World Readable: a personal blog about anything that comes to mind for anybody who cares to read it.
Last month I purchased Podcaster for my iPhone (thanks to this thread over on the TiVo Community Forum) and have now been using it for a few weeks.
Podcaster was originally rejected by Apple back in 2008 so the developer put the app on Cydia instead for jailbroken phones. Then in 2009, a slightly stripped down version called RSS Player accepted into the App Store. Finally, this past June, Podcaster for iOS4 devices was approved by Apple (RSS Player is still available for older iOS3 devices).
Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol’s weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world’s computer systems but also enlists the help of super-intelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan.
The hosts on just about every tech podcast I listen to (Leo Laporte, Tom Merrit, Paul Thurrott, and others) have mentioned “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez at one time or another, so it’s been on my to-read list for a while. I just finished reading this techno-thriller after starting it last month (as I headed to New York on business).
I’ve been pleased so far with my in-house internet cameras and decided I’d like to be able to keep tabs on the outside of the house as well. TRENDnet sells weatherproof enclosures for their cameras but they won’t work with the night-vision models because the IR just reflects off of the glass. I started looking at other models of outdoor cameras and chose the Foscam FI8904W.
Over the weekend I went and saw “Inception.” I didn’t know much about it except that the trailer looked pretty sweet and I had been hearing good reviews about it.
I really enjoyed it! It was like the mind/memory games of “Total Recall” combined with a heist film like “The Usual Suspects” with a healthy dose of special effects from “The Matrix.” The result is Christopher Nolan’s well-paced, action-packed, brain-bending thriller played out by a pretty good cast (although I still think of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the little kid from “Third Rock from the Sun” ;-)).
The way they explained the physics and design (with paradoxes!) and flow of time in the dream world was pretty cool, all without really getting into any heavy details of how the dream-sharing technology worked (which would have been unnecessary anyway). Without spoiling anything, the final sequence, which involves four dream layers (a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream) with different time flows was amazing.
Unrelated side note: I did see the “Tron: Legacy” trailer on the big screen before the film, which wasn’t as exciting as it could have been since I had already seen it on the internet.
Since I was facing a re-org of my media cabinet to set up my new TiVo Premiere, I took the opportunity to make some network changes as well. I’m not quite ready to upgrade my wireless network to the N standard that was finally ratified last year but still wanted good throughput so I could stream and download HD video to the new Tivo box. After doing some research and reading good reviews, I decided to try out MoCA, or ethernet-over-coax.
It’s been almost three years since I bought a new TiVo, so it was time. I’ve added the new TiVo Premiere to my main home theater setup, relegating my trusty, original Series3 box to home office duty.
I already had the 1TB WD Expander drive from the Series3, so rather than spend the extra cash on the Premiere XL, I went with the base 320gb model and then connected the Expander giving me 190 hours of HD recording capacity.
Over the weekend we went to see “Toy Story 3” in 3D at our local theater which I had been looking forward to since seeing the first two original films in their 3D double-feature last fall. As usual, Pixar has delivered another smash hit. TS3 is an amazing, beautifully animated film with a ton of touching and emotional scenes (much like “Up!“).
The “Day & Night” short at the beginning was also very well done, a cool combination of traditional and 3D digital animation. Great storytelling without a single line of dialog.
Some random thoughts (without spoilers):
I’ve read that some people enjoyed the movie more in 2D rather than 3D, saying that the glasses make the overall film darker and not as vibrant. The glasses didn’t really bother me though, and the 3D is not meant to be “in your face” 3D but instead adds depth to the scenes which I thought was cool. Even my daughter, who is wary of 3D films (after a bad experience at MuppetVision 3D when she was little) kept the glasses on the entire time.
Will there be a TS4? There are no plans for one right now, but it sounds like there will be a TS short in front of “Cars 2” next summer. Personally, I felt TS3 was a perfect ending to the trilogy and should left to stand on its own.
Another piece of tech I implemented before we went on our vacation roadtrip was a series of TRENDnet wireless internet cameras so we could keep an eye on the house while we were away.
Back in March, in preparation for our recent family roadtrip vacation, I purchased the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer. The tiny PoGo prints 2 x 3-inch borderless color images in under a minute onto ZINK (zero ink) paper.