Posted on by mwhybark

Gmail-lite

I downloaded and dropped gmail-lite on the server – and it was a seamless experience. All I had to do was point the browser at it.

Unfortunately, the page render on the PDA is a bit wide – it looks like it wants about 400px, and the screen is 320. But it’s a better experience than the Google-approved variant, which basically only disables javascript but retains top and side pagejunk that is problematic on a small screen.

Wait, I’m misremembering.

The apparently-new ‘plain HTML’ variant of official Gmail renders acceptably in the default Palm browser, Blazer. At first. Then, something untoward happens, and the page width exceeds the screen and the list of mail entries are vertically separated in a visually problematic manner.

The developer of gmail-lite notes that the application is also a probable violation of the Gmail TOS, which makes me nervous, as clearly Gmail is a monopoly application in my life now. Spammers, you have made Google into a king.

The upshot of this is I’m a bit wary of looking to use gmail-lite as a primary mobile interface into gmail.

Posted on by mwhybark

Beta two

I added a simple method of letting DJ Vicki speak a bit more randomly tonight.

The important bits are:

global A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2

set A1 to some item of {“You’re listening to”, “What you hear playing is”, “Behind me you hear”}
set A2 to some item of {“by”, “lovingly performed by”, “laid to wax by”}

set B1 to some item of {“Before that, we heard”, “That was preceded by”, “Leading into that we heard”}
set B2 to some item of {“from”, “played by”, “recorded by”}

set C1 to some item of {“And starting off the set was”, “Three tracks ago, we heard”, “led off by”}
set C2 to some item of {“shouted into a wire recorder by”, “atrociously covered by”, “downsampled to mp3 from the original analog sixteen track by”}

Which should be more or less self-explanatory to any interested party.

Posted on by mwhybark

DJ Vicki

Manuel provides me with proof that the lazyweb works. Inspired by my bedtime musing about having speech synthesis provide occasional track info in the context of iTunes, he busta move and the results (should that be ‘TheResult’?) can be found here.

Looking at the code, the script provides the information for the last three songs, and Manuel hasn’t blocked out globals that could store lists of variables to swap in randomly. It also doesn’t yet perform a count-and-interrupt (where when the script is fired it assigns n to the number of tunes to wait before performing a set break and then pauses the playback before reading the announcements).

Lessee now, I know I wrote something that uses globals…

Ah, here it is. My Applescript for using cron to schedule radio streams in iTunes uses a block to set the way that the script sees the radio streams:

global myPlaylist, theCallSign

set myPlaylist to “a radio selection”
set theCallSign to “KUOW”

This lacks a randomization method, though.

UPDATE: I take it back about the pause-to-announce; Manny has the volume fade to half while Vicki lays the lowdown on ya and brings it back up when she’s done. It made me laugh so hard spittle went flyin.’

What would be great: a handy list of the dialog which the never-seen-on-screen deejay from 1979’s “The Warriors” employs. I think it would be a lovely base for DJ Vicki to rock the talkbox with. Amazingly, no script for the film appears to be online.

Of course, eventually we will need to see what DJ Vicki looks like. Little help, party people?

Posted on by mwhybark

Uber

The Greatest Bus Driver in the World, Jon Nelson, recently got a kick out of something I posted.

Here’s where life gets strange. I had not thought about the song “California Uber Alles” by the Dead Kennedys in years, but just last night, with the Governor’s butt still in recent memory, I posted a link to Mike Whybark’s Tussin Up archives. If you look over Mike’s blog, you’ll find, down at the bottom, a Quicktime film of his friend’s Seattle Punk Accordion Class performance of Calfornia Uber Alles. It sounds great and is totally way more punk rock than anything ever recorded by Rancid. The accordions achieve a sort of Klezmer sound that reminds of the Governor’s dad, and his many victims.

Hooray! I was very excited about posting that clip. Happy Jon enjoyed it.

However, although Jason is from Seattle, the singer in the clip is Aaron Seeman, who I don’t know personally. Jon may be excited to learn that Aaron is actually from the Bay Area, and that when Aaron’s tour is over he will be back in the same area that Jon lives.

Posted on by mwhybark

Victoria

I want iTunes to bust in every n tracks and use the “Victoria” speech synthesis voice to say things like “…and that wass Meeles Dahviss with Eena Silent Mood. Right before that we heard…” and so on.

Someone must have written this plugin, surely. If not, here’s a set of scripts that nearly offer the answer; the obvious deployment is to tie it to a key-command and randomize the wrapper script, so that the voice says different things as it announces the trackname and artist. The current implementation also only draws the variables from the current track, and speaks as the track is playing (paused counts as not playing, in this instance).

This has the unfortunate effect of placing the speech right over (or, as in my case) under the audio, making it even harder to understand. I’d hack it up, but I really should be looking at fixing those comments.

Posted on by mwhybark

Der tod

Treo 032505 004-1

A couple of beers at The Comet with the man that married my wife.

To me, I mean.

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Then we had sushi and bento at the wonderfully quiet Oasis Cafe up the block. On the way home walked by the nearly-complete reservoir park, where that van driver plowed into the wall twentyodd days ago. The park looks lovely and I hope that my battered neighborhood’s current problems with the homeless don’t turn it into a wasteland right out of the gate.

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We also walked by Value Village’s window display of Eastertide bunny rabbits.

And of course, a learned lesson. mo:blog does not handle multiple photos in a single post. I’m also beginning to make my peace with the craptacular CCD in the Treo; sometimes it produces a certain generalization in the lighting which to me appears painterly.

Treo 032505 013

Posted on by mwhybark

no wifi for you

I went to the Elysian for lunch on my way home from work, hoping to get some work done, and was puzzled by the repeated failure of my computer to connect to the wireless signal, which is clearly visible under the name “Elysian Free Wi-Fi.” The formerly open access point now required a password to join.

Inquiring with my server, I was informed that the network was “down indefinitely,” which seems odd given the visibility of the signal. Seems like this might be worth investigating further.