The Geek Speeks

Lots and Lots going on...

2006-10-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

I am feeling that this poor blog is not getting the attention it deserves, so here I am back blogging at almost 10pm on a Thursday night. So what has me sitting here and blogging, well I just got home from a NJ Web Design Meetup and realized that I had alot to say ( ok so I never shutup) and I haven't been saying it. So welcome Web Dev NJ folks this blog is cause of you :) We talked alot about online tools that can assist you with web design and development, so please read previous posts on this blog, cause I have documented alot of them previously. Big ones are digg, and del.icio.us you will notice that I have my personal digg feed over to the right of the blog so you can see the last 10 or so stories I have found interesting on digg. One of the cool things about del.icio.us is that you can share the things that you are interested in, and that they are tagged (categorized) my personal del.icio.us bookmarks are located at http://del.icio.us/robbiethegeek Also sidenote as not a web dev notice but a Robbie The Geek life notice : I have been accepted and returned to college to finally complete my Bachelor's Degree. I am attending Ramapo College of NJ in Mahwah, NJ. I am having fun being back in school but boy is it different then the last time I went to college. Students have changed, alot less competitive and confident but the curriculum hasn't LOL Also a few other important sites not mentioned below in any blog: http://www.sitepoint.com http://www.alistapart.com http://www.stylegala.com http://www.456bereastreet.com I will blog more I promise, please feel free to comment and add anything that I missed or got wrong :)

Blogs, Books and Podcasts Oh My...part 1

2006-06-19T14:40:00.000-04:00

I have been away from my blogs for a bit and doing lots and lots of work. The 9-5 job has been very busy, and the side-gigs are busy but learning has really held my attention more then anything else. The Triad of learning at this time is, books, blogs and podcasts. Well here it is I have really started throwing all of my free time into Web Design. Reading, applying what I am reading, read some more, rinse and repeat. Thank god for the books from the masters, the web for tutorials, articles, and blogs. I have recieved years worth of training for very little moeny. I have become an avid reader of blogs, this is for 2 reasons first I write a blog so I am interested in what folks write when they blog, and that all the people in the know/master's of the feild of web standards and design write up fantastic articles with their thoughts on the most pertianant subjects of the day. I have been trying to play about 8-10 years of catchup by reading the most influencial books on the subsections of web design. I am going to skip over podcasts for the most part I will mention that if you are into web design and unlucky enough to make it all around the world to every conference under the sun podcasts are an amazing ansewer. Recently there was a conference in New Zealand called WebStock and every section and presentation is now online and available at WebStock. Last week was @Media and there are assurances from lots of my favorite bloggers that all the presentations will be online soon... Now on to Books, and here is a quick listing and review (of the books I have read so far): Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm This is a fantastic book for those starting out with Website work. This book argues the reasons for using and utilizing Web Standards without feeling preachy or pretentious. I have listened to alot of podcasts and read alot of blogs that almost take a holier-then-thou approach to Web Standards, this book is as far from that feeling as anything could be. A great resourse for all interested in the Web Design / Development world. Bullet Proof Web Design by Dan Cederholm From the moment I opened this book I never wanted to put it down, building on the foundation that was layed down in Web Standards Solutions Dan Cederholm continues to teach us all the techniques, tricks and ways of web standerds design. A very clear sequel to Web Standerds Solutions and just more of the same read it, learn it, use the skills picked up to create better more efficient websites. DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model by Jeremy Keith I am a JavaScript newbie, learning whatever I can. I have read many blogs and out-of-date tutorials, this is not one of thos resourses that is outdated before it was published. This book tackles the idea that JavaScript doesn't have to remain in the background, like the evil, forgotten stepchild known only for the annoying pop-ups. A fantastic reference on not just JavaScript but on the idea of DOM Scripting and unobtrusive javascript. Other concepts solidified in this book are progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. A definate read for anyone looking to learn more about the "new" way of adding dynamic content to a website. CSS: The Designer's Edge by Molly E. Holzschlag I very good beginner's view into the world of CSS design and the abandoinning of the "old" way of doing web site layout(i.e. tables for layout). A good read for solidfying your knowledge of CSS. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug A very good resource for the novice to the feild of user-interface design. A entertaining and educational, Steven Krug is a trailblazer full of useful information. Be back soon to talk more on this subject. Please feel free to send off links or leave comments with your suggestions...

Geek Vs. Mac!

2006-04-24T20:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I took the plunge and joined the Cult of Mac this weekend. I am the proud owner of a 15" MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz Core Duo laptop. Ok the first thing I would like to bring up is the buying process. I had applied for the Apple Credit Care and was approved but you can't actually use the card in the store until you receive the physical credit card. Now I am a rather impatient person once it comes to buying something once I make up my mind. 8 days after I made the decision there was still no credit card in hand. I ended up using a different card to purchase it in the long run so think twice if you would like to us the apple cresit in-store plan well in advance. (I could have bought immediately through the Apple Store but I wanted the in-store experience). I was assisted once I walked into the Apple Store at Garden State Plaza and asked a sales person for assistance with a MacBook purchase. I was referred to a Apple Customer Assistant (or CustomerCare) named Ian. I knew the purchase was going to go well because he got a kick out of my Bittorrent T-shirt. A little info at a iMac he was standing near and off to the sales / genius bar area. My paper printed out Ian came along with us chatting the whole time with me. The conversation was amusing cause he immediately pegged me as a techie guy cause his first question that wasn't purchase related was, "let me guess you are planning on getting Boot Camp woking on it right?". I jumped all over this to try to glean whatever info I could get from an actual Apple employee about setting up my new MacBook Pro to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2. It was pretty much nothing he pretty much told me there isn't anything I can really talk about because it isn't fully supported. Then I went rumor-fishing trying to see if the 17" MacBook Pro was coming in the next few days as National Association of Broadcasters Conference? And all I can say is I think a tumbleweed rolled between us. The final process for buying the machine was very simple and out of the store and home I went. I very nice process from beginning to end and I would easily tell others to go through the store if the want immediate instant gratification but the Apple Store would have saved me about $150 in tax. Thanks again Ian and thanks for reading part one of this blog posting. Part 2 of this article is now available on my new Mac-focused blog

Proud of you Both

2006-04-05T21:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I was able to attend the Senior Showcase for my wife and our great friend Jon. I am totally impressed by their commitment and dedication. I am so proud of Natalie she has set goals for herself by the showcase and reached them. The scenes were all very good, and I was so happy to get to see Jon and Natalie perform the infamous "37 dicks" scene from Keven Smith's Clerks. Please stop by and check out their websites (shameless plug for sites I have created) www.natalieholmes.net and www.jonhoche.com and check out Jon's Blog on this subject from his own mouth. talk to you again soon

JonHoche.Com is up and alive

2006-03-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

I can officially announce that my first professional website is online. www.jonhoche.com is the address to my buddy Jon's site, I am excited to say that I have created a site that he really appears to like. I will tell you that this was/is the greatest learning experience in my entire business career. I can say emphatically that web design/developer is the career I am now persuing. It may take me time to get there and make a living doing website work but hang in there I will get there. The last blog I wrote about my feelings on tossing out the design I had for jonhoche.com and I decided it had to go. So out it went I took a few things from design 1 and rolled that into the final design. I didn't throw out the baby with the bath water I kept the baby :) I got rid of a frames design and added a custom designed blog and guestbook. I am happy with the final design, it is clean accessible, usable and works very well across multiple browsers. Please visit his site and give him some feedback via the comments page leave me feedback at robbie@robbiethegeek.com Hope to hear from you...

The Site is UP...(Almost LOL)

2006-03-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

The news is that I have got a preliminary website up and running for my buddy. There is a fully created and functional website hiding below the Coming Soon page I have put up. I have spent a lot of time working on this website and I am not sure it is what I want for him LOL. The slick, cool factor website that I have developed for him may not be functional enough for an actors resume website. I am going to sit down and discuss these feelings with him hopefully in the next few days. I showed the site around a little today and got a lot of oohs & aahs from folks who are friends and collegues. I spoke with and showed the site to a friend who is very familiar with the acting world, resumes, and actor's websites. His response was less then overwhelming, and of course his computer was the slowest, old, piece of crap and he commented on load times and layout choices. More and more things that came up were Keep It Simple Stupid for the site. Simple, easy, smooth, quick seem to the issues that he and I discussed for about 30-45 mins. Here is the biggest rub, if I go back and redesign my buddies website, then my wife's site gets put off longer. So now do I redesign this website and put my wife's site off or do I design her site and then head back to his site? I leave you all with this question. Feel free to e-mail me with suggestions on who to put off LOL

Lots of updates...

2006-02-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

This is a very hectic and fun-ish weekend for me and mine. We are celebrating one of our own completing a year long Certificate program last night at her graduation ceremony. Tonight we are going to head to a kareoke bar to continue that celebrating after going to see the latest musical at my wife's college. So good stuff but hectic by this geeks' standards, but then the real fun begins. Tomorrow, a small group of friends are going out to Nassau Coliseum to see the a WWE house show, and see Tazz dust off the ring gear for one more match. So friends, food, beers, wrasslin', which makes for lots of fun and excitement. Then the next day is WWE's No Way Out which will probably be yet another so-so crapfest. In the mix of all this madness is the possibility of a site launch. With all the fun, and wacky things going on the site launch may be the most exciting thing in my eyes. Please hang on for site launch news maybe this weekend :) This geek's out...

Side-projects when it rains...

2006-02-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

How many side projects can one geek do? If you have been reading along here at robbiethegeek.com you will know I am starting to re-enter the web site design world. The catalyst in my life was my wife, our very close friend Jon and his girlfriend all graduating this May. All of them are actors so my big present to each of them was to design and create their web sites. So it is very exciting for me to see one of these sites approaching going live. Jon's website is almost complete which means I am one step closer to having this become a real side job. With every site I bring up means my portfolio grows with quality designs, web standards and accessibility. I spend a lot of time testing all my designs in every browser I can get my hands on. I am trying to use nothing but semantic code and conform to web standards. Making sure that everything is functional, clean and the same is extremely important to me. Now all the families in my life are realizing that this is not just a pipedream and I can actually do it, so I am getting lots of requests for web site work LOL. So I have atleast 5 projects on my plate. It is very exciting and time-consuming, I will post completed sites links as they go live.

Major Companies Websites suck...

2006-02-12T13:23:00.000-05:00

At my day job today I was digging around Microsoft's site looking for information about a Citrix support issue. As an organization we have an application that is written and supported in-house. One of the reporting consoles that gives many reports and allows managers to printout and save reports. This console needs to be migrated to our central Citrix farm. Here is the issue; when the users try to save the reports they are seeing the servers hard drives along with their own. This is not only confusion to users but scary users shouldn't save anything on your servers. Now I spend a lot of time digging around the net looking for a solution. Citrix's website links to Microsoft and so do most posts on the issue of hiding drives. I like the flow and usabilty of Citrix's website even if it is ultra-busy and a little too much going on for my tastes. Then I get to Microsoft's support section and everything looks great and readable. There is some solid information to assist in resolving the hiding drives issue, and I start printing out a lot of these pages of solutions to this issue. After printing out almost 10 pages of support info I stroll to the printer and to my dismay see about 70-80% of the screens from the website. So I go back to the PC and look for a printer friendly link, click here for the printer version. It is nowhere to be found. So they aren't using CSS to clean up the print when you click the print button, but there isn't a way to print out a nice clean printout of this support content that I need to take with me to a meeting with supervisors and developers. This could be resolved by thinking ahead when you create a website and creating an alternate style sheet for printing. The next day and the same issue printing support pages on a new issue I am researching this time on Citrix's support area, only 70-80% of the pages. So the lame solution is to copy the text paste into notepad and print, plain text no corporate branding. I am not a web design/programmer yet but I understand web usabilty from lots of surfing, reading, and listening to many sources. Please oh please big companies pay attention to the possibilities of web standerds and accessibility options available to you. Thanks, speak with you more soon...RobbieTheGeek out...

Web Standards & Web Design part 1

2006-01-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome back folks, sorry for the lapse in blogs this last few days. I was a little burnt out from the technology tsunami from CES & MacWorld. Just because I wasn't posting doesn't mean I haven't been soaking up all I can get my eyes on. I have taken a few entry level and higher HTML classes through my job. These were very low-end but worth it to resurface all that old knowledge I have from doing website design and creation years ago. Next up in this series of classes is a CSS class. But I have to say that I have learned more listening to a new webdesign podcast called BoagWorld.Com. A lot of the infomation that is discussed in this podcast is related to Web Standards. The use and support of webstandards seems to be a crusade of Paul Boag, and after listening to the first 5 podcasts I have to agree with his view. I feel very lucky that I came across this podcast because a lot of what was discussed in the classes I took, and read throughout the web never discussed web standards and why you should use them. CSS is extremely intricite and sort of the linchpin that web accessibility relies on. The biggest thing that I have taken away from the podcast and all the sites that I have found through my own searches is seperate the content from the design. And this is where CSS becomes so important this contains all the design elements for your website. The website content then doesn't need to contain any of the formatting (font, size, blocking,...) within the HTML files. This makes changing the layout and overall design of an entire site but editing only one file, the CSS file rather then the old fashioned way which was to edit every single file of your whole site. There seems to be a little bit of an issue with comforming to the standards related to CSS and all the rest of web design set forth by World Wide Web Consortium. The benifit of becoming compliant is that you will futureproof your site, because all future browsers will be based on these standards. So I will make Paul Boag proud and say it one more time, use web standards it makes your site so much more flexible, updatable, and accessible. As you can tell this geek is very excited about web site design & creation. If you come accross any interesting web sites, blogs, or podcasts on these subjects drop me an email. Thanks for stopping by...

CES - Goodness part 2

2006-01-11T17:10:00.000-05:00

Ok after all the MacWorld news I find it hard to get back to the CES news LOL. There were a few things (technologies) that weren't really shown in force. Smartphones other then the Palm Treo 700w. This was a very exciting announcement for a few reasons: 1.) An upgraded version of the Treo 650, a rather nice Palm phone/PDA 2.) The Treo 700w is available from Verizon Wireless and supports Verizon's high-speed EVDO (maybe rebranded VZAccess) wi-fi network. This is very cool because it is basically unlimited wireless broadband for $60 per month. 3.) Last but not least the Treo 700w is a Palm device running Windows Mobile. This is a nice meshing of technologies. Palm has always made very solid, stable PDAs & smartphones but boring and slightly outdated OSes for these great devices. Windows Media is an over-the-top all encompassing Microsoft OS for handheld PCs. And this is one of the few PDA/phones that received any web coverage in relation to iCES. Almost no new news in the next generation gaming consoles, except a few tidbits during Bill Gates' keynote about Xbox 360 and it pushing forward HDTV adoption rates. Sony's PS3 news was completely nonexistent. Sony's big announcement was their E-Book Reader. This is very exciting to this geek because I am always looking to read some technical manuals and this is a great way for me to do it. The reader itself has a fantastic electronic paper screen that is easy on the eyes with very clear text. The specs announced are 80-85 e-books (with support for PDFs) and 7500 page turns worth of battery life per charge. The reason that this device's battery life is rated in page turns has to do with the way electronic paper works. The product only uses power when updating the electronic paper and it locks on until the next page turn. Nintendo Revolution news was even more scarce then PS3 news. Lots of folks also are attacking the portable media player market. The greatest threat to the iPod with video & the PSPs current stranglehold on this market is the Creative Vision:M. The size is a little thicker and less sleek then both the PSP and iPod but with a solid 2.5" crystal clear screen. Battery life is noted at 6 hours of video and 12-14 hours of music playback. Sony & Apple should be just a little scared of this tiny dynamo, it won best-in-show for all of iCES 2006. Everyone seems to be taking aim at Apple, and finally starting to realize that there are things that should be learned from them. Last weeks keynotes show this explicitely from Google, to Microsoft to Yahoo all targeting all of the markets that Apples dominates. Microsoft launching Urge with MTV and the reemergence of Sony's Connect music service. Google's announcement of taking Google Video from beta to a pay service and partnering with CBS for their primetime line-up and their proprietary video player. As you can see, lots of companies are trying to enter the music / video download service marketplace. I really think that right now a lot of companies would like to get a piece of the pay-per-download content service pie. Is it too little too late? We will see... I am going to leave the CES world until January '07 hopefully everyone can substantiate their companies' claims.

technorati tags: CES, smartphone, Gadgets

MacWorld Expo Keynote Impact...

2006-01-11T07:49:00.000-05:00

After yesterday's blog posting I have done nothing but talk about it with friends and family. All of these poor folks in my life are tired of hearing about the tech d`jour. But thank goodness for my blog and you folks for coming by and reading my rants. I was so excited about the keynote yesterday that I watched the crappy stream available on Apple's website. One little rant; as much as Apple gets technology they missed a nice opportunity to make the keynote available via iTunes. Ok so rant off all the rest of this blog today will be gushing over all the goodies discussed yesterday. Reading about the keynote live was good but it really came alive watching it late last night. iLife '06 is a testament that there is a large technology company that understands the wants and needs of web-connected people. It has been mentioned before but the best way to describe this is that Apple understands a digital, "webcentric" lifestyle and caters to it. I wasn't ever a big supporter of Apple or their products and I will tell you why. Often the hardware and software released by Apple (specifically the Macintosh hardware) always seemed to be more style over substance. The announcement of the MacIntel based Macs yesterday committed Apple to the hardware power that was sorely missing to power the Tiger OS. Processor strenuous tasks, such as video editing should now be a lot less intensive given the hardware changes and software revisions released yesterday. I feel like I am being won over but not by the hype but by a feeling that a company understands what I want to do on my home personal computer, and that is just have it assist me in doing what I already do: painlessly. Lots more upcoming from your own personal geek, but for now peace out...

technorati tags: Macintosh, Mac,

MacWorld Expo Keynote

2006-01-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

Enter Steve Jobs about 9 mins after 9am PST and straight into the techno-goodness he is known for. The Expo keynote gets underway with changes to the iLife suite (iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand, iMovie, and the new iWeb). Lots of tweaks to the existing apps including the addition of Podcast suite to GarageBand (this is a nice addition to GarageBand and great as proof of Apple's acknowledging the Podcaster's need). iPhoto gets a nice interface upgrade (very Apreture-esque) and full screen editing. A very exciting addition to the great iPhoto functionality is Photocasting - this is the ability to edit and publish your photos to your .Mac account and create a RSS feed so you can share your photos with friends and family (and no .Mac account necessary for you RSS subscribers). iDVD will support 3rd party DVD players finally no need to get a Superdrive (or trick the OS into thinking your drive is authentic LOL). iMovie allows for multiple stream editing and real-time effects in the menus (that can be widescreen now). iWeb appears to be a blog editor, and a one spot web content suite. Seems that .Mac is now becoming more and more necessary for your day-to-day online life, and some sidenews for .Mac subsribers, recently disk space has been increased 1 terabyte with no increase in cost. Ok, the most exiting news in the last 2 weeks the Intel moonman comes out on stage. MacIntel has happened. For those that haven't been following this story; a full 6 months before Apple promised, the first desktop PC created by Apple using an Intel (core duo) processor was announced. There are now 2 iMacs (17" & 20") all-in-one desktops with iSight, FrontRow, and all native Mac OS 10.4.4 installed applications. Lots of macfan boys and the rest of us should be very excited about this, Steve confirmed speed and power boosts of 2-3 times the power of the high-end G5 currently available. Microsoft had a representative there to discuss Office for Mac running well on this new MacIntel platform via Rosetta (kernel-level emulation) and support for Office for Mac for the next 5 years. One more thing,... A little diagram of a powerbook is shown trying to shoehorn a G5 processor into a current PowerBook. And Steve gets into the fact that Apple couldn't get a G5 PowerPC processor into the high-end laptops. Then dropped his last announcement: a rebranded PowerBook called MacBook Pro running a dualcore Intel cpu. Lots of goodies crammed into this ultraslick case. Steve's claim is 4-5 times the power of the current G5s and I think that may be a conservative estimate. Nice new AC power adapter interface on the MacBook Pro that uses a magnetic solution in case you trip over the power cord it just pops off/out no yanking the laptop off the desk. Anyone that knows me knows I have never even owned a Mac, so I am far from a fanboy, but I was very excited today reading all these tech tidbits. And I would like to thank MacRumorsLive and Engadget for your fantastic coverage of the live keynote today.

Everyone should take a look at Apple's site for more detailed information.

Ok ok enough kool-aid for me... Later folks thanks for reading

technorati tags: Macintosh, Mac,

CES - Goodness part 1

2006-01-10T06:16:00.000-05:00

I have been reading, listening, & watching everything I can get my chubby little hands on CES related. First and foremost I have to say that a fantasitic site that was updated constantly was Engadget. Specifically, the keynote live blogging for all the keynotes was great, thanks so much for all your dilegence. Reading and reporting the hundreds of duplicate stories on digg was a fun past-time all week long. DL.TV had 3 shows from the parking lot outside of the Las Vegas convention center, and hosted all the video's for all the keynotes but Google's (bad google play nice with the DL.TV folks the rest of us not lucky enough to be at the hotel for the keynote are really into CES). A few highlights from CES: - Microsoft's Windows Vista is very OS X-like and will support Media Center functionality including finally anounced Media Center/Vista support for CableCard (this is the announcement for HDTV recording directly, no Cable box needed!!!). A new music download service in partnership with MTV called Urge. - Yahoo is offering lots of online services like Yahoo Mobile (full integration of yahoo mail, contacts and syncing with your cell phone). Direct integration of yahoo services into you cell phone via a single button push to Yahoo Dashboard. - Google announced that : 1.) Google Pack - All the things that you need on you Windows desktop including Norton's Antivirus (6months of service) , Open Office 2, Picassa, Google Earth, Trillian, Google Toolbar for IE, GoogleTalk, and anything else you can imagine thrown into one installer you can customize. 2.) Google Video - a proprietary video player and a downloadable video service. This is a very surprising announcement, CBS has partnered with them and you can download the current primetime lineup and classic TV shows. Be back with more...

technorati tags: CES, Google, Gadgets,Windows Vista, Media Center, technology

Geek dances with Web2.0

2006-01-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

I have been mulling over what to do with the rest of my life again LOL. This is at least the 2nd or 3rd time I have done this. But as a lot of you know I am a digg.com fanatic ( I think I have broken 1000 stories I have dugg). But recently I realized the majority of the stories that interest me are Unix/Linux and Web2.0. That realization combined with my wife and great friend graduating from college and needing web sites has brought this portion of the tech world back into focus. If you check out my del.icio.us feed you will notice this convergence also. I really like all this web2.0 content. Digg, Gmail, del.icio.us, flickr, are just a few sites that can name. Pretty much the software as a service model that the web has become during this web boom is awesome. A lot of the things that were promised during the dotcom boom and bust functionality-wise are now coming to fruition. There are 3 reasons that I can see for this: 1.) Broadband - back in the early-mid 1990's you were lucky if you were running a solid 19.2kbps dial-up connection. 2.) Efficiency - a lot of the dotcoms in the 1990s were all about the flashy office space and huge amount of staff. A lot of the stories of the web2.0 companies are 2-10 employees or so it seems 3.) New tech - the coming together of web programming technologies and frameworks. AJAX, ruby on rails, jscript, perl (back with a vengence), vb.net,... There was some interesting technology back in the dotcom era also, one that comes to mind was DHTML (very Internet Explorer-centric)

Alright enough gushing about web-goodness

The Geek has spoken...

E-mailed in from my commute

2006-01-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

I am sitting on the bus heading home wondering what is going on at CES, and if the Google keynote has started by Larry Paige.

I just finished watching Hak.5's episode 6 on my PSP. Great episode with segments from using a pen laser-hack/mod to transmit music wirelessly, a little hacking with metasploit (again HAHA), a code challenge in C++, and a quick command line VNC installer for systems admins. Before that I listened to episode 224 of Dawn and Drew, now I am listening to This Week in Tech 36. I will tell you I really wish I had a way to read/surf about website design or website tutorials/howto's

If this gets through to the blog please bear with me not sure about the formatting. Geek out maybe... BlackBerry service provided by Nextel

Windows Metafile Madness

2006-01-06T14:11:00.000-05:00

Hello again all, I know that this isn't more CES news, or is it... A little backround: Basically a security hole was discovered (Dec 27,2005) and brought to the attention of Microsoft on Dec. 28, 2005. This security issue allowed a malicious hacker/web site creator/spammer to use a security flaw in the way that ALL Windows Operating Systems dealt with files known as a Metafiles. But the technical details aren't too important except that you should know that this was a huge security flaw, and that Microsoft decided that this issue wasn't going to be addressed until the normal patch-day Tuesday (Jan 10,2006). This is a little crazy considering the number of PCs running Windows OSes and the fact that they were ALL affected by this issue. The security community wasn't accepting the fact that Microsoft took no action to protect it's customers and decided to take this fix into their own hands and make a 3rd party fix. This is a little out of the ordinary to say the least, and apparently Microsoft felt the heat, and recognized that they should, maybe actually forget the standerd patch cycle and support their users. So on Jan. 5, 2006 Microsoft released a patch to the world via Windows Update for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Server 2003 (Those folks that are running outdated Microsoft OSes you will have to wait not that I can blame them the support on Windows 98/95/ME has ended and they are still going to fix this problem) . Now, I think that Microsoft underestimated how much buzz that this issue would get and how much negative exposure they would be subjected to. I leave you with this...Was Microsoft's motivation to remove all the internet focus off of Microsoft and their lack of support for their customers? How much is Bill and Microsoft trying to shift the focus of Larry Paige & Google's first keynote at CES? The timing of this patch seems a little questionable, but all in all thanks Microsoft for breaking up the speculation and rumors the week before CES. This geek is out of here... Thanks for reading.

Happy New Year..Pass the Tech!

2006-01-04T08:31:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2006 and welcome back to the geek speaks. A quick update to start the year off, this week is the annual CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas,NV. Lots of tech news, product launches and booth babes for all you nerds and geeks lucky enough to make the trip out there. A few things that are churning in the rumormill this week already:

Google PC/OS (here is the popular concenus $250 PC with a Linux branded by Google) This annoucement should happen Friday during the keynote by Larry Page
Skype makes friends (Lots of vendors / third parties will make hardware that will work with this VoiP service)
Cell phones with insane download speeds (Samsung is rumored to be showcasing the first High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) download speed of up to 3.6Mbps)

These are just a few of the rumors flying around the tech news sites and blogs right now. Please check in later in the week for updates on all things geeky from CES

Podcasts under Ubuntu...BashPodder!

2005-12-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

Ok so I promised I would return to this subject with my Ubuntu install, and see how I could get podcasts automagically downloaded and ready for my listening pleasure. Ok so after doing a little research, and banging my head against the wall for a few hours, I came agross a great way to handle this. A little shell script called BashPodder, a tiny little bash shell that is configured via a flat text file (bp.conf). Ok so I have an account at Odeo, and my queue there can be reached through and RSS feed. So I copied the RSS feed into the config file and ran the shell script and poof! A folder is created with today's date and all new files I have added to my queue are downloaded. On top of that it creates a single playlist in m3u format. Now I am sooooo stoked I have even less reason to go back to my Windows install. Alright that is all fantastic, but how do I use all of this to grab podcasts as they are released. For all of those folks that are familiar with Unix or any flavor of Linux should be a little familiar with cron (the scheduler that is on all those OSes). Crontab file tells the backround daemon crond what to do, and with just a few keystrokes I had scheduled BashPodder to run every hour on the hour every day of every month. Here is what that looks like:

0 * * * * bash ~/Desktop/BashPodder/bashpodder.shell

So to explain this I am lift a little text diagram from this site :

* * * * * command to be executed - - - - - | | | | | | | | | +----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0) | | | +------- month (1 - 12) | | +--------- day of month (1 - 31) | +----------- hour (0 - 23) +------------- min (0 - 59)

Simple, elegant, & efficient; I hope that this provides some motivation for folks to try a linux distro of your choice. Geek out...talk to you soon...

technorati tags: linux, podcast, RSS, Ubuntu

Back to Ubuntu...Well hello Flock!

2005-12-20T12:37:00.000-05:00

Today I rebooted my dual booting machine and returned to my Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy the Badger) installation. One thing that I am smacked with immediately is the fact that everything is faster, browsing the web is faster, instant messaging patching,...EVERYTHING.

I am home today because of a strike that is in place in New York, the local union Transit Workers Union 100 is striking against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. So no reason for me to cry about it , I took the day off I feel that this shouldn't have come to this, the week of Christmas. So here I am home and playing with all my nerd toys :)

OK back to Ubuntu...I patched this morning that took about 10 mins and in that patching was a new version of the kernal so post patching ...Reboot and start new version of the kernal (2.6.12-10-386). The geek crosses fingers and poof..we are back up no issues on the reboot and actually ran glxgears (quick gui testing 3D accleration) and low and behold my frames per second have almost tripled. Not sure what caused the huge bump in FPS but I am grinning. Then back to digg to see what new news I see, reading a few posts and I come accoss an article about FLOCK. Ok here is what I know so far about Flock; Flock is a new browser that started out as a group of extensions for Firefox and has morphed into a full-blown web2.0 friendly, multimedia web browser. The reason that this caught my attention is well you are reading my blog and Flock supposedly has some hooks into blogging, RSS, and cool internet based community sites (Flickr del.icio.us).
OK so here is the first impression this is a really useful browser. I love the hooks to del.icio.us alot , and the direct connection to del.icio.us for bookmarks or favorites is fantastic. I am still getting the hang of the Flickr connectivity and the builtin RSS feed reader and blog editor.

After realizing that I could edit the rest of this blog I logged out of my blog and bounced back into it directly through the Blog button on the installed Flock browser. This is one very simple way to bring together alot of things I do frequently, I would have to say please head out and get your feet wet with Flock and all the web2.0 sites that I have mentioned in this blog today. Web browsers should bring all your web fucntions together under one roof and Flock does that. I know that Firefox has alot of these functionalities available but they are through extensions and what I have done here is with no customization post install on my Ubuntu machine.

technorati tags: technology, web2.0, linux, ubuntu, flock

The Geek gets schooled...(Follow-up)

2005-12-19T13:47:00.000-05:00

Training is over and I would have to say that the training did it's job. I feel a little more comfortable with HP OpenView for Windows and I am impressed with the scope of the monitoring available through OVOW. I didn't drink the HP Kool-Aid but I would have to say that the product allows you to know when there are events anywhere within your IT enviornment, and take actions on that knowledge. I still think that there is a total disconnect from IT folks and their senior management and HP sales. One thing that I really liked about this training was that Ron the trainer completely understands all aspects of this product and what it can do. We were also made to feel how big the scope of implementing HP OVOW within your enviornment. I felt slightly that I was in a HP Cult meeting because there was a HP Sales Engineer in the class, so forget making a joke about the product; that would lead to a chickle and an explanation of why HP's OV suite is amazing and what is can do. This week of training was good for me I learned alot about the product but also about the IT folks out in the real world. During the class discussion come up, you are with these folks 8 hours a day for 5 days. I mentioned I was a gamer and from that point on I felt like some of the folks in the class looked at me differently. No way a person that uses computers for gaming could actually know about serious business stuff. But the discussions/arguments did get amusing some high points in closed-mindedness were :

"Yeah I look at games a a way to teach programmers how to program now they can make something worthwhile"
in response ot my statement that the most powerful computer in your home this year and in the year to come is and Xbox 360, "No way how is that possible it isn't a computer really"
and my favorite was mentioning IP TV or podcasts I might as well have spoken in Chinese.

It is sad that IT folks, or jsut anyone that works with technology can be soooooo closed-minded, and bigotted, or just completely out of the technology loop. There is alot of interesting technology out there that you aren't working with on a day in and day out basis, as a tech person we should all strive to keep abreast of tech news. You never know where the next big thing is coming from, wouldn't it be nice to know about it before guys like me :) Thanks for reading, the geek out...

The Geek gets schooled...IT Training

2005-12-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

I am lucky enough to work in a situation where I get to go to instructor-led training for technology that I support. So for the record, this week I am in a HP OpenView Administration I class. All I have to say is wow, this is going to be brutal. For those that aren't familiar with this product I will give you the geek's sales pitch...

"Hi there would you like to be more proactive? Would you like to make you bosses see what it is that IT supports and prove to them you are doing your job? Just tell your financial department it is spelled Hewlett Packard when they are filling out the check."

This is a rather negative slant but this is how I entered this week of training. I am totally amazed that companies get there Chief Executive/Information Officer to buy into proactive monitoring of IT events and anomalies, but HP / Tivoli and others are making a killing in this marketspace. This seems like a market that IT geeks would be falling over themselves to get near, but as far as I can tell the only reason techfolks are going to this class isn't for furthering their personal knowledge and trying to advance their career. Nope it is because some administration type is making the IT department that they work in go forward and implement HP OVOW and all the sundry pieces of the OpenView suite. This is just day one down and I will update my blog atleast one time before this training is completed. It seems to be a very powerful product, but I am still not sold on its overall value not to total cost of ownership (TCO) or its return on investment (ROI) but to a geek sitting in front of a console looking at the service maps and messages coming in. Sorry for this detailed and totally geeked out rant. The geek heads back to class in the AM P.S. How come well paid and seemingly intelligent people in the IT industry become total idiots when they are face to face with something they don't know even if there are step-by-step instructions in front of them????

Video + PodCasts = IPTV!

2005-11-21T17:43:00.000-05:00

Ok so now you are comfortable with the idea of podcasts how about if I tell you about the next step of portable multimedia goodness. IPTV, this is a video based show distributed on-demand via the internet. IPTV for now is totally free for the end users (you the viewers), all you have to do is find these shows. I can assist you with finding a few technocentric IPTV shows that the Geek watches on the regular. One easy place to start is peek into the podcasts I listen too for some places to start. This Week in Tech - has grown from just a podcast to a vidcast, stop by Twit.tv and you can see the many different video versions available for download. There are lots of different formats, H. 264, Ipod compatible, and PSP compatible to name a few. Diggnation - more familiar voices turned into familiar faces. If you thought that the podcast was funny seeing Kevin spill beer on his laptop is a lot more funny then hearing it :) You can download this directly from www.diggnation.com or subscribe to it via iTunes. A few more shows that are available from Revision3 are Systm, The Broken and upcoming Ctrl-Alt-Chicken. Digital Life TV (or just DLTV) - Patrick Norton & Robert Herron host this IPTV show, and for the record this is the most professional IPTV show I watch. These guys are pros doing what they have experience doing, a television show about technology. This is the first IPTV show that I have seen that actually uses real commercial breaks, with real commercials. This should totally be on your short list of shows to watch every week. CommandN.tv - A great weekly IPTV show that covers all kinds of technology from a slightly mac-centric point of view. There are 3 folks on camera Amber Mac, Mike Laz and Jeff Mac. Lots of info here in this 20-30mins plus a lively and fun atmosphere. OpenAlpha.tv - Proving time and again that girls are gamers, Jenn Cutter takes us from World of Warcraft through PSP Titles. Fromtheshadows.tv - A few of the old Screensavers folks come together and do some strange hacks, real world testing, and interviews. A very well done show and nice to see Yoshi back in modding action :) hak5.org - This is a monthly show that honestly is fantastic, new and innovative for the IPTV world because it actually does scripted geekcentric spoofs and segments. I am truly looking forward to the 5th of every month when we have been promised a new episode from Darren, Wess and the rest of the guys. Please feel free to send me an excited email when you come across a new IPTV show that you think should be added to this short list. Well this blog has taken forever, lots going on with me and mine including my 31st Birthday, please bear with me there will be more blogs on the way. For now...This geek is outta here! PEACE

Podcasts...What the geek listens too

2005-10-29T15:02:00.000-04:00

Here are a few definitions of what a podcast actually is :

a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.

A form of audio blogging created by Adam Curry, a former MTV Host, and Dave Winer, the founder of Userland Software. Its name comes from the targeting of audio posts to Apples iPod audio player, although podcasts can be listened to on competing players and on computers.

Now for this geek a podcast is something to do on my long commute. I listen to probably 8-10 podcasts a week. This is a nice way to get some great technology info and for me get entertained. Some of the entertainment value comes from legitimately amusing people, and groups of folks podcasting together, and then there is the entertainment associated with listening to a trainwreck happening. The latter podcasts are really not worth the bandwidth they are wasting, these podcasts only get one or two editions to prove themselves then they are removed from my list. A really great way for keeping track of all podcasts is through iTunes. I have tried many other pieces of software / services to automatically get podcasts from all over the internet to my computer. A few options for people to try are Odeo, IpodderX, or Podcast Alley. I will revisit this in the upcoming weeks for my Ubuntu installation and have another reason to never have to boot my machine into WindowsXP. Here is the current podcast lineup RobbieTheGeek is listening to: 1. TWIT - This Week in Tech - is a weekly roundtable discussion about what is going on in the technology world hosted by Leo Laporte. A few of the other TWITs are : Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, Roger Chang, John C. Dvorak, David Prager, and Alex Lindsey. This is a small list of the people that you can hear any given week, this is by and large one of the most popular and heavily downloaded podcasts internet-wide. 2. DiggNation - is hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht that serves as a week-in-review of the most popular stories on Digg.com This is a great and truly entertaining podcast, I often can be found chuckling on the bus while I am listening to this. 3. 43 Folders - This is a strange podcast that contains many ideas to try to make your life more efficient. Merlin Mann is the founder of 43 Folders and has provided many of us little ways to make our lives less hectic, more productive and Âlife hacksÂ to improve efficiency and get things off our minds. 4. HDTV Podcast - This is a great podcast that is now affiliated with AVS Forums. There is a lot of information about living with new products, about the technology behind HD TVs & Home Theaters 5. PSP Podcast - This podcast covers all aspects of PSPing, whether that is cases, speakers, games, headphones, or anything else these slick little devices can do :) That is 5 of the big podcasts that I rotate on & off my PSP. Please check these out and if you have any technology podcasts suggestions please email them to me at robbie@robbiethegeek.com Well that is PodCasts from the geek's angle.Thanks for listening Geek out...

To Digg or not to Digg

2005-10-29T14:27:00.000-04:00

For those of you that don't know what Digg.com is here is a little crash course in digging. First lets grab the definition of what digg is from the creators:

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

Now from a users perspective. Digg is a way for everyone to be part of the technology news & journalism scene. News, rumors, and useless crap all get reported or submitted into digg. Then the digg community gets to decide after reading the submitions if they are worthy of getting a push towards the frontpage (this is what digging is). When you decide to digg a story you are adding your backing and legitimization of a story, all in all you are helping a story make its way to the front page. Once a week there is a podcast called DiggNation, hosted by Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht, that discusses 8-10 of the top stories of the week. Digg is a solid source of news and rumors, but it is a fantastic place that makes all it's members feel like they are part of a community by it's very nature. So for all those folks reading this I suggest you go to digg.com and add robbiethegeek as a friend within your profile check out the geek's RSS feed in the links section to the right. And join the rest of us and start digging.

Nerd Fun...Domain Names

2005-10-28T21:37:00.000-04:00

Wow I have spent hours of fun getting new domain names, but luckily I can now say that RobbieTheGeek.com, RobbieTheGeek.net, & RobbieTheGeek.org all are owned by yours truly and pointing to this very blog you are reading :) . All I can say is it is pretty painless when you can go to GoDaddy.com and less then 2 hours later you have the domain names being forwarded to a completely different spot on the net. Still trying to figure out where all of this is going but please feel free to comment here on the blog, send an email to Robbie@robbiethegeek.com or pop open AIM start a conversation with RobbieTheGeek. This blog is starting to get its roots into a few locations places like Technorati, and should make this place a little more hopping. Well enough from me on this evening, hopefully in the upcoming days & weeks there will be more content. Please bear with me as I get my feet under me and figure out what this is and what it will be...Ok now that I have made this a little mysterious and enigmatic I will be going away now...The Geek bids you all adieu

Hanging at Digital Life

2005-10-26T20:03:00.000-04:00

I was lucky enough to go to Digital Life at the Javits in New York City for 2 of the 3 days. On the first day of the convention I ran into Robert Heron. He was nice enough to stand around while a friend and I got a few photos and talked a little bit about all the projects he has in the cooker Digital Life TV, This Week In Tech, and PC Mag's HDTV specialist. Over the next 2 days we stopped by the PC Magazine / Ziff Davis Village and chat with Robert about High Definition TV's and all kinds of technology. We also ran into a few other notable ZD folks Patrick Norton grabbing some lunch so we left him alone :) and Jim Louderback while he was shooting a snippet / commercial at the Cosmopolitan & PMS Clan area. There was so much to see; a buddy of mine is a drummer and was playing around with Ejamming a online, real- time music collaboration software suite. I saw many cool things, and spoke to a dizzying number of well informed folks but by and large the Shure Headphones representatives never fail to impress this geek. These folks love their products, can explain it and make you want to try it out. There are 3 main levels of headphones (2,3, & 4s)and there is always a PSP, IPod or portable DVD player waiting to show off how great these headphones sound. One of folks that was trolling the booths with me purchased some of the new E2g:Gaming Edition Headphones. He loves them and now has a great set of black headphones whether he is listening to podcasts on his Nano or playing Burnout Legends on his PSP.

For years all of us have seen the little award claims that get slapped all over the boxes for products, you know the Kick-Ass, 9.5 out of 10, Greatest Product EVER!, blah blah blah. Well I was there at the awards ceremony that allows these companies to slap a little DL logo on their products packaging. Here are the results: Best of Show Overall: Microsoft's Xbox 360 Portable Gear: Creative's Zen Vision Home Theater Gear: HP's Pavilion MD6580 Microdisplay TV Digital Lifestyle Service: Streamload's Media Max Game Hardware: RedOctane's Guitar Hero Game Software: LucasArts' Star Wars Battlefront II Gift for Kids: WowWee's Roboraptor Gift for Grown-ups: XM Satellite Radio's Roady XT Hippest Booth: Napster Best Future Technology: Toshiba's HD DVD player Best Show Experience: Nokia's booth I saw most of these products or booths in person, but they hit it right on the head with the Xbox360 for best in show. I am not a Microsoft fanboy, but BIGVIP may have convinced me to drink the Kool-Aid. Seeing Cameo & Project Gotham Racing playable on the development kit during the presentation, the Media Center extender functionality, and the pure cool factor of true next-gen console graphics was stunning and satisfying. Well that is it for now folks...Robbie The Geek out...

First Blog...My Idea

2005-10-24T18:49:00.000-04:00

I am new to the blogosphere, and all this but I am a big techno freak to the point that I have dubbed myself Robbie The Geek. So this is where I will talk about all the goodness that I find interesting within the various technology areas in my life. A little info on me: 30 year old, recently married, chubby technophile who makes a living as a Citrix Administrator and needle-in-a-haystack problem solver for the city of NY. My wife is a full time theater student here in NJ, you may not be aware but that means she is on-campus from 9am-10pm on the regular. So I as a good little geek that I am use this time to play around with all the things that she would give me that, "God he's cute when he explains all that stuff...Why is he excited that he can watch a DVD using that Ubuntu I do it all the time on my Windows box..." So that is the project du jour is Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy), and moving around the media I like to formats and ways I can actually utilize it (PSP=great video player on-the-go). Well that is blog number one a little backround back soon with more tech goodness. Til then Robbie The Geek out