Technology Bites
Yes, I mean that title in all its contexts. Today has been Technology Day at Captain's Quarters, and that is never -- never a good sign.
First, as some of you may have discovered today, I have been working with my BlogTalkRadio player. We have had people working on the issue with player volume on autostart, and we needed to test the function on a real live blog -- and since I'm the Political Director of BTR, I get to be the one to play. We did finally solve the issue of volume, so now we can use autostart without blasting readers into oblivion with Hugh Hewitt's splendid introduction to my show. The player will not autostart on the main page, but will on most of the subpages of the blog. Part of this is monetization, and part of it is promotion. If you find yourself on the page and don't wish to hear the show, simply click on the Pause button.
Next, and less fun, has been my renewal and upgrade for TrendMicro's antivirus program. TM is better than most, but still has its share of problems. It used to have a program named PcScrScn that would bog down the system, especially in the first few minutes after boot. The new version eliminated that program, but the upgrade barfed after its installation. I had to hard-boot the system after it got locked up, and then it wanted to do an immediate scan. Being an idiot, I allowed the scan and selected the "background" option -- which does little to improve efficiency during the scan, but does manage to hide the progress with no option of showing it again.
Lastly, I want to give an update on my feedreader situation. Based on reader input, I reinstalled Omea Pro on my system. Once again, I found it to be an absolute resource hog -- until I turned off all the plugins except for the RSS feeds. If one uses it in the stripped-down fashion, which I assume emulates the smaller Omea Reader, it doesn't cause problems at all, and works very well for my purposes. It auto-deletes old items based on hours, days, or weeks, which gives me plenty of flexibility to keep the feeds clean. Based on the experiences, I'd recommend Omea as a good option, but only in its most stripped-down profile.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on October 29, 2007 12:11 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)
Comments (7)
Posted by Carol Herman | October 29, 2007 12:42 PM
Today, for the first time, when I came here, the "radio" went on all by itself. AND, I LOVED IT!
Alas, it just repeats Friday's show. So, I got to hear about the "90-minutes."
Would'a been nice to get a better buzz. With plucked "one-liners" that showed up on Friday. And, zinged.
The volume control? Heck, me, as anti-computer inards' gifted as you can get ... In other words? Unlike Ross Perot, I cannot "lift the hood" and recogize anything inside ... Still knowns I have a "bull horn" button, bottom right. That when I click it, gives me a chance to "lower the volume." And, even mute stuff. And, if I know that ... then you're not blasting people at all. (Even cubicle dwellers, who want to keep their viewing habits away from the boss' eyes.)
Your radio show is one heck of a neat new feature!
Heck, to listen to Drudge, I used to actually have to turn on my radio! This feature is much, much nicer.
Some day, I'm hoping to can convince Tom DeLay to come on board and be interviewed.
Posted by Dale C. Wyckoff | October 29, 2007 12:57 PM
Oh my.
I'd place a huge vote against autostart being enabled on any page. If I want to do something I can always decide to do so. If I want to listen to the radio, even an embedded one, I can turn it on.
But by using autostart I'm forced to act on every page where the radio starts if I don't want to listen. Forcing the visitor to turn it off is Microsoftish.
This is especially a bad idea when you consider I tend to view Captain's Quarters by opening each post in a different tab.
I truly enjoy Captain's Quarters. I have WinAmp running in the background. I know the frustration, eventually, is going to result in my no longer visiting this site. Something tells me I'm not the only person who would be put off but this.
Dale
Posted by Captain Ed | October 29, 2007 1:05 PM
It's not enabled on the post pages, either. Only on the other subpages. I can't enable it on the post pages because the system would restart the show whenever a comment gets added.
Posted by Captain Ed | October 29, 2007 1:08 PM
I'd also remind readers that BlogTalkRadio pays my salary and subsidizes the blogging I do here, explicity and enthusiastically. I don't do pledge drives, either, although I do have a PayPal button and get some Amazon credits for the Bookshelf sales. Clicking a Pause button on the Links, Bookshelf, and About subpages shouldn't really be that big of a deal -- and some might even enjoy the shows ....
Posted by daytrader | October 29, 2007 1:17 PM
Captain
I really causes issue with me since I was listening to another webcast and on hitting this page I got collision between the two feeds and had to dump out with the back key and pause the other feed before I could come back here.
As to the reader I don't let it purge since in text mode it takes little space to store the feeds even with the number I follow.
I would much rather have it keep and indexed history than have to wander through 20 or 30 blogs archive sections looking for something I want to refer to and pull a quote to use in a blog comment response.
Posted by Stacy In Tucson | October 29, 2007 6:10 PM
Darn, Captain...
I'm loyal, I read you everyday. But I live on my computer...with XM cranked up through my speakers...autoplay is going to suck! There has to be a better way to pay the bills....autoplay is as bad as pop-up ads....
:(
Just my 2 cents (which I'd gladly give you not to have to deal with autoplay, lol)
Posted by mrlynn | October 29, 2007 10:07 PM
Switch to a Mac and you won't need to worry about anti-virus software.
/Mr Lynn