Just a little preview

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

I'm building a super-limited, super-small version of IAM for older wireless devices (Rachel uses an Audiovox Thera — that thing's got really good rendering already); I'm using some Samsug WWW-capable phone. When I got it they swore it wouldn't have coverage yet, but it turns out I have full high-speed right here right now… so Bell has built the 1X towers, but not told its stores I guess.

Now I've got to whip together an experience update, but it shouldn't be hard to build this functionality so I'll fiddle with it over the next week or two in my spare time. What? I have spare time? Hmm… Well, I'll find the time I guess.

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Raging to go!

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

OK, I've released the BME Personals into the wild. Let's hope it survives the night… What's the expression? If you love something, kill it. If it comes back to you, you own it forever. …Or something like that. Oh, and for those that are wondering, vampy is the current cover model.

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Yummy?

Tuesday, September 30, 2003


 So you've heard me talk here about what a good idea I think cattail whiskey is — cattails are more productive per acre than corn, and it's an idea that I don't think anyone has capitalized on yet.

Anyway, even though cattails used to be eaten very commonly in North America, I've never actually tried them before so I figured, hey, today is a good day to die, right? I realize they're not really “in season” right now, but I took a short walk and dug up a few roots.

As I understand it the leaves should be eaten pretty green, and the “flower” can either be eaten when it's young, or turned into flour once its dry… I was more interested in experimenting with the roots themselves, so I peeled them (using just the spongy part on the inside) and cooked them in garlic, peppers, and olive oil along with a few rougly chopped lower leaves.

The taste was great (but subtle), although the leaves were definitely too fibrous to eat as is; I don't know if steaming them or something might help. The roots were the gem of it though — prepared like this they tasted somewhere between a normal potato and a yam… Definitely something I'll try again, so if anyone has any experience cooking these sorts of things, please let me know your secrets.

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Very clever

Monday, September 29, 2003

OK, whoever did this is pretty sharp. That's the sneakiest method ever! :-)

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Phone interface

Monday, September 29, 2003

OK, this thing is really cool… If anyone else out there is toying with the notion of doing an online radio station, the JK Audio Inline Patch is the unit to get. I also have a much higher-end Genter unit, but this is better, and really simple to use.

It plugs inbetween the wall and the phone. On the back it has in and out jacks as both 1/8″ and XLR for feeding signals both to the phoneline and from the phoneline (so if you don't want to talk into the phone, you can use your computer's mic instead). The out signal can be a mixed mono signal, or you can send a stereo signal with each person on a different channel (ie. so if you're listening, I'd be in one speaker, and the person being interviewed would be in the other speaker). You can control the volume of each side of the conversation separately as well.

And yes, this means I start recording all my phonecalls. The quality is really good. I'm not getting any hum or background noise, and the separation is really clean.

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