The Dangers of Monogamey

This is a really interesting article postulating that WoW is a significant factor in the recent decline in PC game sales. While I think there are many factors including the strong console value proposition, the lack of new, original PC games, and the "movie like" production costs of blockbuster game titles, the idea that a game could monopolize a gamer's time to the detriment of other PC game purchases is very interesting. I definitely quit playing WoW after the beta because my wife was a WoW widow, and other of my friends did the same thing. Then again, many of my friends are still WoW junkies ;-)

My new "lust" camera

The Canon Powershot SD700 is my new "lust after" camera. I have an SD500 now, and it is an amazing camera. I can not recommend Canon digital cameras enough. I've had digital camera from Minolta, Kodak, and Nikon, and Canon is by far the best. The SD500 is light, has great image quality, and is fast in most aspects of a good camera experience (boot time, cycle time, zoom speed, rapid shot mode). The concept of getting 4X optical zoom and image stabilization is only icing on the cake.

I'm surprised that they had to shed 1MP to get the extra capabilities, but I think it is a worthwhile trade. The camera is supposed to be available in May, and I look forward to the review on DPreview.com

Why spend an evening aggregating bookmarks?

I've spent the last few hours aggregating my booksmarks into a common location on del.icio.us. Is this a good use of time? I decided it was under the banner of "less is more"

I'm a gadget hound, and I've accumulated many computers in my lab. I've got a role (excuse) for each of them, but I recently realized I could get rid of a few with no impact-- on my geek foo. Everything one owns take time, space, money, electricity, or mental cycles to maintain. Possessions possess their owners, or something like that. So I'm getting rid of two computers, and this means transferring everything on them to another system. And this led to my bookmarks.

I had separate bookmark collections on five machines. This is neither efficient or useful. Now I use another kewl social collaboration tool to centralize my bookmarks and take another small step towards decluttering my life.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an application I need to research when I get the chance. Wonder how it really compares to Illustrator? While I love Adobe, when there is only one significant player in a market, design and innovation tend to languish. Adobe has done the best job of any company I know of resisting the temptation to enjoy its monopoly and slow innovation's pace, but competition is always good.

Video distribution systems

If you are considering distributing video throughout your house, check out this solution. I've got a 1968 ranch home I've started renovating, so whole home video is something I've been contemplating. While wireless eliminated some of the need to hardwire homes with Cat-5 Ethernet, video remains too bandwidth intensive for existing wireless technologies. I debate waiting for wireless bandwidth to improve (802.11n, WiMaxx), or just installing a known, solid solution. Classic ship versus wait problem.

ASCII table

Because everyone needs access to the ASCII Table sooner or later!

Why features don't matter anymore

Rules everyone should remember when building consumer products! This was forwarded to me by a collegue, and I totally agree with the comments in this article.

Print in XP to an Airport Extreme USB printer

macosxhints - Print to an Airport Extreme USB printer from WinXP

Starting all over (the 5th time)

Why do I have a web site? How much time do I have for a web site, relative to other things that require my attention? I'm not trying to be metaphysical, I'm asking myself why I over-engineer solutions. Why do I spend more time maintaining and trying to "build" a site than posting content, which is the reason I created it?
This leads to the simple fact that less is more. Duh. When I need more, I'll get more. I was up till 3am last night trying to get WordPress running, but that didn't work. I've got a high end Unix hosting partner whose tools are admittedly for Unix geeks. I don't have spare nights (anymore?) to devote to mysql, ssh, and chmod. Do I need WordPress yet? Probably not. Do I even need a more expensive hosting partner that caters to Unix geeks? Probably not.
So I'm back to Blogger, and I'll create custom pages where appropriate. Let's see how this works out. Can't be any worse. At a minimum, I shouldn't be up at 3am anymore trying to unravel php errors!