planet snewpy

surface transmissions (2010):

Roku

2010-01-06 16:02:05 -

I've been a Netflix user for many years. I was intrigued when they began offering some of their movies in streaming format directly from their web site -- I think it's easy to see that this is the future of entertainment content distribution -- but I'm personally not a fan of sitting in front of my computer to watch long videos. One of these days I'll get around to either building my own HTPC, or upgrading our TiVo, but in the meantime, Santa brought a fancy new gadget that bridges the gap quite nicely.

The Big Box Office Bamboozle

2010-01-08 17:00:15 -

It looks like my prediction about Avatar is on track to come true, but the box office reports today reminded me just how pointless box office reports are. I already know the answer to this question, but why do these reports still use dollars instead of gross tickets sold? Hey James Cameron! Since you're trying to revolutionize the movie industry with your work, how about doing something really revolutionary -- how about you demand that your box office receipts be reported in numbers that actually mean something? Because, if you look at Titanic's box office take, it's based on the cost of tickets in 1997 (about $4.50). Tickets on average today are about twice that much, so when Avatar's take exceeds that, it'll be on half as many tickets. On the other hand, Titanic sold about 95 million tickets in 1997. That number still has meaning today. For example, the original Star Wars in 1977 sold over 160 million tickets in total. So if bragging rights are going to mean anything at all, everyone needs to be using the same standard of measure. Otherwise, just stop bombarding us with meaningless numbers!

Home Theater PC

2010-02-28 20:45:46 -

When you start the research, like I did, on building your own Home Theater PC, you inevitably come across a page or two that claims to give you all the information you need to build the "ultimate" rig for yourself. Some of these pages do provide a wealth of valuable and useful information, but none of them (that I've seen) actually provide you everything. How do you define everything? Well, if I'm going to make the leap to a HTPC, I'm probably doing it for one of two reasons (there may be more, actually). You either want to build one for the fun of it or just to learn how, or you may be choosing that path to escape the burden of your current cable or satellite company. Coincidentally, NPR just did a story yesterday on the number of people who are starting to tell their providers to take a hike. If it is the latter (like myself), "everything" is defined as the path of least resistance. That is, cost is not the primary driver, as I recognize that if I use it long enough I will eventually make my money back in the savings I will enjoy after I tell my provider to go pound sand. Cost is second to the time and hassle factor of setting up the system. This means that "everything" is not only a foolproof hardware configuration that has been tested, but step-by-step instructions for installing all the necessary software as well.

HTPC Hardware

2010-03-02 16:28:37 -

Let me start by saying that I did not compile this entire list of hardware through trial and error. Most of it came from Jay Taylor's excellent blog over at AMD, and a big thanks to him for starting me off in the right direction. I bought all the necessary parts for the base system following the links he provided. This includes the chassis, motherboard, memory, CPU, hard drive, and optical drive. Beyond that, I started experimenting. Buying my own tuner cards, remote controls, antennas, etc., and returning a lot of it until I found the right mix.

HTPC Install

2010-03-09 20:32:31 -

Once you've assembled the hardware, and collected the software, it is time to begin your install. You can expect this entire process to take between one and two hours to complete. Please follow these instructions:

HTPC Results

2010-03-15 15:45:16 -

The primary reason I set out to build a Home Theater PC was so I could get rid of DirecTV. I've been a subscriber since 1999, and I've never had any complaints about their service, apart from the incessant rate hikes. I've made a few successful attempts to stave off the endless increases. A couple of nasty letters and a few hours spent on the phone with their "Customer Retention" department have worked in the past, but I'm just tired of having to fight that battle. Their rates have doubled since I first bought the service, with no noticable improvement in the content. I still have a single decoder box, no built-in DVR, no premium channels, and I'm paying $60 a month for the dozen or so channels that I watch on a regular basis. Couple this with the fact that the satellite feed, while digital, is not HD, so the over-the-air local channels look and sound a lot better and it's just not worth it. So bye-bye DirecTV!

HTPC Software

2010-03-07 13:10:20 -

I started out thinking this would be a Linux-based PC, but two things changed my mind. First, I've written before about my travails with Linux. I want to like Linux, I really do. But I can't. Mabye I'm just not geeky enough, or maybe I'm just lazy, but configuring the guts of an operating system is not enjoyable, and I will avoid it every chance I get. If that means I buy Windows, so be it. Second, and more importantly, at the time of this writing streaming Netflix movies to a Linux box was still not an option -- this was a deal-breaker.

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-28 20:44:35 -

Yeah, I know I'm a week late, but I had to post an update on our square foot garden. My wife did a great job getting all of our crops planted and now we are only a few weeks away from having some delicious home-grown salads with dinner. Yum! Stay tuned for the first harvest...

Square Foot Gardening

2010-04-08 06:02:03 -

We picked up Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book last year with the intent of planting a small vegetable garden, but never got around to doing it. But this year, we are off and running! Only a couple more days and we will have our seedlings in the ground, and we will finally have a use for all that compost we've been making for the past year. Stay tuned for the planting...

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

2010-04-18 06:06:22 -

My favorite show on NPR is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and we attended the live taping of Saturday's show. The panelists were Charlie Pierce, Roxanne Roberts, and Mo Rocca. I think Mo is tied with Paula Poundstone as my favorite panelist. The show was very good, and it was interesting to see all of the things that go into making the show. The show was taped at Powell Hall in front of an audience of about two thousand. Besides the panelists, the host Peter Sagal, and announcer Carl Kasell, there were a handful of producers on the stage, monitoring the recordings and passing notes to the participants. Following the show, there was a brief period of re-takes to rerecord portions of the show that did not have the best audio quality.

First Harvest

2010-05-21 06:43:03 -

We had our first salad the other night from our garden and it was great. I can't wait for all of the other crops -- peas, carrots, and even cantaloupe! Yum!

Bye Bye DirecTV!

2010-06-03 17:05:45 -

Earlier this year, I documented my Home Theater PC project. My primary motivation for this endeavor was to find a viable alternative, preferably less expensive, to my subscription to DirecTV. I had been a customer of theirs for over 10 years, and in that time I watched my monthly fee creep from $29.95 all the way up to $59 -- almost double! And what did I get for my money? Not a damn thing. I still had the same satellite decoder (circa 1999), with no DVR, and no High Definition content. Their latest rate increase that took effect at the beginning of the year was the proverbial last straw.

Disappointed With LOST

2010-06-08 21:13:48 -

I was disappointed with the Lost finale. There, I said it. It wasn't very good. Actually, it was good -- just like every other episode of the show, it was well acted and well made -- it just wasn't very satisfying. But there are a ton of people who are in denial about that. They are raving about the deeper philosophical meaning embedded in the show and how the finale was not only deeply meaningful but the only ending that fit. Well, I call bullshit. People who say that are just embarrassed to admit that they, like the rest of us, wasted 120 hours watching the show.

Electric Cars Still Coming

2010-06-12 20:05:53 -

A year ago I wrote about the electric car from Zenn Motors that was on the verge of becoming a reality. A year later, it doesn't appear to be any closer to real, unfortunately. I'm pretty bummed about that, but I can't say I'm surprised. The promise of an electric car has been made and broken my entire life. Please click the picture to see an ad from Hot Rod Magazine for an electric hybrid car that GM was promising. Also, please note the ad appeared in 1969!

Here We Go Again

2010-06-01 17:05:48 -

Welcome to the third annual Running of the Blogs! We've called it 30 Days of Blog in years past, but that title isn't terrible catchy, so I thought we could use a new name for it. In fact, I might even register the domain name and turn it into a NaNoWriMo kind of experience. Running of the Blogs evokes images of frightened tourists being gored in the streets of Pamplona. That's kind of how it feels -- you know if you don't keep running, writing something new every day, you are likely to be impaled by the horns of ridicule and derision for having failed in your attempt. I've said it in years past, I have a lot of respect for bloggers who manage to crank out a quality product day after day. It's not easy. But once again, I am accepting the challenge. So, here we go again. Tighten your red sash. On your mark. Get set. Blog!

How To Hide Your Gold

2010-06-14 11:40:09 -

On one of my recent journeys down the Wikipedia rabbit hole -- you know what I'm talking about, when you look up something in Wikipedia and one of the links on the page draws your attention, and you click on it, and then repeat until you are seventeen pages and at least a dozen knowledge domains removed from the information you came looking for -- I wound up on the page for aqua regia (don't ask) and stumbled across this interesting tidbit of history:

Lenovo Wireless Keyboard

2010-06-28 05:44:58 -

The Lenovo N5901 wireless keyboard is a small handheld remote with a full QWERTY keyboard and built-in trackball. It seems well suited for home theater (HTPC) applications, however, it has a number of drawbacks.

Magnetic Picture Gallery

2010-06-27 10:19:18 -

What do you get when you cross a child's door with a refrigerator? A door that any kid can use to show off his best work. This is a simple project you can do with your child (it takes less than an hour), and then eliminate the need for tape or stick-tack for hanging those masterpieces.

Memory Foam Mattress

2010-06-04 06:34:29 -

It's been about six months since we bought this memory foam mattress at Sam's. At the time, I read every single comment on the page, left by dozens (if not hundreds) of people who had purchased the same mattress. They all expressed the same apprehension about buying a mattress online, without ever having laid on it, but in the end, they all did it anyway, keeping their fingers crossed that they would not live to regret it. There were only a handful of truly negative comments about the mattress -- overwhelmingly the owners of this mattress were happy with it. I can now add myself to that list.

Missourah

2010-06-15 16:22:20 -

This is addressed to those who routinely mispronounce the name of my home state. Some of you, inexplicably, are from this state and you still don't know how to pronounce it. Since you somehow managed to escape any proper instruction in its pronunciation, allow me to enlighten you. It is pronounced Mizz-oo-ree. Please note that the word ends in the letter 'i' and not 'ah.' Would you care to explain why Missouri gets special treatment? I've never once heard anyone say "Miss-iss-ipp-ah." Or talk about how they had spaghett-ah for dinner. So what exactly is your problem, anyway?

The Lost Room

2010-06-22 20:42:37 -

I just watched Sci-Fi Channel's miniseries The Lost Room for the second time, and I have to say that it is really very good. It originally aired in 2006, but I didn't watch it the first time until 2007. At the time, I was in between seasons of LOST, and found the two shows to be similar in a lot of ways. The mythology of both shows is dense, sprawling, and very intriguing. But I was ultimately frustrated with how The Lost Room ended, believing that they could have done a better job answering the questions raised.

The Oil

2010-06-20 15:06:23 -

I can't let these 30 days go by without saying something about the story that has everyone talking. Everyone has their own theories about how to clean up the disaster in the Gulf. And the blame game has been played by everyone as well, with no clear winners. I'm not going to jump into any of those debates, but I did have a couple of observations that I'd like to share.

Whew!

2010-06-30 05:54:00 -

Well, here we are at the end of another 30 days. I don't know if it's because I have so much other stuff going on, or I'm just running out of things to write about, but this was the hardest year so far. For those of you following along, I hope it wasn't too painful -- I tried to keep it interesting.

Quest For A Good Antenna

2010-07-05 19:19:40 -

An integral part of my Home Theater PC build is the antenna, and when I first wrote about the hardware, I wasn't even aware how complicated things would become in this area. The RCA ANT1251, which is little more than a pair of glorified rabbit ears, did not perform well at all in my house. I quickly abandoned it for the Terk HDTVa, which I found delivered a decent signal from my attic, and I was satisfied for several weeks.

Google Sketchup

2010-08-07 17:23:29 -

This has been on my todo list forever, and today I finally got around to it. I've been wanting to learn how to use Google Sketchup ever since it was released and they are now on version 7, so that should tell you how long I've been putting it off. Sketchup is a free CAD/CAM software package for doing 3-D design work. It is really easy to learn, especially after viewing the tutorial videos that Google provides. After watching about 20 minutes of video and playing around with it for about an hour, this fancy end table is my first creation. Not bad, huh? I'm going to continue playing with it until I improve my skills and then I plan to use it to sketch some home improvement projects that I have brewing.

Hey Airline Industry!

2010-08-19 06:09:48 -

Recent surveys have indicated that the airlines are getting worse instead of better when it comes to customer satisfaction, one of the key areas being on-time arrivals. Now it doesn't take a genius to realize that arriving on time is heavily dependent on departing on time, so it follows that anything an airline can do to reduce the amount of time a plane sits at the gate will serve to improve this valuable metric. And yet, the airlines continue to make decisions that will most likely have the opposite effect.

Netopia 3347 DSL Modem/Router

2010-08-06 20:12:11 -

At the suggestion of an AT&T technician, I upgraded my old router and DSL modem to this Netopia 3347 combination unit, and I am very glad I did. He notified me that my old DSL modem, a Slipstream 4100 B that I purchased at Best Buy about a year ago, was actually two or three generations old already and that upgrading to this particular device had solved a connection problem for another customer he had helped.

Fifteen Albums That Don't Suck

2010-09-08 19:34:11 -

At the urging of a friend on Facebook, I am accepting the challenge to name fifteen albums that don't suck. This isn't as easy as it sounds, either. I was around and buying music when CDs first hit the market -- you know, back when they were called "record stores?" Investing in an album on CD was just that, an investment -- CDs cost $20 back then. So an album had to be good before I spent any money on it. I eventually reached the point where I wasn't as picky, and would buy an album for a song or two that I liked, but only if the CD single wasn't available.

Rooftop Antenna

2010-10-09 20:43:02 -

I've not had much luck with antennas as part of my Home Theater PC build. Up until now, none of the models I've tried have worked very well. This latest one, a Channel Master 4228, did not fare well inside my attic, so I finally had to admit defeat and mount the thing on my roof. So far so good. The overall signal strength doesn't seem any higher on the meter, but I haven't noticed any dropped signals or pixelation either, and, most importantly, we seem to finally have a strong and stable PBS signal.

Bye Bye Movable Type

2010-12-22 17:38:17 -

It's been a good run. I think I started using Movable Type as my blogging platform in 2003, but it was time for a change. Most importantly because Movable Type blogs have become spammer magnets. A month or so ago, after a particularly nasty spam storm, my hosting company suspended my account and I was forced to disable comments entirely. Where's the fun in blogging if no one can comment?