2007 Nov 28, 11:24Download for formsPlayer the XForms plugin for IE
mashup web forms xforms ie internet plugin download 2007 Nov 28, 4:43How to use FOAF and OpenID together and how DIG used that as a basis for commenting on their blog.
foaf openid authentication identity rdf semanticweb trust web spam 2007 Nov 28, 2:09Valve shows off their cool visualizations of stats they generated from folks playing HL2E2 including heat maps of player deaths by level.
visualization statistics hl2 game games valve development 2007 Nov 28, 1:23One of the new Zune features that had me the most excited was the claimed improved Windows Media Center integration which unfortunately turned out to simply mean support for the Win MCE video format
(
with an exception for HD). I wanted to be able to pick shows recorded by my Win MCE and have the Zune automatically sync up the
latest episodes. However, with the improved podcast support in the Zune software one can easily create a ridiculous hack to accomplish this.
The new Zune software has podcast support which does everything I'd want to do with a
Win MCE recorded TV series so the goal is to shoehorn a TV series into a Zune podcast. An overview of the steps: Create an XSLT that converts Win MCE data to a podcast, run the XSLT as a scheduled
task every few hours per TV series, setup a Web server pointed at the resulting podcasts and the Win MCE Recorded TV directory, and subscribe to the resulting podcasts in the Zune software.
- Reading through the Win MCE data stored as an XML file in "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\Recording\Recordings.xml" and the spec for podcasts I created an XSLT to convert a series from Win MCE data to a podcast.
- I added a new task to the Scheduled Tasks to run my XSLT using my xsltproc.js script. The task runs a handful of commands that look something like the following:
C:\windows\system32\wscript.exe C:\users\dave\bin\xsltproc.js C:\Users\Dave\Documents\trunk\development\mce-zune\mce-to-podcast.xslt
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\Recording\Recordings.xml --param title "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" --param max 4 --param baseURI "http://groucho/" --param thisRelURI "tds.xml" -o
"D:\recorded tv\tds.xml"
For each TV series I run a command like the above and that outputs a podcast for that series into my "D:\Recorded TV\" directory.
- Zune only allows http URIs for its podcasts so I installed a web server on my Win MCE server. I'm running Vista Ultimate so it was quick and easy for me to install IIS7 but any Web server will do. Then I pointed it at "D:\Recorded TV\".
- Once all the above was done I just subscribed to the resulting podcasts via my Web server and viola! Since I'm forced to use a Web server I can even run the Zune software on a machine other
than my Win MCE server. You can see a screen-shot above of my Zune software showing my Colbert Report podcast.
technical xml mce hack windows media center zune windows xslt podcast 2007 Nov 28, 5:07Vishu, my ex-office-mate, has left Washington and Microsoft for California and Facebook. Vishu and I shared an office for a while and I really enjoyed it. We were able to distract one another from,
and help each other with work. We'd often bounce ideas off of one another, work related or otherwise. For one such idea I recently received a Microsoft patent cube, a small marble cube inscribed with
my and my invention's name. There are some photos of
other people's patent cubes on flickr. Vishu
would have received one for this idea too since we developed the idea and wrote the document about it together, but they wait a long time to send you the cube and he was gone a few weeks before they
sent it (don't worry, he got the credit and other rewards though).
A week or two after I got my cube Vishu was visiting the Microsoft campus just before moving his family down with him to California. A bunch of us joined him for lunch that day and it sounds like
he's enjoying his new job already. Have fun Vishu!
microsoft facebook vishu cube patent nontechnical 2007 Nov 27, 7:42Images of products similar to but not 'I can't believe its not butter.'
food humor cooking article blog butter images 2007 Nov 27, 6:13Analysis of Verizon's new open platform announcement wrt the 700 MHz auction, Google, and other stuff.
blog article verizon network network-neutrality government cellphone 2007 Nov 27, 4:19Cool life size weighted companion cube plush toys.
humor portal weighted-companion-cube hl2 valve toy purchase via:boingboing 2007 Nov 27, 4:09List of twelve humorous videos that Webby Awards thinks you've already seen.
humor internet video videos webby-awards web via:boingboing 2007 Nov 26, 1:59Sci-Fi cliche list. Mostly ST stuff here.
humor scifi startrek reference 2007 Nov 26, 12:32Guerrilla clockmakers fix famous Paris clock. Andrew says: "It seems a team of clockmakers broke into the Pantheon in Paris in September 2005 and spent a year fixing the historic and neglected clock,
which had been abandoned by the authorities. They were
clock culture history humor paris france via:boingboing cultural-disobediance 2007 Nov 21, 3:54An April Fools RFC about the Y10K problem. FTA: "Y10K compliant programs MAY choose to limit the range of dates they support to those consistent with the expected life of the universe. Y10K compliant
systems MUST accept Y10K dates from 10 ** 12 years in
humor date reference rfc time y2k y10k future internet 2007 Nov 19, 4:15Replace the zunetag parameter in the URI with the desired Zune username to find the user's Zune social data such as Favorites, Recent Tracks, etc.
zune microsoft xml 2007 Nov 19, 3:47I really appreciate that
the first gen Zune's get the new Zune's
firmware and software. I like the updated Zune software personally because its faster and simpler, has better podcast support, and the whole social thing has is on their website now. So, I guess
I like the software because it has new features that should have been there in the first place.
The social thing is like a Zune social network. It uses your Xbox Live friends to seed your Zune friends list, lets you do the expected social network stuff, lets you preview songs, and unlike first
gen Zunes which required face to face time with other Zune owners, allows you to send songs to people. It also lets you display your recently played tracks and your favorite tracks, similar to what
Last.FM has, via a
Zune Card. I like the Zune Card from a technical perspective because it
separates
the
Zune Card view, written in flash from the
User Card data which is in XML. I hope
they intend to keep the XML available via this UserCard Service because I think there's potential to easily do cool things.
microsoft technical music zune social 2007 Nov 19, 12:35
Two weekends ago I went down to California for Angie and Kane's
going away party. It was fun despite going to a country western club. It was a very large place with plenty of space for line dancing, a dentist chair turned into a make-margaritas-in-your-mouth
chair, and of course a mechanical bull. Surprisingly, I did not fit in.
This past weekend Sarah and I went to the
EMP and SciFi Museum. The last time I was there was for the Star Trek convention (I'm cool) and Sarah hadn't been before. We also ate in the attached diner which
was acceptable.
emp seattle nontechnical 2007 Nov 18, 7:49Jon's blog.|Jon Clanton
jon-clanton blog friend calpoly amazon germany 2007 Nov 18, 9:36My profile on the Zune website.
proldfile me zune music mp3 microsoft 2007 Nov 16, 12:2424 parody: 24 set in 1994. Thankfully, specific knowledge of 24 is not a prerequisite to enjoying this video.
humor video via:ericlaw 2007 Nov 15, 4:12Tim Spalding founder of LibraryThing gives a talk to the Library of Congress folks about his website LibraryThing. Focus on tagging vs taxonomy. Some humorous things in the talk as well.
library-of-congress library librarything books tagging video ontology tim-spalding taxonomy 2007 Nov 15, 4:04Coming soon: case law freely available in the public domain.
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