When I saw this, I instantly had a nostalgic flash back! One of the few computer games I’ve ever played and enjoyed, Lemmings is a mind thinking game that everyone who calls themselves a nerd should play at least once in their life time. Now it’s available on the web! I am not exactly sure how it was converted, but the first 4 levels I played are identical to the original game.

Link: http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

I am not sure if this version of Lemmings is legitament or if someone illegally hacked it and put it on their site. For those who are interested, you can buy a copy of the game for Windows by searching amazon.com or ebay.com for “Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings”.

I’ve been doing some small home improvements the past few days.

Earlier in the week I installed a mop organizer in the pantry. The organizer works great so far and it freed up a lot of space.

Mop Organizer:

Yesterday I finally got around to replacing the broken drainage pipe for the sump pump on the side of the house. What a pain that was. I had to go to both Home Depot and Lowes and I still couldn’t just get 2 feet of pipe. I did get a deal at Lowes though, I got an 8 foot 3.25 OD drainage pipe for $3, since it was mostly damaged. Sadly, I’ve only used 8 inches of the pipe, so if you know anyone in need of some 3.25 OD drainage pipes about 1-3 feet long, let me know.

Before:

After:

And we’re ready for Halloween!

Well, I just found out about the Verizon Wireless Privacy Changes, they want to sell my information. They want to sell your information too, if your using their cell phone service. If you don’t call 1-800-333-9956 within the next few days, your information will be sold. And we’re not talking your name and address, Verizon has changed their terms so they can sell companies your calling information. They are concerned about your privacy, concerned enough to make money by removing it.

Here is a web link to Verizon’s new CPNI Privacy Information.

Well, I’ve been very busy the weeks before and the following week after the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. The trip was fun, met lots of podcasters and got to hang out with the rest of the gang. My only disappointment was with the amount of traffic at the Expo. The first two Expo’s had a mix of attendees looking at either/or podcasting or portable devices. This year, I hardly saw anyone at the expo looking for iPod type devices and there were only a couple vendors there to cater to such attendees. For the 4th expo, they have renamed the expo to the ‘New Media Expo’. This is the 4th name change as well. It’s kind of like a car show that evolved into a drivers show.

If you don’t follow podcasting, the phrase ‘New Media’ is the new buzz word to replace ‘podcasting’. It’s the same thing, just another name to confuse people.

Now, on to Halloween! This is our first Halloween since we moved into the house. There are tuns of kids in our neighborhood, so it will be intersting to see how many trick-or-treaters we see. At the apartment, we would be lucky to see any kids come. Our neighbors suggested 6-7 bags of candy, which is a lot! There are a lot of kids in this neighborhood though. From my observation walking the dog in the morning, the school bus that drives by our house picks up roughly 20+ kids between the streets just north and south of us.

When I was in elementary school I had some pretty interesting costumes. When I was really young, my favorite costume was Oscar the Grouch. After Oscar, my favorite custume was dressing up like an Army man. By 4th grade I was crafting costumes out of cardboard and construction paper. No fabric for this trick-or-treater! In 4th grade, I made a sports car out of boxes complete with head lights and a trunk to store extra candy. In 6th grade, I made a spooky ambulance using an orange pumpkin light for the siren light and had a miniature skeleton viewable from the back window.

For the first time, we’ll be handing out treats and get to see a lot of neat costumes! I can’t wait!

Oh yea, Go Tribe!

The Indians are in the playoffs!

This is the first time the Indians have been in the playoffs since I started dating Heather. I’ve forewarned Heather that I’m going to be watching the games. I hardly watch sports and technically I am not the greatest sports fan. But the Indians in the playoffs trump all.

Here is the scoop. The Indians have a real shot this year at winning the Pennate and the World Searies. They have won 26 of the last 35 games. At the moment they have the best record in both leagues. The last time the Indians were this hot the players went on strike and there was no playoffs or world series!

So, if there is a playoff game and the Indians are playing, only call me during commercials.

I just recently purchased a new computer. It’s very powerful. It has a 320GB hard drive, Intel core 2 Duo 4400 running at 2Ghz and 2GB of memory. There is one problem though, Windows Explorer in Vista. I can’t explain how unstable Windows Explorer is in Vista. The operating system itself does not crash, but Windows Explorer crashes randomly. Whether it be Explorer itself or anytime an application uses the file open/save dialog, I have to cross my fingers that the application doesn’t crash. Vista removed some navigation features for going down and up a folder, and in its place are folder names that are separated with drop downs. in addition, the files are automatically sorted in the current view. The end result is a dynamically changing view of your files. It seems like a great idea, but it has some major stability issues. All I want to do is safe, open and copy files, I don’t need a complex unstable system to do this. Microsoft really went too far with Windows Explorer. They should have been spending this time making other tools that would be much more useful.

If you have the ability to buy a new computer with Windows XP, do it without hesitation. I have not come across a functionliaty in Windows Vista that would make it necessary for anyone to upgrade.

I don’t have a problem with religious people going door to door soliciting their message. Even if I don’t agree with it, this is America. But I’ve had some Jehovah’s witnesses visit our home a few times now. They park across the street, walk right up to the door and ring the door bell. Two times I didn’t answer the door and three times I did. When they leave they go right to their car and drive off. They aren’t soliciting the neighborhood, they are targeting me.

Today they visited while I was mowing the lawn. I’ve told them a couple times now that I am Catholic. Well today they went on to ask me if I thought the world was coming to an end. Boy I wanted to give these a piece of my mind but I held back and told them I wasn’t interested and walked away.

There may be some honest and reputable organized religions out there, but from the education I have obtained over the the years, I’ve associated organized religion as a way for the strong and manipulative to take advantage of the weak and frightened.

In my opinion, the best thing someone can do who seeks spiritual guidance is read a Bible, or what ever other religious or spiritual book that inspires you, and make your own decisions on what everything means. As Thomas Paine once said, “My mind is my church”. Just remember to use reason, as it is human to seek the answers we want rather than the answers that are true or unanswerable.

It took 2 1/2 weeks for the Air Conditioner to get fixed. The repair man did a great job getting everything working again. He was in and out in the matter of hours. I just wish the warranty company moved that quickly.

Our Realtor (Buyers Agent) was a big help with following up with the warranty company. Thanks Mike! If you are looking for a home in the Columbus area, I highly recommend contacting Mike at Buyer’s Resource Realty Services. Mike recently started a blog to help home buyers. Check it out: http://homebuyersadvocate.wordpress.com/

Over the past couple of months I’ve been working on a podcast statistics system for the RawVoice communities Blubrry.com, PodcasterNews.com and TechPodcasts.com. The system can also be completely re-branded for companies who want to use the media download statistics for their podcasts.

Podcast Statistics are a very important part of the Podcasting business. The download numbers are very important, not only as a way for the producer to gain insight of their audience size, but they are also used as a means of making money. Most podcast advertising today is based on allotments of 1,000 downloads, referred to as CPM. If someone offers you $5 CPM and you have 10,000 downloads of your podcasts, you would make $50. The CPM in this example is just that, an example. Actual CPM rates range based on the popularity of your show, the content it targets and the demographics the advertisement targets.

We were fortunate to work with download statistics for a very popular podcast, one of the top 10 on iTunes. This podcast alone has an audience size of roughly 1/2 million. Having this data, I was able to truly test and optimize the database and programming logic in order to quickly create the reports. The first version of the system took 15 minutes to update. The updates now take between 60 to 90 seconds and include the totals for country demographics, software clients and operating system platforms.

If you want to see what I have been working on over the past couple months, check out the Blubrry Podcast Statistics page. Link: http://www.blubrry.com/podcast_statistics/Â If you are a podcaster, you may also want to check out the tutorial video Todd made, it has detailed instructions how to setup your podcast to use the Blubrry Statistics system.

I am pretty excited by the outcome of the RawVoice Statistics system. I have many people to thank, especially my wife for her help and support.

I’ve been solicited a couple of times to place advertisements within specific posts on my blog. I’ve written them off in the past but with the recent traffic increase to this blog I am considering the idea now.

If I do decide to put ads on my blog, I will use the Google Ads placed either across the header or in the sidebar. I will not put advertising within the feeds, I think that is distasteful and a poor use of what feeds should be. I am sure Dave Winer would not approve.

I’ve rejected the idea in the past because I use this blog to talk about issues and topics for friends and family to keep up with what is going on in my life. Will advertising cheapen that? What does everyone think?