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This evening my wife and I went to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater to see Harry Connick, Jr. who’s touring in support of his new album, “Your Songs.” This was either the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen Harry in concert (we couldn’t remember exactly) and it was a great show as always.

The way the musicians were arranged on-stage helped showcase the three different styles of music we would be hearing. On the left were the strings for the orchestral numbers, in the center were the drums and bass, which combined with Harry on piano for the traditional jazz combo style, and then on the right were the trumpets, trombones, and saxophones for the big band numbers. For two hours he played a good mix of songs from the new CD and other recent releases plus a few of his trademark New Orleans jazz combo numbers. In addition to singing and playing the piano (of course) he also played trumpet and bass! “I suck” he joked, but of course he was pretty good.

During the breaks between sets he would talk and interact with the audience, which is always entertaining. He talked about how great it was for New Orleans to have the Saints as the Super Bowl champions (he apparently went to the game and got to meet a lot of the players afterwards). He jokingly talked about how 94% of the country doesn’t understand the “who dat?” chant and proposed (and briefly sang) a more understandable “who is that?” version. He told a funny story about his recent trip to the Grammys where he met Jennifer Hudson and had “her junk” on his arm during a photo shoot (“and she has a lot of junk!”). Another memorable  moment was when he said one of his daughter’s friends said he played “grandpa music” and the four women in his house would rather go see Kesha than him (which prompted  him to sing a few bars of “Tik Tok“).

Like my “Good Eats Live” experience last summer, however, there was a negative aspect to the show that will taint my memory of it … the super-annoying lady sitting directly behind us was a “woo girl.” Yes, at the beginning of every song she recognized, she had to shout “woooo!” at the top of her lungs in her ear-piercing, high-pitched voice. And not only that, she took advantage of silent moments to yell out song requests (“play ‘Come By Me!’”) or inappropriate comments (“Harry’s hot!”). By the end of the concert I was ready to turn around and strangle her. Arrrgh! There were a few other annoying hecklers in the crowd, but Harry dealt with them good naturedly (“it’s my name on the marquee, I’ll handle the comedy.”). Of course the theater had a strict policy on photographs and videotaping, but at the end of the show Harry posed for a picture with a lady in the front row and all of a sudden everyone had their cellphones and cameras out and were snapping photos. It must have been driving the ushers mad.

Overall, it was a great show and a good time. My favorite performance is still the one we saw in Cleveland during the “She”/”Star Turtle” tour when he was playing with the funk band in the mid-90s, but the jazz and big band shows are really good too and I’ll always go to see  him when I have the chance.

We went and saw “Wicked” this afternoon at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, using tickets we purchased about five months ago. It’s an incredible show and I highly recommend you see it if you have the chance!

This was the third time for me (once on Broadway with the original cast, here in Tampa during the first tour in 2007, and now again in 2010) but the first time my daughter had seen it, and she absolutely loved it. She’s actually falling asleep in her room right now listening to the soundtrack. She had read “The Wizard of Oz” (but actually hasn’t seen the movie) so it was fun to watch her put the pieces together as the story of Elphaba and Glinda unfolded on stage. I bought her the novel on which the musical is based (Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West“) a few months ago, but strangely she never got around to finishing it … I’ll be she does now, and I’d like to read it  myself once I catch up on my current backlog.

This was the matinee show so a few of the understudies were performing the main parts. I guess I’m a little spoiled because after seeing Edina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth belt out “Defying Gravity” on Broadway, the traveling company just didn’t pack the same punch. Not that they weren’t good! Here’s a funny note: Richard Kline is playing the role of the Wizard. I wouldn’t have recognized him except the playbill specifically mentioned he “is best known as Jack Tripper’s best friend, Larry Dallas on the classic sitcom ‘Three’s Company.’” That’s right, this guy is currently the Wizard of Oz.

Ever since I started playing Kingdom of Loathing a few months ago, I’ve been listening to the “120 Minutes of Jick and Mr. Skullhead” podcast/radio show. Through them, I was introduced to Nerdcore hip hop since the Asymmetic crew are friends with MC Frontalot, the artist who coined the term.

I’m not actually new to Geeksta rap … I’ve had MC Hawking and Minibosses tracks in my collection since at least 1998 (and of course a few specific songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic like “It’s All About the Pentiums“).  This is first time I’ve heard it categorized into a specific genre (other than parody), however. Now I’ve been listening to new (to me) stuff by groups like Optimus Rhyme.

Want a quick introduction to nerdcore hip hop? Check out the Rhyme Torrents compilations.

I’ve been working on this post for a while. It’s a bit long, so bear with me …

A TiVo is much more than just a souped up digital VCR. What separates TiVo from your cable company’s generic DVR (other than the awesome features of TiVo service itself) is the wide range of (mostly free) applications you can use to enhance your TiVo experience. I’ve written about some of these applications here before (like Galleon, streambaby, and pyTivo) but I figured one comprehensive write-up might be in order.

First off, all of these apps require a TiVo with an active service subscription. For those of you with the old DVD-combo units (like the Toshiba TX-20 or Pioneer 810h), this means you need to have the TiVo Plus service, not TiVo Basic. I’m not discussing hacked boxes here either. You’ll need to know your Media Access Key (MAK), which can be found under your account on tivo.com or on your TiVo under Messages & Settings, Account & System Information, Media Access Key. Finally, I’m focusing on utilities that run on Windows and Linux. Many of these will run on a Mac as well, but I’m less familiar with that platform and the features that may or may not work with it.

Ok, let’s jump in!

TiVo Desktop

I have to start with TiVo’s own application, TiVo Desktop. The free version allows you to publish the music (in MP3 format) and photos (JPG, GIF, etc.) on your PC so you can access them from the TiVo interface. The Windows version of TD also allows you to download recordings from your TiVo (as long as they’re not copy-protected) to watch on your PC, or send previously downloaded content back to the TiVo for viewing on your television (as long as they’re in MPEG-2 format). Do you want to download every episode of “Robot Chicken” that your TiVo records? Set up an auto-transfer and TiVo Desktop will automatically download them for you in the background.

If you upgrade to TiVo Desktop Plus for $25, you’ll gain the ability to automatically transcode your downloaded recordings to a variety of portable formats (like for your iPod) and send more formats back to your TiVo (like Divx/Xvid or Matroska). Combining this with the auto-transfer feature, you can point TiVo Desktop at your iTunes folder where you download your video podcasts and have them automatically pushed up to your TiVo once iTunes downloads them. Before you shell out your $25, though, check out the rest of the applications below since you can get all of the same functionality of TiVo Desktop Plus (and more!) for free if you don’t mind tinkering with other third-party software solutions.

One tip: if your music isn’t in MP3 format, try Dan203’s Universal Audio Plugin, which adds support for unencrypted AAC, WMA, and Ogg Vorbis formats. If all of your music is DRM’ed (i.e., purchased from iTunes), you’re out of luck … even the free stuff below won’t be able to play those files.

pyTivo

Written in the Python scripting language, pyTivo is a free application similar to TiVo Desktop except it supports sending a wider variety of video formats to Series2 and Series3 TiVo boxes. Using pyTivo’s web interface (or by directly editing the configuration file) you can set up the plugins you want (i.e., video and music) and then configure the shares pointing to where your files are located. You can then use the TiVo interface to “pull” files onto your box (just like TiVo Desktop) or use the web interface to “push” them there.

The beauty of pyTivo is its use of ffmpeg behind the scenes to transcode a file into a format that your TiVo recognizes (MPEG-2 for video, MP3 for music). You can throw any video file format that ffmpeg supports at your TiVo and have it play: MP4, AVI, WMV, MKV, FLV, just about anything. It’s amazing … and the resulting quality is pretty good too! One drawback to this method is that it takes CPU power to convert video files from one format to another. Depending on the speed and power of the PC running pyTivo, you may or may not be able to watch the video as it’s being transferred onto the TiVo. Because of this, pyTivo works best (for me anyway) when you want to kick off a transfer for something you will be watching later.

Another cool pyTivo feature is its support of multiple levels of subfolders. No matter how you have your videos organized on your PC, TiVo Desktop always shows them in a flat list. The software will look two subfolders deep for accessible videos, but you’ll still get just one long list when browsing your PC’s Now Playing List from the TiVo. With pyTivo, however, whatever folder structure you use on your PC is what you’ll see when browsing from the TiVo. So if you want to have a path like Movies > Science Fiction > Star Wars > Clone Wars, pyTivo can handle that.

Finally, pyTivo supports metadata. When you download a .TiVo file it has a lot of information embedded into it: show name, air date, actors’ names, etc. Other video types don’t have this extra data, so when you transfer them back to your TiVo via TiVo Desktop, the resulting recording in your Now Playing List will be missing all of that “stuff.” pyTivo will read this extra information from a specially formatted text file and then send it across when the video is uploaded back to the TiVo. Rather than creating these text files by hand, grab the excellent MetaGenerator utility which lets you search for movies and TV shows in several online databases and then creates that metadata file for you. Using metadata also allows you to group shows in folders once they are on the TiVo!

As you can tell by my somewhat lengthy write-up here, pyTivo is hands down the application I use the most … it’s a must-have for any TiVo owner with an extensive digital video library. It can be a bit daunting to set up at first, if you’re not used to tweaking text-based configuration files or playing with metadata, but once you do get it working you’ll find it was well worth the time and effort.

Tip: if you need a quicker, easier setup for pyTiVo on Windows, try the Windows installer to get you going. Just keep in mind that it sometimes lags behind the current codeline so you may run into bugs or be missing out on newer features. Also, be sure to visit the pyTivo forums.

Galleon

One of the older third-party applications out there, Galleon started out as JavaHMO back in 2003 and is a sort of swiss army knife of TiVo applications. In addition to providing the standard download (ToGo), upload (GoBack), and music and photos functionality like TiVo Desktop, Galleon lets you do other things like view local weather, traffic, or theater listings, read your e-mail, browse your Netflix or Blockbuster rental queues, even parse your iTunes library for music playback (MP3 format only).

One neat feature of the ToGo app is that you can initiate downloads of recordings from the TiVo itself rather than from the desktop application. You can even start to download a recording from a different TiVo in your house. Similar to TiVo Desktop’s auto-transfers, you can set up rules in Galleon’s ToGo application for automatic downloads as well.

Galleon was abandoned by its original developer, Leon Nicholls, some time ago, but a few people are still working on it occasionally. I personally have contributed a few features to the Weather and ToGo apps and fixed a bug or two in the Movies app.

StreamBaby

StreamBaby (aka stream, baby, stream) is another application (written in Java) that allows you to transfer video from your PC to the TiVo. Unlike using pyTivo to transfer (i.e., copy) a video file to your TiVo, StreamBaby actually streams the video, similar to what the TiVo does for Netflix streaming. This means that you can actually fast-foward to a section of the recording that hasn’t been transferred yet (complete with thumbnail previews so you can tell what section you’re actually going to)! If you have to stop playback, StreamBaby remembers where you were so you can resume the stream from that point later on.

Just like pyTivo, you point StreamBaby to your video folders via a text-based configuration file. Your preciously organized folder hierarchy is preserved when browsing from the TiVo (multiple subfolder support) and if you’ve got metadata text files for your videos, it supports reading those as well.

Also like pyTivo, StreamBaby is accomplishing its “magic” with ffmpeg, so you can stream any video format (supported by your build of ffmpeg) to your TiVo Series3, Tivo HD, or TiVo HD XL box. The Series2 boxes don’t support streaming, however, so StreamBaby won’t work with that older platform.

TiVoPlayList

A TiVo Desktop replacement, TiVoPlayList (TPL) lets you download unprotected recordings and use auto-download rules but adds some extra bells and whistles like the option to shut down the PC when all transfers are complete. For the people who like to see how much space is being used on their TiVo’s hard drive, TPL can show you the size of each recording on disk along with total disk space used and available. You can even see this information in a nice graph. You can also export the list of recordings in a comma-separated format if you like. TPL is only for downloading recordings, however, so it can’t completely replace TiVo Desktop (no music, photos, or GoBack support). It’s a handy utility to have around, however.

kmttg

If you’re looking for an easy way to download, trim, and re-encode video from your TiVo in an automated fashion, kmttg might be the answer. The middle scroll area of the application is your standard Now Playing List showing you the recordings on each of your TiVos (in a tabbed interface). Select the recordings you want to download, and then click on the checkboxes along the top of the window to build your post-download batch processing job. You can have kmttg automatically generate metadata files for pyTivo, convert the downloaded .TiVo file into a plain MPEG-2 format, and then re-encode the video into a format of your choosing (again, using ffmpeg) for your portable device or for eventual transfer back to your TiVo. If you own one of the excellent VideoReDo products (I highly recommend them, well worth the money for MPEG-2 file editing), you can also have kmttg run the downloaded MPEG-2 file through VRD’s Quickstream Fix feature (to fix any quirks in the video) and AdDetective (to remove the commercials). kmttg is written in Java so it runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux (but VideoReDo is Windows-only).

Web Browser

This isn’t really an application, but more of a tip: you can use a browser to easily download recordings from your TiVo. Just point your favorite browser to https://{your TiVo’s IP address} and log in with a username of ‘tivo’ and your MAK as the password. This is a bare-bones way to pull shows off of your box (you can’t queue up multiple transfers, for example) but it works in a pinch.

To be able to play those .TiVo files you download, however, you’ll need to either install TiVo Desktop for the DirectShow codec or use something like tivodecode to convert it into a plain MPEG-2 file you can view in the player of your choice (like Windows Media Player or VLC).

For even more great information on these tools I’ve just described, check out bkdtv’s excellent posts on downloading and viewing videos over on the TiVo Community Forum. You can find me over on TCF as well.

Now, go have fun getting the most out of your TiVo!

Wow.

Michael Jackson was pronounced dead at a hospital Thursday after suffering cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home, marking a sad end to the life of a man who had been a global pop icon since childhood.

“Thriller” was the first album (cassette) I remember buying. My sister and I went in on it together. And I’m still a little ashamed to admit that I owned a zipper jacket similar to the one he wore in the music video for “Beat It” (except I had a black one).

Yeah, he was weird, messed up, and downright crazy over the past two decades, but he’s still a legend. RIP.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the passing of another icon, Farrah Fawcett, on the same day.

I played Guitar Hero for the first time last Christmas at a relative’s house. Since then I’ve dabbled with the GH demo kiosk at Best Buy and played drums briefly on Rock Band at a friend’s house. It seemed like a lot of fun and really appealed to the air guitarist and table drummer in me (as it would to most men, I would assume).

So for my birthday this past October, my wife and daughter surprised me with Rock Band for the Wii. While this was a great gift, I knew that Rock Band 2 was just around the corner (at the time, just a month away). So I returned the game and pre-ordered RB2 through Amazon.

As time went by, the release date for Rock Band 2 kept being pushed out. At one point it was the second week of January! Amazon duly kept sending me e-mail updates as to when my game would be arriving. I had pretty much resigned myself to not having my birthday present until early 2009. Then, suddenly, earlier this week I got an e-mail from Amazon saying it had shipped! It arrived on my doorstep Thursday night.

Friday evening, my daughter and I unpacked everything. The drums and guitar are wireless, but the microphone is corded (it’s a nice long cord though). You have to daisy-chain the small wireless receivers to the Wii via USB connections, so it’s a little messy in that regard, but it’s worth it to have the convenience of wireless instruments. Once we had everything connected, we gave Quickplay mode a try, my daughter on vocals and me on guitar, both on Easy mode. Considering she didn’t really know the songs, she picked them up really fast. Before we knew it, we had “Eye of the Tiger,” “Hungry Like a Wolf,” and “We Got the Beat” down.

The one thing that bugs me about games like this is the requirement to “unlock” songs. The box lists all of these tracks (“plus many more!”) but when you start, you can’t play just any of them. My daughter, for example, noticed Blondie’s “One Way or Another” was on the box, but wasn’t available in Quickplay until we manage to unlock it in Tour mode. I had the same issue with Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (though eventually I did get all the songs unlocked).

So Saturday night I spent about two hours playing by myself in Tour mode, unlocking more songs. It was addictive! I would finish a set (on guitar) which would unlock more songs, some of which I’d be like: oh, I’ve got to try that one! So I’d keep going and going.

Tonight I finally gave the drums a try, which was great fun too. This is just really a fun fun game. It helps if you’re musically inclined and know some of the songs, but seeing my eight year-old belt out “Eye of the Tiger” shows that anyone can play this game and have a great time.

Have you seen those recent car commercials on TV where they show all of these classic toys (the Big Wheel, Sit-n-Spin, etc.) and then show the adult in the new car, correlating the feeling of those new toys on Christmas morning to driving that new car? That’s sorta what playing Rock Band 2 is like for me … growing up playing air guitar, drumming on the steering wheel in the car, now realized as a video game in my living room. It rocks!

For my birthday last month, my younger siblings got me tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert here in Tampa tonight.

If you listen to any Christmas radio, you’ve probably heard TSO standards like “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo” or “Wizards in Winter.” In fact, until tonight those were the only two songs by the group I had on my iPod. If you haven’t heard, or heard of, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, think Christmas music in the rock-opera style and you should have a good idea of what TSO is all about.

Not only was the music and singing fantastic, the light show and pyrotechnics were amazing. It was also cool to see the wide range of people at the show: couples, families, and folks of all ages. In fact, the two guys sitting next to me, drinking some beers and “woo!”ing during all the good parts looked like they belonged at the hockey game instead of a concert, but were having a great time like everyone else. You never would have pegged them as TSO fans if you ran into them on the street.

Overall, it was a cool experience and a nice way to start the upcoming holiday season. Time to hit up the Amazon MP3 store for some more tracks for the Christmas playlist!

I took my daughter to see “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” this afternoon. I guess everyone who wanted to see this saw it opening weekend, because this was only the third weekend of its release and the theater was pretty empty … and all the kids were girls under 10, as I expected.

“Senior Year” follows the now-familiar (to anyone with a young daughter) characters of Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Chad, Talor, and Kelsi as they finish their last year at East High and face graduation and moving on to college.

Like the first two films, this one has some snappy song-and-dance routines but is a little light on story/plot (but I guess HSM is about the music after all, right?). My daughter’s favorite song was “The Boys are Back,” sung by Troy and Chad in a junk yard scene where they reminisce about being kids pretending to be ninjas, superheroes, etc. My daughter particularly liked the part where they turned into 8-year old versions of themselves. I didn’t really see anything “big budget” about this movie compared to the originals which aired directly on the Disney Channel. I guess doing a full theater release was just one more way for Disney to rack in the cash before the end of the franchise (like they won’t make a ton on merchandising and tie-ins anyway!).

It’s an amazing world our kids are growing up in: when we got home after the movie, I purchased the HSM3 soundtrack from the Amazon MP3 store (for $4 less than the DRMed version on iTunes) and then burned it onto CD so she had it for her bedtime listening enjoyment. Incredible.

If you’re a parent who’s seen HSM3 (or any of the HSM movies for that matter), you owe it to yourself to check out the “Night School Musical: Senior Year Equivalent” sketch from Saturday Night Live:

a-Ha’s “Take On Me” was a groundbreaking music video. I still remember seeing it for the first time on MTV at my grandmother’s house back in the 80s (we didn’t have cable at home). Here’s a hilarious version of it that explains what’s really going on. Pipe wrench fight!

Last month when we were on vacation, I bought this t-shirt at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. Out of all the other shirts in the gift shop, I thought this one was the coolest: it was simple, had no writing (except for the small Rock Hall logo on the back), and just looked sweet. It also helped that it was subtle: the younger people I was with had no idea what the “symbol” was … they thought it was just a cool logo.

I’ve worn the shirt a couple of times since I bought it and every time, at least one person comes up to me to comment on it.

One lady thought it was the disc used in toy guns (like this one, I guess?). One person thought it was a stylized bio-hazard symbol. Most older folks know what it is, though, and just say what a cool shirt it is. I had two people approach me about it just today while grocery shopping!

I have a lot of other t-shirts, but this is the only one that seems to inspire complete strangers to walk up to me and talk about it.

Oh, and if you still don’t know what it is … look here and search the page for “snap-in.”