Michael Ashby | mashby

August 20, 2003

BT – Emotional Technology

BT - Emotional Technology I’ve been a huge fan of Brian Transeau since his first album back in 1996. I don’t remember how, or where I heard it, but the first time I heard Blue Skies I was hooked. Since then, I’ve eagerly awaited each new release from BT.

It’s been over 3 years since BT released an original work (read all about it here), but it was definitely worth the wait. There isn’t a weak track to be found anywhere and in my book, this is his best work yet. From the first track to the last, BT takes you on a journey through an incredible landscape of sound. Along the way he drops some kickin’ hooks that you just can’t get out of your head.

August 19, 2003

Gettin’ Gizzy With It

I love technology and one of my daily fixes is the weblog Gizmodo.com. If you haven’t visted this web site, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s updated almost everytime I go there, which is several times a day.

August 18, 2003

The Perfect Cup

A couple of weeks ago I dropped my thermal carafe from my much beloved coffee maker. As a result, it began a small leak. Faced with having to buy a new carafe, or even I whole new coffee maker, I remembered that I was given a french press coffee makerm as a gift from my Mom.

August 17, 2003

Climbing Mt. Validation

sample tag The other day I was working on a few tweaks on mashby.com and I remembered that it had been quite awhile since I validated my code. For some people as long as it looks good in a browser, that’s good enough and in large part they are 100% correct. However, being the perfectionist that I am, I tend to subscribe to the notion that the code that you write should comply with the specification it was written for. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the button in the Colophon and saw errors galore! :O So I set out on a challenging adventure to try and tweak my code and that of Movable Type the software that I use to manage my weblog.

The first hurdle I had to overcome was to decide just which spec I was going to validate (HTML. XHTML, etc.) Looking at all the errors I currently had to fix, it seemed only natural to go for XHTML. Besides, that’s the new sexy standard. If I could get my site into XHTML I’d be one of the cool kids on the block.

August 16, 2003

Mother Puss Bucket!

I’m sorry, I just have to get this off my chest. Can someone explain to me why a validator trys to validate links in your code as well? It just makes no sense!

August 15, 2003

My Sides Hurt

ROTFLMAO The other day, I was talking with my buddy Dan about starting his own weblog. Yes, if I like something then I have a tendancy to push it on other people. I admit it. Anyway, we were trying to come up with a domain name and I suggested ChiselMonkey.org. The .com and .net domains were already taken, but when we entered the .net domain into our browsers we both died laughing. I think it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

If you don’t mind a little profanity, go to http://www.chiselmonkey.net. Dan and I both want a copy of this as a poster that we can each hang in our offices. It’s just too freakin’ funny.

August 14, 2003

Speak! Good Weblog, Good Weblog

Speak Weblog! Thanks to a handy little guide on Dane Carlson’s Weblog, I’ve added speech capability to my weblog. Simply click on the button at the end of each post and the first 45 words of the post will be spoken. Given my gift for gab in both verbal and text mediums, I don’t think you’ll ever have a chance to hear an entire post. Also, I’d recommend that only broadband users choose this option because the resulting file size can reach in excess of 500k.

How does this work? Well, AT&T has a product called “Natural Voices” that allows developers to add voice capability to their applications. The provide an online demo and so via a web form I’m can submit a post to the demo and have the results streamed back to you. Pretty cool huh? There’s a variety of voices and languages that can be used and Chris Pirillio has taken it to the limit by randomizing both the language and the voice, so you never know what you’re going to hear when you click his “Speak” button. 😀

August 13, 2003

6 Month Anniversary

I still find the fact that I have a weblog a bit odd. I guess I just never saw myself as a writer, much less someone who would post personal tidbits on the web. However, today marks 6 months that I’ve been doing it, so I guess I didn’t know myself very well did I?

August 12, 2003

Photo Web Logging

There’s a new trend that’s appeared in the last six months that seems to be catching on big time and that’s having a camera in portable devices.

Author / Michael Ashby