Tag Archives: TV

Technology

Drone

Leave a comment

home-from-droneThis weekend Matt stopped by with his new drone!  Wow, what a piece of technology!  I was a little curious at the start, but much more so once he was flying it and showing us the features.  He bought a rather expensive model (at least in my book), and it has some pretty sweet features and specs, including a nice gimble & camera.  The gimble allows for beautifully smooth movement of the camera while shooting up to 4K video or 12-megapixel snapshots.

He started it up in the driveway, got up between 200 and 300 feet to clear everything tall in the neighborhood, then flew it around.  I must say, it scared me a bit knowing how much that little toy costed, and watching it zoom out of sight over the neighborhood.  It has a decent range, but I still found it scary.  It probably would have felt even worse, had I been the one who paid for it!  He mentioned getting to a certain point where the video starts to cut out…sheesh, now THAT could give me heart issues… but there’s a nifty little “Go Home” feature and calls it back and it comes right back to your location.

After some flying around and recording (both from my cell phone and from the 4K camera on the drone) until the drone’s battery was nearly dead and getting pretty chilly in the 32-degree weather, we came back inside to warm up and figure out how to view the footage as quickly as possible.

I transferred the videos to my PC and could view them there, but we wanted to watch them on the big TV.  It’s 1080p though, so we couldn’t actually view them in full 4K quality.  I used my laptop, which already has a dock connected to the TV, and the video looked awesome!

The video on a MicroSD card is limited to 4GB file sizes, so our footage was split into two files – one about 8 minutes (4GB in size), and the other about 6 minutes (about 3GB in size).  I wanted to use ShareStudio, an app on the PS4, to edit the video, but unfortunately, the PS4 didn’t recognize the video file format that the drone used.

After we finished ogling the fine footage, I dropped the videos into my YouTube channel to start uploading them to the internet.  After a few hours they completed, and the footage still looks quite impressive there, and now we can share them with everyone easily.  Take a look if you want.  Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 from the drone, and my cell phone footage.

I want to be able to edit those three videos into one nice one, complete with cuts back and forth between be shooting the drone, and the drone shooting me, when we were playing with the “Follow Me” feature of the drone, but I tried doing so in Corel VideoStudio, but it didn’t work out so well.  The resulting video, which I wanted to save as a 4K video, was horrible with dropped frames throughout and full choppiness, rendering it unwatchable.  I might try it again at 1080p, just to see if it’s the 4K it can’t handle, or if my PC’s just not powerful enough to handle the job.

 

News, Playstation (Sony), X-Box (Microsoft)

I’m not old, I’m “classic”

Leave a comment

xbox-360-elite-wcontrollerWe recently dug out our old X-Box 360.  We hadn’t used it in a few years, though it was still hooked up to a TV.  Again, like our PS3, the hard drive had gotten full, so things started getting difficult, and it ended up just going unused as we moved on to other things.  I considered selling the console, and even went as far as to gather up all of the info about it, including the 26 games for it that we have on discs, and I posted it on our Slack Team’s site.

But after a day with no response–during which time Kevin discovered about 11 or 12 more games on discs that I had missed–I also found that I have about 70 more games that I purchased as digital downloads from X-Box Live that were on the hard drive!  I should have considered this before posting the ad I guess.

So I took the X-Box 360 and moved it out to the living room and set it up again so I could thoroughly go through the system and catalog its entire contents.  After doing this, and actually finding many “lost treasures” in the form of classic games from my youth, I decided to promptly pull the ad and keep the X-Box 360.  The 70+ digital games alone would be quite a chunk of cash (at least for me) to throw away, let alone the 30+ disc-based games that we had purchased.

I loaded up a few of my classic favorites yesterday, just to try them out, and quickly found myself enjoying them all over again, not wanting to close them until finishing “just one more level.”  The hard drive did start sounding pretty loud after the system was on awhile though.  It’s the system’s original 120GB hard drive.  It’s pretty maxed out with everything I purchased back in the day, leaving 2.2GB of free space on it… barely enough to hold another decent game.   And of course, you know me… I immediately jumped on the interwebs and found a replacement internal hard drive.  The largest internal drive I could find, that matched the older X-Box 360 model I have, was 500GB for $40.  So I grabbed it.  In a few days I should be able to upgrade and then have plenty of breathing room to work with on my “refurbished” X-Box 360.

Just like with the PS3, I justify it by stressing how cheap the games, parts and accessories are for these old systems… And they play all the good old classic games I love.  I hope the 360, as well as the PS3, last for many more years.  I’ll probably try to keep my youth alive as long as possible!  Let the old-times roll!

News

Geeky Christmas Things

Leave a comment

For the Christmas season, I’ve been playing with my options for using the living room TV for background entertainment when we don’t want to watch actual TV.  Here’s what I’ve settling on using.  Since I have a laptop (Windows 7) connected to the TV (LG 55″) via HDMI, I set it to having the TV as its main display.  I use Google Plus Images to download my albums “Christmas 2008”, 2009, etc., up to 2013.  This is extremely easy on G+, but next to impossible on Flickr.  Once those were downloaded, I renamed each photo (an entire folder at a time) to “Christmas 2013 – Photo xxx” (it auto-numbers them).  Then I created an executable slideshow using Slide Show Builder in FastStone Image Viewer, adding all of the photos from each year, set the transitions, and added caption text to the bottom left corner, which I set to include the photo’s filename and timestamp.  I set each photo for 15 seconds, and built the exe file.  There were a total of just over 600 photos.  I can optionally add music to the slideshow as well, but I left this out, since I prefer to just play an Amazon Music Station or my own music instead.  This turned out really nice.  Amazon has several different “Christmas” channels to choose from, as well as many other channels for whatever type of music I’m in the mood for, or I can easily play any of my own music, which Amazon has stored for me.  Amazon with hold up to 200,000 songs, I believe, which is certainly plenty for me.  And with Amazon Prime, all of the free music and stations is just a bonus.

I must say, it did take most of this month’s spare time (when I wasn’t playing Ingress) to find the best options for each of these tasks.  For example, I had no easy way of controlling the mouse and starting the music and slideshow without standing 6 inches from the TV until I found a decent “air remote” to use.  I needed an easy way to start and stop the slideshow and music on the computer in the living room. Eventually I found this. It has some great reviews and sounded perfect, so I went with it. It works great, exactly what I needed.

I also tried to find all my Christmas photos on Flickr and download them, which is ridiculously difficult to do, for some reason.  I tried using DisplayFusion first to simply randomly show Christmas photos straight from the web (using either G+ photos or Flickr), but as it turns out, there’s a limit to how many photos you can stream in an hour.  If I set it to only switch photos every minute, it works ok, but the other problem (with both photo services) is they both only seem to go back a couple hundred photos or so in my photostream.  This results in only being able to view recent photos, pretty much showing only this year’s photos and a few of last year’s.  This is when I decided to do everything local and just download exactly which photos I wanted to display.

So there you have it, my geeky Christmas slideshow.  We’re enjoying all of the old memories now, and look forward to this year’s festivities, which are starting today.  Now on with the holidaze!

News

Mayhem at it’s finiest…er funniest

1 Comment
Minions of Anarchy

Jay sent me this image recently, and with Sons of Anarchy finally over now, I thought I’d post it here (click it-or here-for the full-sized image).  This was one of my favorite TV shows of all time, no doubt.  Right up there with the Sopranos.  In case you never watched it, it has nothing to do with minions or Hostess Twinkies… It’s about a gang of outlaw bikers that run guns in California.  It was created by Kurt Sutter, who is now married to Katie Sagal.  There are 7 Seasons of the show, and it all wraps up with a very awesome final episode, which just aired this week.

News

Monday Night Features

Leave a comment

Watched two things last night:

The Wil Wheaton Project: A wacky little talk show hosted by Wil that I enjoyed. Probably not for everyone though. Of course, I’m a TMZ fan as well, so I like the off-the-wall wacky humor, making light of current events. Wil’s new show is kinda like “TMZ for geeks”, in which he highlights everything current in the geek world–mostly in TV and movies this week, but I’m sure he’ll be all-inclusive, geek-wise, throughout the season. Yesterday was his first episode. I hope it does well. I’ve followed him for years, since he was in Stephen King’s “Stand By Me” in 1986.

Non-Stop: Very exciting movie that takes place in-flight as an unidentified terrorist threatens to kill a passenger every 20 minutes until $150 million is transferred to his bank account by the Air Marshal on the flight. They communicate through the entire movie by text messaging, with the texts appearing in popup bubbles on-screen as they are received. Unique approach. Especially when the air marshal ends up viewing a phone with a cracked screen–the on-screen text message bubbles were shown with cracks, I guess to show how difficult it was to read the screen. Some parts were a bit over-the-top, but it was still a great Monday-night feature for us.

News

The New Roku Stick…it up your arse!

1 Comment

The new Roku Stick just came out.  The Roku 2 & 3 are better than the stick though, so I don’t get it.  I guess it’s just for people that don’t want the extra little box, and don’t mind a sluggish Roku.  Now, if it were as good or better than the Roku 3, I’d drool over it.  I could plug it into any TV as easy as a flash drive and it’d be fairly portable! But it’s just not there yet.  Plus, they hide the fact that it still needs POWER.  You either have to run a wire from the Roku stick to a USB port on your TV (if your TV has USB ports) or run it to a USB-to-AC adapter and plug it into the wall.  So, when you get right down to it, they just scrunched it down to a smaller package without the HDMI cable–sorta–you still need the same two connections to it–HDMI and power.  It’s the same as gluing a sluggish “Roku 1” to the back of your TV!  Yeah, now there’s an idea!  Don’t get me wrong though, I love Roku–I have several.  I just don’t see the point in releasing something NEW that’s–according to their own website–5 times slower than their best model!

News

Subscriptions. A rant.

Leave a comment

I am so frustrated with how things are these days with tech, services, and just about everything else.  For one example video games.  Back in the day, you could buy a video game and that was it–you could play it normally, privately, or play it online, if the game offered that feature.  There was no fee to play online, no “online pass” you had to own, and no other fees other than the purchase of the game itself.  It was the same with movies.  Buy a DVD, and you could play it anywhere, on any DVD player, on any TV.

Today, things are quickly changing.  Luckily, you can still buy DVDs, but I know that’s going to go away eventually.  The same with video games.  Everything is “going digital” and you’ll eventually only be able to obtain games, movies, and music digitally.  All of your purchases will only be for a “license to download” things, so you’ll never really “own” anything.  Stop paying a subscription fee, and you lose access to everything you had access to with that subscription.   We will soon “own” none of our media, and we’ll only have a temporary license to play it.

Whether that’s a good thing or bad, I guess, is up to you.  Maybe I’m “old school”, but I prefer to have something physical for what I pay for.  Whether that’s a DVD, a Blu-Ray, a Music CD, or a game disc.  As far as I’m concerned, I own that disc, music, or game, and I can install or play it wherever and whenever I want, and not have to pay anything for it ever again.  At this point in this “revolution”, however, I’m a bit stuck in the middle with this stuff.  By that, I mean I now prefer the convenience that comes with having everything digital, but I hate the idea of having to pay a constant monthly fee for the right to access them.  To this end, I have found an efficient way to extract–or, as they call it these days, “rip”–all of my CDs, DVDs, and BluRay discs to media files, so I have everything readily-available, all the time, from my computer, and I can move any of them to any of my portable devices as I want to, without having any extra fees to pay. Ever.

I took this convenience one step further recently after discovering “Plex”, an awesome media platform that allows me to have ALL of this media on a “server” of my own, then stream it, totally free, to any device or other computer I want–even to my TV.  Plex works great, supports all the major formats for music and movies, has apps for all of the smartphone types, and even has apps for all of the set-top boxes like Roku, Google TV, etc.

The latest generation of game consoles (Playstation 4, X-Box One) recently took a very bold step into the fee-based cesspool:  They released both systems as non-backward-compatible!  This means that everyone who has a Playstation 3, or X-Box 360 (the generation of consoles that came out right before them) will no longer be able to play their previously-purchased games on the new consoles.  All of the money that I–and hundreds of thousands of other people–spent buying great PS3 games before, will basically be wasted when our PS3 consoles eventually die or break down.  If we’re lucky, when that happens we might be able to dig up an old, working PS3 somewhere just to keep our came collection viable.  But we know, soon enough, it’ll all be gone.

Now, if a particular game you like was popular enough on the PS3, and the developer is still around and developing for the PS4, you might see a PS4 version of your game made available, but you can sure bet you’ll be paying for it again if you want to play it!  It might have a “cheap $9.99 UPGRADE fee”, but you’ll be paying for it again, regardless.  Games of this type can be found in the “PS3/PS4” section of the Playstation Store on the PS4…And this is a very small section.  The titles here are games that are PS4 versions with equivalent PS3 titles.  If you own one of the PS3 versions and upgraded to the PS4, you’re lucky enough to be allowed to pay for your game again!  I guess we’re supposed to feel good about having to pay for our games a second time…?  You bought the game once though, why should you have to pay ANYTHING for it again?!?!  I know, I know, the developers worked hard to provide the new version, and they have to get paid, etc., etc., But don’t they get enough from the users who buy the game new, who obviously pay double or triple the price of the “upgrade”?  Obviously, the “upgraders” are getting the same version of the game, so the developers can afford to sell a copy of the game for the lower price if they want to.  Ah, but remember now, that “upgraded” copy of the game is now only a “license” to the game… it’s not a physical disc copy of the game.  So you can never re-sell it to anyone else, and I’m sure, by the time the NEXT generation of consoles comes out, it’ll be completely worthless.

Movies are also moving quickly toward this path.  Services like Netflix, Hulu and Redbox already off vast collections of thousands of great movies and TV shows, with everything they offer available to you all at once, for just a low monthly subscription fee.  It’s like having your very own Plex server, except with thousands more movies (but no music–those would be another, completely different subscription service), except that, as soon as you stop paying the monthly fee, it’s snatched away from you completely, and you have nothing.  You own nothing.  I know, I’m old-school.  I’m just ranting.

So these days, as we work hard to earn the money to pay down and eliminate all of our debt, finally getting financially stable, and able to pay our mortgage, gas & electric, cell phone and property taxes to keep living normally, we can add to that a half dozen or even a dozen perpetual subscription fees that will never end, for all kinds of things that we’ll never own.  For me, I’m trying to get by with as few subscription services as I can, as most other people probably are, but as the new game consoles prove, it’s only going more and more–quickly– in that direction.

If you do the math for the subscription scenario, then compare it to the math to actually buy all of the DVD, BluRays, and Music CDs as well as the hardware required to build your own streaming server, sure, you’re going to find that paying the monthly subscription fee will end up costing you thousands of dollars less in the long run, and will take tons less time to build, maintain, and keep up than your own server would.  But then again, I’m a geek who enjoys such things, so taking that time and extra effort is something I’d rather do with a chunk of my time instead of just being twice the couch potato and watch movies for two-thirds of my day.

Rant complete.

News

Jerry Smith’s Pumpkin Farm

1 Comment

Evil TyWell, Halloween is almost here already.  So Sunday we went to Jerry Smith’s Pumpkin Farm.  Wow, was it busy!  I really didn’t think that many people still went to pumpkin farms.  I guess because we always went during non-busy days and times before, we never ran into the crowds.  The prices were high for most things, as we figured–like $5.50 just for a decent caramel apple–so we skipped most everything and just looked around.  (Sandy later found a 3-pack of “Affy Tapples” for $2.39–less than a dollar a piece–at a grocery store, which were great!)

Ty said the last time he came to this pumpkin farm, a llama spit in his face!  So we looked around, found the llama, and tried to talk him into a repeat performance, but he wasn’t buying it.  He did check us out, as well as everyone else around us, but he kept his saliva to himself.  No chance of a viral You-Tube video on this visit I guess.

As usual, there were plenty of pumpkin displays as well as some neat shed displays, setup somewhat like a peep show, side-by-side.  Some were so dark, I kept taking photos just to use the flash to see what was in them.  You can take a look at the photos in the Halloween 2013 set if you’d like.  Ty (IGN: TrotsLikeHorse), shown in the thumbnail above, nearly got ill trying to walk through a dark tunnel that was lit only by a spinning black tube of orange glowing lights which surrounded it, making it feel like you were walking through a rotating tunnel.  It was pretty weird, and with his recent head injuries, he didn’t last long in there.  That photo was taken when he was in there, and right before he ran back out again.  After Jerry Smith’s we stopped at Culver’s and picked up a great lunch to complete the outing, then it was back to GTA5 for the kids, and back to the TV for us.  Sheesh, are we getting old, or what?!

Entertainment, TV

Sopranos beginning-to-end

Leave a comment

SopranosShortly after I found out that James Gandolfini had passed away, which was at the beginning of July, I started watching the entire series from episode 1 to episode 86. Unfortunately I somehow missed this tragic event in the news when it actually happened on June 19th, 2013, but as I discussed TV shows with a co-worker in early July, Tony Soprano came up and he enlightened me. I was totally shocked.

I had already had every episode of every season on my Plex server, and had watched a few episodes in the past–including a few at Hans’ house in Mequon, “back in the day,” so I was all set to dig in and commit. I watched two or three episodes a day, sometimes, and had a great time. There were a few “issues” along the way–like trying to keep Kevin out of the living room whenever a “Bada Bing” scene came on (which never failed to show full frontal nudity) or when the language got extremely “French”… or should I say “Italian?”

But I made it through them all, and came away with a few things. For one, this recipe for Lincoln Log Sandwiches.  I haven’t tried it yet, but I will, very soon.

Another thing I learned is that the episode titles seem to always be just a random phrase or a few words mentioned in that episode, but that seems to work nicely. I can pretty much remember what was in many episodes just by reading those titles. Like “Irregular Around The Margins”– this was when Tony found out he had skin cancer on his head–he explained to Adriana that the spot on his head looked irregular around the margins. And more observations: A “gumar” is Italian for “mistress”, “Gobagoo” is Italian-American for “copacola”, which is a type of ham cold-cut used for sandwiches, “Va fungool!” means “go f*** yourself”, and “gavone” means “idiot”.  Lastly, Tony’s boat was called “The Stugots”, which means “this dick” in Italian.  After that sank, he got another one and named it “Stugots II”.  And see the gun in The Sopranos logo?  HBO put that in there so viewers wouldn’t think it was a show about musicians.

So I learned a lot. Including the fact that some people can become WAY too obsessed with analyzing each and every detail of every single episode of a TV series! I don’t think I did, but I’m referring to the likes of the people on these sites:

Master of Sopranos – Definitive Explanation of “The End”
Eureka!  Solving the Sopranos

The explanation of “The End” gets into just the last scene of the last episode way deeper than I could ever even imagine going! But, after reading that and the “Eureka” article from the Washington Post–which each explain completely different aspects of the exact same episode–I’m fascinated enough to want to go back and watch the entire six seasons again, at a later date… which is one reason I’m posting it here… I’m sure, with my “CRS”, I’ll forget most of the show soon enough, so this post will help me quickly remember what I need to, in order to prepare me for another marathon.

So that’s it. All in all, I enjoyed the series immensely, but I must admit I was pretty disappointed (and a bit confused at first–as it seems most of the rest of the viewers were as well) with the final ending, but after further research (primarily in the links posted above) I now understand what it means and why it was done the way it was done, and it was done perfectly.

So sad to lose such a great actor though.

Tonight is also the series finale of Breaking Bad, another awesome series that I really hate to see go. But, as they say, “All good things…”

Oh, and if you look at the photo more closely (click on it) and you might notice a pinball logo.  I will find this machine and I will play it.

Entertainment, Movies, TV

Plex

Leave a comment

plex

After over a year of using Plex, I checked my website and found no mention of it! Man, am I just not updating this site, or what!?! Again, apologies. Nuff said. So, Plex. Plex is a home media server. You’ll find all the details (and the download for it) at http://plexapp.com/.  Jay and I tried using several applications to handle our movie collections as well as our music collections, and just to stick to the topic at hand, I’ll just say that we kept coming back to Plex for various reasons.  It seems to handle the most formats of music and video out of all of the options we looked at, and handles them all better than the others as far as transcoding for the various platforms and for whatever streaming bandwidths we need.

We settled on the following solution for extracting (“ripping”) our DVD and Blu-Ray collections to standard video files: AnyDVD HD (Slysoft) and Handbrake (PC version). AnyDVD is a commercial product, so it will cost some money, but it does a fine job at enabling you to successfully rip your entire collection to regular video files for streaming. AnyDVD doesn’t actually do the extraction of the video, it simply ENABLES the ability to do it by removing any encryption that may be on the DVD or Blu-Ray disc you’re ripping. The app runs in your system tray and goes to work any time you insert a Blu-Ray or DVD into your DVD drive. Handbrake is the app we actually use to do the ripping. It has tons of options, and we settled on a few solid settings that work nicely across both Blu-Ray and DVD movies to provide a nice, consistent quality for all of our movies. Most, I must admit, are not “HD Quality” (1080p). Going with this quality for every movie would just fill up our drives way too quickly. And since standard DVDs aren’t 1080p anyway, it was pointless to go that route when we extracted our entire collections. We settled on a very good quality resolution that results in each standard movie taking about 1GB of space, more or less, depending on the actual length of the movie. Handbrake will also let us extract full HD 1080p videos if we want to, from Blu-Ray discs, but the resulting files are pretty enourmous, so they’re also that much harder to work with.

Finding those two solutions that work together so well–AnyDVD HD and Handbrake–was no small task either. We tested a lot of different applications before settling on these options, so trust me, they do work, and AnyDVD HD is updated very frequently to keep up with the latest protections added to new DVDs and Blu-Rays. Many solutions for doing the same things these two applications do have come and gone over the years too, but most have been eliminated due to lawsuits or the inability to stay updated. AnyDVD HD is the only one we’ve found to be consistently updated and just always works. How they can do it and stay in business, I don’t have a clue. I do know that it’s located in a foreign country though, which may have something to do with how they avoid being shut down, and another big factor is that the application doesn’t actually do the ripping of the data itself. In legal terms, “enabling” the ability to copy a movie and actually “performing” the act of copying a movie are two distinctly different things, so only enabling the ability for a user to copy content that they legally purchased (a DVD-based movie) apparently isn’t as bad as products that provided the “whole package”–something that “DVD-X Copy” and others did.

When you have AnyDVD HD installed, you can then use just about any “video extraction” application to copy your movies, since the disc is now unprotected and the movie is available to be copied using standard methods. We settled on Handbrake because it’s free, and, much like Plex, it just consistently works right. It does have a TON of options and settings, but once set properly, it does a fine job with both Blu-Ray movies as well as standard DVDs.

So once those options were settled upon, our movie collections began to build. When you configure Plex, you simply set it up with “Sections” for your media. For example, you could have a “Movies” section, “TV Shows” section, a “Music” section, etc., or anything you like. I even have a “Kids” section with just animated and children’s movies, which Kevin uses quite a bit. For each Section you add one of more folders from your computer. I have a “Movies” folder on my PC as well as a “Kids” folder for Kevin’s movies, so I pointed those Plex sections to their respective folders.

That’s pretty much all that’s required for setup! Seriously. Plex automatically goes out to the web and finds the cover art (called “posters” in Plex) and even adds several optional covers for every movie it finds. It also adds all of the movie’s details to its database, and all of this info is displayed whenever you browse your Plex movies or their details. It ends up looking pretty much like Netflix or Hulu, and it’s just as easy to use. Of course, if a cover poster isn’t right, was incorrectly matched, or the movie wasn’t found at all, you can manually edit it to your liking and/or add your own cover art to make it appear exactly as you like.

As I mentioned earlier, Plex is available on pretty much every device you might have with a screen. On the PC, smartphone, or tablet you can use the “PlexWeb” interface to do movie database editing or just for watching movies. Or, on your smartphone or tablet you can use the Plex app for that platform to stream movies ever easier and smoother. Plex on a “real” TV is awesome though. I researched streaming TV devices shortly after starting to use Plex, and found, to my delight, that most of them have a natvie Plex app! After some careful consideration, I ended up purchasing a “Roku” box. This is a hockey puck-sized black box that connects to your TV via HDMI. It can connect to your home network via wireless or wired network (the particular model I got offered a wired option, but some of them only offer wireless). Either way, I use mine wirelessly, even though it’s a little slower that what a wired connection would offer, and it still performs very nicely.

Roku boxes offer hundreds of free (and some paid) “channels”, which are the apps that control whatever streaming service you’d like to do. For example, Hulu and Netflix are optional channels on Roku, as well as Plex and other media streaming apps. Most are free (even Hulu and Netflix, though once you open them you have to sign into your paid account to actually USE them) so don’t be fooled. There are plenty of REALLY FREE streaming apps too though. The content can get pretty obscure, but I guess it’s pretty easy for almost anyone to create an app for these systems and offer streaming content. I love my TWiT Network app now too–This is the “This Week in Tech” network that Leo LaPorte (formerly of TechTV fame) built and it offers some great web-only streaming tech shows.

So the Plex app on Roku is excellent and I use it almost daily to watch my ripped movies and TV shows now. I can’t even remember the last time I had to take a DVD or Blu-Ray out of its box to watch a movie! It’s been many months. Whenever I buy a new movie, it gets opened once, inserted into the PC, and ripped to my server, then it goes back in the box. I only go back to the disc if I want to watch a “behind the scenes” feature or special feature other than the movie that was included on another disc or on the original DVD or Blu-Ray. These smaller videos can also be ripped from the discs as well, and you can even have them added to the end of the movie in Plex if you want, but I leave them on the disc normally, and use Plex just for the movies. It’s fairly rare that I want to view special features, so I don’t mind pulling out the discs for just these times.

Plex is free, and is technically still in “beta”, which means it’s not quite “done” yet. It’s quite complete compared to a lot of other options we’ve tried though, so don’t hesitate to start using it! Handbrake, as I mentioned earlier, is free as well, and is in about the same state–neither of these applications have reached version “1.0” yet, but they’re both still top-notch at what they do. You’d only have to shell out a little money for AnyDVD HD, but it’s well worth it. Oh, and you’d probably have to also purchase a large external hard drive to hold all of your movies and music, depending on how large your collection is. But hard drive prices are always dropping these days, so even that isn’t bad any more.

So that’s basically it, in a nutshell. It’s a great solution to make watching all of your home DVDs, Blu-Rays, Music CDs, and even Home Movies as simple as possible, to the point where you never have to get out of your chair to put in another disc! Of course, some of us could actually USE this little bit of extra exercise these days though… I make up for it by walking during lunchtime at work and taking the dog for extra walks at home.

Entertainment, Internet, Technology

Great Ingress article…including nostalgic photo

Leave a comment

gamers-on-couchCheck out this very good article on Ingress.  After I viewed the big photo at the top, however, I noticed it’s just a “little” outdated.  It brought back a ton of memories though–check it out–the gamers on an Atari 2600 playing Pac-Man.  There are also a bunch of full-sized 33 RPM LPs stacked on top of the (probably 300-lb.) dinosaur console television.  You can even see the slow refresh-rate of the TV screen captured in mid-refresh in the photo.  Ah, the memories!  I just can’t quite make out exactly what product is on those blue and white shopping bags everyone is carrying in the background though… any idea?

Technology, Technology Links, Wii (Nintendo)

Review of the Wii-U

Leave a comment

Wii-UAfter a few days of playing with the Wii-U (once I managed to pry it out of the hands of my 14-year-old) I thought I’d post my thoughts.  An HD Nintendo console has been overdue for quite some time, so it’s a relief to finally see them catching up (somewhat) to the “big boys”–PS3 and X-Box 360–though new consoles from both of those companies are now in the works as well.  But Nintendo reminds me a lot of Apple in the way they evolve.  They’re slower in movement, but over time they do get it right for their particular audience.  Anyway, the Wii-U is an excellent replacement for the Wii.  I am very relieved to see that we can still play our old Wii games on it, so we can get rid of the old thing completely.  It was a pain to have to bring the TV down to a standard definition video image to use the Wii.  Now everything can remain in full 1080p HD.

The Wii-U comes with a huge “GamePad” controller, which is much like a small tablet combined with a Wii controller.  It has a decent-sized touchscreen–at least it’s bigger than the Nintendo DS screen–and feels very comfortable in the hands.  It’s nice and light, with nice finger grooves in the right places underneath and a stick on both the left and right sides.  Many games allow their gameplay to run on either the Gamepad screen or the TV screen, and some allow both simultaneously.  Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to all games–and doesn’t apply to the old Wii games at all–but hopefully this will change in the near future with an update.  Being able to play on just the gamepad–even if you can only go up to 40 feet away from the console–is HUGE for our household.  To Kevin, it means being able to still play the console games he wants when he has time, while we can still watch the TV shows we want.  If Nintendo adds this feature into the classic Wii software, I think this feature alone could justify its price for a lot of families!

The good ole “Mii” universe is alive and well on the Wii-U, and there are always hundreds, if not thousands, of other users visiting our system and posting comments about all of the games.  We even see posts from others as we finish levels of some of the games, and I’m always wondering if the comments are actually directed toward OUR game or just generic comments… Can other users watch our gameplay?? Can we watch theirs?? I haven’t found this out yet.

For the old Wii games, there’s a “Wii” option provided as a separate app, which takes you to the classic “Wii Menu” and provides the exact same interface as the old Wii system.  In fact, you have to put down the Gamepad and pick up a standard Wii controller to play any of the Wii games and use the Wii menu interface.  We did the “Wii system transfer” before completely taking our old Wii out of service, and that was pretty flawless, once we got it going.  This was a lengthy process though, probably because we had accumulated a lot of game save data, Mii’s, and games from the Wii Store over the years.  The process is fully animated once you start it, and kind of plays out like a little cartoon, with “Pikmin” characters (from what Kevin says they are) carrying your data through the old Wii systems, out to a rocket ship and loading them up for the transfer.  One little pikmin character almost gets left behind, ala “E.T”, but they realize it before blastoff, and re-open the ship’s bay door and let him in at the last second.  Once the data is saved to your SD card, the ship takes off and your’re ready to insert it into the Wii-U, switch to that system and continue the process where the ship then lands and the pikmin unload the data into the new system and setup the icons.  It’s an amusing little cartoon, but pretty monotonous if you have a lot of data like we did.

The Wii-U also has “TVii”, which I originally thought would be a streaming TV service from Nintendo, but unfortunately it’s not.  All it is, is a “remote” for your existing TV and cable box.  You select your TV remote by answering a few simple questions based on whether the TV responds to the signals the Wii-U sends, and it sets up the remote for it.  This is definitely the simplest “universal remote control” setup I’ve ever seen, by far.  Totally painless.  Then it does the same for your cable box and cable provider.  Once that’s done you can completely control your cable box and TV with just the GamePad, replacing your two remotes.  Unfortunately, WE have much more than that to control, including our stereo, PS3, X-Box, etc., and the Wii-U doesn’t go any further than the two devices.  If someone could just make a 15-device universal remote app for the Wii-U, I’d gladly pay for it…that would be bliss!

Other apps included with the Wii-U are Netflix and HuluPlus, which both work great.  I’m currently using both services and comparing them.  Using the Wii-U interface, Netflix easily outshines HuluPlus, in my opinion.  In the Netflix app the interface on the Gamepad screen matches the TV interface, so you can use either one to select a movie or TV show and watch it on either the TV or the GamePad. Excellent!  But in HuluPlus on the GamePad, it only shows you the currently-selected option, very large, in the middle of the GamePad screen.  You have to look at the TV to scroll and select what you’re looking for.  Unless you memorize the layout of the menus, you can’t use just the GamePad to find a movie or TV show to watch, so it’s rather limited.  I’m guessing Hulu will fix this in an update though.  In comparing the Netflix and Hulu services themselves, it’s pretty much a draw.  They both offer little of the same content.  They seem to each have their own contracts for the content they offer, and both have good solid YV series offerings and movies.  It’s a tough split.  One minus on Hulu is the fact that its TV shows include “limited commercial interruptions” throughout its TV shows.  Sometimes this seems like a bit much, with hour-long TV shows sometimes having numerous 3-commercial breaks.  And there’s no fast-forwarding through the commercials either–you’re stuck with them.  I did find, several times, when I did several fast-forwards and rewinds to rewatch a part of an episode, that it can get confused and then lets you fast-forward through commercials, but then thinks a later section of the actual TV show is the commercial block!  Then later it seemed to realize it was messed up, and when I went to fast-forward or rewind the show it reset it back to the beginning again.  Pretty irritating, but it didn’t happen often and I couldn’t repeat the glitch at will.  Most of the time it worked fine.  Both Netflix and HuluPlus also have an autoplay feature for TV series playing, so you can seamlessly watch a series without manually having to start each episode.  But since HuluPlus has a commercial block before every episode and after, you have to site through a huge block of commercials (usually 6) between each episode.  A big PLUS with Hulu, however, is with current TV series playing.  Hulu gives you the current episodes of TV shows, while Netflix only provides you with previous seasons, only releasing new seasons of a show long after the next season is airing or long after the series is completed.  I guess you have to weigh the value of this with whether you watch a lot of currently-airing series’ or not.  Both services are $7.99 a month, so it makes me wonder if Hulu is worth it for all the ads when Netflix is ad-free.  But, like I said, there are enough differences between the two services to warrant having both of them, for those who can afford it and are avid movie and TV buffs.

But back to the Wii-U: The Wii-U store currently offers a very small selection, but that’s just because it’s new.  They haven’t added any of the classic Wii games to the store yet, so only Wii-U games are there at the moment.  When they finally get the games from the old Wii store into the new one, there will be a much better selection.  And it’d be even more awesome if they also add all of their classic “boxed” Wii games as digital downloads as well!  They would certainly make a fortune, especially on those hard-to-find classics.  I know they can do it–they already offer most of their new “boxed” Wii-U games as digital downloads, and the classic Wii games are much smaller in size, I’m sure.

We played a bit of Mario & Nintendoland for the Wii-U as well as a couple of the new downloadable Wii-U games that were on sale this week in the Wii-U store, and what does Kevin come back to the most?…. wait for it…. a cheap download called “Little Inferno”!  This game is just plain “WRONG”.  It teaches kids how to burn their toys.  It’s aimed at older teens, obviously, and always warns you not to play with fire, but it provides you with a safe environment to do so, allowing you to burn everything from all kinds of toys imaginable, to batteries, to a school bus full of screaming children, or an angry elf (yes, Jay–an Angry Elf) who has a belt of dynamite strapped around his waist.  It’s totally wrong, but I must admit it’s very addicting to but everything and see the way each item responds to a flame.  How this game got past the Nintendo approval process I have no idea–I guess it’s a good test of the parental controls on the Wii-U–you can block your kids from playing it if you want.  But, if they gotta play with fire, I guess doing it on the Wii-U is tons better than anywhere else!

I think Nintento has a great start here.  As long as they get busy with updating and keeping on top of the issues in a timely manner, this will turn out to be an awesome Wii system.  The GamePad features alone can make it almost as useful as a full tablet, if they make the right improvements.  We’ll see what happens.

News

Random pile o’ crap

1 Comment

38 bags of garbage38 bags of garbage.  Over the past few years I had a sneaking suspicion that we were slowly becoming hoarders… Now i know for sure, as we continue to empty out our old house.  Fortunately, this will be one of the last bulk pickups we’ll need.  I wish I had documented it with more photos, it sure would have been interesting to look back on.  We started with a 30-yard dumpster, filling it to the top in two weeks.  And even after that, we only thinned things out.  There was literally TONS more.  And there’s still some left.  This was tonight’s haul to the curb.   It’s all from 17 years of living (for me) and over 20 years for Sandy.  I guess it’s good to move once in awhile just to clean up completely.  I wonder what it does take to be labeled a real “hoarder”.  We weren’t quite as bad as the hoarders on that TV show, but we were getting there.

My apologies to our old neighbors… we hate creating such an eyesore, but we’ll be out of your hair soon.  Several loads back, we were taking things directly to the curb as we cleaned… Garbage pickers quickly put an end to that though–they spread our trash all over the neighborhood!  So now we have to stack all the trash on the porch, then I have to go to the old house on Tuesday evenings and haul everything to the curb at once to minimize the spread.  I had to do a panorama just to get all the bags into one shot, but there it is.  I’m guessing we’ll have at least 2 or 3 more pickups before we’re completely done.

Health & Fitness

Don’t eat before bed

1 Comment

I usually have a snack while I watch a little TV in the evening, and a lot of the time I’ll wake up the next morning dragging like I got very little sleep, even though I got my usual 6-7 hours.  Sometimes, however–like this morning–I’ll get up, fully awake, and feel great.  I’ve been trying to figure out what is causing this difference.  I’d like to feel this way every day when I get up, if possible!  Everyone’s always giving the advice of “don’t eat before bed”, but they all specify different times– 1 hr, 2 hrs, 3 hrs before bed… so I question the thoeries.

Last night I stopped eating about 2 hours before bed (not on purpose, I was busy with something).  Eating is something I enjoy WAY too much, I know.  That’s probably one of the biggest parts of my weight problem.  But knowing I can wake up feeling this good–good enough to even write a blog entry before going to work–could help a lot!  There’s definitely something to it.  I found a pretty good article that explains it all.  So this is a reminder for me–and anyone else asking themselves the same question.   Looks like it’s good advice after all!  http://www.illpumpyouup.com/articles/eating-before-bed.htm.  I added this one to my link list (on the bottom of the sidebar).

My next problem is related to this one too: I’m getting old… Sometimes, after a busy day, I’ll pass out watching TV… how do I make sure I don’t eat long enough before THIS happens??? Hmmm.  Or maybe this doesn’t count… I do, eventually, get up and go to bed for reals.

Computers, Technology

Sometimes things work out

Dual Monitors (sorta)This week one of our monitors died.  No big surprise—EVERYTHING has been dying or breaking lately… Over the past couple weeks, Sandy’s cell phone broke, our laptop died, the PS3 died, and our expensive Harmony Remote died.   It’s like Karma knows we got our tax refund checks and wants to just eat that money up as fast as possible.  The thing is, we need that money to fix up the house in the spring so the city doesn’t fine us!  Yes, the neighborhood inspectors nailed us last season, and we have a big list of things to fix on our house and property now.

Anyway, back to the dead monitor.  I can’t stand seriously working on a PC with just one monitor.  There’s just so much I do at once, I can’t fit it onto a single monitor, or, even if I could, it gets too confusing switching back and forth between open applications and windows.  With 2 screens (minimum) I can separate things enough to work smoothly and get things done efficiently.  Just ask Randy Pausch from Carnegy-Mellon University.   Once monitor on a PC just doesn’t cut it.

So anyway, it died.  The backlight constantly flickers and repeatedly goes black, rendering it useless.  Yes, it was very old, so it’s not worth fixing.  It was just a standard, cheap 17” LCD monitor that I had broken the base off of so it would fit into the little right nitch on my desk to use as my right monitor.   So I scrapped it.  Not sure what to do next, I took some measurements and checked many vendors for monitors that would fit in that spot.  It’s not an easy task to find the FULL dimensions of a monitor (including the stand) when you need it.  Some sites provide it, but most don’t.   What to do?  I found a few monitors that came with removable stands, which would be perfect, but their size without the stand attached was then questionable.  Arrggh.

Well, another completely unrelated task that Sandy had during this whole dilemma was with a client of hers.  She needed an inexpensive TV and wanted to know if it was possible to get a new flatscreen LCD TV for as little as $100.  So I looked around and found a couple at Best Buy—one for $89.99 and one for $99.99.  She ended up choosing the $99 one, which was on sale from $150, so Sandy had to pick it up for her.

Yesterday, while the TV was sitting at home waiting for Sandy to deliver it to her client, I got an idea.  I wondered how something like this would fit into our desk cubby.  So I carefully removed it from it’s box and did some measuring.  It looked pretty close!  So I attached the stand and set it in place.  It fit PERFECTLY!  All of Best Buy’s smallest monitors (18”-19”) were around the same price, but none of them would fit in this space on our desk.  This TV was on sale, $50 off, so it was normally $150.  It was a 15” screen, so it was a bit smaller, but it had all the right ports—a VGA port, HDMI, and all the others.  I even had an extra AT&T box I could use on it that I haven’t used since 3 PCs ago, because I didn’t have a TV antenna or HDMI input on any of our replacement PCs.  The only other issue I could foresee would be with its resolution.  I know TVs are not quite up to the specs of monitors, so I expected the resolution to be lacking.

I went ahead and unboxed the rest of the package and set everything up.  I connected the cable box to the HDMI, and the PC to the VGA input.  Everything worked perfectly, and it has quite a nice image!  Yes, the quality is a bit less than a monitor, but I was expecting as much.  Surprisingly, however, the specs say it has a maximum resolution of 1366×768, but when I set that resolution in Windows 7 it told me that it’s not optimum and recommends 1920×1080 as the optimum resolution, and when setting the TV’s resolution to 1366×768, the monitor went black and displayed a “Not Supported” message!  I tried other resolutions, but only 1920×1080 and 1600×900 would work, so I compared the two with a standard web page displayed.  1600×900 is what my main monitor is at as optimum, and it turned out that looks exactly the same on the TV, but leaves about a 1” border around the edge of the picture area, resulting in a LOT of wasted screen space and simply eliminates the extra pixels from the 1920×1080 resolution instead of “stretching” to use the full screen.  So 1920×1080 it was.  It’s kind of bizarre that this TV is actually smaller than my main monitor, yet I have to use a higher resolution on it.  It worked well enough though, fit perfectly in its spot, and I can now optionally watch cable (or our DVR recordings) on it by simply switching from the VGA port to the HDMI port on the remote.  That’s awesome, especially since a lot of the time I will drag a Netflix browser window over to my right screen to watch a movie while I work anyway.   And 15” isn’t as small as it sounds sitting next to my 20” main display.  In fact, there’s only about a 2” height difference in the actual screen displays.    So it really goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I then had to return to Best Buy and pick up another of these TVs for Sandy’s client.  Sometimes things work out in strange ways.  But after having so many things die unexpectedly, this seems like little consolation.

Family News

Happy Holidays!

We”re having a great holiday season!  It’s the day after Christmas and this is my day to recover enough to be able to go back to work tomorrow and be productive for another week.  I woke up early this morning to find Sandy already gone off to work–or so I thought.– I looked out front, and there she was, trying to shovel about three feet of snow out of our plowed-in driveway!  I dressed quickly and went out to help her.

Looks like we got about 8-10 inches of the dreaded “lake effect” snow here overnight.  So it really was a White Christmas after all.  After the driveway was cleared enough, Sandy was able to leave for work, and I finished the rest.   I’m a little sore right now, but recovering with a hot cup of coffee (it’s no Vente Quad White Mocha, but it’ll do) and sitting at the desk next to the radiator.  I’m uploading 170 Christmas photos to Flickr right now. Here’s the link. Kevin got the Playstation Move AND the X-Box Kinect!  Sheesh, was side of Santa’s naughty-and-nice list was HE on?!?  The Move was pretty easy to setup, just pair the controllers and go.  The Kinect, on the other hand, was one of those projects that just didn’t want to go right.  It uses NO controllers–YOU are the controller.  Instead, it’s a big bar that sits above or below your TV and includes a high-def camera and a bunch of sensors.  It also moves on it’s own to find the best position to track whoever is playing at the time.  It looked easy to setup at first–and it probably is for people with large living rooms–but for us it was tough.  Apparently our living room is just a little too small for it, so placing it above or below the TV wouldn’t work.  After some thinking and a playing around with it, we ended up having to mount it on a shelf on the wall behind the TV.  This gave us a few extra precious inches, which was apparently just enough to allow it to function properly.  After that, Kevin and Matt had a blast tubing down the whitewater rapids and bouncing in zero gravity in Kinect Adventures.

We had our traditional great Christmas dinner with Mike, Rick, George and the family, a great ham, and some great homemade Au Gratin Potatoes that Sandy made.  And this morning, since Socks absolutely refuses to go outside at all, it looks like we’ll be doing another of our traditions–the annual Doggie Deck Toss–where we throw the Chihuahua off the back deck and into the tallest snow bank in the backyard, then watch him tunnel and hop his way out.  I’ll try to grab a picture.

Update: We had a successful Puppy Launch this morning.  Here’s the photo.  See the flying Chihuahua!

News

Where were you on that fateful day?

1 Comment

9/10/10 – It’s the anniversary again.  Below is the entire cumulative contents of all of my previous postings on 9/11, including the old comments posted by users.  Please give it a read and feel free to post your own comments and experiences.  We’d love to hear from you.  I have temporarily enabled public commenting for this, so you don’t even have to sign up for an account to post a comment.

Where were you on that fateful day

Originally wrtten by Jim Trottier – Thursday, 09 September 2004

When huge historic events happen that seem to effect everyone in the world in some way or another we seem to remember everything about that day in our lives much more vividly than most other days. So let’s discuss where we were and what we were doing on that fateful morning of September 11th, 2001. Here’s MY recollection: I was working at Cirqon Technologies in Gurnee, Illinois. I was a PC Tech there, and had recently moved to that department full-time after 6 months of working half-days in the chem lab and half-days in the IT department. I was at my workstation in IT, next to my boss, Mark Stricklin. Mark and I got along great as co-workers, and he was an awesome boss. He was also a Man of The Cloth, and is very respected in his community. He does a lot of charity work, and enjoys helping everyone he can, so this event seemed to hit him extra hard. Anyway, we were working at our respective workstations when a co-worker came over from another cubicle and said a plane had just ran into the World Trade Center! To us we began to assume some sort of accident where small aircraft struck the building. We wondered, but weren’t overly concerned. A while later the same co-worker returns–more excited now–and says ANOTHER plane hit the OTHER tower now! Ok, now we began to get concerned. It was certainly no accident now. Next we learned that ANOTHER plane had struck the Petagon. I got the chills. The events ran through my head over and over as if to force me to memorize them forever, as I sure will. Shortly thereafter we also learned that yet another plane was still flying and possibly hijacked. Jeff, Cirqon’s V.P., sent our Plating Surpervisor out to buy a small television so we could watch what was happening. He returned with one, and set it up in the conference room. We didn’t have an antenna except the small one included with the TV, so the reception was pretty bad. We managed to rig up a better antenna though, using some wire and the window frame in the conference room. Still fuzzy, but at least you could see a halfway decent picture. We watched the rest of the day as they re-ran the two planes hitting the towers over and over again, the Petagon burning, and the eventual Pennsylvania field crash of the fourth aircraft. I dug out the boombox that I had stowed away in IT (I put it away after boomboxes were banned from every department a few weeks earlier) and tuned it to an all-news channel so we could keep up on events when we weren’t able to watch the TV in the conference room (when we needed to get some actual work done). I remember quite a bit of debate that day on the radio with structural analysts who insisted that the towers could absorb that type of impact, and since they still fell there must have been some other “inside” event as well which contributed to their collapse. As it turned out, that was totally false, and the towers were actually designed to absorb the impact of much smaller planes containing much less fuel–they were, after all, designed at the turn of the century when planes the size of today’s weren’t even imagined. Overall it was an incredibly moving and horrifying day. My boss was deeply saddened, and consoled a few of his friends on the phone during his free time that day, and for several days after. Let’s hear what your experience was. Here are all of the responses that users have submitted from the two other times that I posted this article:

Jayson and I were actually sleeping. He was off work because he had just had his appendix removed. His mom called and said we were under attack—so we ran to the TV and thats basically where we sat for the rest of the day. It just seemed so unreal–I remember looking at the TV and thinking —this has to be a bad joke–it really cannot be happening. I was also calling my family and friends–knowing they were ok, but just needing to talk with them because so many did not get a chance to talk to theirs after that day.

–ishellbell

2004/09/09 19:51 I was in downtown Chicago about a block away from the Sears Tower at a client. At that time details were still sketchy and they thought another plane was on it’s way to Chicago. All buildings were being evacuated. I had no choice but to head back to the train station and get as far away as possible. Unfortunately that’s what the entire loop was doing. The station was wall to wall people. Metra handled everything perfectly. Under the circumstances, schedules were history. They just started loading trains up and running them out as they filled up. They never even charged anyone. I always meant to send Metra a letter commending them and their conductors for going above and beyond on such a frightening day, but never did.

When I got back into town, I just went home and spent the morning watching the coverage with my wife.

It will be forever etched in my memory.

–chad

2004/09/09 20:01 I was also at work(DaimlerChrysler). When a co-worker of mine came to me and told me about the first plane hitting the building, and that it was a passenger plane. Right away I knew that this was big news, having been to New York and I’ve seen how massive those 2 buildings were. So right away I went to my locker and got my boombox. We all kept working (on the assembly line) and listened to the radio as the horrible events of history were revealed. Some of my co-workers that were near me also started paying attention to the radio. It was a day that I will never forget. It is right up there with the day that Kennedy was shot in Dallas Texas. Even today I still remember where I was and what I was doing on that fatefull day.

–wainer53

2004/09/12 10:13 I had just come downstairs and turned on the TV. There was this horrible site of a plane hitting the first tower. I called my sister in Waukegan immediately, and she told me about the pentagon crash. Then while talking to her the second plane hit the second tower. It was devastating. This was the first attack in the United States.

I was 7 years old and walking home from a movie at the Vogue Theater, with my mother and sister when the paperboys were yelling “Extra”, “Extra – Japs bomb Pearl Harbor”. My mother was shocked and I in turn was also upset, but being only 7years old, I didn’t even know what a Pearl Harbor was what’s more where Pearl Harbor was ….

This attack brought back that 7 year old fear, and was a real eye opener about how vulnerable we all are. I continued to watch TV and of course they kept replaying the horrific crashes and live voice recordings from the victims in the air. The shock and grief were unavoidable. The tears and prayers were also unavoidable.

What brave people aboard those planes, and especially the victims whose actions diverted the fourth plane from the White House, as they all knew they were victims of terrorism and going to die.

Pearl Harbor, The assassinations of Martin Luther King, President Kennedy, and Senator Bob Kennedy, the attack on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and White House, the attack on the children in the Russian School, will always be unforgettable hurts in our hearts and souls.

We must always remember the victims in this tragedy and all victims of terrorism, and do everything in our power to avoid a reoccurance. Do not be afraid or embarrased to be vigilant and observant of anything out of the ordinary. Be alert and report anything that looks suspicious to the authorities. We must do everything in our power to not be victims of any wrongdoing. Support our brave servicemen and servicewomen and law enforcement personnel. Help eliminate wrong doings.

–mahirose

2007/09/13 11:31 Well where to start… I got married on the 9th of September and was in Vegas on my honeymoon. I was of course in bed late and woke around 11 am, we began to walk the town and went to New York New York. As we were walking through i notice there werent very many people. Then we walked by a TV and i saw the events and since i was in New York New York i assumed it to be a movie plug, so we kept on walking and i ran into a man who was watching a small tv with others crowded around him and they were all in tears so i asked them what was going on when they all looked at me and at the same time they said we had been attacked. Well we hurried back to our room to check the news to confirm what had happened. Before you know it the streets of Vegas were empty as well as the casinos. Of course there were no flights going in and out so we could not leave to come back home until flights resumed because everyone had jumped on buses and rented cars by that time so we had to stay a few extra days, the flight home was one of the worst and scariest flights ive ever been on, as we landed everyone stood and cheered, happy just to be home safe.

–WhoDunIt

iPhone/iPod Touch

Netflix adds instant streaming to iPhone & iPod!

Netflix has finally added instant streaming to the iPod and iPhone!  Last Thursday (somehow I missed this last week) they release the app in the app store.  You can now use your iPod or iPhone to watch any movie or video available on Netflix Instant!  This is huge for me–I’ve been drooling for this since the iPad was first released.  Netflix had the app available for the iPad several months ago when the iPod was first released, but they held back on releasing the app for the iPod and iPhone for some reason, until now.  My guess is that they made an exclusivity deal with Apple so they could sell more iPads for the first few months of its release.  Arrg.  Anyway, it’s here now, and I’m much happier.  I now have thousands of movies and TV shows available almost anywhere I am, instantly!–WITHOUT having to jailbreak my iPod.

Family News

April is here

A co-worker got me today with a simple, yet potentially very effective practical joke. I came back from lunch and sat down at my workstation to use the computer and the mouse cursor wouldn’t move. I moved the mouse around faster, trying to get some sort of response from it, but got nothing. Being the geek that I am–and having helped users with this same issue many times in the past–I started checking things. I guess I got lucky and did the right thing first–I flipped the mouse over to check the mechanism. On the bottom, covering the laser sensor, was a sticker that said “April Fools! :)”. Nice.

So I brought the idea home and did it to both Kevin and my wife. It didn’t quite work right with Kevin though. I asked him to check a website for me. When he couldn’t get the mouse working on his laptop in his room, I heard some violent shaking and banging around in his room, then he came out complianing that his mouse isn’t working. He looked angray and almost ready to cry. I told him to calm down and work through it. I asked him “What would you do to try to fix it?” He said “I checked, it’s plugged in!” I asked “Anything else you can check?” After a few long moments of considering this, he flipped it over to check it. Then he yelled at me, saying “You MEANIE!”. He was all set to tattle to his mother about me and I waved him off, silently motioning that I did it to her mouse as well. She was in the living room watching TV, and starting to get curious of what was going on and while Kevin was angry at me.

Kevin kept quiet once he realized what I was saying, and Sandy dropped the questioning, so I figured I might still be able to pull it off on her too. I had to go out shortly after this though, and she only mentioned passively later on that she had found my April Fools joke. Kevin says he didn’t spoil it, but I’m not buying it. Kevin’s a mama’s boy and he can’t keep a secret. I’m sure he helped her as soon as she ran into trouble. I thought she might call me on my cell while I was out if she had a problem with the computer, as usual, but no such luck. Kevin probably bailed her out, but no one is fessing up, so I guess I’ll never know.

I thought it was a neat little prank though, much better than finding out your wife got picked for JURY DUTY! Which I convinced myself was an April Fools joke my wife was just taking to an extreme…until I got home and she showed me the official letter from the court. Can you believe that? What a day to get picked for Jury Duty! Now, time to go over the postal stamp and verbage of the letter for signs of an intricate hoax…

News

Passing gas and digital TV

I recently heard a radio commercial on my way to work that startled me.  I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not at first. It was about passing gas, of all things.  It was a family at dinnertime and the dad says “After a meal like that, I have GOT to pass gas!” The kids scream “No! Daddy’s gas could kill us all!” Then the father goes on to explain that the kids are right, etc., etc.  At the end of the commercial they refer you to dontpassgas.com and it’s an ad from the American Legacy Foundation.  Check their website, there’s even a couple television commercials there.  They all are really vague about their exact meaning until the very end of the commercial, but they’re actually referring to the gas passed by second-hand smoke, not the bodily function of passing gas.  Geez, if I had to step outside every time I had to pass gas, I might as well LIVE out there!

Another new site worth visiting is DTVAnswers.com.  It provides all of the information you need about the upcoming switch to Digital TV in the US, which is taking place on 2/17/09.  Everyone will be required to either have a digital TV by that time, or have cable or satellite TV.  People who still have older TVs and use over-the-air signals to watch TV will have to purchase a Digital TV converter box in order to still watch TV.  Fortunately the site also provides the details on how you can apply for a coupon from the NTIA for $40 toward the purchase of a converter box (limit 2 per household).  Digital TV is defintely a reality, so it’s time to switch or you’ll be watching snow… And we’ve certainly seen enough SNOW lately!!

I added these two links to by links list, or you can click on them in the article to visit the sites.