Michael Castellon

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Merry Christmas, from way out here https://www.instagram.com/p/DO4GdyOEvAE/ My #Maine squeeze 🦞🇺🇸 Happy birthday to the most amazing woman in my life. Your love, laughter, and kindness make every day brighter. Here’s to celebrating you and all the joy you bring to everyone around you. https://www.instagram.com/p/DE0AEGvPk0b/ After hundreds of hours in the Texas sky, I can say this: the quiet charm of small-town airports never fades. ✈️ #flying #aopa #eaa #aviation https://www.instagram.com/p/DC-lpVgtZg9/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DBXe_dsvXQ6/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DAOPYsOPboq/

  • Are Podcasters Selling Out?

    On a long enough timeline, anything that is ever dubbed “underground” will eventually succumb to the far less cool tag “sellout.” It happened to Grunge, it happened to The Stones, and it even happened to Tarantino. It only makes sense that podcasting would be next:

    Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. announced Monday it will launch a daily four-hour show featuring podcasts, or amateur programming of digital audio files distributed over the Internet.

    The program will be produced and hosted by Adam Curry beginning May 13. Curry is a former MTV personality and co-developer of the technology, which makes it easy for Net users to download podcasts to portable music players.

    Curry will produce the show from his home in a suburb of London. It will be carried on a Sirius talk channel and “feature highlights and insights from the world of podcasting and showcase new talent and artists from around the world, including new music,” Sirius said in a written statement.

    Podcasters are abuzz about which shows will be picked for lucrative contracts with Sirius and other outlets that will likely jump onto the podcasting bandwagon. What these people don’t realize is that any content delivered over the radio, as opposed to RSS feeds on the internet to an iPod, is little more than, well, a radio broadcast. And radio broadcasts, even satellite radio broadcasts, just aren’t as cool. Radio DJs haven’t existed within the realm of hip since the early 1980s, when they too sold out and let record companies strong-arm stations into believing what was good music. Thus, the dismal state of radio today.

    It’s like when blogging became wildly popular last year. Even CNN started a blog, and within days people realized a blog on CNN is just, well, an online CNN article. The attempt to even jump on the commercialization of podcasts is unhip by most standards, unless you own one of the outlets that will profit from making podcasts available to those with not quite enough technical know-how to work an RSS feeder and want to feel like they’re listening to an actual podcast.

  • The role of technology in China’s recent anti-Japanese protests

    Rebecca MacKinnon has an interesting post today:

    Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times has now posted his excellent essay originally written for the Wall Street Journal about how the role of technology in China’s recent anti-Japanese protests. The government certainly allowed these protests to happen, and even encourages the rise of anti-foreign and especially anti-Japanese nationalism in Chinese cyberspace as a way of deflecting people’s frustrations away from their own government. Nonetheless, Xiao believes that the internet and wireless technology that made these protests possible will ultimately do more to break down the Communist Party’s control – despite all the impressive efforts to control and filter what Chinese people can see and do on the internet.

  • Barry Bonds’ 700th Home Run Ball for Sale…Again

    Barry Bonds’ 700th home run ball is once again up for sale:

    An unidentified bidder first purchased the ball for more than $804,000 through Overstock.com after it was caught by a fan at SBC Park last Sept. 17.

    However, the consignors of the upcoming auction have conservatively estimated the ball will sell for for between $100,000 and $200,000, ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell reports.

    Ouch.

  • My 20-gigabyte fourth generation iPod


    This is my 20-gigabyte fourth generation iPod.     I have almost 2000 songs on it, and I use it to store and transport every digital picture and electronic document I own, including my portfolio and my website.

    It works seamlessly between my notebook PC, which runs WinXP, and my Mac-Mini, which runs Mac OSX Tiger.

    I wished it looked as cool in its protective case as it does out of its protective case.

    Here are some pictures of iPods all around the world.

  • May 8, 2005

    Still trying to get caught up on end-of-the-semester grading. Shouldn’t be hard to get caught up on time.

    Two out of three of my classes are now complete. Two As so far. Let’s see if I can go for the trifecta and ace this semester, properly closing my last semester of graduate school.

    Spent lots of time today reflecting on Mom, and I hope you did, also.

    Found this article online:

    Jennifer Wilbanks’ extravagant wedding plans now appear to be toast.

    So perhaps it’s appropriate that a New Jersey man chose a piece of toasted Wonder Bread as a canvas for the runaway bride’s portrait, now selling for more than $16,000 on the auction Web site eBay.

    While 48-year-old Perry Lonzello reportedly carved the Georgia bride’s likeness into the toast and posted it as a joke, his artwork has been making some serious bread. Lonzello, who has been keeping a log of the resulting toast frenzy on the eBay listing, said he plans to donate the money to charity.

    As of noon Pacific Time Saturday, 116 bids had been made on the toast, with a top bid of $16,100. The week-long auction started at $1 and closes Sunday morning.

    Now that the runaway bride has apologized, I wonder if we can get the media to apologize for wasting two weeks of our lives by covering the debacle.

  • Tony Pierce reflecting on the rejection of his graduate school application

    Tony Pierce reflecting on the rejection of his graduate school application and the termination of his employment at the E! Channel:

    i am a chicago cub fan. i have dealt with rejection and misery and sadness my whole life. just the other day the cubs were up with two games left to play with wood and prior on the mound and they figured out a way to blow the lead and lose the playoffs to the team that ended up winning the world series. this is nothing compared to that.

    Amen.

  • May 5, 2005

    Spending a good part of this week getting caught up grading freshman comp papers. Also, I only have two more items to complete before I am completely finished with my Masters — unless I made a terrible mistake and forgot to turn something in. I will be completely finished this time next week, and the job hunt will formally begin.

    I upgraded my iPod from a third generation 15 gigabyte to a 4th generation 20 gigabyte thanks to eBay. Pictures will likely be posted soon.

    I was in touch with Beth Siron today, a TTU MATC grad who is now involved with the Glen Canyon Institute. I’m looking forward to doing some documentation work for the organization.

    Found this article courtesy of the University of Texas student paper:

    Incessant heckling and shouting culminated in an arrest Tuesday night during a speech by Ann Coulter, an extreme right-wing pundit, at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

    Shouts became so pervasive during the question-and-answer session that Coulter informed the organizers she would no longer take questions if the hecklers were not silenced. For a time, the shouts were considerably lessened, until the issue of gay marriage was broached.

    Read the rest on your own for the gruesome details. I’m just surprised people actually pay Coulter $30,000 to “lecture.”

  • Tiger Notes

    I made it to the university computer retailer 5 minutes before they closed to pick up a new copy of Mac OSX Tiger. The stayed open until 7pm tonight in order to meet demand for customers who insisted on picking up a copy of the OS on its launch date. So far I’m pretty impressed, but I wouldn’t be if I had to pay the $129 retail price (I was able to nab it for $69 on an education discount). Spotlight is by far the best feature, and will be particularly useful once I start transferring and backing up a lot of files from my notebook to my Mac-Mini.

    AppleInsider has some interesting notes on both Tiger and iWork:

    Based on an analysis of data and information, we believe Apple in the US has shipped upwards of a quarter million retail copies of Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” to its retail stores and Apple authorized resellers in preparation for tonight’s Tiger launch event.

    Sources close to the company said the average Apple retail store is expecting to have 1000 copies of Tiger on hand, while flagship locations, such as the company’s SoHo store in Manhattan, have reportedly been stocked with 5000 copies. Additionally, stores are receiving a hundred or so Tiger drop-in kits for preexisting Apple desktop computers in inventory and a few dozen mini drop-in kits for existing Mac minis.

    …

    Dare we say it, but Microsoft will love it — iWork sales have become so sluggish that Apple is literally inventing ways to pull sales of the product out of the doldrums.

    After an initial modest response, sales of the software have been described as nothing short of “horrible.” Most retail stores AppleInsider spoke to conceded to only moving a handful of copies each week, if that.

    I noticed that Apple included a demo version of iWork alongside my copy of Tiger. I feel more reluctant to install it now, though.