By the time this post is live, I’ll be en route to my ship (above). As with my last vacation (Copenhagen), I’m leaving the laptop behind - travel tech is limited to my iPhone, Shure earbuds, and old Panasonic Lumix digital cam. Onboard WiFi runs $55 for 150 minutes, so I’ll periodically check in online to limit the twitching. Otherwise, I can be found at the pool or beach… with books… made from trees! See ya next week.

It’s been one amazing adventure after another, but I’ve made the very difficult decision to leave Sling Media for an exciting new opportunity. I’m grateful for having worked with such a talented and dedicated group on a product lineup I care deeply about. Before joining Sling, I was both an ethusiastic customer and blogger - I fully expect that to continue well beyond my period of employment as they continue to innovate (God-box, Cacther, PRO-HD, SlingPlayer 2.0). Sling on!

Brent and I are giving away a Firefly PC Remote ($50), courtesy of Snapstream. For remote details, check out my brief hands on or Brent’s extensive review. The rules are simple: Leave a comment on this post saying you want in. However, your comment must be accompanied by a Gravatar image/icon - sign up here. (It’s painless, really.) Please be located in the lower 48 (US) and we’ll randomly choose a winner later this week.

There’s been some discussion lately regarding a lack of originality in the blogosphere and the recurring debate of bloggers are/aren’t journalists. While Mari and I are content to let others hash this out (for now), we’ve been busy removing feeds rather than adding. And we don’t want to get stuck in a rut - not only are we blog readers in search of inspiration, but we also need to stay current for our day jobs. So where are the good technology blogs we might not know about or sites that deserve a second look? (more…)

Version 2.5 of the WordPress blogging software just went gold, and I want to give the new Gallery feature a spin. Here’s a few of the pics I snapped at CES in January:

It’s going to be quiet around here the next few days…

Not only is it March Madness (Go Retrievers?), tomorrow’s the move. And I haven’t even finished packing, plus it’ll take me awhile to dig out. However, once I do my home work environment should be much improved. Examples: I intend to upgrade my “walking desk” by wall-mounting my current 19″ Samsung desktop PC LCD, which in turn will be replaced by a 21″ - 24″ television - better suited for HTPC duty and improved “lab” conditions for the Battle Royale. (Unless it waits until I’m in the office, where I can use two Westinghouse HDTVs side-by-side.) My Airport Extreme base station and 750GB Maxtor USB drive are currently 15 miles apart, but one of my first post-relocation tests will be with the new firmware enabling network Time Machine backups. However, I’d be happy with just improved disk access.

FYI In the course of clearing out my stuff, I had decent results unloading maybe 15 items through the ebay consignment shop and finally figured out how to recycle useless tech via Office Depot (PDF link).

Yep, ZNF finally gets a redesign.

WordPress is a great open source blogging platform for managing content, but customizing the look and feel requires a decent amount of effort plus a bit of skill. I tried to offload some of this about two years ago - long story, short: I was out a few hundred bucks and left with nothing usable. Nowadays, professional blog design runs several thousand dollars and most designers are booked solid… Even if I could stomach the cost (I can’t), I rarely received a ping back when researching a new look. So, I gave up on the idea of hiring a pro and started looking for freely available themes which might be good enough. I found two last fall that I thought I could work with, and yesterday I was obviously inspired to spend some time getting this one ready. Hopefully, the redesign is a bit more modern looking yet the content is still clearly presented. I’ll continue to tweak the theme, as I find time and motivation, over the next few weeks.