crazybob's shared items

A recent update to the net-connected Chumby device adds Pandora Radio as an option under the Music menu. Check out the above video for a quick demonstration of everything. It’s pretty straightforward – you’ll need to reboot your Chumby to get it to show up initially but once that’s done, you’ll find the Pandora option amongst the other available music sources.

Then, simply enter your Pandora username and password and you’ll have access to your stations. You can create new stations straight from your Chumby device and they’ll show up on Pandora.com as well.

It has surprised me that this, the tremor before this recent financial disaster, the Keating Five scandal, has not been at the center of this campaign before. But now, apparently in response to Palin's suggestion that the fact Obama knows Ayers is relevant to whether he should be president, the Obama campaign has released this very strong 15 minute documentary about the Keating scandal.

For those not old enough to remember, here's the outline: 5 Senators, all of whom had received campaign funding from Charles Keating, intervene with regulators to get them to overlook criminal behavior by Keating, leading to the collapse of Lincoln Savings, leading to a $3.4 billion bill for Americans. The only one of those 5 Senators to receive both personal and political benefits from Keating: McCain.

Fair? Totally relevant to the question whether the judgment of this candidate is the sort that's needed at this time. Totally relevant to the basic question whether his philosophy -- deregulate -- is what this sector needs at this time.

Wise? Not sure. I'm not sure Americans distinguish between hard-hitting-and-fair criticism (which this is) and hard-hitting-and-unfair criticism (which Palin's is). One might worry that they're "burn[ing] down the house to roast the pig" but I assume they've reckoned that.

But ugly? You bet.

I use the provided Android "drawables" with my Android apps fairly often. (You can use the built in resources in addition to your own.) I find the "ic_menu" items the most useful. I reuse the same icons the built in apps use for common functions like "save", "edit", "delete", "dial", "browse", and so on. Also, from time to time, some other image the platform provides fits. I found myself guessing at particular images from names, and then jotting down notes - and then finally said to myself "man, I gotta write a script to just spit these out in a table for reference."

Hence, here is the full reference to the included drawables for the 1.0 SDK.

Yes, you can also just include your own drawables with your app, but the thing with the built ins is that they are always there with every app, provided by the platform, and they already cover many common icons you may need (they are in the "android" package, and included in the android.jar file).