Dave's BLOG

The iPod Touch/Android Shakedown!

2010-12-06T14:11:00.002-05:00

I bit the bullet and got an Android smartphone a while back, and figured I'd use this page to sort out what I like and don't like about it, as compared to my old iPod Touch.

The Prices

My Android is a Samsung Intercept. I got it for around $200, and a 300 minute/month, unlimited data plan for $25/month from Virgin Mobile. My iPT was around $200, and last I looked, Apple wanted around $200 for an iPhone, then $70/month at a minimum for the cheapest voice and data plan (through AT&T, was it?). Yeah, in this case, Virgin Mobile spanks AT&T, especially considering how little I use the voice side of my phone. Heck, AT&T's data alone was $40/month. Sheesh. So yeah, base price is about even, but Android plus Virgin Mobile beats the iPhone pretty easily.

The Actual Phone

The unfair comparison here is that the iPT doesn't have a phone. Android wins! (Wait, what?) Well, the Android let me combine two devices into one, and let me stop carrying my plain old phone. And that's been very nice.

OTOH, my old phone, low-tech as it was, was quicker to dial. Unlock the keypad, punch a couple of buttons (for speed dial) or the actual phone number, and you're talking. With Android, you unlock the screen, start the phone app, scroll around to find what you want, it's clunky. In that way, I kinda miss my old phone, but I doubt the iPhone would be much easier than Android, at least from seeing others with their iPhones.

Other Unfair Comparisons

My Android has a GPS and camera. My iPT is an older generation model that doesn't have either. Android wins! (Hey, stop that!) Actually, I've used the camera maybe two or three times, and until I feel like pretending that I'm a photographer again (it happens every two or three years), I don't really seem to be messing with it much.

The Android GPS is tolerable, I guess, but the software leaves something to be desired, (i.e. I can scroll the map to look around, but can't select a point on the map as a new destination), and it's not hard just in driving around to get it to give obviously bad driving directions. (I'm getting a stand-alone GPS for Christmas; we'll see how much better that is.)

The Hardware

Here's where Apple shines, and the fanboys can gloat. (Hi, Andre!) The Intercept has a smaller screen and thicker body, while the iPT is noticeably larger. +1 for Apple.

Also, not sure whether it's the Intercept's processor or touch screen or what, but where the iPT may be slow or pause on 1 out of 20 interactions, the Intercept is sluggish maybe half of the time. I was playing with my iPT for the first time since I got my Android, and it was VERY nice not having it lag on just about everything. While that's probably not Android's fault, Apple gets another +1 for homogeneous hardware that just works.

But the Intercept gets kudos for having a keyboard. If you're reading stuff on the iPT, it's nice, but putting input INTO one is a bit tedious. I've sent maybe a dozen emails from it in the couple of years that I've had it. I've sent that many via the Intercept in the last couple of weeks, as well as had SMS conversations with folks, and it's just NICE! +1 Intercept!

And while usually Apple just GETS hardware, my Intercept came with a wall plug USB adapter. +1 Samsung, (even though I'm actually only using the wall plug on my bedstand to keep my iPT charged).

The O/S

This gets subjective. In a nutshell, iOS is simple, Android is more powerful. And as a geek, I often like powerful over simple. But not always.

Okay, some particulars. With Android, I can connect to a machine on my network via SMB, pull an MP3 file down and have it show up instantly in Android's music player. It takes a little geekery (I probably lost some of you when I said SMB), but it's possible. It's also possible to see exactly what's on my SD card, and move things around if I want.

Neither thing is possible with iOS. With iOS, you load songs via iTunes, which doesn't run on Linux. So I need to borrow Wife's Mac to put things on or take things off of my iPT. Silly, but simple. Apple assumes A) you aren't running Linux, and B) you'll be plugging your iPT into your main computer regularly. Wrong, and wrong. I've never plugged my Android into a non-Linux computer, and only once have I actually used my Android as a USB drive. (It's not exactly simple to do, +1 Apple.) But the point is, I don't need to. The thing is wireless, why would I need to plug it into a computer?! +2 or +3 Android.

But then I sit down with my iPT, and all my apps are right there, and they're simple and they just work. Hrm. What's a geek to do?

Email

Android has a native GMail app. Yay, Android! But that app only does GMail, and you need another to check an IMAP server, while iPT has one mail client that tolerably does both. Yay, iPT! (But, as I mentioned, my Intercept has a keyboard. Yay!)

Web Browser

Android's web browser is clunky; Safari on the iPT is smooth. In particular, bookmarks on Android are weird, and I'm still trying to figure out if I can do tabs. Safari just works. +1 iPT, if only for being easier to figure out.

The Stores

Both devices have their stores to get apps. Again, Apple does simple, while Android does functional. I'm not on Mac or Windows, so none of the links to apps take me to iTunes, so simple breaks. But the Android store and web presence in general isn't as smooth, somehow. I think in both cases, I'm a bit spoiled by the search awesomeness of google.com, and hate not getting that in the device stores. But the availability of apps hasn't been a problem on either device; no clear winner.

One other thing, though. I can develop my own app on Linux, and put it onto my Android, if I want to. I can't do that with iPT. Now, to be honest, I'll probably never actually do that, so I can't factor that into a score, but the geek in me loves that I can. So there.

Twitter & Facebook

Both services have clients for both devices. I realized that I prefer Twitter's mobile clients on either device to their web client, as it's more obvious when I get replies. (Insert twitter grumbling here). Facebook's clients seem equally tolerable on either. No winner here.

YouTube

Both devices have YouTube clients, and both are frustrating in that they won't let you search for a channel or user. The Android client will let you pull up your subscriptions, but the larger ones seem to go into some other mode that just shows activity on the account, which is weird, and is not what I want. But the Android client can also do playlists, so you can go to the web site, setup a playlist, and watch in on the Android, which I've never found a way to do with the iPT. +1 Android.

Other Apps

I love GoodReader on iPT, and hate that they don't have an Android client. Adobe has an Android version of Reader, which is kinda cool, but not as easy to use. Dropbox exists on both, and OMG you can edit text files on the Android! +2 or +3 Android! And they sync back to the server (since it's Dropbox)! +2 more for being so awesome! Weather Channel exists on both, but they have real estate issues on the Android (some screens have not quite half of the already small screen being scrollable; come on!) Google Reader has an app on Android; haven't looked on iPT, but it's nicer than the mobile web app. ESPN is on both, and equally clunky on either.

Bottom line is that, for the apps I use, the two are about equal.

Other Annoyances

I've already beat up Apple for making me use iTunes for way too much with the iPT, no need to belabor that here. Intercept has its problems with the interface, and I'm also still trying to get Android to notify me exactly when and how I want. Having a separate phone was easier in that regard, as I never got email on my phone, just SMS, which I did want it to wake me for. To date, I don't keep my Android on the bedstand, which means I can miss SMS's that I'd rather not miss, but I'm still working on figuring that out.

Conclusions

So I'm actually going to punt, and not declare a solid winner here. I like them both, for different purposes, and they each have their strengths. I'm finding that for being on the go, in my car, waiting in line, etc., I'd much rather have my Android. For laying in bed and reading web pages or watching videos, it's kind of a toss up, but I like my iPT, and plan to keep using it.

Drink Recipes

2010-11-18T13:16:00.001-05:00

Dave's Fuzzy Comfortini

I think this is my own creation; I've had a few too many to recall. But don't blame me if you like it too much. Equal parts:

* Vodka
* Peach Schnapps
* Southern Comfort

Shake over ice and consume, slowly.

Snowtini

This one's simplified from a Sandra Lee Food Network video:

Equal parts:

* vanilla vodka
* chocolate liqueur (i.e. Creme de Cacao)
* Baileys Irish cream liqueur

Shake over ice and serve in a martini glass.

Lola's Margaritas

* 1 can frozen Minutemaid Limeade Mix
* 2 cans water
* 1 cup tequila (or more if you want to taste the tequila)
* 1/4 cup triple sec or cointreau (orange liqueur)

I prefer Sauza Gold but Jose Cuervo is OK too. I'm not a fan of most white (the clear) tequilas. And of course the 1800 and other top shelves are always better but VERY expensive. Hope this helps...Lola

Dell Fail

2010-04-05T12:55:00.002-04:00

This is a gripe post, about Dell. The short of it: I'm not going to buy anything from Dell again.

The (hopefully not too) long of it: For Christmas, I bought two laptops. I ordered them from Dell, via their online sales chat interface. The salesman offered me a deal where if I got the two laptops, I'd get Windows 7 free for them, as an upgrade. I said okay, a couple of weeks later got the laptops, and went to the link to upgrade, where I was told that my laptops didn't qualify for the free upgrade.

I called Dell several times, talking to various support-folk and managers, and they basically all said "too bad, so sad, don't care, goodbye". (Except for the girl in sales that I talked to, who was much more friendly, and actually apologized that she couldn't be of more help.) That the original salesdude screwed up is understandable; it happens. That nobody could be bothered to look up the chat transcript (after repeated requests from me to do so) to see that it was promised, and make it right, is just a sad way to treat customers.

So yeah, no more Dell for me. Caveat Emptor.

A Vase

2010-03-06T16:47:00.003-05:00

So I'm playing with Blender some more. This time, I went through a beginners modeling tutorial I found at http://blender.org. (See below for the link.)

The tut had me shape the vase, then apply an image as texture to both the vase and the floor (for the floor, I used an image I found via Google Images). Then it gave a simple lighting setup, that I copied. A little ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing for good measure, and you get the image shown here.

Pretty neat thing, that I could follow everything the tutorial was doing (including the things that weren't where the tut said they'd be, due to 2.42/2.49 differences), without frustration. Part of that is due to it being a better tutorial than some I've tried, but part was both my growing experience with Blender, and a better, "lets just play" mindset to it.

Putting the time in, and it's all in how you look at it. Two lessons I'm learning these days.

Oh yeah, about the tutorial. The link at blender.org was broken, but Google found it at this address instead. And the tut was written for Blender 2.42, so there are changes. But anyway...

Growing Digital Grass

2010-01-05T17:09:00.004-05:00

Okay, this is a small thing, but I liked it, so I'm gonna talk about how I did it. Nyeh.

Wife wanted a grass border for her blog. I poked around in Gimp for a while, learned a bit about paths, thought I'd do a half-dozen blade-shaped paths, create brushes out of them, and stamp a grass border. Learning about paths took up my mental energy last night, and I quit and went to bed.

Tonight, I thought about using Blender, and googled "blender grass". I found this tutorial that shows how to grow grass using particles. I followed it, mostly, but found a couple of twists. One was that using a Spot lamp didn't do too well for my purposes, as I wanted to scale the image down and repeat it, and the color variations didn't match too well on the sides. Second was that just scaling the plane from side to side skewed the grass blades, and scaling it on X & Y thinned out the particles too much.

So I changed the lamp from Spot to Sun (I accidentally tried Hemi, which looked awful), and instead of scaling the plane, duped it, ending up with 3 planes side-by-side, which looked much better. Changed the background to white, rendered, and saved the JPEG.

Then loaded the JPEG into Gimp, scaled it down a good bit, widened the canvas, and grabbed a chunk of grass that I wanted to duplicate. As I rect-selected it and hit copy, I just happened to notice that a brush was created from that selection. Very cool! So I switched to pencil mode, and "stamped" a row of grass, cropped it down to wide and not-high dimensions, and put it up on her blog.

FWIW, I grabbed the daffodil image (with CC permission) from Flickr and used Gimp on it as well, to create the image border and title text.

Yeah, having fun with graphics!

[Edit: Oh yeah, the border! Assume a Creative Commons-BY-SA license. Gimme sec, I'll figure out how to add it to the image...]

Grrr, Apple fail!

2009-07-04T11:06:00.003-04:00

Apple just released an upgrade to the iPod Touch's OS. While it's free for the iPhone, it's $10 for the iPod Touch. Minor annoyance, that, but I suppose I can cope. After all, I'm not paying $700+/year for phone service, so I'm still saving money. So I fire up the iTunes store on my iPod. Not there. Not anywhere. Gotta go to iTunes to get it.

A little background: I run Linux. Apple doesn't like Linux; no iTunes for me. So that's my first complaint from back when I got my iPT: can't use it without iTunes, can't iTune w/o Win or OS X. Grrr. So I borrowed the iMac at work, and got my iPT turned on. From then on, I get most of what I listen to (i.e. podcasts) via the iPT's wireless connection. Plus I loaded up on free apps from the app store (The Weather Channel, Last.FM, Twitterific, etc.)

So then I wanted to put some videos onto the iPT, and broke down and started running Win XP in a virtual machine to be able to run iTunes. That worked well enough, and using Handbrake let me rip my DVDs into a format that the iPT can play. So far, so good.

Now I want to upgrade my O/S. I go to iTunes, and it says it can't install the new O/S until I upgrade iTunes to 8.2. Grrr, again. Okay, I upgrade. And I reboot. (This is Windows, after all.) Now can I upgrade? Okay, it downloads the upgrade, announces that it's backing up my iPT, announces that it's upgrading my iPT, then gives an error message. Something about an unknown error, go to this web page for more details. The details say to reboot Windows. I do so.

And now Windows doesn't see my iPT. At all. Doing a lsusb in Linux shows that it's plugged in, but Windows doesn't see it. And the iPT gives the original "I need iTunes" display. I reboot Windows a couple more times, with no luck.

Okay, fine. Since I got my iPT, we got a MacBook for Wife. I figure that if it doesn't work on Win XP, I'll plug it into the MacBook. MacBook sees the iPT, sees that it's hosed, restores the old O/S (2.2.1, I think?), then sees that I've purchased the 3.0 upgrade, downloads it again w/o complaint, and installs it, leaving me with a pristine iPT running 3.0. Success, perhaps?

I take the iPT back to my Win box, where my backup resides, and plug it in. It sees the iPT now, and gives me the option to load it up from the backup. I'm getting hopeful. I restore, things are looking good. Well, sort of; it's missing a few of my apps, but they're the ones I never use (SSH, TV.com, etc.) I'll deal with that later.

But all of my podcasts are gone. Maybe 60 or 70 eps of various shows that I've downloaded. A much larger Grrrr! So I'm done with messing with this Win XP VM. I plug into the MacBook again. And...

It proceeds to erase all of my apps! WTH!? Why on earth would it remove my apps (and their configuration) without giving me the chance to either stop it or validate them or something?! This is seriously bogus! And when I quit cursing Uncle Steve's lineage, and go to restore them, it knows that I've "paid" for these free apps, and offers to let me download them again "without paying". If you knew they were legit, why the !@#$ did you erase them to begin with? (And yes, I had logged in on the same iTunes account on the MacBook as I had on the Win box.)

All of this seems to be in the interest of Apple not letting me copy stuff that I own to places that they don't think I should copy them. Or, to rephrase, all of this seems to be Apple assuming that I'm a criminal and taking steps to punish me before I can prove myself innocent.

Feh. I'm wondering more and more what Android devices are out there, or what the state of Linux on the iPT has gotten to. This is *NOT* what should happen to someone playing by the rules.

Computer Treadmill

2009-03-22T19:23:00.006-04:00

I spent the afternoon getting a new treadmill, for the purpose of making us a computer treadmill combination. Turned out, it was dirt easy.

We bought a ProForm Crosswalk 480. At slow speeds, it has a nice, quiet motor, and at Sears, it was only $500 or so. Initially, I was looking for a model that we could take the display off of, but the more I looked at this model of ProForm, the more I realized that we could just do away with the vertical bars entirely. The 480 has a cable that comes out the back of the unit, and the display (once removed from the upright stand) lays flat on a shelf (see the picture below), making it ideal for what we're doing.

We've had an Ikea computer desk for a year or more, and I forget the name of it, although I couldn't really find it on their website, so they may not make it any longer. From their current catalog, it looks a lot like the Fredrik line, as far as being adjustable, with the smaller shelves and all.

So the short of it is that we assembled the treadmill without the upright bars, connected the cable coming out of the treadmill to the display panel without threading it through the upright bar, and just put it on the lower shelf. We adjusted the height of the desktop to suit Wife (and although it's probably not optimal, 8-yr-old Daughter can use it without complaint, as seen below), and we're off and running. Or rather, walking.

Oh yeah, and since we don't need any features on the treadmill itself besides having it let you walk, we got away with a much cheaper model. Big win all the way around. Especially when you consider that a "properly made" model, (like the Steelcase Walkstation, for instance) costs 7-8 TIMES as much.

Weird Guitar Hero Problem

2008-07-31T09:41:00.002-04:00

About a week ago, we started having a very strange problem with Guitar Hero 3. The guitar controller would work as far as going through the menus and starting to play a song, but once the song would start playing, even though we could see the fret buttons being pressed on the screen, strumming would only very rarely cause the note to play, and after a very short time, we'd fail out of the song.

My first thought was that it was a bad guitar, but strumming worked fine to move menu selections, and the fret buttons worked fine to select menu options. I thought it might be the Wii controller, but the same thing happened with both controllers. My son wanted a 2nd guitar anyway to go co-op career, so we got a brand new guitar, and the same problem happened with the new guitar as well.

The solution happened to be that we needed to delete our save data. My guess is that Son was goofing around with unlocking cheats, and corrupted the save file just enough that it gaffed the program when a song was playing. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him at all. But with a new save file created, it worked just fine again.

Hope this helps somebody.

Bad Words

2008-05-22T11:56:00.002-04:00

We were watching a show called Kitchen Nightmares last night as a family. We told the kids that sometimes they say bad words, but that the show bleeps them out, and that's what they should do.

Well, halfway through the show, somebody says something bleepworthy, (I forget the context, even). Daughter, 7, pipes up, "I know what word he said, and it starts with 'S'." We cringe. Where's she been hearing THAT from? Okay, Sweetie, what word did he say? Go ahead, you can say it this once.

Her reply?

"Stupid."

Ahhh, I love our kids.

Yahoo! Maps

2008-05-21T10:03:00.002-04:00

Okay, first, I'm a Google fanboy. I use Google mail, search, Earth, Blogger, and (until now) Google Maps. But as a result of playing around with Yahoo Maps (as a result of placing my Flickr photos onto maps), I'm really thinking Yahoo's winning my heart for online maps.

Both Yahoo & Google maps let you type in a zip and get there quickly. But Yahoo's maps have some neat extras. 1) They mark county lines. 2) They have townships more clearly marked. (I think Google has these, but they're not as obvious.) 3) The most cool thing: when you pull up a map, you can enter a type of business and see all of that type of business on that map. (After playing around, I think Google maps will do something similar, but it's extra clicks away, and usually takes you away from the current map when you click it.)

In typing this up, and making sure I've given Google a fair shake, the two sites aren't as different as I was initially thinking, but I'll still give kudos to Yahoo Maps for making locating a business feel much easier (even if it's only a little bit easier) than Google Maps. (And as a dig to both, both had the pharmacy closest to my house, but neither of them had it placed on the map anywhere NEAR where it actually is.)

Getting TV

2007-11-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I just admitted in my last TV post that I use BitTorrent (along w/Netflix and iTunes) to download TV shows. My justification is that they're shows I could be taping off broadcast channels and cutting the commercials out of (or fast-forwarding through) myself, or getting on Netflix as a whole season, anyway.

But I'm also looking for better alternatives. I got excited recently about Joost.com, offering online TV free-of-charge. Then I tried it out, and found that their software doesn't run on Power Macs or Linux, which is all we're running these days. Harumph. Of course, Joost's downside is that they won't let you FF through the commercials, which unless the commercials are highly tuned to my interests, and much more brief than the 20-min-per-hour of broadcast, I'll just go back to Netflix, iTunes or BitTorrent anyway.

The other alternative I keep hearing about is the combo of a-la-carte cable/satellite and PVR. I keep hearing that regulations or something prevent it from happening, and the current FCC guy is in favor of it, but I'm not really holding my breath, or certain that it would bring me back to the fold, either.

Anyway, none of my current three options are optimal. iTunes costs too much per episode, Netflix essentially makes you wait a year to watch a whole season at once, and BitTorrent isn't seamless or automatic enough (plus, I hate almost all of the tracker sites). What I'd love is a $20/month, commercial free, (peer-to-peer is acceptable, I suppose), DRM-free, merging of Joost and iTunes.

Anyone? Anyone?

(Footnote: Miro is an open source Joost, with an expanding offering, but without the forced commercials, not much in the way of big-network offerings. Still, it's worth keeping an eye on, maybe.)

Television

2007-11-09T15:49:00.000-05:00

Used to be, I was strongly anti-TV. Rots your brain, I'd say. You lose IQ points, I'd say. I formed this opinion back in the late 80's, I think, when the height of TV fare was Dukes of Hazzard, Hee Haw and Dallas.

Even in recent years, we had satellite TV, but I'd still fire off "rots your brain" comments, due to the horror of commercials. I'd watch whatever my wife would have on, up to the first commercial break, then wander off and do something else. Or reach for the remote and mute that sucker. Kids shows (SpongeBob, Fairly Odd Parents, etc.) were tolerable, as there was only one break to mute/suffer through, but only barely tolerable.

Probably the best TV watching I did during all that time was Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which I'd tape (remember VHS?) and watch later. 2 hrs compressed to 1.5 or so.

Then I found the triple combo of iTunes, Netflix and BitTorrent. All three have solved the commercial problem, making it safe to wander back into the living room after the kids have gone to bed. But then I noticed something else. At some point in the last decade or so, shows got better. They actually became worth watching, (some of them anyway).

I'm not saying I don't have problems with them. Characters still drink and smoke and sleep around and do mean things. But at least the shows I'm watching these days have some depth, some creativity, something to hold my attention. (The current list, in order by my favorites: House, Heroes, Lost, American Idol, 24. Wife also watches/watched Bones, Grey's Anatomy, Prison Break, Alias.)

I hate to hear myself saying it, but I'm liking TV again.

Do, More Than Study

2007-11-01T15:38:00.001-04:00

I tend to want to learn it all, right now. I pick a hobby-du-jour and go out to find all the websites and all the books I can on it, and read like mad, to try to learn as much as I can as fast as I can.

This time around with photography has been different, though. I spent the first month doing nothing but take pictures, reading very few webpages, and no books. I have questions, to be sure, but I'm letting them simmer. And after the first month, instead of running back to study-mode, I decided to just expand a little bit, from "just taking pictures" to planning a little bit more of what I'm going to take, (in some cases by trying to copy the ideas I find in others' photos), and leaving the study for after Christmas (when perhaps I'll get some gift certs for some books, hint hint).

And what I'm finding is that as I'm doing, I'm building up some much more meaningful frameworks in my mind, making some of my early questions fade away as irrelevant, and causing others to become much more well defined. This way, (mind you, I'm guessing here) when I do go hit the books, what they're saying will have some nice, appropriate mental structures to fall into, rather than under my old system, where I throw everything at a wall and hope some of it will stick.

I'm so very curious how this experiment will turn out, that I'm quite enthused to leave the books shut for now. (I'll keep ya posted...)

What I'm Learning

2007-10-31T14:03:00.000-04:00

There's a zen saying that from one thing, you can learn 10,000 things. Here are some non-photographic things I'm learning from photography:

I will run out of ideas. I will also get more.

Newness wears off, but there's still joy to be had in the doing. More joy, potentially, than exists in the newness.

The simple things you do at the beginning don't really box you into one certain path. In fact, nobody really pays attention to the simple things you do at the beginning.

It might take more than a minute's thought. Corollary: there's always another way to do it. The sweetest fruit isn't necessarily the low-hanging fruit, and you're not going to jump to the top of the tree in one bounce.

Don't be afraid to copy (other's ideas, anyway). In fact, this is probably the best way to get going.

Similarly, from cycling:

No pain doesn't mean no gain. It might mean slower gain (or not), but might mean I'll stay with it, too.

Enjoy the doing. You'll never get anywhere, let alone get to all the fun places those with experience seem to be, if you don't enjoy the doing along the way.

The Mind is a Garden

2007-10-22T16:47:00.000-04:00

"... the time which was left to him ..., he devoted to work. Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. 'The mind is a garden,' said he." -- Victor Hugo (from Les Miserables)

A Glorious Day

2007-10-18T16:08:00.001-04:00

On Twitter, @antonyjohnston said "it's a glorious day when major retailers are competing for the right to boast the largest DRM-free catalogue...", and included a link to Apple's boast. Amazon is apparently making the same boast recently, and I and others are wondering where eMusic.com stands in the "biggest" queue.

I couldn't agree more. It is indeed a glorious day, and it's a sign that an industry that can appear so completely clueless at one point can actually turn around and have a clue, in less than a lifetime.

Now we just need to have folks competing for who can support copyright reform the most.

Lost Weight!

2007-10-17T11:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've mentioned this everywhere else I live online, might as well do a recap here. As of this morning, I'm at my goal weight of 180#. (I was 179.5# on Monday, but it bounces around day by day, as you'd expect.)

The grand total is 35 pounds off, from 214 on Jan 2, 2003 to 179, four and a half years later. The last 10 pounds or so came off over the summer, as a result of continuing low-carb and doing more with cycling several times a week. As far as low-carb goes, I continue to love eating this way, and when I eat more carbs (i.e. that pizza lunch earlier this week), I feel it for a day afterwards, and it feels bad. Call it the carbs, call it a mild wheat allergy, however you look at it, I'm perfectly happy to avoid large amounts of carbs.

Having the weight off feels great, too. I certainly feel more energy now versus 2003, when I had trouble going up a full flight of stairs without feeling it, (and heaven help me if I was carrying my then-3-yr-old while climbing). I'm not Mr. Macho now, but it feels great to be in better shape.

Of course, now comes the challenge of keeping it off. My new goal is to be at 180# (or a little less) on 1/1/2008, i.e. make it through the holidays. I'm thinking that if I keep doing what I've been doing, but just add a little snack mid-afternoon or at bedtime, I should be able to stop losing weight, and keep where I am. Regardless, I want to keep paying attention to it, and keep exercising. (That'll be the hardest, as winter approaches, and I'd rather be riding outside than exercising in the basement.)

Copyright Promotes Creation?

2007-10-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I got to thinking again today about why we have copyright. The constitution says "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" and I'm okay with that. I'd prefer the "limited Times" actually be limited, and the current term doesn't seem at all limited to me, both in how long it is, and in how it keeps getting longer to prevent anything from falling into the public domain.

But then it struck me. It says copyright is to promote progress. Typically that's interpreted to mean that copyright is intended to encourage creativity, by allowing creators an exclusive market for their creations. Now will somebody please tell me this:

How on earth can I be encouraged to create something more, 70 years after I'm dead?!

Copyright term currently extends to the life of the author plus 70 years. I'd personally prefer a copyright term (preferably registered, but that's another topic) of, say, 20 years plus a 20 year renewal, but I suppose you could make a case for life-of-the-author.

But how, pray tell, can I be encouraged to create something more, after I'm dead? How can granting copyright privileges to my heirs encourage me to continue creating (beyond the grave)? Is it seriously a problem that we wouldn't have 80-yr-olds continuing their art if they didn't know that their grandchildren would be allowed to fight over the proceeds?

If copyright didn't exist, I agree that creation could suffer. Creators would need day jobs, most current full-time creators would create less, and some wouldn't create at all. But in my view, requiring creators to come up with something new every 20-40 years seems like a reasonable balance between giving them opportunity for compensation on the one hand, and allowing for public ownership of created works on the other (think Beethoven, Shakespear, etc., that nobody needs permission to play with).

Yes. I want copyright reform.

Photography

2007-10-11T13:31:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I have a zillion hobbies. Back a month or so ago, Wife wanted a new, smaller camera, and I went through a hobby-du-jour moment of wanting to take pictures. I put it off, as I have these moments fairly frequently, but as the topic persisted around our home, I had something come to mind.

I had been perusing photo groups on Flickr.com, and had found one called Project365. The idea is that you take one (or more) picture(s) a day, and post it to this group, every day, for a year. No more and no less than one picture from each calendar day, no taking 7 pictures today and uploading them one at a time for the next week.

It was an approach that I'd never really tried before. Taking one picture takes mere seconds (if you have the camera in hand, or a minute maybe if you don't). Knowing that you can only post one picture means you have *zero* incentive to take all of the neat pictures you can think of, because you can only post one from a given day's shooting. You have to spread it out over a long time.

So I'm currently somewhere around 40 days into this. It's been an interesting process, and I'm learning some interesting things (which I'll post shortly). And 365, here I come.

(My photo page, FWIW, is here.)

eMusic.com Does Audiobooks!

2007-10-10T16:14:00.000-04:00

I've been on eMusic.com for a while now, and am still enjoying it, getting to explore a host of new music for a very reasonable price. Imagine my surprise, then, when I went onto their website a week or so ago, and saw that they're now offering audiobooks.

It's a separate subscription and a separate price, but for $10/month, you can download an audiobook in MP3 format, completely free of DRM. (Which means I can copy it and listen to it on any of my computers as well as my MP3 player, which doesn't do DRM, thank you very much.)

As I'm not terribly literate, I can't really say much about their selection, but in half an hour's looking, I found plenty to pique my interest. I've pulled down Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters so far, and have them in my queue along with my podcasts and Librivox books, and while something tells me I shouldn't be quite this excited about this, I've got a queue of books that I want a year or more long, and I'm really planning to enjoy this service.

The Tyranny of Lists

2007-10-08T15:36:00.000-04:00

I've noticed a pattern with me and lists. If I have a bunch of things to do, I'll make a list. So far, so good. It helps me get it all out of my head, so I'm not spending so much energy trying to remember things, and gives me that energy to focus on doing.

But then I'll do the first things (i.e. the most interesting things) on the list, and the remainder will sit idle for weeks/months/until I lose the list. I've noticed that the longer it sits on the list, regardless of how worthwhile it is, the less I want to do it, (or perhaps, the more I feel like I'm being nagged by it).

So I'm trying something new. First thing in the morning, I'm making a list of what I want to do that day. If there's something truly important that doesn't get done, it can be carried over to the next day, otherwise I just erase the list at day's end, and start over. So far, it's been great to have a fresh start every day, and it's been nice to spend a few minutes thinking about what I really want to do with the day.

Tools are meant to serve us, not us serve them. Harumph!

Working Fire

2007-10-05T15:58:00.000-04:00

Another book I finished not too long ago was "Working Fire" by Zac Unger. Every so often, I go through an "I wanna be a fireman when I grow up" phase. This time around, I picked this book up from the library.

While "Working Fire" was much too profane for my taste, it gave (in my uneducated, non-fireman's opinion) a very good picture of life as a professional Oakland, CA, inner-city firefighter. I came away from it still wanting (perhaps more than ever) to be one of the ones that goes to help, but I also know now more than ever that I'll never be either a professional or an inner-city firefighter. My hat's off to those who to, though, to be sure.

Koi... Mil Gaya

2007-10-04T14:10:00.000-04:00

Saw my first Bollywood movie this week. (At three hours long, I watched it over a few mights.) It was quite different from American fare, and quite refreshing. ("Bollywood" refers to the film industry in India, if you didn't know.)

Imagine taking a screenwriter from the 40's or 50's, with all of the optimism and innocence of a movie like "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" or "The Sound of Music", add Indian actors and actresses, make it with modern film equipment, and you've got "Koi... Mil Gaya", (which, from the subtitles, translates into "I've Found Someone"). The characters are simple and stereotyped, but fun. Nobody takes themselves too terribly seriously, including the screenwriters. You see the plot coming a mile away. But what a refreshing difference! And it's just amazingly beautiful, all the way through.

Thanks, Netflix, I've already queued up its sequel!

Mere Christianity

2007-10-03T15:47:00.000-04:00

Finished reading C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" recently, and I'm impressed enough to have added all the rest of Lewis's books to my reading list. While I can't say I learned anything particularly new, he explained a variety of religious subjects more simply and clearly than I've ever read before. He stayed within what he considers points agreed upon by all of Christianity, and while there were a few things (as a Latter Day Saint) that I disagreed with, on the whole it was a very enjoyable read.

Missy

2007-09-19T12:22:00.001-04:00

One of the things I apparently missed blogging about over the winter was that we got a new dog. If you read back to Feb '06, we had tried this before, and it didn't work out too well, but this past Feb, Wife went down to the local Humane Society to look around, and saw Missy.

Missy, they said, is a cocker spaniel/poodle mix, a cockapoo, or spoodle. (I can't say I like either name; a cockapoo sounds like a bird, and spoodle sounds like a pasta dish.) She's sort of a light beige, with poodle-like curly fur and a spaniel's soft, pretty, floppy ears. I love playing with her ears, and it's funny to go see my sister-in-law's dogs, which are both at least twice Missy's size but have ears 1/3 of Missy's.

She's usually a pretty good dog. She gets a bit protective of Daughter and Wife when Son is around, and has nipped at him a couple of times, but overall is pretty laid back and mellow. She's also nipped at Daughter and one of her friends, and we're not at all sure what either of those were about, or whether either was provoked in any way. But overall she's pretty calm and relaxed.

She gets a bit riled up at the kids' bedtime, running from room to room, doing laps around the bed, and so on. She also loved to "wrestle" with me, biting/chewing (lightly) on my hand and letting me toss her around. I'm the only one who will let her do that, though; Son and Wife aren't interesting in the play-biting in the least, and Daughter would rather play fetch and pet with her. (One of these days, I'm going to get a picture of her chewing on me, and call it "Biting the Hand that Feeds You"...)

Wife (or kids, over the summer) usually walk her during the day, and I get to take her out at night, around the block. It's gotten to be a routine thing that I really like, seeing our neighborhood through all seasons and weather, getting a glance at the stars and moon (or the clouds).

Like most dogs, she prefers people food to dog food, and we usually give her a little something at dinner time, but at least 3/4 of her food is her own stuff. She'll still beg somewhat, but usually doesn't make too much of a fuss. She will come running when she hears the cheese drawer in the fridge open up. I'll often throw her bits while I'm making up my eggs-n-cheese in the morning. She was really bad at catching them at first, but with some practice, she's gotten pretty good.

And perhaps most importantly (to me, anyway) is that she's not so much of an early riser. I've heard lots of folks talk about needing to get up right away to let the dog out in the morning, but she's usually content to pad around the house until 9 or 10 AM before needing to go out.

All in all, having a dog (or at least, having our dog) is a pretty good deal, and I'm glad we got Missy.

DailyLit.com

2007-08-24T15:40:00.000-04:00

DailyLit.com is a service that will email you entire books, a little bit every day.

Now I've thought about doing something like this in the past, using the text of books from Project Gutenberg or something, chopping them up and setting up some program somehow to email them to myself once a day, but it seems that they already did so, and are making it available for free.

I'm starting out small with this one: I'm now two pieces (out of 679) into Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I should be finished by, what would that be, mid-2009 sometime? Maybe I'll do War and Peace after that...

Twitter.com

2007-08-07T17:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, what the heck is Twitter? And why is it all the buzz?

Well, it's kinda like "blogging lite". You get 140 characters to type in a message, and it gets posted on your twitter page. Kinda like blogging, kinda like IM. Kinda fun. And speaking of IM, if you set it up, you can post from IM (i.e. your Jabber client, or from GTalk) as well.

My first take on Twitter was "how worthless is this?", but I have to admit it's grown on me. There are some things that I want to blog about (like this), but other things, (like my morning ride), that's too short to blog about, but that I'd like to post about somewhere (even if, as with blogging, my mom and I are the only ones who will read it). At 140 chars, I have to stay short and sweet, which has its own appeal. And apparently, for those of you who have friends, it's a fun way to keep in touch, if they're on Twitter as well.

And other sites are popping up around Twitter. One, twittervision, is particularly compelling. Twittervision shows a map of the earth, and displays a new tweet every few seconds. This doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty neat, at least to a map geek like me.

Anyway, I'm giving it a whirl.

Freecycle

2007-07-10T09:50:00.000-04:00

Not sure at this point where I found this, but go check out Freecycle. It's a group of local mailing lists around the U.S. (and apparently elsewhere in the world) for people to list things that they're giving away. You watch the list, and ask for things you'd like, or post things you'd like to offer.

So far, we've given away several things that were usable, but not worth the effort to try to sell, e.g. a very old but working laser printer, an old bed frame, a washer/dryer that we were replacing, several guinea pigs (with cages), and soon an old bike. We've also gotten a couple of things as well, e.g. some astronomy books, and a gas grill. The grill needed some cleanup and a new burner, but it was in better shape than the one we gave away when we last moved due to lack of space in the truck, so we're happy.

But Freecycle is quite the interesting place. In our case, the list covers our county; I'm guessing other lists might cover more or less area. Our list sees maybe 100 messages a day, which implies that there are plenty of people locally watching it as well as posting to it.

Worth checking out, or even better, giving something to.

Grilled Asparagus

2007-06-28T19:00:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, we went to a cookout at a friend's house. The host served, among other things, grilled asparagus, which was quite tasty. So Wife decided we should try it out now that we have a grill again. (More on getting the grill later.)

The first try wasn't so good. The grill had been running quite hot, I think, and the asparagus was burned black on one side. Fortunately, you can just scrape off one layer of black, and the rest was edible. (Well, as edible as asparagus ever gets.)

But our second try was wonderful. A new tank of gas and some fiddling, and the grill is cooking much cooler. I put about 2 dozen stalks on, covered with olive oil and I think kosher salt, and let them go as I was cooking some hot dogs, turned them once or twice, and took them off when they were just a bit limp, (the tip sagging an inch or two when you hold the base level to the ground). Hoo wee, was it delicious! I actually wanted to eat it. (I've never really been an asparagus fan.) But I ate about half of it, and played tug-of-war with Wife for the last piece.

Man, I've gotta remember how I did that!

A New Bike

2007-06-27T12:51:00.000-04:00

Hey, look at that, I still have a blog! Well, let's make a post.

I got a new bike for my birthday! It's a Trek 7000, which I got from a local bike store.

I initially went to a local sporting goods store, a few weeks ago. The guy I talked at was *very* quiet, and I couldn't get more than a couple of words out of him. The bike was nice enough, but more than I wanted to spend, and with him not being helpful...

I did a little bit of research online, and found that I wanted a hybrid. They're more comfortable than a regular road bike (i.e. easier on my aging butt), and have a wider range of gears (at least than my 15-yr-old 12 speed).

So I went to the shop down the street, and found the Trek model, but in a smaller size than would be right for me. They had my size in stock, but not assembled. So I went to another sporting goods store, which didn't have anything I wanted, and a day later, to Target.

Target had a Schwinn bike that was the style I was looking for, and I pulled it down off the rack and gave it a try. The price was right, but the shifters were awful and the gears rattled badly in low gear. All in all, I wasn't impressed, even at a lower price.

So I went back to the bike shop, and they had mine assembled. Tried it out, loved it, bought it. Friendly, helpful staff, and a good bike at a decent price. And I get to feel good about helping keep a specialty store running, (for what that's worth to ya).

Jeanne Newhall - Cakewalk

2007-01-09T15:26:00.000-05:00

Probably my favorite find on eMusic.com so far is Jeanne Newhall's Cakewalk
CD. This is mostly ragtime piano, but it's not anything like what I think of
when I think ragtime piano. It's a lot more subtle and downplayed, rather
than the traditional way RP gets played. And her version of Maple Leaf
Rag is just amazing. Well worth checking out, and I'll be going back and
trying out more of her stuff in the future.

eMusic.com

2007-01-06T12:57:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, I resubbed to emusic.com. I'd subscribed a few years ago, and lost interest in a couple of months, but this time I'm rather liking it.

In no particular order, what I like includes:

No DRM. I don't have to burn a disc and rip it to take the tracks to work with me, like I do with iTunes. Or to put it differently, I don't get the whole you're-a-criminal-and-no-it's-not-your-music vibe that iTunes gives.

At roughly 25 cents per track (or less, if you get their bigger subscription), I don't feel like I have as much risk getting an album without hearing it first. So far, I've got 16 whole albums and parts of a 17th, and I've made repeat listens to 5 or 6 of them, which is better than one per month. So I'm paying less than $10 per good album, and getting 3 extras to cherry pick from.

It's quite easy to find stuff to try out. I've got a queue of about 30 albums that I'm considering getting, a list of "neighbors" with similar tastes, whose lists I have yet to explore, and a growing list of articles and reviews from the eMusic folks to check out when those lists shrink down a bit.

The biggest downside, of course, is the 30-second previews. Had I heard the whole album beforehand, there are a couple that I wouldn't have wasted time on, but that's life. But again, I don't mind the duds, as I'm still spending less on average for good music.

Another slight downside is that there are no major labels. I say slight, because my focus isn't so much on getting all the songs I used to listen to on the radio, but on finding new music that I like. But I would have preferred, for example, to have gotten my Jack Johnson Curious George CD from eMusic rather than iTunes. So it's a slight problem, but I blame the major labels for being <insert obligatory RIAA insult here>.

Anyway, the bottom line is that eMusic.com is a good thing, and worth the $10/month I'm sending them.

Jack Johnson and Curious George

2006-12-28T20:15:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have a new favorite album. It's the Curious George soundtrack by Jack Johnson, that I got off of the iTunes Music Store. We got Curious George off of netflix.com over Thanksgiving weekend, and I watched it with Daughter several times, and really liked the music, so I figured I'd look for the soundtrack. And after listening to the preview on iTunes, I picked out 10 of the 14 tracks. (Yeah, I skipped a couple of the songs that were just plain kid songs.)

But the rest of them are just awesome. Upside Down has just the most wonderful attitude, Talk of the Town as well, and Jungle Gym is just plain fun, reminding me of how much fun it was to be a kid in the city. We're Going to be Friends is the theme song to another movie, Napolean Dynamite, that I just love, but I never really listened to it until I bought it, and it's just wonderful, wholesome and innocent. And all of the songs have this gentle, relaxing, "what I used to like about Simon and Garfunkel when I wasn't listening to the lyrics" feel to them.

My New Telescope

2006-11-13T16:21:00.000-05:00

It came, it came, it finally came!

I got my very first telescope today. Per a number of people's recommendations, I got an Orion Starblast, on an EQ mount. Got it put together with/despite help from my kids, and went out to try it out.

The only mildly negative part of the evening came when I tried to get the EZ Finder aligned. I aligned it fairly easily, but had to realign it a few times before either it stayed put, or I figured out how not to bump it again, not sure which. But with it aligned properly, pointing the scope was a breeze, and I found everything I set out for, (except M38, but that was my fault).

Found Albireo and the Pleiades, which both Wife, Kids and I thought were quite stunning. Then they sought the indoors, and left me to look at M42 and the moon by myself. By 11pm, a haze was setting in, so I headed inside.

Anyway, I'm glad I found the positive reviews of the Starblast. Granted, I'm a novice, but it seems to be nicely made, and is certainly a nice step up from my binoculars.

Halloween Night Observing

2006-11-01T10:54:00.000-05:00

Had a fairly pleasant night out last night, and setup my binoculars on a tripod out front while the trick-or-treat-ers were coming by. Got glances of "what the heck is that" from a few parents, but got to show the moon to a couple of tweens and a group of older teens; all who looked were suitably impressed. "Sweet!" was the most common comment :).

I'm amazed at how hard it is to *NOT* see satellites pass overhead these days. Saw three or four from my brightly lit front porch looking out over my brightly-lit-by-streetlights-(darnit) street. (Unfortunately, the ISS passed by too early and too low in the sky, and was obscured by clouds.)

And for the 2nd year in a row, saw a very nice, bright meteor shoot overhead just as I was glancing up. Both this year's and last's shot from mostly north to the S or SW.

Meanwhile, I continue to await the shipment of my new telescope. How can a few weeks pass by *SO* *SLOWLY*!

Uranus and M39

2006-10-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

Central PA finally has a clear, moonless night (well, early evening, anyway), and I headed out with my binocs.

For starters, I decided to track down Uranus. I've found all the planets from Mercury out to Saturn, and I finally just realized that Uranus should be within the range of my binocs, even in my light-polluted skies. I star-hopped from alpha-Aquarius down to gamma, zeta and eta (which were naked-eye, actually, but my eyes weren't all that dark-adjusted when I first went out), then down past kappa to lambda, and voila! Lambda-Aquarius has a couple of dimmer companions above and to the left and right, and Uranus was fairly close in magnitude to them, but below. It's gonna be fun over the next while to see Uranus move and the others stay behind.

Then I pointed my 'nocs up at Deneb, and did more star-hopping out to M39. Not as much to say about it, although the view was really wonderful. M39 itself had about a dozen or so individual stars visible, and the general area around it was full of more faint stars as well. If Santa will cough up a scope in a few months, I'm going back there, for sure.

Low Flying Moon

2006-10-11T16:48:00.000-04:00

This is a bit outdated at this point, but still interesting, I think. On 9/29, the moon was at its lowest point in the sky (during transit) for the past 18 years or so. (Transit is the highest point in the sky over the course of a night, roughly speaking.)

Seems the moon moves between high and low points over the course of a lunar cycle (roughly 4 weeks), but those high and low points get wider and narrower over an 18.6 year cycle, and we just passed the maximum of it. In 9 years, there won't be much difference between the high and low points at all.

Anyway, the long version of this can be found on Wikipedia's article on lunar standstill.

Lunar Occultation

2006-09-29T20:37:00.000-04:00

While out pointing my binocs at the moon tonight (I've just started playing with the Astro League's beginner's lunar checklist), I noticed that the moon was getting awful close in the sky to a particular star. For grins, I sat there a while longer, and watched the moon move in front of it. Quite a nifty sight, for a beginner. xephem shows it as v1 (I assume that's gamma-one) Sagittarius; Peterson's Field Guide shows it as W Sag.

Woo hoo! My first occultation!

Hawk Mountain

2006-09-11T16:50:00.000-04:00

Took Son and Daughter up to Hawk Mountain this past weekend, and had a very nice time. We got up there about 2pm, went through the visitors center, then hiked up the trail.

The first half of the trail was nice, smooth and wide, and had three or four overlooks with wonderful views of the valley. The first overlook, South Overlook, even had a wheelchair accessible pad with a great view as well, (the others required climbing up on large rocks).

The second half of the trail, leading up to the north overlook, was a tiny bit more challenging. Nothing that Daughter (5) couldn't handle, although she doesn't really pay attention to where she's walking, and tripped a few times. Son, 9, had no problems at all, though, and both of them loved it and want to go back real soon.

As far as the birds were concerned, it wasn't that great of a day. We saw a couple of turkey vultures, an osprey and a bald eagle. At least, that's what more experienced birders around us were calling them. The bald eagle, to my eye, didn't have the white head, but then it may have just been the lighting or something. Didn't see any hawks, which Son thought was odd. In a few weeks, the air is supposed to get just thick with birds, and apparently, when the wind is out of the NW, they come out in larger groups.

We're hoping to go back up there in a week or two, and see more birds and maybe some fall colors, too. Very much worth the trip.

Frankenstein

2006-09-06T16:37:00.000-04:00

Listened to the LibriVox recording of Frankenstein. Quite interesting, although I'm not sure if I liked it. It was fairly dark, with a fair amount of anger. But as a cultural thing, it was interesting. No Igor, no bolts from the neck, and the monster never had a name; Frankenstein was the name of the monster's creator.

I don't suppose I would say I regret the time spent, but I would rather have listened to more Sherlock Holmes stories, though.

More Music Thoughts

2006-08-17T16:01:00.000-04:00

I've been keeping with playing keyboard in the morning, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes, before I go to work. In the process of learning to play, I'm trying to learn how to learn as well. I saw a quote on a piano list I'm on by Anni Wakerley: "I had my piano lesson this morning and my teacher was saying there are 2 questions she's never known the answer to. The one is 'how do you know when you are in love?' and the other is 'how do you practise the piano?'." So I'm in good company, but I'm trying to find an answer anyway.

First off, there's memorizing the piece you're playing. I've tried it, and I like it. I've already mentioned how much more fun it is to play something that you're making up on the spot, and I think that part of the fun is that you're playing something purely out of your head. Memorizing gets the piece wired into your head, so that playing it is just playing.

Another item a college friend had told me 20 (!) years ago was how different it is to play with your eyes closed. (I think he turned the lights out, but there are way too many toys between my keyboard and the lightswitch; I'd hurt myself on the trip back.) The curious thing is how it changes your mental processes.

Let me put it another way. Seems like there are different tasks going on when you play. One is getting the notes from the paper into your head. Another is getting them from your head to your fingers. A third is getting your fingers on the right keys. Playing the way I had been, reading the notes as I play, involves all three at once. Memorizing the piece (or making it up on the spot) removes the first task, so you can concentrate on the other two. And closing your eyes forces you to concentrate more on the third task.

I would certainly like to be able to sight-read music as I'm playing, and I don't have any desire to play blindfolded, but I do see these two techniques as changing things up a bit, and helping various parts of my playing.

I hope, anyway. I guess we'll see.

Update: Anni said further: "Carol's point was that there are guidelines, but ultimately you have to find the way that works for you. Nothing more uncomfortable than being in a straightjacket of someone else's making."

I couldn't agree more.

Hershey Park

2006-08-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, we went to Hershey Park. It's the first time I've been there over the summer, to ride the rides; (we've been there to see the Christmas Lights before). My bottom line is that with one big exception, I'd rather go to Knoebel's.

That one big exception is the Lightning Racer roller-coaster. It was tucked at the back of the park, was the best ride we went on all day, and had the shortest wait of any ride. Our first time on it probably took us 5 minutes in line, the second time, maybe 10. Simply amazing ride; loads of fun. Son and Daughter (9 and 5, respectively) both loved it. I'd rate it at least a tie with The Phoenix at Knoebel's: not as much airtime, but more unpredictable twists and turns. And nowhere near as rough a ride as on Knoebel's Twister. I'm glad they don't charge by the ride, or I'd be stopping there on my way home from work to ride it, often.

One other high point of the day was the train ride. Hershey's train had trackside animatronics that were fun for the kids, and it was quite a bit bigger, and hence more comfortable a ride. OTOH, Knoebel's longer train ride is much more scenic, going out into the woods like it does. But Hershey's was quite a nice ride just the same.

Now the downsides, at least as compared to Knoebel's. Not as much shade. Way longer lines (except as already mentioned). Much more expensive food, and they check bags on the way in, to make sure you don't bring your own. Way more crowded. More expensive to get in. Paid parking.

I won't belabor the above, except to say that food was more than twice as expensive, and of course Knoebel's doesn't charge to get in, for those adults who won't be riding rides. Wife only rode one ride on Saturday, and it would have cost $40+ for her just the same. (We got our tickets for close to free from Wife's Mom, as Mom-in-Law's work had their company picnic there. Thanks, Mom-in-Law!)

Comparing rides, both places have clean, safe rides. The flume rides are about the same. Hershey's version of the Skloosh is taller. Hershey's has more coasters, and has metal coasters (with plenty of loops). Knoebel's has more for little kids.

Adding it all up, Hershey's vs Knoebel's is $130 vs maybe $60, not counting food, and we rode many more rides at Knoebel's. I loved Knoebel's before, but I'm a bigger fan now.

Homespun Tapes

2006-08-04T13:21:00.000-04:00

A while back, I'd gotten a guitar instruction DVD from Homespun Tapes. While I didn't do much with it, I liked the idea of using the video, so when I got their recent catalog, and it had things on sale, I went through looking for keyboard videos. They've got plenty, and I ordered two: Learn to Play Blues Piano by David Cohen, and You Can Play Jazz Piano by Warren Bernhardt. Being a beginner, I got volume one of both sets.

They arrived yesterday, and I sat down and watched the first half of the blues video last night. It moved through a tiny bit of theory pretty fast, and gets right to showing you some fun stuff. I'm still not really fluent at doing vastly different things with my left hand; simple chords one per measure are okay, so the first piece was a little bit of a stretch. Still, it's really easy to follow what he's doing, and will be great fun once I improve my skills a tiny bit.

And of course this fits in with my creative ideas, in that both videos emphasize improvising, and what I've watched of Cohen so far talks a bit about that at just my (beginning) level.

I'm really liking Homespun products a lot.

Synergy

2006-07-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

One of my coworkers is a Mac dude. He has an iMac and a Powerbook on his desk, and has them hooked up to allow his iMac's mouse/keyboard to control both boxes, (as they sit side by side). I was suitably impressed by this, but he then informed me that the software he uses is Open Source, and cross platform.

So I went to take a look. It's called synergy, and can be found on SourceForge. I pulled down the RPMs and installed it on my two work machines. My desktop box already has two monitors, so getting that setup right was a (very) minor nuisance, but once I figured that out, I now have a three-monitor desktop.

What's especially slick is being able to cut-n-paste between the two boxen. I highlight text on my laptop, and it pastes into apps running on my desktop box. Very nice. Especially as I'm not too fond of my laptop's keyboard. (Actually, I just don't like that it only has one Ctrl key, and yeah, a full numeric keypad is nice, too.)

So I'm now running Eclipse over X onto my desktop box, and I can use all three screens while developing, yet still have my whole dev env on my laptop, to take with on the road.

Way slick. Thanks, coworker-dude, and thanks, synergy.

librivox.org

2006-07-24T16:05:00.000-04:00

Ah, collaboration. Ain't it grand?! How the internet lets folks get together to do all kinds of neat stuff. Write Open Source software, search for aliens from another planet, write an encyclopedia.

Or record free audio books. I recently found librivox.org, which is a collaborative effort to "record all the books in the public domain". A grand ambition, but they've already release over 100 books, and lots of other shorter works and poetry collections as well. I'm currently listening to their recording of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus", which I'll blog about once I finish.

They're approaching their 1st anniversary, and had a short poem, "Art and Heart" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, that they wanted as many recordings of as possible, so I gave it a shot, and it was quite fun. And to follow up with that, I just signed up to record a couple of chapters out of Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo". I saw and liked the movie a while back, and as they were/are looking for readers, I thought I'd give it a try.

One cool thing about their approach is that you don't have to be a professional "voice talent" to do this. They aren't fussy at all about pronunciations, especially in works like Monte Cristo with lots of French and other foreign names. They even say that different pronunciations by different readers is "part of the Librivox charm".

It's a great place to find stuff to listen to on my commute, and helping out with the recording is a neat way to say thanks.

Sherlock Holmes

2006-07-20T16:03:00.000-04:00

I mentioned back almost two years ago that I had listened to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on audiobook. I got back to it recently with A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It really is amazing stuff.

For starters, they're really enjoyable stories. I never really knew that I was a fan of detective stories, but having things unfolded and explained at the end of the story is great stuff. Secondly, the personality, foibles and human-ness that Doyle gives to Holmes is very captivating. Although I'm not interested in crime and I'll never be a detective, as I hear the stories, I've felt quite a kinship with Holmes, (no, I'm not a cocaine addict), in the way he talks about boredom, among other things.

Ripping good stuff.

Working Through the Keys

2006-07-19T12:46:00.000-04:00

I continue to get my hands on the keyboard every morning (at least on weekdays, and occasionally on a Saturday as well). I've figured out all of the major and minor chords (12 of each), I can play all 12 major scales, and am working on figuring out the dom7 chords (used as the V7 chord of a key). I'd also like to figure out all 12 blues scales as well (I've got the C and F#/Gb blues scales down pretty well so far).

I'm still trying to balance the technical (what I just mentioned) with the creative, and after a week or so of technical, I'm feeling like I need to get back to creating with it. Perhaps tomorrow, if I remember.

Linksys Woes

2006-06-19T16:15:00.000-04:00

A while back, I was trying to get our then-new Mac to talk to my Linksys wireless router, (a BEFW11S4 wireless router, version 2). It would connect and get an IP address, but I couldn't talk to either the internet or even the router's config page. At the time, I punted and ran a cable up from the basement to the Mac, and was happy. Now I'm wanting to use my work laptop from the couch, and am not interested in running a cable across the room, so it's back to troubleshooting.

I started out on Saturday, poking around their help docs. To my encouragement, the first one listed for my router described my problem to a tee, but after making the setting changes, nothing had changed.

I then got onto the Linksys customer service chat. We tried a couple of things, at which point Wife called me to go out to eat, and good Italian food at Buca di Beppo's beats troubleshooting wireless any day. This morning, I tried again, and got CSDude#2, who was also helpful, and we tried a few more things.

But one of the attempts severed my chat connection. When I got back online, I got this dud, CSDude#3, who wouldn't even look at my previous logs, nor connect me to CSDude#2. Finally I gave up on him, and reconnected, getting CSDudette#1, who walked me through the rest of their script, reflashing my firmware, and even trying some things I couldn't see making any difference, like spoofing the router's MAC address. But I dutifully played along at home, and finally (after 3 hours, total) ran out of CSDudette's ideas.

I then browsed Amazon.com for a new router, toyed with the idea of buying a D-Link router out of spite, and decided to power cycle and hard reset everything one last time.

As things came back up, I reconfigured the router, and decided to look through all the options one last time. On the last page of the setup browser, the wireless tab, I found an option for TX Rates, which defaults to some odd text like 1-2-5.5-11 or somesuch; I changed this to 1-2 MBps, and tried to connect one last time, and whaddya know, it worked!

It took at bit more playing to get the DNS correct, but that was more to do with my laptop's setup than anything with the router. I'm still not sure why my change got things to work, but I'll take what I can get.

Creation Efforts

2006-06-16T16:06:00.000-04:00

A couple of things I've been playing with, trying to learn to write music:

1) Just doing a melody, single notes, right hand. Nothing too complicated, (and certainly nothing to write home about yet), but it lets me think more about rhythm and timing and such.

2) Putting some chord in the left hand, and keeping the melody going, single notes, with the right. This gets me thinking about chord progressions, which many melodies certainly seem to imply as they go along.

Something occurred to me on the drive to work today, namely that learning to play somebody else's music will help you get the ideas into your head, and be able to create your own, but learning to play the music that you create (as you create it, even) is several times more efficient (at my stage) at developing creative muscle.

And as I've said before, the more I have my hands on the keyboard, the better I'll be at playing, even if I'm not thinking about "performance" proper.

My Continued Keyboard Efforts

2006-06-13T11:55:00.000-04:00

My efforts to play keyboard are coming along quite well, (or, at least, are still quite a bit of fun, which is most of my personal battle). I'm sort of balancing myself between using the book (in my case, Bastien's Adult Book 1) and making stuff up. Actually, I'm just about finished with Bastien's Book 1, and about to start poking around with Alfred's Book 2, (both of which I already had on the shelf; gotta start with what ya got).

Another book that I'm thinking about using for ideas (that's actually billed as being an idea book) is How to Write Songs on Guitar by Rikky Rooksby, which I got last time I was trying to learn guitar. It has chapters on chord fingerings (useless for keyboard) and lyric writing (not of interest to me at the moment), but has a really nice catalog of chord progressions that I can play around with. If I actually start using it, I'll post more about it.

Son's Cello Travails, Continued

2006-06-09T15:41:00.000-04:00

Son's cello playing travails continue. His 4-alarm wailing and gnashing of teeth has subsided, especially as we went to a music store and let him pick out a book with tunes that he wants to play. Seems like much of what's in the lesson book is exercises and such, and not so much fun tunes that he knows.

And it turns out that Son was also getting tired of constantly being pushed to do "hard stuff". In this case, his teacher wants him to play slower, which is "boring, and harder" according to Son. He says he can "play better if he goes faster". Okay, fine. For the summer, I'm telling him he gets to get away with 3-4 days per week of playing, and he gets to pick the music.

So far, he's going along with it, and only complaining a bit. And the rule is: no computers or PS2 before cello.

One last note (pun intended): the book we got was for euphonium or upsie-dasium, or some other odd instrument, and came with most tunes written for bass clef, in keys of either Bb or Eb, and then all tunes duplicated, written for treble cleff in key of C. I've been taking them, putting them into a Lilypond file, and letting Lilypond transpose them to bass cleff, key of D (or perhaps C), which is a really easy task once you get used to it. Yay, Open Source!

How I'm Gonna Play (Around) (Part 2)

2006-05-31T15:41:00.000-04:00

The second part of my new approach is what I'm going to be playing. While I get a little satisfaction out of having learned to play someone else's tunes, (especially someone else's tunes that I really like), I get a lot more joy out of coming up with my own stuff. This changes my approach in two ways.

First, I've realized that my goal isn't performance. I don't really want to be able to "play Carnegie Hall" or anything. I want to be able to create music. Either via "composition" or "improvisation", or probably both, although I'm hoping to avoid thinking either of those two fancy words too often. I want to sit down at the keyboard and start messing around until something interesting comes out. At this point, I'm not even concerned with how, or even whether, I'll be able to let others hear this music. (If I don't figure out how to create, there'll be nothing for anyone to hear, so let's keep first things first.)

Second, it's changed how I look at the books. I'm no longer, thinking "I need to learn how to play page 24 to progress as a player". My brain has no fun thinking that particular thought, and I've got my dozen or two learning attempts as examples. Rather, I'm going to think "So what ideas or techniques are there on page 24?", and then "What can I make up that uses those ideas?". And once I start making stuff up, my hands will be practicing, while my brain is off creating. Brain has fun, hands learn, and I win.

I've been at this for a week, and I've already started to notice that I play loads better when the ideas are coming out of my head, rather than off the page, through my eyes and down to my fingers. And this all fits in very well with Part 1, in that I'm just going to play around.

How I'm Gonna Play (Around) (Part 1)

2006-05-29T10:10:00.000-04:00

So here's my new approach to learning to play keyboards. The emphasis is on play.

First: Play needs to mean play around, not be a slave to a book/teacher. Seriously, my approach in the past was to try to recreate what was in the book, without mistakes; for me, this is messed up. My first thought needs to be: what fun can I have with this instrument.

Example: This morning, Kids and I watched a Looney Tunes DVD we got off Netflix. So with the Looney Tunes theme fresh in my head, the first thing I did when I sat down at the keyboard was to pick out that theme. Kids had come down with me, and were suitably amused that I could play the LT theme (even though I was only doing so with one finger). (If you're curious, it starts off EDCDEDECDDDD..., as I was playing it, anyway.) It was fun, and it wasn't in any book.

So the goal is to just have fun, and when I tell anyone I'm gonna go play, I should be thinking play around.

In My Musical Past

2006-05-25T16:33:00.000-04:00

This is probably the 10th or 20th time I've tried to learn an instrument. I've taken keyboard lessons 4 or 5 times, guitar lessons twice, clarinet lessons in middle school. I've also done the self-instruction thing on keyboard 3 or 4 times, and on guitar another half-dozen, at least.

You'd think I'd have given up by now, but honestly, I know that there's something musical in my nature, and I just can't give it up. So I keep coming back.

My approach, of which I am now certain is flawed, goes something like this: 1) I must practice at least 30 mins, and preferably 1 hour, every day, 2) I must do what the book or instructor says to do, because they know best, 3) somewhere down the line, if I have lots of dedication, determination and discipline, I'll get good, and then it'll be fun. Or something.

This is way screwed up, (for me, at least).

Let's start at the last one. I have no dedication, determination or discipline. None. If it's not fun, I'm not going to do it. I never have with anything else, and I doubt very seriously that I'm going to start now. (If it's me that's screwed up here, so be it. I'm all I have to work with.)

Now the middle one. At this point I've seen enough books and teachers to realize that nobody really knows how to teach an instrument. Or rather, nobody can tell you something that, having heard it, will cause you to learn an instrument. At best, we, the learners, have to teach ourselves, and having books and teachers are only good for minor corrections, suggestions and ideas. At some point, I may well go back to taking lessons, but for now, it's futile.

I don't mean that no teachers know anything, or are incapable of imparting knowledge. All of my teachers have understood their respective instruments. But again, I need to stop relying on someone else to teach me, and figure out how to learn.

The goal, in my opinion, is to get your hands on the instrument. I can type quite nicely. I got that way by typing, a lot. That's a physical challenge, much like learning an instrument. Books have music. Books have ideas for what to play, when you're new enough to not have ideas of your own. Teachers have their place, too, but neither books nor teachers should be up on a pedestal; spread the books out on the floor, and glance down occasionally when you need an idea to get you started.

And the first one: if I'm getting my hands on the instrument, then the time doesn't matter. Or rather, watching the clock doesn't matter. If I'm having fun, playing around, learning a bit here and there, then minutes on the clock will come and go without being noticed. Again, if it's not fun, I personally am not likely to bother.

So I'm giving up on the old way. Good bye, and good riddance. (More shortly on what I'm replacing it with.)

Fixing a PS2

2006-05-24T13:25:00.000-04:00

My (I mean, Son's) PlayStation 2 stopped working awhile back. Broke my (I mean, his) heart. I checked the obvious things: it was plugged in, the light went from red to green when I pushed the power button (it's a newer slim-case model). But the browser thingy would come up, rather than the game in the console.

I poked a bit more, and after being unplugged and plugged back in, the laser would shuffle out and back when the unit was turned on, but still no life. I left the case open when doing this, (holding back the disc brake), and saw that the disc wasn't spinning up. Not a budge.

So I went poking around on eBay, looking to see what parts were available. After a bit of research, I found that the model I have is a V12, and that you can buy replacement drive motors. In my case, I went to www.richspsxparts.com to get mine, then ... drum roll, please ...

Ripped off the warranty sticker and popped open the case!

Woo hoo! I feel like a real man! I voided my warranty! (Yeah, never mind that it expired several months ago, and the machine was broken anyway.) Someone once said that if you can't open the case, then it's not yours. Well, buddy, it's mine now!

Anyway, all this self-congratulation aside, I had actually opened the case and poked around a bit before ordering the drive motor, but after getting the motor, four screws loosened the drive assembly, three more loosened the drive motor, a ribbon cable popped out of a socket to take the drive out, put the new one in, screws back in, and voila! It works again.

The motor was less than $20, so I figured that if that wasn't the problem, I wasn't out too much, (versus $130 for a new PS2, anyway), and it was good fun playing around inside the box.

And even more fun being able to play our games again.

I'm Gonna Play

2006-05-23T12:29:00.000-04:00

You've heard the phrase, "It's all in how you look at it." I have a bit of an obsession with that idea, looking for a better way to look at things. And most of the ways that my life has ever improved has been as a direct result of looking at things differently. Examples abound in how things have gone for me as a parent, as a husband, at work, etc.

Well, I'm playing around with a new way to look at things, and in particular, at music. Seems since early childhood, music has meant a lot to me, but I've always had problems "sticking with" an instrument, "putting in the practice", etc., needed to get good at playing.

Did the end of that last sentence strike you as odd? "Get good at playing"?! I've got two kids. They play. A lot. Daughter, age 5, does little else. Playing is natural. They do it because, well, because playing is fun. What other reason do you need? But have you ever watched kids play?

Daughter plays with dolls. She talks to them, makes them do things. If you watch closely, you see that she's exploring social things as she plays. Sorts things out, tries to make sense of her world. In short, she's learning.

Think about it: playing means learning.

I must have known that when I was a kid. And I must have forgotten it along the way.

So the short of it is that I'm going to have fun with my keyboard. Yeah, it's a dinky little "toy" Casio, nothing like my old "professional" M1, but if I'm just playing, then a toy is just fine. And I'm going to ignore that pesky voice in my head that says that to learn an instrument has to be hard, dull and boring.

Yeah, I'm gonna play.

Magnatune Podcasts

2006-04-06T12:37:00.000-04:00

New cool thing: Magnatune now has podcasts. I've subbed myself to the jazz, electronica and new age ones, and each is fairly nice. Like listening to an hour-long radio show (with no commercials, of course), with just a bit of talk at the start and end, so you know where to go to find out more. And each show has show notes with times, which is nice if you want to listen to the entire album (or perhaps just skip to the next song). Each podcast is promised to have one show per week, so I could probably subscribe to a couple more, and have one show per workday...

Magnatune is still not evil.

Should Companies Care What We Think?

2006-03-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

Yet another wonderful example of how people gathering together on the net are making a difference recently came across the O'Reilly Radar blog. In short, a guy put together some posts on his blog detailing how to bypass the menus and talk to a human at a few companies. It got so popular that he turned it into a full-fledged website, www.gethuman.com, and is accepting info from collaborators.

The article discusses why such a site is necessary. From the article: "In an era of fierce competition, when customers have more choices than ever, the toughest business challenge isn't to keep expenses down. It's to keep loyalty high." Amen to that. I love to be loyal to companies. I look for reasons to be loyal. And I'll pay at least a little extra to do business with folks I like/respect/etc. They should get wise to that.

Quite a nice read.

Jury Duty

2006-03-03T16:12:00.000-05:00

I've been off the past three days, on jury duty. As days go, it was okay.

We sat for 2.5 days. Two panels were called. A jury was seated from the first one, and the second, that I was on, was dismissed without having a jury selected. Apparently, in our case, the guy plead guilty before we could be selected.

There were two people there that I knew from church, which is somewhat unlikely, considering that's two out of 150+ jurors, and I know maybe 150 people at church out of 450,000 people in the county.

My fellow jurors were a hoot. I heard pretty much constant complaining in the conversations going on around me, for the whole duration. Apart from the complainers, the whole experience wasn't that bad, although yesterday afternoon was a bit noisy.

I could have taken a laptop with me and worked, but decided against it, as they would have made me leave such laptop in the juror area, had I been called for a panel. I wouldn't have wanted to do that with my own machine, so decided against it with my work machine, and just worked in the evenings to make up time.

The two court workers in the jury area, Lillie and Rita, were terrific. Thinking about it, they spend their work life dealing with people who, as I said, largely don't want to be there, and complain about it at every chance. But they did so with a good sense of humor and a good bit more understanding than I had at the end of even day 2.

I did this about 6 years ago, and rumor has it that I'm now off the hook for at least 3 years from now.

Now then, where was I?

Goodbye, Baxter

2006-02-27T11:34:00.000-05:00

After a week with our new dog, Baxter, we came to the conclusion that we're not dog owners. Dog lovers, yes, without a doubt, but not owners. Yesterday we took him back to his previous owner.

As dogs go, Baxter is an awesome dog. Quite smart, as I had mentioned, loads of fun, and very patient with Daughter (who loved carrying him around, awkwardly, and was trying to teach him to dance). But having him changed our routine and home-life in ways we weren't expecting, and wouldn't enjoy even after settling in.

Needless to say, all four of us are rather sad about this. Son woke up crying this morning, and Wife was pretty upset yesterday, too. I shed my tears as I took him back. Broken hearts will mend, but doing so isn't much fun.

Dog's Bedtime

2006-02-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

On night #1, we let Dog sleep in our room, and with the door open, he pretty much had the run of the house. On night #2, we crated him, as a) previous owners assured us this was how he always slept, and b) on night #1, he places a couple of piles at the foot of the stairs overnight.

So on night #3, we were planning to crate him again. Wife and I finished a bit of TV watching, I took Dog out for a final walk, came back in, unhooked the collar and started moving toward the crate. In a flash, Dog understood this, and bolted upstairs, ending up in Son's room, sitting at the foot of Son's bed. "I'll sleep in here, if it's okay with you, Dad" was the look on his face.

I move him off of Son's bed, and he runs in and hops up on ours. "Well, okay, Dad, I'll sleep in here with you, if that's what you want." No, Dog, I want you in your crate. I carry him downstairs, set him down in front of the crate, and he circles around behind Wife. A couple more bits of coaxing, and he finally goes in.

I'm seeing that the words "dumb dog" will probably never be uttered in our house.

Bringing Home Baxter

2006-02-20T13:23:00.000-05:00

Well, we went and did it. We got ourselves a dog. A coworker's sister-in-law was looking for a good home for him, and decided that we're it. It's the first dog that either Wife or I have either one of us had, so it'll be an adventure.

He's fairly energetic, (although not quite as much as I was anticipating). When we got him home, he tore through the house, finding all of the kids' toys we had missed cleaning up, and chewing up several (although fortunately, since we were watching him quite closely, they were all ones we didn't mind him having). He also ripped through the fake bone you seen in the picture.

He's two years old, which means (hopefully) that he's past the worst of the puppy stage. He's both housetrained and cratetrained, which help, too. Of course, we did find a couple of piles in the house yesterday morning, after his first night with us, which we have attributed to his being left out of the crate and in a new place, but last night we crated him, and it went fine.

I'm sure I'll have lots more to post on this in the days to come. It's gonna be fun.

A Picture from Flickr

2006-02-03T14:20:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking I might just post links to a few of my favorite train pictures on Flickr. I subscribe to a few train-related RSS feeds, and add a few to my favorites list every day. Thus far, I'm up to almost 800 images. (Don't worry, I won't post them all here.)

This one has many of the things I love in a good train picture. I love long shots (i.e. shots taken with a 300mm or longer lens); I love trackwork (even simple stuff like sidings); I love signals (and the implication that they're controlling the flow of traffic). Add to that the fact that it's some place I've never been (Japan), and that I'm finding a growing love of passenger trains, and this one's a winner all the way around.

(Click on the image to go to the Flickr page.)

Latest Virus

2006-02-02T16:39:00.000-05:00

I would have blogged something earlier today, but I've been spending my afternoon making sure that this virus thing that's been going around isn't going to erase all of my DOC, XLS and MDB files.

Oh, wait, that's a Windows virus. Silly me. It won't affect me on my Mac or Linux boxes at all.

Now, how many years ago was it that Uncle Bill said that security was his top priority? Dontcha just feel so much safer? No?

Caring more about DRM

2006-01-31T11:38:00.000-05:00

I can't stand DRM. Digital Rights Management. A cute phrase that means that the folks who sell you content get to tell you exactly what you can do with that content. Can't stand it. Harumph.

I'd never buy a CD that I couldn't rip. If I couldn't rip it, I'd take it back. Or suffer the loss of quality and do an audio rip. Whatever. The reason is that I bought the music, I should be able to do what I want with it. Have a copy at home, a copy in the car, a copy at work, not being limited by the physical media. All very legal. I really don't care if others are ripping it so they can give it to 10,000 of their closest friends. I'm not, so stop trying to punish me like I do.

But up till now, I haven't really cared about DRM on video. DVDs are supposedly protected, although DeCSS exists to break that. Videotapes have that Macrovision stuff to make it so you can't copy them, too, although there are ways around that, too. But apart from my general dislike for DRM, it hasn't really bothered me. I've lost one or two tapes to defect or little hands, and it would have been nice to have had backup copies of them, but I doubt I would have bothered making copies anyway.

Until now. Today, I expect to get a DVI-to-S-Video adapter for my iMac. This'll let us send what's on the monitor to our TV (which sits a few feet away). This means that we'll be able to watch all those MST3K AVIs that I downloaded recently, and have burned onto DVD-ROMs. But it also means that we'll be able to throw some of our other DVDs onto our iMac's hard drive, and watch whatever, whenever, without having to go look for the disc.

Unless DRM can stop us.

Can you see why DRM is offensive? I paid for the disc. I paid for the computer, with a nice, big hard drive. But because I'm guilty until proven innocent, they're telling me "no, you can't copy what you paid for, even for legal purposes".

And what about copying all those old VHS tapes up, too? And maybe burning them onto DVDs to have in the car for long trips? Can't do that legally, either.

Or can I? One tenet of law says that's "fair use". Another says "you can't circumvent copy protection".

So am I a criminal, or not?

I can't stand DRM.

WB Offers Fake P2P

2006-01-30T14:23:00.000-05:00

Slashdot posted an article just now about how WB in Germany is going to try offering movies and shows via P2P.

Except they're not.

Real P2P means a few things. 1) It's free, as in "free pizza". WB's won't be. So far, so proper; it's their shows, after all. But WB says the price "will be similar to the cost of a DVD". So they get users to foot the distribution costs, they have no physical media costs, and pocket all of the cost savings. Yeah, right. Not to mention they "get control" of my computer and whatever piece of my upload bandwidth they want? Not on my computer, you don't.

2) It's peers, talking to peers. Get it? The "P" in P2P means "peer"! The article says nothing about being able to go get a movie from a friend, or even seeing what others have. This is not P2P.

3) It's free, as in "freely copyable". WB's? Nope. You may have bought it, but their "security features" won't let you make a copy. Your computer just crashed? So solly, buy it again. Want to put it on your laptop for a business trip? So solly, buy it again. Want to take it to your lake house on vacation? So solly, buy it again.

There are legal problems with P2P, as many folks use it, but there are benefits even within what is (or should be) legal. I'd use something like iTunes or Google Video, perhaps, (if they would offer something I wanted to watch), but if WB offers what they're sending out press releases about ... I'm just speechless.

You have got to be kidding.

Row by Row

2006-01-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

I'm still angry at my coworker, Bill, for this one. We've been on this Sudoku kick for a while now, and able to solve the harder ones with a bit of effort. So he (who has the best times in the office) decided to take things up a notch.

He suggested doing the puzzles one cell at a time, left-to-right, top-to-bottom. With no marking. Grrr, talk about breaking my brain.

The thing is, doing it that way means juggling tons of cells in your head at once, even on the easy puzzles. It's more of a mental workout than I've ever enjoyed getting in the past. (Which probably explains why I'm not so good at chess, now that I think about it...)

Anyway, if regular Sudoku is getting to easy for ya, give it a shot.

Getting TV Series from Netflix

2006-01-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

One thing we've been doing lately has been getting a TV series from Netflix. They've got a good selection of TV shows on DVD, and it's a good way to catch up on some shows we never saw (as we haven't had broadcast channels for the past few years). And without commercials, too.

The problem is this: sometimes, there's a "short wait" status on the show we're watching, and we'd rather have Netflix wait a day, and send us the next in the series, rather than skip it and send us the next movie in our queue. (Netflix is good enough not to send us, say, disc 4 until we've seen disc 3, but they will skip to the next movie in-queue, which, if we're engrossed in one show, may not be what we want.)

Our solution: set up a new profile, and only put that season of that show into the queue. This way, they've got nothing else to send us until that next disc comes available. In our case, we already had a "parents" and a "kids" profile, so we just took the allowable movies assigned to "parents" and put them on the new "tv" queue. Worked like a charm. The "parents" queue is still out there for when we finish the series and want to go back to movies for a while.

Of course, if the status went to "long wait" for some reason, we'd probably switch back to the regular way of doing things, but for now, it's quite nice.

Now if we could just stop watching cliffhanger TV shows...

Sun Palace - Give Me a Perfect World

2006-01-25T14:26:00.000-05:00

The vocalist on this one has a really pretty voice, but these tracks were a bit too dreamy for my tastes. Worth taking a listen to, though, if you like the dreamier side of, say, Enya.

Netflix Throttling

2006-01-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

I love Netflix. We've been signed up for a few months now, and it's great. I'm getting much more out of this than I ever did from cable/satellite, and at only 1/3 the price.

So I went looking for more info on how they operate, and found a couple of things of interest.

First is an article on the Fast Company website. It seems that their warehouses have no shelves, and that they scan their entire inventory daily, finding it to be faster than going and finding the DVDs that they want. Fascinating article.

Second is just how many people complain about "throttling".

The accusations are that Netflix plays shady games with when they admit receiving your discs, and when and what they send out to you. My experience with when they receive discs into their system is this: apart from weekends, they've always received movies the day after I put it into the mail, except in the week or two before Christmas. (Now who, pray tell, expects anything to flow through the postal service in the two weeks before Christmas?) The weekend thing seems to be that if you put it into Friday's mail, they get it on Monday. If you put it into Saturday's mail, they may get it Monday, or they may get it Tuesday. This makes sense, if you realize that they're trying to receive two days' mail in one day. They may not get through it all.

Now what about juggling what/when they send to you? Do they play favorites? Turns out, when you read their terms of service, under the allocation section, they tell you that they do exactly that. A guy named Michael did some experimenting, and wrote up just what goes on and just how you can be effected. My experience pretty much mirrors Michael's; I'm guessing we're not quite rock bottom, but we do get more delays than when we first signed up.

But despite my being at a little lower priority than others, I'm still loving the service, and am happy to suggest it to others.

Phalanx

2006-01-20T12:17:00.000-05:00

And speaking of fun puzzles, I went on another search for a chess game. I wanted one that runs on Linux, is freely copyable, and is easy enough for me to beat now, but hard enough to be a challenge should I get any better.

GNUChess and Crafty both fit the first two criteria, but both clean my clock with both hands tied, and neither have easy settings to let me weaken their play. No fun. (Technically, you can turn stuff off on Crafty, but I never figured out how to strengthen it gradually.)

Then I found an article on devalia.org talking about this very issue. Seems there's a chess game called Phalanx that, on its easiest setting, is more than weak enough for me to win, but at its hardest, is strong enough for me to play for years to come.

Now I just need to play.

Sudoku

2006-01-19T15:59:00.000-05:00

Son and I were looking through Toys-R-Us after Christmas, searching for a way to spend a gift card he got, and we passed through a book section. Sitting on a box, out of place, was the book "Sudoku for Dummies". I like the Dummies books, (although I tend to not want to tell the world via my bookshelf that I'm a dummy; let 'em figure it out on their own), and usually, they only put out Dummies books on popular topics, so I picked it up.

And was instantly doomed.

Back in middle school, I got some logic word puzzles, where by elimination you filled in a grid, searching for, i.e. each person's hair color, eye color, pet's name, etc., given clues like "Ben doesn't have green eyes", etc. I loved 'em. The easy ones only had three or four sets of clues to resolve, while the harder ones had more like 9. I went through them all.

Enter Sudoku. It's similar, except no word puzzles. It's just a nine-by-nine grid, with a few numbers already filled in. Trick is, each number 1-9 can only appear once in each row, column, and 3x3 cell. And that's all the clues you need to fill in the whole puzzle, number by number.

They come in various levels of difficulty. Son has been enjoying the easy ones, while I've been doing the harder ones, and am currently trying some that are 16x16, rather than 9x9.

If you're curious, there are sites that describe the game much better, and others that will generate you games to play, for free.

But be warned. It's addictive!

Ikea

2006-01-18T12:13:00.000-05:00

We went to Ikea over my Christmas vacation. First, let me say that Ikea is neat stuff. It's good quality furniture, in a nice store. You get to put it together yourself, usually, but it's not usually a problem, and for a simple afternoon project, it can be pretty fun.

But a few things made this trip different.

First, we didn't just get one item. We got five. By the time I was finished putting them all together, I was all funned out.

Second, picking out that many items wore me and kids out. Wife just keeps on going; must be a gender thing. Then we get to pull all of the items from the shelves. More weariness. Then stand in line, for maybe half an hour (although at this point it seemed much longer, as you can imagine).

Only to get up to the register and be told that we were missing some boxes. In all of my previous Ikea shopping experiences, everything came in one box. Seems this time, three of our selections were in two boxes each. Back to the shelves, fill another cart with heavy boxes, back to the line, another half-hour-that-seemed-much-longer.

Third. We did think to bring the van, but were a bit optimistic about how much would fit in it. Suffice it to say, we got it all in, but for a while, I was wondering if we would need for Son to ride up on top.

Fourth, we got home, and found that the first piece we wanted to put together, a new bed for Son, was missing the hardware and instructions. Called Ikea, and a very nice and helpful person said that they'd mail it out to us in a week to 10 days. Harumph. They were right, too. It took a week. Emailed us the instructions as a PDF, though. Pretty neat.

After all this, I am still an Ikea fan, but I'm certainly hoping to not do that again anytime soon. Whew.

Drop Trio - Cezanne

2006-01-17T11:03:00.000-05:00

If I had never heard any Drop Trio before, I'd say this is a really cool album. Not quite my style of jazz (a little too adventuresome for my tastes), but very well played, and lots of fun.

The problem is, their first album (Big Dipper) is now one of my current top ten favorite albums. I've listened to it probably at least once a week since I heard/bought it (I heard it; moments later I bought it). So I was hoping for more of the same, or at least something similar.

Seems like Cezanne is a live album with covers of several Big Dipper tracks, as well as some new cuts. And while Big Dipper is a Rhodes-and-Hammond release, Cezanne is largely piano with some R&H and other synth work in places.

I was hoping for Big Dipper, Part 2, and have to be satisfied with an album that's merely very good. Heavy sigh.

Minor Note

2005-11-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, I haven't been blogging much here lately. Funny thing, that. I've actually been working on my railroad simulator at lunch instead of surfing for stuff to blog, and then blogging it. And at home, I've either been doing family stuff, or watching Netflix movies. (And I have to admit, I got a little weary trying to come up with reviews.)

So anyway, I am blogging my dev efforts over on my other blog (although why even I would want to read that is beyond me), and I am still out here.

Cello and Guitar Duets

2005-11-22T13:41:00.000-05:00

Son started playing cello this school year (3rd grade). A couple of weeks ago, I dug out my guitar, and started playing chords to his practising. To the surprise of both of us, it's been a lot of fun for us both. He says "it sounds more like a real song", and has gotten slightly annoyed with me on a couple of occasions when I goofed up and had us start over. For me, it gives me a real live reason to play, and of course is a welcome chance to do something with Son.

And for both of us, it's been a great help with our timing. Son would be all over the map, tempo-wise, paying much more attention to the notes rather than the timing; now, he does a great job of keeping time, and enjoys counting off to start ("1, 2, 3, 4", or "1, 4, hut, hike" or sillier).

Big, big win.

Nails

2005-11-07T10:47:00.000-05:00

When you have no nails your hammer grows restless, and you begin to throw sideways glances at screws and pieces of string. -- Jarkko Hietaniemi

Young Children and Language

2005-11-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

On a recent trip, I was sitting next to Daughter (age 4) on the plane, eating our dinner, and she looked like she was done with her sandwich. I asked her if I could have the last bite, and she said yes. As I finished it, she got upset with me, saying "I didn't say you could eat it *ALL*!"

I explained to her that "last bite" did in fact mean "all", but it got me thinking. Kids are new to the language. It's more obvious with little kids, but even older kids don't yet have a full command of every expression.

Just one more way that kids require patience and understanding.

Miss Congeniality, I and II

2005-11-01T13:23:00.000-05:00

A fashion unconscious FBI agent goes undercover in a beauty pageant to catch a badguy. In the process, she grows to like and understand her "fellow" contestants. Nothing really highbrow going on here.

Sandra Bullock is the agent. I've really liked just about everything I've seen her in, and up to a point, this one was no exception. For being as attractive as she is, she does a very credible unattractive (or at least insecure) part. And Michael Caine was great, too, as the image guy who has to make her into a credible contestant. Oh yeah, let's not forget William "The Man" Shatner. (Or should we?) Naw, he was fun in it, too. (We have a running family gag about who the greatest actor of all time is: Shatner or Adam West? You be the judge...)

Above, I said "up to a point". That point was about 2/3rds of the way through the movie, at the point where you learn who the badguy is. It was the oddest thing: after that moment, it was like a different writer/director took over, and it became a different movie. And not that good a movie, either.

Anyway, apart from that, it was a tolerable movie, although not really one I was all that interested in seeing again.

And lately, Wife rented MCII, which I skipped. She said it wasn't worth the rental: predictable and trite, mildly amusing.

Robots

2005-10-31T14:44:00.000-05:00

We got this one off Netflix.com, and then managed by coincidence to have Sister-in-law get Son a copy for his birthday. It's pretty fun, and darn pretty to watch as well. (If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a sucker for animation eye candy.)

Overall, the story on this one was decent; nothing to write home about, but fun. One thing that did grab me was the emphasis on what a throwaway culture we have. I've long wanted, for instance, simpler cars, and ones that don't become obsolete. But, as it's not a priority for the buying public, it's not going to happen from manufacturers. But, I digress...

And did I mention that it's pretty? (Oh yeah, I did.) William Joyce was involved in its making (I forget if he was director or producer or what); he did the Roly Poly Olie show on one of the cable channels, which I really liked as well, and Robots has a very similar feel to it. (Art Deco, is it?)

So I'm looking forward to watching the copy we have again. Decent stuff.

Edward Scissorhands

2005-10-28T13:27:00.000-04:00

Wife has wanted me to see this one for a while now, so we put it in the queue, and watched it. This one was odd in a generally good way.

On the good side, it was visually very striking. Terrific contrast between the gray of the castle, and the pastel of suburbia. The characters were really interesting and well played. (It was neat to see a young Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder.)

Storywise, the movie was an interesting adaptation of Frankenstein. Edward was the misunderstood creation trying to fit in; you never really saw much of "the inventor". And as you'd expect from a Frankenstein movie, it ended a bit sad, (although it certainly could have been a lot more tragic).

On the bad side, while the suburbanites were clearly supposed to be stereotypes, (which was fun in most of the characters), we get to see yet another psychotic/evil religious character. I suppose they were still in vogue back in 1990. (As if they aren't, still.)

Not a movie that I'm just dying to see again or own, but it was amusing for the evening.

Free Isn't Really Free

2005-10-24T14:16:00.000-04:00

Wife got a Craft Robo (CR). It's a neat machine. It looks like an inkjet printer, but instead of printing, it cuts. Or, think of a small plotter that "draws" with a blade. I've been playing with it a bit, too, and it's gobs of fun. The machine is identical to (same manufacturer as) another cutter called Wishblade (WB). The only difference is the software that comes with each. CR's software lets you cut directly from any TrueType font; WB's software, at present, does not.

So WB owners, to compensate for this, have been tracing fonts; both WB and CR owners have been tracing the outlines of a variety of other designs (clip art, photos, etc.) to be able to cut with their machines. Both machines' software let you save the results in a sort of vector file to re-use.

Or to share.

Well, the web is rife with free fonts and free clip art. Except it really isn't free, is it? Or is it? It's the next verse of the song that the CC folks and Larry Lessig have been singing for quite a while: what can we do with the media we acquire?

In this case, gathering the media (fonts, clip art, etc.) is permissable and encouraged (by the websites that offer it, from the creators, for free), but nobody says anything about derivative works. So this particular group of about 1300 WB/CR owners I've been reading are alternately either breaking the law (or not; who knows for sure) or refusing to share or accept content, unless folks can track down the content creator and get permission.

I did find one clip art site that requires all submissions to be either CC-licensed or public domain, from which I then proceeded to download an image, trace it, and upload the trace file to a WB/CR site for all to use. But many of these WB/CR owners are sitting on hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of "free" fonts, and tons of "free" clip art, that they'd love to trace and share, but can't or won't for fear of infringement.

Let's just say it again: copyright law, which applied adequately (I suppose) in the pre-Internet era, is now broken. When/how can this be fixed?

More Lessig on Creative Commons

2005-10-20T16:26:00.000-04:00

The latest of Lessig's introductory comments on Creative Commons can be found on his blog.

Titan A.E.

2005-10-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

I remembered seeing the ads for this when it came out, and had wanted to see it, but hadn't. As far as the story and plot, it was tolerable, if predictable, and amusing at spots. As a visual treat, it was top notch. I'm guessing it was one of the first mixed 3D/2D movies, and was really impressive. Not one to buy, perhaps, but okay for a rental.

International Spy Museum

2005-10-18T10:35:00.000-04:00

For his birthday, we (myself and Brother-in-Law (or BIL)) took Son and Cousin to (cue James Bond theme) the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. It was enjoyed, in decreasing order, by myself, BIL, Son and Cousin.

First, the good stuff. The museum was very nicely put together, if a tiny bit crowded. They do suggest getting advanced tickets, although that adds to the price. The exhibits run through pretty much all of history, and all of spydom, from B.C. and biblical references to Cold War and current affairs, and from code cracking to assasination to transfer of secrets to wiretapping and bugging. In most cases, they had examples of the hardware they were describing, and several short films (5-10 minutes) were playing constantly. They even had an air duct you could crawl through and spy on the folks below, which Son and Cousin loved. And the gift shop, while expectedly overpriced, was a lot of fun, too. The Spy Cafe, next door, was where we ate lunch, and that was decent as well. The whole thing took about 2.5 hours to go through.

Now the "bad" stuff. It was a lot of reading, which Son, just turned 9, tolerated, but Cousin, age 8.5, had no patience for. As a result, they were moving through things much faster than I was. BIL wound up following them, and they got to the gift shop awhile before I did. Wife mentioned later that the website does suggest ages 11 and up, so we were taking that chance. Also, we got to DC around noon, and found no street parking, and almost no open parking garages. We finally parked about 5 blocks away, (at G & 13th streets, in case you're interested; the museum is at F and 9th), and walked it. So nothing really bad, but just stuff to be aware of.

I've wanted to take the family to DC for a number of years, to see all the sights, but this continues to make me want to wait a few more, until the kids are older and better able to appreciate it all. (But I sure had fun...)

soundtransit.nl

2005-10-17T11:53:00.000-04:00

I mentioned recently getting interesting links in blog comments; soundtransit.nl is one of them. It's a CC-licensed repository for soundscapes. People go out and record various things, and upload them. The sounds on the site range from ambient sounds from backyards, libraries and churches to trains and air traffic controller conversations. And all available for remixing. Neat stuff.

Lilo and Stitch 2

2005-10-17T11:52:00.000-04:00

Because the first one was so good, we got the 2nd. For about the first 2/3rds, I was underwhelmed, but it kinda pulled it out at the end, so I gave it 3 of 5 stars when I rated it on Netflix. It's tolerable for a rental, and does have some nice animation (mixing the 2D and 3D stuff with the spaceships).

K-Nex roller coaster

2005-10-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

For his birthday last year (or maybe for Christmas), Son got a K-Nex R/C car and a K-Nex roller coaster. The car was a bit over his head to put together, and a bit hard to control, and so we shelved the roller coaster, and sort of forgot about it. Well, the recent amusement park trips got him remembering it, and we pulled it out and put it together.

It was still a bit over his head, as far as doing it himself, so he clicked the parts together, and I told him what to click. It went together over a few nights of effort, and is actually a really cool toy/model. As a roller coaster, it's small, but works quite nicely, as the single car grips the rubber tubes with wheeled grips, and just whips around the track. I mentioned it being small; it's a little figure eight, with the track going under the lift and back around to the bottom.

Of course, now I want to get 5 or 6 more such kits, and put a real roller coaster together in the basement. :)

Lessig on the Creative Commons

2005-10-13T10:22:00.000-04:00

Lawrence Lessig has started up a series of posts describing the basics of the Creative Commons, talking about some of the problems that CC aims to solve, and how a CC license works. The first two posts can be found here and here. A good introduction or review, for those just getting up to speed.

Hacking my Camry (sort of)

2005-10-12T11:42:00.000-04:00

I've got a 2004 Camry. I took it into the dealer at 4000 miles (they had a $5-for-first-oil-change special, so I bit); all was well. At 5000, a light came on on the dash saying "Maint Reqd" for Maintenance Required. I guessed at the time that the dealer should have reset something but didn't.

So I went in for an oil change today. Asked the guy what was up with the light, and he showed me how to turn it off:

Turn key to Acc
Hold odometer push-button in
Turn key to On
Watch the odometer reading turn to dashes
Watch the dashes slowly disappear
When the dashes all go away, and turn to zeroes, release the odometer button

And voila, the light goes out and stays out for another 5000 miles.

I asked if I could somehow change the setting to have the light come on at some arbitrary mileage (like 3500 or 4000, which is when I like to get my oil changed), but he didn't know of any way to get anything but 5000.

Anyway, thought it was cool, and wish it had been in the manual (not that I would have found it by reading it, of course :).

Update: From the comments on blogspot.com: "make sure you're using the main
odometer; not the trip". Indeed, I had just run across this on my last oil
change, when the service person couldn't get it to reset because it was on
trip. When we put it over to main, it worked fine. Thanks, anonymous
commenter.

Moulin Rouge

2005-10-12T11:32:00.000-04:00

Can't tell you much about this, except Wife didn't make it more than about 30 minutes into it before turning it off. I wandered through the room, and what I saw in about 15 seconds was too weird to interest me. Weird in a bad way, that is; some flavors of weird (I'm thinking about Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam) are right up my alley, but this wasn't it.

What Do You Do When Everyone Hates You?

2005-10-12T11:22:00.000-04:00

Apparently, Forrester Research just released a study talking about the woes of the music industry. This prompted an article on TechWeb talking about the one big fact missing from the report: you know you're in trouble as a business when everyone hates you. From the musicians (who create their product) to the music lovers (who buy it), the music industry has earned itself a lot of spite.

Of course, the fact that the article points out that consumers largely don't pay attention to record labels works in their behalf as well, as few people say things like "I don't buy Sony". But folks are at least starting to say "I don't buy RIAA", which tends to target all of the big guys.

Anyway, the article also mentions the music industry's going through the "5 stages of death and dying", which was amusing, and echoes one of my earlier points that publishers are becoming increasingly irrelevant. All in all, a good read.

Ehren Starks - Lines Build Walls

2005-10-06T11:29:00.000-04:00

I was pretty excited to hear that Ehren Starks had a new album, "Lines Build Walls", out on Magnatune.com, and finally got around to giving it a listen.

First off, let me say that I did enjoy it quite a bit. It's quite energetic, very nicely played, and an all-around good album.

I was bummed, though, to find that it was just solo piano. I had really liked his first album, as all of the pieces were piano and cello, which I'm really finding that I like. (In fact, I played a couple of tracks from "Depths of a Year" for my Son, who was considering whether to start taking cello in school this year). I also liked the jazzier feel that Depths had; Lines was more "straight-up", and not as adventuresome.

Again, Lines is quite good, but just not the same kind of music as Depths.

Someone Else's Dad

2005-10-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

I got a haircut yesterday. When I got home, I yelled a hello down to the basement to my kids, and Daughter, age 4.5, came to the foot of the stairs to say hello back. She saw me and said, "You got your hair cut! You look like someone else's dad."

Lego Star Wars

2005-10-04T13:02:00.000-04:00

Apart from helping my daughter play Monsters, Inc. on the PS1, (which is still a darn fun game, btw), about the only game I've been playing recently is Lego Star Wars. Son rented it awhile back, and Wife's mother, Grammy, got it for him for an end-of-school-type present, he liked it so much.

The whole Star Wars universe is compelling to me. From Episode 4 through Episode 1 (yeah, I still haven't seen Eps 2 or 3 yet; we've got Netflix now, so I'll be fixing that), I just want to jump in and live in that world. But most of the Star Wars games are, understandably, rated T-Teen, and until Son is is teen, (or at least closer), we're avoiding "T" games.

Enter Lego Star Wars. The characters look like the little Lego figures, and many of the game elements are "made" from Lego bricks. The scene background is drawn like the movies, however, making the whole game play like you're a Lego guy in the Star Wars world.

And it's great fun. It's aimed at the 8-12-yr-old set, making it great for Son, while not so easy for me that it isn't a challenge. It covers the Star Wars world from Eps 1-3, and is not nearly so grim as apparently Eps 2 and 3 are reputed to have been in theatres. There are maybe 15 levels in all, some that you can finish in 5-10 minutes, and others that might take 30 or more to complete properly. There are usually several goals in each, such as getting all of the "studs" (i.e. money), collecting "mini-kit pieces" (that the game uses to build star ships from the movies), and a main story with puzzles to be solved (i.e. defeating Darth Maul, winning the pod race, etc.)

And even better, it's 2-player cooperative. Some games (i.e. the Gran Turismo games) will split the screen to let you compete against player 2; LSW lets two players work together to solve the level. Both are on-screen in the same view, which means players need to stay somewhat close together, but doing so is only a minor nuisance at times, and really, if you're cooperating, you should be together anyway. Either player can jump in or drop out at any time, which is also nice.

Anyway, whether it's playing with Son, or waiting for him to go to bed so I can play the game myself, it's gobs of fun, and one I expect to unwind with for a while yet to come. (At present, if you're interested, I've gotten all the Jedi Meters filled, all the levels complete, I've bought the Mini-kit detector, and I'm working on getting all the mini-kits and buying all of the characters.)

Elf

2005-10-03T13:31:00.000-04:00

I guess I should mention this one, too, although it's been a little while since I saw it. But with Christmas coming up...

Yeah, this was a funny movie. Will Ferrell was hilarious as the elf. It's the first movie of his that I've seen, and he does a really wonderful job as a naive elf headed for the big city.

We rented, borrowed and otherwise watched this several times as a family, and it just stays watchable. Really, really good.

Kahvi Collective

2005-09-30T13:28:00.000-04:00

Not sure where I found this, nor why I haven't mentioned it until now, but I've found a really decent podcast for electronica: The Kahvi Collective. I've listened to maybe 12 "shows", and while a couple were a bit unusual, all were quite listenable, and I didn't turn any off early. In fact, I've saved them all, and had a Kahvi day at work last week where I went through them all again. All of their releases are music-only, no talk, and are CC-licensed.

640x480x256

2005-09-29T15:17:00.000-04:00

Went on a road trip for business, and without a laptop, had to make do with the only machine they had available at the time. It was a Win98 box, running at a resolution of 640x480, and 256 colors. It was painful! I remember 256 colors as being pretty neat back when it was a step up from 16, but when it's a step down from 16- or 32-bit true color, well, ouch.

Of course, the small resolution was painful as well, especially when viewing websites. Gmail pretty much assumes 800x600, and nobody that I know of even runs that small any longer (except for that one box at one of our clients, that is). To their credit, the rest of their machines are much newer, with nice flat panel displays, etc.

Good thing I kept busy with other things, and didn't need to use it much...

Big Fish

2005-09-28T09:52:00.000-04:00

When I mentioned in a staff meeting that I had seen Big Fish, everyone who had seen it raved about it, (including myself). It's about a guy and his dad; the dad has spent his life telling these wonderfully elaborate stories about his life, which the son assumes to be pure fiction. As the movie unfolds, the son finds out more about what's fiction and what isn't, and finally gets to know his father.

I have to say that while I loved the movie, the son's character didn't do much for me. Other than that, the fantasy aspects were wonderful, and the people you meet were delightful. An added bonus for me is that it was set in the South, which tugs at a part of who I am.

Interestingly, it's a Tim Burton film, but not nearly so strong visually as many of his other films. At the same time, it was exactly what it should have been, and as I've said, very enjoyable as a result.

Ruthless Pruning

2005-09-27T11:51:00.000-04:00

I've felt lately like I've been spinning my wheels a bit. Gotten frustrated that I feel like I'm doing way too much and getting nowhere at any of it. So Friday, I decided to "take the day off". I came to work, as usual, but determined that I would leave my email off, avoid breaks to look at various pursuits I'm interested in (i.e. bloglines.com, del.icio.us, etc.), and just make it a light, pursuit-free day.

The results were amazing. I was vastly more relaxed than I've been in a long while, and while I never really intended to "focus hard on work", I was more productive than I've been lately, too.

So over the weekend, and today, I went through my RSS feeds in bloglines, my "daily" list in del.icio.us, and my podcast subscriptions, and whacked them to bits. I'm down to 35 RSS/podcast feeds for the first time in ages (from a high in the upper 60's), and I'm going to avoid del.icio.us for a while.

Liberation! Man, it feels good to be free! (Now let's see how long this lasts...)