WEBVTT

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The Power of Source Code

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Yeah, hi everybody, it's Source
Code. It is Saturday, August
21st, 2004. I'm Adam Curry.

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Saturday afternoon in Curry
Castle in Belgium. It's about
3.36. How's that for an
approximate time for you?

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Sorry about yesterday. No
postings on the blog and no
source code. It was just way too
crazy.

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During the radio show in the
morning, as you know, we're
winding down.

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One more week to go and then two
more days to finish up the month
and that'll be all over.

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We had the Chanuk crew who flew
us in Iraq.

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They flew us from Camp Smitty to
Basra.

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a final two or three hour drive
from there to Kuwait on our way
home.

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And we also did some night
goggle vision reconnaissance
flights.

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So anyway, they came by.

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They wanted to see where we
worked since we'd already seen
their area of responsibility.

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It was a good time, but tiring
nonetheless.

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From there, I went straight
home.

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There was someone who almost
arrived immediately for an
interview, which was, of course,
all

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set up.

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But I keep forgetting I really
don't like doing stuff on Friday
afternoons.

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And then on top of that, some
folks who had seen the house
earlier in the week came back,

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wanted to see it again.

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This time they brought the
entire family.

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And I got a call earlier this
morning that they are coming
back again on Monday.

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So that looks good.

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I don't know if you remember,
two days ago I mentioned that
Crystal, my assistant, had...

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I'm not quite sure where she got
it from.

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She got one of these Pinnacle
Systems Show Center, which is
essentially a video device that
you hook up to your television.

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I have it hooked up to our big
Grandmaster View screen here.

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It has a Wi-Fi card, so it talks
to your Wi-Fi environment.

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And it sits there basically
listening for a show center
server, which I'm not quite sure
what protocol it speaks.

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It may be Windows Media Server,
I'm not sure.

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But that has to run on a Windows
machine, so I still have an old
Sony VAIO laptop with Windows
2000.

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Loaded it up, and lo and behold,
it's working.

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First of all, regarding the...

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the setup

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the wifi setup

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is stupid

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you have to fill in

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name, a network name, and it
comes with a show center as the
network name installed

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standard, which makes no sense
because, of course, that means
everyone's going to have

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to change that.

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Either you have to change your
Wi-Fi network name or you have
to figure out how to change

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it on the show center device,
which means you've got to
reboot, hold down the B key.

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I mean, this is all stuff that
is just not easy for people.

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I think it should work like my
laptop does.

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When I walk in range of a new
Wi-Fi network, it says, hey,
should I add this?

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Do you want to connect to it
now?

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That, of course, is the way this
should work as well.

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So basically, you create a
database in the show center
software on the PC.

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Of course, just like a share
program, like a peer-to-peer
program, if you want, it'll

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go through your entire disk and
pull up all kinds of media
files.

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So that works pretty
straightforward.

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And it's basically...

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Basically, you have three bins,
music, movies, photos.

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You can create playlists from
them.

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is the files that it will
accept.

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Let me see.

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I think I have...

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Here, it does tell me which
files it'll accept.

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Hold on.

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mp3 windows media audio wave
file jpeg png gif mpeg1 mpeg2
divx avi version 5 plus 4 plus 5

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simple profile remember that is
x video avi simple profile dv
avi windows media video video
files

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also must all contain audio data
well so apparently there's a
quite a difference between

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avis and avis because some
really i had this huge bucket of
bit torrent downloads which

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are either mpegs or avis and
some of the avis do work on the
show center if you put it in a

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windows media video it converts
it to a vcd file you know so
it's a little bit disappointing
that

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you just don't know exactly what
is going to work or not and if
you should convert prior to

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putting it into this database

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or if it

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will do it by itself. It's very
unclear.

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Something it does have that's
pretty cool is you can

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set up a folder to be watched

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and the minute you drop

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anything into that folder,
automatically

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it will be added to the database
and then

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from the control center, the
show center

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in the living room, which has a
remote control,

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makes it nice, you can already

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a little light pops on saying
new media

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and you go to the new media menu

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it will show up and it will
play.

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Essentially when you select new
media to be played

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it's being streamed across

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my Wi-Fi network.

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So I'm going to play with it a
little bit more

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and I'm interested to see how

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Tricia, my wife, and Christina,
our daughter

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how they pick it up

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and how they use it and I'm
putting mounted

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volumes on their

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computer desktops so they can
just

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drag and drop stuff in there as
well.

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So we'll see what happens. It'll
be cool.

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Right.

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I told you that I've been
reading

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...

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That would be big quotation
marks.

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Michael Crichton's Timeline.

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The reason why I say reading

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is because I've been listening
to it on audiobook.

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I actually just finished it
yesterday afternoon

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on my drive home, sitting in
some extra traffic.

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So I even was able to finish up

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the last 25 minutes I thought

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I wouldn't be able to listen to
during my drive home.

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Great book.

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Really enjoyed it.

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14 hours worth of audio.

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And I got an email from Dave
Weiner.

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Let me just pick that up here.

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FYI, I've become a member of
audible.com

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and am reading

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Timeline now as I drive.

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He's driving across country.

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It's a very nice, if somewhat
paranoid, service.

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I guess he's referring to...

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He could be referring to the
book or to audible.com.

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Thanks for the tip in your audio
blog post.

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Next stop, St. Augustine.

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Dave.

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Okay.

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So there's something
interesting.

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I was talking about the
audiobook.

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I think what I even said is...

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Gee, wouldn't it be cool if I
could attach one of those DRM

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protected audio files, because
Audible.com uses the AAC, Apple,
DRM, can't copy me stuff.

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And if you tried to open it in
iTunes just by double clicking
it, it would then say, hey,

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you know, you want to buy this
book? Looks like Adam referred
it to you. Of course, they have
a

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number, it's DRM, so they know
that I bought it. And maybe they
could give me two bucks for
selling

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another copy, because I think it
goes for, I don't know, it goes
for at least $10. What I want to
do

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today, though, is share with you
a little piece from that book, a
monologue, which I found very

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interesting and very applicable
to perhaps the reason why we
have weblogs today. Now, if
you're

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reading this book still and
don't want to hear any parts of
it, then you should probably not
listen

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to this. It's definitely not a
spoiler, doesn't mess you up at
all about the plot or the
outcome

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of the book. But it's a
monologue by one of my friends,
and I'm going to share with you
a little

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one of the characters and he's
basically doing

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a pitch for this vision that he
has, which is irrelevant, but
listen to the theory behind

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the pitch.

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Now, of course, since this is an
AAC file, I can't open it in any
other application but

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iTunes.

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I tried to open it in QuickTime,
didn't work either.

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So I can't open it into my
recording application, so I'm
going to have to put the mic
down on

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the speaker so that I can start
up iTunes and you can listen to
this.

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This is about three minutes, but
it's a very interesting thing.

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Hi.

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He walked back and forth across
the stage.

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Today, everybody expects to be
entertained, and they expect to
be entertained all the time.

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Business meetings must be
snappy, with bullet lists and
animated graphics, so executives
aren't bored.

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Malls and stores must be
engaging, so they amuse as well
as sell us.

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Politicians must have pleasing
video personalities and tell us
only what we want to hear.

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Schools must be careful not to
bore young minds that expect the
speed and complexity of
television.

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Students must be amused,
everyone must be amused, or they
will switch.

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Switch brands, switch channels,
switch parties, switch
loyalties.

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This is the intellectual reality
of Western society at the end of
the century.

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In other centuries, human beings
wanted to be saved, or improved,
or freed, or educated.

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But in our century, they want to
be entertained.

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The great fear is not of disease
or death, but of boredom.

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A sense of time on our hands.

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a sense of nothing to do, a
sense that we are not amused.

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But where will this mania for
entertainment end?

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What will people do when they
get tired of television, when
they get tired of movies?

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We already know the answer.

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They go into participatory
activities, sports, theme parks,
amusement rides, roller
coasters,

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structured fun, planned thrills.

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And what will they do when they
tire of theme parks and planned
thrills?

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Sooner or later, the artifice
becomes too noticeable.

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They begin to realize that an
amusement park is really a kind
of jail in which you pay to be
an inmate.

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This artifice will drive them to
seek authenticity.

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Authenticity will be the
buzzword of the 21st century.

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And what is authentic?

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Anything.

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Anything that is not devised and
structured to make a profit.

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Anything that is not controlled
by control.

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corporations, anything that
exists for its own sake, that
assumes its own shape. But of
course,

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nothing in the modern world is
allowed to assume its own shape.
The modern world is the
corporate

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equivalent of a formal garden,
where everything is planted and
arranged for effect, where
nothing is

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untouched, where nothing is
authentic. Where, then, will
people turn for the rare and
desirable

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experience of authenticity? They
will turn to the past. The past
is unarguably authentic.

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The past is a world that already
existed before Disney and
Murdoch and Nissan and Sony and
IBM

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and Amazon.

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All the other shapers of the
present day. The past was here
before they were. The past rose

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and fell without their intrusion
and molding and

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selling. The past is

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real. It's authentic.

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And this will

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make the past unbelievably

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attractive.

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Well, that's

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probably about enough of that.

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And hopefully it sounded okay
through my

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air-based audio bridge.

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So I thought that was just an

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interesting bit of monologue.

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One about how people were going
to look for

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reality. And maybe that's what
weblogs

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bring if you subscribe to that

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type of vision. That weblogs

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bring a sense of reality. Or

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multiple weblogs can triangulate

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reality. And the whole

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bit about the past, who knows?

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Maybe that's what archives are
all about.

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So what else?

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um...

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iPodder update, the application
that turns your iPod into an
audio MP3 aggregator.

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So the current status is you
fire it up manually.

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It sucks in about six different
feeds and updates your iTunes.

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And if you have it, an iPod
automatically.

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I'm going to be working on the
next release where there will be
a separate text file sitting in
the iPodder folder.

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And that's going to be your
subscription file.

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So all you do is basically just
add a new line with a URL to it
to any MP3 enclosure feed with
MP3 files.

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And it'll automatically run
through that file as well.

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It'll parse it and download the
enclosures when you run the
iPodder application.

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After that, so that'll probably
be about release beta 06,

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I hope to just have some form of
installer that sets it all up
for you and runs the program at
a set interval.

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with one configuration file

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And you never hear from it
again.

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It just keeps running
automatically at the intervals
that you set.

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And I think I mentioned in the
previous show

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that it looks like some
developers out there

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are working on their own
versions.

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Some Python stuff.

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I'm looking forward to that
coming out.

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Please, make this better than I
did.

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Let's see.

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That's about it.

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Let me see.

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I've been at this for...

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How long are we going to talk?

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14 minutes?

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Okay, no song of the day.

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Besides, enough copyright
violation with that bit from the
timeline audiobook.

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But I'm going to go fill up the
server with some more content.

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See if I can now connect the
bridge on that

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so that if a new video comes in
as a torrent,

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bit torrent file,

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it's downloaded and then
automatically dropped into this
watch folder

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on the Windows PC server

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so that we can then watch it in
the living room.

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Wow.

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It's kind of like when I was a
kid.

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The RadioShack 101 projects.

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Just need to have a red wire, a
blue wire,

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and a nice long yellow.

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one and it'll all work.

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Okay, everybody, that's it.

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I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Bye.

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Bye.