Posts for July 2006

Compare Democracy Player to iTunes

Democracy (an open source Internet video/TV platform) has posted an article comparing the Democracy Player and iTunes. Worth reading. Gist: the Democracy Player is already probably a better desktop player (Windows, Mac, or Linux), but it doesn't yet have the ability to sync videos to iPods (or any other player, for that matter). That's on the list, though, and when finished will make the app a real heavyweight in this space.

July 30, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Lada Ada and Tim Berners-Lee...

A couple of quick, cool posts...

July 28, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

nuvexport is da bomb

Another threshold crossed! I've been ripping DVDs for some time and dumping them onto my iPAQ 1945; trivial (go, mencoder!). And I've been using a MythTV box for some time to record the few TV shows that I DO watch; easy.

I can watch Myth'd shows throughout the house: on the TV connected to the MythTV box, my desktop machine, or even my Windows laptop thanks to the various incarnations of mythfrontend. But what I hadn't gotten around to wiring up was converting Myth'd files to a format that I could put on the iPAQ and view. The MythTV storage type is called NUV, and it's specific to Myth...as well as much higher quailty (and size) than is needed for the portable player.

nuvexport to the rescue! I'd read about it, but hadn't pulled the trigger on getting it set up. It's got some foibles...it's basically just a perl based wrapper for other transcoding tools, and it sometimes suffers the slings and arrows of changes to those other programs (this thread at mythtv-users saved my bacon when I updated ffmpeg). But with some experimentation, it is working great! Thanks to everyone involved for making such excellent tools. I should have the premiere of Eureka sitting on my iPAQ in about an hour, which makes the chances of me watching it soon much greater! *grin*

July 28, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Upside-Down-Ternet

Genius: Fun things to do when running an open wireless AP. Also, a great introduction to splitting netblocks to allow varying usage, QoS, etc.

link from reddit

July 27, 2006 permalink | Comments (2)

More mapping fun

I already use and love Mologogo on a cheap pre-paid Boostmobile phone. Now, I just successfully downloaded Google Mobile Maps (or is it Google Maps Mobile? dunno.) to my work Blackberry. Slick!! It's a different tool than the mologogo app, since GMM doesn't use GPS to let me track myself. But it's the regular Google Maps interface and it's FAST. Looks great.

I'll keep both, thank you very much!

July 26, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Symbolic Links on Windows

Joy! sysinternals comes through again; there's actually a tool to create symbolic links on Windows! I had no idea. Behold...junction.exe. This made installing Django on my laptop trivial. Thanks to Nathan Colgate for his comment discussing this on the Django Installation page.

(and yes, let's all hope Microsoft doesn't ruin sysinternals with their recent purchase of it...)

July 26, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Seduced by Steam

Well, at this point I had best not complain about lack of entertainment options for a LONG time. After perusing the website for a week or so, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on The Ship; an interesting Hunter-Killer style game set on a series of luxury art-deco style cruise ships. It's fun stuff, and a welcome tweak to the genre.

And since the download was via Steam, I had several other games to ogle as I paged through the listings, purchase just a click away. I spend Saturday evening looking for an old CD-ROM to re-register a game through the site, and never found it. So I bit the bullet and spent $9.95 on the original Counterstrike! (not CS: Source; it's probably pushing the limits of my Windows PC, resource wise. Plus it was $10 more, and I'm cheap. *grin*. Maybe later.) And as a bonus, you get the single-player Counterstrike: Condition Zero game as well. Not a bad deal for what I sometimes spend on lunch. And there are TONS and TONS of CS servers out there.

Boy, is Counterstrike bringing back some memories. I was NEVER any good, but I spent quite some time playing CS, I guess back around 2000-2002. It's quick, easy, and fun. Loving it! So I have plenty to occupy my time. See ya on The Ship, or in CS! Drop me a comment if you want to hook up on a server sometime.

Oh...and does the Team Fortress 2 trailer look AWESOME, or what? Holy Frack. I probably spent even more time playing TFC back in the day. Pyros and Demomen rule!

July 23, 2006 permalink | Comments (2)

"Done The Impossible", anyone?

Another one for my legions of local fans (ok...Lee and Andy); just FYI, I d/l the torrent of Done the Impossible, the fan documentary of the rise and fall (and rise and fall) of Firefly and Serenity. There's a DVD coming out with much more content, but the producers released the main portion as a torrent. I finished downloading a bit ago; uncompressed, it's slightly too big for a CD-R, but I'm compressing it now, and I'll stick it in my bag, if anyone's interested.

UPDATE:OK, so I'm a dork. Funny how the video file didn't...um....compress all that much. *sigh* I hear they do compression INSIDE those things. Fancy that. OK, I'll have to burn 'er to a DVD-R; give me the weekend to finish that up. I think I only have 1; I may need to go to Fry's! (Ah, an excuse. Joy.)

link from P2P Blog

July 20, 2006 permalink | Comments (1)

For my pals...

I don't have a plasma/LCD TV, nor do I plan on having one anytime soon, but I still saw this post referenced by PVRBlog, and thought it was worth throwing up: How to: Wall mounting a LCD or Plasma. Among my LEGIONS of fans, there are several folks with at least one of these things; maybe this will be of use.

link from PVRBlog

July 19, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

What HAPPENED today?

Sheesh. Today was flat out bizarre...both in my personal space and in news-land. Personally, the day had it's weirdness moments throughout, but the topper was when I was out running after I voted. I see this guy with one of those runner's baby carriages. OK...seen plenty of those. But I've NEVER before seen someone let go of it while he's running downhill! And I mean for 10-15 seconds at a time! Just running along beside it...and yes, there's a baby in it! What if he stumbles, or the carriage hits a stone, or...whatever. What a bizarre dude! I just stared.

And regarding the news...I mean, what the hell? First off, it's clear that religious fundamentalists have WAY too much power in our country:

*sigh* Aren't there maybe some more important issues going on, guys? And then, of course, two days of our President bumbling his way through the G8 summit, caught "off guard" in a chat with Blair (while putting down some bread, I tell ya) and attempting to backrub (WTF?) another head of state...some days really are surreal.

UPDATE: good news...Ralph Reed concedes in the GA lieutenant governor race. I DO so love the vote in either primary system we have...I got to play anti-Reed.

July 18, 2006 permalink | Comments (1)

DoD Detainees to get Geneva Convention protections

This is, at least, a start. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is and will be a blight on this nation's honor, but at the very least we are now acknowledging that certain rights are due the prisoners there. The Administration spins this, of course, as no change; whatever. Listening to US Senators dismiss our obligations under the Geneva Conventions last weekend on Meet The Press sickened me; I'm sure now they'll be happy to stand up and trumpet this. Again...whatever.

July 11, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Nokia 770 upgrade out

Yahoo! I'm behind the times a bit, but it's here! Downloading shall commence...

July 6, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Brilliant SecondLife anime sim

Wow! I have only seen the New World News post and the linked YouTube video, but Neil Protagonist's anime-inspired sim is a) AWESOME, and b) a genius foray into "immersive commerce" (Hamlet Au's term, not mine. Clever, though).

First off, I love good, high-quality anime/animation, and this sim appears to be a true homage to the genre. Hats off! I think even more important, though, is the commerce setup...everything is for sale with a click! It's sad to see the prefab mall concept mindlessly replicated into SecondLife, and it's always irked me in the back of my head. Neil's build clarifies the issue perfectly...there's no NEED for a mall-like setup for storage of inventory, organization of product (sometimes on virtual shelves, even!), and mindless separation into boxes of shops. Instead, wander through a sim where everything is for sale with a right-click and "Buy", where items can be shown as they'll be used. It looks like a great idea; I can't wait to login (let me go see if the Linux client has been recently updated...).

See ya in Nakama!

July 3, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Wyden to Block Telecom Bill Without Net Neutrality

Good news...Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon (D) has placed a hold (an informal notification of intent to filibuster) on the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S.2686) that just came out of the Senate Commerce Committe. While in committee, a Net Neutrality amendment was defeated 11-11. After reading the committe remarks from Sen. Stevens (the sponsor of the bill), I'm VERY afraid...this guy has sponsored legislation that would impose major legislative changes on our telecommunications infrastructure (not to mention My Damn InterWeb!) without...um...the slightest idea what he's talking about: ...I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. ...

Oh yes, that's just a taste. there's more to the transcript, if you're brave. If we're going to be monkeying around with this stuff, let's try to at least understand what we're trying to regulate, eh?

Lots more info at Save The Internet, if you're interested. Full disclosure; being of a strongly libertarian bent, I'm certainly not a fan of regulation in general. I'm reviewing both sides closely; but this appears to be one of those places where we've already effectively granted a virtual monopoly via legislation...which causes some market solutions to be ineffective. We'll have to see; it is CERTAINLY worth talking about.

July 3, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Good stuff at SIMILE

The SIMILE project (at MIT) is full of interesting cool open-source, Semantic Web-based tools. My favorite right now, though, is Timeline...a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is WAY cool; I have been looking for something like this for quite a while, but I'm nowhere near enough the DHTML/JavaScript coder to build the widget framework work myself. There are lots of scenarios where I'd love to be able to display time-based events in an inuitive way, and this fits the bill perfectly. Try out some of the examples; jazz-y!

July 1, 2006 permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier posts -- Later posts