Do the Books Make the Man?

So I was a little bored today....emptied my bookshelves at home, spent four hours organizing my books in a 8x30 grid, and snapped this picture...


...(no, not really).

Been playing with GuruLib. Promising concept but I suppose my UI standards are too high - wish they could get a face lift.

Took only about 45 minutes or so to key in the names of all the titles in my bookshelves, then I exported the resulting list of data that Guru snagged from A9 into a tab delimited list. Wrote a quick script to pull all the high quality thumbnails from Amazon (given a set of ISBN numbers) - and composited them into this collage with a little RMagick.

According to GuruLib my small collection of 248 books would yield approximately $3075.00 on the used market (estimated $4100 new if the titles were bought today).

It would be very easy to turn my tiny Ruby + RMagick script into a web widget. You can gather some interesting info about someone by their book collection I would think.

So tell me...do the books make the man? (Click on the thumbnail of thumbnails - to have a closer look).

Update:
I'm really liking LibraryThing. Another site, Listal, is the most "Web 2.0" of the three social collector sites I've tried, but so far, for books, LibraryThing takes the cake. Leaves me hoping for a MusicThing..or a MovieThing though. GuruLib is certainly a contender if they give themselves a facelift and move to a faster host. I always root for the underdog anyhow.

I should also mention bibliophil.org and lib.rario.us. I have to knock lib.rario.us simply because they are hosting a commercial site on dreamhost.com. And seeing as how dreamhost has been down for me all day today, not very smart for a commercial solution.

You Tubes

For some reason I prefer to work (code or write), with the presence of music or television. The world feels a bit less empty I guess.

Typically when home I can just flip on the TV and I have an ambient content source. I have been looking for something equivalent to a web based television channel, that streams non-stop. But preferably something I can program with my tastes and interests at the moment (similar to Pandora).

I haven't looked too hard, but the closest I've found so far is "Series of Tubes". Can't say I'm a fan of the interface, but some pretty nice features. You can stream the most popular videos from YouTube and Google Video, or "feature" videos from a specific category. The site will build a playlist and stream one after the other - allowing you to skip ahead if desired. You can also build a custom playlist by simply specifying a set of keywords to filter on.

I also found lasttv.net. Only it provides non-stop music videos. Not horrible, but I had some issues with their interface obscuring the flash video controls - so I couldn't affect the currently playing video. Probably temporary technical issues.

If anyone has found something better for streaming, non-stop, user-definable video - drop me a line.

Unintentional Porn Du Jour

Unintentional porn of the day...as seen on Yahoo's homepage today. "Which (open air quotes) energy bar (close air quotes) is best for you!?".


Oh my...

Windows Vista Install Fiasco

Sigh...I had such high hopes. In less than two hours I've run into so many issues with this over engineered OS. I purchased the upgrade to Home Premium this weekend and crossed my fingers that it would be a smooth process. I was successful but it wasn't without serious stressors on my patience.

Installation:

• I attempted to be a good citizen and run the freely available upgrade advisor, downloadable from Microsoft. It told me that a few of my applications may not work with Vista, and that one, particularly my Intel SATA device manager needed to be uninstalled prior to upgrading. Only that..well, that particular piece of system code can't readily be uninstalled from my HP Pavilion without, oh, rendering my PC DOA. So I ignored the kind request by Microsoft to nix that service from my machine.
  
• I fired up the upgrade installer (after hacking through four layers of security tape and trying to figure out how to open the patent-pending hellraiser-pandora's box of a DVD case they shipped with) and entered my product key, hit next, then waited...and waited...and waited with nothing but an hour glass to stare at.
  
• Eventually the installer comes back to life and tells me I need to update the installer components - which I do, but alas the installer requires a restart. So I start from scratch, enter my product key again - and wait...and wait...(roughly two minutes) for the installer to report back that I need to uninstall yet another three applications that are incompatible with Vista (Daemon tools for instance). WHAT? Didn't I just run upgrade advisor? Why didn't upgrade advisor report these applications? (Probably two different teams at MS, ugh). I feed the demon what it has asked for, and quit the installer, [before I do I receive a promise that it's saving the application compatibility report to my desktop, implying that it won't spend another 10 minutes analyzing my system when I return]..so I uninstall the offenders and restart the installer only to find...
  
• WHAT!? You are starting all over again? OK fine , enter the damn key in again, wait the two minutes while it does God knows what... wait another ten minutes while it analyzes my system AGAIN to look for compatibility issues (so much for the cached compatibility report) .... and finally.... ahhh... "Click here to install the new Vista OS or click HERE to install an upgrade and keep your files and settings"...but THAT option is greyed out! WTF? (Small print -- Sorry, you can't install an upgrade while other users are logged in). *@#&#! (Why they couldn't have done this simple check upon startup of the installer is *beyond* me).
  
• I close the installer, logout my wife, log back in, rerun the installer---and the amnesiatic piece of shit installer - STARTS OVER AGAIN!!
  
• But after another ten minutes later...it's finally on it's way... and I go to bed, because two hours after that it's still installing, uncompressing, housekeeping, rebooting, rebooting again, etc. But in the morning I'm finally offered a login screen.

Installer UI

Just some observations (pet peeves really), but the installer is quite schizophrenic when it comes to progress UI. In some cases the installer will appear DOA for minutes at a time with nothing but a rotating hourglass.

In others it uses a progress bar to represent activity (not actual progress), animating the horizontal progress bar to completion then starting over again, and over...and over...).

In others it uses a progress bar as intended showing true approximate % however updates only when the stars are aligned so it never truly reflects how long you have to wait. (Are we THERE yet?)

In other cases it uses a simple label (28%) to denote how far along it thinks it is with a given task - but alas it too never updates until well, it's done doing whatever it was doing.

Ease Of (Lack thereof) Use:

• Everyone on my damn system is configured as Administrator yet anytime I do anything remotely useful with an application or file, I receive a security confirmation dialog.
  
• Here's one for the books, still don't understand the intention here but... I copied some JPG images from my digital camera to a folder on my desktop, then fired up the new Windows Photo Gallery. Each image however was using the default placeholder icon. When I would right click on a photo it would tell me I don't have *permissions* to view the photo. WHAT? I right click on one of the problem children - and it tells me that the file is in fact readable, writeable, from anyone in administrative group.
  
  Finally I had to copy the files from the folder on my desktop - TO my actual desktop..then back again into the folder (going through 3 different security dialogs asking me "are you sure you want to move these files you imbecile!")...then magically the files are viewable.
  
• I generally use msconfig.exe to toggle which applications in the startup and login sections of registry would actually start when I logged in (aim, etc.). But after upgrading and logging in everything under the sun popped up.
  
  I ran msconfig and confirmed that each app was unchecked in the startup tab. I also went into each app separately and unchecked (start when windows starts), but alas on login up the come. I finally just pruned the registry myself.
  
  When you run msconfig the next time you log in (on XP) msconfig would startup up - and you would simply need to check a box denoting your desire for it NOT to startup next time. Well, unfortunately msconfig causes some heinous security dialogs to popup upon my next login on vista "an application is attempting to obtain access to the desktop, sound the alarms..you imbecile"... I finally dug down a few levels deep and allowed msconfig to surface for air.
  
• Upon navigating to a website that utilizes a java applet - my Aero interface abrubtly falls back suddenly to windows classic...my entire desktop loses its bells and whistles...all because this one tiny java window is using old rendering code?? Holy shit. Only when I finally close all the IE instances does it finally return to normal. This is truly amateur on the part of Microsoft.
  
  This one put me so far over the edge...I knew they were considering this behavior at one point but they received so much negative feedback during beta I would have hoped they'd solve it.

WTF WTF wtf wtf Microsoft!!!... I'm so ready to pull the rest of what little hair I have left - out. A synonym for vista is prospect. Vista certainly has potential but, that's the extent of its value in my humble and pissed off opinion. I've been using a Mac for the past six months. And will now most certainly remain a Windows ex-patriot ... and remain in the world of calm, warm, common sense..and usability.

Have You Seen *This*!?

While driving home from work (you have to do something to keep from going crazy on such a tedious commute), I had a bit of a Jack Handey moment. Got to wondering... have I seen anything in my life that the greater majority of the world population hasn't? Or even more profound, have I ever observed something in my life that nobody else but me has witnessed? Have you?

The former is probably pretty easy for most. I've traveled quite a bit, visited obscure beaches in Sicily, or glaciers in Alaska, the wailing wall in Israel, the dead sea. Certainly that pairs down the world population a bit - but I'd bet there are still more individuals that have seen the Inside Passage of Alaska, than have stepped foot within my own living room. But in that regard I am still not unique, my entire family has traipsed over every inch of my home.

I could probably dig a hole a few yards deep, and pluck a rock from the earth - chances are I'd expect, I would possibly be the only person that has ever set eyes on that particular stone? Certainly no guarantee of this.

I suppose I need only witness (alone) the birth of some living creature - and I would meet the requirement. The newborn would be a unique and one-of-a-kind configuration of atoms for which I am the first witness to - however, I would not be alone in having seen (most likely) the birth of new life.

In that same vane, I could pick up a paintbrush and craft a work of art - unique and previously unseen. But probably everyone (so to speak) has be witness to the "birth" of a work of art.

What if you've witnessed some apparently unique coincidental turn of events, such as a hippo eating a zebra, or three coins falling off your dresser and each landing upright on their edge rather than a face of the coin? Due to the law of truly large numbers (coincidence theory in general), there is most always a chance, statistically, that someone has been in your shoes.

Now that I think of it, I have seen a pantless man in a tree, bloodied, having just driven off a cliff above at forty miles an hour on a motor cycle. Perhaps I'm the only man to walk the earth to have witnessed such a thing? Sigh, I suppose the man in the tree at the time had a good look at himself at some point that day, making the two of us in that moment.

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