In about a month, I'll talk about something that I've been involved in for nearly a year. It's one of those things where there's not a lot happening for what seems like months at a time and then all of a sudden there's a whirlwind of activity. It's quite a motley crew I'm associated with on this one.
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As previously discussed and immortalized on Flickr, the Hangar One Wasabi Infused Vodka arrived today (a day early). Their vodkas are hands-down some of the best vodkas available.
Now, their wasabi infused vodka? If there's anyone that could distill wasabi into a vodka, it was the folks at Hangar One. I think the verdict is that they did an impeccable job at distilling the essence of wasabi into a vodka. It's very smooth, but it has the wasabi "bite". However, it's shall we say, an acquired taste.
It gets an 8 out of 10.
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Subversion service has been rolled out to all SourceForge hosted projects.
Service may be enabled by project administrators in the "Subversion" section of the Project Admin pages.
Nice.
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Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again. Akismet Java is an API for interacting with Akismet.
Changelog.
Download.
Javadocs.
Very minor changes in this release. I guess a few of the 1.0 download files had been corrupted. So, it was a good a time as any to update the release.
Well, the folks over at Hangar One made good on their promise to deliver a wasabi infused vodka. The only place selling it mentioned on the Hangar One site is here. You're only allowed to order one bottle and you've got to do it over the phone. I just placed an order and my bottle arrives Tuesday.
Joy!
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At the beginning of February, I received a Corporate Blogging Solution Forrester Wave evaluation form. blojsom was identified as "a vendor in the blogging solution market." So, I filled out the form and sent it back. blojsom was not selected for an in-depth evaluation. Our ride on that wave was short 
Oh well ... blojsom will still be included in the final report as "We didn't do an in-depth analysis of this software, but maybe you want to check it out anyway." And they're doing an add-on piece to talk about vendors not included in the formal evaluation.
I keep good tabs on what other vendors (commercial and open-source) are up to, so I decided to visit the good folks over at Traction Software. I'm guessing I'll read about them in the final Forrester evaluation. They're enterprise blog software and built using Java. It's not the features I'm at all worried about, but the price tag. The TeamPage-15 product offers 15 named users, 5 projects, and unlimited visitors for $5,000. As a comparison, MovableType's commercial pricing gets you 5 more users and unlimited weblogs for $600.
Buy into blojsom for $0 and you get unlimited users and unlimited weblogs (and the features).
Surf's up dudes and dudettes!
Technorati Tags: forrester blojsom traction software movable type
delicious-java is a Java API for interacting with the del.icio.us social bookmarks service.
Changelog.
Download.
Javadocs.
Technorati Tags: del.icio.us java api
I woke up at 3 AM, parched. After gettin' my drink on, I stupidly channel surfed. There's always something you can watch at 3 AM, but rarely should. I just happened upon Cobra, the 1986 epic tale of a cop on the trail of a serial killer, starring Sylvester Stallone.
"This is where the law stops, and I start."
At 3 AM, you need lines like that!
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OK, I thought my purchase of the Burton iPod Jacket (1, 2) was a little ... well ... over the top. I justified the expense as having saved a considerable amount on sale from the MSRP. OK, not really, but go with me on this one.
However ...
As I was throwing out the Mountain Gear catalog, where I got my jacket, I noticed the North Face MET 5 Jacket with Heat Kit. This jacket has a damned heater built-in! You can control the damned temperature of the jacket!
Now, if it had iPod integration, well ...
I know there have been a flurry of what seem like product pimps here, but I'm buying this stuff, so ...
A few days ago I mentioned I was getting the Burton iPod Shield Jacket. It arrived yesterday and like an uber-dork, I wore the jacket for a good portion of the afternoon ... inside. It's that comfortable
The jacket works as advertised.
Form: There are probably others out there like me that don't like to carry around a lot of gear. I have my wallet, cell phone, keys, and board lock. I thought it was going to be annoying with the iPod in the jacket, but they picked a sweet spot so if you're bending and flexing around, you don't notice the iPod. Also, the jacket doesn't feel unbalanced with the iPod inside. The SOFTSwitch panel on the forearm is flexible, so it's not like wearing a jacket with a plate that would get in the way or slice your arm up.
Function: The SOFTSwitch panel has controls for increasing volume, decreasing volume, skipping to the previous song or skipping backwards, play/pause, and skipping to the next song or fast-forwarding. It also allows you to turn the iPod on and off from the control panel by holding down the play/pause button for a couple of seconds. The most useful control allows you to disable the SOFTSwitch panel by holding the volume increase/decrease buttons for a couple of seconds. This way you can ride and not worry about skipping a song or blowing your ears out. Enable the panel again by holding the volume increase/decrease buttons for another couple of seconds.
Flickr photo set with some more detailed photos of the jacket.
Technorati Tags: burton burton ipod shield jacket
I met a bunch of friend this past Saturday at Bromley in Vermont.
Welcome back to east coast snowboarding, Mr. Czarnecki. Would you care for a lovely smorgasbord of loose granular with a wind-chill of biting cold?
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? There will always be a powdery place in my heart for the magic winters and snow here on the east coast. If only to be back in the land of plenty.
Technorati Tags: bromley snowboarding
I ordered the Burton Shield Jacket earlier this week. I found a store that had the jacket in true black in small. All was well in snowboard apparel land until this morning when I received an e-mail saying the jacket was apparently not available.
The Burton Mens System Jacket that you ordered on 2/14/06 is not in stock. We have cancelled your order and your credit card has not been charged. We apologize for any inconvenience this may caused you.
Uggggggggh. <south-park>You bastards!</south-park>
Burton has a great sell strategy. Any item you buy from them is basically limited edition. Once all the vendors are sold out of their stock for a given item, that's it. Burton isn't making any more. So, if you see something that you really must have, buy it. Hell, buy two. In the world of eBay that we now live in, there's bound to be someone out there looking for the same item, same color, same size. And hey, maybe you can turn a little profit.
Anyhoooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I exhausted all my Google, Froogle, Yahoo, local store calling mojo trying to find someone who might have the elusive Burton Shield Jacket in true black in small. All for naught. There seems to be a surplus of this jacket in the Acid Green Color. One can only imagine what reason that might be
Now, while in Whistler, I had seen the Burton iPod Shield Jacket at the Burton store in Whistler Village. This is the exact same jacket as the Burton Shield Jacket with the added benefit of having a "specially designed, EVA molded chest pocket" in which to hook up your iPod. You can then operate the iPod from the "flexible SOFTswitch™ control pad located on the sleeve that’s iPod-compatible." I sort of scoffed at the jacket since I'm pretty particular about what I carry on my person while riding. If it at all gets in the way, it's gone. I figured an iPod would be too bulky. Also, the price tag for the jacket was a bit more than I was expecting.
Now, in my search for the Burton Shield Jacket, I came across a site that was selling the Burton iPod Shield Jacket at a significant discount. I guess Burton told all their merchants, "Time to get rid of that '06 stock. Start your sale engines now!" So, all the '06 jackets are now selling at a nice discount.
The long and short of it is that I placed an order for the Burton iPod Shield Jacket. The price was too good to pass up. And even if I never used the iPod integration, it's still only marginally more expensive than the Burton Shield Jacket with the sale price. Internets willing, the jacket I snubbed will arrive next Monday or Tuesday.
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This project is dedicated to open source projects generated by and for the Six Apart development and user communities. It includes resources for Movable Type, TypePad, TypeKey and LiveJournal.
I'm interested to see what projects eventually make it into this space. I'd be more than happy to donate and maintain the TypeKey4J API. I was thinking about setting up a TypeKey4J project on SourceForge, but having it under the 6A project makes more sense.
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Whistler/Blackcomb photoset on Flickr from my vacation to Whistler/Blackcomb in February of 2006.
Trip report forthcoming.
Arrived safely in Vancouver earlier today. It might be a little damp and rainy, but as long as the moisture keeps dumping snow up in Whistler, I'm not complaining.
I met John Glover. He's a cheery fellow and very friendly.
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Well, 3 years ago today, blojsom 1.0 was officially available for download. We started with a 1.0 release.
I'd like to go back and build the blojsom 1.0 WAR file just to see how much smaller it was compared to the current release. Even still, the blojsom 2.29 WAR file "weighs in" at just under 3 MB. Not bad I'd say.
50 updates later and blojsom is still going strong.
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The Fraggles go to Outer Space, far from Fraggle Rock and head on the adventure of a lifetime.
OMG! I'm ten years old again!
I had a gerbil when I was growing up and I named him Gobo after Gobo Fraggle. After he died, my mom told me she buried him in the backyard. As with most, "We buried your pet in the backyard" stories, I came to find out years later my mom just threw Gobo out in the trash.
But ... OMG! Fraggle Rock: The Movie!
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I ran the entire transcripts of the past State of the Union speeches (via C-SPAN) from George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush through the Tagyu automated tagging service. You give it some text or a URL and it gives you some tags that seem appropriate given the text (check their FAQ). I used only the text of the speech, not the URL of the page when submitting to Tagyu.
George W. Bush
2006: toread poll iraq
2005: iraq poll
2004: socialjustice national
2003: politics iraq saddamhussein 9/11 poll statistic survey war alqueda
2002: war iraq biden
2001: socialjustice national poverty
Bill Clinton
2000: national politics poverty socialjustice
1999: politics leonardos seed socialjustice vetenskap usa journalistik national
1998: poverty politics
1997: poverty education learning
1996: national poverty socialjustice
1995: poverty politics
1994: national individual politics poverty socialjustice quotes healthcare insurance
1993: national poverty politics socialjustice
George H.W. Bush
1992: poverty socialjustice politics national
1991: politcs features
1990: "Bummer. I couldn't find enough related text to suggest a tag." (I tried it twice just to make sure)
1989: politics poverty
Technorati Tags: state of the union george w. bush bill clinton geroge h.w. bush tagyu
