I've been trying to dust off this blog lately, but my day job keeps getting in the way. For those of you who don't know, or haven't visited the root of this domain, I'm a television editor and for the last 4 months of my life I've been laboring away as the Lead Editor on a new show for MTV called "Busted". It has been very grueling, but we're making great headway and just started airing weekdays at 6pm ET/PT then replaying at midnight. You can see full episodes at this link.

On the SageTV front, I have been working a little on Meekell. I've added a bunch of animations and fixed some bugs. I'm planning on making a release sometime before the end of the year with reworked music and photos sections that should take advantage of the new 6.4 features.

With tech, I have my eye on Canon's new HD camcorder the HF11. With SageTV's support for AVCHD on the extender it should be an easy sell. With that purchase I also plan to pick up a Drobo to keep the video safe, then hopefully a new Mac Pro to really get into selling my photography as stock.

There is a lot of stuff on the horizon, so don't forget about me! I'm still here.

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I don't normally re-blog, but this video was just too great not to share with as many people as possible. The song is called "How to Kill a Brand" by Doc Adams, a parody sung to the tune of "How to Save a Life" by Fray. It sums up perfectly why the PS3 won't be finding a home in my entertainment center.

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I've finally had a little break and I really would like to write a full review of Zooomr, because I think it has a lot of potential due to the people in charge of it. (Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate.) The problem is, I'm trying to merge my older GMail-based login with an OpenID login that Zooomr has migrated to and instead of combining them, it created a second account. Now I'm stuck having to send myself temporary passwords every single day.

I've tried their feedback email with no response now after over a week. I'd really like to get things together so I can write a good review when they release Mark III next month, so can someone get on this please? Thank you.

Update 2-11-07: Wow, that's service! I was helped both the top guys at Zooomr, and we concluded that it was entirely my fault. The solution was quite simple, and I'm embarrassed to say that I managed to merge my Zooomr account quite a while ago with an alternate openID - one different than I've been using for a fair amount of time now.

So anyways, problem fixed, and I am really impressed with the great service I received. Seriously, how many companies have their CEO and Founder/Lead Developer helping out customers? Thanks guys. I really appreciate it.

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So while I've recently gotten severly addicted to Flickr, Zooomr is currently offering free pro accounts to bloggers. I figured that there were probably a couple of people out there who might be interested in trying out a new service, (especially those who's accounts have been NIPSA'd) so I thought I might write up a comparison for this blog.

Check it out, Zooomr is launching v2.0 next week so it's a great time to give things over there a try.

"Ante Up" - hosted on Zooomr

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Go to a conference lately? Any conference, tech or otherwise, and you're likely to walk away with some incarnation of a memory stick with some vendor's sales pitch on it. They're passed around like candy, pretty much every chip company makes one - they're everywhere. But to be honest, I didn't really keep one until recently because I really couldn't find a use for them.

Sure they're good for holding documents, but my computer does that. If you work on your own desktop every day, your thumb drive begins to collect a lot of dust because it's tough to remember to plug the thing in periodically to synchronize it. Honestly, I just had a hard time justifying the cost. Tough to justify free? No - the space. In order to have the opportunity to use it, you have to carry the thing around with you all the time, and I carry enough crap I barely use, I didn't need anything new to pack in my pockets.

But after I was forced to purchase a large thumb drive to save my documents from a crapped out Windows installation, I was stuck with a 1gb drive and no way to return it. I set out on a quest to find alternative uses for the thing to see if I could find a reason not to sell it on ebay. I've succeeded.

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How many pictures do you currently have on your computer? 100? 1,000? 10,000? When was 5-hour slideshows, but we also don't have albums organized for our children to look at so they can learn how hard it was 'in the old days'.

Photographs have become somewhat disposable. We make sure to take them at big events, and because every picture we take is essentially free, we're taking more pictures than ever - but without a good way to organize this HUGE collection of photographs, why are we taking them at all?

After I had my first digital camera for a year, I had amassed over 1,000 photographs. I threw them in a folder on my computer. Sometimes I uploaded some to a photo service like Shutterfly, but most the time they just sat there on my computer. Perturbed, I went out and found Adobe Photoshop Album. There are a number of alternatives, but I have yet to find a better organization system than the one Adobe has created. I should mention up front that Adobe's brilliant solution is offered for free.

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Do you constantly find yourself aimlessly wandering your way through your huge bookmark library looking for something new to read? Do bloggers with random posting schedules like me totally annoy you because you never know when to visit their site? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then it's time someone talked with you about RSS Aggregators. RSS is a technology many sites now use (including this one) that basically equates to a news wire. Think of it as their own personal broadcast station that constantly loops the most recent items from that site. Now, just like you need a radio to listen to AM stations, you need something called an aggregator to sort out these feeds to view them and also alert you when something new is added.

So now you're thinking, "Well that sounds great, Vince! Where do I start?" Well, there are a LOT of different aggregators out there, probably hundreds, and they vary quite widely in their use-ability and compatibility. I have tried a number of different approaches but I think I've finally found my RSS nirvana, and I would like to share it with you all.

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There has been a lot of talk around lately about how Microsoft's new Origami/UMPC might be the solution to everyone's mobile computing needs. I normally don't write about this kind of thing but the conversation has really gotten me thinking.

It seems that a lot of people within the tablet community are frustrated because they've realized that they're not using their tablets as much as they'd like to because they aren't taking them everywhere they might need them. The general consensus is that a smaller device would be more likely to make the trip, therefore giving them more use and more productivity. As a general rule this makes sense to me, but I still have one major issue with the concept - a UMPC still can't fit in your pocket. (I have partially been corrected once, though I also consider it somewhat of a joke.)I just can't see myself whipping one of those things out at a moment's notice, and unless you're a European Carry-All owner, I can't imagine this would go many more places than a slightly larger, more functional tablet.

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If you can see this post, you've made it to the new server! Let me know what you think of my new site design in the comments. I'm straying a little from the wordpress pack by ditching the sidebar, but I think the menu system is much cleaner and allows more focus on the posts. Please let me know if you find it difficult to get around, if something doesn't work properly, or if you miss a feature that I threw out.

New content is coming soon!

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Sorry for the lack of posting lately. My job has been very crazy, but rest assured: I have been working on a complete site redesign and am in the process of switching web hosts. So as soon as I complete things I'll flip the switch on the DNS and move everybody over. I have so much built-up content for this site it's driving me crazy. I just need to get the site in order and I should be able to finally get some posts up about my PPC6700 (which is awesome), a 6-month follow up on my X41 Tablet, some new features for my SageTV STV and a bunch of podcasts.

So stay tuned! Lots of good things are on the way.

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I'm really behind on my RSS reading lately, so this isn't as timely as I would have liked it - but I've recently won an Ink Blot Award for the Best I Felt The Earth Move Experience When Finally Ordering A Tablet PC! This is surely as a result of the strange coincidence I experienced when I was ording my Tablet, and there was an earthquake while I was on the phone with the sales person. You can read my account of it here.

I want to thank Warner for this wonderful honor. It is truly touching to be recognized by such a prolific TabletPC auteur.

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I have been completely inundated with comment spam over the last few weeks, which I suppose is a good thing because it means I'm getting enough exposure to become a target. It's a bad thing because it means WordPress has sent me roughly 200 emails telling me I might have been spammed. So I've had enough. In an effort to keep things as invisible as possible, I've installed Bad Behavior and Spam Karma 2. Please, please, PLEASE tell me if you have ANY issues posting to my blog as a result of these measures. Hopefully most of you won't even notice them, but I wanted to let everyone know, just in case.

I'm not a fan of captchas, but some of you might get presented with one if you trigger the filters. I would really appriciate feedback on how many people are having to fill those in. If you get one, please let me know in your comment, or email me.

Thanks so much for understanding, and for helping me implement these new plugins. I hope they don't get in the way of good conversation.

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I'm back baby! If anyone's looking for heaven on earth, I've found it. It's called Bora Bora and it's in the South Pacific.

I'm easing back into things slowly, and I've written up a 'First Impressions' post on my X41 Tablet, so that will be up tomorrow hopefully.

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