Month: October 2005

incentive to get WWdN back into shape

Posted on By Wil

I don’t care about rankings at all, because that sort of thing really only matters for marketing and ad sales, neither of which are particularly important to me right now.

But I laugh out loud whenever The Chicago Sun-Times mentions me, and whatever my Technorati rank currently is, in their Sunday paper.

To wit:

News Item: Wil Wheaton Dot Net www.wilwheaton.net,
ranked by the number of sources that link to it, falls from the 16th
most important blog in the world to an all-time-low 37th most important
blog in the world.

News Item: Approval rating for President Bush falls to an all-time-low 39 percent.

I think I read somewhere that Technorati has some new ranking algorithm that includes frequency of posts, in addition to the number of sources that link a particular site, so it’s no surprise that WWdN has dropped so much, since I haven’t been posting there for the last twenty days or so.

 But now I have a real incentive to get WWdN fixed, so I can put as much distance as possible between myself and Commander Kookoo Bananas!

problems with the iTunes Music Store?

Posted on By Wil

As I noted earlier this week at the SG Newswire, Apple has updated just about everything, including a new version of iTunes, where they’re offering sales of ABC shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives.

Since I upgraded to iTunes 6, I’ve noticed lots of problems with the iTunes Music Store. I’ve purchased three albums this week, and on two of them, I got an error that "We could not complete your request. An unknown error occurred (502)" (thanks for that useful error message, guys!) which stopped my download. Earlier this week, I waited a few minutes, checked for purchased music, and the download picked up where it left off.

However,today I purchased The Mirror Conspiracy from Thievery Corporation (holy shit is it a great album) and the same thing happened . . . but this time, when I checked for purchased music, it said I had everything I’d paid for, which is wrong, because one of the songs is nowhere to be found on my machine. It’s probably due to the insane load on their servers right now, and
I’m going to contact customer support and see if they can help me.

I read at the Unofficial Apple Weblog that an episode of Lost was – har- lost, but when he was able to get his file later on. I have not been so lucky. Has anyone else had problems like this?

Announcing the first WWdN poker tourney

Posted on By Wil

After playing tournaments every day for almost a month, and then hitting a terrible losing streak, I just wanted to walk away from poker for a bit. It’s been a nice break, but I’ve recently started to get the itch to play again.

Anne and I went to Vegas yesterday for the opening of the new Blue Man Group show at Venetian (full review is coming soon — short review: it’s awesome). We stayed at Mirage, and though I was more interested in sitting with my wife than sitting at a poker table, walking past the poker room reminded me of how much I miss the damn game.

So, I think I’ll get back on the horse with a WWdN semi-private tournament, this Friday afternoon. It’s just a $10+1 buy-in, so it’s affordable for most people. To come and play with me and other WWdN readers, sign up for PokerStars and then when you log in, go to Tourneys -> Private -> WWdN: Where’s My Burrito? Invitational, or you can just search for tournament number 13722477. The tournament will happen on Friday the 14th at 4:00PM EST. I know this is a little early for West Coast players, but it should make it easier for international players to join us. The password is "monkey."

In easy-to-cut-and-paste-into-your-own-blog form:

What: WWdN Where’s My Burrito? Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Friday, October 14th. 4:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 13722477
Buy-in: $10+1

This tournament is open to anyone who reads WWdN or WWdN:IE, or who happens to know that the password is monkey. 🙂

It should be fun, a nice warm-up to the PokerStars Blogger Tourney, and if enough people show up (and enjoy it, of course) I will make it a weekly event, with the time (and buy-in) rotating to accomodate everyone who wants to play. As an added incentive, I’ll name the next tournament after the player who knocks me out.

I know two days is short notice, but I hope lots of you can make it. I’ll be sure to give more notice for future tourneys.

I hope to see you there!

open the box

Posted on By Wil

Pandora.com is an  incredible site that helps you discover new music. You tell it
the title of a song or name of an artist, and it will create a station
for you, starting from that selection. Pandora then plays a song from a similar artist that it thinks you’ll like, as it builds a custom net.radio station for you. The Long Tail Blog says,

"[T]hey
determine similarity not by what other people listen to but what their
small army of musicologists identify as related traits in the music
itself. You’ll get delightful stuff you never would have thought of."

I started with Soul coughing, discovered a band called
Gerling, heard an old TMBG song I’d somehow managed to never hear
over the years, and eventually heard a new band called The One AM Radio (which I LOVE, and never would have found on my own, which is the whole point of Pandora.) If you really like a band, there are links to Amazon or iTunes so you can buy the album, or explore more of their stuff on your own.

Pandora
gives you ten hours of free listening to try it out, and offers a year of service for thirty-six bucks. If pandora can stay honest, and keep
the music industry’s pay-for-play agenda out of the way, it could be an
amazing service.

(Thanks, Carsten!)

turn the page

Posted on By Wil

Via Slashdot, I saw that the British Library has an online exhibit of some amazing works of literature, including manuscripts in the authors’ original hand, like Leonardo DaVinci, and Lewis Carroll. There are flash and non-flash interfaces, to serve users of varying bandwidths and preferences, and the images are simply amazing.

This is one of the greatest advantages of living in these times: I would almost certainly never get a chance to see any of these works in person, but The Internets bring them right into my home.

If you like this exhibit, you’ll probably like WikiSource and Project Gutenberg too.