Have you ever had one of those projects, where you just have the hardest time getting anything done? That’s how it seems to be with my current project.

I mentioned in the last post, that Art and I are getting ready to launch a new web site and podcast. Art has taken over the web master duties, I’m taking care of Podcast production, and we are both going to be creating content for the web site.

Now, Art is making leaps and bounds on the site, and it’s really coming along nicely. Me on the other hand, I’m wallowing in non-productivity.

I’ve can only put in 2 or 3 hours every night, and I even have to skip a night here and there. That should be plenty of time, right?

Remember Mike, “slow and steady wins the race”.

I’m going to keep plugging away, and we hope to have something up by Wednesday or Friday. When we do launch, I can give you all a URL or two to look at.

(Art, we still good on Wednesday? Maybe Friday?)

I’m planning on doing a bunch of video tutorials, and last night I was working on a opening screen for the video, and it came out really nice. Then I realized that the right side of my title is getting cut off by the you tube logo. I may try blip.tv or some other service and see if it works there.

I’ve got three videos recorded, but I still have to edit and narrate them, I’ve got my VMWare Server set up, and my first virtual machine running.

I’m really can’t wait to tell everyone about what we’ve been working on, but I want to wait until we’re ready. After re-reading the above, I can see that I am making more progress than I thought. It’s just that I want to have launched it yesterday, and already have started working full time on the project. Patience Mike, Patience.

Just a little bit of a giveaway, the picture here is a cartoon of me, and it’s part of our logo. The daughter of a friend of ours was nice enough to create cartoon characters of Art and I. We scanned them in, and Art has been doing some incredible work to make a logo.

OK, that’s enough for now. Stay tuned.

Posted in BlogNewsandUpdates, Projects, WebSites 6 Comments »

When it comes to being an evil genius, I rank pretty low on that scale. No, I’ve never seen a evil genius scale, but I have to assume that there is one. What else would you use to measure evil geniuses with?

Now, when it comes to being a genius, sorry, but I’m pretty low on that scale too. Once again, I’m assuming that there is a scale for this.

When it comes to ideas, plots and plans to take over the entire world, or at least large plots of it, I seem to have more of those than I know what to do with.

Anyway, about a week ago, we bought a new scale. Also, around that time, I posed a question to Art. I asked if he had any interest in doing a podcast with me.

Turns out that he was.

(Note: The whole scale analogy kind of fell apart, but I already found and used the nice scale photo, so I felt obligated to tray and tie it in.)

I’ve been meaning to post about this new endeavor, because frankly, I’m pretty excited. I can’t wait to start churning the podcasts out.

Of course, being tech guys, it’s going to be a tech podcast. I don’t want to give away too much, but we are doing a brand new website with it, and Art is currently fighting with the Drupal install. We hope to have to site launched, and our first podcast ready, by Wednesday the 26th. Hopefully we’ll make it.

I know that I haven’t been terribly active in the blogging arena lately, but I think that this podcast and new web site will give me some real focus, and help to get me back on track. Don’t fear, I still plan on updating this blog, after all, there is a lot of stuff that just doesn’t fit on a pure Tech blog.

So stay tuned.

Photo by Chance Agrella

Posted in Blogging, BlogNewsandUpdates, Tech, The Mumbler 7 Comments »

I’m so excited! Why you ask? Only because I finally received my invitation to buy Popcorn Hour!

Way back in February, I did a little drive by linking, and mentioned Popcorn Hour. Popcorn Hour is a standalone video player, that can play video files from a number of sources. It can play files that you store on a local hard drive, files shared by other computers in the house, and even videos on youtube.

All in all, this is a sweet little device. You don’t have to have a hard drive to operate it, and without a drive, it sells for $179.

There has been such a demand for the player, that it became an invite only system. I signed up a month or so ago, and Monday I received my invitation to buy it.

When I initially signed up, I wasn’t sure if I was going to want to buy it or not, but recently I’ve ran into some frustrations when trying to get some video files on DVD to watch on my television. That has been such a pain, that even my wife is all for buying it.

So I went ahead and ordered it. (W00t!)

I won’t receive mine until sometime in April, but you can be sure I’ll let you know what I think of it.

Posted in Internet TV, Movies, Multimedia, Tech, TV 2 Comments »

This weekend, I was converting one of the CD Audio books that I legally own into MP3, for my own personal use, and I was a little bored.

Since I was using up too much CPU time to play a game, and was being interrupted too often to write anything, I was in the perfect zone to watch some Internet video on my computer.

That’s when I ran across a Team Fortress 2 Tournament on Gamespot’s Tournament TV.

The Tournament had actually taken place on March 14th, but it was still available to watch. The tournament was called Uber Destruction, and was for the Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2.

This was actually the first tournament I had seen on Gamespot, but I’ll have to tune in and see when they have others. It was really great to see how others play, and the hosts of the show were pretty funny. Although to be honest, I’m a little peeved because I couldn’t imagine much of a better gig.

Anyway, it actually got me pretty pumped up to play some more Team Fortress 2. I love the game, but I haven’t played in awhile.

If you’re into gaming, you should tune into Tournament TV, looks like the next one is going to be for Call of Duty 4, with $4000 in prizes.

Posted in FPS, Games, Internet TV, Team Fortress 2 Comments »

I’ve had a little change in philosophy lately when it comes to pownce.

A long time ago, possibly even months, I decided that I’m kind of tired of getting all of these messages about things I don’t care about. I mean, come on, I don’t care about what you had for breakfast.

Ok, let’s be a little more specific, I don’t care what you have for breakfast on a daily basis, unless it’s something really cool or strange. I mean really, if you post and say “strangest thing happened to me today, I had an iguana breakfast burrito”, then I would be pretty interested.

Not only in how it tasted, but where exactly one might obtain a iguana breakfast burrito.

Man. I sure love breakfast burritos.

I better stay focused. What was I talking about? Oh yea, that’s right.

Assuming that you didn’t have an especially strange or interesting breakfast, I probably don’t care.

I think it is safe to assume that I especially don’t want to know what you had for breakfast, after you posted “good morning” to all of your friends. So, after suffering from information apathy, I turned off my message notifications.

The other day, a friend sent me a private message. Luckily, I still had the notifications turned on for personal messages. The thought struck me that I almost missed that, and right now, my friends could be posting something really cool, and I would be missing it.

So I turned on the email notifications again, but this time I removed a bunch of people that were creating a whole lot of noise. This has really made things much more manageable.

I don’t mind people who post frequently, but it has to be worth reading. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I start posting more frequently. It’s not quantity, but quality.

By the Way, if the phrase “Information Apathy” hasn’t been used before, I hereby coin it.

Image by Chance Agrella

Posted in Pownce, Social Networks 5 Comments »