The Stiletto, Serius Satellite Radio
Posted by Jowlstar on Oct 26, 2006
The Stiletto 100, the newest Serius satellite radio reciever by Serius is what I recently got as a present,
The pro’s of the Stiletto are,
1. It’s small, and easy to carry
2. It stores alot of songs, and you can record songs from the satellite radio
3. Using the satellite headphones your able to hear satellite radio
4. It has two batteries the big one which is the 4 hour, and the little one which is 2 hours
5. Its Wi-fi enabled
The con’s of the Stiletto are,
1. In order to recieve the satellite part outside, you must be wearing the headphones which hurt my ears
2. When walking around outside the signal gets messed up and it has to rebuffer
Ask for my review of the Stiletto, it’s a slick small and easy to carry device that fits in my back pocket. While i’m walking I enjoy the channels Buzzsaw which is a rock and roll channel, and Hair Nation, and of course the always elegant Howard Stern. On sunday nights I enjoy walking and listening to the Bears on the Stiletto. I’ve transfered Mp3’s to my Stiletto, and have been listening to them,
I’ve also recorded music while listening to it on the Stiletto. I found one problem though if your listening to a great song on the Stiletto and you want to record it, you can but if you hit a bad signal area the song wont record that part which really was sad for me to find out. While listening to the Stiletto outside my home, I have to wear these headphones to get the reception for the channels, the headphones hurt my ears.
When I first got it I realized it came with two batteries, both of mine are currently charged, the small battery which is the two hour one takes two hours to charge. The four hour one takes four hours to charge, the greatest thing about the Stiletto though in my opinion is the WiFi, I probably use this the most of anything else. Everyday I bring the Stiletto to school and listen to it before and after school, the WiFi enables me to listen to it in my room, in fact im listening to it right now. Overall the Stiletto gets a straight A- from me, and I will post new developments as they occur.
Taking time to just write
Posted by Jowlstar on May 15, 2006
in this case I just sat down at my computer and wrote, this story has no name yet.. this is first chapter called
Brothers sudden disappearance.
Whispering in my ear, I heard the voice as I sat their asleep. I could barely hear the voice of my brother telling me to wake up and get dressed, I had not slept good in the past week or so and was dreadfully tired. I stumbled out of bed to notice the time was 5:00 am, which was unusual for me as I went to school at 9:00 am. Me and my brother lived together in a apartment building on Chaplin Street, my name is Sarah Mcalister, and my brothers name is Brian Mcalister. I got dressed and got into his car with no idea of where we were going, he turned on rock and roll like he usually did in the morning. We drove quite fast, and I asked him where we were going. He muttered something, and I could barely understand what he said but i did catch the words “to pull a job”. We pulled up to a building and he got out of the car, my brother said in a stern voice “Stay here, dont move a muscle” and I obey’d, I stood in the car for about 20 mins before I heard a noise. I got out of the car and walked through gravel to the large warehouse, I didn’t see anything at first. I opened the warehouse door to find the warehouse DEAD EMPTY, my brother was no where in sight. I began panicking and suddenly found something. I found a dead body, I could not figure out who the person was but I knew to call the police, I hurried to the car and grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. They said they would trace the call as I had no idea where I was and it ended up taking them a while before they got to the scene of the crime. The cops looked for clues to my brothers whereabouts and were quite interested in every single detail I could remember, I told them everything from that morning till now. They said the guys name was Bruce Chung, a known gang of the Mafia. Bruce Chung was wanted for alot of small crimes and more, they said my brother was in some sort of trouble also but when they finished looking around my brother was gone. I was taken to the station and was questioned some more, and was put into a orphanage and was told if my brother was found I would be called on the spot.
Figuring out where we are at, 25 podcasts behind it seems
Posted by ChefTD on Jan 12, 2006
Though the blog hasn’t been updated since almost the middle of December we actually have had a live show every week. Just a reminder to folks following this blog. We do a live stream of this show every Friday after 3:30pm PST. Sometimes it’s right at 3:30pm PST, sometimes not, but we haven’t missed a week yet.
As for podcasts, we have missed several of those and have been very inconsistent. Here’s what shows haven’t been posted yet (also serving as reference for us, and this will be updated after posting, just FYI):
The checkbox will be checked and strikethru on the show number/date once we are caught up, unless otherwise noted above. The plan will be tomorrow to post within an hour after each show so at least we stay up with the current shows.
We skipped from show #38 to show #51 and were actually good about posting the podcasts right away after each show for three shows, stopping again at show #55.
My Goals
Posted by Jowlstar on Dec 19, 2005
People with no goals usually don’t succeed, atleast thats what I heard. So I made a list of my webmaster related goals and here they are-
1. Be prepared to each show, with something to talk about (No dead air)
2. To get lots of traffic for Webmaster Cookbook
3. To get Spawn to say something more than yes, no, maybe, during the show
4. To get into a routine of posting something everyday on both Webmaster Cookbook and Orting
5. To get into a routine of getting traffic and visiting blogs on Blog Explosion
These are just 5 of my goals, but I wonder what are your goals? These goals that I talked about are all short term goals, one of my long term goals is to become a great engineer and I am making lots of progress to that.
Scratch card Jowl!
Posted by ChefTD on Dec 11, 2005
I’ve noticed that Jowl has renewed excitement in Blog Explosion. Perhaps it is that they are running their $1,000 Christmas cash giveway or the new scratch card game.
What Happened On Show #63
Posted by Jowlstar on Dec 11, 2005
We started the show a bit late because I came into the studio 10 minutes late because my teacher would only accept late work if it was done at school. I ended up staying and getting 4 assignments done which was good, then I came to the studio and the show starts up and ChefTD out of nowhere says Jowl and Spawn I am going to let you guys have this 15 minutes to talk about how we could improve the show during the week. Spawn could not help saying anything more then yes, no, maybe. So I basically ended up talking alot of the time I suggested that we start doing blogexplosion every day to increase the amount of traffic coming. Spawn suggested that we should start saying the link to our chatroom at the beginning of the show and I thought that was a great idea. Then the show came to the end and we asked everyone if they had any ideas on how we could improve the show during the week. If you have any ideas be sure to tell us because we are open to any ideas.
What happened in Show 61
Posted by spawn on Dec 2, 2005
Today in the show we talked about our new camera that we bought. It is called Kodak z760. We linked a picture from putting the camera into the computer onto webmastercookbook and we called it a dust covered phone. We also spoke a little bit about forms, me and ChefTd worked a little on it before the show. We put codes together and we mixed alot of other things to create code that now seems familiar to me. We are going to talk more about it on next weeks show.
The dust covered phone is shown below:
Jowl the cartoon
Posted by Jowlstar on Nov 25, 2005
This is the real Jowl as a cartoon
Demoing the Kodak z760
Posted by Jowlstar on Nov 25, 2005
This was a demo close up that we took of a dusty studio phone using the Kodak z760
Pandora, adding music and songs
Posted by Jowlstar on Nov 13, 2005
Okay, ChefTD pulled me onto Pandora which was created by Music Genome Project. Pandora is a free music station where you select music titles or artists that you wish to have on your station. The free version of Pandora has advertisements but I have listened to 20+ songs and not heard a advertisement. You can get Pandora at this site, when you get there if you like rock and roll you can listen to my stations which are JOWLS ROCKING ROCK, and Jowls station or you can listen to ChefTD’s station which is TD’s Rock Radio. This is a good music service and I highly reccomend it because all i’ve been hearing is good music, and they have all types of music if your not into the music not me or ChefTD like you can create your own station and then start adding music.
A Review Of Todays Show
Posted by spawn on Nov 11, 2005
Today ChefTD taught Jowl how to be a better dj than he was, I reviewed what I wrote earlier about what I knew about PHP thus far. We also reviewed concatenation, which means you link stuff together and the symbol for concatenation is a dot like so (.). We also talked about the basic auctioning, we actioned off my brain and Jowls arm. We also talked about tagging.Tagging is like bookmarking, when you tag it is like saving an item to your favorites folder so you can come back to it later on. I have started to talk more in the show but my enthustiam needs some work as Jowl puts it. We will be back on the course next week as Chef TD tells us, this is what we learned today in the show.
What I’ve Learned So Far
Posted by spawn on Nov 11, 2005
I have learned how to use many functions, I have used functions like the Time, Date, C-type Method, Print, Concatenation, Conditionals, Switch/Case, and I looked up the ahref function in ChefTD’s HTML book called. I’ve also learned how to write many forms of code with these types of code writing materials. I learned how to also start PHP code, and it goes “less then question mark and PHP, question mark greater then”. I am hoping to use these functions to write games, ChefTd has told me we will learn this later in our courses, as we still have many weeks to go. This is what I have learned and still hope to learn. The following is what ChefTD has to say about this book:
Perl and CGI For The World Wide Web ****
by Elizabeth Castro
There are many webmasters out there who would
like to learn Perl but have probably picked up some of the more tech-only type Perl books
(the ones with the Llama on the front). No Webmaster interested in programming in Perl or
who runs Perl script should be without this book. This is indispensible for your
library.
I’m Back
Posted by Jowlstar on Nov 11, 2005
I’m back and I know it has been a while since I posted something on the site. Last week I was at school getting caught up on some work because I was sick for a few days. Today I am going to be writing show notes and getting as much done as humanly possible between 10:30 A.M. and 1:30 P.M. I will also be working on the show notes and such after the show as always, and I hope to get some help from Spawn. Today the shows notes for 55,56, should be posted today and 57 will be ready to be posted tomorrow. I will be working on doing a better job of posting every week because that is my job and I have indeed been neglecting my job and duties.
Show #54: Stringing together PHP
Posted by Jowlstar on Oct 29, 2005
First we booted up the windows explorer browser, then we went to the course reading material. Then the browser crashed on Spawn’s machine, ChefTD thought that the MSN toolbar might of been causing Internet Explorer to crash. ChefTD stepped in and tried to fix Spawn’s browser issues, and spawn and I began to read at the top of the course material for this week. ChefTD then fixed the browser and Spawn and I kept on reading. We learned how to comment our code using the type C method, the type C method is used in commenting your code. If you use the type C method, then you can see the stuff you learned while writing the code because if you write a code you will probably forget how you wrote it. Then ChefTD said that for every PHP document we start we use this:
and then we end our script with
and thats how we start and end every script. Then ChefTD told us to make a string and told us that it would look like this:
$myname = ‘Jowl’;
Then we saved the document that we made as 1b1.php, and FTP’d that to our weekly folder.
Links Discussed:
PSPad - Windows-based free text editor with lots of code syntax options. WMcookbook recommended!
Firefox - an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. (ChefTD note: For those looking for the bleeding edge of browsers, try another Mozilla variation: Flock)
Original live airdate: Friday October 7, 2005 at 3:30pm PST / 6:30 pm EST
Webmaster cookBook AUDIO:
Streaming:
20k listen archive stream (dialup users)
64k listen archive stream (broadband)
download 15.0 MB (64k version)
Trying to write code and getting errors
Posted by Jowlstar on Oct 14, 2005
Alright so im writing code and I go to upload it and I get a parse error that says
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /web/sites/tdavid/webmastercookbook.com/courses/php101/jowl/1b1.php on line 7.
I’m unsure of what a T variable is so can anyone help me, I looked at my line 7 and don’t see any errors, here is line 7:
2 $my_favorite_website= ‘<a href="http://www.orting.com/">Orting</a>’;
3
Both spawn and I have run into the same problem and we have also had many errors but have worked through them, I will ask ChefTD about a T variable later on in the show today.
I fixed it by changing my code to this, i figured out i was missing a closing tag.
2 print$my_favorite_website= ‘<a href="http://www.orting.com/">Orting</a>’;
3
Update 1:15pm PST: I just learned that I was not suppose to put a print out in front of the dollar sign and that the code up there is still wrong. (from ChefTD: Yes, you can put print in front of the $string, but you were trying to print and then assign at the same time, which is not what you wanted to do.)
Update 1:20pm PST: (from ChefTD) Jowl, here is what you want to do:
2 $my_favorite_website= ‘<a href="http://www.orting.com/">Orting</a>’;
3 echo($my_favorite_website);
4
Show #53: PHP course begins - Week 1 - Lesson #1a
Posted by Jowlstar on Oct 13, 2005
First we opened up a new document in Pspad then we went to week #1 course reading material and started to read the information on that page. We then wrote down our first PHP script in the Pspad and the code for that script was:
2 <?php
3 // Does my host have PHP, and if so, what version?
4 printf(“Your host is running PHP version %s”,phpversion());
5 ?>
6
Then once we finished writing that code we uploaded it into our server via FTP and I found that my code was wrong and had to redo my code several times before I finally got it right.
Links Discussed:
Week #1 course text (Lesson #1a)
Original live airdate: Friday September 23, 2005 at 3:30pm PST / 6:30 pm EST
Webmaster cookBook AUDIO:
Streaming:
20k listen archive stream (dialup users)
64k listen archive stream (broadband)
download 13.4 MB (64k version)
Show #52: PHP Course Orientation
Posted by Jowlstar on Sep 28, 2005
We started our setup for the PHP course we are going to do next week, we introduced a new member to the show named Spawn. The setup involved Spawn and I opening up Windows Explorer and going to our shared documents folder then making a new folder named courses. Then we made a subfolder inside of courses called PHP and then we made a subfolder inside of the PHP folder called Jowl. Then we put 32 subfolders inside of Jowl and labeled them from 1-32, we labeled all the way to 32 because this course will take at least 32 weeks.
Links Discussed:
Cyberwurx Hosting - PHP hosting for as little as $5 a month
Cyberduck - Good FTP clients for the Mac
Smart Ftp - Windows-based drag/drop FTP editor, similar in design and functionality to Windows Explorer
Notetab - good text editor for Windows, the light version is free
PSPad - Windows-based free text editor with lots of code syntax options. WMcookbook recommended!
Original live airdate: Friday September 23, 2005 at 3:30pm PST / 6:30 pm EST
Webmaster cookBook AUDIO:
Streaming:
20k listen archive stream (dialup users)
64k listen archive stream (broadband)
download 13.5 MB (64k version)
Getting up when you don’t want to
Posted by ChefTD on Aug 31, 2005
Jowl and I have been struggling — both of us, really, but moreso Jowl than I — in getting up early enough to get to the gym. School starts back shortly and Jowl has been living the summer life a little too much: not going to sleep. That’s the big problem with getting up: if you stay up too late, it’s darn hard to get up in the morning.
So what does this have to do with webmastering? Well, we set a goal to get our energy level up so we could whip this site back into shape and working out at the gym is part of that plan, but even that’s starting to fall apart a bit.
We started out going five days a week, and then we fell off to every other day and now, well, I’m not sure what type schedule we are on. The plan was to go before Jowl goes to high school every morning. We figure that this time would be the best time to squeeze in the workout every day … or at least every other day.
But we are strugging to make this work. Cliches aside, some things really are easier said than done.
Alright, going to make one more run at Jowl to get going to the gym, it’s been almost two hours now I’ve been waiting to go. 3:45am I was up. 5:43am now.
Jowl went back to bed. Guess we are going to try the workout later today.
Where are the podcasts for shows #33-39?
Posted by ChefTD on May 22, 2005
We’ve received a good number of emails, comments and concerns wondering: where are the recent podcasts? Some of this feedback has been fairly critical on our seemingly disappearance from publishing podcasts.
Well, here’s the good news: we haven’t stopped providing podcasts. Webmaster Cookbook is still alive and broadcasting live every Friday as it has for the last 39 weeks.
A reader named Simon commented on Friday 5/20:
Hey great new look guys!I think its strange that you have time to design a new site but done take the time to update the content
I think I learnt from your show that its the content that matters. No new shows or post in a while… maybe you need to hire some new webmasters to manage the site for you?
I look forward to some updates.
Simon.
I responded in detail, thanking Simon for the care and concern. I also politely corrected him about the design. The design is not new, it’s actually the original design the site launched with that was (finally, argh!) put back in place.
It could certainly be worse: we could have nobody care at all when the podcasts will be published. This is something I’ve talked to Jowl about that there are people on the web who do enjoy our weekly show and are wondering what’s going on here lately.
It’s important to point out that Webmaster Cookbook did not start out as a podcast program. It started out — and still is — a weekly streaming live show. We broadcast live every Friday. Originally it was an hour long show (starting at 3pm PST / 6pm EST) but based on feedback about the length we have tweaked that to where it currently is a 30 minute program (3:30pm - 4:00pm PST).
It is a very experimental show and continues to be subject to much change. If you don’t like changes, then you probably won’t like our program. This is a real, reality how-to webmaster show and just as how real life gets in the way of getting real things done, real life has gotten in the way of this show having its podcasts appear in a timely manner.
Another recent criticism is why don’t we show how to connect to a database or other programming-related tasks? Eventually we will get to that kind of webmastering stuff, but Jowl’s skill set isn’t there yet. You don’t just get into an airplane and start flying, you work your way up to things like that. His skills currently are such that he understands the basics: FTP, what HTML is and how to write some basic HTML from scratch, how to take pictures with a digital camera, how to compress pictures/graphics and make them web-friendly and some more fundamental webmaster skills. In 39 weeks I think Jowl has learned a great deal. And 99.9% of this he learned during the shows we’ve broadcasted live (and some via podcast) for the world to listen to — freely.
Dependable site updates are an important part of webmastering and that is one area where lately we’ve been falling apart on with Webmaster Cookbook. Simon has learned something valuable from this which is part of the reason I reposted his comments above. Jowl is learning this too. It’s all part of the bigger picture which is: how do we fit being a webmaster into the rest of our lives? How do we produce content, part-time, that can grow traffic, interest and provide overall site value?
Let me stop there for a minute and point out that if you want to listen to the live streaming show then just tune into the live stream each week at 3:30pm PST here: http://www.webmastercookbook.com/20k.php
We have had new content every week for those who have followed this live show. No, we haven’t had new blog entries or new podcasts posted every week, but we have broadcasted a live streaming show every week. We realize that this doesn’t work so good for folks who can’t make the live shows each week and the podcasts are a nice substitute.
Now will this live time change? Maybe.
It’s changed several times already in the 39 shows we’ve streamed live. However, we have streamed every show somewhere between the hours of 3-4pm PST on Friday. Webmaster Cookbook is actually part 2 of a streaming live show that my other business site has done for adult webmasters since May 2000.
For years I’ve heard from listeners wanting a mainstream show. Something that was family and work friendly. So some 39 weeks ago we decided to split up this show and make at least part of it available for a family-friendly audience, but we didn’t want to put it at our established site (because the target audience was not a work-friendly, family-oriented audience), thus the Webmaster Cookbook show and this website was born.
In order to pull this type show off I needed a reliable, dependable pupil and fortunately our oldest son, Jowl, was interested in learning how to be a webmaster. He stepped into the role and the first dozen or so shows were very instructional and I think went quite well with the exception that instructional material via audio only with no visuals can be very difficult to do. If we did the show as a video I think it would work much better and maybe that is the direction we will someday be headed. Especially now that places like OurMedia make it so that you can publish your videos without the concern of the bandwidth expense.
With all this said, there are a couple more reasons why these podcasts haven’t been published; some of which are personal and I’m not going to completely get into. For those who don’t care, don’t want excuses, etc, and just want to listen to the podcasts then feel free to stop reading with my explanation above.
However, for those who are more curious then please keep reading.
When podcasting started catching fire, Jowl and I decided to make the show available via podcast. This worked good for about 20 shows or so and then something started happening. As I stated above, this show was intended to be a father-son joint venture, not something that only one or the other of us produced solo.
I’ve been wanting to (trying to) teach Jowl how to handle the podcast portion of the show that up until two months ago I have handled exclusively. For whatever reason, he and I don’t seem to be able to find (enough) time off air to work on Webmaster Cookbook. Jowl is only going to be a teenager once and as a parent and friend I don’t want to push him into doing something that he isn’t excited about and/or interested in doing. If something has to give, then it’s this site and the other one he is working on (orting.com). At the same time, though, as parents my wife and I want to teach him something about responsibility, dependability and a good work ethic. These are things that will help him secure and keep employment throughout his adult life.
So the last two months Jowl and I have been working to determine whether this is something he really wants to be doing. The decision is totally up to him and so far at every opportunity he has told me that this is something he enjoys doing and wants to keep working on. The words haven’t equalled the action and activity though, unfortunately, which Jowl would be the first to admit.
As an instructor I’ve failed miserably so far in being able to teach Jowl motivation to work on the website.
He would much rather play online games, chat with his friends and do that ‘fun’ stuff. I get that. I totally understand wanting to spend time when you aren’t at school doing non-school stuff.
Those who have been frustrated by what seems like our total incompetence with this website might want to be mindful that this site is a real learning environment, not something we are producing professionally. If it were then I would pay somebody to help, put up a more viable business model and work this much, much harder. I have been producing business-oriented, profitable websites for years so I’m no stranger to creating that type of website.
None of this should say we are treating this like a hobbyist venture. No way. We are serious about this website, but we are serious about it in a very limited amount of time. It might take a year, two or more to get to the point where it is a totally professional production. The beauty of this — for those who want to learn — is that they can follow this as it builds in real time. They can see how lame it was in the beginninng and how it turns into something better. They can watch Webmaster Cookbook cook.
For these reasons, Webmaster Cookbook is one of the more true reality shows about webmastering you’ll find on the web (we can’t be the only one) because when something is going wrong it’s very obvious. A great example of this is when we upgraded to the new version of Wordpress and stayed with the default theme for a long time. Why? Because we needed to implement the old design with Wordpress 1.5 new theme structure. It is well documented that Wordpress altered their theme structure with this new site. Jowl and I needed time to discuss this situation and how we were going to handle these design/template changes. On most websites you’d rarely see this type of change taking place; the changes would be done and maybe — or not — the webmaster might say something to point out the obvious: that the site had changed.
Will podcasts for shows #33-39 be published? Yes. We do realize people want to download and listen to new content and both Jowl and I are really excited about that.
If you’ve come this far then hopefully it’s more clear why there has been a delay and why there might be other visible — and perhaps irritating and annoying — things that happen at this website. It’s part of the learning and discovery process of being a webmaster. If anybody reading this thinks it doesn’t pain established webmasters to be part of something like this, then you are wrong — I’d love to block out two days and completely overhaul Webmaster Cookbook with everything I dream for it, but then what about Jowl and what his dreams are for this site? Me taking this solo action wouldn’t be fostering a joint venture. There wouldn’t be anything father-son about that.
Now this took me a long time to write and the time spent writing this could have been spent finishing up those podcasts and getting those published but this is also educational information for Jowl. And in the spirit of transparency and sharing this dialogue and learning experience I am posting here.
So that’s why things are the way they are here currently. Patience in webmastering is another skill that needs to be exhibited sometimes. As a webmaster’s stable of websites grows, you have to pick and choose what sites to update and when. What sites to invest in and what sites to hold back on. It’s a neverending learning experience.
Welcome to Webmaster Cookbook! 
Yesterdays show
Posted by Jowlstar on May 7, 2005
Yesterday ChefTD was getting alittle mad at me over the air, and we made a blog event. In the blog event thought of stuff to write about.