Sage

I stumbled across a Firefox plugin for something called Sage yesterday. Sage is an extension that loads your RSS feeds right into one of your Firefox tabs. I figured I’d try it out and see if I could further centralize all the blogs I read into one application.

Unfortunately, I found Sage to be less useful and less user-friendly than Thunderbird for reading RSS feeds. Sage has the ability to automatically find RSS feeds in any webpage. You’d think this would be a good thing because it would eliminate the manual search-and-enter method of getting your feeds into your reader. The only problem is that Sage does not always find the available feeds, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no easy way to manually enter those feeds into Sage yourself. It’s either auto-detect or nothing at all.

The other thing about Sage that I dislike is that it doesn’t archive past blog posts, unlike Thunderbird, which keeps a running archive of every article it has ever downloaded. This makes it very difficult to go back to one of my favorite sites and browse through the history to find a particular article that I want to re-read, link to, or write about.

So, while Sage sounds like a good idea, it gets two thumbs down from me. To date, I still haven’t found a feedreader that I like better than “Thunderbird”:http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/.

Halo 2 Soundtrack, Vol. 1

One of the best things about the rise of video game technology, besides the beauty of the graphics, is the quality of some of the soundtracks that are coming out. Since the release of the “Xbox”:http://www.xbox.com, “Halo and Halo 2”:http://www.bungie.net have remained consistently at the top of the popularity charts. Martin O’Donnell composed the score for both games, and the soundtracks are absolutely phenomenal! The music is well-written and inspiring, consisting of both orchestra and voice. Indeed, O’Donnell has set the bar high for all other video game developers to produce soundtracks of equal quality and richness.

The release of Volume 2 has “just”:http://www.music4games.net/n_halo2_volume2_soundtrack.html “been announced”:http://www.bungie.net/News/Story.aspx?link=C653BD55-08DA-4F7A-93C7-4E2895D048FF, an event that has been greatly anticipated by all Halo fans. The beauty of the Halo soundtracks, however, is that you don’t necessarily have to be a fan of the games in order to enjoy the music, the quality is, in my opinion, that good. So, if you love good music, check out the soundtracks for these two games. I think you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Palm T2 Wireless Keyboard

I love my Palm T2. My entire life is on this handy little device – my address book, my calendar, and much of my short story writing. ((Fortunately, everything is also backed up on my PC at home.)) It’s extremely portable and extremely powerful. It also has the ability to create and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files, a feature that I frequently use when I get a story idea that I need to write down quickly so I don’t lose it forever. I simply pull out my handy-dandy wireless keyboard, pop it open, and plop my Palm down into the cradle and start typing. I have done quite a bit of writing on my Palm, synchronizing it with my PC at home later on for further editing and modification. In this respect the wireless keyboard is a lifesaver and a great tool to have on hand.

The only real problem I have had with the keyboard is that the wireless connection doesn’t always work properly. I’m not entirely sure if the problem is with the infrared signal itself or if the keyboard driver on the Palm periodically falters, but I will sometimes find myself typing – absolutely nothing at all. Sure, I’m hitting the keys, but nothing is appearing on the screen. So, I have to turn the Palm off and back on, sometimes several times, before reacquiring the signal between the two devices. Occasionally I even have to turn the keyboard off and back on, along with the Palm, for the two to work together properly. It’s a frustration and a hassle, but when the two work together, it _does_ allow me to write, whenever and wherever, I want when the need arises. Until I can afford a laptop, this arrangement suffices.