Mills’ Place Indexing Life.

One of the Reasons I Rarely Log Into MySpacePosted by Mills on December 29th, 2006

I logged into MySpace last night and this morning for the first time in a while. As always happens, within minutes my email inbox looked like this:

4 Ways to Make Me Hate Your PodcastPosted by Mills on December 20th, 2006

We got an iPod video a couple weeks ago as part of our photo/video/dj package from the wedding. I finally feel like I can enjoy a piece of the internet that I was previously missing out on - podcasts.

Today, you can find a podcast covering almost anything. Hooray for worldwide amateur publishing! But, just like blogs, the quality of those podcasts can vary greatly.

Now, I don’t have my own podcast. I’m no expert. But I do like listening to them… for the most part. And I’d like to see most of them succeed. But there are a few things that I think could be easily changed to make it a much more enjoyable experience.

If you’re a podcast content creator, please don’t:

1. Spend the first 5 minutes talking about the show itself

If you want to acknowledge what you did all week, how much bandwidth your podcast is pushing or who your baby’s real father is - great. But do it at the end of the show. I have a short attention span and usually don’t want to hear it.

Yes, I could just fast forward. But I shouldn’t have to edit your show for you. Especially considering I mostly listen to them on my work commute. Driving & Controlling iPod = Bad.

2. Play backing music through your entire show

There’s a reason professional talk show hosts don’t do this - it’s annoying. And it takes away from your content. A banging techno track in the background tells me that you don’t think what you’re saying is interesting enough to stand on it’s own. In which case, I don’t want to listen anyway.

Music is great for intros, segues, outros and short voiceovers. Not so much for everything else. Minus an additional point if the backing music is so loud I can’t hear what you’re saying. Which brings me to my next pet peeve.

3. Allow your levels to vary wildly

There’s nothing better in the morning than cranking up the volume on a podcast because someone decided to sit four feet from the microphone, only to have them occasionaly scare the piss out of me with an ear shattering laugh.

In cases like this, compression is your best friend. And if you don’t need compression, please normalize everything. Big volume variances between different shows is just as annoying as big volume variances in a single episode.

4. Go off topic (too often)

If I’m subscribed to your podcast, it’s most likely because I’m interested in whatever your podcast is supposed to be about. Going off topic every now and then can add a personal touch to your show. But when it happens too often, I get annoyed. There are a lot of shows that interest me and only so much time in the week to listen to them. Keep it brief and to the point.

Millsplace is Back. Nevidia sucks.Posted by Mills on May 23rd, 2006

Well, millsplace.com is back after a little hiatus. My current domain registrar, Nevidia, is bunch a toolbags. While the downtime isn’t completely their fault, the fact that it took fourteen days to get up and running again is.

Problem numero uno? They didn’t notify me when my domain was about to expire. I’d later find out that was “my fault” for canceling my hosting service with them a year ago. And even though the two are separate, but related, services, I learned that once you’re no longer a hosting customer you need to specify that you’d still like to be reminded of your domain renewals. An interesting and unique approach!

Problem number two? Getting a hold of them is apparently a two week ordeal.

May 9: Domain expires. I go to Nevidia’s website to use their “live chat” feature to renew my service, but no representatives are currently online, so I send them a message.
May 11: I email them about it again.
May 12: I call them, but “all of their representatives are currently assisting other customers” and I should leave a message for them to call me back. I hang up without leaving a message and try the number again throughout the day, only to receive the same message.
May 14: I email them again.
May 15: I call them and leave a frustrated message.
May 16: Someone calls me back! But I don’t get to the phone in time. They leave me a somewhat mean message saying they’ve emailed me about this multiple times already and tell me to call them back. So I do. Many times that day. But I never get through to a person.
May 18: I email them again.
May 21: I call them and leave another message.
May 22: ECHO, Echo, echo…

Note that throughout this whole process, I tried their “live chat” help every single day at varying times. Nobody was EVER there to help.

Problem number three? Dumbass employees.

So I finally got a hold of Nevidia today on the phone. And somewhat unsurprisingly, I spoke with the same girl who left me a voicemail about a week ago. I knew it was her because of the snide tone to her voice, that carried an obvious undercurrent of “the customer is always wrong.” Such as her assertion that the office manager, “Astro”, has repeatedly emailed me regarding this… even though I’ve received no such emails. And yes, I’ve checked (and rechecked) my bulk email folders. When I asked her to resend them for my records, she told me that there wasn’t any point, since they obviously aren’t going through. Lucky for her, I have another email address with a different provider. And while was “happy to send them” to that address, I still haven’t received them an hour seven hours later. But, that’s obviously my fault.

Moral of the story? Don’t ever use Nevidia for anything. This is just the finale to a three year pattern of terrible customer service (and hosting downtime) experienced by myself and friends. I’ll be transferring my domain to a different registrar as soon as the sixty day lock is up.

A LeafPosted by Mills on April 29th, 2006

A Followup on the HDR PhotosPosted by Mills on April 20th, 2006

Apparently, my drive-by HDR posting from the other day left a lot of unanswered questions. Such as, “WTF are you talking about?” So I guess I should explain a little better.

Normally, a photograph only captures a certain range of intensities that are acceptable to our eyes. Without getting into the details, HDR is a way of representing a much greater range of intensity levels in an image - from the darkest shadows to the brightest sunlight.

It’s pretty easy to play around with. Basically, it involves taking a series of pictures with varying exposures and blending them together. To use one of my previous HDR images as an example, I set up my tripod and took nine pictures of the same scene, with incremental shutter speeds to vary the exposure:

I then used Photomatix to automatically align them and create the HDR image. At this point in the process, the picture appears very dark. The problem is that computer monitors (and other such output devices) have a limited dynamic range, so images with a high dynamic range won’t display properly. To fix this, I needed to tone map the image. Luckily, Photomatix does that too.

To be honest, I don’t understand much about the process. But I do know that it creates some stunning images that bring out details you might not otherwise be able to see. For your comparison, here one of the original pictures (left) and the final HDR picture (right). The picture itself isn’t very interesting. But the results you can get with this kind of processing are.

High Dynamic Range ImagingPosted by Mills on April 16th, 2006

I did some experiments with compositing HDR images from a series of bracketed photographs yesterday. Some came out neater than others, but here are a couple shots that I think really stand out. Be sure to click on the images for a larger view. And ignore the Photomatix watermark - I’m using a shareware version to put these together.

If you haven’t seen some of the fantastic HDR images making their way around the internet lately, just take a look at the Flickr HDR pool. You’ll find some great examples on every page.

Microsoft Origami PrototypePosted by Mills on April 5th, 2006

I know I said no more videos till I get back to RI, but this one was too good to put off. I got to play with a prototype of Microsoft’s new Origami device today! This thing really peaked my interest when some details were first leaked a couple months ago. I was able to get a quick demo on video and then play with it for a few minutes.

First impressions? It’s a little heavier than I expected, though certainly not uncomfortable. The mouse nub would take some getting used to… but there’s not many things you’d actually need the mouse since the Origami features an awesome touch screen. The display was sharp and everything felt quick. The handwriting recognition feature is surprisingly accurate, given my chicken scratch. Battery life seemed low, but the pack is pretty small and it would be easy to carry an extra.

All in all, it seems like a great device. There will be different models coming out in a few months, but this one is set to launch in just a couple weeks. If I was a big mobile user, I’d probably give Origami some consideration. Even if the price to hardware ratio is a little dissapointing, in my opinion.

• $900
• 512MB RAM
• 40GB HD
• 3 Hour Battery Life

In other news, I got to play with Visual Studio 2005 on a tablet PC with the latest build of Windows Vista! That was pretty intense. Video is forthcoming.

Our Connected World - AKA: Technorati RawksPosted by Mills on April 5th, 2006

A couple days ago, I went to Technorati and searched for devconnections. Perhaps it was my own naivety, but I was actually kinda surprised when I got results. In about two seconds, I had a list of everyone at this conference who had been writing about the experience on their blog. Each night since then, I go back and check again so I can find new entries and read up on everyone else’s day. I’ve found blogs from event goers, sponsors, and even presenters. In fact, one of the presenters from my second video, Keith Smith, wrote about the experience on his site, noting that it was his first time doing that kind of presentation.

Well, I sent him a quick note letting him know that I enjoyed his talk and directing him to the short video clip I posted. He thought it was great! So much so that he even wrote about it on his site! Very cool! And a true testament to kinds of things that are now possible in our ultra-connected society.

So to kick of the day the right way, I’m adding a new wordism to my personal repertoire: Connectified.

Laptop Woes and Harley HoesPosted by Mills on April 4th, 2006

Well, there won’t be any video from devconnections today. And it’s not because I didn’t take any. In fact, I got some cool footage from a demonstration of a soon to be released, shared source, web based SQL server management suite. But alas, my laptop blows.

I put up a good front while I hang with the geekiest of the geeky down here in Orlando. But back at the hotel, I’m sporting a six-year old Toshiba Satellite 2755DVD brick… err, notebook. It’s got a speedy 600Mhz Pentium III with a whopping 64MB RAM and 6GB of storage. Editing video on this thing is like using a Dodge Neon to tow an 18-wheeler. Up a mountain. During a blizzard. Without wheels.

So, videos from today and tomorrow will have to wait till I get back to a real computer in RI. Sad. And I was just getting good with Windows Movie Maker 2 - which, as a side note, held up amazingly well on this less than capable machine.

In other news, I didn’t win the Harley-Davidson they were giving away. heh. Some chick who planned to give it to her boyfriend did. Upon hearing this, the entire room let out a collective groan.

This conference has me all sorts of excited about ASP.NET 2.0. When 2.0 first came out, I avoided looking at it because I knew we didn’t have the time to migrate everything over. But now I’m convinced that there are too many great enhancements to keep putting it off. A presentation on the Wizard control nearly knocked me off my chair. Ok, no it didn’t. But it did leave with a stupid smile knowing that it’s exactly the kind of thing that will make our online applications a million times more manageable. Master pages? Woohoo! It’s about time on that one. I’m also happy to see that Microsoft is commited to making .NET’s featureset work properly with browsers other than IE.

Anyway, I’m rambling now. One more day of conferences, then off to Atlanta.

DevConnections - Day 2Posted by Mills on April 3rd, 2006

Here’s a couple short clips from today’s devconnections sessions. Topics include themes and asynchronous processing considerations in ASP.NET. It’s crazy to be learning from the very guys who make these products.

And after seeing a few demonstrations, I’m super psyched about Atlas - their new, free AJAX framework for ASP.NET 2.0.