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DIY PVR 3: Hardware

2011-06-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

Since reading this Coding Horror article on Jeff Atwood's new dvr setup, I've been contemplating switching from TiVo to Windows Media Center. One of the good things about Media Center is that you can pick your own hardware, but that means that you have to pick your own hardware. Someone needs to sell a prebuilt, preconfigured HTPC to compete with TiVo.

My requirements were simple- it has to incorporate a cablecard (with switched video)-compatible tuner. It has to look nice- like it belongs with TV equipment (tower cases are out). I'm looking for as inexpensive as possible, without being cheap.

I looked briefly into prebuilt options- the Dell Zino HD and HP Pavilion Slimline. They both have blu-ray options and look pretty nice, but it didn't seem worth it to me to go either route- they were around $600 each, thus not saving me much; the Zino would require a network tuner; the HP isn'tquite complete enough to avoid outside purchases.

Case - Antec Fusion Remote ($150) + Antec EarthWatts EA 380D ($35)

Choosing a case and remote took the most amount of time by far. The trend in HTPCs is to go small- real small. Mac Mini small. Ordinarily I'd agree, but I wanted to re-use internal hard drives (not a single laptop-sized drive), and I wanted an internal tv tuner. Figuring out which cases are good quality (and still being sold) was tough, since we're talking cooling and airflow and noise in addition to the all-important will-it-break factor. I eventually came across silentpcreview's recommendations, and from there chose the Antec Fusion because it had the necessary internal space and looks nice. With children around, the volume knob will certainly have to be disabled (not sure why it's there in the first place), but the LCD display looks kind of neat and LCD Smartieis surprisingly well supported by Media Center plugins. Unfortunately, it's ~$150 price tag doesn't include a power supply, so I added an Antec Earthwatts EA 380D, which is Bronze 80+ certified. It's probably overkill (Jeff's using a similar setup at less than 60 watts), but it will hopefully be energy efficient, cool and quiet.

Remote - ???

Finding the right remote was the most difficult task. TiVo has me spoiled- their remote is great. It has the buttons you need, feels good, and is easy to figure out. There are a lot of remote options for WMC computers, and some look really nice. Unfortunately, a lot of them simply won't control the TV- I need power, volume, and input buttons; I want a remote as universal as possible. One option is the Logitech Harmony family of remotes, but I had one a few years ago and it wasn't all that I hoped it would be- it was over complicated (even once everything was set up) and the batteries (4 AAs!) died quickly. I don't need an LCD display on my remote, and I don't need different modes, and it only needs to control 2 devices- the TV and the computer. After much searching, I decided to try several- a TiVo Glo remote (after I bought it, it struck me that the lights probably make the battery run out faster- d'oh! Looks like you can turn it off, though), the bundled Antec Fusion remote (it's free, might as well try it out), and the discontinued Philips Multimedia remote (I hope this is it for $28 [I also hope that's a real store]). Maybe eventually I'll try out the TiVo Slide remote, too- the bluetooth functionality is appealing.

Processor - Intel Core i3-2100T ($135)
For the CPU I went with Jeff's choice of the Intel i3 2100T for its combination of high computing power, low power consumption, and low temperature (thus quieter). It also has an integrated on-die video chip, thus removing need for a video card (reducing electricity usage, heat, etc).

Motherboard - ASRock H67M ITX ($100)

I also went with Jeff's coice of motherboard. I considered getting a larger one since I have a larger case, but matching up motherboards features to find a good one to go with the 2100T wasn't a very exciting proposition. This one has an integrated audio chip, HDMI and DVI output, and TOSLINK (optical) output, which are exactly the connectors that I need. Plus, if I want to get a different case, the MiniITX form factor will let me put it in any case I want. The only downsides are the single PCIe slot and only 2 DIMM slots.

RAM - Corsair 4GB DDR3 ($45)

I remember back in the late 90's when my dad upgraded the ram in his computer, doubling it to 8MB. That 4MB upgrade cost $150! Today, ram is practically nothing- I got 4GB for around $40. I expect 4GB will be more than enough, and if it's not, upgrading is easy and cheap.

TV Tuner - Ceton InfiniTV4 - ($300)

Although there are networked TV tuners that would fit the bill, I decided that I wanted as much as possible in one case- thus fewer power cables, fewer things to plug in, fewer boxes under the tv, fewer things to go wrong. The InfiniTV4 looks like it will work great- 4 tuners, man! Plus, it's been temporarily reduced by $100 to $299, making it only $50 more than the HDHomeRun Prime 3cc, which doesn't ship until later in the month. One extra tuner for $50 seems worth it to me.

HDD - Crucial RealSSD C300 ($125)

I've heard good things about Solid State Drives and their sweet, sweet transfer rates. I already have a large capacity drive (1TB, plus the 2TB drive that's plugged into the TiVo), but I wanted a separate drive for the windows installation. SSDs are great for boot times and program startup times, but not that great for storing media (even if I could afford it). I picked out a 64GB one that should be more than enough for what I need. There's a lot to know about buying SSDs (like MLC vs SLC) and I didn't research very well, but I did choose one listed as SATA III and having a perfect 5-egg rating over 289 reviews. What could go wrong?

Blu-Ray - Samsung Black 12X BD-ROM ($65)
I need a blu-ray drive for both playing Netflix movies and ripping my own discs, so I picked a regular old drive. Nothing special, but the reviews were good.

My total was around $950 before shipping, not counting the Philips remote. It's certainly more than the $700 for TiVo + lifetime subscription (at least, that was how much I paid 3 years ago for the HD), but it's going to do a whole lot more. Not included in my hardware list are the Windows 7 Home Premium license that I already have (family pack, natch) and the 1TB drive that will be repurposing. I'm also expecting to spend $100 for blu-ray playback software, and purchase/donate to several Media Center plugins.

Once all the hardware arrives I'll post my experiences putting it all together and setting up the super-sweet experience.

DIY PVR 2: The Promise

2011-06-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

After being a loyal TiVo user for 10 years- not to mention converting my wife, parents, and sisters- I'm not going to switch to anything unless it's significantly better. For reference, here is an in-depth comparison of the TiVo Premiere UI and Windows Media Center 7. It looks like MC7 beats TiVo in all but a couple areas that I care about (most significantly, the ability to undelete shows). Here are some of the features I'm expecting to get out of this effort.

Beauty
MC7 has a very stylish UI. Reflection effects abound, and everything is fast. It appears to be just as easy to use as TiVo (if not more)- this will greatly help with wife acceptance.

4+ Tuners
TiVo has just announced new Premiere models that will have 4 tuners, but MC7 beat them to the punch. There are cablecard-capable tuner cards (and network tuners) that can decode 4-6 shows at once, and you can even have multiple cards. We have occasionally had the need for a 3rd tuner (Thursday nights can get pretty crowded); 4 is just gravy. Any more would be waste, but who knows- in a few years I might have a different opinion.

TV Shows
I'm not sure exactly what to expect here- MC7 doesn't sort by date recorded when shows are grouped, which is a TiVo feature that we use all the time. However, Recorded TV HD does hold a lot of promise, such as grouping shows by family member- finally, I don't have to see the kids shows in the list! Plus, it looks fantastic- automatically downloading show artwork.

Web Video
We'll occasionally miss an episode, want to catch up on a newly discovered show, or see adverts for webisodes- what to do? All this content on the internet, and TiVo is out of the loop. Hulu is coming to Premiere, but AFAICT not to the TiVo HD. Who wants to get up, go to the computer, and play/watch them there? MC7 has plugins for Netflix, Youtube, TED, and others- plus, if worst comes to worst, we can just fire up a browser and watch it on the website.

Music
I have my music collection and Sandy has hers, but playback has been mostly relegated to iPods and at the computer. MC7 has an awesome UI for playing music along with visualizers, photos, or a collage of cover art.

Blu-ray
We love the TiVo UI, so it's always a shame when we have to switch to the Playstation 3 to play DVDs or Blu Rays. It does a good enough job, but it's missing the 10-second replay button, the on-screen playback position (though the "display info" button does show you the progress). I also don't care for the ceremony of switching all the inputs over to watch a movie, then again to go back to TV.

I'm not quite sure what the future holds here, since the Blu Ray player is 3rd party software, but I'm sure it will work out ok. Certainly no worse than what we have now, and even if it is, we can continue to use the PS3.

Movie Library
The built-in movie collection is good, and Media Browser is even better. I'm excited to browse through my movie collection, all on one machine, in one UI. Plus, the eye candy is incredible- it automatically downloads and displays artwork for the movie, plus it displays the actors with pictures. It is my understanding that there is a plugin that will let you see the trailer in the movie's info page. It's a quantum leap above our current system of going downstairs, looking through the shelf, picking a movie out, bring it back upstairs, putting it in, switching the inputs, etc.

Remote Access
TiVo does let you schedule recordings online- a must-have feature in this day and age. MC7 ups the ante with Remote Potato, which adds a web server for browsing the listings & scheduling recordings, then turns the dial to 11 by streaming recorded videos to mobile devices!

Extenders
TiVo is gaining some ground here with their recent announcement of the TiVo Preview, which lets you stream your recorded shows to another TV in your house. But Media Center has been serving recorded video (and music and more) to extenders for years. Unfortunately, the well for extenders seems to have dried up, leaving the Xbox 360 as the last one. We do have an Xbox 360, but it's hooked up to the same TV; if there was ever a compelling need, we could move it downstairs. Right now there are no plans to use extenders, but it's great knowing that we could.

Video Games
This is where MC7 starts to separate from what one would ever expect from a TiVo (or any DVR). There are several plugins that will browse rom collections and launch their emulator. I gave my PS2 to my brother, but I'll be able to play R-Type Final again- not to mention R-Type Delta, all my TurboGrafx-16, NES, SNES, Game Boy, GameCube, etc wirelessly using the PS3 controller! It looks like the Dolphin emulator can even play Wii games in HD- with the wiimote!

AirPlay
We love the iPhone/iPad, and take most of our pictures/videos with it. How great will it be when we can seamlessly stream pictures and videos to the TV- seconds after they're taken? Thank you, AirPlay!

AirPrint
The Mac Mini that I bought to be a media center might just have to retire- setting up the media center computer to be an AirPrint server will let us wirelessly print from our iOS devices without having to turn any (additional) computers on.

Caller ID

This is a project for a future date, but it looks like I can just plug in a USB modem that supports Caller ID, set up some software, and any calls will show up. If the caller is in Outlook, it'll even show their picture!

DIY PVR 1: TiVo Grievances

2011-06-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

I've been an avid TiVo supporter since I bought a Series 1 back in 2001. The leap beyond VCR was incredible- seeing episode titles and descriptions, season passes, suggested recordings, not running out of tape, and not being shackled to live tv. You could watch one show while recording another! I even upgraded the hard drive (20 hours is just not enough) and added a network card (to archive/share shows).

Over the years we've upgraded to a Series 2 and a TiVo HD. The HD was another leap forward- both by recording HD and adding a separate tuner: now we can record two shows at once while watching a third and downloading a fourth! They even added YouTube, Amazon Instant video, and Netflix (others, too, but these are the ones we use).

I still love TiVo, but it's showing its age. Sure, you can download videos off it (using TiVo ToGo) to put onto your iPad, but putting video onto it is a real bear- StreamBaby and pyTivo make it possible, but it's not a pleasant experience. It has Netflix, but the interface only allows you to watch your instant queue- no searching, no related movies, etc. The YouTube interface works well enough but is painfully slow to search; even just navigating the menus (favorites, for instance) is slow.

For these past ten years, TiVo has been great about updating its software- we got such essential features as the Deleted Items folder. But since the introduction of the Premiere, things have changed. They've come out with an iPad app for controlling the Premiere; they've promised an update to make it work with the HD with reduced functionality. The Premiere interface is nice, but it's slow.

The introduction of the premiere cuts off hope for improvement on the HD. I can't imagine that they'll come out with an update that will make moving or removing a season pass take less than the several minutes it currently takes (we have 50-100 season passes). It's unlikely that they'll add multiple user support (I just want the kids shows to not show up in the Now Playing List- they can just go into Kid Zone).

I've recently decided to digitize our video collection. I've been encoding DVDs, and have a modest collection. I setup a Mac Mini server running pyTivo and Streambaby in order to serve up to the TiVo- but so many headaches. They both can push the video so it shows in the Now Playing List, but good luck getting the ratings to show up consistently (important if you have parental settings turned on), and good luck maintaining a consistent folder list (like making a folder for all the Star Trek movies, so they don't litter your Now Playling List). And pushing Blu Ray rips take forever (literally- I cancelled the transfer after 2 or 3 days, with no indication that it transferred any of it). Cancelling transfers can lock up the UI. If the audio isn't in the correct format, transferring it will cause the machine to reboot.

For all its woes, the TiVo still does what it does well. I think that I'm just outgrowing it, and I'm looking for better solutions. It's the standard, but I think that I can do better- though not for cheaper. I'm going to build a Windows Media Center computer- an HTPC, if you will. We'll try it out, see how well it works, and if the TiVo is better, then we'll continue to use it (maybe even upgrade to a Premiere).

In the upcoming posts I will detail my expectations, hardware, and what the reality turns out to be.

Dandelions

2011-05-21T12:20:00.001-07:00

For about 1 week in spring, the dandelions come out and look pretty.

Ripping DVDs

2011-03-21T12:03:00.001-07:00

Since getting a Cisco/Linksys E3000 router running with a MiniDLNA server (via TomatoUSB), I’ve decided to start ripping our DVD collection into a format that can be played on:

TiVo HD (pushed via pyTivo or MiniDLNA)
iPhone 4
AppleTV 2

The commonly supported formats are MPEG2 and h.264; I’m opting for h.264 for the better compression even though it means that I lose subtitle support on the TiVo HD (maybe an update will fix it, right?).
Since others may want to replicate my work, here is my process:

1. Ripping

I’m using Windows 7 (64-bit), so unfortunately, DVD43 is not an option. Therefore the first step is to rip the DVD to remove the copy protection. I’ve been using the free DVD Decrypter to copy the disc to my hard drive.

2. Encoding

Handbrake gets me most of the way done; it’s a great (almost) single-step process. Here are my notes on dealing with the TiVo HD, using the streambaby video compatibility page as a starting point:

checking “Web Optimized” seems to do the same thing as MP4 FastStart or qt-faststart, though I’m not positive
when using h.264, if the framerate is variable and/or under 25fps, the TiVo will stutter and it won’t play right. Force the FPS to 29.97
I’ve found RF:18 to be a good quality setting; movies end up at about 2GB for a 2:30 hour movie.
I’m not sure exactly what the problem with the audio is, but when I use AC3 passthrough (on my Harry Potter DVDs, at least), the TiVo reboots itself the second the video is pushed to it. It could be that the audio sample rate is wrong or it’s VBR or something, so I set it to AC3 (ffmpeg) with a 48 sample rate and 160 bitrate.

I’ve created a HandBrake preset file (tivo.plist) to deal with these problems. It was made for version 0.9.5.
My process is thus:

set the preset to TiVo HD
add the Closed Caption track (more on the difficulties with that track later). I haven’t tried more than one track.
add chapter markers and import the chapter names via ChapterGrabber. Unfortunately, ChapterGrabber doesn’t save in the csv format used by HandBrake, so I save as a .chapters file and use a perl script (chapter2csv.pl) to change the format.
Encode. It runs at about 10-15fps, so a 2:30 movie takes about 5 hours.

3. TiVo Fixes

At this point, the file can be pushed to the TiVo, but the first few seconds will be green and blocky. After searching a while, I found that the problem is that the audio track needs to be before the video track. I’m not sure why, but it does fix it. So my process is:

run a MP4box (download here) command to fix the video:
mp4box dest.mp4 -add "source.m4v#2" -add "source.m4v#1" -add "source.m4v#3" -add "source.m4v#4"
(#1 is the video stream, #2 the audio, #3 is the subtitle stream and #4 is the chapter stream; use "mp4box -std -info source.m4v" to list the streams)
use MetaGenerator to create a .txt file with the metadata used by the pyTivo.
I'm conflicted about using pyTivoParsley2 to embed the metadata in the mp4; it seems that the description gets truncated when read by the TiVo and by pyTivo; and not all of the metadata is stored. I would prefer everything to be contained within the mp4, but I want complete data more.

4. iTunes Metadata

I've found that mp3tag works pretty well at setting the iTunes metadata (including cover/poster art) without having to add it to your library.

5. Done!

At this point I have a .mp4 and a .txt for each movie. I like to encode the trailers, too, and put them beside the movie (it helps, psychologically, to get into the mood to watch a movie).
They appear in the PS3 (and, presumably, Xbox 360) and are playable from there, and on the iPhone using a DLNA player (or, presumably, via adding to library and syncing it over).

6. Not Done?

The missing pieces that I haven't resolved yet are:

Thumbnails (via DLNA)- some images have them, some don't, and I've yet to see a video with a thumbnail, even though I've added a cover image to the file.
MiniDLNA currently doesn't serve videos to the TiVo- according to this forum post, it's been fixed, but there's not yet a new TomatoUSB build that incorporates this fix.
Even though the chapters and subtitles are stored in the file, only VLC will display them. Oddly, Media Player Classic displays the chapter names as subtitles; maybe reordering the subtitle/chapter streams will fix it?

Shamrock Shuffle 2010

2010-03-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

The Shamrock Shuffle is over. This was my first 10k, and I was pretty satisfied with my performance. I finished in 1:20:07 (slower than my training record of 1:07:52) with a 38:56 split (slower than my previous 5k of 36:59 and training record 33:44). But this course goes up UW Madison’s observatory hill, which is as steep as all get out. I was 784/794 total, and 367/368 of men. The fastest men finished in 34-35 minutes- less than half my time. Crazy.

I thought I was doing pretty well; I ran the first half at a pretty consistent pace, but people were passing me the whole way. Especially disheartening were those pushing strollers and double-strollers. The course is a there-and-back affair; I ran the first half without walking and most of the second. I’ve not been in a good training groove, and I could stand to lose about 20 pounds.

Of course, I was wearing my Vibram FiveFingers. Spring is coming, but the lake was still mostly frozen over, so it was pretty cold- probably in the 40s. Glad I had my Nike Fit Dry pants and jacket. I had the Nike+ and iPod on me, but I forgot to turn it on until mile 3, and it lost the workout anyways (thank goodness for nikeplusedit.com!)

Firefox Extensions

2010-01-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Functionality:

Xmarks
Sync or backup bookmarks and passwords
FEBE
Backup your Firefox profile and extensions

Appearance:

AdblockPlus
Download Statusbar
Downloads show up in the status bar, Chrome-style
Fission
Combine the progress meter with the address bar, Safari-style
Locationbar2
Formats and linkifies addresses in the location bar. Makes the domain stand out, IE-style.
Omnibar
Integrates search bar to the location bar, Chrome-style.
Link Target Display
Install this and you can turn off the status bar, Chrome-style.
Tab Progress Bar
Provides a progress meter for each tab
Tab Scope
Popup previews for tabs
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Menu Icons Plus
Adds icons to menus. Really improves the appearance of Firefox. These should be included with Firefox.
ImageZoom
Right-click to enlarge any image. Now you can hold right-click and use the wheel to zoom.
TinEye Reverse Image Search
Right-click on an image to find other instances of that image. Useful to find out if the image was photoshopped, or for larger versions.
RestartFirefox
Should be built-into Firefox. Adds a "Restart" menu option to the file menu.
Menu Editor
I use this to remove the "Open in New Window" menu entries.
LineMarker
Occasionally it's useful to be able to mark a line on a web page; e.g. when reconciling a bank statement, to be able to mark the transactions you've already gone through.
BetterGmail2
I prefer the IMAP interface to the web one, but this extension does add some cool things to the Gmail experience: hover color change, and Target Alert-style icons for attachments in the inbox view.
Duplicate Tab
Comes in handy every once in a while
Linkification
Also comes in handy every once in a while

Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

2010-01-20T08:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently, this is Julia Child's method:

Lay the eggs in the pan and add the amount of cold water specified. Set over high heat and bring just to the boil; remove from heat, cover the pan, and let sit exactly 17 minutes.
When the time is up, transfer the eggs to the bowl of ice cubes and water. Chill for 2 minutes while bringing the cooking water to the boil again. (This 2 minute chilling shrinks the body of the egg from the shell.)
Transfer the eggs (6 at a time only) to the boiling water, bring to the boil again, and let boil for 10 seconds - this expands the shell from the egg. Remove eggs, and place back into the ice water.

Chilling the eggs promptly after each step prevents that dark line from forming, and if time allows, leave the eggs in the ice water after the last step for 15 to 20 minutes. Chilled eggs are easier to peel, as well.

The peeled eggs will keep perfectly in the refrigerator, submerged in water in an uncovered container, for 2 to 3 days.

NOTES : The perfect hard boiled egg has a tender white, and a yolk properly set. There is not the faintest darkening of yolk where the white encircles it (a chemical reaction caused by too much heat in the cooking process). Eggs cooked this way can also be peeled neatly.

Halloween 2009

2009-10-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

The house is decorated!

Deck is Stained

2009-08-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

After many days of work and 3 gallons of stain, the deck is finally stained (2 coats). With my dad's help, we tightened some bolts and replaced some boards (including the entire railing). It's 16' x 16', so it was a lot of work.

I had to use a ladder for the outside bottom and lean over the railing to do the top

You can see how gray and warped some of the wood was

Look at that those beautiful water beads!

Finished (for this year)

Braid

2009-05-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

Have I never blogged about Braid? It hardly seems possible. I've talked, thought, and told people about it more than any other subject on this blog, and yet no mention. Time to correct this.

I first heard about Braid on Joystiq. They covered it a lot because of its unusual development- made over two years by one designer/programmer and one artist. There's definitely an appeal to that, because we all would like to think that given enough uninterrupted time we could do the same. It was released on XBLA as part of their "Summer of Arcade" in August of last year, and initially there was some controversy on the pricing- people thought that $15 was too much for an XBLA game. It also got a lot of press because people thought that it was really good. And it is. It's amazing.

The game starts out like a Super Mario Bros. clone. The mechanics are simple- move around and jump on guys that look suspicously like goombas. The object of the game is to save the princess. When you get to the end of the level, there's a castle and a dinosaur that says "Sorry, the Princess is in another castle...". The similarities end there, because Braid is a puzzle game. The main character, Tim, can rewind time, so if you miss a jump or get killed, you can rewind a little (or a lot) and correct your move. The object of the game is to collect all the puzzle pieces, and by doing so to understand the storyline.

The time mechanic is used in a way that's both simple and mind-bending. At all times, you can rewind time and do things a different way, but different levels have different mechanics. One level has green glowing objects that are unaffected by rewinding (or fast-forwarding) time; in another time progresses forward when you move to the left, and rewinds when you move to the right. You can't die (well, you can, but then you rewind to when you were alive), so you can solve the puzzles at your leisure. Of course, there are still difficult jumps and timings you have to perform, but you can take time to study how things move to time things the way you want.

The gameplay is fantastic, but it's the storyline that compells me. It was described as an adult storyline, and I couldn't agree more. Not adult in the obscene sense, but adult in the sense that the characters and topics are adult, and children (even teenagers) won't quite understand. The plot involves saving the princess, but the nature of her peril isn't quite explained, except that Tim made a mistake. The plot is vague, which makes it extremely interesting and at the same time annoying because even at the end, it's not entirely clear what the game is about and what the storyline is.

Not many games make me notice the art or the music. Braid's art is beautiful and haunting, and its music doubly so. There's nothing scary in the game, but just hearing some of the music, or thinking about the storyline, sends chills up my spine. It's both creepy and beautiful at the same time.

When I first got it, Sandy was out of town. I started at around 9 or 10 at night, finished it at 2 or 3am, then stayed up until 5 or 6 looking at forums, trying to figure out the storyline. I've had some discussions with friends about it, and I'm still not sure. I got all the achievements except the one for beating the speed run in 40 minutes or less- it just seems so contrary to the rest of the game, and I don't want to spend 40+ minutes on an attempt

I found out later about the stars (and how one is inaccessible beyond a certain point in the game); today, I finally got all 8. There's not an achievement for it, but it does change the ending, and all the stars in Andromeda light up:

Like Portal, Braid is short, insanely fun, has a great storyline and awesome music. It's instantly one of the best games I've ever played.

Braid: 5/5

Favorite LA Food

2009-04-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Island's

Hawaiian (no teriyaki) [my favorite] - Pineapple cheeseburger
Hula [Sandy's favorite] - Mushroom burger
Moa Kai - tuna salad with cheese on a bun

Coco's

Turkey Avocado Jack Croissant

Shershah Exotic Cuisine of India [Marina Del Ray]

Chicken Tikka Masala
Rice Pudding (a sweet, milky rice soup with almond slivers)

Tito's Tacos

Tacos - there's always a dozen people waiting in line here

Pink's Hot Dogs

Treyarch sometimes has them cater free hot dogs for everyone

Stefano's New York Pizza [The Bridge]

Stuffed Lasagna

Mario Kart – the End of an Era

2009-03-20T00:21:00.001-07:00

Towards the end of working on Call of Duty 3 (mid-2006), some of us picked up Mario Kart for the Nintendo DS (by far, the best version of Mario Kart) and started playing it regularly after work. Over time, some racers have gone and others have joined. Now, almost 3 years later, the end of an era. Tonight we played our last games together.

From left to right:

Caleb Schneider (Draven)
James McCawley (Bluenote)
[front] Brian Joyal (Ped Xing)
[back] Bryan Pearson (ndlswntr)
Matt Kimberling (hardkode)
me (ar0)
[back] Austin Krauss (umgamr)
[front] Steve Crowe (white rice)
Brian Douglas (legend)
Penny Chock (hiro)
Ewan Oughton (ultrahax)

Our game schedule consists of the 4-map “Front 9”, where maps are chosen with shotgun rules (first one to call it). The “Back 9” consists of:

DK Pass
Banshee Boardwalk
Bowser Castle 1
Rainbow Road

It wasn’t always that way- it ended up an institution because after a while, we ended up choosing the same maps over and over again during the second round, and of course, things must be settled on “the road”.
Most of us race using the Kong/Egg combination- UMGamr’s “gift” to the group. For a while, it was everyone, but lately some racers have spurned the Kong/Egg for the Rob/Bomber. I, for one, remain a believer.

Looking at the records, it looks like I’ve capped out Wins column with 9999 wins to 5057 losses. I’ve got at least 100 wins up on everyone else. And now, at the peak of my career, I’m retiring to Madison. And, perhaps most importantly, I won the last Back 9.

Some terminology:

“It’s over” – originally spoken by the Bluenote (frequently) after getting knocked off the course, now said whenever getting knocked off, especially during the first round, when there’s still time to recover
“Items Based Racing (IBR)” – using a kart combination (such as the Luigi/Cucumber) with a high items value so you get good items. Items Based Racers are typically n00bs; they peak out at a certain point, and need to switch to a real combination (e.g., Kong/Egg) to improve/remain competitive.
“Unforced Error” – making an avoidable error causing you to go off the map
“Feng/NoValues Bullet” – a bullet is typically referred to by this name, referring to the two most notorious karters.
“Poise” – performing a particularly elegant move/victory.
“40-Point Night” – winning 1st in every map in a game. These are pretty rare.
“80-Point Night” – winning 1st in every map in both games. These are exceedingly rare- I’ve seen perhaps only 2 or 3 in all my racing.
“Winter Mountain” – in DK Pass, the name of the very top of the mountain which has a box that, even if you’re in 1st place, will either give you 3 shrooms or a star. Named for the endless winter, who first discovered it.
“As we all know, the ___ is the championship round” – typically the back 9 is the championship round, but the blank is filled with whichever round you win (or anticipate winning).
“Go to the next map!!” – an exclamatory statement usually spoken by the UMGamr after a particularly bad performance or losing to a rival.
“The B Game” – when there are too many players (more than 8), the lesser players are forced to play their own game, derisively referred to as the B Game.
"A lot of Kong/Eggs in front" – the Kong/Egg, being the superior kart choice (and the choice of the best racers), usually ends up at the front of the rankings. UMGamr enjoys pointing out this phenomenon.
"The Phat" – Hardkode prefers his old DS Phat to the new DS Lites. Also used in expressions like "Here comes the phat, finally waddling in" and "The phat's going after that box like a half price buffet"

Update:
Bryan talked about this a bit on this podcast: http://10thmusepodcast.blogspot.com/2009/03/episode-51-is-up.html

New House Excitement

2009-03-07T18:39:00.000-08:00

Things we're excited about with the new house:

dishwasher
I've been hand-washing dishes for the past year
washing machine/dryer
no more trying to get quarters, dragging the laundry to the laundry room, waiting for it if it's busy
counter space
our kitchen has so little counter space that we frequently rest stuff (like the toaster) on the garbage can lid for that extra little space. We have to put the toaster on a shelf when it's not in use.
cabinet space
no longer paying rent
room for kitties to run around & play
air conditioning/good heating
our living room stays warm enough, but the bedroom doesn't get enough heat. And our portable AC unit does a mediocre job of cooling off the place.
2-car garage
finally a place for both of us to park! No more street parking, no more tickets because of street cleaning, no more dirt and dust from parking outside.

Flight of the Conchords: Carol Brown

2009-03-05T00:19:00.001-08:00

Walt Disney Concert Hall

2009-03-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

As part of our “Things To Do Before Leaving LA” list, Sandy and I went to the Walt Disney Concert hall to see the Vienna Philharmonic. (I really wanted to go to the Hollywood Bowl, but their season doesn’t start until after we leave.)

Sandy made me get a new suit, so we went to the Men’s Wearhouse. They had a 2-for-1 sale, so I ended up getting two suits. Sandy achieved one of her dreams, too- she’s always loved blue shirts with suits, and wanted me to get one. So we got all dressed up.

The concert program was:

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Zubin Mehta, conductor
Angela Maria Blasi, soprano

Wolf:
Italian Serenade

Marx:
”Hat dich die Liebe beruhrt” (If Love Hath Entered Thy Heart)
”Selige Nacht” (Blissful Night)
”Zigeuner” (Gypsies)
”Barkarole” (Barcarolle)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D minor
Feierlich; Sehr ruhig
Scherzo: Bewegt, lebhaft
Adagio: Sehr langsam, feierlich

We had a good time, though I really wanted to go the following night, when they played Wagner/Chopin/Schubert- I didn’t realize they played different pieces on different nights.

The baby, however, really liked the first movement in Bruckner’s Symphony. Sandy reported she got all energetic and moved about for most of the song.

Lamborghini Dealership

2009-03-01T20:04:00.001-08:00

Today Sandy and I got to fulfill one one of my childhood dreams- to sit in a Lamborghini (fortunately, my dream didn’t include driving them). Since we don’t have much longer in LA, we went to Lamborghini Beverly Hills off Wilshire. Sandy’s favorite was the neon green; I think I liked the black one best.

Although they may be attractive, they are expensive- $6,122/month for the Murciélago (about $450,000 cash) or $3,410/month for the Gallardo ($263,000 cash). And they are not fuel efficient- 9mpg city for the Murciélago, and 14mpg city for the Gallardo. There’s even a “Gas Guzzler Tax” of $5,400 and $2,100, respectively.

House Hunting

2009-02-11T19:35:00.001-08:00

We’ve put a bid on a nice house in Madison, WI. It’s a 6 year old, 4-bed, 3-bath, 2337 sq foot tri-level on Appleglen lane. From the listing:

Wonderful multi-level features an open layout, master suite with private bath, & finished walk-out lower level. Great room has vaulted ceilings, kitchen includes stainless steel appliances & island with breakfast bar, & dinette leads to large deck. Lower 2 levels are finished & include a large family room with pergo flooring & gas fireplace, full bath with jetted whirlpool tub & separate shower, & 4th bedroom or office. Family room could fit a pool table. Large home -- must see inside!!

Front

Back (plus garage)

Living Room, Kitchen & Dining Room

Upstairs (master bed + bath, 2 kids beds + hall bath)

Downstairs (family room, guest room + bath)

Subbasement (utility room)

Sample of Carpet Throughout House (stair shot)

Hotmail gets POP3 Access

2009-02-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, you could pay $20/year for POP3 access to hotmail. The option has been gone for a long time, but now it's back! (and free!). No more paying for IzyMail (sorry, IzyMail- you worked well, but your time has come).

Now could someone work on contact syncing between Outlook and Gmail?

Hawaii 2008

2009-01-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

November 8-18, 2008

In November 2008, Sandy and I went on a 10-day vacation to Hawaii. We decided to go to Hawaii because it's high on our list of places to see. Also, since we plan to move to the midwest next year, we felt we should take advantage of the shorter (cheaper) flights from LAX. Our trip consisted of 1 day in Oahu, 5 days in Maui, and 3 days on the Big Island. We had a great time.

Oahu

Circle Island Tour

Our primary goal in visiting Oahu was to see Pearl Harbor, because Sandy's birthday is December 7, and she's been hearing about it all her life. We didn't really know what else was there, so Sandy found a 10 hour tour that circles the island. The tour started at Pearl Harbor, went to the Dole Pineapple Pavilion, a macadamia farm (free samples!), Bonzai Pipeline, the Ko'olau golf course, Sandy Beach, and would have gone to Diamondhead Crater if there was time. We had a great tour guide called Pappy.

Pearl Harbor

Dole Plantation

Bonzai Pipeline

Ko'olau Golf Course

Sandy Beach / Halona Blowhole

Waikiki Beach

On our last day in Oahu, we had a short amount of time between breakfast and the plane, so I went to see Waikiki beach while Sandy packed (she wasn’t feeling well from the morning sickness).

Diamondhead Crater

We only saw Diamondhead from the airplane as we went to Maui, but we took a pretty good picture of it.

Maui

We spent most of our time in Maui because we'd heard that it was most like what people think of when they hear "Hawaii." It didn't disappoint. We stayed in Kihei and had an amazing room near a beautiful beach. I went running twice in a hilly area. We went on a sunset cruise, swam with turtles, went to a luau, and saw some fantastic scenery.

Castle Kamaole Sands

Sandy found a great deal on the condo we stayed at. It was amazing- in most respects better than our apartment. It had a washing machine, two full bathrooms, a full kitchen with dishwasher, and a balcony with a view of the ocean. The only problem with it were the bugs- quite a few creepy crawlies- nothing biting or otherwise dangerous, though.

Outside, the grounds were beautiful, with a pool and hot tub. Across the street was a park with a great beach.

Sunset at Kamaole Beach

It must be pretty difficult to take a bad sunset picture in Hawaii- if you have the beach and can see the sunset, it's going to be picturesque. We got some great shots the first night, and missed getting ready in time every other night.

Sunset Cruise

We took a sunset cruise out in the harbor. It was great- we even saw a humpback whale, which was a bit early for the season. Sandy did well for a while, then came down with a combination of morning sickness and seasickness, but we still look back on it fondly.

Surfing

To complete the Hawaiian experience, I took a surfing lesson. (Sandy couldn't go because of being pregnant.) I didn't get very good at it, but did have fun. The water was nice and only a couple feet deep, but there were lava rocks strewn about; even though I had aqua socks on, it was still painful to walk on. After two hours of paddling and foot damage, I was ready to stop. I think I will try it again sometime in LA, though.

Snuba/Snorkel at Molokini Crater

One of the prime snorkeling/diving destinations in Maui is Molokini Crater. A favorite highlight of our trip was our snorkeling trip at Molokini and a separate site where there are a number of sea turtles. Sandy snorkeled while I went snuba diving, since I am not certified to scuba. Molokini has clear water and high visibility, but the real action was at the second dive site. It's what's known as a "Cleaning Station," where turtles congregate to get algae cleaned off their shells by fish. We saw several on the floor and swimming around. On a couple occasions one swam so close to me that I could have reached out and touched it. I wasn't allowed to touch it because they're protected, but I did get an awesome photo.

Royal Lahaina Luau

What's a Hawaiian vacation without a luau or some poi? The Royal Lahaina Luau did not disappoint. Sandy finally got a real flower lei, which made her extremely happy. The luau itself was interesting- the dancers are all very talented. And everything you've heard about poi is true.

Speaking of poi, one thing we found at Hawaiian McDonald's is taro pies. They look like regular apple pies, except the filling is purple. I had to try one, and it tasted pretty much like a regular apple pie, except less apple-y.

Iao Valley

In the couple hours before we had to get to the airport, we drove to Iao Valley State Park and saw the Iao Needle.

The Big Island

Our trip concluded with a couple days on the Big Island in Hilo. We were excited about seeing the Observatory and lava fields [/ lava flow]. Our hotel had a very comfortable and large bed, which somewhat offset Sandy's bad experiences with various other aspects of the hotel policies and staff.

Mauna Kea Observatory

Being an astronomy enthusiast, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go on a tour to the top of Mauna Kea to see the observatories and sunset, followed by a star show. Unfortunately, the altitude was above Sandy's allowed limit, so I had to go alone. Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth (starting at its base on the ocean floor; Everest is the highest mountain), and the altitude combined with being in the middle of the Pacific and the distance from light-polluting cities give the observatories atop it some of the clearest views of the sky in the world.

The trip started at a lava field at the base of the mountain, and then went up to the visitor's station for dinner, and to get used to the altitude. Parkas are handed out with dinner because at that altitude it gets cold. The tour guide gave us a lot of information about the geology of Hawaii and volcanoes, including the two types of lava- a'a and pahoehoe. When we got to the summit we got to see the observatories, but the public isn't allowed inside, so once the sun set, we drove to a secluded place at a slightly lower altitude to have our own star show. Venus and Jupiter were both clearly visible, so we saw Jupiter through the telescope (apparently there's nothing to see with Venus). It was a bit of an exciting time, because a couple days prior the Keck Observatory had just captured the first images of an extrasolar planet. Our tour guide showed us where the star system is, but of course we couldn't see it ourselves. Nevertheless, we did learn a number of things about constellations and saw some cool things like the Andromeda galaxy. (The pictures below of Jupiter and Andromeda are not mine, but they are what it looked like).

Helicopter Tour

Since Sandy wasn't allowed to do an excessive amount of hiking along the lava trails, instead of walking through Volcanoes National Park we took a helicopter tour. It was a good decision, because on foot we would hardly have seen anything compared to what was visible from the air. We saw lava vents, the lava fields, and where the lava runs into the ocean. You can tell the flowing lava from the old, hardened lava because it's shiny whereas the old stuff is dull. The pilot described it as looking like brownies, and now I get hungry when I look at the pictures. We also flew over the rain forest area and saw our hotel from the air.

Lava Field at Night

We heard that there is a place that people can visit where the lava flows into the ocean. They said it was best at night, so we drove there and walked a quarter mile over a lava field with flashlights to get as close as they allow. It was a beautiful sight- the smoke was lit orange by the lava, and Jupiter and Venus were visible in the same shot.

Volcanoes National Park

On our last day, we had a late flight, so we figured we'd spend an hour or two at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, just in case we had missed anything in our experiences. There wasn't much to do because half of Crater Rim Drive was closed off due to a vent that opened within Halema`uma`u Crater in March 2008 (which we have our picture in front of). We did walk through the lava tube, which made the whole visit worthwhile. It was a short walk through a rain forest with big ferns like Jurassic Park.

Mauna Loa Macadamia Farm

On our Oahu tour, we stopped at a macadamia farm that had free samples. (The cinnamon macadamias were particularly good.) Ever since, I was checking out stores in hopes of finding that kind again. Alas, I never did find it, but since we were only a couple miles from the Mauna Loa macadamia farm, we went to the visitor's center to get some more free samples (and purchase some bags). The honey roasted ones and the milk chocolate coconut were pretty good, but not as good as that farm on Oahu.

Metal Gear Solid 4

2009-01-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

I think that I was at a disadvantage playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots because I haven't played any of the other games in the series. Except about an hour of Metal Gear Solid 1 on PS2 about 10 years ago. I have kept up with the buzz about the various games, so I knew a little, and I read some plot summaries on wikipedia. Going in with so little, I must say that I found a lot of the plot to be very satisfying, and I don't begrudge them any of their long cinematics, because they wrapped up a lot.

My primary motivations for playing it were that (1) I had just gotten a PS3 for Christmas, and (2) all the game of the year awards that MGS4 was receiving. I played through it once on normal difficulty, and although it was great, I didn't feel compelled to explore it further.

Although I heard that the gameplay is much more run-and-gun than previous games (which were more stealth-oriented), I don't have any problems with it. I look at it as an action game with stealth elements rather than the other way around. It actually reminded me a bit of System Shock 2, when I was waiting for the guards' alert level to drop. The camera was a bit wonky, I must say, but the difficulty of the game was such that I didn't have any problems with it. I'm actually surprised that people haven't complained that the game is too easy- though I'm certainly not complaining.

Graphically, MGS4 is stellar. I don't think that anything is technically out of the abilities of the Xbox 360, but it is one of the best looking games I've ever seen. Everything is very detailled, and the cinematics show off how much effort went into every part of the game. I will complain about the framerate, though, because although it is often 60fps, it drops to 30 too often.

The weapons are all top-notch. They have an excellent system where you can pause the game at any time and purchase new weapons, ammo, and upgrades from Drebin. You get money by picking up weapons, which are automatically sold. There are several ways you can customize your weapon, depending on which slots it has. It is the system that I wish we built for Quantum of Solace (they even have the MGL-140, their version of the M32).

I think that the most important thing about MGS4 (and perhaps the MGS series in general) is the way it puts almost every other video game to shame. First, it has a great story, which is not so special as the fact that they put actual effort in making and telling a story. Their priorities were all in the right places- character development, giving characters realistic motivations, and showing psychological scars better than most movies. They also give you options as to how to play- you can try to rush in and take people down, or you could try to sneak around and flank them. They also don't try to hide the fact that it's a game- it's not an open world for you to do whatever you want; it's a set of chained scenarios where you go from one to the next. The "realism" that some games try for by hiding/eliminating hud elements or limiting your ability to hold/purchase weapons just isn't present; you have an unlimited inventory and can pause the game to purchase more ammo or change outfits. Playing through the game, there were many points where I thought to myself that this is how video games are supposed to be.

One of my favorite aspects of MGS4 is how the creators have fun breaking the fourth wall. At one point Otacon asks you asked to switch discs, but then realizes that it's on Blu-Ray, which has enough storage to put the whole game on one disc. In MGS1, there was a character that could read your memory card and predict your actions, and the solution was to plug the controller into port 2. In MGS4 they tell you about that, but if you switch your controller to port 2, you'll get a cutscene where Snake says that he can't move, and Otacon reminds you that he said that it wouldn't work. Part of the plot of the game is how the "war economy" arose because the nanomachines made war seem like a video game, making it easy to recruit soldiers. One level is even an exact emulation of the first level of MGS1 for the PS1.

The most memorable scenes for me were those regarding the B&B (Beauty & Beast) squad: 4 psychologically scarred young women in control of war machines. Each one is a boss- Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, Crying Wolf, and Screaming Mantis. The fights are all exciting and memorable- Laughing Octopus disguising herself as various things; the fight atop the church against Raging Raven; the snowstorm battle against Crying Wolf; and using Screaming Mantis's voodoo dolls against her. Once defeated, you have the option of killing them or tranquilizing them (I tranquilized them), and Drebin tells you how they became monsters.

I really enjoy how all the mysterious aspects of the story are explained. Screaming Mantis is able to seemingly posess any soldier (including Snake), which turns out to be because she can control the nanomachines. Akiba, the inept, sick, out-of-sync soldier in Meryl's FOXHOUND unit is actually quite a good soldier, but is afraid of needles and so he never took the nanomachine shots. Liquid Ocelot wasn't possessed by the arm of Liquid Snake- he intentionally became him through self-hypnosis to further his goals. Vamp isn't immortal- he has particurally good nanomachines that repair him whenever he dies.

The game always seemed to have new things to do and new ways to play. Typically, things play out in the normal 3rd person run-or-stealth way, but they often change things up. They have some on-rail vehicle shooting sequences (which I don't usually care for, but these were short enough that I enjoyed them), a couple awesome scenes where you control the Metal Gear Rex, an emulated PS1 level, and an extremely aggrivating Mortal Kombat-style fight sequence.

The only complaints that I have about the game are minor. One, the load times are a bit rediculous. There are pauses for 3-5 minute installs at each act break, along with a 20 minute initial install. Plus, if you play again, you have to install again at each point. It's not too major, but it is a nuisance.

My major gripe with MGS4 was the multiplayer. I wasn't all that interested in it, but I figured I would give it a try. First, I had download and install the update (20+ minutes). Then, I found that I needed to create an account on Konami's web site. And not one, but two accounts. They can't have the same name, and one has to have a regular secure password, and the other needs to have a numeric password (of course, you can type in any alphanumeric password- it just will fail the submit). These accounts are separate from your Playstation Network account, which every other game uses. I understand that one is for making purchases, but I find its existance dubious, and it could have at least waited for you to want to purchase before creating/signing-in it. After all that work, I went through the laborious character creation process (of which I can only create 1 without paying extra), then tried to get into a game. I set it for team deathmatch (the most popular gametype ever, right?) and waited for it to get enough players to start a match. After 20 minutes it failed with some weird error, and I gave up. So MGS4 online might be great, for all I know, but I found it an excercise in frustration.

I don't let these negative aspects of the game cloud my judgement on it, though, because it is a superb game.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: 5/5

9 Reasons Not to Date a Tyrannosaurus Rex

2008-12-19T15:06:00.001-08:00

Spoiled Cats

2008-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

One day, when we have a house, we want to add platforms like these for our kitties. This color scheme is pretty ugly, but the concept is great. Kitties really like to be high, and it will keep them from climbing our stuff so much.

Olson Baby

2008-11-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

Sandy is Enceinte! I've setup a blog (http://olsonbaby.blogspot.com/) to track the progress of the pregnancy and onwards.

Firefly Convention

2008-11-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday Sandy and I went to a Serenity/Firefly convention. We had a lot of fun, and got our picture taken with Summer Glau. The picture happened so fast that I don't quite remember what happened, and consider myself lucky that I was looking at the camera at all. Later, during the Q&A, Sandy asked questions to each of the guests that day- Gina Torres, Summer Glau, and Adam Baldwin.

iPhone

2008-11-27T12:31:00.000-08:00

I've had the iPhone 3G for about 3 months now, and I'm quite happy with it.

My case:

Some of the features I'm most impressed with:

The screen turns off and on when you hold it up to your ear
When you browse web pages in Safari, phone numbers are hyperlinked so you can click on them to dial the number
The responsiveness with navigation- moving your finger around to scroll feels really nice
Apps and the integration with the features of the phone- an app can use the GPS to locate you and reference with the web to show you information about things around you (theaters, restaurants, etc)

My current set of apps:

Grocery IQ - a shopping list program; worth $1
toodledo - a todo list ($4) that syncs up with online account and home Outlook
Wikipanion - a wikipedia browser
Google Mobile App - it's cool, but I don't use it so often
Shazam - tells you what song is playing. It's so cool, works so well, and I have no idea how it works.
midomi - for when Shazam doesn't work (which it hasn't yet), and it can recognize singing a song
i.TV - for TV listings (when away from home)
Now Playing - for movie listings
iFlix - for netflix queue management (I like the interface, but I can't login with my secondary accounts)
PhoneFlix - for managing netflix queue
Goodrec - a restaurant recommendation program, that I use more to just find restaurants
iWant - for finding restaurants, gas stations, movies, etc
Urbanspoon - for finding restaurants
Google Earth
I Can Has Cheezburger - for lolcats
Shovel - a digg.com app
The Weather Channel - a second opinion to the built-in weather app

Sol Free Solitaire
Carrie's Dots
Hangman
Hanoi
Lightsaber Unleashed
MarbleMash
Morocco (Othello)
PegJump

Hopeful Parents

2008-08-20T17:15:00.001-07:00

Font Conference

2008-07-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

Mailbox! Open mailbox!

Quantum of Solace Xbox 360 Trailer

2008-07-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

Battle of the Batmans

2008-06-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

Highlander 2008

2008-06-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

2008-06-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

TurboGrafx emulator on iPhone

2008-05-29T14:42:00.001-07:00

Sweet!

http://www.zodttd.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ac11bfc6519ab8b728118f2021c17ebb&t=1831

Prevent Outlook with Gmail IMAP from Showing Duplicate Tasks in the To-Do Bar

2008-05-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/microsoft-office/prevent-outlook-with-gmail-imap-from-showing-duplicate-tasks-in-the-to-do-bar/

vmcNetflix

2008-05-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

vmcNetflix is an add-in for Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center which allows you to manage your NetFlix subscription, stream NetFlix "WatchNow" movies directly to the Media Center player, or download the movies for playback later from a "WatchLater" gallery.

I tried it out and it worked pretty well. It had troubles trying to fast-forward, and sometimes takes some doing to get it to work, but when it works, it's great. Now if only it could stream to my TiVo instead...

Review: Tetris Evolution

2008-05-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've had Tetris Evolution for a while but I finally got the last achievement (thanks to this YouTube video), so now it joins the short list of games for which I've gotten all 1000 points. I'm glad I did, because I have loyalty to Tetris, but the game itself doesn't merit such loyalty. For being called Evolution, one would think that it would take everything from previous Tetris games (New Tetris for Nintendo 64 and Tetris Worlds for PS2 and others would be my choices), put in some different backgrounds, music, and maybe a new game mode, box it up, and rake in the profit.

In some ways that's what they did. It does have new backgrounds, and it has all of the standard game modes from Worlds, but the game itself seems like something rushed to meet a deadline. There are a couple choices for backgrounds, but some of them are incredibly distracting, and there's no way to tell what they are until you load up a game with one. There are thumbnail pictures, but some of the pictures have absolutely nothing to do with the actual video that will play in the background. There are only one or two music tracks that one wouldn't mute after five minutes, much less the hours one would conceivably be playing for. The video and music playing during the menus are the best of the lot, but there's no way to actually select them for in-game.

Evolution does support 4 player local or online play, and it has all the game modes that one would expect, but they're not put together very well. In Tetris Worlds you would choose your stage, and by playing and getting to higher levels you would change your environment- terraforming it or something. You would also unlock customizations for your little block character. It felt like over time, you were actually accomplishing something. Not so in Evolution- you can start a game, and it will remember your high scores, but that's it. It has achievements (thankfully none require you to play online), which are possibly the highlight of the game. Nothing else kept me playing, except the desire to unlock them all and prove to the world that I am a decent Tetris player.

Once the achievements are earned, there's really no reason to keep Evolution. It's not broken, but it's about as forgettable as Tetris games come.

Tetris Evolution: 2/5

Quantum of Solace: The Game

2008-05-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Story Behind Pac-Man

2008-05-03T13:34:00.001-07:00

From The Madness of Mission 6. It all makes sense now.

R-9 Figurine

2008-05-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

Pre-orders for R-Type Command from certain retailers will include a bonus R-9 Figurine! I don't have a PSP anymore, but I am still totally going to get it. That figurine will be mine.

Apparently, it's from a set released in Japan called Shooting Game Historica.

Washington Mutual

2008-04-21T10:41:00.001-07:00

Washington Mutual has awesome offers for online savings accounts with high APYs, but I just found out that it takes some maintenance on the part of the account holder. See, the APY is not fixed, so they can change it at any time. And they do. I signed up for a 5% APY a year ago, and at the beginning of the year they dropped it to 0.25%(!). I finally got around to calling to see if they would raise it to the current offer, 3.5%. They said they couldn't, but that I could just apply for another online savings account, and that it wouldn't interfere with my other. But that did the trick! I was even able to transfer the money from the other savings account directly into the new one (though I had to put $1 into the checking account, for some reason).

Hooray for interest income!

Memory Mapped Files and Fault Tolerance

2008-04-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've been searching google for how to design a system that uses memory mapped files, and does so in a fault-tolerant fashion. Since any write might get written or not (depending on power failures and users killing the application), the system must be written in such a way that the data is guaranteed to be valid.

I've found an article that didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but did put it all together and answered the specific question at hand. The example code is in java but I won't hold that against it.

http://www.devx.com/Java/Article/10027

Fire and Motion

2008-04-12T17:29:00.001-07:00

Joel Spolsky (from joelonsoftware.com) has written an article called "Fire and Motion" which gives words to the ideas and approaches that I've tried to do- that if you're in a situation where you're playing catch-up to your competitor, then you need to stop the cycle and change the terms of the battle. It's really interesting and worth remembering.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080401/how-hard-could-it-be-fire-and-motion.html

April Fools: Legend of Zelda Trailer

2008-04-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

Hank Scorpio

2008-03-26T16:13:00.001-07:00

I Want to Believe

2008-03-25T12:54:00.001-07:00

Portals

2008-03-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

Vista Annoyances

2008-03-22T11:25:00.001-07:00

Even though I don't use Windows Defender and have it disabled (to the extent that it is possible), I still get a Windows Update message every couple days telling me that there's a definitions update for it.
Every so often, the CPU usage of the System process will go way up. Rebooting doesn't seem to help, but temporarily unplugging the battery does. When the System process has high CPU usage, the computer becomes very unresponsive, taking a long time to open programs and whatnot. Eventually, it seems to go away on its own.
I have a backup program that syncs my computer with my wife's desktop machine. It is set to run on my laptop at 3am, and to bring it out of sleep mode. I have the laptop set to go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, but whenever I wake up in the morning, my laptop is still on, and hasn't gone to sleep.
There are a lot of processes running when the computer is doing nothing. This isn't even including the 7(!) processes for the AVG antivirus (all of which total about 2MB, so I can't complain too much). Back on Windows XP, there were about 10-15 processes that were just always there, and I grew to accept them. But Vista adds 2(?!) Windows Sidebar processes (1 for the weather applet, the second for all the others); there are 12 Host Processes for Windows Services running, 2 WMI Provider Host processes, 2 Task Scheduler Engines (1 for each CPU?), the Desktop Window Manager, the Search Indexer, etc. I'm a pretty knowledgeable guy, but I couldn't guess what half of the services do, and it seems that if you disable them, your system fails or hangs in mysterious ways.
I really like the search box in the start menu, but why does it take so long to get a result? It's only searching the start menu, and there can't be more than maybe a hundred items or so, yet typing in anything takes about 3-5 seconds to get a result. Come on, Vista- I've got a fast machine.

Outlook Scripting

2008-03-19T09:39:00.001-07:00

In the battle of me vs the overwhelming number of contact birthdays in our calendar, I have won! I have successfully scripted Outlook to look up the categories of the contacts and apply them to the contacts' birthdays. Now, I can simply set a filter to not show the contacts that aren't close friends or family.

Before:

After:

The script (press Alt+F11 in Outlook to open the VB editor):

Sub SetBirthdayCategories()
Dim oCalendar As Outlook.Folder
Dim oItems As Outlook.Items
Dim oAppt As Outlook.AppointmentItem

' Obtain calendar events list
Set oCalendar = Application.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderCalendar)
Set oItems = oCalendar.Items

' run DoBirthday on recurring appointments
For Each oAppt In oCalendar.Items
If oAppt.IsRecurring Then

Call DoBirthday(oAppt)

' tweak reminder logic
If InStr(oAppt.subject, "'s Birthday") Then
  If InStr(oAppt.Categories, "4 Relatives") &lt;&gt; 0 _
  Or InStr(oAppt.Categories, "5 Friends") &lt;&gt; 0 _
  Or InStr(oAppt.Categories, "6 Ministry") &lt;&gt; 0 _
  Or InStr(oAppt.Categories, "7 Professional") &lt;&gt; 0 _
  Or InStr(oAppt.Categories, "8 Medical") &lt;&gt; 0 _
  Or InStr(oAppt.Categories, "9 Acquaintences") &lt;&gt; 0 Then
      ' these people have no reminder
      oAppt.ReminderSet = False
  Else
      ' family and close friends have 1 week reminder
      oAppt.ReminderSet = True
      oAppt.ReminderOverrideDefault = True
      oAppt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 7 * 24 * 60 ' 1 week
  End If

  ' Don't forget to save changes!
  oAppt.Save

End If

End If
Next
End Sub


Sub DoBirthday(ByRef oAppt As Outlook.AppointmentItem)
Dim sArray As Variant
Dim oContact As ContactItem
Dim filteredItems As Outlook.Items
Dim oCategories As String
Dim bCategoriesMatch As Boolean
Dim sFilter As String
Dim subject As String

subject = oAppt.subject

If InStr(subject, "Anniversary") &lt;&gt; 0 Then
Exit Sub
End If

' remove "'s Birthday" to get just contact's name
subject = Replace(subject, "'s Birthday", "")
Debug.Print subject

sArray = Split(subject)

' obtain last name; take off "Sr." (or anything with a "." in it)
Dim sLastName
For i = LBound(sArray) To UBound(sArray)
If InStr(sArray(i), ".") = 0 Then
sLastName = sArray(i)
Else
sArray(i) = ""
End If
Next

' Restrict contacts by LastName
sFilter = "[LastName] = " & sLastName
Set oContacts = Application.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
Set filteredItems = oContacts.Items.Restrict(sFilter)

' Early out if nothing was found
If filteredItems.Count = 0 Then
Exit Sub
End If

bCategoriesMatch = True
oCategories = ""

' search for all appointment subject's elements matching being inside contact's FullName
For Each oContact In filteredItems

If (bCategoriesMatch And oCategories = "") Then
oCategories = oContact.Categories
End If

If oCategories &lt;&gt; oContact.Categories Then
oCategories = ""
bCategoriesMatch = False
End If

For i = LBound(sArray) To UBound(sArray)
If InStr(oContact.FullName, sArray(i)) = 0 Then
  GoTo last
End If
Next

'Debug.Print "   Matched contact '" & oContact.FullName & "': " & oContact.Categories
Call SetCategories(oAppt, oContact.Categories)
Exit Sub
last:
Next

' Didn't find an exact match.  If all the contacts have the same categories, then that's the one for us
If bCategoriesMatch Then
'Debug.Print "   All contacts had category: " & oCategories
Call SetCategories(oAppt, oCategories)
End If

End Sub


Sub SetCategories(ByRef oAppt As Outlook.AppointmentItem, oCategories As String)
If oCategories = "" Then
oAppt.Categories = "Birthday"
Exit Sub
End If

' append "'s Birthday to the appointment's subject
oAppt.subject = Replace(oAppt.subject, "'s Birthday", "")
oAppt.subject = oAppt.subject & "'s Birthday"

oAppt.Categories = oCategories & ", Birthday"
oAppt.Save
End Sub

(Stupid VB editor won't copy with the color formatting)

Now I just change my filter (View->Current View->Customize Current View...->Filter) and set the "SQL" field to be:

(NOT("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '4 Relatives' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '5 Friends' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '6 Ministry' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '7 Professional' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '8 Medical' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '9 Aquaintences' OR "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '91 Restaraunts'))

And that's it!

Joystiq's Quest Quiz: Tim Schafer

2008-03-09T21:17:00.001-07:00

You have to admire a job well done. Joystiq has started a Quest Quiz, wherein they ask members of the gaming industry folks what they would do in a classic text-based adventure situation:

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Some of them were ok, some showed what a jerk the answerer was. Tim Schafer, though, did quite well, and showed what a good job that he and Ludwig Kietzmann could do.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/07/return-to-quest-quiz-tim-schafer/

Developers

2008-03-07T13:10:00.001-08:00

The Waldo Ultimatum

2008-03-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Waldo Ultimatum - Watch more free videos

Changing Gmail Email Address

2008-03-02T17:54:00.001-08:00

A year or two ago I got an invite for a gmail account. I wanted to try it out, so I signed up (arolson@gmail.com). It was pretty nice, but I wasn't willing to give up my old hotmail address- who wants the hassle?- so I left it alone. I never really used it for anything. I would occasionally check in on it, and, to my amazement, the spam messages kept rolling in. I've never given it out to anybody (except my sister, who sends the occasional message), and yet there were hundreds of spam messages in the spam box, and dozens of spam messages that made it through into my inbox.

Contrast this with my hotmail account, which I've had for about 6 years. It never gets spam. That's the email address that I give out to friends and family, sign up for forum accounts, and order things online. It's great to not get spam- my spam filter is set to do nothing. I never need to check through the spam list to see if it caught something it shouldn't have.

I think that the difference between the two is the format of the email address. The hotmail one, rather accidentally, has a number at the end- username1234@hotmail.com. The gmail one doesn't- username@gmail.com. My guess is that smart spammers take lists of known email account names and try them in different domains- there's a username@yahoo.com, so they try username@hotmail.com, username@gmail.com, etc., since there's bound to be some hits. But username1234 is probably not in their lists at all. And taking a all the known email account names and adding numbers (especially a couple digits) probably gets too prohibitive (until they read this post and adjust their strategy).

So I've had it with this gmail account. I want to sign up for a new one and use all its sexy IMAP compatibilities. So I sent myself an invite, and created a new gmail account. That's the easy part. The hard part is migrating all the services that I use over to it.

blogger
I found instructions (http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41448) on how to transfer a blog from one account to another. Just invite the new account to participate, set it as an administrator, then you can remove the original account. It gets more complicated if you want to change ownership of all the old posts, but I don't think it matters to me, as this blog is pretty much just for me.
google bookmarks
I use the google toolbar for firefox, and have recently started getting into using its bookmark capabilities. You can export your bookmarks as an html file, but I couldn't find how to get google to import that html file. I did find a site (http://use.lifeslip.com/yourweb/) that could do it for me, preserving all the tags.

All seems to have gone smoothly. With IzyMail forwarding my hotmail to gmail ($10/year; I'd rather have found a free alternative [that I don't have to run myself], but I can pay that), ScheduleWorld acting as my SyncML server, syncing Outlook, google calendar, and my wife's computer (soon: gmail contacts), things are pretty good. Advantages:

I can access my email anywhere
if my laptop doesn't have internet access, I can still access old emails
My calendars and contacts are synced up and backed up online (in case of computer failure)
my hotmail is forwarded to gmail, so I don't need to change my email address
I can use any email client (Outlook, thunderbird, work or home), and switch at any time (without having to import old email)

David Blaine: Street Magic

2008-02-24T21:02:00.000-08:00

Language Warning

HD

2008-01-30T09:00:00.001-08:00

We're all moved now, and my favorite part is that we can now get HD. Our previous apartment at the Meadows had DirecTV through a company called Multiband. Although I got my HDTV two years ago now, they dragged their feet on upgrading the satellite dishes to the new HD ones. And although the complex was wired up to the cable company, I couldn't get service because the lines were disabled because of their contract with Multiband. Every couple of months I'd call and ask when they'd have HD available, and the answer was always "probably in a couple months." They finally got around to upgrading a month or two before we left.

The new place, however, has Time Warner Cable. I was planning on going with their DVR, but Sandy really, really wanted to keep TiVo, so we got the TiVo HD. It was $300, which I believe is the same price as my original Series 1 TiVo was when I got it. Because we were already subscribers, I was able to get the lifetime service, which they don't offer anymore except for people who already have a lifetime subscription. It's expensive- $400- but it'll pay for itself in 3.5 years, and it's pretty nice to have one fewer monthly payment.

The CableCard is multi-stream, so with the one card TiVo can record two (HD) shows at once. It's pretty sweet to see those two red "recording" lights on in the front. Plus, now we don't have to worry so much about scheduling conflicts- if Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is on opposite of Heroes, it can record both at the same time!

It's so beautiful to see shows in HD, especially after two years of waiting. Most, but not all, of the shows in our season pass list are in HD. USA is pretty much the only holdout. Come on, USA- even TBS is HD. And we can't find Mythbusters in HD, and that's on Discovery.

Conan O'Brien

2008-01-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

I'm sympathetic to the writers' strike, but Late Night with Conan O'Brien has been significantly better with the absence of scripting. Conan doing unscripted comedy is so much better than most (if not everything) the writers have contributed. It's gone from an occasionally-watch to a can't-miss.

Lately he's been riding a zipline through his audience wearing rocket shoes and smoking helmet. To pay for it, he has started wearing an Oscar-Mayer logo on his chest. He's done it a couple times and has asked for suggestions to bring it to the next level. Sandy came up with a suggestion and emailed to him, and I think it's pretty good:

Mario Kombat

2008-01-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

Way back in the day- it must have been high school, if not junior high- there was a video game magazine (I forget which one- EGM or Gamepro, probably) that would publish envelope art. Being a huge fan of Mortal Kombat, as well as Mario, and being a Nintendo fanboy (or, at least, on the Nintendo side of the war), I decided to pit Mario characters against Sonic characters in Mario Kombat. I made a few envelopes, but never sent them in. They've been sitting in a box for over 10 years now, so I think it's time to share them with the world. I'm still pretty happy with them, except for all the Marios being cross-eyed.

Mortal Kombat II was the latest installment when I started (and remains my favorite in the series), so the select character screen is from that version:

What would Mortal Kombat be without fatalities? Kitana was my favorite character, so here is Princess Toadstool (Peach) dressed in her outfit and performing her fatalities on Tails at the Dead Pool and the Tower:

It was around this time that Mortal Kombat 3 came out, and so I had to update the Mario Kombat series accordingly:

This last one is unfinished, but depicts Bowser (King Koopa) as Scorpion, performing his fire breathing fatality against Dr. Robotnik. The stages are the Pit II from MKII, and the Portal. I think maybe I stopped working on this one to work on the above one and move onto material from MK3.

Bioshock

2008-01-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

I finished Bioshock yesterday. I rescued all the little sisters, completed all the research, and got all the achievements except the ones for finding all the tonics (I missed 3) and journals, and the one for beating the game on hard. It was a good game, and I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say that it's unworthy of all the accolades it's received, but I won't be giving it game of the year.

(Spoilers ahead)

A couple things don't sit well with me. Andrew Ryan, the mastermind behind Rapture, who tracked your progress throughout the game and tried to stop you several times, submits to you when you finally encounter him, and orders you to kill him. From listening to his journals, I might be able to understand why he wanted to end it all, but it's out of keeping with his character from the rest of the game.

Fontaine's character worked pretty well, and made a natural antithesis to Ryan, but I don't quite get why he would have faked his death and gone ADAM-crazy, or why he would have been leading you through the entire game. He was a mob boss, and was in charge of the working class- he already controlled everything, so why would he want ADAM, too? If he was controlling everything you did via mind control, what was the point of the submarine supposedly holding his family? He doesn't get anything out of it, and there's no need to build sympathy for his cause because the player is already under his control. Also, why hatch this enormous plan to send out someone into the real world, only to bring him back years later to bring down the whole city? It seems to me that he didn't need to leave at all, from a storyline perspective.

The mind control twist was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the level 4 twist in System Shock 2. Part of my problem with Bioshock is that it was made by some of the original team that did System Shock, and is hailed as its spiritual successor. (I've even heard it called a remake, replacing cyberpunk with steampunk.) But it's not. It definitely has some of the same ideas and gameplay, but System Shock has SHODAN, and Fontaine is no SHODAN. The only character that comes close is Portal's GLADoS. Bioshock is close enough to System Shock to force the comparison, but it just doesn't stack up.

Not that Bioshock isn't a good game in its own right. The genetic manipulation, the little sisters and big daddies, plasmids and tonics, weapon upgrades, hacking, and choose-your-own-approach gameplay are all top notch. The environment is unique, the storyline is (mostly) tight and logical, and it's nothing if not memorable. I went in thinking I'd love it, but it wasn't the life-changing experience that it was claimed to be, or that System Shock actually was.

(Apparently there's an interview that attempts to explain some of the characters' motivations)

Bioshock: 4/5

First Class

2008-01-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

On our way back from Illinois this Christmas we were finally able to use our airline miles to upgrade our tickets to first class. It cost 15,000 miles per person, leaving us with just 16,000 miles left, so I think the upgrade cost about $300 in air miles. It was nice, but not quite what Seinfeld led me to believe.

The seats were definitely nicer, with both elbow and legroom. The steward hung up our coats as we went in, and our service was much faster since there were 2 serving everyone in first class- about 20 in all. There was a choice of a fruit and cheese plate or an omelette, but all the fruit plates were taken (we were in 4A and 4B, so there must have been 12 or fewer fruit plates on board). They had danishes and bagels, also. They weren't any better than typical airline food. We boarded the plane earlier, departed earlier, and arrived slightly sooner (because we were in the front of the plane- get it?).

Aside from that, there wasn't anything special about it. We still had to watch the safety video. First class only stands out because of how crappy coach is. If they had those displays in the back of the seat in front of you that let you watch whatever you wanted, that would be something.

I guess the airlines are in trouble nowadays, so they need to get as many people on the plane as possible. There's no shortage of passengers, so there's no need for them to try to compete and win us over. JetBlue and Virgin Airlines are actually trying to make flights more pleasant, but they cost more. The problem is that tickets for 2 people from LAX to O'Hare cost about $600-$800 already. I'd be more willing to pay extra if they were still around $400 like they were in 2002 and 2003.

And a $300 premium for some legroom? I guess it's ok if that makes coach seats cheaper.

Christmas Lolcats

2008-01-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

Recipe: Pepparkakor

2007-12-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

This recipe for Swedish Pepparkakor (ginger snaps) comes from my grandmother. Christmas is not complete without pepparkakor, rice pudding, and some Bond Ost cheese.

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp (dark) corn syrup (or substitute ~3 tbsp brown sugar + ~1 tbsp water)
1 tbsp warm water
2 tbsp baking soda
3 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves

1) cream butter (in mixer)
2) add sugar, egg, corn syrup
3) dissolve baking soda in water, add to mix
4) sift spices together with flour, add to mix
5) chill mix (1/2 - 1 hour in freezer)
6) put flour on table & rolling pin, roll mix until thin
7) cut shapes, place on greased cooking sheet
8) bake at 375 degrees for 4-5 minutes

I have discovered some tips that help make it (in my opinion) better. For one, I don't cook them very long, so they're still slightly chewy. I also have a lot of trouble rolling them flat without sticking to the rolling pin (no matter how much flour I use), so I came up with this method.

1) Before chilling the dough (or after it thaws again), pack it into a cylindrical tube such as this Pampered Chef measuring cup:

2) Freeze the dough; once it's frozen, take it out and push up about 1/4" of dough. Then take a piece of thread (or unflavored, unwaxed dental floss) and use it to cut off the top of the dough. If it's frozen it'll keep its shape pretty nicely:

3) Bake on a stoneware plate. This one is also from Pampered Chef. Once it's warmed up it takes 6 minutes for each batch. This is what they look like when they go in:

4) This is what they look like when they're done, 6 minutes later:

5) Once they're out, put them immediately on a wire rack to cool. By the time the next batch is cooked, they've cooled and are ready to eat.

Mmmm.... peparkakor....

Catfish

2007-12-16T22:40:00.000-08:00

moar funny pictures

Olde English: One Picture Every Day

2007-12-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

IRC programming

2007-12-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

Vista Annoyance: Details View

2007-12-16T21:08:00.000-08:00

I created a new folder, extracted the contents of the beware irc daemon, and went to the details view. This is the default view:

Thanks, Vista. Even though at some point in the past, I went through and customized the details view with the columns I like (hint: they're the default columns from Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP), then went into the folder options and set it as the default view for all folders, Vista still decided that this folder of ini, conf, and exe files is a Music folder.

If you poke around enough, you'll find the View->Customize this Folder (different from Tools->Folder Options), where you can set the folder template that you want to use. I don't know how you'd do it if you have the menu bar turned off, which is the default in Vista.

Nom nom nom

2007-11-28T22:57:00.001-08:00

Handbrake

2007-11-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to encoding season 3 of Arrested Development using Handbrake. Since I had some trouble encoding 2 of 12 episodes (resolved by getting the latest DVD43 and Handbrake), I ended up encoding a couple episodes using both Handbrake and Videora iPod Converter. It could be the settings I used, but both were 100MB and had the same audio settings, but the Handbrake-encoded version had noticeably better quality.

The difference is really only noticeable when the video is resized. Here are some screenshots from the last episode encoded with Videora and Handbrake, and zoomed in with Photoshop.

Videora:

Handbrake:

The overall picture is much smoother. Also, since Handbrake works directly from the DVD, it keeps the chapter markers in the video. And no temp files! Hooray for Handbrake!

I suppose now I need to re-encode the first 2 seasons.

Vista Annoyance: Favorites

2007-11-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

This picture illustrates one of my major annoyances with Windows Vista: the favorites list. I realy liked the idea when I saw it on OSX, and even tried to emulate it myself on XP. You can imagine my excitement when I saw it was going to be in Vista. But, like many things in Vista, the implementation is lacking.

On the right is a Windows Explorer window. The favorites list is there by default, all is well. I can add, remove, and reorganize favorites, and in general it's pretty good. If I change the order in one window, it changes it in them all (even already-open ones).

On the left is a "Save As" dialog. Note that it, too, has the favorites list. And it's got all the ones from the Explorer list. But what's going on? They're not in the same order; they're not in any order, really. I have no idea what order they could possibly be in. And what's with the extra entries? Desktop appears twice, and they threw in "Recent Places" and "Computer" for some reason. They might be useful, for all I know, but what are they doing there? If they're important, put them at the top, and separate them visually somehow. Let me know that "hey, these aren't part of your favorites list, but they're pretty useful in this context, so I'm going to put them in for you, right at the top and out of the way." Don't try to pretend like I put them there.

I look at the list on the left, and I get confused. There's too many for me to want to look over them all, and hunt for the place where I want to save the file (hint: it's always the desktop). I like the list on the right- it's still a little busy, and all the blue icons are too similar for me to find them very easily, but it's nice. That list is mine; I can do whatever I want with it.

One thing I don't like about the list, since I'm on the topic, is that you can actually move things by dragging them onto the icons. So if you're trying to add a new one, make sure that when you let go of the mouse you see the solid black "I'm moving this right here" line, otherwise you will be moving your entire file/folder to that location. At least when you reorder it won't let you move (even though visually, it looks [and even says] that you're moving).

It may *say* Move, but it's really just going to reorder

This is just one of the particularly irksome things about Vista that makes me wonder what happened to Microsoft.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T18:41:00.000-08:00

moar funny pictures

Linux

2007-10-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

Cool things

Distribution: xubuntu
Dock: awn
Browser: firefox
IM: pidgin
Search: Beagle or Google desktop

Obstacles

Outlook

calendar (thunderbird + lightning might solve)
contacts
sync

Razr (opensync)
Palm Z22 (opensync)
Timex Data Link watch

iPod/iTunes (rhythmbox? banshee?)
Visual Studio (anjuta?)
Photoshop Elements (picasa? pixel?)
Photoshop Organizer (picasa?)
Video Editing/DVD authoring
Mozy
Tivo Desktop
Xbox 360
Cisco VPN software

Portal

2007-10-18T22:03:00.001-07:00

I had my doubts after hearing about how great Portal was, but I'm going to have to agree: Portal is awesome. The mind-bending portal gameplay is fun, but the script makes it shine. Whoever wrote the script is a genius. And whoever decided to hire the guy who wrote the script and the team that wrote the ending theme is a genius.

The plot in general reminds me a lot of Cube. The constant voice of GLaDOS also brings back fond memories of Shodan from System Shock, though she wasn't funny. I also read it's like the Island, so I added it to my Netflix queue.
The boss fight and ending credits really made everything worthwhile. Possibly the best ending I've ever seen, though games rarely have particularly memorable endings. I especially love the ending theme - Still Alive (no wonder- it's by Jonathan Coulton):

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here
HUGE SUCCESS!
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
Because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead

But there's no sense crying
over every mistake
You just keep on trying
'til you run out of cake
And the science gets done
And you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive

Now that I get it, I've got to make a papercraft Weighted Companion Cube. As someone in the Gamefaqs forum said:

I'm going to make one.
Then I'm going to incinerate it.
It'll be just like old times!

I would never incinerate mine, though.

Portal: 5/5

Re Your Brains

2007-10-06T14:49:00.001-07:00

Favorite Songs by Jonathan Coulton

Code Monkey
Re Your Brains
Chiron Beta Prime
Better
Skullcrusher Mountain
Mandelbrot Set

40+ Free Windows Apps for You

2007-09-13T13:07:00.001-07:00

Normally the list of free windows apps suck- they spend all their time on firefox, winamp, and pretty useless or already known stuff. This one was pretty good, though:

http://www.teknobites.com/2007/09/08/40-free-windows-apps-for-you/

Handbrake

2007-09-13T12:48:00.001-07:00

What do you know- handbrake now works on Windows. It looks like you need DVD43 for it to work straight from the disc.

I tried it on Alien3 SE, which I had previously had a lot of difficulty keeping the audio in sync, and it worked great. It's very convenient to be able to encode straight from the DVD, with no intermediate files/programs involved.

The resulting file was 950mb for 2:25 (6.5mb/min, 110kb/sec) and looked as good as the DVD (768kb video, 128kb audio, h264). I may just have to re-encode the DVDs I had previously done (at the time, h264 was limited to certain resolution/bitrate restrictions and mpeg4 was advised). Here is a screenshot.

I will have to check it out on a TV show DVD and see how well (if it all) it can encode a DVD's worth of episodes.

Recover Deleted Files

2007-09-13T12:19:00.001-07:00

I purchased a copy of Recover2000 a while ago, but I don't think it's all that great (sometimes it helps, sometimes not). I have stumbled across Undelete Plus, which is a free undelete program. I am posting for future reference.

Windows Live Writer

2007-09-12T12:53:00.001-07:00

I found out about Windows Live Writer and its ability to work with blogs. I'm giving it a try. So far, while not perfect, it's really quite good. It could use some paragraph-alignment buttons, but all in all, good work, Microsoft.

Nobby's War Stories

2007-09-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

Nobby, the lift-bot's war stories:

bin-j-Jabbli

Of course you wouldn't remember it, but the battle of bin-j-Jabbli, you may have heard me mention that, carnage it was, carnage and suffering. And anguish. Carnage, suffering, and anguish. Sometimes you got carnage. Other times you got anguish. Other times you got suffering. Sometimes you got a mixture. Carnage and suffering. Carnage and anguish. Anguish and suffering. Anguish and carnage. Anguish, suffering, and carnage. Begin to get the picture? Best years of me life.

Blobberlobberlop

Can hardly bear to talk about it, but Blobberlobberlop... a massacre that was, seeing as how we'd not been properly trained, you see wee was used to other conditions, bin-j-Jabbli, Wimpers, Hadjadji, Phlegnos, that was the terrain we'd been trained for, flat mountainous parched sodden muddy sand and sheer icy rock baking in the fetid jungle heat. But Blobberlobberlop was something different, so when the Blobberlobberloppi came flubberlubberlubberling along, well, we was hacked to pieces, not a man left standing, but we didn't bear a grudge, no, nothing personal, we was fighting men, and a premature agonizing death in a meaningless conflict engineered by imbecillic politicians and greedy arms dealers, werl, that was what we was trained for, soo? It was meat and drink to us.

Hadjadji

Nightmare, it was, down in the devistation of Hadjadji, desert country of course, and sodden. Sodden. Sodden it was. Sodden, and the sinkimutts up to the top of your wope and your doings jammed - we had Heckler & Kock & Snartigern & Eably & Erasthidmites & Eably's Cousin's Friend. Nerick point four-five calibre wossnames, which was always prone to blogging, but what we done, we waved them at the tribesmen and when they saw them they thought to themselves (and you could see them thinking it because Johnny Tribesman has never been any good at disguising his emotions) they thought, blimey, HKSWWWCFN .45 calibre wossnames, and they charged across the burning evistation and massacred us to the last man, but was we downhearted? No, it was OUR IDEA OF FUN.

Phlegnos

Can hardly bear to talk about it, but, that day at Phelgnos, the Balneans grouped above us on the commanding heights of the Pelopennopolopoulos, General Shatton with his borms shot to ribbons, you could hear his blibber raggling from half a bile away. Anyway, down came the Balneans uttering their horrible war cry of "Ere, Wotch your step" and strinking horror into every man's allenoids, WHOMP! they went URGH! SPLOD! TWANG! yuss, it was all scribble and tink and hello cor blimey, until all of a sudden I got my head shot orft and everything went not so much black as a rather effeminate purple but you get what your given in this life, that's my motto, what's your motto, same as mine I expect, wouldn't be surprised, young buggers, what do you do, nuffink, right? Right. End of story.

Wimpers

Nightmare, it was, Wimpers, a battle as was seared in the remembery of everyone what fought and died there... pointless it was, thrumping about in the splod, up to your queeg in albol and flard with the Snazzis ranged on every corner and poor old General Perlman with his ob clamped shut and everything went all wet and eably. The only word for it was "hardihosh" but we didn't care, we was fighting troops and "Mmmppph" says General Perlman through his clamped ob and off we charged, mowed down in waves, it was a massacre but I'll tell you wot, we enjoyed it.

QTFairUse6

2007-09-09T15:05:00.001-07:00

QTFairUse6: http://hymn-project.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1553

Overlord

2007-09-06T22:02:00.001-07:00

I finished Overlord a couple weeks ago, and it is great. It really is a complete game in as many aspects as I can think of. There are a number of things to do, a number of things to collect, and it's all attainable, and everything fits really well into the narrative.

One of the hooks of the game is that it lets you choose which path you want- you can be evil, or more evil. The difference is largely in whether you want to be a feared, powerful and respected overlord, or whether you want to be backstabbing, cruel, and otherwise feared. But though this may sound serious, the game has a rather lighthearted approach and even when you're choosing the more evil path, you're generally being evil to other evil characters. So you don't have to feel so bad.

I'm glad I'm don't have to fight him

The other major aspect of the game is the minions that you control. You have an army of these creatures at your disposal. The game makes it clear that they're in it to serve you- they live and die at your whim. They are always cheerful, and often delighted with the tasks that you call them to do. They run into battle with cries of "for the Overlord!" and shrieks of glee. Whenever they find life force or gold they pick it up and set it at your feet, saying "for the Master!"

What Overlord does so effectively- and what makes it so great- is making you feel like you're the all-powerful master of your castle and minions. The instruction is done by a senior-type minion named Gnarl, and even though he's instructing you, he makes it clear that you come first. He may be in charge of the castle, but you're the boss. He's also a really amusing narrator- whenever you find a new spell or upgrade he'll say "Oooh, and object! I like objects!" He explains that the minions will automatically pick up and equip anything useful they find- and sometimes useless things, too. He apologizes for them: "their brains really are quite small."

They're always so happy to do stupid things like put jack-o-lanterns on their heads

The minions do everything for you. You don't have to (and can't) dirty your hands lifting up any tower objects. Send the minions to do it- it makes them so happy. Getting low on health? Sacrifice some minions in a blood pool. The game makes sure to pick the least-armed ones, and they run up and dive into the pool, to their doom. But there's always more minions, so long as you have been collecting life force. And you'd better collect that life force (or use the exploit) in order to power up your armor. You sacrifice minions of different types in the forge to power up your weapons or armor in different ways.

They each have their own way of attacking, too. Brown minions are the strongest and run into fights, using their bare claws if they have no weapon. Reds are weaker, but are immune to fire and throw fireballs. Blues can go in water, raise dead minions, and are immune to magic, but they're pretty worthless in a fight. Greens are immune to poison, and when placed on a guard marker, they turn invisible and jump on the back of your enemies, causing massive damage.

You're the Overlord. Let your minions carry it.

The game gives you frequent upgrades to your health, mana, spells, and minion count. When you start out, you only have brown minions, and you find the other 3 kinds soon enough as you play through the storyline. It's always a treat to find a new upgrade, and inside the tower there's a place for everything.

Your tower is one of those little touches that shows how much care the developers put into the game. It has three levels- the throne room; upstairs, which is mostly trophy-type rooms; and downstairs, which has the armory/forge and dungeon. When you start, your tower has been looted and practically destroyed. As you play, different areas will get repaired and become accessible. It's always exciting to see what new areas or features will appear next. You will eventually be able to purchase decorations for your throne room. There aren't many choices, unfortunately, except to purchase or not purchase each type of decoration.

Your throne room also has a jester that you can kick around. He lists off your accomplishments in the game by calling you different titles. For instance, if you decide to let the townsfolk have the food, he'll call you "Quieter of the Grumbling Stomachs." He has a lot of amusing ones, such as "Appreciator of voluptuous assets," and (since you hit him a lot) "Bullier of Jesters" and "Suppressor of Free Jester Speech".

Good and Evil title screens

One of the most brilliant little touches is the main screen. The camera starts outside, and pans around and through your tower. The brilliant part is, they automatically load the last saved game, so as you play through the game, you see it start out in disarray, then it has scaffolding, finally it's repaired and gets the upgrades that you purchase for it. When you choose to start the game, the camera just flies over to your throne room and there you go. If you want to load a different game, the options is there, but auto-loading your last saved game and showing your tower is just a wonderful little touch.

I went through the "good" or "less evil" campaign (really, just a couple choices that don't really alter the rest of the game) first, then I played a new game taking all the evil choices. This is definitely the way to go, because the evil campaign has much more options. If you're sufficiently evil, the nearby town will sacrifice 10 maidens to you, and if you chase them all down, they will appear as scantily-clad servants in your throne room. You also end up with more upgrades in tower decorations. Another great, small touch is that in the tower, the color of the sky will change from a bright white (when you're good) to a dark purple (when you're evil). Your character's appearance, too, will change from a glowing silver armor with bright red cape, to a dark gray armor with gnarled spikes and a cape so black that it has a heat haze and emits red particles.

Good and Evil throne rooms

You also end up choosing a tower mistress- either Rose, the good one, or Velvet, the "evil" one. When you're given the option it's cool how they fight over you, and make you offers of minion upgrades to entice you to choose them. Rose is smart and compassionate, and seems to have no problem with how evil you want to be. Velvet is self-centered and materialistic, and orders you to go buy her nice things.

Rose and Velvet

The levels are based on Tolkienesque themes, with areas full of elves, dwarves, men, halflings, trolls, zombies, and others. The halfling (or as the townspeople call them, "harfling") areas are taken right out of Lord of the Rings, with their distinctive small circular doors.

The bosses are each based on the seven deadly sins (I loved the movie Se7en), and all are former heroes that have given into a particular evil desire. One of the points of the game is said by the Wizard: "The good... they don't know how close to evil they really are." They had all banded together to defeat your predecessor and went home victorious, only to fall prey to temptation. One gave into gluttony ("have some more food- no one would deny a hero!") and became a gigantic, hideous, spherical monster. Another swore off fighting and gave into sloth ("rest up- you've earned it!") and a gigantic tree grew around him and made his nightmares real. All are cautionary tales in how desire becomes obsession and turns heroes into villains.

I've been trying to get all the single player achievements- I've got all but Tower Collector, which I was trying to get the second time through but missed the one object that you can't go back for (d'oh!!!). It has a multiplayer as well, but I haven't given it much playtime. There are some multiplayer achievements that it looks like it would take a good number of hours to get; alas, I'm not that interested. I played one round and was winning, so the other guy disconnected. Jerk. I'd really like to get all the achievements, but it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to without spending a serious amount of time.

I definitely recommend downloading the demo to see if it's up your alley. The demo was enough for me to get me to purchase it, and I'm glad I did. It's a polished, fun gameplay experience that is well worth the $60.

Overlord: 5/5

Mitch Hedberg

2007-09-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

I came across a fan site for one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg. They have some mp3 bootlegs from his shows, as well as clips (audio and video) clips of various things he's done. His promos for Jimmy John's makes me wish they were in California.

Street Fighter: The Later Years

2007-09-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

CollegeHumor looks into the lives of the Street Fighter combatants, 10 years later. Tiger uppercut!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Transformers: The Game

2007-09-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished getting all the achievements for the Xbox 360 version of Transformers: The Game, and boy am I glad it's over. Pretty much everything, good and bad, that has been said about this game is true. If you want to like it, there are things to like about it. If you don't like the movie, you won't like the game. If you're a fan of G1 Transformers, then there are parts of the game that you'll enjoy.

I do not care for the movie character designs, but they are pretty cool in this game

The main problem I have with the game is its stability. I wasn't trying to find any bugs, but I found them. The first was a savegame-corrupting crash that forced me to start all over again. Fortunately, I was only at 20% completion (I had just gotten all the energon cubes in the first mission), but it was at least an hour or two lost.

I also found two 100% reproducible progression-breaking crash bugs. The first was during the Decepticon missions, playing as Barricade, my fight with Bumblebee would always crash midway through, 4/4 times. I finally got around it by going to a previous level and saving there, then returning.

The second crash bug was during the fight against Ironhide, which is the toughest fight in the game. I played at least five times only to have the game crash about 4/5 into the fight. The only way I could find around it was to always start the fight from a fresh boot- if I got killed, I would quit to the dashboard and relaunch the game. This fight is so frustrating that I would often take a break and play Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix to cool off. But oh the feeling of victory once Ironhide was finally overcome!

Blackout is a badass, but this fight is still stupid hard

My next complaint is the enemies. I understand that to fill out the game, the designers needed to put in Autobot and Decepticon drones as cannon fodder, and am fine with that. Most drones are killed in a couple hits (or one, from the more powerful playable characters), and explode into a satisfying array of chunks. But others (most notably, the towtrucks) are completely invincible until you throw something at them, which offers you a brief window during which you can wail upon them. Not only that, they will perform an attack- either spin around their tow cable or bull-rush you- that will knock you flying back. Your guns are also completely worthless against these drones (and all non-human enemies), because they will simply engage their shield right before the bullet hits.

The difficulty in this game varies greatly. Generally, drones and even bosses are pretty easy to kill one-on-one, so you always end up fighting a group, or fighting and then racing then fighting some more. Usually, too, all the action must take place inside the “action zone.” This is an understandable concept, since you don’t want the player initiating a fight and then going off to collect energon cubes. The problem is that this zone is pretty arbitrary, and even if it’s just you vs a decepticon, the zone stays fixed. So, the decepticon can leave the zone, but you can’t (mostly, though, they stay inside). Some of the fights, though, are stupid hard. Like when you have to defend the Allspark while spiders spawn from nowhere and Megatron shoots you so that you get knocked back, and by the time you get up, you’re knocked back again, out of the “action zone”, and you can’t get back in before time runs out. And the enemies who are invincible until you throw something at them. And the two-on-one fight where you have to defeat Blackout and Starscream one at a time, then both together. And the fight against Ironhide, where if you fly, you will immediately get shot out of the sky and lose over half your health.

Don’t get knocked out, or you’re not coming back

The last main complaint I have is that the physics system is completely out of tune. What I suspect happened was that during most of development, everything had a realistic mass and number of hit points. Then, an Activision bigwig came along and said, "This game isn't next-gen enough. I want to hit robots and have them go flying, and I want debris all over the place during a fight." The developers were forced to make this change, and the end result is that if you get too close to something it will either send it flying or cause it to explode. The other cars that drive along feel like they're made of cardboard when you run into them, sending them flying through the air. Large structures like highway signs and obelisks will break into dozens of pieces if you brush against them, giving the feeling they're kept together by a delicate balancing act.

If you're willing to look past these faults, there is stuff to like. Optimus Prime and Megatron are voiced by Peter Cullin and Frank Welker, the voices from the original cartoon. The vehicle designs look just like the movie. I'm not really a fan of the new designs, but this game presents them so well that I checked amazon to see if the toys are as good (they're not, and boy are they expensive).

Optimus Prime is about to lay some serious hurt down

The most important part- just being a Transformer- is done right. When running in robot form, the camera does a combat-run shake (a la Gears of War), which is pretty cool, but I wish there was an option to turn it off. Running and hitting Y to transform into a vehicle is awesome. The environments look pretty nice. Some complain they're too small, but I have no problems with their size. The animations are really well done, especially Blackout (the helicopter), who uses his blades alternately as a cape, saw, nunchucks, and a sword (his melee attack includes an awesome Blade-like turn-around-and-stab-behind-you move).

The developers were able to add in some cool G1 content that adds some value to the purchase. One of the missions has you playing as Optimus Prime and fighting Laserwave reborn as a purple tank-like vehicle. Once you play through the game and find all the Autobot and Decepticon symbols, you can play as G1 Optimus or Megatron (Megatron doesn't transform into a gun, he just flies, which is still pretty good). There's also some repaints of Jazz and Starscream, but I can't say I care much about that.

Flying around as Starscream is one of the highlights of the game

The highlight of the game, definitely, are the two flying levels where you play as Blackout and Starscream. After playing through the Autobot campaign, which was entirely ho-hum driving and fighting, being able to fly around was awesome. Blackout is arguably the most bad-ass character in the game. He fires the same blue-exploding projectiles as he does in the movie, and practically all you do is cause havoc. I also ended up with a better appreciation of Starscream, whose character design I particularly didn't like from the movie (it's the same design, but being able to fly around as him made up for it). His level is beautiful, too, and probably the most fun set of missions in the game.

If you're looking for achievements, then if you're patient you can get 1000 fairly easily. Well, simply, if not easily. The bulk of them you'll get just going through the missions. There are some challenge/interesting things-to-do achievements. For all of them, however, you'll have to collect 100 energon cubes from each level. Finding the first 90-95 won't take more than 10 or so minutes, but you'll spend another hour or more wondering around looking for those last cubes.

If only the Blackout toy were as awesome as this

If I had paid $60 for the game, I'd probably be pissed. For the $15, I'd say it's mediocre at best. I plan on keeping it around to show anyone who's interested. They can then play the fun parts of being Bumblebee, Prime, et al, and can play the awesome flying levels.

This game is what it is: a movie tie-in. They did some important things right, and it is playable, though the difficulty varies wildly. If you want to like it, you can, though if you're trying to get all the achievements, you will probably hate it by the end. It's not a terrible game, but it makes me sad that such an excellent license could be so callously cashed-in upon.

(One last thing I’d like to mention that is bizarre, is that in the combination load screen/controller layout screen, Y is labeled “Convert”. Convert? This is the Transformers video game, where you play as a Transformer who transforms from robot to vehicle and then transforms back again. Why would the button be labeled Convert?!)

Transformers: The Game: 2/5

Firefox Icon

2007-08-31T14:14:00.001-07:00

Looks like this icon has been around for a while now, but I just discovered it. I preferred when Firefox was called Firebird, mostly because of Jairo Boudewyn's awesome Crystal Ball icons (and because it went better with Thunderbird and Sunbird). But it looks like Firefox has a decent OSX dock-type icon now. Still not as good as the crystal ones, but plenty good in its own right.

Convert Space Ghost RealVideo to iPod

2007-08-31T11:28:00.000-07:00

I needed to convert my Space Ghost: Coast to Coast video files that I had previously captured to RealVideo (when will Volume 4 come out on DVD?! That's where all the best episodes are!) into more convenient iPod format.

After searching for a bit, I came across the Real7ime Converter, which does a pretty decent job of converting to avi. Then I just fire open Videora iPod Converter to convert the avi to iPod format.

Kittenwar

2007-08-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

A while back Sandy and I submitted this picture of Mystie and Stormy to Kittenwar. They held their own, but as cute as they are, they just can't seem to break 50%.

Firefox, RSS, and Netvibes

2007-08-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

Netvibes is my favorite RSS reader/home page- it just does everything right. So I looked up how to add it to the "Subscribe to this feed using" option in Firefox. You need 3 new string values:

browser.contentHandlers.types.6.title => Netvibes
browser.contentHandlers.types.6.type => application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
browser.contentHandlers.types.6.uri => http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=%s

Replace "6" with the next sequential "browser.contentHandlers.types" number.

Outlook 2007 + Hotmail

2007-08-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

It looks like Microsoft has finally made their Microsoft Office Outlook Connector available to everyone. And it's free!

Thus far, it seems really good- superior to the built-in hotmail/webmail support. You can see (but not sync!) your hotmail calendar, and your hotmail contacts show up as a new contacts thingy. What makes it worth the install, however, is that it background-downloads all emails, lets you categorize emails, and in general performs way better.

It really makes a difference when things perform well. It's the little psychological victories that make all the difference. Just like Joel says.

Content-Aware Image Resizing

2007-08-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Article

Sense: This picture makes none

2007-08-17T23:00:00.001-07:00

I know it's a bit old, but I just think it's funny. The original was a bit small, so I whipped up this one from the real photo.

Homer Simpson: Blackjack Dealer

2007-08-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Best TV Shows

2007-08-08T00:22:00.001-07:00

Arrested Development
The IT Crowd
Heroes
Battlestar Galactica
Lost
Desperate Housewives
Psych
The Dresden Files
4400
Mythbusters
Burn Notice
Digging for the Truth
Best Week Ever
Futurama
Simpsons (seasons 2-9)
Family Guy
24 (seasons 1 & 2)
Beast Machines
Scrubs
Coupling

Highlander 2007

2007-08-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

Highlander 2007 has come and gone. Despite some initial misgivings, I had a good time. My clan was MacMayan (because all clans have Scottish names, and we go to the Mayan, natch), and even though we were a completely new clan with 20/22 new members, we ended up taking second place overall. We could have taken first, though, if not for some questionable ref calls. Our team was really great- everyone worked together, there were no conflicts, just pure teamwork.

Going in, I had wanted to do the Video Game Challenge, but the games were Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, which I had never played. I also wanted to play paintball, because I had never been, but this was not the venue for trying new things- every event is worth points, and there's only one opportunity for each (no practice). I ended up working on two events- Orienteering and the Genius Challenge.

Orienteering consists of your team trying to find flags in the woods around the camp. The team has a compass and elevation map with marks where the flags are, but the compass doesn't help a whole lot. We ended up going for the hardest ones first in effort to sweep around the perimeter going out and pick up the easier ones coming back, but we spent a lot more time trying to locate the harder flags than we expected. We ended up finding only about 4 of them, but they were all worth big points, including the highest valued one. We were exhausted coming back to turn in our results on time, and half of the group stayed behind until the last minute to find the highest valued flag. They found it, and one guy ran about 1.5 miles uphill back to the starting point to turn in our results. He was incredible. We ended up winning by such a large margin that we didn't even need the last, highest-valued flag. We were also covered in crazy little thorny things. The guy in this picture ended up throwing out his socks.

The Genius Challenge consisted of 50 questions of various sorts, mainly logic puzzles, but a fair number of questions that required outside knowledge to solve- e.g., the capital of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), the number of Stanley Cups that Wayne Gretzky won (4). Our team knew some of the answers, but we weren't allowed to get outside help. A number of questions were worded very poorly, and I know we would have done better if the test had been more clear. And the question that I just couldn't come up with the answer for the life of me- make 21 from the numbers 1, 5, 6, and 7 and the operations addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. (The answer is 6 / (1 - (5/7)).

Overall, we did awesome, especially against so many other groups- 250 other people in 9 other clans; we were one of the smallest at 22 people, and only one other group had as many new people. Considering our start, where our clan leader couldn't make it for the opening ceremonies, and nobody knew anyone else or what was going on, we really turned heads at the closing ceremonies when we took a close second place.

4400 Intro

2007-07-31T00:26:00.000-07:00

"A Place in Time", by Amanda Abizaid. This is perhaps the only intro that we never fast forward through. And the show is really good, too.

Solar Eclipse Map 2001-2025

2007-07-29T21:16:00.001-07:00

(article)

Why Terrorism Fails

2007-07-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

I came across this article and thought it was pretty interesting.

Thunderbird -> Outlook

2007-07-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

I had to migrate thunderbird emails into Outlook, and it wasn't pleasant. I had to go through eudora or something, and it didn't get the dates right. I found this link and am leaving it here for future reference.

TiVo file editing

2007-07-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

After using the TiVo ToGo to download the file, you can make it into an mpeg either using graphedit, or with directshow dump, which is much easier.

Sometimes the videos can be edited with any program, and sometimes not. TMPGEnc is free and its mpeg tools help to merge and mux/demux, but unfortunately its clipping tool doesn't work with my problematic video. For that, MPEG2VCR worked for me, though I wouldn't particularly recommend it for general usage.

Alas, no one (free) tool could do all I want, but this combination of free software and demos served my purposes for this situation.

Sandy's Computer

2007-07-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

I upgraded Sandy's computer with the guts of my old Alienware. Here are the components and links so I can locate them easier in the future.

Motherboard: Asus K8V SE Deluxe
Hard drive: WD Caviar 320GB (WD3200YS)

Best Games I've Played

2007-07-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

(In no particular order)

Curse of Monkey Island
Shadow of Destiny
R-Type
R-Type Delta
God of War
Mortal Kombat II
Super Mario World
Mario 64
Tetris (Game Boy version, played on a Game Boy Pocket)
New Tetris (Nintendo 64)
Baldur's Gate (1/Tales of the Sword Coast/2: Shadows of Amn/Throne of Bhaal)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Metroid Prime 1/2
Mario Kart DS
Starfox 64
System Shock 2
We Love Katamari
Aliens vs Predator
Portal
Braid
Overlord

Honorable Mentions

Galactic Civilizations II
Tetris Worlds
Final Fantasy VII
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
New Super Mario Bros
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Oblivion

Transformers Premiere

2007-07-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

Last night at 12:01 am Sandy and I went to see Transformers at the Arclight in Hollywood. This was definitely the place to see it, as they had the vehicles from the movie parked outside. I took Sandy's picture with Bumblebee, and she took mine with Optimus Prime. This was worth the $22 right there.

We saw the movie in their dome theater, which seats 800, and was sold out. The crowd didn't seem all that excited when we started, but once the movie started there was cheering and laughing as much as one would expect from a midnight showing.

I have mixed feelings about the movie. When I first started hearing news about it, I was pretty skeptical. I didn't really care for the new character designs (and still don't), and I really didn't like Armageddon. But then they announced that Peter Cullin would be voicing Optimus Prime again, which is a brilliant move that I wouldn't have expected of them. So I remained cautiously optimistic.

Then the people who saw an advance screening started reporting that it was pretty good. They said that it was a good action movie, but that there wasn't much plot or character development. After hearing that, I didn't know what to think. I wanted it to be good, and tried to expect it to be bad, but I was also expecting it to be good.

Now that I've seen it, I'm still not sure what to think. Sandy loved it, but I'm not so sure. It was missing a lot of what made Transformers really great back in the day, though I can't tell you quite what that is. But it also had some pretty cool stuff, and all the characters were pretty likable. There was a number of cliched characters, but they weren't a major part of the movie, and the cliched parts seemed to be over by the time you've had enough. The characters were often funny, and everyone seemed to be excited to be in the movie and trying their best. I really liked how the army soldiers acted as a team, calling in air support instead of taking the Decepticons on single-handedly. They actually portrayed the army as powerful- sure, a Decepticon can decimate an unsuspecting base, but the army can fight back. They don't necessarily need to rely on the Autobots to save them.

There's definately good mixed in with bad, but when I think about it, the original movie wasn't perfect either- it had more than its fair share of lame situations (the fight with the Junkions set to "Dare to Be Stupid" comes to mind). When I left this movie, I wasn't all that enthralled with it, but with more distance I come to look upon it more fondly. If nothing else, it should serve to justify a sequel, which may realize all I hoped for.

Transformers (2007): 4/5

Outlook 2007 constantly prompting for password

2007-07-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

I was having a problem in Vista that Outlook 2007 would always ask me for my password when it opened, or when changing folders after being open for a while. It would have the password filled in and the "Remember Password" checkbox would be unchecked, so I would check it and hit "OK". But it wouldn't remember- sooner or later, it would come up again. It was really annoying. It would prevent Outlook from being able to "Send & Receive," failing silently until I switched folders, which would bring up the password prompt again.

I assumed the problem was this, and that Microsoft hadn't gotten around to fixing it for Vista. But apparently, this is the actual solution. Thus far it seems to work. Woo hoo!

UPDATE: It may work temporarily, but it doesn't stick. D'oh!

UPDATE 2: Microsoft Office Outlook Connector (indirectly) solves the problem