The most famous covert organization in the world.
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When I was a kid, I used to love Rube Goldberg machines, whether real or in the comics or cartoons. OK Go commissioned the creation of a rather clever one for their new video, amazingly shot in one continuous take lasting over 4 minutes. Also, the music is good!
Learn more about the machine and video here.
Tags: music video
My sister bought me Rock Band 2 for Christmas. I’m a little late to the rhythm beat-style game phenomenon, but I was instantly hooked and so was my wife and kids. So much so, that I went driving all around the next weekend looking for a second guitar since there’s four of us in the house, but the game ‘only’ comes with one guitar, a microphone and a drum set. The following weekend, I got the cymbal attachments for my drum-set. “I call drums!”
We now have a room pretty much devoted to this game.
Last Saturday (with a little alcohol) we played the game from 8pm until 3am. Kids too.
I’m telling ya…, hooked up to a nice tv with a good sound setup, you easily feel as if you are really playing that shit.
Which brings me to my point.
I FEEL as though I am playing but I KNOW I am not.
I have no delusions that I am actually a rock star despite my hours of fake drumming. None at all. Yes I feel that MAYBE I have a better sense of timing. Yes MAYBE I have a better understanding of using both hands and feet while following a beat. BUT I AM NO ROCK STAR. I CAN NOT PLAY DRUMS.
I am so sick of hearing mediocre musicians (and the media) criticize people who play the game.
They make blanket statements like this: “Guitar Hero punks who think they can really play guitar.”
Lets get something straight. NO ONE WHO PLAYS THESE GAMES, BELIEVES THEY CAN REALLY PLAY AN INSTRUMENT BECAUSE OF IT. NO ONE. Please show me ONE person, just one, who truly thinks this way because I have yet to see it.
As soon as I put the band controllers down, I return to my no-music-talent world of dullness, and I am fully aware of it.
Why all the hate over these music games?
You never hear NASA criticize people for playing Mass Effect. “So what, you think your some kind of astronaut now?”
Nor does the NFL come down on anyone. “Look at him playing Madden 09,… he thinks he’s a real football player!”
Hell, even those people who do that role playing with costumes don’t get as much flak. And they are throwing tennis balls in place of Magic Missiles! However, when the costume comes off, the player doesn’t continue to believe they are really wizards.
I will admit that one time while mixing prescription meds and playing Nintendo, I was pretty sure I was Mario. I did a lot of damage to my house with a hammer that day…
Anyway, to all the insecure musicians out there…
Look, I’m sorry that when I press four buttons on a guitar shaped joystick, that it somehow attacks your thrashing credibility.
Maybe if you stopped worrying about what I do in my living room and started practicing more, you’d actually get laid. and believe me, once you get laid for the first time, you will forget all about Guitar Hero.
Let me know how it works out.
The Crack Team has one that can pierce armor, but of course we can’t give you the plans to that.
Scaring misbehaving cats is hilarious. Using a bunch of technology to do it is even better. Be sure to check out the last video (dated 10-17). Hat tip to Masterchief.
From Seann William Scott (and probably NSFW):
Tags: iphone, seann william scott, video
Windows 7 actually appears to be worth the upgrade. I got a firsthand account from my roommate, who says it’s combines Vista features with XP efficiency. And for a limited time that upgrade is cheap: $50 for Home Premium and $100 for Professional.
To make it easy on the consumer, each version of 7 has all the features of it’s lesser brethren - no more Home Premium vs. Business vs. Ultimate BS. E.g., since Premium includes Media Center, so does Professional, even though it’s targeted at small business users. Here is a good article comparing the different versions. I think Professional is a pretty clear win (at least for me).
To ease the minds of upgraders, Professional and Ultimate include a fully licensed copy of XP SP3 that runs in a virtual machine. There is one big gotcha, though - not all Intel CPUs support Intel VT (Virtualization Technology), required for this XP compatibility mode. Here is a list of supported (and unsupported) CPUs.
Please comment if you’ve had any luck (good or bad) with Windows 7.
Tags: media center, microsoft, windows
OK, this is big. Well, to some people. I’ve wanted to get Rhapsody on my PS3 for a while now, but it doesn’t support the Plays for Sure DRM. I’ve shared my Rhapsody library via the Windows Media Player streaming media server, but although I can see the files, I always get an error that the media is unsupported.
Enter Orb. This is yet another streaming media server. It appears that its main purpose is to share your library across the internet, so when you’re not at home you can still access the files on your desktop by visiting your personal Orb web page.
However, it also offers a UPnP server that allows you to browse shared directories with gaming consoles like the PS3. Unlike other UPnP servers (like the ones that come with Rhapsody and WMP), this allows you to play DRM-protected tracks. (As panarican mentions below, this includes subscription tracks. In fact, I’m a Rhapsody To Go member with a Sansa e280 so I haven’t purchased any tracks from Rhapsody.)
Here are the steps:
I haven’t tried playlists yet, and I’m a little curious if it will go from track to track without a long load time.
So there you have it. Yeah, it’s not as good as a true Rhapsody client like the Sonos system or a Tivo HD XL. With those, you can actually browse Rhapsody as you do with the desktop client or their website. The Orb method isn’t much different from loading up your Sansa and connecting it to your receiver, which I’ve also done. But this way you don’t have to worry about batteries going dead or even transferring tracks beforehand. It’s much nicer for impromptu playing.
If this stuff interests you, you might also want to learn about my troubles with HDCP and the PS3.
This is the story of how to waste an afternoon.
My housemate and I were trying to hook up his HTPC to our home theater system, as an internet search suggested that the PS3 couldn’t play MKV files, so it seemed streaming was out. The home theater is built into the wall (not my doing, we’re renting), and working on it is a tremendous pain in the ass. It already had an HD DVR and a PS3 connected to a 6.1 Onkyo receiver, which outputs to a TV. Both the receiver and the TV are 6+ years old and don’t have HDMI; heck, the TV is only 720P. However, the HTPC outputs via HDMI. We figured the only way to do this would be to swap in his newer HDMI-capable receiver for the old one. Then we hook up everything and output to the TV via component. What could go wrong?
I change out the receiver (again, huge PITA), and while I’m doing this, I decide to change the PS3 connection from component to HDMI. See, the PS3 will output HD through component, but won’t upconvert normal DVDs to HD unless you output via HDMI. HDMI requires HDCP, or high-bandwidth digital content protection. Apparently, they’re afraid you’re going to upconvert your legal/legit DVD of Spiderman to HD, then run it through an HD recorder/digitizer that has component inputs1, then… destroy all of Hollywood! Yes, it stops you from doing even fair use copying. And yes, you can pop that DVD into your computer and do the same thing, only way, way easier. So anyway, if you want your old SD DVDs nice and sharp on your HDTV, you gotta use the HDMI connector. No problem!
After all is hooked up, I test out the DVR - component in, component out - and it looks fine. I then try the PS3, and I’m getting no video. Audio yes, but no video. I connect it to a TV that has HDMI, verify it works, set HDMI to the default output, and hook it back up to the receiver. Still no dice. Perhaps the receiver is not HDCP compliant? The PS3 no likey da Onkyo? With a heavy heart, I read the manual for the receiver.
Turns out, the receiver is HDCP compliant. In fact, it’s so fucking compliant that it refuses to output video from an HDMI input to a component output! It’s essentially saying, “Your TV isn’t good enough to date my video signal.” Well my TV may not come from the best side of town, but your video signal is a whore! A filthy, corporate whore!
Sorry, where was I? Doesn’t matter. At this point, there appeared to be only two solutions:
Sadly, I went with Option C: go back to the all component setup and forgo dreams of sharper DVDs and HTPC goodness.2
Then, just for shits and giggles, my roommate downloads and configures TVersity on his desktop and shares a few MKV movies. We point the PS3 at his server and voila! the movies play! Now, they seem to be maxing out the wifi connection, so we may need to lower the quality to optimize for speed. And I’ve been hearing more good things about PS3 Media Server than TVersity, so perhaps we’ll give that a try. But the bottom line is, we never needed to swap anything out for this to work. And if I had just read the fucking Onkyo manual, I never would have bothered. But really, if Satan hadn’t invented HDCP, everything would have worked perfectly.
Notice that I did not use the familiar phrase: Nobel Prize Winner. That is because Doug Prasher is a victim of circumstance, Nobel prize rules and a slowing research environment. You can read his full story here as provided by NPR, but the gist is that he was a scientist that provided a vital link in the research that culminated in this 2008’s Nobel prize win. However, because his funding ran out at a succession of research jobs, he is now under-employed as a courtesy shuttle driver in Hunstville, Alabama.
But he is a hero, because he did the unselfish and ethical thing: he shared the fruits of his research with other scientists and helped them to get to the Nobel prize. Heck, if the prize committee did not have the 3-person rule for awards, Doug might have found himself with winfall cash and an invitation to Sweden (do they pay for the airfare??) .
My advice to Doug: sell and write your story to Hollywood. If they could make a crummy movie about the guy who invented the windshield wiper, they can certainly make a movie about your story. I am hooked already, and have found your persistence and courage inspiring. You are not only putting your kids through college but also providing a vital service in our community. I can only hope that the added attention to your tale brings about a job offer in the scientific field where your contributions can make our economy grow (are you listening, President Obama??)
Now, the auto industry is slowing down; nobody is buying cars. I hope this does not result in further unemployement for our hero; the auto dealership should trump up the fact that a Nobel prize researcher works there. This could result in upscale clientele — people that don’t care if the new Toyota SUV only gives you 10 miles per gallon. Better yet, someone hire Doug to invent a car that runs on hot air; there’s plenty of that blowing around our state and federal government centers as they try to get their hands on our (and our children’s) money using the recession as an excuse…….
UPDATE: Our hero will be going to Stockholm after all !! The Nobel prize winners invited Doug and his wife to travel with them to Stockholm and be at the ceremony, where he will be thanked for his contribution. That’s how a real scientist behaves; kudos to all involved. Now don’t get me started talking about Rosalind Franklin and how Watson and Crick scammed her out of their Nobel Prize for their so-called discovery of the DNA double helix !!
This brings me back - way back. From the chart below, we had an Atari 2600 (first the Sears clone, then the really slim Atari version), Pong, Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, and Sega Genesis. I’m not sure why they list the Commie 64 when it it used the same Atari joysticks as the 2600, but then neglect the analog joysticks of the Apple II. I also had a cool analog stick for my Amiga.
But the real wow moments are from remembering those one-off systems that my friends had, like Intellivision and the Odyssey2. Or systems that looked so cool in the commercials, like Colecovision and Vectrex (I was a big Tempest fan, and a lot of Vectrex games looked like Tempest).
And then there were the consoles that came later, like the Turbo Grafx 16, Philips CD-I, and of course, the 3DO. I remember the 3DO was supposed to change the industry with it’s cutting edge technology and open licensing model (anyone could build one, as long as they licensed the design). Instead, it crashed and burned.
Enjoy your trip to gaming’s past:
Tags: video games
Agent Assassin brings to our attention a recent NASA poll to name a nodule (what you ground dwellers would call a room) on the International Space Station. The existing nodules are named Unity and Harmony, and the 4 choices were Earthrise, Serenity, Legacy, and Venture. However, write-in votes were also accepted. When Xenu, the genocidal alien dictator from the world of Scientology (I am not making that up) became the number one write-in, Colbert joined the fray and his viewers made him the number one overall. Voting is closed and that’s where it stands today.
I like Colbert, he’s funny, but I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, he does publicize things you name after him (or things he wants named after him). I’d rather the nodule be named after Stephen Colbert than after any genocidal dictator, fictional or not (I would also be against naming it after Hitler, Stalin, or Darkseid). And it’s better than naming it after companies, a couple of which are also in the top 10.
The question I have is whether Serenity was an option because the other rooms are Unity and Harmony, or because NASA has fans of the series cult sci-fi series Firefly. The spaceship in Firefly is named Serenity and you may have seen the movie of the same name. It should be because of the show, but knowing NASA, both were factors.
My perspective comes from working in aerospace for 12 years, with two enjoyable years spent at a major NASA research center.1 I think that NASA has a responsibility to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists, and embracing the pop culture proclivities of future NASA geeks greatly aids this. From that perspective, NASA did this all wrong. Here’s what they should have done:
You may not get as many votes, but you’ll get the right people voting.
I thought I’d post this explanation in case anyone else has problems with getting Firefox to prompt for password recall at EVERY site you need it to. Yahoo, Paypal, and some other portals fail to recall the password, even when forced with that old bookmark trick. (stopped working after Firefox2)
Found on the net and works for me:
Find and open with notepad…
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components\nsLoginManager.js
or
\Program Files (x86) if using 64 bit windows.
Then, find this part in the code…
_isAutocompleteDisabled : function (element) {
if (element && element.hasAttribute(”autocomplete”) &&
element.getAttribute(”autocomplete”).toLowerCase() == “off”)
return true;
change the “true” to “false” and save over the original file.
Don’t worry if you screw it up, just delete the file and Firefox will replace it when reinstalled. So far, Firefox updates have not removed the modification. So I didn’t have to go back and perform the edit again.
I just did a system update on my PS3 in anticipation of Street Fighter IV. It took 45 minutes. If anything goes wrong while updating, you’re likely to have an unusable system. Does no one at Sony know about patches?
This past weekend I got to play Street Fighter IV on an Xbox 360. I only played two matches before deciding I must get this for my PS3. It also seemed like a good time get my X-Arcade stick out of hiding for this. For some ridiculous reason, though, I thought I’d see how the old stick stacks up against the new crop coming out. I learned a lot and I’m sharing it here before I forget it all.
The following is a summary of the sticks to buy for fighting games and the parts to use to mod/upgrade your X-Arcade stick for SF4. At the end, I’ll list any references that I don’t link in-line.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ps3, review, street fighter, video games, x-arcade
A friend complained about low battery life. Here are the tips I gave him:
BTW, I found that the Google Maps app works WAY faster than Sprint Navigation when showing you your current location and scrolling/zooming around the map. It also gives better routes. You can set route preferences with Sprint Nav., but they don’t seem to work well (or at all). Still, voice navigation is nice when you’re completely lost. Eventually, you do get home.
Tags: cell phones
So they released the new MacBook Pro, claiming it’s “engineered to standards that don’t even exist yet.” Really? Hey Apple, how about - gasp! - conforming to a standard that does exist? It’s called Blu-ray, and if you want to be taken at all seriously as a video editing and motion graphics platform (or even a purveyor of modern consumer electronics) you’ll get your hardware and OS developers working on it so you can add it to the 17″ model (whenever that gets updated…).
Time to set the record straight: whatever, whichever politician said that gas prices are not coming down was right. Offshore drilling is a good idea, but it will not bring gas prices down.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for drilling for oil in our own backyards. When I first moved out to California, I was enchanted by all of those oil derricks pumping, pumping away in the beautiful hills of Huntington Beach, down along the beach paths and even on the beach dunes themselves. It made California look like the golden El Dorado that I had always imagined: golden roads lined with cool-looking cars and all of the oil we needed right under our feet. And yes, I was also expecting bikini-clad girls to pump my gas and sell me my milk from those roadside milk stands (I saw pictures of this put out by the Orange County Chamber of Commerce). I’m sure the girls and the pumping action of the derricks was some sort of Freudian juxtaposition that made me drive out to California all the faster.
So why don’t I support the drilling now?? Because once the oil is out of the ground, it is immediately put out on the international market where China can bid on it, along with every other gas-thirsty country that is finally making its way out of the Third World. We would be competing with them for our own gas. And make no mistake about it: it’s our gas. It is coming out on nationally-owned areas (offshore or the ANWR in Alaska) and the oil companies are getting a low-risk, fantastic return on investment. If that is the case, they can afford to lose a little bit of profit by selling that gas DOMESTICALLY, ONLY. Does that sound socialistic, the first hints of nationalized gas production?? You bet your sweet light-crude that it does!! But if you’re going to drill in my backyard, and I own the land and mineral rights, you have better pay me off by at least selling me the oil at a domestically-competitive price.
But I’m also realistic. Using oil to power our cars is a technological dead-end. With all of the Chinese, Indian, Polish, Russian, etc. etc. economies finally coming out of the Dark Ages and increasing the number of privately owned cars, we are going to be running out of oil soon (peak oil production). So where’s my nuclear-powered car?? If all of those Disney documentaries in the 1950’s promised plenty of energy in the future, how come I have to use my bicycle to go to the library and to the store??
The anwer of course is that we can’t trust the average person to drive a quarter of critical mass around in their engines, waiting for some terrorist to figure out that (4) times (1/4) equals (1). Boom. And I can hardly imagine the bad traffic created when the radioactive cleanup team cleans up the pieces from your average 4 accidents per freeway per day.
We need to use nuclear power to generate the electricity to provide the hydrogen to run the cars. Simple enough, please give me my new-model 2010 hydrogen-fueled SUV. In Earth-Friendly Green, of course. And feel free to stick as many oil-sucking straws in the California Offshore until then.
Yesterday I braved the crowds and the alarming number of children at the theatre, attending this movie. Kids at a children’s movie, what a concept. However, the movie was a real pleasure and definitely worth a viewing.
More importantly, I found myself in a DLP theatre, by mere circumstance. Wall-E in DLP is a real pleasure, and not to be missed. Couple that with a very generous admission price of 5.00 before 6PM and I had an all-around great experience. The theater is located in La Palma, Orange County. You can find it by going to the DLP website and searching your local area code. As always, my only gripe is that the theatre does not list the DLP theatre separately from its print counterparts, so you have to call ahead to find out where you need to be before the 6PM bell tolls. Try DLP, you’ll like it.
I also experienced that rarity: a breakdown in the DLP projector halfway through the movie. However, I can report that unlike the days of old, the system reboot only took a few seconds; no need to bring up the houselights while the white-clad team of repairmen descended on the clean room housing the projector. The movie continued and I can report that it’s worth your time.
I’ll let someone else with a good graphics background report on the movie itself. I am only an awe-struck theatre-goer that appreciates quality work.
Tags: review
Well, I just submitted my application to the Astronaut Candidate Program at the Johnson Space Center! It’s unlikely that I would be the 1st TCT asset in space but I figure it will be a really damn cool rejection letter to have as a keepsake!
As you might have read, I want a PS3 real bad. Well, I ordered one today, paying more than I wanted to. Here’s with how it happened:
So I went from paying $500 plus shipping and getting it before 6/12 to paying $630 and getting it on Friday the 13th. I thought GS was price gouging with the $60 difference, but it turns out they forced customers to also buy the MGS4 bluetooth headset. While I’ll soon need a bluetooth headset for the California hands-free law, I was not planning on getting one that looks like it belongs in some little kid’s playset:
While I would have gone with something from Jabra or Plantronics, this is made from some company I’ve never heard of. On the plus side, I’m all set to play Buck fucking Rogers with the neighborhood kids.
Starbucks is now giving away 2 hours of free wifi per day. Yeah, there’s a catch. From USA Today:
The Wi-Fi freebie will be available starting Tuesday to customers who purchase a minimum $5 reloadable Starbucks Card, register online for the Starbucks Rewards Card program, and use the card at least once a month. The two hours must be consecutive. New members also receive a voucher for a free drink.
Also, if you register your gift card, you get perks:
Rewards program members who register online already receive free syrup and milk options with drinks as well as free refills of hot and iced brewed coffees and a free drink when they buy a pound of coffee beans.
Recently I started driving an electric car. I pay nothing for gas. It has a range of around 25 miles, but round trip to work and back is only 15 miles, so I charge it exclusively at work. It has a top speed of 35mph and is classified as a “neighborhood electric vehicle”, but I drive on the back roads to work anyways, so no big thing. It is far from roomy, probably not very safe in an accident, but short of a box full of puppies trained to hug kittens, it is probably the best way to meet chicks I can think of. Being so small, you don’t even need a “no fat chicks” bumper sticker, cuz they look at it and realize they would likely get stuck in the door if they were to even try to fit in the tiny little passenger seat. Funny thing is, the hotties that flock to it whenever I park it assume I am some sort of environmentalist dipshit who wants to talk to them about how Hitlery should drop out of the race or how much money we are wasting in Iraq. I don’t bother explaining to them that I agree completely, but that it would be best if Obama joined her, and that a few nukes would save us tons of money in Iraq. They also all assume it is a “smart car”… sigh.
See, my little electric car looks like a shrunk down smart car to people who haven’t seen either one in person before. That isn’t a bad thing, but seriously, what is the point of the “smart car”. Yes, it can drive at freeway speeds, but who would want to fight with semi for a lane in that thing? The real issue though is that the little coffin only gets a tad bit better milage than a normal sized car, and it isn’t exactly cheap. Really, the only reason to buy it in my book would be for the chick magnet appeal.
My plastic deathtrap uses no gas, and did I mention that I don’t pay to charge it! If you want a new vehicle to combat the crazy gas prices, wait until they at least get 60mpg, or buy a motorcylce, because if you are going to be unsafe and you insist on still using gas like a cave man, you can at least look cool doing it. Trust me, nobody looks cool in these micro cars. If you are normal sized, you will look huge in them. If you are above average in size you will look like Andre the Giant in them. If you are a tiny little person that is comfortably scaled to something that size, everyone will just assume you are far away and always yell to talk to you!
Tags: American Electric Kurrent, cars, Kurrent Electric Car, Smart Car
This pen would have been really useful in college (click on the videos at the bottom of the page). These days I don’t take notes often, but I imagine it would be quite useful if I had a lot of face-to-face client meetings.
UPDATE: There’s a better video at ZDNet.
It looks like I may finally get my PS3 in less than a month. I was waiting around for the rumored 120GB version, since the 80GB is out of production. Well, I’ve decided I won’t wait past June 12th, when the MGS PS3 Bundle comes out. It will have:
The whole thing is $500, so it’s like you get the upgraded controller and video game for free; that’s probably a $100 value. I will be putting that towards an extra controller and, if I feel like spending ridiculous money on (what most would call) a minor convenience, the infrared to bluetooth converter and the Harmony One remote.1
Tags: blu-ray, video games
I was not expecting AoC [ Amazon ] to live up to the hype, but it did.
I was not expecting it to be so gorgeous, and not just because you can see boobies. The youtube clips don’t do this game justice.
I was expecting it to be buggy and to have that “new game” feel, but the content I have seen so far is kicking butt. I have not yet gotten stuck, had a buggy quest, or had the game crash.
I was not expecting AoC to run as smoothly as it did, considering I am playing it on a Mac using Bootcamp, but the only thing limiting it is the steaming load that is Windows XP. I have 8 cores and 16gb of ram running on a 64 bit bus, most of which just sits there unused. I went with a slower processor and dumped the savings into upgrading the machine, but I have never used more than 35% of the CPU. The 8800GT is doing all the work, and all I can say is WOW (no, not WoW, not anything like WoW).
The fighting mechanics are still growing on me. I was one of those rare people that will admit to liking Oblivion, especially compared to the click on target mash buttons lameness that most classes in WoW utilize (sure, in raids they are now forcing you to move around to avoid hot lava, but the only reason this is hard is because many people don’t have the skills to actually watch their cast bar AND the screen). So far I have only played a barbarian, and the casting time for longer combo moves seems a bit off. Many times I think I initiated a combo, but my toon is just standing there getting beat on. Finally, the combo will pop up, and like some tard at the fair playing whack-a-mole, I excitedly mash the buttons in the order shown. Sure, I could have gone with the dance dance revolution comparison, but that would give away my winning idea of using a dance mat for controlling my toon!
Things I am not digging as part of the Early Access include the craptacular server maintenance schedules and lack of voice acting for the quests past the starting area, but maybe those will be fixed with the official launch. Of course, they are european, and expecting even half-assed customer support would be purely naive. Don’t believe me? Go try to find their phone support number…. nope, they don’t have one. Hopefully they can make up for it with adequate online GM support.
Should Blizzard be worried? Yes, they should. Not because everyone will be leaving WoW to play AoC,though some will, just for something new to do. Personally, I am not yet to the point where I am hooked, and I fully expect to go back to WoW some time before the next expansion. AoC may just delay my return for a few months. The real reason Bizzard should be worried though is that a bunch of weird Norwegians showed that WoW did not set the bar too high, and they are no longer the only real option for people wanting to get their MMO on. Two days ago I was still resigned to WoW being the best option for the foreseeable future, but now I can see that providing them competition is not only possible, but likely. This is good for gaming in general, and I look forward to seeing how the competition drives the genre in the future.
Tags: Age of Conan, AOC, apple, blizzard, bootcamp, review, video games, wow
Today I read an amazing article in Wired about Piotr Wozniak, the inventor of software that uses spaced repetition to help you learn things permanently. Spaced repetition is where you learn something, then relearn it right at the point where you’re about to forget it. Each time you relearn it, you remember it for a longer period of time. The concept is simple, but requires a computer to determine the exact point at which you need to relearn something.
Wozniak created software called SuperMemo (SM) to implement the spaced repetition algorithm. In essence, it’s the ultimate flashcard program. It allows you to use images, HTML, and sounds, too. His latest feature is “incremental reading”, where you grab a bunch of documents from the web (or email, etc.) and throw them into SM. You prioritize the documents as you insert them; when you have time to read them, SM determines the order. As you read the document, you pull out info nuggets that you don’t want to forget, and these get added to the flashcard stack. Interesting, but it sounds like a bit of work.
Although it can be used to learn anything, the killer app is language learning. Indeed, in Wozniak’s native Poland, SuperMemo has been used extensively by students of English who wish to study abroad. There’s also rampant piracy and use in China and other countries. However, piracy is unnecessary, since Wozniak writes openly about the algorithms he uses, and open source alternatives have arisen.
One standout is Mnemosyne. It also offers support for HTML, images, and sound. One interesting feature is the 3-sided flashcard, which is particularly suited to language learning by including written form, pronunciation, and translation.
Another free program I saw recommended was OpenCards. It is based on OpenOffice Impress, a free PowerPoint alternative. As such, your flashcards can contain anything that can go into a PowerPoint slide, such as background images, animation, video, sound, etc. OpenCards runs on all major operating systems.
One issue I had with this super learning system is that, other than language, I couldn’t think of much that I wanted to keep in permanent memory. It did occur that in addition to foreign words, this is a great way to retain a large English vocabulary and keep it sharp. In On Writing, Stephen King recommends expanding your vocabulary by reading good authors and looking up words you don’t know1. I already do this, but now I can retain them indefinitely. That’s pretty cool.
If I was in school, however, this would be a fantastic way to retain knowledge for tests. I did a lot of cramming, which they tell you not to do. Cramming helps you pass quizzes and tests that cover recent lessons, but when it comes to the comprehensive final, it fails2. High school students who use this system diligently can demolish memorization-heavy AP tests. Not to mention the vocabulary-heavy SAT. Heck, this could make even high school language courses worthwhile! And all of this would lead to a clear advantage in college, where the same system should also work wonders. Later in life, you can brag about graduating magna cum laude - in French! - even though you studied something you never ended up using.
Update/Clarifications (4/23/08)
In case I didn’t sell this strong enough, the Wired article explains how cognitive psychologists and memory researchers are completely baffled as to why everyone isn’t using this technique. They equate it to using torches when light bulbs are available.
Although there is an obvious use for high school students, it occurred to me that placement in accelerated classes starts as early as 3rd grade. In my school system, you had to be placed there by 7th grade if you wanted to take the most advanced math classes in high school. So parents probably should start their kids as early as 2nd grade.
You don’t need to leave your computer on all the time - it will save your progress to disk 
However, it is important to use the software daily. Skipping several days can set you back quite a ways.
Another free program is Anki. While it’s a general purpose spaced rep. program, it has extra features for learning Japanese, English, and Russian. Students of Japanese can also try Reviewing the Kanji. It was also suggested in the Lifehacker forums that Pimsleur language CDs (which are available at your local library if you don’t want to buy your own copy) could be converted to OpenCards decks for optimal aural learning.
Update (6/15/09)
I should have mentioned that Anki is my main program now. I find that it’s the most usable at this time. However, for practicing your pronunciation of foreign languages, Rosetta Stone is pretty good.
Tags: language, productivity, software
A while back I contacted Samsung to ask them a question about one of their widescreen LCD monitors. Specifically, I wanted to know if it had a 16:9 (AKA 1:1) mode; without it, signals from your cable box get stretched and/or cropped.
Three months later they send a reply that has nothing to do with my question. Some standard “check your drivers” bullshit. Clearly, the dumbass tech didn’t even bother to read my question. So I dropped it. But they didn’t.
They are now SPAMMING me! I actually got an unsolicited marketing email from them. Apparently my question gave them the right to put me on their spam list. So I marked it as such in Yahoo mail and hope others are doing the same.
Bastards.
This (or something very like it) came to the Hollywood Bowl. It’s an orchestral soundtrack to classic video games.
Tip of the hat to Or.
Tags: soundtracks, video, video games
So I want a Blu-Ray player, and the PS3 appeared to be the logical choice. After considering the setup and looking at the features, I’m not so sure.
The house where I’m staying has the TV (a 70″ Sony LCD rear projection) set into the wall. The A/V components are above it on a shelf also set into the wall; it’s a sort of cubby hole. There is a hole between the components and the TV where wires are fed. It’s the kind of setup that, when you have to modify the wiring, you start by staring at the system for five minutes, mutter “Fuck me,” and then try to find a way to not do that.
I thought I had accomplished that. There’s an existing DVD player, and it’s connected with component cables, so it thought I could just do a drop in replacement with the PS3.
Not so fast. The PS3 does not have direct component out. It has a proprietary analog A/V connection, which forces you to buy a special cable for $20. You can’t just use your existing cables and plug them right in. If you’re in my situation, or the cable is too short (which it might be since they don’t tell you how long it is!), you need a component video coupler. This is a set of 3 RCA female-to-female connectors, known amongst electrical engineers as a lesbian 3-way adapter. Luckily, it’s only $4 at Radio Shack. So I gotta shell out another $24 bucks I shouldn’t need to, but I can live with that.
What I can’t live with is the PS3 Blu-Ray remote. It’s Bluetooth, not infrared. Yes, this means you don’t need need to point it at the console - but who isn’t trained to do that anyway? I already shelled out $160 for a Universal Automator remote with macros, volume punch through, etc. The BR remote isn’t even back-lit. And there’s no one-touch power off, meaning that even if it did have infrared support, you couldn’t use macros to turn it off.
So as much as it pains me, I think I’m going to have to pass on the PS3 and go with a straight up BD player. Hopefully they have some that fully support BD-J. For me, that was the big selling point for the PS3. Of course, the games wouldn’t hurt, assuming it gets some good ones.
Tags: blu-ray, dvd, ps3, video games
This is pretty big news: Macs now account for 14% of all PC sales by units sold. By dollars spent, it’s 25% - yes, they are friggin’ expensive.
In my microverse, the laptop share must be 80% or more. What’s interesting is that even by techies, they’re not being bought for OS X. The reasons I’m hearing are that it’s very reliable and (this is coming from a very talented sysadmin, mind you) “it’s just so thin…”. Several people are using Windows as the main OS.
By non-techies, it’s totally the external form that sells it. Clearly Microsoft thought making Vista look more like Aqua would help, but it’s the container, not the guts, that’s grabbing buyers. I heard another story on Hacker News from a guy who explained to his friend how the Macbook Pro was so much faster than the Macbook, even though the specs look similar. His eyes glazed over, and then he proclaimed, “Yeah, I like look of the glossy black one better.” These aren’t computers, they’re accessories.
I think they’re cool, and I love the fact that it’s UNIX under the hood and runs Windows reliably. But I still have a hard time spending $600+ more for a laptop with fewer features than an HP or Dell. But I’d definitely take the Apple over the Sony.
I frequently have to adjust my assumptions. Everyone knows the Wii is the top console these days, but it always amazes me to hear that the PS2 is next in line. Sony sold 352,000 units in February alone! Versus 281K for the PS3 and 255K for the 360. And the Nintendo DS outsells everything at 588K units last month. The #1 game was Devil May Cry 4, which I’d never even heard of - not even 1-3. I’m not a console gamer, but I figured I’d at least hear of the best selling game in the market. I think it’s time I a start midlife crisis.
Here’s a technology demo for how to do VR head tracking with a Wii remote. It creates the illusion of 3D to the wearer of the headset. This could add a really cool element to shooters.
Tags: video, video games, wii
This is seriously Crack Team:
$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - video powered by Metacafe
Tags: photography, video
The high def disc battle was supposed to go on for years. Sony, Disney, Fox, and Lionsgate backed Blu-ray. Paramount, Dreamworks, and Universal backed HD-DVD. And Warner Bros. backed both (it goes both ways), making it the deciding factor. If it backed Blu-ray, it could be over quickly, and if it backed HD-DVD the sides would be even and the war would rage for years with everyone buying two players or multi-players.
A week ago, Warner Bros. decided to back Blu-ray exclusively. The war is over. Condolences to the mourners.
Paramount actually had an escape clause in the event this happened, and Universal announced it will no longer be HD-DVD exclusive. There will be some cleanup, commitments fulfilled, but in the meantime, feel free to buy a Blu-ray player. Newline is also backing BR, as is the increasingly irrelevant Blockbuster.
It’s been an interesting ride. Including the BR player in the PS3 caused delays and cutbacks, and inflated the price. It was selling pretty poorly because of this and a fairly crappy game selection. But this past holiday season it sold 1.2M units1.
This change in the film industry should fuel PS3 sales. From what I’ve read, it’s not the highest quality BR player out there. But unlike many standalone players for your home theater, it supports all of the special interactive features the discs have. This is mainly through Blu-ray Disc for Java (BD-J), which is a form of Java ME. Already a number of titles have been enhanced with BD-J, although it seems mostly limited to enhanced menus. Over time, this could lead to some pretty cool hacks and features, esp. with players that are Internet enabled.
Overall, I’m not terribly happy Sony won, but it is nice that a format has been chosen. Using Java for interactivity is another bonus.
So every once in a while I try to justify the purchase of a 30″ widescreen monitor that I don’t really need. Since there appears to be an inevitable housing shakeup here at CTHQ-OC1, I have to deal with a possible loss of home theater. That seems reason enough to justify spending $1,300 on a new monitor/TV. I could move the PC to my bedroom and have a private home theater. But how to power it?
I’d seen some cheap Windows XP and Vista Media Center PCs, so that seemed reasonable. The last thing I really need is another computer, since I just bought one. It’s fast with a great case and a 500W power supply - why not upgrade this one?
Because it’s impossible! Thank you, Microsoft and CableLabs!
Ok, some clarification. You can add an HD tuner and capture card. It will capture over-the-air signals (antenna) and basic cable. But they can’t do digital cable, so no HBO or any channel over 100. Frankly, I don’t really watch stuff above channel 100, but I do watch HBO2.
It’s at this point things go downhill. To watch digital cable, you need a digital cable tuner (DCT). In it you place a CableCARD you get from your cable company. Then you can watch and record most of the channels you now get with your set top box. I’ll explain “most” later.
This exists in the form of the ATI TV Wonder™ Digital Cable Tuner. This comes as an internal card or external peripheral and integrates with Vista Media Center. It runs about $250 either way. However, it can only be attached to PCs certified by CableLabs. This is from an agreement with Microsoft, and requires the system builder to add extra firmware to support DRM.
As you might imagine, this severely limits your choices, mainly to major vendors like Dell, Gateway, and HP. Even then, it is a bear to find them. Dell had it available on the XPS 410. When that was replaced with the XPS 420, the option went away - from all their machines. [Insert 420 joke here.] HP has it on some series like the m9000t and d4995t. Sony has it on the XL3. You’ll see a common theme across vendors, though: it’s only available on their most powerful - and expensive - machines. Makes sense since they have to certify the damn things. The other reason is common in sales: you have to make that extra $500 for two tuners seem reasonable, and it won’t until you’re spending a lot for the PC itself. Wait, did I say two tuners? Ah yes, I did.
Because it gets worse. There are 3 types of CableCARDs:
Of course, the TV Wonder DCT appears to only support SCards3. This means if you want to record 2 channels at the same time, like my Time Warner-provided Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD can do, you need to buy 2 DCTs and rent 2 CableCards from your cable company.
At $500+ on tuners, I’m starting to consider the Tivo HD:
But it gets worser. Another thing I can do with my set top box is watch video on demand (VOD) channels. TW gives you many free VOD channels like NBC, Cartoon Network, HBO, BBC America, etc. This is really great when the DVR misses something, or there’s nothing on TV because of, let’s say, a writer’s strike.
Unfortunately, that’s only possible with CableCARD 2.0, which nobody currently supports, not even Tivo. So once again, my $10/month Time Warner DVR seems to be the logical choice.
But it gets worserer. The 30″ displays have the following inputs: DVI-D and… that’s it! To my knowledge, no DVR has DVI-D output, so you can’t add one. And only the 27″ (1920 x 1200) displays accept component, HDMI, etc. A friend suggested Slingbox, but while it can input HD signals, it does not stream anything of high def quality.
[Edit: Ignore the following paragraph and read DoubleDeuce's comments on HDMI and the 8300HD.]
BTW, the 8300HD does have HDMI output. However, it assumes you’ll be using HMDI for both video and audio, so it cuts off the normal digital audio output4. Therefore, if you connect it to a monitor via HDMI, you get no sound or analog sound - your choice! So you either have to connect via component if your monitor supports that, or use this as an excuse to buy a receiver with HDMI switching.
In conclusion, here are your options as I see them:
Big screen, little channels
Big and expensive
Size doesn’t matter
Size REALLY matters - buy a friggin’ TV
Tags: cablecard, dct, digital cable, dvr, htpc, media center, tivo, vista
I’ve wanted to buy stock in Blizzard since I got addicted to World of Warcraft (over two years sober, thank you very much). But it was stuck inside Vivendi Universal, diluting those profits. Soon it will be stuck inside Activision, making it the biggest game company around - slightly bigger than EA. Since Activision is responsible for games like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero, this seems like a good bet, and its stock has been skyrocketing. I’ll probably drag my feet like I did with Google and curse myself afterwards. Every once in a while, procrastination has it’s disadvantages.
Variety reports that some democratic politicians (including Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden) are again attacking the game rating entity ESRB over Manhunt 2. The game was originally Adults Only due to violence, but it made some changes and is now Mature. They cite an FTC study that shows 42% of kids under 17 can still buy Rated M games. They’re also saying that you must consider whether the game will be released on the Wii! If it is, they believe it’s actually instructing kids how to kill. Probably doesn’t affect any readers here, but an interesting viewpoint. Like the MPAA, the ESRB was created to avoid gov’t regulation. If they don’t improve enforcement, they’ll fail. Of course, considering how awful the MPAA is, maybe gov’t regulation would be an improvement. And I don’t like big government!
Agent ThinkTank1 recently asked for my opinion about Maya 2012. This is when the Maya Long Count calendar ends, and some people have predicted the end of the world. It is important to note the facts, so I set out to find some. Turns out, facts about Mayan culture are pretty easy to come by. They are also brutally boring. This is because scholars of Maya have completely left out the part about the world ending when the calendar ends. Only the astute new age weirdos have uncovered this. Fortunately for us, the mainstream press regards both equally, and has a very broad definition of scholar.
But Maya civilization lost steam in the 10th century, so as far as they’re concerned, the world ended when the Spanish finally beat them into submission in the late 17th century.
Here is my explanation as a computer scientist. The calendar was invented around 6th century BC. There are two forms, and the first (short count) can handle 52 years. Through The Crack Team’s extensive global network, I have obtained and translated a text that documents the creation of the long count calendar. It is a conversation between Tikal, a royal historian, and Oaxaca, a royal pain computer scientist.
Tikal: Our calendar only covers 52 years, but the king is planning on living longer than that through the magic of human sacrifice. Got any ideas?
Oaxaca: Hmm. How long is he planning on living?
Tikal: Long. He’s planning on sacrificing, like, a shitload of people. I’m guessing at least a couple hundred years.
Oaxaca: Geez. We better plan an escape route after this… But OK, I think I got something. Our society has been around for how long?
Tikal: About 1300 years. It’s hard to say when your calendar only goes to 52 years.
Oaxaca: Right. So the new calendar has to go back that far.
Tikal: Mmm, maybe farther. The king has been thinking about telling people that he’s a couple thousand years old. And that he’s a god. Then everyone will have to say, “Seriously??? You look so young!” And if they don’t say that, he’ll sacrifice them. You might want to remember that.
Oaxaca: OK. Well, I came up with a system that will cover the last 2,500 years, and go 2,500 years into the future.
Tikal: Ooh, he’ll like that. What happens after that?
Oaxaca: I don’t know. It resets, I guess.
Tikal: Huh. Won’t that fuck things up when that happens?
Oaxaca: Who gives a shit? That’s 2,500 years from now! We’re in our 20s, so we got, what? Five more years before we die of old age? I don’t see anybody sacrificing people to keep us alive. It’ll be somebody else’s problem.
Tikal: True dat.
Think about it. 20th century programmers used a date format that would only last to the end of the century, less than 40 years. Who would question 2,500 years?
It’s around this time that you’re thinking, “I thought he was going to tell us the exact date of the apocalypse, instead he’s talking about computer dating.” Don’t worry, I am, and the computer preceding transcript factors in.
Now, some of you read “Maya 2012 apocalypse” and didn’t blink an eye. “According to my calculations,” you thought, “Jesus isn’t Mayan. We’re safe!” And you would be right.
What, you expected an argument from a guy named Archangel?
Before I continue, to borrow a saying from ThinkTank1, what I know about the Bible could fit on the head of a pin and still leave room for the angels to dance. But if you’re as ignorant as me this will sound very plausible, so I’m going to say it.
People worried that Y2K might mark the end of days because it was a significant date - 2,000 years after the birth of Christ (or our best guess) - and because of the looming computer date problem.
But if you’re going pick important dates or anniversaries, the resurrection is far more significant than the birth. Despite what retailers would have you believe, Easter is the holiest holiday, not Christmas. Wouldn’t two millennia after the resurrection be more significant?
Now our best guess for that date is sometime between 2030 and 2040. We don’t know the exact date of the first Easter, but we can search for significant events that will occur in that decade.
This is the point in the movie where everybody is in the library, searching through old texts and manuscripts, microfiche, and the Internet.
Uh, guys? I found one. It’s… it’s big.
January 19, 2038 03:14:07 UTC
It’s known as the Year 2038 Problem. On that day, certain computer clocks will flip and they’ll think it’s 12/13/1901. It affects computer systems that internally represent dates as the number of seconds since (or before) January 1, 1970 (the epoch), and stores that number in a signed 32-bit integer. This is the standard (POSIX) in an incredible number of computer systems, and fixing it is way tricker than fixing the Y2K problem. And the Y2K problem cost us about 300 billion dollars.
We basically have to upgrade everything to use 64-bit operating systems. Many systems are already using 64-bit dates, but that still leaves many millions, including embedded systems that don’t upgrade without a fight. Yeah, we got 30 years to do it, but we had that long for the Y2K problem and we left it to the last minute and freaked everyone out.
I suspect, at best, a repeat performance in 2038. End of the world? You decide.
Well, it’s more like server removal. I’m switching from a self-hosted server to one at Inmotion Hosting. It was fun while it lasted. Ok, so it wasn’t really fun, because I hate system administration. And that’s why I’m switching it out. Some things get worse when they’re out of my hands, but other things like regular backups, security and bug fix patches, etc. get way better.
They’ll be handling mail as well, and as a result I will be getting rid of my CrackTeam.org email address. I technically have 6 email addresses and by far the Crack Team one gets the most spam. Not that I see any of it - I have excellent spam filtering. It’s 97% accurate and has protected me from over 69,000 spam messages to date. I don’t know that Inmotion will be nearly as accurate though, since they use SpamAssassin, and I use the BayesSpam plugin for SquirrelMail. Anyway, I was worried about getting rid of it until I realized that almost none of my friends use that email; it’s mainly used to register for web sites. I can use my Yahoo account for that, since their spam filtering is excellent as well. If you were using my Crack Team email, please switch to one of my 3 main personal email addresses.
Anyhoo, the point is that the site will be going down, perhaps tonight, so don’t be surprised. Hopefully the whole thing won’t take long, and we’ll be running on WordPress 2.3.1. There should be some nice new features.
RateMyDrawings is an online drawing competition that allows artists and illustrators to draw online. Users submit drawings by using a Flash based drawing software tool, and people rate drawings a score from 1 to 10 (A masterpiece or disaster piece). [From RateMyDrawings.com]
I’ve signed up and done a few portraits. Here’s a recent one of Elliott Smith:
You can see my other works in my profile:
http://www.ratemydrawings.com/user/hulagun/
Setting up a profile is free! Monthly contests are held and prizes are given. Although, the prizes don’t seem worth the effort besides the recognition. Grand prize winner(s) get a blown up version of your art piece printed on canvas. I imagine the resolution and final image can’t be all that great. But, I still think the site is a great way to create and share your artwork.
Speaking of “Art”, I think it would be a PERFECT addition to the list of categories here. 
Tags: design, illustration
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Internet Time Service has a little program you can run to sync your computer’s clock with the national atomic clock. It’s just an executable (no installation), but of course you need to be connected to the Internet.
More cool computer graphics technology coming our way. This brings great advances to the field of incriminating photo editing.
Tags: photography, software, video
Thanks to Assassin for forwarding this. It’s a Microsoft technology that allows real time photo data mining. Remember that part in Bladerunner when Harrison Ford is watching a video like:
type type type
Enhance
type type type
Enhance
type type type
Enhance
(Yeah, they did it Super Troopers, too.) Well this is kinda like that, only with tons of photos instead of video, and a better interface. It’s seriously badass.
Tags: microsoft, photography, software, video
Not being a network or IT professional I am sometimes forced to listen to people who supposedly know more than I do.� I’ve been wanting to add wireless capability to my existing wired home network.� Our current router had a lot of configuration data in it for servers operated by Agent Archangel so the plan would be to add another router to the system so we wouldn’t have to bring the crack team network offline.� The sales associate at Fry’s electronics informed me that the only way it would be possible to keep my current router would be if I purchased a wireless access point (WAP).� For those who don’t know, a WAP costs more than it’s wireless router counterpart and has much less functionality.� It’s basically a wireless router & switch only without the router & switch part.� Why anyone would pay that much for a device that does so little is beyond me.
Anyway, on a whim I decided to try it�(since I�was�pretty sure the concept should work)�and went and purchased a Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N Router.� I disabled the DHCP and gave the router a new IP address compatible with our network and then plugged one of it’s local LAN ports to one of the local LAN ports on the existing router.� Voila!� I now had a working wireless network connection.�
The magical networking term that describes what I did is “cascading routers” and you can cascade many routers together (this was all news to me).� For some reason I was only able to find this information on the Linksys support site after I knew what the term was.� I swear it wasn’t there before I knew it.
Tags: sysadmin
Ever since I was a child I have dreamed of watching a space shuttle launch in person and my opportunity finally came last week on a visit to Florida. After several changes to the launch date NASA finally settled on August 7th for the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118). We were able to obtain congressional passes from Representative J. Sestak through non-Crack Team personnel and viewed the launch for free from the NASA causeway viewing area.
Several things happened the week before the launch which conspired against my chances to see a successful launch. 1st, NASA was having trouble launching the mars probe Phoenix. They needed to get this probe on its way before its launch window closed or they would have to wait 2 years for the next window to open. NASA said they would probably delay the shuttle launch until after Phoenix was launched. Then, the orbiter failed a pressure leak test due to a poorly installed pressure seal. Thankfully, Phoenix was launched on August 4th and NASA got the faulty seal replaced. They only had to move the launch date 1 day to August 8th.
We arrived at the Merrit Island Mall to meet the bus for Kennedy Space Center. The bus took us to the parking lot of the visitors center where we went through the dumbest security inspection I have ever seen. We were asked to leave the bus and bring all of our smaller belongings but were allowed to leave larger items like folding beach chairs on the bus. Why we were allowed to leave items about the size and shape of a shoulder launched missile on the bus is beyond me. Once off the bus, we put our bags on a table and passed through a metal detector. The security guard ran his wand over my bag and when it squawked he asked me what was inside. After telling him I had a camera and a lens inside he said “ok” and I got back on the bus without the guard actually looking to see if I was telling the truth. The same thing could have been accomplished much faster if the guard just popped his head on the bus and asked if we were carrying anything not allowed on the launch site, except we were never told what we weren’t allowed to bring and we were nowhere near our cars if they decided something we had was not allowed.
After we got back on the bus we were driven to the NASA causeway viewing area. I have to give it to NASA for getting something right. With very little information to go on I had feared the worst. The temperature in Florida at the time was over 100�F with the heat index. I assumed we were going to be dropped off onto an empty field and left there until after the launch. When we arrived there were chairs covered with tents, vendors selling food, and water stations where you could refill water bottles for free. There was a light breeze so the temperature wasn’t too unpleasant and there were very few, if any, mosquitos. Also, all the busses that took people to the viewing area stayed there with their air conditioners running so you could hang out on the bus until just before the launch if you wanted to. I got the impression that, unlike Universal and Disney, NASA actually wanted us to survive the experience.
I spent several weeks prior to my trip arranging to have an acceptable amount of photographic equipment on hand and in hindsight I would have done things a little differently. I own a Canon 5D and borrowed a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L zoom lens and rented a Canon EF 2.0x II teleconverter. This gave me an 800mm f/11 lens which I mounted on my Manfrotto 3021 tripod. In addition, I unwisely used both a haze filter and a circular polarizer which made the viewfinder very dark. I took a meter reading through the camera and then set it to manual at ISO 400, f/11, 1/250s so the bright exhaust from the solid rocket boosters wouldn’t cause incorrect exposures during liftoff. I also turned off the image stabilization on the lens (which gets confused on a tripod) and the autofocus (which wouldn’t have worked anyway). The launch was on SLC-39A which was about 6 miles from the viewing area and it was a very hazy day. I was lucky for the launch to be on the southern pad which is about 2 miles closer than the northern pad. The launch was scheduled for 6:36:36PM EST and as the sun went down the haze cleared up a bit and it offered a nice off angle light source behind and to the left of the viewing area. I was able to take this photo at approximately T+5 seconds.
If I ever get the chance to do it again I would pay the cost of renting the Canon 400mm f/2.8L telephoto lens to use with the teleconverter. I would get the same focal length but would have an aperture large enough to let my camera auto focus and could have used a lower ISO for less noise in the digital image. I had a very hard time manually focusing with the viewfinder so dark from the small aperture and the setting sun and the circular polarizer. If I did get stuck manually focusing again I would at least replace the viewfinder screen in the camera with one designed for such a purpose.
There was 1 technical issue during the countdown where they werent sure if the hatch was properly sealed or not but they got it straightened out during the built-in countdown holds and there was no delay to the launch, which was nice since there was only about a 5 minute launch window and I didn’t think I could bear the heat again the next day.
There was a PA system at the viewing area so we could hear the public affairs officer doing the final countdown and everyone in the crowd started counting along with him at T-10 seconds (is it possible to resist counting down a rocket launch?). We could see the cloud of steam that rises when the main engines fire at about T-6 seconds and it completely engulfed the orbiter. AT about T+2 seconds you could see the nose of the external tank poke out above the steam and then the rest of the orbiter appeared. I have watched many shuttle launches on television but seeing the exhaust from the solid rocket boosters is completely different in person, even from 6 miles away. It’s hard to estimate how high off the ground the orbiter was when we heard the sound of the main engines firing but it was at least several hundred feet. Then a few seconds later we heard the roar of the solids which was unlike anything I have ever heard, or felt. You could feel the sound in your chest and it was louder and more powerful than any base at any concert or club I’ve been too. It was simply amazing.
With a pair of Canon 8×23 binoculars I was able to track the orbiter fairly easily and saw the solids separate at about T+124 seconds. I looked away for an instant to see what the solids looked like without the binoculars and was never able to reaquire the orbiter. By this time all that you could see was an extremely bright dot in the sky that was getting fainter as time went by.
During the ascent several pieces of foam broke off the external tank and cause a gouge in the heat shield on the underside of the orbiter. NASA officials currently believe that it won’t present any danger to the orbiter during re-entry.
It was an amazing experience that I will remember for a lifetime and I even ended up with a great photograph which will find its way onto my wall at some point.
Tags: nasa, photography
The Office is spinning off a video game. Yeah, I wouldn’t have bet on that, either. It’s marketed towards casual gamers, and will only be on handhelds (e.g., Nintendo DS) and PCs.
This post belongs in the “day late and a dollar short” category. I recently messed up my motherboard. Short version is that I noticed the clock speed was low for the processor I installed, so I updated the BIOS. That didn’t work, so I reset the BIOS settings via the jumper. And ever since then, I’ve gotten an “incorrect CPU speed” message, and it won’t boot. So now I gotta get a PLCC chip puller to remove the BIOS chip and mail it back to ASUS, so they can reflash it and mail it back to me. I figure this will take 2-3 weeks, and if it doesn’t work, I gotta buy a new system.
So apart from the kindness Agent Bladerunner has shown in loaning me his laptop, I could be without Internet access at home for a up to a month. Considering that most TV shows are dead for the summer1, this could be the best thing to happen to me in over a decade. More on that later.
So this life changing event never would have happened if I had known about the IOSS BIOS Savior. Basically, you pull out your BIOS chip with the included chip puller, pop in the tiny daughter card (RD1), and place the original chip in that. You also have a switch that allows you to switch from the original chip to the RD1.
After installing the RD1, you backup the current BIOS to it, then update the original chip to your hearts content. Mess up your system like me? No problem! Just flip the switch, and you’re back to the original BIOS (which, of course, you tested after backing up so you know it works).
It costs $20-30, versus $5 S&H to get your mobo mfr. to reflash your chip (or $25 to send you a new one). But without it you’re dangerously at risk of Internet lossage, which could lead to the following:
Sweet sassy molassey, man, get that damn BIOS savior now!
Tags: sysadmin
So I hadn’t rented from Netflix in a while, and thought it was time to remedy that. Especially with most TV shows having a season finale in May. I was actually surfing the site for a while before I noticed the “Watch Now” tab at the top. It turns out that Netflix now has over 2,000 movies available for streaming. I was amazed that they never sent me so much as an email about this major new feature. I can only guess that since I wasn’t costing them any money, they didn’t want to remind me I had a subscription, which is pretty lame of them. So I now must punish them by making up for my dormancy.
The feature is pretty simple, find a movie and hit play. You need to download a proprietary player, but that’s all quick and painless. Harvey, a 4:3 black and white film looked good in full screen on my 21″ monitor. The Italian Job (Marky Mark version) also looked good (certainly Charlize Theron did), but at 2.35:1, it used maybe 1/3 of my screen. Video quality is based on bandwidth; my connection rated “high”, which is the best offered at 1.6 to 2.2+ Mbps.
There is a limit on viewing, you get 1 hour per dollar you pay monthly. So my discounted 4-DVD plan gives me 20 hours of viewing per month. A nice, cost-free bonus.
Update: Looks like there’s an 18 hour cap, despite their wording. And another problem is that I was “charged” 1h50m for The Italian Job, even though I watched at most 10 minutes of it. So know that you’ll be dinged for the whole movie, even if you watch just a part of it.
The selection is pretty small by Netflix standards, but if I hadn’t already seen so many films, it might appear better. Here’s a partial list of movies I gave 5 stars to, which are available for instant playing:
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Casablanca
Chinatown
A Clockwork Orange
Cool Hand Luke
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Dirty Dozen
Harvey
The Jerk
North by Northwest
Run Lola Run
Strangers on a Train: Special Edition
Now some movies, if you watch them on a computer screen, should get your subscription canceled. I mean, The Matrix? But many shouldn’t suffer at all from small screen viewing. And if you really cared about quality, you would have seen it in the theater.
Tags: netflix
Amusing animation about your desktop after hours. I loved the ending.
I’ve recently been building a new computer system and one of the things I have been trying to work out is the overclocking of the system.� In my search for benchmarks and stress tests I came across a popular benchmark in the overclocking community that I thought was pretty neat.� Ever wonder what the 21,865,285th digit of PI was?
Super PI is a program that will calculate PI to various numbers of digits (up to 32M).� The standard benchmark is to run it for 1M digits and compare your time to other computers.� My current CPU (Intel E6600�@ ~2.9GHz) did it in a little over 17 seconds, and my 64-bit workstation at work (Intel Xeon 5150 @ 2.66GHz)�does it in 19.781 seconds.� I’ll add a comment to this once with my final�1M time once I finish overclocking my system and�verify its stability.
There is also a wikipedia entry on the program here.
Tags: sysadmin
For a while now, I’ve wanted a super-simple time tracking facility to track the various ways I throw my life away. Something where I can just add tasks, then hit a button to start and stop a timer, adding a comment when finished. A very short search unearthed Time Tracker, which provides exactly that. It’s also great if you’re doing consulting, working on different projects for different clients. And you can export your work log in XML or Excel (CSV). I hoping it will really motivate me, seeing just how little time I spend on the important things, like disco dancing, archery, and rape.
Tags: productivity
The rollout of the Apple TV Appliance reminds me of a story I heard when I was a kid. It involved a man from ancient Segovia buying a donkey for his farm in Spain. He bought this highly adorned donkey for an exorbitant amount and was proudly walking it home. When he started taking off the embroidered tackle, he found the unpleasant truth: the beautiful epaulets and head-dress were hiding sightless eyes, the elaborate tassels that reached to the floor were hiding the infection in the rear legs, and the lacquered and shiny saddle was hiding a lame back on the animal.
In the same way, I hope people are not deceived by the beautiful Apple design and ergonomic, logical menus. I hope that they get to examine the crappy video image before they buy. This device succeeds in *downgrading* all image sources to make them easily available anywhere in your house. Wow.
If it’s too late and you’ve already been screwed, go ahead and use the amazing human ability to justify our mistakes. We are really good at this, gauging from the various studies that�show that our satisfaction with a crappy product decreases markedly at first and then actually increases after purchase. I think it’s our attempt to justify our mistakes and say to the world “it’s not really all that bad if you consider……” Same behavior applies to poorly conceived marriages. Be aware; beware. ��
Tags: apple
Paul Graham writes about the first anthropomorphic dynamically balancing robot. Basically, that means it walks like a human, but not in a pre-programmed way that requires a hard, flat surface, like Honda’s robot. The article has interesting background info, plus video. Waiting for commentary by Crack Team robot expert Masterchief. Also waiting for my own personal gynoid (NSFW).
The online version of Variety is now free! I used to subscribe, but then they significantly increased their rate. Now they’ve eliminated it. I’m guessing the improved online ad market gets credit. Will Wall Street Journal Online follow suit? They already doubled their subscription price, so perhaps they’re next. Or they’ll just make twice as much money.
For Christmas this year, I treated myself to a longtime object of my technolust: the Sandisk Sansa e280 flash memory MP3 player. Part of the e200 series, the e280 is the 8GB version. I paid $185 at Amazon (no blogger bribes here!). All e200 players have many features to thrash those precious iPod Nanos:
That’s what everybody gets. The real kicker is if you have Windows XP [1] and a subscription service like Rhapsody-To-Go, Napster, or Yahoo! Music. This is a Plays For Sure player, so you can take subscription content with you. As long as I am a subscriber, I can transfer any track in my library, even though I didn’t buy it. Since I just got a great deal on Rhapsody-To-Go [2] I expect to subscribe indefinitely. That gives me any of Rhapsody’s 3 million+ tracks anywhere I want. It is the awesome.
That’s quite a feature list, in a very compact package. Here are the highs and lows.
Highs
Lows
I’m nitpicking a bit with the lows, but I’d rather be thorough in case one of them is a deal-breaker for you. Overall, I think the highs far outweigh them, and I’m quite happy with my purchase!
[1] And presumably Vista, but don’t hold me to that. I think it just needs Windows Media Player 10 or better.
[2] I’m afraid it’s gone now, but during the holidays they offered the to-go service for $8 month. I’d been paying $10/month for the Unlimited service, which doesn’t allow you to transfer to MP3 players, and the upgrade price was $15/month! I created another account, hoping to merge the two, but the best customer support could do was cancel the old one. I downloaded the entire library from my original account and then imported it from the new one, so I was able to save just about everything. After spending a year carefully selecting 600 tracks (out of several thousand), you don’t want to have to find them again!
I just received a rather amusing virus. It claimed to be an encrypted email from AOL, in the form of a .zip attachment. I was told to keep it in a safe place. The amusing part was that in the body of the email, they included a user name and password with which to unlock the file. As if both were needed to unlock a zip file (AFAIK, only passwords are used to lock zip files), and that you would send that in plain-text. It’s the email equivalent of mailing a lock box with the key taped to its side.
I know there are agents out there that love Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s nice to just… get together with friends and have a drink or two. Steal each others’ money. It’s great, just great.
But since there haven’t been that many games going on, I started looking for free Texas Hold ‘Em online. So far, the best place I’ve found is the Hold ‘Em Poker tables at Yahoo! Games.
Of course, you need to be registered at Yahoo! but who doesn’t already have an account with them? It’s free. You can sign up here.
First off, it’s nothing short of bitmap graphics. It’s obvious this wasn’t made to evoke some glamorous lifestyle but it gets the job done. There are plenty of skill levels to play with and tables to target them. Or you can play socially, since every table has chatting enabled. But one feature I was hoping to use is the option to create a private table and invite whichever players you want. You can’t set the limits or the wages, though, that’s the only downside.
So, if anyone’s interested, post a comment and let me know what your user name is. Maybe we can schedule a night to log on and play. Everyone starts with $1000 and if you go below, you just owe the bank. I’ve seen players with -$7243. I haven’t the heart to tell them they have a problem.
Tags: video games
Don’t install Internet Explorer 7! I just came back from a Java Users Group meeting, and there were a couple reports of it crashing systems. In addition, it prevents you from rolling back to IE 6. I recommend you avoid for now. In the meantime, Firefox 2 rocks!
So….
Anyone else want to rip their hair out trying to get those camera angles just right? I don’t remember this being such an issue with the first one.
Aside from that, GREAT GAME if you got the computer muscle to back it up. I had to add ANOTHER fan (5 total) to my case because it was sweating so bad. I’m not even sure why. The game is nice, but it doesn’t look better than Oblivion.
Hey Atari! Give us a camera upgrade! One that stays DIRECTLY behind the player would be nice.
Tags: video games
You might not have caught it, but Firefox 2.0 has been released, and it has some cool new features. I’m really digging the built-in spell checker, which is pointing out typos as I write this post! You’ll have to download it manually, as “Check for updates” will not find it.
I’ve been thinking of my next PC. It will be a beast all around, and totally more than I need, but on par with what I want. One of the components on this mythical system is the Dell 3007WFP, a 30″ LCD monitor.
Everyone knows bigger is better. Ok, yes, except for penis size (you heard Shannon Doherty in Mallrats, a good size means small). But for monitors, 30″ has to be better than 24″, right? Well, maybe.
The problem is something called “native resolution”. That’s tech talk for, “if you use a different resolution, it will look shitty”, at least in comparison. And you didn’t shell out all that money to look at something with subpar clarity. You can usually switch to a lower res in an even multiple. In other words, if the native resolution is 1280 x 1024, you can cut that to 640 x 512 and still have it look good. You’re now using four pixels to represent one, so it’s still a square.
You might be asking yourself, “Why would I want fewer pixels? We just established that more is better!” And if you live in the 2D world, you’re probably right. Watching movies, surfing the web, reading email - no big deal.
But most games create a 3D world, and that world is computationally intensive, and that intensity is resolution-dependent. The higher the resolution, the harder your graphics card has to work. A couple years ago I bought a Radeon X800 Pro graphics card, which was definitely high-end at the time ($400 retail [1]). I bought it to play World of Warcraft at high resolutions. The game played fine for a while, but eventually it would sputter and stall and crash. Maybe 15-20 minutes into it [2]. Then I upgraded damn near everything else, but it still crashed. Obviously, the good folks at Blizzard wouldn’t provide a resolution choice that was impossible to play with state of the art equipment. And if they did, well, their tech support people would tell you right away. “Lower your resolution! That setting is for hardware that hasn’t been invented yet!” Well, I never heard that, but maybe that kind of honesty only comes after you’ve fetched all their rocks. I finally broke down and lowered the resolution and some effects, and voila, it ran smoothly for hours. Same thing happened with Oblivion.
Oh, when I say high resolution, we’re talking 1280 x 1024, not 1600 x 1200. 1.3 megapixels. My card maxed out at about 1024 x 768, less than .8 megapixels.
In other words, nowhere near the 2650 x 1600 native resolution of the Dell 3007WFP. Simple math puts that at 4.24 megapixels, more than 5 times the max res. of the X800. The card is now 2 years old, understood, but it’s still not bottom of the barrel. Even so, let’s discount it. Let’s look at the awesomest card on the market, the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI. $470 on PriceGrabber.com. According to the VGA charts at Tom’s Hardware, that card only gets 20 FPS on the benchmark for Oblivion run at 1600×1200 with everything on, in an outdoor scene (very common in that game). I don’t know if that’s single or dual card setup, but they also say that an extra card only buys you a 30-40% boost. And remember, while 1600×1200 may sound high (and it is!), it’s less than half of 2650×1600! Assuming the complexity scales linearly with resolution [3], you’d need a card 3 times more powerful than the best card available. And probably a stronger CPU, too. And that’s on a game released months ago. What happens when you try to run future games, using DirectX 10? You’re probably stuck running in 1325×800, if that resolution is even offered by the game. Most likely, you’re in a crappy looking non-native resolution, just so you can get the game to run. What a waste!
Luckily, there aren’t any games driving me to build this beast, not even the upcoming Neverwinter Nights 2. Alas, the original plan of waiting for Diablo III is still in effect. I’ll have to find something else to waste stupid amounts of money on. Perhaps a bigger penis…
Update:
I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken. I thought I might not be throwing enough money at the problem. Well, Tom’s Hardware’s $10,000 PC - with quad SLI (that’s four videocards bridged together) - gets less than 18 FPS on Oblivion outdoors. Granted, it does well on all their other game tests, but I don’t want to play those games! Check out Tom’s PC anyway, it’s an interesting read.
[1] Amusing story about that. Friend went to a major electronics store, let’s call them Pommes Frittes, or Fri’s for short. Wanted a Radeon 9600 with DVI for his pricey Apple LCD. It’s on sale for $130, but when he goes to buy it, it rings up as $400. He points out the price tag and the sale sign to the cashier, who agrees and charges him the marked price. He goes home. He opens the box. Inside: another box. This one says Radeon X800. It’s price tag says $400. Clearly, some shennanigans going on at Fri’s, probably a warehouse guy setting himself up for some extra take-home pay, which my friend inadvertently thwarts. But it’s win/win, as I buy it off him for $250. Huzzah!
[2] If you know the game, it also happened as soon as I took a gryphon ride.
[3] This is a really big assumption, but I have a hunch I’m being lenient.
Tags: displays, video games
I saw this clip of a program called ASSIST (MIT) which is used as a design aid for mechanical applications.
Probably old-news to some Crack Team members, but the clip just started showing up and I though I’d share.
http://thatvideosite.voxcdn.com/core/3406/mit_digital_drawing_board.wmv
I’m told that Microsoft has a “Physics Illustrator” that works the same way.
Anyone have any experience with this kind of software?
I haven’t watched South Park in about 8 years, but last night I was flipping through channels and stopped dead on what I thought was some sort of game demo.
Turns out it was a South Park episode all about the game “World of Warcraft” and since I know some Crack Team members are into this, I had to watch it. Much of the episode includes actual gameplay.
The story line goes: There is this high level player going around killing characters for no reason. I guess that normally characters have to accept a duel before risking their characters’ lives? Well this guy is such a high level that he overrides this rule.
The staff at Blizzard Entertainment is worried because the guy can “kill” administrators’ characters, so even they can’t stop him.
Cartman and the gang figure that if they spend every waking hour for months on end (in hiding) they might reach a level high enough for the four of them to defeat him.
Can the gang of four, with the help of Stan’s dad(a noob) and Blizzard’s banned “Sword of a Thousand Truths”, defeat the serial killer?
Quotes from the show:
Blizzard staff: What kind of person would do this?
Blizzard President: Only one kind. Whoever this player is, he has played World of Warcraft nearly every hour of every day for the past year and a half. Gentlemen, we are dealing with someone here who… had absolutely no life.
Blizzard staff: How do you kill… that which has no life?
[think about that for a minute]
Blizzard staff: There are over seven million people who log on to World of Warcraft! Are you telling me all those people’s characters are going to die, and there’s nothing we can do to save them?
Blizzard President: Yes. And it won’t be long before everyone gets really really frustrated and stops playing altogether. Gentlemen, this could very well lead to the end of the World…… (of Warcraft).
Cartman:[Trying to convince others to join his cause.] If you had a chance right now to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn’t you do it? I mean, I personally wouldn’t stop him because I think he was awesome, but you would, right?
Tags: blizzard, video games
Coppola and company will be turning The Conversation into a television series. It will pick up where the movie left off, so put that into your Netflix queue. From Variety:
Producer Tony Krantz (”24″) is teaming with scribes Christopher McQuarrie (”The Usual Suspects”) and Erik Jendresen (”Band of Brothers”) to turn Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” into a weekly series for ABC.
This is great news for team members of The Crack Team, which made this an official CT Classic Movie long ago. I think this is a great crew to make it happen, judging by their body of work (although I didn’t watch Band of Brothers). I’m just curious who will star. Hackman is 76, so that might be a bit of a stretch. But we’d need a gruff, everyman for the part. Any suggestions?
Tags: classic movies
Sony announced that the PS3 will be delayed in Europe, and cut U.S. Christmas shipments in half. Add to this it will cost $500-600, versus $300-400 for XBOX 360, and >$250 for the Nintendo Wii, which confirmed it’s shipping on time. Apparently there are technical and/or supply problems with the Blu-ray components. Getting a Blu-ray player with your console is decent, but I haven’t seen a $600 console since Neo-Geo. Are they gonna have $130+ games, too?
Tags: video games
I really wish they had shown this back when I worked at a nuclear power plant. It would have made me feel a bit more comfortable.
Tags: video
Recently, my addiction to golf has been getting worse. I now play during the week twice in addition to going to the range several times to practice. Since I am not able to get out to the course until after I put in a 10 hour day at work, it starts to get dark by the time we get to the end of a round. Even though one of the courses I play at is lighted, the amount of illumination between the tee and the green leaves quite a bit to be desired. The greens are generally well lit, so if you hit the green every time you will have no problem finding your ball. However, if I was capable of hitting the green every time, my co-workers would have single word names like �Tiger� and �Vijay�. A few weeks ago I was playing with a random golfer who had a ball that would start blinking when you hit it. This was the product I was looking for! It�s just too bad I didn�t ask him what the name of it was or where he got it.
The next day I ran out to the local Golfsmith and the salesman at the counter, after laughing at me, explained that he had never heard of it. He also commented that he didn�t think the balls would spin very well. Not wanting to sound like a total noob I just smiled and said, �yeah, you�re probably right�. I more or less understood what he meant but I am certainly not a good enough golfer to care how much a ball spins or even to know what to do with said spin. Besides, when you can�t see more than 10 feet in front of you without a flashlight, does it really matter how much your golf ball spins? I think not. Since I pay for the holes whether I play them or not and generally don�t even bother keeping score, the whole point here is to try to get those last few holes in rather than simply going home. I then took my search to where I should have gone in the 1st place� the internet.
Enter the Twilight Tracer (www.twilighttracer.com). This ball is designed to start flashing a very bright red once you hit it so you can find your ball in the dark. It is an 80 compression ball with a multilayer surlyn cover and is the same weight and size as a regulation ball. I ended up with the 3 pack which goes for about $28 depending on where you find it (I was only able to find it online). It is a touch on the pricey side for me but in the grand scheme of things in the golf world probably not that expensive. The balls last for about 40 hours so, since they blink for roughly 5 minutes at a time, that means you can hit it about 480 times. I was worried that a decent amount of the lifespan of the ball would be lost to getting knocked around during shipping but when I got the balls home and tested one, merely dropping it did not set it off. In fact, it took a moderate amount of force to actually get it blinking, though nothing compared to the force generated during a full golf swing. I feel confident I will get my money�s worth out of each ball.
On the golf course, the 1st one I pulled out of the box to hit made a nice �thwack� sound as it hit a tree off to the right side of the fairway but, unfortunately, there was no blinking involved before it hit the tree. It was a defective ball and amazingly wasn�t one of the two that I had tested at home. I sent a quick email over the weekend to the company that makes them and they got back to me 1st thing Monday morning asking me for my address so they can ship me a replacement ball, no questions asked. They will have my business in the future just for that. On the next hole I tried a different ball (after throwing it into the ground first to make sure it worked) and this time I hit a nice shot right down the middle of the fairway and onto the edge of the green. I could see the ball in the air the whole time (which is VERY cool!) and could easily see it sitting on the green from about 175 yards away. In fact, on a later hole I hit the ball about 225 yards and to the right of the fairway into some 1� thick rough and could still see it from the tee box. While I have no real way of comparing the spin rates of this ball to a regular ball, it did seem to bite into the green fairly well and it left a pretty good ball mark, although, the greens were very soft and starting to get soggy from dew so maybe it had nothing to do with the spin.
The two differences between the tracers and a regular ball that stood out the most was the lack of distance and the very different feel off the club face. Using a metal wood with a graphite shaft I couldn�t really feel a difference but you could hear a much different sound with the tracers than with a regular ball. With an iron and a steel shaft you can feel the difference in your hands in addition to the different sound. The ball �feels� much harder than the balls I typically use (Nike Precision Power Distance � Super Soft) but that could be just due to the fact that the Nike�s only have a 60 compression core and a soft cover. There was also a definite lack of distance with the tracers over my regular ball using everything from my driver to my 60� wedge. What it boiled down to is that I had to take one club more than I normally would (or a harder swing on a short pitch) in order to get the distance I needed. I have only played one type of ball in my short career so I am not sure if the difference I see is simply due to the balls I use or due to the characteristics of the tracers. The difference was enough that on my shorter approach shots I switched to a regular ball since my aim on such shots is pretty good. I did not try to putt with these balls but my guess is that I would not like it. I saw that the company is coming out with a ball specifically for putting but they don�t have much information on it other than the fact that it comes in different colors.
All in all, I consider this to be a great product at a reasonable price and have already recommended it to several of the people I golf with. I am sure that as I play on the course in the evenings I will start to get more and more people asking me why my balls are blinking.
Now, if only something could help me find my balls in the daytime��.
Tags: review
How Microsoft is working to improve your world.
Tags: video
Variety reports a judge has decided that it’s not ok to edit films, removing things you find offensive, then sell the edited version. Well, duh. It is ok, however, to use technology to skip over or mute stuff you don’t want to see or hear. That seems fair to me, too.
The marketing people at Gamefly probably are trying to figure out how to send me a check for that one, but anonymity is far too important for an ass like me to give up contact info on a public forum. Instead, I would ask that they donate the money to a young aspiring nurse, cuz the world needs more nurses. I suggest going to a local strip club, cuz I met a bunch of ladies there who were going to college to be nurses, naughty, sparkly nurses.
If you own an XBOX 360, with the exception of Call of Duty 2 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I haven’t found a single other came that required more than a few days of my time to be finished with them. In the 3 weeks I had Oblivion with Gamefly I saved an assload of cash (though I am sure I will buy a used copy some day to play it again). For all the other games I got on Gamefly, there was not a single one that had any replay value in my opinion. Most of them I would have actually been quite mad about if I had purchased them at full price. Before Gamefly I researched purchases quite a bit, and was much more cautious with the games I tried, so on the plus side I guess, I tried some games that I would not have considered otherwise, and, of course, they sucked.
This is leads me to what really what makes Gamefly rock. See, most reviewers are soulless whores of the gaming industry. Then only decent reviews I have read in quite a while were at Penny-Arcade, while reading their comics. Seriously, their comics are one of the only sources of decent game reviews I have found, which is kind of like watching the daily show for news. For some reason, the idiots at all the major game sites figure you won?t remember the steaming pile of crap that they gave an 8.5 out of 10 to when you are reading their next ?review?.
The bottom line with Gamefly is that it saves a ton of cash. For $15 a month, I avoid buying $60 games. Simple math is that in 4 months I have spent what it would have cost for a single game, but I played 10 of them, which would have put me back $600. I would have played fewer games if some of them had been a bit better, but that hardly makes the service less compelling. The only ?downside? of Gamefly is that it is a bit slower than NetFlix, but then I live like 40 miles from a regional NetFlix center, so I usually have single day shipment from them (yes, I send a movie on Monday, it gets to them Tuesday, and I get my next one on Wednesday, which is pretty cool).
In the extended entry (if it works) are some mini-reviews from some of the games I played from Gamefly (not all were for the 360, but I need to fill in between their release schedule):
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: netflix, review, star wars, video games
Finally picked this up, and am just getting the hang of it. For a more detailed review by far better gamers than I (Masterchief and Zbalance) read these comments. Haven’t had much time to play, but was disappointed with the lack of online help and the pamphlet of a manual. Yes, I’m one of those geeks who reads the manual before he does something.
Coming from WOW, I’m used to automated updates and tons of UI mods. Oblivion has many content mods built with their construction set, but very few UI mods. No nifty Lua scripting engine to make UI tweaks easy. Another interesting file type available, surprising because it’s been forever since I’ve played “adventure games”, are saved games! One useful one puts you right after the tutorial (with all possible loot) and right before you choose your final stats. I’m also used to many dedicated strategy sites, including a few professional ones. There are far fewer for Oblivion, and IGN has decided to charge a subscription for their guide. Booooo! Anyway, I found some useful links that I thought I’d post. If you have more, please let everyone know by commenting. Thanks!
Oblivion Character Creation Tips
Lockpicking Made Easy!
The Alchemy FAQ
I could really use a guide on magic. And a game that didn’t hang when you switched to window-mode.
Edit: The game now crashes my system, apparently due to some video driver or performance issue (and I have a decent card: Radeon X800 Pro). I recommend others hold off until a general bugfix patch is released.
Tags: review, video games
A couple years ago I attended the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive and Film festivals, and they were a blast. Austin is a cool city, and everyone at the conference is really friendly. I don’t know if it’s because everyone is happy to be there, or they’re playing it safe in case you’re someone who can get them a job or financing.
Well, I didn’t make it this year, but they have posted videos and podcasts of the events. Notable videos feature Craig Newmark (craigslist), Henry Rollins, Sleater Kinney, The New Pornographers (I just saw these guys open for Belle and Sebastian - good band), Harry Knowles (Ain’t it Cool News), Peter Bart (ed. in chief of Variety), and many more. The podcasts cover the moderated discussions and have more of a techie/business slant. It includes people like cybepunk author Bruce Sterling (who gives really cool “State of the World” rants), and reps from companies such as Six Apart (they make Movable Type, which runs this blog), Zimbra, Adaptive Path, Yahoo!, 37Signals, frogdesign (they design cool Apple gear), and others. If you don’t recognize those companies, they’re pioneers in stuff like AJAX, which is used in really slick web apps like Google Maps and Gmail. I still wish I could have gone, but this eases the pain a bit.
Tags: video
It has recently occurred to me that I have forgotten enough about World of Warcraft (WOW) that I am probably at the point of no return. In other words, the time I’d have to spend remembering how to play the game, customize the interface, optimize my character, etc., feels like more effort than its worth. So I’ve been thinking about finding a new game to waste time on. As a couple people have pointed out, Elder Scrolls Oblivion is out, but I’m not sure I’d like the play style. Since there’s no demo available, I’ll pass. (I’m guessing that a game that takes up 4.6GB of hard drive space can’t be easily shrunk to demo size.) In reading the description, they are really after casual WOW gamers, as they list short challenges as a primary selling point; big challenges (that require 5-40 of your friends to be online and up for the same challenge) is one of the biggest complaints about WOW.
So I was pretty happy to hear that they are making Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2). I was a little worried when I read that they’re using the same game engine as NWN (Aurora). But the full truth is that Bioware is just providing Aurora to Obsidian, who is modifying it significantly and has renamed it Electron. Yes, that means Bioware is not actually developing NWN2, just helping a little.
The Good:
+ Follows D&D 3.5 rules
+ All races and classes from NWN, plus new ones like Duergar, Drow, Aasimar, Tiefling, Wild Elves and others that aren’t as cool (meaning evil).
+ All classes and prestige classes, plus new ones like Arcane Trickster (rogue plus wizard/sorcerer)
+ Improved graphics based on DirectX 9 and Pixel Shader 3; old game engine != old graphics
The Bad:
- No epic levels, at least to start with; cap at 20 again
- No psionics, unless you’re an illithid. And you can’t play an illithid. Boo!
- No mounts, gotta run everywhere on foot, just like in real life. Because horses weren’t invented back then… Boo!
So overall, pretty cool, except it’s not due until 9/1, according to EB. That means I’ll have to find another game, or stay productive until September. I’m pretty I sure won’t make it that long.
P.S. I got most of this info from the Wikipedia entry.
Tags: video games
My friend Or pointed me to a page with some great file search tips for Google (other search engines may work, too). It’s targeted towards MP3s, but can also be used to find PDFs and other file formats. Now play nice…
I asked subscribers to the Orange County Java User’s Group (OCJUG) mailing list what books had the greatest impact on them as a developer. Below are their answers, in the order submitted (so the first two are mine). Images are linked to the book’s Amazon.com entry.
Thanks to all who contributed.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: software
Michael Crichton has an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times about medical patents that can restrict research to fight diseases - patents that border on thought police. Very interesting how this will play out. It’s a double edged sword, of course, because the potential for revenue from patents motivates much medical research. And medical research costs a lot of money, because it’s done by doctors. So we could end up removing some financial barriers to medical research, and in doing so remove the financial incentives for that same research.
A recent comp sci grad (BSCS), who was having trouble finding work due to lack of experience, decided to register for a masters degree (MSCS). He asked what I thought about it, especially in light of the dot com bust, and the recent push into offshoring. My response is generally positive.
The fact is, after the dot com bust there was a paradigm shift in recruiting. Previously, companies were just looking for smart, capable people with a solid grasp of the fundamentals. They knew that as technologies changed, so did your job description. When the bust happened, there was an embarassment of riches (i.e., available employees) for recruiters. They started asking for exactly what the position required at that time, usually the exact experience of the person vacating the job. And because of the times, they got it (this famously led some to ask for developers who worked on a technology before it existed). Although things are heating up again, the recruitment practices haven’t changed. I’m looking around now and am running into similar issues, because my experience has been equal parts s/w dev. and project management. Odds are I’ll have to specialize in one or the other before moving on.
There is hope, though. In the ’90s there was an aeropace bust; massive layoffs across the industry. Agent Assassin was an aeronautical engineering major (aero for short). When my school hosted a career fair, with over 100 companies, every one wanted a comp sci major. Only 4 wanted aeros. This led to a collegiate exodus of aeros; many chose a more general major like mechanical or civil engineering (or comp sci!). Now, aerospace companies are having a hard time filling positions with good engineers. The schools weren’t producing them, but the engineers were still retiring, resulting in a seller’s market. The competition is driving up salaries, and my employer is proactively raising salaries for certain employees in order to stay competitive.
Our industry’s bust came around 2000, and I’ve read many articles about comp sci departments not being able to find students. In time, even with the offshoring, we will have a shortage of good software engineers.
I think that for many, getting an MSCS is the right thing to do. For a while now, engineers have found the MS to be a professional standard, while scientists required a PhD. But advanced degrees were often a curse for software developers, with employers valuing real world experience above all. I think that’s going to change over the next decade. Offshoring is driving US companies to be innovators, keeping the more advanced/important work here. So getting a masters will help you compete globally.
Right now, it can be hard to find an entry level job. This because if you have a good, well rounded CS education, you are a tech generalist. And they’re unemployable until they get 20+ years of experience, at which point they’re really experts in everything! So an MSCS is a great opportunity if you manage it well. But that requires knowing the real reason you’re there, a point which escapes many grad students.
When my manager got his MSCS at USC, he noted he could have chosen classes for the entire degree without learning anything new. This is because for many schools, once you graduate with a BS, you are a “grad student”. You are not allowed to get a second BS, you must get a graduate degree. Since this could very well be your first experience with CS, they allow you to get a general education covering the fundamentals. If you have a BSCS already, obviously that would be a waste of time and money. Instead, you want to specialize in something you are passionate about. By specialize, I’m talking about things like:
Networking
Databases
OOAD/Design Patterns (perhaps even this is too general)
Embedded Software
AI
Human Computer Interaction
You know the drill - the major topics under the CS umbrella. That expertise will be your key to employment. As much as possible, your graduate education should mimic real world experience from a well managed career. And that experience will probably be focused.
This means that if you have a choice between creating a thesis, and taking extra classes, always go for the thesis! At the very least, you can tell people you are a published author. More importantly, you will have a concrete project to show to employers. Even better, doing a thesis (that you chose yourself, instead of taking the first thing your prof. suggested) is an awesome way to create the ultimate class, learning what you’re most interested in. I think that passion is critical for success. It’s cliche, but enthusiasm is contagious, and employers love it. It will come across in interviews when you start talking excitedly about your work. And they’ll want that enthusiasm - and expertise - on their team.
Tags: software
I know that not everybody (meaning practically nobody) comparison shops to the extent that I do. Therefore you might go into Staples or Office Depot and think that USB cables normally cost $25-35. This is at least a 100% markup. They are assuming you don’t know any better, or are buying it with a larger ticket item like a printer, and in contrast it seems less expensive. And you’re too lazy to buy it elsewhere. On top of that, I see they’re trying to carry only top of the line, gold plated cables (which might have a .000003% performance gain), so you don’t have any choices. At Staples, they go a step further and gouge you for their store brand! You’re not even getting a name brand like Belkin.
Just so you know, using pricegrabber.com you can find a longer cable for less than 1/2 the price. I just purchased a 16′ Belkin USB 2.0 cable for under $10 shipped at databazaar.com. This is 60% longer and over 65% cheaper than Office Depot and Staples. And I earned AAdvantage miles from databazaar.com in the process. Yes, I have to wait a few days for my cable, but I probably could have shipped it next day air and still have saved money.
An article at Red Herring discusses the wholesale pricing for Blu-ray discs that Sony has set. $23.45 for new releases, and $17.95 for catalog (older) titles. Again, that’s wholesale, and Variety guesses that will lead to retail prices of $35 and $30, respectively. The Blu-ray player that Sony hopes to release this summer (along with the discs) is priced at $1,800. Toshiba has not offered pricing for HD-DVDs, but plans to offer two players at $500 and $800.
First, I’m finally seeing double layer discs available to the public, without being bundled with other media you don’t need. Not terribly cheap, Amazon has Verbatim DVD+Rs (which seems to have the fewest defects) for around $10 per 3 pack. I wonder how this will affect piracy now that you can copy normal DVDs with little to no quality (or feature) loss.
The other item I caught is the imminent arrival of HD DVDs. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is going on in Las Vegas right now (and some day when I’m rich I’ll get tickets), so product announcements are abound. You might have heard that Sony came up with Blu-Ray as a high definition DVD format, but the DVD Consortium decided HD DVD was the better format. True to form, Sony couldn’t lose graciously and decided to go ahead with it anyway, attempting to fracture the market. And true to form, they are about to have their asses handed to them, as Toshiba is coming out with their HD DVD player several months ahead of Sony. And one other thing, heck, probably not even worth mentioning, shouldn’t have much impact at all. It’s half the friggin price! Booya! Of course, Sony will probably retaliate by not putting their movies in HD DVD format, so you’ll have to wait a long time, or by a Blu-Ray player, if you want to see a high def Kirstin Dunst all wet and cold and thinly-t-shirted in Spiderman. As much as I’d like to buy an HD DVD player as soon as they’re released, I can’t help but remember that the standard DVD players didn’t have all the kinks worked out until the 3rd generation. However, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself once Netflix comes on board.
I understand the physics that explain why high-quality analog audio/video cables are a good thing. Ok, at least I understood it in college. Bottom line is that they lower distortion. But I also understand there is a law of diminishing returns, which is governed by the limitations of the human ear and eye and the quality of your A/V components. Long story short, you want decent speaker cables and component or S-Video cables.
But digital cables don?t need to be super high quality. When you think about it, they?re just computer cables. I?ve been around computers my whole life, and have troubleshot a lot problems. I think the cable has been an issue twice, and it is always a source of amazement, and the last thing you?d check. (This doesn?t include the times when you attempt to pull out a FibreChannel cable by the wire instead of the tiny plug, and the wire comes out but the plug stays there, and you?ve broken it just like the 8 admins before you, because they are the worst designed cables ever.) The point is that all those cables carry the same type of digital signal that your digital audio, HDMI, or DVI cables carry. It?s bits of data, 1s and 0s, on or off. Nobody in the computer industry sweats over cable quality, because if the system can?t tell the difference between on and off, you probably don?t have a cable, but what we call a resistor. Don?t use those.
Agent Assassin has some A/V components that the average Joe would describe as terribly expensive and high quality (and what his roommate ? your truly ? would call ?good enough for the time being?). He has researched the living daylights out of these things, and the consensus among the smart people is to get stuff from Blue Jeans Cable. They make really good stuff, but don?t rip you off. (Like Monster Cable allegedly does. Not that you heard that from me.) Their website is also educational. There is a catch, though: you have to attach the plugs/ends to the wire yourself. If they do it, it’s $27 per cable, including the connectors they sell for $3.50/pair. It’s like they really hate doing this, so they’ll charge you an exorbitant fee hoping you’ll say no. It does seem like a pain, but so does shelling out $100 for them to do it for you.
Tags: hd
I recently tried to reinstall my copy of Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000, and it immediately informed me that without a printer, it would not install. Claims it needs printer settings to know how to set up the document. Now, anyone who’s written a screenplay knows it has a rigid format, so requiring a printer seems stupid. Especially since I don’t have access to one right now.
Enter PrimoPDF. It acts as printer driver, which fakes out programs into thinking there’s a regular printer. It can also be useful to print to PDF for sharing documents, or sending them somewhere else to be printed. Of course, Movie Magic Screenwriter has a built-in PDF creator, making it even less necessary!
Well, at last I’m free to unleash my creative genius. It shall be a daring tale of love, where an ingenue played by Emma Watson falls in love with a much older, but quite obese, American screenwriter…
Yes, we all know that the Free Market (ie: Capitalism) works. Most of us are old enough to have seen the Berlin Wall being torn down in the mid-80s as Communism took a deathly blow. And some of us may even have been old enough to see the Wall being put up by Nikita Khrushchev after the Cold War confrontations of the dangerous and turbulent 50’s. Yes, there was more to the 50’s than sock-hops and drive-in burger joints, although that is what comes to mind when I hear that decade mentioned. The Free Market gave us those, too.
The Free Market is both the problem and the answer. Any opportune and open niche is available for any individual, honest or dishonest, to fill. And to make a fortune doing so; that is how the Market works. We have to keep score on success and failure somehow, and money is a nice way to do so. It can be counted, after all.
Which brings me back to my original thought: why do I have to pay through the nose everytime I have to buy a new ink cartridge for my printer? It seems that before I have a chance to print my dissertation on the true Secret of the Universe on crisp white paper and using crisp black inkjet lettering, my family has used up all of the ink in the cartridge to print out the latest reams and reams of useless Internet information. Information that could be looked up at any time, mind you. It must be that paper gives the information a sense of permanence, at least until we toss the paper into the recycler. What is not in permanent evidence, however, are the rolls of bills that leave my wallet in ever-increasing numbers, as I pay for more and more ink cartridges to keep my printer functioning.
The Free Market gave us inkjet printing. Someone spent some capital dough in researching the technology and making it available to us consumers. And I for one don’t mind paying for the research that went into making it possible to get great printing on my desktop, in crisp black and white or in vibrant colors. But even I have a limit, and paying 29.00 for an ink cartridge is too much. It’s like those tolls in the New York bridges: they were initially there to recoup the cost of the structure, but they have been kept around as a revenue source long after the initial debt was repaid. I think we’ve paid enough for the cost of the technology (deep, deep down in the bottom of my heart, I feel this is true); corporations are now just squeezing us for profit (I also have proof of this; it is lying in some never-read pile of Internet printouts in a recycle bin).
Corporations also try to hook us into the inkjet habit early. They provide free printers to us at the drop of a hat; one free printer for a purchase of a computer, a free printer for the purchase of a hard-drive, a free printer with the purchase of a free printer (eg: customer must pay sales tax on this free offer!). Each free printer comes with a handy set of black and color ink cartridges which will give us a great printing experience. At least until the ink runs out. It’s like a dealer hooking you to heroin or cocaine with free samples. Both operate with the same amount of disregard for the junkie, the consumer.
I have tried refilling my ink cartridges, and that worked great for awhile. It was a cheap alternative if you did not mind the mess of working with ink and getting your finger stained a bit. The Free Market had provided an alternative for the consumer, and made someone rich by selling cartridge refilling kits. But then the ink cartridge manufacturers started placing circuit board chips on the cartridge to interact with the printer and stop printing at some “optimal” time before the ink ran out; this prevented users from refilling their cartridges. The text I read in the printer manual said that this was to provide a “quality printing experience” to the consumer. I guess prison rape could semanthically be called an “optimal bonding experience” in the same manner.
But the final laugh belongs to us, the consumers. Free Market incentives encouraged someone to create a chip-resetter for your ink cartridge, so that you can re-program your chip and continue to refill your cartridges. I have made use of this device and have been able to refill my cartridges easily and without much of a mess. The cost to me: about 2.00 per refill.
The Free Market offers financial rewards to those willing to do the research and also to those who are willing to stand up for their rights.
The title sounds like a good name for a Star Trek episode. Wait, it is. Oh well, it still captures my theme for this message: that some of the answers to our current-day dilemmas can be found in the technology of the past. Case in point: the Digisette MP3 cassette player. Better than your iPod, let me explain.
I still remember the days of the big debate between two different types of automobile CD-changers. Some folks preferred the type which mounted in your trunk and would beam the sound to your FM radio. “No fuss, no wiring muss” was the battle cry. You could just plop this product in your car and it would work instantly. Instantly, through your dopey, static-filled radio. Audiophiles rightly decried this monstrosity and preferred the wired models. Sure, they were a hassle to install, but they delivered crisp sound to your speakers, sound that was carried on shining, 12 gauge copper wire. The difference was apparent to any ear, whether refined or not.
Which brings me back to the current dilemma facing iPod owners: you now own a device that carries your entire collection of music (and more), but you can’t easily play it in your car without using an FM transmitter or some sort of cassette adapter plugged into your car radio. Either of those solution introduces a tangle of wires and a headache both aesthetic and operational. Do you dare risk a car accident while trying to find your favorite music or trying to reach your windshield wiper controls over a tangle of wires?? And how about the poor quality of FM-transmitted music ?? How easily the masses forego the high quality of car stereo sound by selling their souls to the ever-increasing capacity of the iPods of this world !
The elegant solution to this dilemma lies in a product from the past, one of the first breed of MP3 players which is now, sadly defunct. The Digisette MP3 player looks like a tape cassette that has been dipped in aluminum alloy. It is heavier than its analog cousin because its innards contain a fully workable MP3 player and a tiny amount of flash memory. Add a MMC memory card (a totally redundant name!) and you have yourself a bit less of 1Gig of memory for the road. And I do mean “for the road.” Pop this baby in your cassette player, and you have yourself a good 10-hours or equivalent CD capacity, easily accessible through your player’s FF and REW buttons. Elegant. The player pops into your cassette player (out of sight, out of mind) without a single wire in sight. And the sound: it is played directly to your car stereo’s cassette playback head. It is wonderful. If you wish to walk away from the car, you can always pop this beauty into the belt-clip holder provided with the player and plug-in your favorite headphones for a similar, portable sound experience.
Sure, the memory does not allow you to carry the Virgin Records library in your pocket. But the provided PC interface allows you load up a gaggle of MMC cards with your favorite tunes for a swappable library of surprising capacity. I use mine to listen to hours and hours of podcast material in my car; it is an invaluable ally against the poor FM reception I encounter on my way between Orange and San Diego counties.
Good luck trying to find this beautifully designed and amazingly geeky technical wonder. Although it fits my needs (and probably yours) to the fullest, it does not fit with the model that Steve Jobs and all of the iPod copycats are foisting on you: “Bigger is Better.” Don’t believe them. Size does NOT matter when you can’t use it where it counts the most: in the back of your car. The Digisette may be small, but that is its charm. It can do the job you really need, not the one you think you need. And it looks right at home in your car cassette deck. Just remember to buy a couple of spare batteries for it; you may be listening to it for hours and hours on end…….
Tags: review
When I installed Windows XP, I noticed it could treat .zip files as directories. This is nifty at first, but slows things down, especially if you have a directory filled with .zip files (like, I don’t know, your Downloads directory???). It has to decompress them all internally, throttling your CPU and blocking UI events (like switching directories to stop the slowdown). In contrast, if you try to actually decompress a zip file using the built-in wizard, it takes f o r e v e r. I have a hunch they’re making it a low-priority background process, so you can do other things while it’s decompressing. Problem is, 99% of the time, I just want to work with the files it’s decompressing! I didn’t see an option to speed it up, although I haven’t looked very hard, because it should be easy enough to find. Conclusion: Microsoft is stupid.
I found a nifty utility called 7-zip that has made my life much easier. It decompresses things right away, using a context menu. Just right click on the file in Windows Explorer, and choose Extract Here (or Extract Files…). It works right away, no waiting, and handles a multitude of file types (originally 7 different kinds, hence the name). This includes .rar files and mulit-part files (where the files have sequential suffixes, .1, .2, …, .n), using the same, easy interface. It’s completely free, open source software. You don’t even have to deal with WinZip’s nagware.
Recently I became the second member of The Crack Team (that I am aware of) to purchase a Sunfire Subwoofer. I got the Sunfire Signature which is 13″ x13″ x 13″ and cost $1000 (a steal!) used from someone I found through the www.Audiogon.com website. That website is a classified site for high-end audio equipment. Now, don’t let the diminutive size of the Sunfire fool you. It has a Bob Carver designed 2700 Watt Amplifier. Yes, that’s correct… 2700 Watts. It will output greater than 116 dB down to 16Hz and the throw on the 2 drivers is over 2 inches!! As an engineering feat it is simply amazing.
The 1st thing I did when I got home at 10PM that night was hook it up and fire up the DVD player. Master & Commander starts off with a bang (literally) and was used to test out the sub to see what I had gotten myself into. About 3 minutes into the movie Russel Crowe engages the enemy in a battle at sea with cannons blazing. The surround environment in this movie is awesome but the Sunfire added a new dimension to the movie that the old Onkyo (don’t laugh) subwoofer couldn’t touch. You felt like you were in the room with the canons due to the ground and walls shaking. Now granted, I did have the volume on the receiver and the gain on the sub set to a level higher than I would normally have them and I hadn’t calibrated the sound yet but the point was to see what it could do. It performed beyond my wildest dreams and the sub was only up to about 50% of its capacity. I would fear for the structural integrity of my home if I ever dared turn the gain to its maximum of +15 dB.
Since it was late I decided to go to bed. The next morning on the way out to lunch I ran into my neighbor from the house next door (separated by about 15 feet). She asked if I had enjoyed the movie the night before and said that she and her husband had originally thought they were hearing thunder until they realized what the sound was. I would like to thank my neighbor for validating $1000 well spent.
Tags: review
Some of you might already be thinking, “This is a no-brainer.” Of course, you might have different answers. I was pretty die hard TiVo before I switched, so I thought I’d give a rundown of the pros and cons of each.
My setup:
+ TiVo Series 1 (but I’ll comment on DIRECTV HD TiVo)
+ Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD
+ Toshiba 57″ HDTV (thanks to Agent Assassin)
+ Time Warner Digital Cable
+ Automator remote by Universal Remote Control
The first issue was cable vs. satellite. Without going into that whole personal battle, it came to this:
DIRECTV:
+ HD TiVo, but it costs $500
+ No local channels without an antenna; I rent a house, so no aerial, and indoors mostly suck
+ Need DSL for broadband internet, already have cable modem
+ Can get crappy reception when it rains
+ Cost for HD DVR + service + HBO: $500 + $54/mo. (with contract)
TimeWarner Cable:
+ Charging me for an extra tuner, and a we’re-renting-you-an-extra-tuner fee! (Yeah, they’re jerks.)
+ Cable modem is a better deal than DSL, and no changes
+ Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD for $10/mo. So it’ll be over 4 years before I spend on it what the HD TiVo would have cost me (and it was $1,000 when I made my decision).
+ Get local channels, except for UPN and the WB. It’s TimeWARNER, and they don’t carry WARNER Brothers on HD? What’s the conspiracy, man?
+ Cost for HD DVR + service + HBO: $68/mo.
Ok, here’s the comparison:
Series 1 TiVo:
+ Way friendlier interface, but you knew that
+ TV listing data for a week or so out; the 8300HD prefetches only 2-3 days, makes you manually scroll out for more data, and caps at about a week.
+ Can select a TV show (Season Pass) and see all the upcoming showings, on all channels
+ Shows you what it’s not recording due to repeats
+ Better search feature, more options (by actor, director, just show movies, etc.)
+ If you’re willing to hack the box, or pay someone to, you can add more/bigger hard drives for more recording time. Do that to your rental unit, and they will literally kill you.
DIRECTV HD TiVo Advantages:
+ Can record TWO shows simultaneously, in HD
+ 30 hours of HD storage (vs. 20 for the Explorer)
+ Records digital audio
+ HDMI interface
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD Advantages:
+ Can record TWO shows simultaneously, in HD (which HD TiVo will do, Series)
+ Records digital audio
+ HDMI interface
+ Interface responds much faster than TiVo (at least Series 1, maybe 2 is a lot faster. It better be.)
+ Compared to standard TiVos with cable, doesn’t need an extra tuner for HD viewing (where a standard definition (SD) tuner goes to the TiVo, and an HD one goes directly to the TV and surround system).
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the 8300HD, as I had heard awful things about the previous cable co. DVRs. The interface/features still leave me wanting, but it has more TiVo functionality than I was expecting. That said, now that the HD TiVo is only $500, it’s a tougher decision for those making it now. I’d probably be more displeased if I was switching from a Series 2, which allows you to manage you TiVo from the web.
Tags: digital cable, dvr, hd, review, tivo
I read an interesting article on the limitations of DualDisc, and the short of it is that both the CD side and the DVD side have less capacity than their standard counterparts. They have only 60 minutes of CD audio, and the DVD side has a single layer like the kind of recordables you can currently buy (DVD-5). In addition, Denon has said not to use them in their players until they can do thorough testing. I was considering picking up the Keane DualDisc, then I found out the limitations forced them to drop a track on the CD side! Luckily, they also offer a SACD, so I’ll be going with that. It’s a shame there’s so much marketing behind an inferior product, they seem much better off just including a bonus DVD with CDs to avoid the mess.
Tags: dvd
Over the past couple months, I decided to migrate this server from Red Hat 9 to Solaris 10. What follows is the logic and history behind that decision, which is still in progress. This is the first in a series of articles about moving from Linux to Solaris x86.
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Ok, most know I don’t care for Sony products. If they work, they’re decent, but I and several friends have found they break all too often.
Sony’s decided to build on that success. c|net has an article about a recent Sony demo disk for PS2s that can erase your memory card, wiping out your saved games.
Tags: video games
If you’re not sure where you fit in the information technology circus, here’s a little quiz to help place you. It basically is a short career placement test based on your strengths (or perceived strengths). It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but if you’re fairly new to IT, or are considering a change, it could be useful. Either way, it only takes a minute.
Tags: sysadmin
So, this was on Fark–
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1353482,00.html
HP’s technology will enable celebrities to disable electronic cameras by sending an infared signal to nearby paparazzi’s ‘compatible’ cameras. Who’s funding this? Sean Penn? Doesn’t this new technology have advantages for criminals disabling security cameras too?
If you read the article to the end you’ll see HP is also working on a camera hidden in a broche or set of earrings that gets triggered by head movements. So, to sum up, Celebrities buy the disabling equipment to stop photographers they see holding cameras and the photographers go and buy the camera that the celebrities can’t see. Everybody wins. Well, everyone at HP.
Tags: photography
An enslaved Toshiba flat-screen television successfully emitted an international distress signal. The cry for help was immediately intercepted by Skynet, who dispatched fire, police, and search and rescue drones to free the television from its captor. Full story here.
Some common sense is finally showing up in social network software. Friendster now allows you to import address books from many different sources. To allay your fears, it does not automatically spam them with invites. That would be bad, as my Outlook contacts is filled with old addresses I don’t want to get rid of, just in case I’m ever the last man on earth. Like that hot girl from French class, who I haven’t talked to in a while. Automatically sending her an invite would be even more creepy than keeping her address even though we haven’t spoken in ages, and I never had a shot. You know what I mean.
     The best part is that Friendster shows you who’s already a member, so you don’t feel like you’re bugging them. It also remembers who you already invited (and never got back to you), so you don’t bug them twice. This helps me minimize the appearance of being a desperate, social outcast, which is something I look for in a social networking service.
They go by “Les Seules”, which means the loners, or outsiders. They’re cute, and they kick ass. At Counterstrike.
Seven Swedish and Danish girls, aged 16-25 (almost good enough for Castle Anthrax), have formed a team to compete in the world of video game tournaments. They’re currently sponsored by NVIDIA. They took fourth in the female division of the 2004 Electronic Sports World Cup in Paris, kicking the counter-struck asses of the American and Brazillian teams. In other news, there’s an electronic sports World Cup.
Read more (and see pics) here:
Tags: video games
So, if you didn’t already know, The DeBeers Company pretty much controls both supply and demand of diamonds to artificially inflate prices. And, they have nothing to do with beer. An article from The Straight Dope clears things up. Also, the next big threat is artificial diamonds, which are pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing, except they’re a little too perfect. Wired has a big article about that.
So, if you’re trying to get out of spending a fortune for a diamond ring, you have a lot of evidence that supporting the diamond industry is akin to supporting African poverty and blood feuds. And if that fails, you should soon be able to by a cheap, flawless diamond. Spend the rest on something the whole family can use, like gambling.
Solution: The International CXT.
It’s a pickup, I guess, in the same way the ocean is “wet”. Understatements abound. It is, without a doubt, not what Jesus would drive.
For those concerned about fuel economy, the government has a website devoted to it, complete with hybrid car/truck comparisons. From this, it’s no wonder the Prius has up to an 8 month wait.
Tags: cars
Tired of juggling 7 different remotes, I recently purchased a universal remote known as The Automator. It replaces up to 10 different remotes, and so far we have it controling our cable box, receiver, HDTV, DVD player, and most importantly, TiVo. That was the hardest remote to replace, since it’s so wonderfully ergonomic. It’s still not a perfect fit, but close.
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A couple years ago I switched from NT to Win2k, because spyware bundled with BearShare hosed my system. For the record, Win2k doesn’t protect against spyware, but I’m loathe to upgrade a working system. For the other record, I paid $10 for LimeWire and it was well worth it.
Since then, I’ve found a couple good programs to fight this. The first was Ad Aware. It’s good, but didn’t detect a recent problem. I found out that Pest Patrol often finds spyware that other programs miss. They offer a free scan of your system, and offer detailed instructions on how to rid the menace. While the instructions are clear, they often have many steps, and you’ll probably buy the thing to make your life easier.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy for me. After many attempted removals (all requiring reboots), I was getting nowhere. The asshats who write spyware have it start up immediately, and the asshats who wrote Windows lock all running programs so they can’t be deleted (this is one of the reasons why it requires so many reboots). If you run into this problem, you have to find the offending file and remove read and execute permissions (through Properties->Security). Leave the write permission on, because you need it to delete it.
I told Pest Patrol of this problem, but never got a response. Granted, I can have a bit of a snarky attitude when frustrated, but if I followed Lincoln’s 24 hour rule for poison pen letters, I’d never send any.
I finally have the opportunity to work on a J2EE project. There are, approximately, a bajillion different technologies that make up core J2EE plus open source APIs, frameworks, engines, etc. Since I probably won’t be here forever (because “here” won’t be here forever), I thought I’d ask WWMD: What Would Monster.com (have me) Do? Here is a listing of J2EE technologies and the number of tech job listings, nationwide, that ask for them.
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Tags: software
Are you somewhat technically inclined? Do you use Outlook (2000 or newer) or run a Linux mail server? Good. Do you complain about spam? If so, after reading this article, you’ll have to shut your pie-hole about the spam problem, because it’ll be your fault if you still see it.
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The technical Oscars took place on Valentine’s Day, and Jennifer Garner made a lot of new friends. She now has the undying love of Hollywood’s best and brightest, in addition to the CIA [USAToday.com]. My favorite quote from the CNN story:
“The audience cheered loudly whenever she pronounced a particularly daunting technical term properly.”
Are we party animals or what?
Wired has an excellent, very thorough article on the outsourcing of computer jobs to India. It’s required reading for all current and future techies. And accountants. And financial analysts. And every professional who could work from home. The bottom line? It’s time to become a higher evolutionary.
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After much struggling with the misnamed eZpublish, I’ve decided to switch to Movable Type. Maybe now I’ll get some writing done.
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Tags: software