Trying out Google Wave

I just got my invitation on Saturday to try out the developer release of Google Wave.  Since then, I've had a chance to invite a few people and play around a bit.  The first few minutes left me fairly impressed -- not by how it looks, but instead by the uncanny knowledge of something foreign and entirely mysterious under the glib interface.  This is some powerful software.  But what can the power accomplish?

Wave is clearly nowhere near a public release stage, and a lot of features don't work, have yet to be implemented, or are have syncronizing issues. I can't upload images or any attachments yet from Firefox 3.5.5, for example.  Also, it's pretty annoying not to have the green dot showing which of one's contacts are online.  But these are just petty temperment issues of the 800-pound gorilla that Google has only just introduced to the arena, and nothing to base criticism on.  The main muscle behind the protocol is pretty functional, and quite impressive.  It's wicked cool to be able to collaborate in real time and see what the other person is doing moment to moment.  And the possibilities of "robots" and "gadgets" seem endless in the emerging internet world of real-time, automated, fully cross-referenced content.  Now the Google team will have to prove that this muscle can be made gentle, dependable, friendly and useful, especially to the non-technogeek.

Tune Generator Down for a Bit

My apologies, but the online version of the tune generator is currently not working.  It has been hosted on the CS computer at Marlboro, but the CGI script is no longer doing its job.  When I try to navigate to it from the CS student work page, sometimes it comes up fine, but when I refresh the page, the script has only a blank offering.  Rather than try to keep it up on a remote server, I may try to host it myself.  I'm looking into using XAMPP, the very simple Apache server installation, for hosting it at home. 

Wish me luck!

Meet Dory

This is Dory, the newest (and cutest) member of my household. Her father is a black lab and her mother is a German Shepard, husky mix, both from Waldoboro. She is about 12 weeks old, about 16 pounds, and growing faster than bamboo. The photo above is from about age 8-weeks, and the one below is within the last few days. She's a real sweetie! (When she's not savaging our possessions to shreds or pooping on the floor). Smart, too. We love her to death already.

New site at abrahamstimson.com

For my musical enterprises, I've opened up website at abrahamstimson.com. I realized it was high time to put together an online press-kit like one expects most professional musicians to have. Suggestions are welcome, especially regarding the content of the site, i.e., what would someone interested in hiring me want to know about me. The overall look of the site, including things like the CSS stylsheet (I love the redundancy, just like in "PIN number"), will hopefull get more interesting once I've fleshed out, well, the flesh. Please take a look!

It's right now a blog-style site, powered by WordPress. My friend and fellow musician Alden Robinson has generously given me space on his WordPress server, and showed me how to take advantage of some of its cool features. Thanks, Alden!

Graduated from Marlboro!

Graduation was Sunday. Though the weather people were calling for rain all day, it actually turned out to be beautiful weather throughout the whole event, and only spattered a little rain in the late afternoon as everyone was heading home. I was lucky to have a nice assortment of family and friends present, and the whole ordeal seems kind of a blur. It was also my Grandpop's 80th birthday that day, and we took him out to the Chelsea Royal diner for late lunch and a surprise birthday cake.

I'm in Maine now, at least for the next week or so. Plans for the summer are starting to develop, and it's looking like a good time. It feels quite nice to be done with school!