Toby Johnson’s Blog

Here’s a great YouTube video of the Twirl-A-Squirrel bird feeder, which aims to solve the age-old problem of squirrels stealing birdseed from feeders. The squirrel’s heavier weight sets the gadget in motion, which gently spins the little varmint off, leaving him just a little bit dizzy but none the worse for wear.

Double rebates, making the sales rep happy, getting out of a bad contract — here’s a great post on how to get Cingular to hose you a bit less.

My previous Digital Audio Player (a Neuros Digital Audio computer, no longer in production) was either lost or stolen on my recent trip to Las Vegas. I was quickly going crazy without having my music with me at all times, especially since WLRS has decided to quit playing music during morning rush hour in favor of the incredibly boring Lex and Terry show (check out their sucktacular website, complete with a homepage that makes the all-too-common amateur mistake of a pointless Flash animation on the intro page. Although you should watch this one all the way through, since it ends with a hilarious picture of the two DJs in some dorky pose trying to look hardcore).

So, I set out to look for a new DAP. My list of criteria was rather simple, or so I thought:

• At least a 20GB hard drive
• Ogg Vorbis and MP3 support
• Small, portable design
• A good, usable, intuitive interface

Since it had been a while since the Neuros — the first DAP to support Ogg Vorbis — was released, I figured that by now the list of players fitting this bill would be quite extensive. I was wrong. Any time I found a player that fit the technical criteria, some more digging around always turned up a pile of reviews trashing its usability.

Just when I was about to give up, I found the iAudio M3. Read the rest of the article to find out why I chose it and why I recommend it to anyone looking for a digital audio player themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

The full-length trailer for Batman Begins has been released. (Media file removed, sorry…)

Here’s a copy of the new Star Wars Episode III trailer! (Media file removed, sorry…)

The trailer for the Return of the King Extended Edition DVD was released today. The DVDs come out December 14th!

The new Star Wars Episode III Trailer is out! (Media file removed, sorry…)

I got a letter from someone at Mozilla.org today who saw my plug for the Firefox Web Browser and asked if I’d add a button for them to my website. I was happy to oblige, seeing as how I probably spend hours a day using their awesome, free product. (Hey Peter, you’d better add a Firefox button to your site, too.. you wouldn’t want people to be able to actually tell our pages apart! Ha!)

I also have gotten my wife to start using Firefox as well, and she seems to rather like it, which is proof positive that it’s not just a program for computer geeks!

Whether or not the “browser wars” become reignited as some have speculated, it is becoming obvious that the Mozilla Foundation and their free Firefox browser have gotten Microsoft’s attention. Microsoft seems to be backing away from their earlier stance that a new version of Internet Explorer will not be released until the next version of Windows comes out sometime a few years from now. The development manager of IE has even started a blog where he serves up a bunch of lame excuses as to why IE is such a horrible product.

They very well should be taking notice, seeing as how Mozilla browsers now account for almost 15% of web traffic. This is up from around 5% a year ago, and almost all of that gain is at Microsoft’s expense. People are simply fed up with Internet Explorer and its outdated interface, unwanted popup ads (battling these pop-up ads is often compared to those “whack-a-mole” carnival games), and horrible security record.

As the well-respected Netcraft website puts it, “This is an extremely dangerous situation for Microsoft. The phishing threats and the growing professional chorus of disapproval for Internet Explorer provide Windows users with very good reasons to turn elsewhere, even if only temporarily. But Firefox is so good that many will want to stay with it. And once they have tasted the power and freedom of open source, maybe they will be tempted to try ‘just one more program’.”

I just read an interesting story on CNET about Nokia funding the development of Minimo, a cell-phone-sized version of their Mozilla web browsing technology.

Last year I wrote about Firefox (then called “Firebird”), Mozilla’s stand-alone web browser. Since then, Firefox has become even faster, more stable, and more feature-rich. They just released version 0.9, the last version before the 1.0 milestone. Even now, Firefox is so much better than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in every regard that I cringe whenever I am forced to open IE, which I only do when some poorly-written web site doesn’t follow well-established internet standards and instead relies on Microsoft’s misguided “extensions”. If this happens when I’m at a commercial website, I simply take my business elsewhere.

Anyway, it’s nice to see some cash flowing Mozilla’s way. If it weren’t for them, web browsing would be a very bland and often-maddening experience. I eagerly look forward to the day when I can put away IE for good!

I posted a few days ago about Microsoft sending us some Xboxes and games to replace the ones we burned out when we first got here. Well, when they said “a selection of games”, they were understating a little — along with the four Xboxes, we got 4 copies each of 11 different games!

One of the included games was Voodoo Vince, which is the funniest video game I’ve ever played (although I hear a new Sam and Max is in the works, so that distinction might be short-lived). I won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t played it, but I was laughing out loud through most of its levels. The visual gags are just incredible.

Despite a few programming quirks, and the inability to download extra levels, this game is great. And don’t let the cartoony look fool you; it’s not for kids — some of the puzzles would be too hard for them, and some of the humor is slightly dark or off-color.

Okay, I lied earlier; heres a partial spoiler: in one level of the game, you are required to properly set up the various conveyer belts and machines in a meat factory to make sausage which you later use to persuade a Cajun cook to help you along. And as for the meat, there are a number of cute forest animals scurrying about on the floor, which you must guide onto the conveyors. They wave at you, giggle, and say things like “wee, this is fun!” and “you’re my best friend!” in a highly cutesy voice… until they reach the grinder. Definitely not PETA-approved!