Out of here

I really need to travel. As you can sort of see...I don't really update my blog a whole lot, but I am 100% more likely to update it when I am traveling. Or at least when I am in a rest stop bathroom with "glow in the dark" condoms. Maybe its just over exposure to the internet. Having a corporate desk job, the internet is always a click away. All day, all night, all the effing time. It's cool when there are things going on, or I just don't want to work, but there is always a new gadget or social tragedy to read up on. That's why I need to travel. Oh well, the holidays are almost here, and I will be in for another road trip to MI to see family.

Other than that, I cannot wait for the Triangle to run out of water. Literally. It is going to be mayhem.

Savannah cont.

Savannah, GA

A view from the waterfront in Savannah.

Yeah. Funny.

The Office (U.S.A.)

I am convinced that the U.S.A. ruins nearly all that it touches. Just look at any chain restaurant that pretends to be "authentic," (if you need examples, leave a comment). Or The Office (U.S.A.). Give me a break, the damn show would be funny if they just took Ricky Gervais' scripts from The Office (UK) and had American actors use "Northern American" accents. I guess I am not alone in my sentiments, but it does seem to have a prime time slot for weeknight disengaging entertainment. Ugh.

Lincoln

Zappa

Stumbled across this video the other day on YouTube. Enjoy. Makes me kind of feel the same way as watching True Stories.

Angry since 2005

If you need a refresher, keep up the hate. I know some people have forgotten. Examples here, here and here. That last one will install a rootkit on your windows PC. Call me when the PS3 is worth a damn.

True Stories: Talking Heads

If you want to experience a bit of David Byrne in 1986, get your hands on a copy of "True Stories: Talking Heads" (the movie). If you have Netflix, it's in the Watch Instantly selection. If you are uneasy about humanity today, just imagine feeling that way since '86. It is written in a musical style that I really like, a sad love story, and great commentary from David Byrne himself. Needless to say, this movie is already one of my favorites of all time. Watch it. Let me know what you think.

Welcome to the South

I'm not sure about you, but this just doesn't look like justice. I guess if this guy wasn't "retarded" he could have stood trial. Instead, he has just sat in jail for 14 years. So much for the pursuit of happiness.

The "Completed" Media Center

As you know from previous posts, and the overall buzz of this on the internet, Apple gave me $100 dollars to spend on more Apple stuff. I guess that was enough to push me to invest in another mac. Now there is a Mac mini connected to the 1080p HDTV in the livingroom. And boy is it awesome. I'll answer the first question that I wanted to know for a while. Does this thing play 1080p H.264 video? The answer. Yes. But keep in mind we got the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo model with 2GB of RAM. It is now the heart of my entertainment center, pretty much does everything I needed, records my vinyl collection, holds the lossless music for the livingroom, streams my large library of mp3's from the den (which is managed separately for my iPod, and iPhone). Also, I am running XP on the mini, so I can watch instantly with Netflix. I don't have a tuner to turn it into a DVR yet, but I haven't been too tempted by any shows on OTA HD to really care to record it. But I have heard good things about Elgato's stuff. Maybe I'll turn into a TV fan someday, but for now, Netflix fits the bill.

There is a pretty decent selection of 720p and 1080p free video available for download now, especially since Apple doesn't force you to wait for quicktime to download the movie while you wait with the app open anymore. If you navigate to the iTunes music store "movies" section, scroll down to "Theatrical Trailers" in on the bottom left pane. Image below for better clarity of my description.









They have a good selection of HD trailers that download as Video Podcasts, and I like it.

Another good video aggregator (actually way better in my opinion as far as video for viewing on your PC) is Miro. Great interface, easy to manage media (aside from how separated it is from Front Row, maybe a different post though), and a great selection of RSS feeds with tons of great content. HD content is easily browsable from the Miro Guide, unlike iTunes where I feel like they don't really want people to find the HD stuff.

To conclude, Linux is out of my house, not because I don't like it, just because it doesn't do what I need to do. I have a few old computers that could be used for single tasks with linux, but that's about it.

Leave a comment if you have any ideas/suggestions or things you do with your own.

Old, bald and M$FT

I am having trouble thinking of anyone in such a high paid, cushy position as this dude in the photo above. With enough cash at hand to choke China, and with as little brains as a donkey, this guy is hanging by a thread. He even predicted the failure of the iPhone. I haven't heard much from him since this interview. Ugh, old dudes in the tech industry, get a clue.

How I feel.

I hate Mike Love. It's just every once in a while I get upset about his influence on music, and tonight is one of them. Every time I think about what the world could have been like if SMiLE had been released in the 1960s rather than the 2000s, I just get dissapointed. Oh well.

If I ever hear Kokomo, I bawl my eyes out.

iPod Touch Review

The iPod Touch is here, and for some, exactly what they were waiting for. From my perspective, it is a bit of a let down though, especially compared to the iPhone. Ok, for starters, 16GB is small. Not bad. Just small. A HDD version? The iPod classic is a large device, and really lacks any appeal other than a huge HDD. But this isn't really the big problem with the Touch.

The big problem with the iPod Touch is the lack of an external speaker. Seriously, wtf. Yeah, maybe the device would have been 1mm thicker, or whatever the reason, this is a HUGE shortcoming. You have YouTube, Music, Videos in your pocket and the only way to show them to someone is to let them jam your earbuds into their ears. Gross. Lame. I'm sure this will probably be fixed in future models, but maybe not. Maybe iPod's were never meant to have speakers. Maybe iPod isn't meant to be used by people who want to share with others. I can't even tell you how often I have pulled up a video, song or whatever to show someone or let them HEAR something on my iPhone.

This shortcoming, along with the small storage capacity and no tactile volume controls, makes the iPod Touch a crappy choice between holding ALL of your music and video with a small screen to watch it on, or a small peared down version of your music and video with a beautiful screen that ONLY YOU can really enjoy (unless you carry large headphones everywhere with you, or don't mind other people's earwax).

Just a disclaimer to anyone who might take this seriously, I have yet to touch the Touch.

Apple is crazy, and awesome.

Unbelievably, Apple listened to all the whiny complaints from iPhone early adopters such as myself. Apparently, they didn't take my explicit advice, but actually surpassed it. $100 Apple dollars. I cannot think of another occasion in the tech industry where this has happened. Prices always go down. But as I said previously, there seemed to be no incentives to early adoption, especially since so much was promised to be delivered in future software updates.

In other iPhone news: there has been a lot of buzz about free ringtones. Its true, and friggin easy to get them on your phone. Engadget has covered it the best here. Apple even patched iTunes in the last 24 hours to do what seemed like stop this workaround, but its been worked around again. All I have to do is make 100 free ringtones, and I have made the rest of my early adopter tax back. WOOHOO.

iPhone Story

This is the letter I left with Apple today, when I saw their "Share your iPhone Story" section on apple.com

I purchased the iPhone on the day it was launched: I was very excited. Above all, it has been the best cell phone, internet device, PDA, iPod that I have ever owned. I was also very interested in what would be next as far as new features and applications delivered through iTunes software updates.

However, I am a bit disappointed now that the only real new features (iTunes Wifi Store, and Ringtones) have been announced only to a $200 price drop! As far as I see it, I have had the privilege to use this fantastic device for the past 69 days, but it seems a rather stiff "early adopter tax" granted that no new apps or features were delivered until this announcement. I understand Apple stands to make a profit on the products they sell, but this seems a bit out of the ordinary. It seems even Wall Street took this price drop the wrong way (AAPL is -5.13% in the wake of this announcement), even though the sales figures tell a much different story.

As a long term customer, I am accustomed to product refreshes, and price drops (I purchased the iMac G5 iSight only to see the iMac Core Duo released soon after), but this feels different. Even seeing this "iPhone Story" section today, rather than yesterday, prompted me to write a complaint, rather than a glowing review and even an insightful story about the devices functionality that would improve the product.

My thoughts of what a fair "gift" to iPhone early adopters are probably out of place, but I have planned to own my iPhone through the 2 year service contract with AT&T (as I'm sure is echoed by most of us early adopters). In light of that, I feel that giving a complementary Apple Care Plan to early adopters would be the best gift. I feel it is a win-win from both sides. I have my perfect phone for 2 years worry free, and it remains in the public eye (free advertising) for Apple for those 2 years. Additionally, this could be done silently or publicly by Apple, and would be communicated by word of mouth by the users who received this "gift".

Please feel free to contact me about my story, I would like to discuss.

Modified VNC client lets you VNC from your iPhone

With the hacking of the iPhone heating up, a number of applications that let you control your Mac or PC from your iPhone have popped up, and look quite promising.

read more | digg story

Media Solution #2

Since last time, I have learned a bit more, and refined what I have started.

It turns out that the front USB port on my DVD player can accept any FAT32 formatted volume, including a large HDD. It works pretty well to dump video files onto my 2GB memory stick or the HDD for viewing.

I found a better way to DAAP from linux, even with Apple Lossless. Reading this how-to I found a good way to run mt-daap on Ubuntu without running a frontend like Banshee or Rhythmbox. This way iTunes buffers the stream, as directly playing the files over the network in the previous setup wirelessly was skippy too often. Only part that threw me off was configuring the firewall in Ubuntu. I am now using Firestarter, but even when I configure it to what seems to be correctly, it only lets avahi (bonjour) broadcast over my LAN if the firewall is completely off.

Maybe someone has a suggestion?

My media solution until I really do it up.

I have been alluding to this post for a while, and finally I have something to share that I am at least semi proud of to pipe media into my living room.

Starting with the tasks I hope(d) to perform:
1. Listen to my entire library of lossless/lossy music in the living room.
2. Computer/internet in the living room for photos, video, a good way to access music (itunes) and other stuff, like writing this post.
3. HDTV, Upscale DVD, compressed video.
4. Eliminate Windows from all parts of the system (taken most of the focus lately).

To start, here is a shot of the living room...Wii, PS2 with Guitar Hero controller on the floor, Philips Upscale DVD player with HDMI out, Samsung LN-S4095D 40" 1080p LCD flat panel HDTV, iBook G4 800Mhz running in clamshell mode outputting 1920x1080, an old Onkyo receiver connected utilizing all 2 audio inputs from the TV and the Philips turntable, and finally, Bose 301 bookshelf speakers.



The main audio hub of this setup is the HDTV, taking sound from all connected source (Wii, PS2, DVD, iBook) and going analog to the receiver. An easy way to upgrade this setup would be a new receiver with digital audio inputs, as the HDTV receives and outputs digital audio. The Upscale DVD player is connected via HDMI, Wii and PS2 over component, iBook by d-sub (VGA).

So, to satisfy point number 1 above, I set up a file server that I keep in a closet, and run headless via VNC. To start, this had been a Windows box running iTunes, and served as the main ripper/burner for new CDs entering the house. All of the music kept on this system was encoded in Apple Lossless, and was shared via iTunes DAAP. This kept my mp3/mp4 collection on my iMac separately managed for my iPod and generally makes everything easier to manage. Lately, I got the idea to just share the folder containing all the music in my lossless iTunes library over my network, and add the files to my iBooks iTunes music library. This provides a much more seamless experience, and gives you nice album art coverflow (which you cant do with DAAP shares.)

As I stated, I wanted to eliminate Windows from this system. Finally, it seems I can. With the recent release of Ubuntu 7.04, I downloaded it and loaded it on my main server directly (usually wouldn't do that, but Windows had already shit the bed and needed to be reloaded either way), and with minimal googling had the system up and reading and writing to the NTFS volume loaded with all of my Apple Lossless files (I was NOT going to rip my collection again) and sharing either as SMB or NFS in a few clicks. Honestly, this post will probably turn into more of a free comercial for Ubuntu, which is friggin awesome, especially Feisty. I have been playing with Ubuntu since Dapper, and it has always impressed me as being a general purpose Windows replacement. Now it finally is (as far as my needs are concerned aside from work). Also, since I have this computer running all the time in the closet, I use it for bit torrent, as well as additional NAS.

As far as the iBook goes, it is slow and steady. It can't do cool stuff like Google Earth at 1920x1080 without serious problems. But it can run iTunes and browse the web/You Tube pretty well (the Wii is better/faster in some regards). I really want to be able to use iTunes or Democracy to aggregate and watch video blogs, but for now, video is left to the Philips player.

Using a wireless keyboard and mouse (non bluetooth) is a bit laborious but they work. This job should really be done with a Mac mini, but I am still holding out until they can play 1080p quicktime (at least 2.0Ghz core duo per apple.com).

As I said, video is left to the Philips player. It can play any avi, mpeg, divx video, display jpegs, play mp3 and has a front usb port for jump drives filled with music or pictures. It upscales to 1080i, which looks great, although there have been some DVDs that have looked crappy.

Room for improvement:
1. Wire ethernet to the TV side computer so that I can access video_TS folders using Matinee or buy an external HDD to house the large files.
2. Buy a faster TV side computer that can actually play HD video, front row, DVR?

For now, its a pretty good solution that takes care of most of my needs. It seems that the best solution (until I wire the house or go 802.11n) is cheap CD and DVD media for video, because streaming over 802.11g doesn't work. All told, music is flaky sometimes too, since it is not buffered.

I hope this sparks some ideas to help your media center. Drop a line if you have found anything interesting in your own.