Nathan's Occasional Blog

Wow – a company that understands the new medium of marketing.  Very cool to see. My bet is that they’re going to get a lot of good feedback from their target market.  I have a feeling we’re seeing one of the first commercial uses of Second Life as applied to the real world … a collaboration between a company and its clients to create the ideal product

Starwood Hotels & Resorts is launching its new Aloft Hotel in the virtual land of Second Life in September, months before the chain of hotels opens in real life.

Source: Images: First hotel for ‘Second Life’ | CNET News.com

This is a posting from the new Windows Live Writer.  It’s a WYSIWYG blogging editor from Microsoft.  Pretty nifty UI so far … though I’ve only been using it for about 5 minutes.  It will interface with MSN Windows Live Spaces and most of the other popular blogging tools (I use Blogger).

You can check out the dev team’s blog Writer Zone to stay up to date on what’s going on with the package.

 Here’s my first impressions:

1. Great job MS on coming out with a blogging tool … especially one that supports other platforms. 
2. Why isn’t “blogging” in your dictionary for spell checking?
3. Dude – I can copy and paste a picture into a posting!  ROCK ON!
4. Drop shadow effect on images – sweet.
5. Back to the spell checking – why not use the same Word engine that can “inline” check spelling (wrongly spelled word gets a squiggly red line under it)?
6. How do I get more plugins?  When I click the link for More about plugins… in the preferences window I get pointed to a URL that doesn’t work.  At least put a “coming soon” page up.  Right now I get a 404 error from IIS.
7. Can I set the “open in new window” and “rel:nofollow” options in the link dialog to be default for all links?
8. I see you just added a “Blog it” button to my Windows Live Toolbar in IE7b3.  Great idea – but how about you tell me you’re changing things in other programs?

I’m sure there’s more to come, but as of right now I think I just dumped BlogJet.  I still have w.Bloggar around to change my template though.

I just got an email announcement from the Executive Director of the Boeing Greater Seattle Classic, a PGA Champions Tour (a.k.a. senior tour) event being held next weekend at the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge.  I live about a 1/4 mile from the 18th fairway.  So what’s the big deal?

On Friday, Aug. 18, at about 9:50 a.m., a Boeing 777 will salute BGSC fans and players as it circles the course at TPC Snoqualmie Ridge, lines up with the 18th fairway, and flies up and over the clubhouse to start the event.  The airplane, provided courtesy of The Boeing Company and Japan Air Lines, will be flying at about 1,000 feet over the area…

Oh hell yeah!  That’s going to be friggin’ awesome to see.  The plane will essentially be coming up the street towards my house.  Consider this my official notice that I’ll be in to the office late on Friday morning.  🙂

We’ll post some pictures as soon as we have them.

Play catch on the Field of Dreams.  I can’t believe that was made 17 years ago!

DYERSVILLE, Iowa – The corn lining the outfield is tall again this year. The iconic white farmhouse, with its wraparound porch and picket fence appear unaffected by time. The mythic baseball diamond and lush outfield looks just like it did in the movie made 17 years ago. And for a couple hours Friday evening, hundreds of children and parents raced around the bases, played catch or hit soft pitches all over the field made so famous in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”

OK Go – Here It Goes Again … on treadmills

Have I mentioned how cool You Tube is lateley?  🙂

I’ve been thinking to myself (and now the world at large) lately that we’ve finally reached the point where it would be cheaper to have a car that runs on MILK instead of gas.  A gallon of gas where I usually tank up is going for $3.36/gallon right now (for 89 octane).  A gallon of milk, as advertised at my local Safeway, could be purcased for about $2–$2.50 (more for organic).  Heck, the Safeway website just told me I could get a weekly special of 2 gallons for $3.96 at the store in North Bend!

Of course the nerd in me quickly jumps to the conclusion that this kind of technology would totally screw with the economies of the dairy market and we’d be even more hosed in the end.  I’d wager we use way more gas than milk here in the US, so as more people use milk for energy instead of food the price would skyrocket.  Plus you get into the same issues ethanol has like short shelf life, difficult to transport, and a staggering amount of resources (grass, farm equipment, energy for the farm equipment) to bring the product to market.

BUT, if you put on your “suspension of disbelief hat” for a moment, you know – the one Hollywood made for you when you were a kid, you’d be able to save some serious MOOO-lah!  [sorry, couldn’t resist]

Anyway, given all these wonderful thoughts clogging my brain I got a great laugh when I saw Autoblog’s Honda’s Heifer Hybrid post.  Alanis, THIS is ironic.  🙂

I’ll have to settle for the little things, like my car suddenly getting 4 mpg better on the last two tanks than it ever has in the year I’ve had it.  Not going to complain there!

Courtesy of Thomas Hawk’s Zooomr photostream

I just came across a great article on Blogging Baby about how a parent’s reactions and communications during painful medical procedures (like immunizations) affects the child receiving the procedure.  It turns out our instincts are wrong: don’t reassure or comfort.  Distract!

This quote from a children’s book captures the idea well: “If an adult tells you not to worry and you weren’t worried before, you better hurry up and start because you’re already running late.”

I have to say that I’ve seen both sides of this with our daughter.  I think it was her 9 month checkup and she needed to get some shots.  I held her a played with her and (without really consciously making a decision to) used a distraction technique.  There was a small whimper and a single crocodile tear, but that’s it.

At her 12 month checkup she had to get some more shots, and this time Alicea and I played the part of normal soothing parents.  BIG FUSS at that one.  Same with her 15 month checkup when the doctor was examining her (no shots) and we were totally in “it’s okay” mode.

Guess the clown nose will have to come out more often at the doctor’s office!

I have to give a hardy “amen” to Graham’s post on the Canadian IT Manager blog.

“After much careful and prolonged deliberation, I have decided that one of the main reasons to switch to Vista for me is the much improved version of Solitaire!! … Fortunately, there are some other good reasons to switch to Vista but I can’t seem to get to all of them because of playing Solitaire.”

It’s only a matter of time before advertising finds its way onto the rest of XM Satellite Radio’s channels, and this Google deal only makes it worse.

But what really gets me is that XP purports to be “CD quality” sound – BULL HONKEY!  We’ve got XM in a factory Honda unit and an add-in SkyFi2 and both have the same issues:

• We get numerous dropouts of signal on our commute … which is 80% on I-90, a major and very wide thoroughfare east of Seattle.  Certain bridges, some hills, a cement wall, and even trees will kill the radio feed.
• I think even my 16 month old daughter can tell that the XM feeds are heavily compressed.  It’s way too noticable for my ear and quite distracting.  Being a drummer I tend to hear the nuances of the percussion tracks on a song, and the higher frequencies that cymbals generate are the very ones XM compresses the hell out of.
• For two vehicles we’re paying about $20/mo. for crappy radio that cuts out.

Done.  I’ll be calling XM customer service later this evening to cancel.  Enough is enough.  If they put a satellite over the west coast (so the signal is higher than 15–20 degrees above the horizon to the south east) and double their “premium music” streams from 32kbps to 64kbps, I might reconsider.

Until then we’ll be spending our $20 each month on a new CD for our massive collection.