I like iTunes. I like Winamp. I use both. But the thing that kills me about iTunes is the fact that you can’t have its mini-player “Always on top” like you can with Winamp. iTunesOnTop takes care of that.

Wow! Thanks to Joseph of Make-Believe.org, I am using Sauce Reader 1.3 to post this. It seems there’s a small wave of new “blog this” type tools just now arriving. Scoble has been talking about his new “Magic Folder” (OutlookMT) from Kunal. And now Sauce Reader’s latest upgrade includes this feature. This brings me to another point: I probably need to rewrite my aggregator review now that I’m not using RSSReader as my default. Maybe I’ll get to that today.

I’m watching Something’s Gotta Give with my wife and folks. Let’s just say I’m glad I grabbed my mom’s laptop before we started the movie. It’s the worst one I’ve seen this year! Maybe in the last few years! Seriously horrible! Whee!

After many annoying popups from AIM I actually looked at them and one sparked my interest. A seinfeld and superman webisode! I had no idea what a was, or have any idea what it is now, but what could be better than Jerry Seinfeld and Superman in one togethor? After watching it I thought that it was pretty funny and you might too. Maybe.

Dr. Suess drew political cartoons?

RSS. You’ve probably heard of it. Maybe you haven’t. But it is “The Thing” on the Internet today - and has been for sometime among most bloggers.

If you’re unfamiliar the concept works like this. Remember when “content delivery straight to your desktop” was the big wave? I think it was around 1997. The latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape both had “channels.” The idea was great, but it didn’t take off and it wasn’t applied well. Today, the concept has been much refined as it has evolved into RSS and Atom.

I have been reading news feeds for quite a while. They’re the quickest way to sift through many web pages in minutes. Along the way, you’ll find yourself using your RSS reader first and then your browser to read sites you regularly frequent. With my RSS reader, I can tell at a glance if some of the sites I visit often have been updated, which saves me from checking on four or five at once.

The difficulty I’ve had is that I can’t ever decide and stick to a specific reader. I find little frustrations with one and turn to another too frequently. FeedReader seemed occasionally unstable. NewsGator gave Outlook problems occasionally. The otherwise superb FeedDemon doesn’t (to my knowledge) allow a complete “at a glance” view of all your feeds listed on the left pane, and instead forces you to pick a category. All the web-based RSS readers I’ve tried (including AmphetaDesk, WinRSS) seem too clunky to me.

SharpReader, , NewzCrawler, RSSBandit, and RSSReader are pretty similar upon first glance. Some are free, some are shareware, some are better than others. All depend on .NET.

FeedDemon, to me, is so close to being perfect, it’s just painful. The brilliant idea of creating a well laid out - and easily styled “newspaper page” of a group of feeds is very appealing. I was so impressed with it that I didn’t mind the concept’s shortcomings until after the novelty wore off. The problem with this wonderful feature is that some feeds should be given the flexibility to take up more or less space on these newspaper pages. The ability to customize this to a greater degree by “prioritizing” feeds within the layout page would make it very practical. With this feature taken to the full extent, you have the potential of building your own version of Google News. Without it, the feature is merely a unique idea.

Do I sound picky? I am when it comes to applications that I use on a daily basis.

But I think I have finally settled on one RSS aggregator: RSSReader. At least I’ve stuck with it longer than any of the others I’ve used!

The only two features I would add to it would be FeedDemon’s “newspaper” concept and tabbed browsing windows - and I can live without these for now.

I might end up moving to FeedDemon, but for getting a quick glance through a ton of information, RSSReader does it quickly, simply, and elegantly. It has the best import/export feature of any of the readers I’ve used, which is great since any day I use at least four different computers. Plus, it’s 100% freeware.

To Enjoy RSS on RSSReader:

If you haven’t already, install Microsoft’s .NET Framework(required prior to installation of RSSReader)

Download and install RSSReader

And to get you started, you can import a short sampling of my list of RSS feeds I frequent.

Will I stick with RSSReader forever? Maybe not. I could see myself shelling out the 30 bucks for FeedDemon if it progresses a little more in the areas I described, as I’d expect it to. But until then, RSSReader gets the job done. And done well.

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For more information on RSS Readers, I recommend this wiki, which gives very quick information on a number of RSS Readers, as well as links.

If RSS is a part of your Internet reading, what do you use? I am still in search of the best and most flexible

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(By the way, I also like Steven Garrity’s idea of using the new web-based kinja as a simple public weblog aggregator. With a little more customizable design, I think it would function enjoyably in this way.)

Sheesh. I am all about customization today!

AMD has been sneaking around. They don’t want to get caught. But ExtremeTech has caught them! Ha! And boy, have they caught them!

It seems AMD was being so sneaky they actually were described as doing something “quietly” in a headline. That’s impressive sneakfulness, if you ask me.

See here: “AMD Quietly Launches Athlon64 2800+”

I want to see more headlines containing the word quietly:

“Mice Quietly Sneak Into Kitchen For Some Cheese”

Or maybe… more headlines using the phrase “Quietly Launches”:

“North Korea Quietly Launches Nuclear Missiles”

“McDonald’s Quietly Launches Fat People”

“Batman Quietly Launches Robin from Front Seat of Batmobile on Accident”

Did anyone else notice the new job openings at Google? I can’t tell if this is an April Fools day joke or not. It just seems too good to be true.

Being a warm and beautiful spring-ish day, I decided this afternoon to go for a walk out in the desert behind the church (where I work). For those of you who aren’t familiar, washington state does indeed have a desert! No, seriously. No April Fool’s joke! (See illustrated map.)

There are those who think desert country is not much to look at, but having made my home in the low desert of Eastern Washington for most of my life, I greatly appreciate both its beauty and its climate. I am actually afraid of precipitation. I had friends in college from Seattle who teased me when it would just sprinkle because I always had to have a rain jacket.

Rain confuses me. It’s a little like being repeatedly smacked in the face, very lightly. At first, it’s cute. And then you just want it to STOP! Luckily, here when it rains, it’s usually at night, so I don’t have to yell at the sky out loud. But sometimes I do anyway.

Anyway, I was out walking in the middle of the wonderful little nameless desert hill in South Richland and I stumbled upon some not so deserty things. The first being that little dandelion that seemed to just poke some color defiantly into the brown nose of the desert. This particular little plant could be seen from a great distance and I did not spot any others like it nearby. I do have to admit, I was a little confused about how, exactly, there came to be a single dandelion growing in the middle of this desert without another one in sight!

Aha! That’s where that miniature flower garden came from! I believe the old saying is “if you irrigate, they will come.” Meaning dandelions. These two (the sprinkler and the dandelion) must just be some of the first residents of what is currently quite “unsettled” land.

Dandelions really are a funny sort of thing. My dad and practically every other person who has a lawn hates them with a deep passion. I personally don’t get it. I think a couple of them kind of spice up a boring green lawn. But that doesn’t seem to be concensus among lawn wranglers.

And this? A strip of cut sod - over a half a mile from any house or lawn! We have some pretty strong winds in the Tri-Cities, but I would count myself amazed if this got so far into the desert by gusts alone! Maybe it followed the sprinkler out here!

Have you ever seen a sod farm? They’re nearly the craziest sights imaginable. It’s like you’re staring at acres and acres of beautiful parks. But they’re really just Future Lawns of Suburban Families. It’s a little troubling that we have to have people literally farm our grass before it gets to our house. I wonder if they call it a grass “nursery” just after they’ve planted it.

Ah, spring… When birds turn to making nests… out of leaves, twigs, brush, caution tape, and an orange plastic bin. Sigh. You may have heard before, “The solution to pollution is dilution.” Interesting concept, but dead wrong. The solution to pollution is actually to have birds build nests out of it! Hmm… Where’s Woodsy the Owl when you need his spokespersonry? Spokespersonhood? Spokespersonity? Spocompton?

Yes, it was a little troubling to see such a great deal of litter so far out into the desert. But what was very disturbing to me was this. A Bruchi’s napkin discarded. First, who on earth would do something so horrible as to discard their napkin to have it blow away into the desert? And second, WHY DIDN’T THEY PUT THEIR NAPKIN IN THEIR LAP?

(By the way, can you tell I once again have access to a professional digital camera? Now, if only I knew how it worked…)

I would have waited until midnight to post this, but I like to sleep. After posting my april fools day joke i felt obligated to fix the second edition of one hour news. So I did! But not only did i stop there, I also fixed the network problems that have been plaguing our home network basically since we have gotten it. I feel like such a genuis! And an idiot to because I didn’t fix it earlier. Oh well, to the victor goes the spoils. Which is a great quote or something, buthas no reasonable application here in this post at all.

“Mathcaddy: One Hour News: Session 2″