you want, then Wisestamp is something you must try.  Again, free software doesn’t cost you anything to try!

Google Earth 5 beta released

Feb 02

metalman777software, tech, www google earth, software No Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSuJq4UzkIA&feature=player_embedded]

Looks very cool! And its free!

to Dream, to Dream

Jan 30

metalman777apple, tech apple, imac, macbook, price comparisons No Comments

Ever get that hankerin’ for a new toy?  I’ve been feeling the urge for a new MacBook, but gracious, I just don’t have $1500 to throw around.  Still, it is fun to jump on-line and do the internet equivalent of window shop.  Here are some interesting facts I found.

A new MacBook and a new 20 inch iMac are just about the same price!

A lower end aluminum MacBook starts at $1299.  To the left, you can see that it comes standard with 2 gigs of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.  It’s actually not a bad deal.  It’s portable and light, has built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The only drawback is the entire lack of firewire!  I’m still trying to figure out why Apple removed this feature! (maybe they are getting ready for USB 3.0)

The MacBook would make an awesome addition to my Mac family.

But then the greedy, Tim The Tool Man Taylor “more power” part of me takes over so I think it would be nice to have a brand new iMac.  My brother in law has a 24 inch model and it is super sexy beautiful.  I practically drool everytime I see it!

At first glance, the 20 inch iMac is actually cheaper than the 13 inch MacBook.  But the oberservant observer will also note that the 20 inch iMac only comes with 1 gig of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.  The graphics card is much beefier than the MacBook.  Of course, you lose the mobility of a laptop.

Being the techno geek that I am, I of course, would have to upgrade if I were either one of these beautiful machines.

This is where the pricing really levels off.  After upgrades, the two computers are just about $25 apart!

After upgrading the MacBook to 4 gigs of RAM and the hard drive to 250 gigs, the total cost is $1549.  I guess that ain’t so bad.  The only other two items I would like would be a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter ($29) so I could connect a bigger monitor to it, and a notebook mouse so I could navigate the computer easier.

There is the obligatory RAM upgrade, to 4 gigs.  Since the iMac is a desktop, I’d like to have a 500 gig hard drive too.

I hate Apple mice.  I’d buy a nice Logitech or something.

So, if anyone has an extra $1500 they want to throw my way, feel free!

I just keep learning!

Jan 08

metalman777tech, www blogs, google, google reader, greader, rss No Comments

I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now.  I even wrote a blog entry about it a while ago. So I was surprised that I found a feature that has been there all along and I just never noticed!

I can make a web page displaying all the blogs I subscribe to.  Pure and simple!  I updated the *BBB page of my blog to show this coolness.

Read below:

I love to write blog entries. I love to read great blogs even more (Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice). Below are some blogs that I scan most everyday. This page will be a work in progress, so check back in to see the changes. [UPDATE as of Jan 8, 2009! I just realized that I can make all the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader public! Got to the bottom of this page to see them!!]

Here is a complete list of all the blogs I read daily in Google Reader, grouped by topic:

• Apple Stuff
• Battle Star Galactica
• Christianity
• Entertainment
• Essential Blogs To Read
• Lost
• Movie News and Reviews
• Music
• Photography
• Photoshop
• Techie Stuff
• The Office

5,000 hits!

Nov 29

metalman777Life, tech, www 5000 hits, blogging, redesign No Comments

My little ‘ol blog has had over 5,000 hits now!  I know most blogs get that kind of traffic in just one day, but for me, that stat is pretty awesome!

I thought it would be a perfect time to celebrate and do some redesigning.  Thus the new look for the blog.  Cheers!

Gmail gets skinned!

Nov 21

metalman777tech, www gmail, themes No Comments

Google has given us many free things: Google Earth, Google Maps, Blogger, Youtube, Picasa, Google Reader, and yes, Google Mail.  I’ve been an avid user of Gmail for quite a while now and was pleasantly surpised that Google finally added Themes go its online mail service!

As you can see above, Google has given us 31 different themes to use.  Personally, I only like a few, but I sure appreciate the thought!

Below are my favorite themes:

If you feel Ninja-like, this is the perfect theme!

Give your email an office feel!

My personal favorite! Brings back many memories of being in front of my TSR-80 trying to get my tape drive to work!

And Now the Music Journey Starts

Oct 27

metalman777Life, apple, music, software, tech hard drive failure, music No Comments

So you might have read about my ultimate nightmare of losing my entire 300 gigabyte iTunes library. I made a few phone calls today and got prices ranging from $500 to $2500 (plus the cost of a new hard drive) to recover all the data from my dead drive.  My bank accounts just can’t take that type of hit at the moment, so I have resigned myself to building back my entire music library.

I do have to give props to Apple, as they are letting me download all of my purchased music and videos again.  Unfortunately I have many, many, many more albums that I have acquired elsewhere.  Those will be regained via Bit Torrent!

I got a great deal on a 1.5 terabyte Segate External Drive at Best Buy and will steadily rebuild my music library.  I’m using Senuti to recover all the songs that are still on my iPod.  The salt in the wound is that my iPod crashed about a week before my hard drive.  I had my 30 gig iPod stuffed with music!  After it crashed, I was lazy and didn’t put much music on it so that sucks!

I’ll probably be blogging on my situation from time to time.  Wish me luck!

This Just Isn't My Weekend…

Oct 25

metalman777Life, tech, www gmail, sucks!, youtube No Comments

crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Google changed the way you log into youtube this weekend.  If you use Gmail, as I do, you can link your Gmail account to your Youtube account.  Somehow someway I didn’t link ‘em right and now my youtube account of 2+ years is gone!!! I had something close to 100 videos posted!  crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe youtube is getting back at me because I have been publishing video to Viddler….yeah, yeah, that’s it!