Archive for December 3, 2007

Christmas gift awesomeness

john / December 27, 2007 / One comment
  • The Kindle is awesome. The awesomeness is due to the wireless delivery of books. And the fact that I can browse Amazon at my PC and direct books to my Kindle with one click. (Similarly, the Unbox/Tivo integration is awesome for the same reason — Amazon is silently building a great asset here). The book selection is soooo much broader than that for the Sony Reader.
  • Call of Duty 4 is awesome. the ranking/challenge system keeps you engaged. Haven’t cracked the UT box yet, so entranced with COD4 – must get to 5-star general.
  • Stupid little RC helicopters that we got are fun. Available from lots of vendors. Pretty uncontrollable, watch out lamps!

Everything else is awesome too! I will blog it all in the fullness of time.

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Photo stuff

john / December 26, 2007 / No comments
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Team Speed — LSU v OSU

john / December 24, 2007 / No comments

Excellent data up here — Eleven Warriors ? Blog Archive ? Ali Baba And The 40 (Time) Thieves. Perchance the Buckeyes will be able to at least stay within 3-4 scores.

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Solar Solar Solar

john / December 24, 2007 / No comments
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Replace my X10 crud

john / December 23, 2007 / No comments

I still have a few old crufty X10 devices I control at Halloween time. I am seeing a lot of Zigbee and Zwave products and think I need to move on for next Halloween. Just a couple examples:

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LG Viewty config

john / December 23, 2007 / No comments

Probably crazy but we are trying to coerce an LG Viewty cellphone to work on ATTWireless — good tips here on how to get internet configured — Re: LG KU990 (Viewty) – Setting up Internet? – LG – Wireless Forums from AT&T

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Recent Books

john / December 23, 2007 / No comments

My book reading has slowed to a crawl the second half of this year. Work, Family, Halloween, BioShock, all conspired to limit my time.

  • Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. All kinds of acolades but I gave up, it was just boring.  No hook, nothing intriguing about any of the characters. Nothing compelling about the setting or milieu. I gave it 100 pages. I’ll never know what happens to the characters and I really don’t care.
  • The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells. An interesting title as the story generally is about the economic and societal fall of Silas Lapham. At a deeper level it is a morality play about the temptations faced by Lapham, and how he tries to do the right thing despite the costs. At the end of the day he is at peace albeit greatly reduced in lifestyle. Shouldn’t we all aspire to this?
  • Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Very entertaining tale centered around 3 childhood friends and their adult lives as the earth goes through wrenching changes imposed by unknown outside agencies.  Some hard science but a lot of character drama as well.
  • Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam by John Nagl. Great analysis comparing British army culture and success vs US army culture and success. The core point — the British army is a leveraged tool of broader political goals, whereas the US army is designed for all or nothing wars when politics have failed. I also loved the succinct priorities established by Templer in Malaya when he took over the British military mission:
  1. get the priorities right
  2. get the instructions right
  3. get the organization right
  4. get the right people into the org
  5. get the right spirit into the people
  6. leave them to get in to it.
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Crossword Puzzle gifts

john / December 14, 2007 / No comments

Diary of a Crossword Fiend: Holiday shopping guide for crossword nuts — awesome list here.

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Buckeye matters

john / December 14, 2007 / No comments
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Distance Learning — graduate engineering

john / December 9, 2007 / No comments

Been tough to keep up with my coursework at UW this year — they just don’t have a deep distance learning curriculum, particularly in materials science, my interest area. Scanning the web for new options:

Of course if I want to go self-paced and just learn material without worrying about a degree there is always MIT Open Courseware though at a graduate level the materials are often very thin — someones lecture notes.

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Color code for soundcard ports

john / December 8, 2007 / No comments

PC 99: Information and Much More from Answers.com — i always forget this

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Stuff I Want But Do Not Need — Photo edition

john / December 7, 2007 / No comments
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The BCS National Championship

john / December 6, 2007 / No comments

This game is so freaking far away that I have a hard time getting up for it. Plus the hangover from last year. But here is some smack talk from the LSU crowd, something to get the blood boiling — Eleven Warriors ? Blog Archive ? Missed Coffee And Need Something To Get You Going?

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Cablecard install getting better

john / December 6, 2007 / No comments

The last time I tried to get a cablecard installed was a disaster — A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way: Comcast Cablecard Install. Things have gotten a lot better. I recently installed two cablecards from Comcast in two different Tivo3s and while it was crazy arcane, it could all be done over the phone and it worked. You have to record all kinds of goofy numbers and tell them to a Comcast rep over the phone, and then wait while they do some mysterious network authentication task, but then things work. Finally got rid of that disaster Microsoft TV box.

Apparently I am not the only person rediscovering the cablecard. And as noted, the cool thing about current cablecards is the multistream capability so that I can record two channels at once. You can’t get Comcast PPV/Ondemand content, but you can get Amazon Unbox.

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HD cams compat with Leopard

john / December 3, 2007 / No comments

iMovie ’08 Camcorder Support — getting a cam, here’s the list of what is actually tested with latest apple software

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