Excellent. Kevin Kelly: Cool Tools

Why specs matter (Dive Into Mark): ” Most developers are morons, and the rest are assholes.”

Railroad “is a standards-based repository for large binary files such as digital media, along with their metadata. It is designed to be easy to integrate with content management systems and other client software. Railroad uses the industry-standard Apache HTTP server. It uses Apache’s mod_dav and mod_python, and metadata is stored in a PostgreSQL database.”

Woohoo! I just called Senators Frist and Leahy, and did my part for democracy! I have SAVED THE REPUBL…um…ok. Bugged some senators. Whatever. I do encourage you to check out savebetamax.org, however.

A couple of projects I haven’t mentioned before:

Python Director: a pure-python TCP load balancer. It takes inbound TCP connections and connects them to one of a number of backend servers.

PyWebLog: Not a project, per se, but a great comparison of Python web frameworks. Basically, take a problem, and code in up in different frameworks, to see what’s what. And blog about it, so that we can follow along from the stands. Great job…thanks!

Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code either finally has a website, or more likely, I finally found it. You can get his audio blog MP3s here directly…Daily Source Code. His “regular”/text weblog is still located at live.curry.com.

The Guardian: “Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement.”

Bizarre. But cool.

Found a couple of new audioblogs that I’m liking. Adam Curry (formerly of MTV) now lives in Amsterdam, and does a good blog. Lately, he’s also been doing an audioblog as well (link is to a specific date…I can’t find a audioblog-only list on his site.)

From Adam’s site, I bumped into another good blogsite, Evil Genius Chronicles (Dave Slusher). Seems interesting, and he’s also started audioblogging. I like his topics…cool guy. And he’s pretty funny.

This stuff rocks. I have a couple of portable players, depending on situation. I have a iPaq 1945, with a 256MB SD card…perfect for tons of audio and video. I’m presently re-watching XFiles from DVD ripped to about 100MB 320×240 46k audio. Watches like a champ on the iPaq. Still plenty of space for audio, too. I usually have a couple of hours of audioblogs, IT Conversations, etc. on there as well. Sometimes even music if I’m in the mood!

I also have a tres cheap ($30) CF card only player, and an old 64MB CF card. This is great for running and such…the player is limited (no FF/RW within a given file, for example, just “previous/next”…and no ID3 title info)…but not something that I find a big deal. (More along the lines of “whooptie freakin doo”, actually). I dump something (audioblog, some music) onto the CF card before I leave, and I’m ready to go.

After some initial fascination with the video playing, I’m actually spending more time with the audio stuff. The blogs and interviews are timely and interesting, and I get some good points of view. Recommended.

For you political junkies that haven’t seen it yet: Electoral-Vote.com

Into Tomorrow: Ouch. Thumbs down. Three thumbs down, if I had them. They didn’t really talk about ANYTHING (oh…except the Wifi-enabled surfboard…I forgot about that! *sigh*), and the technical level was…um…well, wasn’t. Nothing wrong with this for some folks, I’m sure, but not my cup of tea.

Computer America: Not much different. Pass. I don’t need to be told how cool the new “iPod KILLERS” are going to be.

On the bright side, a new Gillmor Gang is out from IT Conversations.