The site ClassicVanHalen.com shows how to save and print the classic Van Halen CD Covers which include: Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down and 1984.

If you need the covers for the Van Hagar era, try albumart.org, or as I’m finding with my exhilarating and exhausting quest to get our entire CD collection ripped into MP3 with cover art, Google images and Amazon work well too.

Yesterday I was looking for firsthand accounts of the details behind how the Nintendo Fan Network worked. After going through the turnstyles at the Mariners double header yesterday, here are the step by step details to get connected and start using the Nintendo Fan Network:

STEP 1. Download the small application wirelessly from the Nintendo DS Download Station. You need to be fairly close to these small booths with the Nintendo logo for your DS to find the application. You’ll find them in the following locations:

Along the concourse near the signs in sections: 108, 116, 123, 134, 227, 238, 314, 327, 333 and 344. Also in front of suites 27 and 55 and in the Diamond Club and Bullpen.

STEP 2. You can either purchase a NFN authorization code or use your credit card to buy NFN access. The cost is $5 per game. Yesterday was a bonus, $5 bought access for both games. You’ll be given a card with a code that you enter in later.

STEP 3. If this is your first time, click on Register New Use on your DS and choose a username and password.

STEP 4. Enter in your seat section, row and seat separated by spaces. So if you were in section 123, row 19, seat 9, you’d enter it as follows:

123 19 9

STEP 5. Choose an option from the menu pictured above. The red numbers are explained below:

1 - Food & Beverages. If you want to order food and drinks you have to enter in a credit card number, name and zip code of the billing address. It will be saved to your account so once entered, you don’t have to worry about it again.

2 - Broadcast Video. With this option you can watch a slightly delayed (a few seconds behind) TV broadcast of the game in progress. Video quality of the game is decent, however the graphics that show on the scoreboard, like the trivia is pixelated and difficult (in some cases impossible) to read.

3 - MLB Stats & Standings. Reference the detailed player statistics. You can sort the lists by name or position. This came in handy a few times when we wondered about specific players throughout the games.

4 - MLB Games in Progress. Check in on other games happening around MLB.

5 - Fan Network Games. A few casual games you can play if you’re bored with the game.

6 - Fan Network Messaging. You can send and receive messages with others around the stadium on the Nintendo Fan Network. The messages you can send other NFN users include canned messages like: “Bad call, the umpire got that wrong” and “Where are you sitting?” You can send custom messages to the NFN representative. The one at the game yesterday was named Pat and he responded right away when I messaged him a question about the service.

Other thoughts about the Nintendo Fan Network
Disappointing that the snacks menu doesn’t have any garlic fries. That’s a Safeco Field tradition. Some other examples of pricing which includes taxes: beer is $7.25 where you can get for $6.75 from the vendors walking up and down the aisle. A Philly cheesteak and fries cost $11.95.

I asked the woman at the Nintendo DS Download Station if this service would be back in 2008 and she said it would with a slight graphical difference. She didn’t know how many other stadiums would be getting the Nintendo Fan Network. Overall, I’d say it was a cool experience and think it adds to the experience. My friend who isn’t very technology-oriented thought it was fun.

My DS was fully charged and made it through the entire first game and to the fifth inning of the second game.

There are two languages that would come in handy if you live in the United States and like to travel to neighboring countries: French (for Montreal and Quebec, Canada) and Spanish (Mexico).

Our middle son is currently taking Spanish and when I saw the language learning site trymango.com this morning, he was the first person who came to mind. Could this help him with his Spanish studies? I signed up and took a peek inside.

But first, a hat tip to Jay at Dumb Little Men who also shares two additional resources at the end of his post for learning foreign languages for free: FSI Language Courses and the foreign language podcast collection from openculture.

Signing up for Mango (oddly it’s not called Try Mango, it’s called Mango) involves only your email address. Why does a site like this need your email address?

Privacy Policy: We will NOT sell or provide your email address to any third party. We will only use this email address to authenticate your access to the Mango Language application and provide you with update information. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Authenticating access with email only is hopelessly insecure, but we aren’t trading military secrets or stock information, so maybe this is cool. The first email address sent thanking me for signing up, however, did not provide unsubscribe instructions (CAN SPAM compliance). The site is too new to have a rating from SiteAdvisor yet, so we have to take this one on faith.

Mango is a flash-based learning environment with voices that are clear and hover overs with your mouse to indicate the pronunciation of each word. After showing you a few common sentences, the system will test you by giving you the English word and seeing if you know how to say it in the language you chose.

Today’s Hmmcast #173 takes a look at the language learning process, particularly the importance of repetition.

BTW, if you haven’t noticed, I’ve fallen off the 4:20 schedule a bit this past week. I’m still working through the wonders of HD video. Things should be back to normal the first week in October. Hang with me and it should be worth it — at least visually — no matter what resolution you view the show at.

Hmmcast #173 downloads
PSP .mp4 (480×272) iPod .mp4 (640×480) Windows .wmv (1480×1080 HD)

Generally I enjoy the site sci-fi.com. Enjoy the blog, the writing, I’m subscribed. They’ve linked to blog posts here in the past and seem like good blog neighbors. Their comment registration system, however, is about as anti-commenter friendly as a blog can get. Check out how they describe their own system (emphasis mine):

You need to be registered to comment on this site. No worries, though — registering is easy, fast and completely free.

After trying this morning to register, I disagree. It’s one of the least futuristic comment registration systems I’ve ever seen and experienced firsthand on any planet. But don’t take my word for it, follow along below with the sequence of events.

First, follow the Sci-fi Members link and end up on their comment form to see they default check three different subscriptions.

Pitching their newsletters and store during the comment registration process? I understand why they want to do that, but if the subscriptions are that great, we’ll be more than happy to sign up for them. Add to that in my Firefox status bar the McAfee SiteAdvisor for scifi.com is in yellow caution mode:

Oops. A third party program received 5.7 emails per week? Looks from what we’re agreeing to is 3 subscriptions, not 5.7 subscriptions a week. What’s the story here? Not wanting any of this, my email box is crowded enough, I uncheck the boxes and move onto the other parts of the form.

Does it let me use a tagged email address so I can more easily figure out who sold or gave my email address to spammers: myemail+tag@domain.com?

Even though the error message above says it accepts the + character in email addresses, it doesn’t. Moving past reason #2 not to register and leave a comment, we move to the password field. You’d think a site that looks forward like scifi.com would encourage SECURE passwords. Passwords at least 10 characters, letters (upper and lower case), numbers and symbols, right?

Wrong, it’s letters and numbers only. That’s strike reason #3 to leave comments, but let’s not stop there. The username field doesn’t employ any sort of AJAX username checker so you can see if your name is already taken. This means you need to fill everything out over and over again trying to find out if your name is taken. Has some imposter has already claimed TDavid? Yup.

Another bummer? When you click back on the browser, the password field is erased (sessions, use sessions). This registration process just to leave a comment on a blog is a mess. Sure, we have CAPTCHA enabled for new commenters here at Hmm, but I’d rather fill out two separate CAPTCHAs (and help a good cause) then jump through all these hoops only to be added to a list that gets 5.7 emails a week. As for us default checking the new comment notification by email? That is a benefit to readers, unlike newsletters sent too frequently and that are difficult to unsubscribe from according to a third party source.

It’s no wonder very few people seem to be leaving comments with a system like this. It isn’t that the content doesn’t encourage feedback, it’s the system telling them no, no, no. I’d probably have left this comment somewhere on Scifi.com, perhaps this post ironically titled, if I had the patience to beat my way through this system. Two people did.

Scifi.com I like your blog and your site, but you need to get your engineer Scotty to work on your Movable Type comment registration warp drive post haste. And for any other bloggers out there with a similar anti-commenter system: please don’t do this.

Remember the moblogging site Textamerica.com (TA)? In 2003/2004 when this blog was getting off the ground, TA was a site with some promise and hype. And then Flickr rose in prominence and pretty much killed them in the moblogging popularity space, and yet they still limp along.

When I used a camera phone I sent pics to my picture blog at tdavid.textamerica.com. A Hmm search says I linked to them in 18 past posts. Those links now are all redirecting to the main textamerica.com site. Did I ever get any email from them saying they closed my account? Not that I know of, but a look at their terms of service indicates (emphasis mine):

Textamerica.com reserves the right to cancel any person’s registration and to remove any materials related to such member without notice or cause.

I hadn’t sent any pictures to them in a long time, so perhaps inactivity might have been what prompted them to axe my account? Or maybe it was posts like this one: Textamerica hardware upgrade has some members wondering: where did our pictures go?

Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter because Textamerica is going to be for commercial account only (unless you are one of the few with a lifetime personal account):

As of November 1, 2007, Textamerica is transitioning into being a Commercial Only Service Provider and will no longer support individual users with personal account moblogs unless they hold a Lifetime Membership. All non-commercial account holders who do not hold a Lifetime Membership have until November 30, 2007 to archive and remove existing images and/or videos.

This Textamerica rise and fall for personal moblogging reminds me of why I’m reluctant to spend a significant time at third party sites. Even if the sites are mega cool (which, in retrospect, Textamerica never really was) and getting a ton of hype, I’ve seen so many Textamericas come and go that it makes it harder for me to get too involved elsewhere. This cynicism might have a lot to do with why I haven’t been an avid visitor of Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and so on. I have boarded the Second Life ship (which on some days seems like the Titanic), but that’s more because I’m fascinated in where the virtual world space is headed in the future, not only or even primarily Second Life. I’m part of a group blog at VTOReality.com that actively follows this space. So far the successes seem to be more about gaming than business, but there are some notable exceptions.

I digress. Let’s get back to linkrot like Textamerica.

How to deal with linkrot on your blog
Now that Hmm has 18 posts containing links to pages that Textamerica is redirecting to its homepage, how should I deal with these posts/links? Here’s what I am doing, but am open to additional suggestions/advice/feedback:

1. removing all hyperlinks to textamerica.com except the one in this post
2. where the post doesn’t make sense without the linked page/image, I’m adding an update text with a link to this post in brackets [like this]. These days I try to make very few posts that rely on content linked from a third party site, so even if the site goes down or changes like Textamerica has, the post will still make sense. Linkrot sucks.

I was tempted to delete some of these old posts, particularly the shorter ones with little other content, but that would be breaking my own links. How do you handle linkrot in your blog archives? Do you fix the broken links or just leave them broken? Every blog out there that links out to third party sites is subject to linkrot in varying degrees. The question is how to deal with it as your blog grows? My current strategy is when this comes up deal with it. I probably should have a more structured linkrot maintenance plan. Do you?

Update 9:47am PST: Updated all 18 archived posts with links to Textamerica and my now defunct moblog there. Along the way, I found broken links to other places in the same posts and removed those as well.

Ever buy something only to stop back a week or two later and see the price has dropped or the store across the street is running out the same thing cheaper? Good way to invoke instant buyer’s remorse.

Fortunately many retailers offer refunds for sale pricing, subject to a few rules like it can’t be a close-out price, internet-only deal, etc.

PriceProtectr.com is one of the more potentially useful sites/services I’ve looked at in awhile. Machines were made for work like Price Protectr (PP) is doing. Their service, free as of this writing and zero third party ads spotted (just how are they making money anyway?), will keep checking to see if the price for something you just bought went down and then email you when a lower price is detected so you can take action and manually request a refund.

For example, two of our recent bigger purchases are the Samsung HDTV 1080p which we paid $1,799 and the Sony Handycam for $999. After registering for PP, I went to Best Buy’s website and copied the sales URL page into Price Protectr.

PP showed me that our TV was on sale for $1,699 and the Handycam for $899. We printed the sales offer out and will be heading back to Best Buy later tonight to get our $200 refund. I’ll update this post if they give us any problems when we try to get the money back.

Those thinking about buying the new line of iPods announced today might want to bookmark Price Protectr now. Check out that iPod Touch model which seems typically Apple expensive at $399 for 16GB when you can now get the classic iPod with 160GB drive for $50 less ($349). 16GB might seem like a lot, but isn’t the minute you start building a good-sized music collection. A smaller 8GB iPod Touch is available for $299.

Apple slashed the price of its 4GB iPhone, which seemed to negatively impact stock price today (disclaimer: I own Apple stock) so if you just bought one of those, PP should be lighting up with good news soon (unless this is considered a close-out deal). If you’re buying any consumer electronics or TVs, this site could definitely help make sure you get the best deal.

Want to make sure that only websites you authorize can use your Google Adsense code? The Adsense team has added a new feature (thanks Anuj Seth) that can be accessed as follows:

STEP 1. login to your Google Adsense account
STEP 2. click on the “Adsense Setup” tab
STEP 3. click on the “Allowed Sites” link
STEP 4. make sure the radio button for “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account” is checked. A form will open up below that looks like the screenshot below.

STEP 5. Fill out the list of domains where the Google Ads code will be authorized. Note: if you add a new site that will use Google Adsense do not forget to add to this list or you won’t get paid. Ouch, definitely don’t forget this step. One way to remember might be to make sure you always target every ad spot (you do mark every ad spot for performance reasons already, right?) and then when you do that, hop on over and add to the Allowed Sites list.

Subdomains ok, but can’t limit to blogs located in subdirectory
Currently you can’t add sites inside a directory. For example, we have a blog still located at blogcharm.com (for archives only, it’s not being updated any longer) still running Google Adsense. Since Blogcharm doesn’t use subdomains (name.blogcharm.com) Google throws the following error when trying to add the correct subcategory blogcharm.com/vtor: “”blogcharm.com/vtor/” at line 6 invalid: URL must not end with a path”

Why is this a problem? Because any blogger at Blogcharm could run your ads if you authorized the entire domain. Even a site that violated the Adsense TOS which could put your — or in this case our — Adsense account in jeopardy. I removed the Google adsense from our Blogcharm site. It would be nice to see the Adsense team realize there are situations that go beyond subdomain support and into subdirectory support that would be nice to have as an option.

All in all, a handy feature to help better control your account. At least you won’t have some nemesis online throwing up a bunch of crap sites that violate the Adsense TOS attempting to get your account banned.

G.ho.st stands for Global Hosted Operating SysTem and is one of the more ambitious computer in a browser window options I’ve checked out to date. Registration and use of G.ho.st is free and comes with 3 GB of space. You’ll need to confirm your email address before being able to login.

G.ho.st looks like a desktop and has similar functionality except one major downside: everything happens in a browser window. While the maximized browser is about as stripped down as one can get, I still feel like I’m working in a box. It just doesn’t feel right to me. What about you?

Other Annoyances include:

- the g.ho.st browser is really a proxy to other websites and thus some sites don’t display properly, including this blog and any other that blocks hotlinking through proxies.
- the URL in the browser window not changing when I clicked on pages which negated the use of copy/paste of the location bar, something I use frequently

Remember FTP in Windows Explorer
One neat thing I discovered while using g.ho.st — or rather rediscovered because I keep forgetting that the functionality is there — is the ease by which you can use FTP in Windows Explorer. Hold down the Microsoft key and press the E key to launch Windows Explorer. Then type:

ftp://YOUR_G.Ho.st_username@g.ho.st

After entering in your G.ho.st password you will be able to drag and drop files from your real desktop to your virtual one. Try this with your web hosting FTP account. It’s a handy way to use a basic FTP editor when you’re on a Windows box without any other kind of FTP, but beware that passwords are passed in plain text. Use web folders instead if you’d like a secure connection.

In summary, G.ho.st reminded me what features I like and use on the desktop and how a virtual desktop doesn’t give me enough reasons to use regularly at this time. Maybe in the future when the quirks are worked out and we can move outside the confines of a browser. I’m curious what readers think of G.ho.st and virtual desktops in general?

By copy pasting the right to left override character at the very end of this post that looks like the image above, hidden codes will make all your type appear backwards (thanks tip of the day). Want to drive folks batty today in chat (IM, Twitter, IRC)? Just copy and paste that and start typing. Could be semi useful for spoilers in blog posts.

Also, I learned from this article that some middle eastern languages like Hebrew and Arabic are written in bidirectional text (right to left and left to right). ‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉Drive them crazy in chat with right to left chat.

Do you live your life ecological friendly or unfriendly? Until this morning, I’d never taken any test to find out how green I am. Here is my eco footprint:

3 1/2 planets? That doesn’t seem good until reading: “THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.” 24 acres per person?

The test consists of roughly 15 short choose an answer questions and will take a few minutes to complete. How do you compare?