videopress announcement

wordpress just announced videopress, a plugin that allows HD streaming video to be embedded in blog’s. HD streaming video -true HD streaming video- has been somewhat of the holy grail for internet content distribution. One of the few that have seemed to have done it right is abc.com. Custom applet, dedicated servers and network mean that it is a very costly proposition; definitely out of the reach of the common man (at this point in time, 2009 A.D.)

I thought finally prayers had been answered, but alas, the videopress HD stream sputtered and stuttered, although it was in glorious HD 720p. Lovely as it was, totally unwatchable. The SD stream played nicely, however. It is a paid upgrade, IIRC on the order of $60/year, but youtube and vimeo have that for free.

Maybe a bit of code tweaking on videopress’ part will make HD a reality, though I have a strong feeling that it is the omnipresent flash engine that is causing the hiccough (hiccup for the dictionaryless).

I will wait in the wings with bated breath (until my ADHD draws me elsewh

SQUIRELL!

on the hunt for a shopping cart

Just let me say this. I hate paypal. I abhor their apathy toward their users and detest their ubiquity on the internet that almost forces one to deal in their cyber monopoly.

Detested not for their success, but because that success has kept their eyes on the general ledger and on tidy excel spreadsheets earmarked for the CFO and out of the emails from users who have been shorted on internet deals. They just don’t give a fcuk as long as they get their 3% from each side. Guffaw.

So I’m off to wean myself from this bloated pig of convenience and configure a proper shopping cart system ala my new favorite open source platform, WP. Not that I am looking forward to getting charged fees from the credit card companies, either, but they are the lesser of two evils.

Neat Receipts database failure

Dodged a minor bullet on this one. My NeatReceipts application running on XP would not load. I had a backup database that was about a month and half old, just in case I had to reinstall or format the computer.

Shouldawouldacoulda backed up more recently.

My initial google-age of the problem was hair loss inducing; snippets of reformatting and registry searching and replacing raised my blood pressure past its usual 115 over 70.

Luckily, some smart chap figured out that if you allow the computer to create space by compressing files, the database files that SQL needs are rendered useless (for all intents and purposes). The elegantly simple solution was to uncompress them and voila! the NeatREceipts application worked once again.

And then I backed up today.