Disappointing sports weekend

Both the Bucs and the Browns lost yesterday on opening day of the NFL’s 2008-09 season.

The Rays have lost 5 out of 6 games in September, allowing the Red Sox to creep up to 1.5 games behind in the AL East … right before opening a three-game series with the Sox here in St. Pete tonight. If the Rays aren’t careful, they could see their magical turnaround season evaporate in the final three weeks. They’ve got six games left against Boston and three against the Yankees. One bad series and they could find themselves out of the playoffs!

The Indians are still 10.5 games behind the White Sox and even though they’ve been strong late in the season (Cliff Lee is doing amazing work), it’s too little too late for Cleveland’s playoff hopes in 2008.

Controlling HT components through walls

The way my home theater is set up, all of the components (receiver, TiVo, DVD recorder, Wii, etc.) are hidden in a cabinet. When we first moved in, I would leave the cabinet doors open so that the IR signals from the remote control could reach the components.

This was unsightly though, so eventually I picked up a pair of Terk Leapfrog IR extenders. Basically I left the IR receiver out in front of the TV which would receive the infrared signal from the remote then transmit it wirelessly to the transmitter in the cabinet. The transmitter would blast out the IR signal which would bounce around in the cabinet and get the signal to the right component.

That setup was fine, except that since the TV is up on a high shelf (about six feet off the ground), it was hard to get a line-of-sight aim from the remote when you were sitting on the couch. So you’d have to extend your arm up above your head to point the remote at the IR receiver. A minor annoyance, but still an annoyance. I also use my receiver to play music outside in the lanai area. Even though there’s a window through which I can see the media cabinet from outside on the lanai, aiming the remote to control the receiver volume was a hit-or-miss situation.

So I decided to investigate RF solutions. RF remotes use radio signals instead of infrared. Thus, they are not line-of-sight and also travel farther. I considered trading in my Harmony 676 universal remote for the newer, slicker 890 which uses RF, but wasn’t ready to drop $280 on a new remote. Enter the Next Generation Remote Control Extender. This slick little device incorporates an RF transmitter into a AAA (or AA) battery casing. I put one of the batteries with the transmitter in my TiVo Glo remote and then put the receiver (a flying-saucer shaped thing which also includes a charger for the second battery/transmitter and the IR blaster hardware) in my media cabinet. Wallah! I can now control the TiVo through the cabinet doors without the need for the extra IR receiver … even from rooms away! The other benefit was it freed up another power outlet in my cabinet since I didn’t need two bricks anymore (for the Terk receiver and transmitter units).

The battery/transmitter also works in my Harmony remote, so now I can control the music volume from the receiver out by the pool, without the need for line-of-sight.

It’s taken a little getting used to, not having to aim the remote at a specific place anymore, but I love the new convenience factor.

The terrabyte TiVo!

150 hours of HD-recording goodness … today TiVo unveiled its new TiVo HD XL.

From the outside it looks just like the TiVo HD, but this baby sports a 1TB (that’s 1 terrabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes) “green” hard drive, THX certification (like my now-discontinued Series3 box), and comes with the backlit Glo remote … all for $600 (plus the monthly service plan).

Yes, you could buy the regular TiVo HD and upgrade it with an internal 1TB drive for less than the XL’s $600 price tag (even Weaknees has had upgraded 1TB TiVos available for some time), but for the average consumer who doesn’t want to crack open their new piece of equipment and mess with hard drive upgrades, the XL should be their first choice.

I’m not really in the market for a new TiVo at this point: I’ve got an S2, an S3, and a THD all in active service plus a Toshiba TX-20 (DVD burner model) sitting in a closet not being used. Plus, the THD has the 500gb WD Expander attached so that box itself has 660gb (about 88 hours of HD recording). I’ll be waiting for the rumored Series4 before adding a new TiVo to the household.

Side note: when I first saw the name of the new model, it reminded me of my Atari 800XL. 😀

Strange sightings on my commute home

I saw two really odd things on my drive home from work this evening.

First, on the exit ramp from the highway, I was behind an old lady in her late 70s/early 80s driving a late model Lincoln Continental with a license plate frame that read: “Mailmen do it first class.” I wondered if she realized what that means.

Then on the last stretch of road before my neighborhood, I looked in my review mirror and discovered that the guy behind me in a Jeep Cherokee was wearing full mime makeup! Yup, white face, exaggerated smile with the dots in the corners, etc. It really freaked me out … it looked like he had just come from a bank heist or something. You don’t usually see mimes driving motorized vehicles.

Shopping under gray skies

I guess we should have gone to the parks today instead of yesterday: it was gray and overcast, but cool and not a single drop of rain. Oh well!

img_2384-790133After breakfast and a little personal time at the hotel (Disney’s All-Star Music resort), we headed over to check out Disney’s Boardwalk. We had seen it yesterday while taking the Friendship boats from Hollywood Studios to Epcot and it looked neat. It’s a nice little area, but not that big and there’s not that much to do in the early afternoon. It’s mostly restaurants and clubs (which open later) and a few stores for shopping. It does afford a nice view of the Yacht and Beach Clubs across the lake, though. I liked the tagline for the ESPN club: “we recommend the HD.” 🙂 It’s probably a cooler place to go in the evening.

Since it was just about early lunch time, we decided to try Spoodles, a Mediterranean restaurant on the boardwalk. The breakfast menu was up, but since it was 11:15 we figured by the time we were seated, lunch would be served. Well, after waiting for 10 minutes and then being shown to our table, we were told they don’t serve lunch! Just breakfast/brunch, and then dinner starting at 5:30. We had already eaten breakfast, and there was really nothing appealing on the brunch menu …

… so we left, drove over to Downtown Disney, and had lunch at Bongos Cuban Cafe, which was very good (I recommend the Cuban sandwich). After lunch we wandered around the West Side and Disney Marketplace and did some shopping. Then it was back to the hotel for a family nap.

Refreshed, we went over to Summer Winterland miniature golf and played the sand course. My wife scored two holes-in-one and tied the course record for the day (38). We actually left Disney property 😛 and grabbed dinner at QDoba over in the touristy area on Apopka-Vineland Road.

Back at hotel, we swam a bit in the guitar-shaped Calypso pool and then finished up the day watching a bit of “Finding Nemo” in the hotel food court on the big plasma screen.

Overall, a fun, relaxing day, and we stayed dry the entire time.

Down(pour) and out in the Magic Kingdom

We’re in Orlando this weekend for our annual Labor Day mini-vacation at Walt Disney World.

The day started out great: blue sky, white clouds, nice temperature. We got up early and headed over the Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios) since it opened an hour earlier for resort guests. Once inside, we made a bee-line for the new Toy Story Mania attraction. It was only a 30-minute standby wait, so that was the first thing we did … and it was great! You sit in a four-person car (two on each side) and use a toy gun to shoot at targets in the Midway-themed ride. You rack up points as you go, and your score is tallied on a separate screen. I got the third-highest score of the day (177,000+ points) but since we were there first thing in the morning I’m sure that didn’t last long.

img_2352-sm-707691Eventually we took the ferry from Hollywood Studios over to Epcot, where we had lunch reservations at Tappan Edo in Japan. Mmmm … fantastic! Our chef, Akira (not the Akira), put on a good show and cooked some fantastic food.

Unfortunately, while we were inside at lunch, the rain moved in. Unbenownst to us, this was caused by the outer bands of Hurricane Gustav moving through Florida. Actually, by the time we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped and the day had turned overcast. We figured that would be the end of it. But no, the rain continued on and off during the rest of the day, meaning we spent most of it in our rain ponchos.

Disney is well known for the use of cutting-edge technology in their rides and attractions, and rarely do you see public breakdowns. Well, we ran into one on the newly revamped Spaceship Earth ride. The latest remodel has included touchscreens in each car. During the beginning of the ride, you can select your language, where you’re visiting from, etc. Your photo is also taken. Well, unfortunately the system in our car crashed shortly after we boarded, so I got to watch the system reboot … literally. The BIOS screen was first (with a customized Spaceship Earth logo), then strangely, the GRUB boot loader was used to boot Windows XP (Start menu and system tray on the bottom of the screen):

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I watched as the little wireless icon re-connected to the Spaceship Earth network and eventually the system started working again. Unfortunately, by then we were past the photo part of the ride. At the end, the system asks you questions about what you’d like to do in the future and then builds some sort of customized animation using your headshots in it. Since our system was rebooting and never took the photos, we didn’t get to experience our “customized future.” Oh well.

We finished the day at Magic Kingdom, riding Splash Mountain (we were already wet anyway) and Space Mountain, and visiting the Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (also highly recommended!).

Around 7:45 in the evening we decided to head back over to Hollywood Studios to see Fantasmic. After taking the monorail over to the Transportation Station, and then waiting for the bus, we were informed that the park had closed at 8pm (it was now 8:15pm) since the show was at 8:30 (we thought it was at 9). So we ended up just catching another bus from Hollywood Studios back to the hotel and calling it a night.

By the way, the title of this post is a play on a short story by Cory Doctorow.

Attention to detail

I consider myself to be very detail-oriented, so it bugs me when I run into examples of where it’s obvious no one else is paying attention to the little things.

Take this receipt from today’s lunch at Subway for example:

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Huh? Happy Holidays!? Happy New Year!? It’s August! No one working at this Subway (like the manager) has noticed this? For the past 8 months?

Ok, I can’t completely fault the employees of my local Subway. I must admit that I’ve gone there quite a few times this year and this is the first time I noticed (in my defense, though, I really only glance at the receipt to check the points balance on my Subway card).

I have a (non-technical) colleague at work who is fond of the following phrase when he’s telling me how I should solve a programming problem: “C’mon, it’s just a simple IF statement.” Now I don’t know a lot of about POS systems (point-of-sale, not the other meaning for POS) but in this case I think a simple IF statement would have worked. If the current date is greater than or equal to, say, January 15, don’t print that message anymore!

Sheesh.

Stream to your TiVo

The 9.4 software release for the TiVo Series3 and HD boxes included the ability to stream YouTube videos in H.264 format and the community quickly started re-engineering the feature. pyTiVo developer wmcbrine was the first one to get a basic stream working in his HME for Python framework.

Now, TiVo Community user moyekj has released a small java HME app called tivostream that allows you to stream MPEG and H.264 content directly to your box without the need for transcoding (which is what pyTivo does via ffmpeg).

You drop the jar file into your high-level video directory and run it. A new ‘videostream’ menu item will appear on your TiVo’s Music, Photos, Products, & More menu through which you can browse your video hierarchy and then select a file to stream. Playback starts almost instantaneously. Since it’s a stream, the file isn’t actually copied to the TiVo so there’s no disk space taken up. Also, if you drop out to Live TV or go back into the TiVo menus, the stream is cancelled. So what if you want to pick up where you left off? moyekj has written the ability to jump x minutes into the stream. Just start the stream again, enter a number (in minutes) and press the skip-to-tick button. Pretty slick. Overall, tivostream is still in very early development, but it works and shows promise of cool things to come. You can read this thread on TCF for more details.

One note: if you’re going to run tivostream alongside Galleon, start tivostream first. Both apps try to grab port 7288 but Galleon is smart enough to try 7289 (or the next available port) if 7288 is in use already.

“Snow day” in August

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Luckily Fay is going to track to the east of us today, but last night Pinellas county cancelled the first day of school to be on the safe side.

So my daughter has to wait one more day to start the second grade.

Right now it’s just cloudy and stormy looking outside. The Tampa Bay area isn’t even under a tropical storm watch anymore so we’re just expecting wind and rain, but nothing serious.

Now hopefully we’ll have calm weather for the next two weeks so we can get our new windows installed.