I started making a post about this device thinking it was pretty silly. But as I thought about it, it is actually kind of cool (but still kinda silly), though I’d have wanted one or two more features. What is it? The iSeePet (okay, we can stop putting ‘i’ before everything now. It is just as bad as ‘e’.). This device offers remote monitoring and feeding of your pet. In simple terms, it’s an automated feeder that happens to have a webcam attached to it. So, while you are at work you can feed your pet and then get a close-up of it eating. Be sure to check out the promotional VTR (It looks like it is a japanese product actually) on the web site. Oh yeah, it is linux based too. I wonder what else you could hack it to do. Maybe add a food request button that would send you an email or text message that your pet wants food. And at the very least it should let you listen in at your home, or maybe you should be able to send a voice message to it to play for your pet (think of it as iChat A/V for your pet). The only problem is the price. $500 seems a bit steep.

This could be the start of a whole range of products. I can just see it, next we’ll have the iSeeKid, for parents who have to work late.

Yay! It’s back. It sounds like metamark.net got hijacked. Here’s the word on what was up with the whole xrl.us/metamark(s).net thing.

I’d been using the URL shortener at metamark.net (it shortens things to http://xrl.us/…) for a few weeks. One thing I really liked about it was that it had a fairly nice api, which made it very easy to fit into my mud client (tinyfugue). Sometime on Monday, the service just went poof. I haven’t been able to find any news about it either. Anyone else have any idea what happened with it?

So I finally broke down and picked up the BroadQ Qcast, though I got the one sold under the name GameShark Media Player. First off, I must say that now that I have this working it kicks ass. I pointed it at my laptop and it is playing a divx file over wireless. Pretty keen I must say. Also, it lets you install this on more than ones computer, so my G3 will definitely be running the server side of this soon for music.

Now, for the hell part. This software has the worst documentation/install process I’ve ever seen. In fact, if I didn’t have a clue about how OS X does things I would never have been able to install this. Let’s see. First, the documentation instructed me to put the server CD-ROM into my computer and copy the GSMP to my desktop. The problem, there’s nothing that says it is GSMP. There’s just a MacOS folder with a file called jinstall.zip. Not that big a deal, I can figure out what to do with that.

Next problem, the documentation says “First, click on and run GameShark Media Server to connect with our server(s) and allow updated software modules to download”. Um, there is no GameShark Media Server to click on, just the zip file. Nowhere is there any mention of this. And, when I do unzip the file, all I get is an executable called JExpressInstaller, which quits as soon as I try running it. Wow, what great software! This is the point that someone who doesn’t really know some of how things work on OS X would be sunk. There’s nothing else to do. The one program you have to run doesn’t do anything.

The solution, go in via command line. The way applications work on OS X is that they are folders with an extension of .app, and since I knew the app was in java (oh yeah, others might not know that. The only reason I know it is a friend has it). I found the jinstall.bin file, which was mentioned as the installer in the linux install instructions, and ran that. And after filling out where to install, it finishes up.

We won’t get into the next stage where the buggy java code for the initial registration and setup fails do render any text in the forms you have to fill out (unless you go back and forward in the forms). Once I got it all set up though. It worked like a charm. It’s just getting there was hell. I wonder how much of this is GameShark’s fault and how much is BroadQ’s. Oh yeah, the game is being supported by MadCatz, but there’s pretty much no mention of it on their site. I know that I’ll be posting to the support forums at BroadQ about this. But, for now, I watch some Hanaukyo Maids.

I was catching up on my RSS reading and this caught my eye on the AP news feed at Yahoo! News:

China ‘Open-Crotch Pants’ Face Extinction

His head is shaved. His red-and-yellow T-shirt proclaims “Cute Girl!” His loose, white-cotton shorts are grimy with dirt. Suddenly, he stops in mid-stride and squats, the seam of his pants parting smoothly to allow a stream of urine to pool onto the concrete.

“Good boy!” his 25-year-old mother, Wu Chunhua, shouts encouragingly as he speeds back to play.

The startlingly revealing “kaidangku” (literally “open-crotch pants”) have made such posterior peek-a-boo a common sight in China for decades — rain, shine or, in a specially padded form, snow.

The principle is clear: no-fuss waste disposal. They’re split down the middle — in front and back — and provide what many parents say is maximum convenience with minimum coverage. [Yahoo! News]

Can’t. Stop. Laughing. (And possibly the best headline EVER)

As someone said when they mentioned this, yet another example of how everything is on the Internet. This time it’s the Racial Slur Database. So many here I’ve never ever heard before.

A few people have asked me how I set up ZOË, so I thought I’d post it here. I’m not sure how much of a typical user I am. If you aren’t familiar with ZOË, I think the about document on the web site gives a pretty good description. You might also try reading some of the reviews that are listed on the reviews page. One simple way to think about it is as a search engine for your email.

WIth my current setup I read all my email with IMAP. So I have ZOË point to my IMAP inbox and folders and index everything from there. I also store all of my sent mail on the IMAP server so that it gets indexed too. One thing ZOË can do is be an SMTP server for you. It will accept email and forward it onto another server (like your ISP for instance). But there’s an issue with this that I’ll talk about later. I’ve also been slowly adding in RSS feeds that I really like into ZOË so that it indexes them (though not all the RSS feeds I read).

So far I’ve been running it for a few days and I really like it. I actually have some old old email sitting around on my old windows box that I’m going to upload to the server so that it will get indexed too. Okay, now for the parts of ZOË that I think need improvement (and I’ll say again, that even with its flaws I think it is great).

Okay, so the things I see as flaws in ZOË (btw, to the author of ZOË, feel free to think of these as suggestions ;), and also note that I have no idea how complex any of these would be to do. Knowing me, I’ve picked the things that are the hardest to change.).

• SMTP Server – ZOË has a built in SMTP server. So that if you want it to index your outgoing mail you can send it via ZOË. This is actually a pretty cool idea, but my big problem with it is that it doesn’t work unless your mail server requires SMTP authentication. Out of all the places I send email, only one of them requires SMTP authentication. This would be so nice to have. Also, I’m not sure how the code works, but what I’d really like is a way to be able to set up multiple SMTP servers and then choose which one to use from a pulldown list.
• Importing/Reading in messages – There has been a little bit of talk on this subject on the ZOË mailing list. One thing I’d love for IMAP stuff is some kind of understanding of the folder structure on my IMAP server. The first is that there is some mail that I really don’t care about indexing. By just saying ‘don’t index this at all’ I solve the problem easily. While thinking about this I also realized I have a few mailing lists I am on that don’t use header tags to identify themselves. One thing that would be neat is being able to designate certain folders as ‘mailing lists’ so they can be accessed that way (though I have the feeling that this is getting into the ‘complex to do’ category.
• Searching – There maybe something like this already, but I haven’t found it yet. I’d love an advanced search form. Something where I can search for just subject or author. Or some combination of stuff.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Once again, a big thanks out to the author of this software, it really is pretty cool. I plan on donating once I am employed again.

So amidst all the other stuff I was doing this weekend. I finally finished Golden Sun on the GBA. I have to say I was impressed. It took me around 28 hours to get through the RPG. I’m really not sure if I was going slow or fast through it. Overall, it was a pretty good game, even though it is really like part one of two (I actually got the second one first and decided to put off playing while I found and played the first one). Tonight I got sucked into the GBA again, this time by Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I’ve now put the GBA in the other room so I can get some stuff done before I sleep. I may have to start hiding it. That is one of those games where it is very easy to just lose large chunks of time. So far I give it a thumbs up.