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I just wanted to throw out a quick link to this article at the LA Times. Apparently it is illegal in some states to collect rainwater for personal use. Using that water, which happens to fall on your property, is actually stealing according to some strange perversions of logic.

“If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to someone else,” said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress. “We get into a very detailed accounting on every little drop.”

It turns out that the issue is a lot more complex than one person collecting water from their gutters for a garden. Large scales water collection (say for an entire community) could cause some serious interruptions in the water cycle and have major effects on people downstream.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article and while it’s only a short introduction to the complexities of water politics, it’s worth checking out.

Guadia Quest is an awesome little NES-style RPG that comes on Retro Game Challenge. It’s a lot like Dragon Warrior on the NES, but much easier and more approachable. You can save whenever you’d like, as often as you’d like, so you can play without worrying about losing much work. The game is very enjoyable, but the items and spells are not explained at all, so you will have to experiment to figure out what everything does.

Because it is a game within a game I have not been able to find any guides for the game, so here are some notes that I have put together. You won’t necessarily need them but in case you want to do the best that you possibly can without a ton of grinding, they’ll probably help.

[This mini-guide is a work-in-progress. It is woefully inadequate at the moment.]

FAQs

1. How to I revive a dead character?
Naga pint (item) or Imup (spell)

2. How to I get mana back?
Stay at an inn or use elixir.

–

What items do:

Naga Pint: Revives a dead character

Burrito, Drumstick, and jerky: restore hitpoints (in order, more to less)

Uni-tear: about 50 hit points given to every character

Wild herb: Recover 100 hit points for every character

Orbs: Help you fight the guadias.

Red cow: Wakes up a sleeping character.

Grim coin: Instantly kills some enemies.

Naga wing: Returns you to the main city (Centraan).

Incense:

Titaniun, Silver, :

Holy Key, Demon Key, Dark Soul: Allow to you progress in the game, by opening doors or getting past guards.

–

What Spells do (from Gamespot):

Green character (the tank):
Level 3: Warp (Warp to Towns and Dungeons)[1]
Level 10: Funko (Reduce Encounter Rate) [3]
Level 11: Ragua (Low-Damage to all enemies) [3]
Level 15: Fasta (Increase Field Movement Speed) [2]
Level 20: Chero (+5 STR & SPD) [6]
Level 28:  Healt (Heals ~70 HP for all) [16]

Orange character (the healer):
Level 2: Heala (Heals ~40 HP) [2]
Level 3: Prota (+10 DEF) [4]
Level 4: Megra (Low-Damage) [3]
Level 9: Healo (Heals ~60 HP) [9]
Level 10: Getup (Cures Sleep) [2]
Level 12: Degra (Mid-Damage) [4]
Level 13: Healy (Full HP) [8]
Level 15: Dropu (Steal) [5]
Level 17: Dynow (Instant Death Spell) [6]
Level 20: Imup (Revive) [24]
Level 24: Fegra (Heals ~70 HP for all) [16]

Purple character (the sorceress):
Level 2: Megra (Low-Damage) [3]
Level 3: Dormi (Sleep) [2]
Level 4: Heala (Heals ~30 HP) [2]
Level 7: Movit (+10 SPD) [4]
Level 8: Zegda (Mid-Damage to All) [5]
Level 10: Healo (Heals ~60 HP) [5]
Level 11: Degra (Mid-Damage) [4]
Level 12: Weaki (Lower Enemy Stats) [8]
Level 13: Hitta (+10 STR) [4]
Level 14: Healy (Full HP) [8]
Level 16: Harda (+10 DEF to all) [6]
Level 17: Magda (Heavy Damage to All) [7]
**Level 21: Metamega (Massive Damage) [6]
Level 25: Imup (Revive) [24]

Lately I’ve been taking a lot of notes and doing more writing than I normally do. I’ve also gotten a number of great emails from readers about what their writing with and pens they might like. [Check out these posts to see previous coverage of writing equipment.]

First of, I started using a Platinum Preppy fountain pen. I’m not a big fan of fountain pens, but I do like the throw-away variety and, coming in at $3, the Preppy definitely falls in that category. It’s a lot of fun to use and it doesn’t have any of the problems you might associate with older fountain pens, like ink pooling or putting out too much ink. I started using it partially because I have been writing on a Behance notebook with rather thick pages, which the pen is ideally suited for. The nib does seem to dry up for a few seconds if I leave the cap off for too long, but past that I really like it.

I’ve also been using  Pilot G2 Limited. I’m a big fan of the G2 so when I saw the Limited I has to pick it up, despite a selling for about $10. It is basically your standard G2 with a more metal parts and a bit more heft. It’s a little longer than most of the pens I use, but that doesn’t bother me. While I like the extra weight over the comparatively flimsy G2 and I appreciate the nice colors (there is a white as well at the gunmetal gray) and upgraded grip, I don’t think it’s worth the extra money. It’s a solid enough pen, there are others I like more at the $10 mark. It’s a must-try for G2 and Pilot fans, but I’d be a lot more impressed with it at $6.

Finally, I’ve been using the Sharpie pen, though not as much as I was. This is a pen that everyone loves because it’s cheap and can write on anything. Plus it is a Sharpie that doesn’t bleed through. Overall, it’s a pen that everyone should own, and while I prefer a standard pen for day to day writing (the Sharpie is not particularly smooth thanks to the material of the tip) it’s something that has earned a spot on my desk.

I’ve been taking more notes in ink lately (probably just because it’s quick and it let’s me organize my thoughts very easy) so I’ll try to do these posts more frequently.

I have been, and still am, resistant to Twitter. Yes, it’s a cool service and it let’s you easily connect with all sorts of amazing people, but getting true value from my time investment in it has been difficult. [Just check out this post, it's not that far from the truth.]

Twitter is about two things: who follows you and who you follow. Because you have control over the latter, let’s start with that.

There are basically four type of people that you can follow:

1. People you know (friends, family, coworkers, etc.)
2. People you have to follow (your boss, clients, etc.)
3. People who you find interesting that you don’t know (often top Twitterers)
4. People you follow because they follow you

If you follow all four of these types, your Twitter feed is probably so full of posts that it is too overloaded to do anything aside from browse now and then. If you’ve spent any time analyzing your Twitter usage you’ve probably started to trim back on types 1 and 2, and ruled out 4 altogether. (Remember just because you like someone in real life does not mean that their Twitter feed is worth following.) This trimming probably helped cut down on the “Having lunch with @myfriend” and “dude, I hate Mondays” and “#myfirstjob” tweets, but it didn’t stop them altogether.

Those types of things are just a distraction. If you are using Twitter as a distraction, great, or if you want to use it to talk to buddies, that’s cool too, but if you want it to be a professional tool what value are you getting (as a follower) or instilling (as a poster) from these?

But Twitter would be boring without this stuff, right? And how else could we better get to know our associates without them telling us how awesome their last jog was or how cold it is outside?

Before we get too far, I’d like to point out why I’ve been hesitant to get too involved in Twitter. It’s about distractions (which should be kept to a minimum) and persistent tasks. For me, a persistent task (more accurately, a persistent tab) is anything that I keep open all the time and check in on frequently. These include email and RSS, but then all the other things that we check in on all day long, like web site comments, your work chatroom, Google chat, and so on. The more of these you have, the less you can concentrate on the task at hand, especially once you get into ones where you can spend lots of time using each day, like Friendfeed, Facebook, and MySpace.

So is Twitter worth the time investment and the fact that using it means that you will have one more tab open all day long everyday (or a desktop client/iPhone app)? It must be to some people, but I’m guessing a lot of people just enjoy the distraction.

So who is getting real value from Twitter right now?

1. Anyone with a large number of followers
   If you are kicking out your thoughts and links to, say, 5000 people multiple times a day, there is clear value in that for you.
2. People using it to gain access
   All of a sudden we have a way that is faster and less formal to get in touch with CEOs, thought leaders, (internet) celebrities, etc., and you have a better chance of getting a response than an email.
3. People expanding personal brands
   … though you generally had to have one already- we aren’t seeing Twitter celebrities
4. Brands looking to gain access to people
   NYtimes, CNNbreaking, NPR, Woot, etc

Are you on that list? If you are not, then you are really just using it to stay connected. I prefer my RSS reader for that sort of thing, but that’s just my personal preference.

So while there are undeniably ways to get value from Twitter, it’s not clear to me that a whole lot of people are getting a good return on their time investment. I’m going to keep thinking things over, but it seems like that same time is better spent on something like Friendfeed or working on my blog  (which, like so many others, has gotten much quieter since Twitter and similar services became popular).

CES is over, as are the holidays and vacation. It’s nice to back in the city, but that means back to work and the daily grind, which isn’t quite as much fun.

Before CES 2009 is a distant memory I wanted to mention the issue of attendance. The official projections (probably from CEA) had the number at something like 10-13% down, but in actuality it was way more than that. Silicon Alley Insider says 30%, which seems closer to the truth. It was obvious at times just how empty the show was–normal bottlenecks like Intel’s booth were generally easy to get through and there was no rush to enter the show floor at 9am each day. Also, large pieces of the show floor were empty, where companies had pulled out or just didn’t show up.

The most depressing moment of it all (at least for me) happened Saturday morning. I was sitting in the press room with about 25 other people, with just one other person at my table. Normally the press room is packed at that time, with barely a seat to spare. Instead it was just me and a bunch of international press. Even the WiFi connection was working great, which rarely happens CES. Of course, there were no donuts left.

Anyway, it’s all over now, but it wasn’t a great year for CES. Maybe if Apple shows up next year it will help, and obviously an improved economic outlook wouldn’t hurt, but I think it’s clear that the show needs some reorganization as well.

Anyone who runs a multi-author site knows that tracking of all the articles is a constant challenge. Keeping tabs on who is writing what is hard enough, but then trying to follow who is getting the job done is another thing altogether. Whether you want to track word counts, reads, comments, etc., there just isn’t a good way to break things down by author.

So here’s what I’m looking for: a plugin that allows me to track a few very simple metrics, broken down by author. Specifically I’d like to know:

• number of articles posted over a given period
• average articles per day
• comments (total and average per article)
• pageviews (total over a time period, per article)
• some other ideas, though less important ones, could be: average word count per article, what categories are being written in, etc.

Basically it would just be a simple way to track who is writing and how successful their posts are. It wouldn’t have to be a comprehensive package, just some insight into the performance of each of the authors. The hardest one of these would be tracking pageviews, but a rough estimate would be fine.

Are their ways around a custom plugin? Possibly, but nothing great (at least that I can think of). You could possibly use Google Analytics for this, but you would have to have a unique code for each of the authors in the URL (or URI, whatever you want to call it). This requires some customization and adds to the length of your URL stucture, but could possibly be OK. The downside is that you are stuck using an analytics package that won’t be able to track comments, calculate post totals, or other site specific metrics.

From what I can tell, it really has to be done within Wordpress to be done well. All the data is readily available (if you know how to get it) so then it’s just a matter of calculating the totals and presenting them in a friendly manner. Part of the challenge would be creating a slick UI and also not having the plugin be a resource hog (maybe it could update only once an hour or once on a day). Based on plugins like Wassup we know it’s possible to do fairly extensive analytics packages within Wordpress.

Any takers? Anyone know of a plugin that I haven’t found? An easier way to get these results? I don’t think its asking for a whole lot (and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been done yet).

If you have been reading this site you know that I recently set up a NAS. A lot of NAS devices have built-in iTunes Media Server functionality, which makes sense as a NAS is an obvious place to store your music (most people have at least a few gigabytes these days…).

As you probably guessed, I did this with my NAS and I was immediately disappointed with the results. iTunes Server is extremely limited and while it can play music (the most important function) that is about it. You cannot drag songs into playlists or get them to play easily on your iPhone/iPod (this ability is tied to playlists). Also, if you buy songs, you have to store them locally, and then move them to your server, (then the server has to scan them, which can be every 5 minutes, hourly, etc., before iTunes will update). To put it simply, songs on your server don’t have the same accessibility or usability as songs in your Library.

My problems did not stop there though. Sometimes iTunes would see my NAS’ iTunes Server and not let me access it (I gave me a weird error about a firewall issues that did not exist). Just today iTunes did not recognize my NAS, this means you have no way to access the music (even though I could get to my mapped drive through Windows). Even restarting iTunes did not help… restarting the NAS and/or computer would have probably done the trick. Also the music on the server is a bit slow to load initially. It will take a few seconds for iTunes to list all the tracks. This is a minor annoyance, but it’s just one more thing between you and you music.

What does iTunes Server do well? Well most of the time it’s automatically recognized by iTunes, so it’s very easy to setup (at least with Windows, I’m guessing it’s just as easy on a Mac). Sadly, that’s all I can think of.

So today, after iTunes could not find my Server, I was done with the experiment. The solution was pretty simple, I just needed to change my iTunes Library folder to the folder where it live on the NAS using a mapped drive. So rather than the Library living on my C: I changed it to my Y:. I have a pretty substantial amount of music so it took a long time for iTunes to rescan the folder and organize it but afterwards I was all set.

It begs the question, why did I do an iTunes server in the first place? Well this is a feature on most nicer NAS devices so I wanted to give it a shot. It also lets more than one computer use that music. Finally, because of your limited permissions, it means that your music is blocked from iTunes’ tampering (changing folders, converting file types, adding tracks to the library, etc.) Ultimately it just wasn’t worth it though and I can’t see an iTunes server being something that NAS owner would want to use.

To summarize all this: iTunes Server can only play music, that’s it. If you want anything more, and you are storing your music on a NAS, you should map a drive and use that as your iTunes Library folder.