New Domain Names

Vanity domain names seem to be the current fad. Apparently .coms are no longer cool in the web world. I’ve been debating a move from mikeschepker.com for a long time. Since the title of the blog is piece of shep it would make sense to move it to pieceofshep.com. Now I’m thinking of something entirely different. To go with the trend, maybe I should change the title of my blog and go with the domain I just purchased, shepis.me. The title of the new blog would obviously be shep is me. I don’t know yet. I also purchased imshep.com. Right now all these domains point to mikeschepker.com. Any thoughts? Should I move to pieceofshep.com or shepis.me or keep the site at mikeschepker.com?

My iPhone

I’ve only had my iPhone for a day and I am in love with it. I love being able to get on wifi networks on my phone, having a full html browser, the applications. To be honest, while the phone is great, I don’t know if I’d ever buy it if it didn’t allow 3rd party applications. That’s what makes the iPhone truly great. I love being able to be in contact with people anywhere, whether it be email, IM, twitter, or whatever.

This is my home screen on the iPhone

This is my home screen on the iPhone

The email on the phone is fantastic and looks just like it does in Outlook. Now, if our work webserver goes down, I can be notified right away if I’m not at the computer. Twinkle is great for a Twitter client. I tried Twitterific, but whenever it would launch it would crash right away. Probably my favorite has-some-use app has to be Shazam. You let it “listen” to part of a song and it will tell you what song it is. That should come in handy whenever I’m in the car and don’t know the song.

Another cool app, and this one cost, is the MLB At Bat. When I bought it I thought I was just getting

The second screen of my iPhone

The second screen of my iPhone

the box scores and the Who’s On stuff, but no. They did more than that. They update the games with video highlights as they are going on, so you can watch the highlights of the game. And the video quality is amazing. Other great apps that I’ve tried are Facebook, Last.fm, The New York Times, and Google. The Google one is a little pointless because you can get to all their stuff via the Safari web browser. It is kind of nice though because it is a quicker way to get to those things. All in all I’m extremely happy with the phone thus far. And I’ve not even used it to watch movies or listen to music yet. It was a great purchase and I can’t wait to see what other cool apps come out for it.

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Last.fm Makeover

In case you haven’t noticed, Last.fm has received a makeover. The new site looks fantastic compared to the old one. It probably has to be one of the best site redesigns by a popular website that I’ve ever seen. The best part about the redesign is the user profile page. If you look at mine, you can see how clean the new design looks. I love how it has thumbnails of the artists (or album covers) next to the recently played songs. The images for the artists in the user’s library are excellent as well.

Last.fm displaying artists I\'ve played (click to enlarge)

Last.fm displaying artists I've played (click to enlarge)

Notice how nice and clean they look. They charts are now ajax-ified and are quite nice. The color scheme of the site is much easier on the eyes. They managed to create a new site that totally changes the look but still feels familiar. It goes to show you can have a complete redesign without losing your identity. Overall, it is a really successful redesign. Maybe MySpace and Facebook should take note. Much props to the design team at Last.fm.

Computer Frustrations

I’ve been really frustrated with my Windows Vista box. When I first got the machine, last summer, I loved Vista. Now, with each day, I tend to loathe it more and more. This is due to many frustrations I have with it.

Things seem to freeze all the time. Whether it’s Internet Explorer (yes, I use it to check the compatibility of websites I work on), Windows Explorer, Windows Sidebar, or pretty much anything else. I don’t run a lot of programs at once and have 2gb of RAM (which Windows while idling uses about 44% of) and these things still freeze.

Things just don’t work. Windows Media Center is a piece of crap and can’t play DVDs without freezing or taking forever to load. I went to burn a cd this morning using Nero and clicked “Burn” forgetting to put in the cd. No problem, Nero notified me and I put in the blank disc. What’s that? Windows decided to drop the drive altogether? Nice. So then I had to reboot the machine so it would pick up drive. All to burn the cd.

Another factor weighs in on my continuing hatred for Vista. My MacBook. While I do find some faults with OSX, for the most part, it’s a good OS. It’s fast on my MacBook, there’s good software, and the look and feel is great. And I never run into any of the problems I run into on Windows. My next desktop computer is going to be a Mac. Too bad that won’t be for a while.

I could install Linux on it, which I do have Ubuntu installed via Wubi, but I don’t want to have to do a lot of work to get something to just work. I don’t want to go around the bend to get my ATI card to work to it’s full potential all while sacrificing other aspects of an environment I like (If I want to use the ATI drivers for desktop effects I can’t play games or have a screensaver because the screen flickers while doing those things). Too bad OSX won’t work on PC hardware (without mass amounts of hackery).

Wisdom Teeth

Yesterday I had my wisdom teeth removed.  The procedure went by really quick and I didn’t feel much pain. They hooked up the IV of wonderful drugs and about 15 seconds later I began to get dizzy then I fell asleep.  I woke up a couple times in the 35 minutes I was out and felt them doing things in my mouth and it hurt a little, but by the time they were done and I woke up that pain was just a distant memory.  My jaw and gums are still sore today but it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.  The vicodin they prescribed makes me extremely sleepy.  I’d say the worst part so far has been how swollen my face has been and how thirsty I have been.  I hope the rest of my recovery goes just as well as the past day has and really hope I don’t get dry sockets.

In other news, I’m glad I didn’t camp out for an iPhone.  The ATT store that I would have camped out at only had 20 to sell on release day.  I went to the store today and they ordered me one.  It is supposed to be in in 7-10 days.  We’ll see how that holds up, but at least I should be getting one soon.  I’m excited about that.