Akeem McLennon

Improving Organization

I’ve been looking through AudioBiblio, Blue Laguna, and RealityLapse and I think some pages should be organized better.

In AudioBiblio’s case, I’m thinking that to home page (after you login) should be improved to include more features of the site.  This site has a lot to offer and I’m adding new features all the time, but they might get lost if people don’t have time to explore (and the average person doesn’t).  I’m also moving in the direction of including more icons and pictures all over the site to make it more visually appealing.

The navigation bar on BlueLaguna has become extremely long.  I’m thinking of doing alphabetical menu items, but that can make that area too short in comparison to the content.  I’m open to any suggestions, but this might be an opportunity to include some new features as well to fill up that space.

Last, but not least, RealityLapse also faces the same navigation issue as BlueLaguna.  However, this issue spans across many pages.  I’ve recently beefed up the music section, but that has also meant that the information pages for each anime has become cluttered with links.  The list on the “Full Episodes” page has also grown extremely long.  Personally, I like having one big page with all the downloadable anime series, but this can lead to a lot of pointless scrolling and searching through relatively small text.  The blue subnavigation already organizes anime alphabetically, but I think the best solution will be to add additional filters that change which anime gets displayed.  This will also be a good place to integrate the tags I assigned to most of the anime a while ago.

Posted in Audio Biblio, BlueLaguna[.net], Reality Lapse, Web Development | 1 Comment »

Trying to decide on a cellphone

I’ll be heading off to Rice University this fall and I’ve been trying to decide on a cell phone provider.  At the moment I have a PDA phone running Windows Mobile which I use to keep organized and synchronize all my email and contacts with my server.  Although this works fine, my phone is kinda bulky and Verizon doesn’t really have any good smart phones.  Right now I’m on a family plan, but the contract on my line has expired to I’m free to move to a new provider.

So far Sprint is looking the best.  They’re supposed to come out with a new phone around September called the HTC Touch Pro that seems to be exactly what I’m looking for.  They’re also coming out with this device that uses your internet connection to create a miniature cellphone tower with unlimited minutes called the Airave.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Why Your Printer Can Be Accused of Piracy

As many people are aware, the movie and record industries have been suing people who share music and videos through peer to peer services.  In mosts cases, they may send what is called a DMCA Notice to warn someone to stop sharing before that happens.  However, according to a new study from the University of Washington, the technology these industries use to detect “copyright violators”can produce a lot of false alarms.  These systems don’t necessarily identify what the user is sharing, but simply identify the fact that they are sharing something.  In some cases, the test machines weren’t even sharing anything at all, but only had BitTorrent clients open.  Although BitTorrent can be used for filesharing, it is also used for legitimate uses such as NASA’s Visibleed project. These detection systems are also very vulnerable to spoofing, which means people can easily be framed from file sharing.  The study also shows that certain inanimate objects such as laser printers connected to the network can also be falsely accused of illegal activity.  In this case, the printers were accused of downloading copies of Iron Man and the latest Indiana Jones movie.

Posted in Other | 2 Comments »

My new bike

Amidst rising gas prices, I have decided that it was time for me to invest in a bicycle.  I originally planned on buying one from Walmart, but their quality didn’t seem very good so I ended up getting a dual suspension mountain bike from Target.  At $89, it was only $20 more than a tank of gas would’ve cost me.  At first I was expecting to fall down a bit since I haven’t ridden a bike since I was 8, but so far everything has been great.  Apparently what I’ve heard was right: You never forget how to ride a bike.  However, I still don’t fully understand the gear system that seems to be on most mountain bikes nowadays.  Regardless, I have been enjoying my bike rides to a from lunch (about two miles each way).  I recommend buying a bike for anyone else trying to save money on gas.

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Music & Manga

It has been quite a while since I’ve done anything with the music or manga sections on RealityLapse.  However, I’m definitely going to work on them in the next coming weeks.  First I’ll be updating the manga section, which hasn’t really been working for a while.  Honestly, the server it was hosted on stopped working and I was so frustrated with it that I just decided it wasn’t worth fixing at the time.  Within the next week, I’m going to be moving all the manga (over 80gb) to a new server while adding new titles and chapters.  Once that’s done, I’ll be working on adding more soundtracks to the music section.

Posted in Reality Lapse | 2 Comments »

It’s a Panda eat Panda World Out There

When I was younger, I used to be obsessed with was then called the WWF (World Wrestling Federation).  However, due to disputes with the World Wildlife Federation, they had to change their name to WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).  Someone recently sent this picture to me and I thought it was funny.

Posted in Other | No Comments »

SONY/BMG’s Digital Paranoia

As we’re all probably aware, the record industry has been generally reluctant to sell music online.  I can’t say that I can completely blame them with the onset of Napster and other file sharing services, but they’ve been making progress.  When iTunes and most other music stores got started, they sold music that used Digital Rights Management (DRM) software.  Essentially, this was intended to prevent filesharing by limiting the number of computers it could be played on.  However, unlike mp3s, DRM music files came with many annoying compatibility issues and headaches that discouraged people from buying legal downloads.  Fortunately, the record companies began to realize this and started offering mp3s through sites like AmazonMp3.com.

Among the major record companies, Sony/BMG was the last to make the switch to “unprotected” music.  More recently however, they seem to be notoriously hostile toward any form of streaming music.  In addition to various lawsuits, I have recently noticed a condition of their recent partnership with Youtube.  Most videos from Youtube can be embedded on blogs or other websites.  However, this has been disabled for music videos based on songs owned by Sony/BMG.  To my knowledge, none of the other major record companies do this.  In fact, many artists embed Youtube videos on their own websites.  Hopefully, Sony is only holding out once again like they did with mp3s, but a less people have complained about embedding videos so I’m not very optimistic about.  Recently, I have also tried to get streaming licenses from them for AudioBiblio, but that has been a bit of a challenge.  EMI on the other hand doesn’t have a problem with this.  I’m still waiting on responses from the other two.

Posted in Music | No Comments »

Favorite Icons

Have you ever notice that sometimes websites have a little icon by the address bar?  Those are called favorite icons.  Recently I changed Reality Lapse’s favorite icon to reflect the new logo that has been on the site for quite some time.  In order to do this, I used Dynamic Drive’s Favicon Generator to generate an icon file.  Then, I just uploaded favicon.ico to the root folder for RealityLapse.com.  Most modern browser just look for the file there.  For example, you can find it at http://www.realitylapse.com/favicon.ico

Posted in Web Development | 3 Comments »

My laptop’s back!

I finally have my laptop back after sending it to HP to repair a problem I was having with my WiFi. In case you’re wondering, it’s an HP Pavilion that I originally bought because it was only $700. However, I’d recommend it to anyone who’s looking to buy a new laptop and it seems to be fairly common as well. Most people don’t bang their laptops up like I do mine so you probably won’t have to repair it like I did, but it was under warranty anyway so I didn’t pay anything. Now that I have it back, I can begin working on some stuff that required a few files that were stored on there.

//Edit: Ha ha, now it says “Compaq” every time I turn it on.

Posted in Other | 1 Comment »

Horrible Band Name, Good Indie Music

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of indie music on the radio.  If you don’t know what Indie music is, it refers to songs by artists who haven’t been signed to major labels and are therefore less mainstream.  Sometimes I wonder why some of these people aren’t more popular, but in other cases it’s painfully obvious why their success will always be limited.  For example, the song Must Be the Moon has a nice funky and techno sound to it.  However, it’s made by a band called “!!!” (pronounced chk,chk,chk).   Don’t get me wrong, I like some of their music, but this is probably the most retarded name I’ve ever heard for a band.  Try searching for “!!!” on Google or any search engine for that matter.  It won’t work.  When musicians make decisions like this they’re essentially shooting themselves in the foot because nobody can ever find them.  However, you should check them out never the less and maybe buy the song if you like it.  This was also annoying slightly annoying since it wasn’t on AmazonMp3.com, my music store of choice, but at least they have digitial downloads.

Tags: indie
Posted in Music | 2 Comments »