Matt McDonald’s Website

We used the Blockbuster movies-in-the-mail system for quite a while. It was nice being able to take your movies into the store and switch them out. I felt like we were getting twice the amount of movies as Netflix. Sure, the mailed movies were a bit slower than advertised, but I still felt we were getting enough movies to justify the price.

Then they changed up the system. Suddenly they wanted to charge you a higher price to bring your movies into store to exchange it for a new movie. We opted to try it the regular way, but their slow speed of getting movies sent to us quickly became more obvious. Some times it would take 10 days to get a movie to us. I don’t think it ever took the time they advertised. I sent them a emails asking why we couldn’t get the movies faster, they gave a canned response. I wrote another email, and got more worthless babble. So I just canceled the account and set out to try Netflix.

What a difference.

We send our movies in the mail. Netflix gets them the next day. They ship the movies. We get them the day after that. Everything works as advertised. Plus, we get emails at each step.

Today they went the extra mile. Apparently they had problems on Monday, a day one of our movies was supposed to ship. They were nice enough to give us a 5% credit off our next bill. It’s small, but it makes me happy.

These are my links for March 10th through March 21st:

• Converting ogg to mp3 in Linux - NKB: Nachos Knowledge Base -
• Perfect General II - FAQ -
• moblock-deb: Debian packages for MoBlock (a PeerGuardian alternative for linux) - moblock-control start
• Fender Jaguar/Jazzmaster Bridge Mod — Jag-Stang.com -
• Acclaimed Music - All Critics Lists -

These are my links for February 27th through March 6th:

• Yet another iPod manager - Home -
• Free guitar lessons - justinguitar.com -
• MMALinker.com: Online MMA Videos -
• Windows Tip: How To Find Directories That Are Taking Up Space On Your Hard Disk -
• AudioPod+ -

These are my links for January 26th through February 20th:

• Sulla’s Civilization IV Walkthrough - Civilization Fanatics’ Forums -
• Linux.com :: Mounting USB storage devices and Windows partitions -
• HARDWARE iPod - Gentoo Linux Wiki -
• FLAT EARTH® | IMPOSSIBLY GOOD® -
• The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner | MakeUseOf.com -
• Job Search Made Simple | SimplyHired -
• Creating An SSH Tunnel For VNC Using PuTTY -

I watched a lot of tennis this weekend.  As none of the teams I care about were in the NFL playoffs, it satisfied my sports craving.  And it did so in a big way.  Friday night I was able to watch the match between James Blake and Sebastein Grosjean.  Blake was down 2 sets, but somehow fought back to win.  Blake is really starting to develop, I think there’s an outside chance he’ll be able to beat Federer in the quarter-finals.

Speaking of Federer, he nearly lost on Saturday.  As it was on very early in the morning, I missed it live, but was able to catch a replay later in the day.  The first 4 sets, he looked very beatable, but in the fifth set he was back to perfection again.  They kept showing the huge crowds gathered outside the stadium, watching the big screen.  Everyone was waiting for history to be made, but it wasn’t to be this time.

However, the best match of the weekend was Hewitt vs Baghdatis.  I couldn’t belive when woke up Saturday morning to find the match still on, as it was well past midnight.  I missed the first set, where Baghdatis dominated, by the time I turned it on, Baghdatis was starting to fall apart.  In the 4th set, Baghdatis looked all but done.  He was missing simple shots, the announcers commented he was ready to get the match over with and go home.  Who could blame him, it was after 3 am.

Then something strange happened.  Hewitt missed a few shots in a row, and Baghdatis noticed his cheering section.  You see, Hewitt being Australian, nearly the entire stadium was filled withe people supporting him, wearing yellow and green.  So it was odd to see a small section of guys wearing blue, who were going absolutely crazy.  The camera zoomed into Baghdatis’ face, who was looking up at them in amusement.  You could almost read his mind.  “What on earth are you guys still doing here?  I’ve given up, why don’t you?”   He turned around, and laughed.  Then won another point, looked back up and his fans and laughed again.

I think those determined fans gave him a second wind, because suddenly he came to life and started playing with heart again.   He pushed the game into a fifth set, as the clock rolled past 4 am.  Finally Hewitt got his act together and won out the fifth set.  It was really too bad, by that point I was cheering for Baghdatis to win.

I don’t know what I’m going to do in a couple weeks when there is no tennis and no football on TV.  I need to move to a warmer climate just so I can play year round.

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A week or so ago, Steve Yegge made a post titled Blogging Theory 201: Size Does Matter.  I’ll sum up 10,000 words for you - “when you write a blog post, put as much time and effort into it as you would an essay for school.”  While I partly agree with him, I also believe you really need to look at your target audience.  At least that’s one of the first lessons your writing instructor should have taught you in school.

So that begs the question - who is my audience.   Honestly, I don’t even know.  A lot of my posts are just random junk I want to remember.  Sometimes I post news on what’s going on in my life, which is probably of interest to friends of mine.  Then I post random movie reviews.   I’ll also post code snippets here and there, when I find an elegant solution to a problem I’ve been looking at.

I guess you could say my target audience is me.  That sounds extremely egotistical, but it’s true.  I can’t see anyone else getting enjoyment reading every post, my interests are too diverse.   That’s fine with me, I’m used to it.  I don’t know anyone else who played the violin, was on the football team, then hung out with the math geeks back in high school.  I don’t expect anyone to be reading my page every week anyway.  That’s the beauty of the internet.  I can put Steve Yegge, Sasha Frere-Jones,  Zend Developer Zone, and icanhazcheezburger into my RSS reader and spend all of 20 minutes of my time getting an overview of everything I enjoy.

These are my links for January 14th through January 16th:

• best of craigslist : Star Wars Guide to the Candidates -
• Smithsonian Magazine | Travel | The Smithsonian Life List -

Since I’ve been getting semi-daily calls/emails from recruiters lately, I found this blurb hilarious.

Had something similar happen the other day:

Joe Recruiter: Hi, this is Joe, just wanted you to know we’ve increased the salary for that job we offered you to $75k a year.
Me:  Really?  I’ve never been offered a job without an interview before.
Joe:  Wait, who is this?
Me: You called me a couple hours ago.  I said I was going to pass along your info to friends looking for a job in the area.
Joe: Oh.  Well.  Tell them the job is now up to $75k a year.
Me:  Yeah, right.

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These are my links for January 11th:

• 2008 March Madness on Demand - NCAA.com -

I’ve never had a new years resolution. I guess I never got the point. I set small goals for myself here and there, so I never saw the need to set them at the beginning of the year. That changes this year. So here we go:

1) Read at least 1 book a month. Should be easy, I’m actually not sure how many books I read anymore.
2) Write 1 PHP article every 2 months. First one is in the works already. Not sure where I will try to publish them. Maybe just right here.
3) Finish 50 NES games in 100 days. Last night I couldn’t fall asleep, so I got up and fired up the emulator. I’m a sucker for old-school NES. The rules are simple. No game genie codes, anything else goes. I made a list of 78 games so far, just in case some prove impossible (I know I never beat a few of these without game genie codes - Ninja Gaiden I’m looking at you. Go here to check my progress.

I guess #3 isn’t really a year resolution, since it’s only planned to be 100 days, not the full year. Just another mini-goal to challenge myself.

These are my links for January 10th:

• Dragon Warrior III FAQs - Dragon Warrior III Walkthroughs - Dragon Warrior III Guides -
• LittleRadio.com -
• KCRW | 89.9FM -
• KEXP 90.3 FM - where the music matters -
• East Village Radio -
• dublab -
• CD101.1 FM Radio, Columbus, Ohio. The Alternative Station -
• BAGeL Radio : indie rock noise pop internet radio -
• Bejeweled 2 Flash Game - Free Online Games -
• Simple Calendar Widget Demonstration -

These are my links for January 6th through January 9th:

• Prototype JavaScript framework: API.Prototype API Documentation -
• MySpace.com - Vs. System - 100 - Male - San Diego, California - www.myspace.com/versussystem -
• System Requirements Lab -
• crimson_warfare.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object) -
• Geek Trends: 15 Footers with great usability by Pop Upon Magazine -

Zoinks!

I just received a phone call.  I answered it, but no one was there.  My phone said 1408 was calling.

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I recently discovered imeem.com. Similar to youtube, but geared towards music. Acutally, I’m really surprised they can get away with their operation. Basically, people upload songs, which you can listen to with their flash player. I remember back when I first came across yahoo’s music service, I remember the faq saying they weren’t allowed to let you queue up whatever song you want, so I don’t know what’s changed since then.

The best and worst part of the site are the playlists. Being able to set up different playlists is a great idea, much more useful for songs than say, videos, but unfortunately it’s the part of the site that needs the most work. Adding a song to a playlist takes 1 too many clicks, and adding a song frome one playlist to another is even worse. Want to add multiple songs to a playlist? Forget about it.

The playlist editor was even worse. I suppose it’s nice if you only have 10 or 15 songs, then they all easily fit on the screen. But if you have a lot, moving them around can be a pain, as drag and drop is the only method to move things around. Anyway, here’s my first crack at a playlist:

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These are my links for January 2nd:

• TripIt | Organize your travel - plans@tripit.com

1. Icky Thump - The White Stripes
2. Sound of Silver - LCD Sound System
3. Boxer - The National
4. Into the Wild (Soundtrack) - Eddie Vedder
5. In Rainbows - Radiohead
6. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
7. Person Pitch - Panda Bear
8. The Con - Tegan and Sara
9 The Shepherd’s Dog - Iron and Wine
10 Untrue - Burial

I’d put up a top 10 movie list, but there are still a bunch of 2007 movies I’d like to see - Michael Clayton, The Darjeeling Limited, Once, Ratatouille for example. Guess I’ll make my list in February or something.

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I just replaced 4,650 lines of javascript with this

var myRequest = new Ajax.Request(’ajax/get_product_data.php?’, {
method: ‘get’,
parameters: ‘product_id=’+$F(’product_list’),
onSuccess: function(transport) {
var product_data = transport.responseText.evalJSON();
$(’category_list’).value=product_data.product_category;
$(’unit_cost’).value=product_data.unit_cost;
}
});

You read that correctly - 4,650 lines.

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It’s been nice to have a few days off to relax. The weather warmed up enough to play tennis the past few days, but now it’s cold and rainy again. I’ll be back at work tomorrow, so that’s not too much of a problem.

Lisa and I went to see a couple of good movies over the weekend - I am Legend and Atonement. One sci-fi movie and one romance. Not hard to guess who picked which movie, but we both enjoyed each of them.

Fantasy Football finished this week. I finished 2nd in the league with my friends, and 4th in my public league. I’m fairly happy with my luck this year.

Finally, congratulations to my brother Andrew, who became engaged on Monday. I’m sure it will be a Christmas to remember.

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These are my links for December 14th through December 19th:

• WebUrbanist » 7 More Abandoned Wonders of the World: Amazing American Abandonments -
• Sclipo: Dj Set Tutorial: Mixing Trip hop -
• Frequent discussions - Cake PHP | Google Groups -
• BookMooch: exchange books and trade them, like a book swap or book barter -
• Says-It.com -
• Data belongs in your tables — not in your code -

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