James Chamberlin

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that the Microsoft guys were dead-set against any talks with Sony about bringing the BluRay drive to their console system. They seemed to have an “over my dead body” stance on the issue, but Steve Balmer admitted that the console will be going blue this year.

The drives will begin manufacturing very soon and will be shipped in the third quarter of this year. I suspected that Microsoft would realize that there’s money to be made and regardless of their rivalry with Sony, they’re a company and they want to make money.

This all comes out at a rather ironic time though. A piece of news surfaced about the fact that BluRay players and disks aren’t selling as fast as people had hoped for and many consumers claimed they couldn’t tell the difference between DVDs and BluRay.

Haha. I had to laugh at that because on my tiny 20″ LCD monitor, I can tell the difference. I can’t imagine what BluRay on a 40+ inch HDTV would look like. DVD is a great format. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of VHS, but consumers will eventually come around. Because of BluRay, I have stopped purchasing movies on DVD. I’m frankly holding my cash for TV shows on DVD which I know won’t see BluRay releases for years [if ever] and will buy the others when BluRay players and movies become affordable. Players currently cost over $300!

One of the tools Google has developed for webmasters to obtain information on their visitors [where they’re coming from, browser type, etc] is their Analytics program. I was impressed by its demo a long time ago and signed up for it immediately. It seemed to work well for a while, but I’ve been having problems with it recently.

I don’t recall exactly when it began happening, but my account seems to lose website profiles all the time. For those not familiar with the service, Google gives each site you work on its own section [profile] and tracking code. Well, I seem to lose two or three of them all the time. The system seems very unstable and I’ve found similar complaints from other users. I don’t know what the problem is, but Google should fix it.

I intend to stick with the stat scripts that my host provides for free. They’ve never given me a reason to swear out loud. This is the first time Google has really let me down.

I’ve been a frequent shopper at Amazon.com for quite a while. The prices are usually reasonable, though I usually wait for sales. But one thing [there are several, but I’ll just mention one for today] that bugs me about their site is on the home page, they often have an announcement. It’s not all the time, but when they do have one, it’s up there for a long time and there’s no way to get rid of it to my knowledge.

Right now it has a letter from Jeff Bezos blathering on about their electronic book reader, which from what I’ve heard is a piece of ****, but I can’t find a way to get rid of the damn letter and replace it with the more sales pitches.

If only Amazon would put a little link at the bottom of the letter which would enable normal front-page activity…

I received my new Dell yesterday. It’s my third one, and none of them have shipped with a piece of network cable. All I ask for is a cheap three-foot Cat 5 cable with connectors. Is that really too much to ask for? Not everyone uses wireless network technology.

A few days ago, I was working with another WordPress installation which is for another project. When I downloaded the config file to update it, I noticed the formatting was screwed up. So I fixed it up so that it looked like it should, uploaded it to the server, and WordPress had a fit. Whatever little changes I did screwed everything up.

I didn’t have a backup of the config file, so I couldn’t just undo the changes. I’m usually pretty good about making backups of some things, but it looks like I’m going to have to backup the WordPress files a little more often.

In the case of that install, I just re-installed everything. I didn’t make any posts, so I didn’t really lose any data. It’s just a pain in the ass to deal with things like this sometimes.

Grand Theft Auto isn’t a series of games I’ve ever played. I can understand why some people love the games, but there hasn’t been anything shown to me that made me want to go out and buy it. It’s just not my thing, I guess.

But the level of attention the game gets always interests me. Some of it’s good and some bad. The bad tends to focus on the violence that this and other games include. The praise this year doesn’t seem to be from the typical groups of fanboys. I watched the video review on IGN the other day and was somewhat impressed by what I saw. Not all of it appealed to me [lapdances in video games? WTF!?].

What I thought looked interesting was the fact that you can pretty much do anything you want in it. Open-ended games are very appealing to me. I don’t being limited to a scenario. One of my favorite things in the RollerCoaster Tycoon & Age of Empires games is you are free to do whatever you want.

I’ve currently got two Dell computers on my desk and I’m about to replace the older one with a new machine. I’ve built my own computers in the past, but I’ve been very happy with the two Dells that I’ve received and really don’t enjoy building my own. The odds of getting a component that is DOA is rather high, and I’m really not the patient type who wants to RMA things.

Anyway, the older dell that I have isn’t quite on its last leg, but I can’t imagine it lasting too much longer. The RAM (256MB) isn’t enough to do a whole lot with in a day where you need at least 1GB of RAM. Some of the applications I’ve been looking at require a minimum of 512MB and a decent processor. Well, this old thing just isn’t going to cut it anymore. And besides, it’s noticeably slow at times. Instead of upgrading the RAM, putting in a new HDD, and re-installing Windows, I’m just going to go with a new PC.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the machines I have and the one that I’ll be getting:

Dell Dimension B110 (Work Computer)
Intel Celeron 2.53GHz
256MB DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
80GB IDE HDD
Integrated Graphics
Windows XP
17″ CRT Monitor

Dell Inspiron 531 (File Server)
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.60GHz
2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
500GB SATA HDD
Vista Home Basic
Integrated Graphics
20″ Dell LCD

Dell Vostro 400 (Work Computer)
Intel Core2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz
2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz
250GB SATA HDD
Windows XP
Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
20″ Dell LCD

The biggest difference among them is the video card. With the new Vostro 400, which should be shipping in 2-3 days, I’ll be able to run everything I need to [including games for IGN]. It’ll also be nice to get rid of the huge CRT. The weight of that thing has caused my plastic table to dip/bow in the middle and pens/pencils tend to roll towards the middle if I don’t have them in a little holder of some sort. I’m considering buying a new table since it would only set me back $20-$40 depending on where I bought it.

I’ve been working on webpages off and on since 1999 and over the years I’ve used a lot of FTP programs. Being cheap, it can be difficult to find a free FTP program that’s worth my trouble. But I’ve found a few that I’ve liked, but they seem to always die in development. The last one I liked was LeechFTP, but it was abandoned by its developer some time ago.

About a year or two ago, I began using SmartFTP, but I sometimes have connection problems with it. And when you are always uploading files due to WordPress updates (yeah, 2.5.1 was just released), you want the program to work properly. But with failed connection after failed connection warning in the program tonight, I went on the search for a new FTP client.

Well, meet FileZilla.

I’ve had one or two connection drops already, but I’m wondering if it’s my host and not necessarily my FTP client. But the file transfers are easy to re-queue under FileZilla. It’s going to take a while until I know whether or not this is going to be a favorite FTP client, but at least it’s free.

Just hours after yesterday’s blog entry, Ken Griffey, Jr. blasted home run number 597. As he gets closer to 597, he’ll get more press coverage.

I came across a post on another site courtesy of Digg this afternoon regarding Ken Griffey Jr.’s home run total. He’s currently at 596, four away from the next milestone of 600. And there’s very little press about this.

When I was younger, I collected baseball cards with a frenzy. I still have some of the cards, but one of the cards I was most interested in obtaining was Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card, specifically the 1989 Upper Deck card.

Way back then, this card had a book value of over $100. This is a very good reason to want to collect it, of course. But I never did manage to obtain one. Today, they can be had for a lot less on sites like eBay. Highly valued cards like the Griffey ’89 Upper Deck Rookie aren’t worth much unless they’re graded by a reputable grading company like PSA, which looks at the surface, edges, etc for imperfections. If you manage to get a perfect 10 from PSA, you can get over $200 for it from most buyers.

Anyway, back to Griffey, himself. Right from the start of his career, Griffey proved himself to be an excellent baseball player. Not only did he have speed on the bases and in the outfield, but he had one of the sweetest swings of anyone. He hit for a good average and belted a lot of home runs, so much so, it was Griffey who was said to be the next home run king, not Barry Bonds.

But injuries nearly ended the outfielder’s career. Once he would heal up, he’s get hurt again. I remember watching SportsCenter on ESPN and seeing disappointing news after disappointing news. But here in the last few years, Griffey is playing more often. He’s not injured nearly as often and is about to hit his six hundredth home run.

The lack of media coverage is rather surprising though. Here we have the one guy who is clean [no steroids], and he’s about to surpass a huge milestone. Griffey is currently in sixth place all-time, and the media doesn’t care.

I realize the media is tired of covering baseball because of steroids, but they should be championing the one guy who didn’t use.