kahunaburger

“I Love You, Man” is actually pretty funny except for the sappy ending.

It that doesn’t make you wear it, what does? Genius …

I did some furniture rearrangement in the bedroom and finally got rid of my trusty, old LED alarm clock. That thing must have been with me for at least 15 years and you could tell that by how beaten up it was. Since then I don’t have an alarm/clock in the bedroom. I really don’t need the alarm, because I always wake up at the same time and even if I have to go on a trip and have to get up earlier, I usually wake up before the alarm goes off. However, what I miss in the bedroom is a clock: I really would like to known whether it is 3am, 4am or 5am when I open my eyes for the first time.

I found the perfect alarm/clock replacement called “Chumby”. That thing has been around for years already (I think 2006) and I remember reading about it in the past, but then forgot about it. I’m not even sure how I rediscovered it, but there’s one on the way to my home right now.

Chumby is about the size of a traditional alarm clock, but it is so much more. The little device features a touch-screen and connects wirelessly to your home network. You can customize what is being displayed on the Chumby by using your web-browser and configuring the widgets (screens) that are supposed to be displayed. Each screen is displayed for a configurable amount of time before it gets replaced by the next weidget. Last time I checked there were more than 1000 widgets to choose from: clocks of all shapes and forms, news/rss readers, games, weather widgets, internet radio stations, etc. – the possibilities seem to be limitless and development of new channels is extremely easy (each widget is in fact a small Adobe Flash Application that can communicate with network services out there).

Just to give you an idea, I created a “Virtual Chumby” (displayed below, if you have Flash installed). It’ll cycle through some widgets and a few of them are interactive (look for buttons, sliders, etc.); on the 2nd widget click the mouse inside the dark area and move it around to create “relaxing sounds”:

I know Pia is going to love it … and perhaps daddy as well

Yes, I know I’m screaming – it’s supposed to be that way! Text messages are one of those things that drive me absolutely nuts. Not the messages themselves, but the fact that the carriers can get away with highway-robbery and nobody seems to complain about it.

An analogy: The US Postal Service just announced a new service that allows you, the sender of a letter, to add a short message to the recipient on the outside of your envelope.
One line of text costs $25 dollars extra. You can purchase a bulk-subscription, which allows you to send 100 such messages a month for as little as $250.
As the recipient of such a message, you would be charged an extra $12.50 per message (whether you want that message or not). A subscription, as above, would allow you to receive up to 100 such messages.
If you want to make sure that the service cannot be used for outgoing or incoming mail, you’ll be charged a $10 per month service fee.

If you didn’t say “That’s insane!” while reading the above paragraph, then, congratulations, you are the poster-child of a new-era, brain-washed, mobile user; Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Alltel are very happy with you and would like to send you this free ringtone as a gift (additional charges may apply).

Text (SMS) messages are one of the biggest rip-offs ever created. In fact, plain text messages (as opposed to picture messages) don’t cost your provider a single cent (or a fraction thereof). Your mobile phone is in constant communication with nearby cell-towers. That communication is used to figure out where the strongest signal is coming or whether there’s data that needs to be exchanged with your phone. That communication happens regardless of whether there is something to talk about or not.

When you send or receive a text-mesages, the data that makes up the text message is broken into smaller pieces and is added to that constant communication without increasing the size of the individual packets. And that means that a carrier does not have to do anything “extra” to transport messages back and forth.

I actually called Verizon and asked them to disable all incoming/outgoing messages to/from my phone. Believe it or not, they asked me to sign up for a “parental controls service” that allows me to do that and more for $4.99/month extra.

What to do instead? Most phones that can send/receive text messages also have some sort of Internet access. Use email instead. Chances are that basic data-access (which is used for emails) is still a heck of a lot cheaper than text messaging. If you have already data access and want to send/receive text messages outside of your carrier, you may also be able to use Google Voice’s free SMS sub-system.

Whatever you do, just don’t let the carriers get away with those outrageous charges for a few LOLs …

PS: photo courtesy of Kenby10 on flickr.

After snowy and cloudy days we finally had some good weather today and it was gorgeous when the sun came out. At noon I took the dogs for a walk through the arroyo next to my home.

I really like the highlight/shadow play in the fresh snow. It’s been a long time since I took a camera, but I like the results from today. This is my favorite:

snow3

Mini avalanches:

snow2

If you look careful, you can identify my foot prints from a few days ago:

snow4

Three fingers from some grass:

snow5

The cold weather had also left some marvelous crystals on the tree/shrubs:

frost1

And another one:

frost2

This is more a “note to self”, but I’m sure others find it useful as well.

Quite often I run across AVI files with a broken index. That index is used in media players to seek rapidly in the movie file. Without an index or with a corrupt index, seeking either does not work at all or takes a long time.

mencoder, which is available on almost any platform, allows you to massage AVI files besides tons of other operations on a never-ending list of video formats.

Here’s the command to repair a broken AVI index (I used the mplayer/mencoder version that comes with the FreeBSD ports collection):

$ mencoder -idx in.avi -ovc copy -oac copy -o out.avi
MEncoder 1.0rc2-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.60GHz (Family: 15, Model: 4, Stepping: 10)
CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
success: format: 0  data: 0x0 - 0x2aea0000
AVI file format detected.
[aviheader] Video stream found, -vid 0
[aviheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
AVI: Generated index table for 332070 chunks!
VIDEO:  [XVID]  640x272  12bpp  23.976 fps  994.0 kbps (121.3 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:3  fourcc:0x44495658  size:640x272  fps:23.98  ftime:=0.0417
videocodec: framecopy (640x272 12bpp fourcc=44495658)
audiocodec: framecopy (format=55 chans=2 rate=48000 bits=0 B/s=17579 sample-0)
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Writing index...81f (99%) 7391.58fps Trem:   0min 690mb  A-V:0.047 [993:140]]
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Video stream:  993.962 kbit/s  (124245 B/s)  size: 628485708 bytes  5058.428 secs
Audio stream:  140.323 kbit/s  (17540 B/s)  size: 88735536 bytes  5058.936 secs
$

You guessed it right: “in.avi” is the broken file and “out.avi” is the repaired avi-file. The whole operation took a few seconds on this 700MB file.

Take all the hours of all the people who worked one way or another on the health care bill, from either camp, the speech writers, the secretaries who typed the speeches, made copies of them, the conference rooms rented at hotels, the food/drinks consumed during meetings, the money spent on travel, the number of hours wasted in the workplace, because of endless discussion of the subject – take all that money and tell me how many lives could have been saved or how many people could have free health insurance for the rest of their lives.

I know we live in a democracy, but sometimes I wish our president had three joker cards per term that would allow him to stop nonsense or extreme waste of time and money.

Then give “Dynamic Systems” on engineering.com a try. In the case picture below you have to use the three domino pieces on the left and place them close to the existing domino piece (by the hammer). The goal is to get the silver ball into a bucket (which is hidden behind the panel with the dominoes on the left).

That monster of a Samsung DLP TV in the bedroom has left the premises and made (a lot) of room for it’s successor, a Lucky Goldstar 42″ LH50. I had picked that model a long time ago, because of a few features that were important to me (see below). I waited and waited for the price to come down and finally found an offer that was almost half the list price and that’s when I ordered one.

The LCD itself is a pretty standard 42″, 120Hz screen with full HD resolution. Not too fat and not too slim either. It’s black (what a surprise!), has a beveled edge and, according to LG’s marketing material, invisible speakers (they are not inaudible).

I heard the first yawns already, so let me move to the features that made the thing interesting to me.

The LH50 series is equipped with some technology that LG dubbed “NetCast”. It has some networking features builtin that do not require any extra boxes to be connected to the unit. At the moment there are two cables leaving the TV and entering the wall: the power cord and an Ethernet cable. The network cable hooks into the home network and provides the TV with full Internet access.

Using the NetCast technology, I can immediately access Netflix without any extra hardware connected to the unit. And I believe that was the one feature that made me go for this device. LG also throws in access to YouTube and VuDu’s HD online rental service. Yahoo’s TV Widgets are also there, but I found very limited use for them. Oh, and to round of the package, you can access Windows home network shares (photos, music, videos) directly. The last option comes in handy, because all my media is served via Samba to Windows clients.
The TV’s software can be updated via the Internet and I expect we’ll see some more services being added in the near future.

What’s important to note is the fact that the TV landscape is rapidly changing. I feel that 2010 is the year where we finally see the beginnings of the future of home entertainment, because units like the LG TV above make it easier for a lot of people out there to change their habits: I cancelled my satellite service, I don’t watch regular TV, I get my news elsewhere, I watch a lot less and when I watch something, I’m in complete control and do not get interrupted by ads I don’t care for. And let’s also not forget that I save a bundle every month.

If I go on at this rate, I can quickly turn kahunaburger into a movie-review site.

Dog #2 decided to eat too much grass yesterday (yeah, I know, the grass is all dried up, but he still likes it – go figure). When dogs eat too much grass they tend to throw it up after some time (Max is not sick, he just likes to eat grass).

Murphy’s Law dictates that the dog puke is either in a location where there’s the highest chance that the dog owner will step into it or that the act of puking happens at a time where the dog owner is trying to sleep. The 2nd option happened last night.

It was 4:30am when I heard the familiar I’m-about-to-throw-up sounds and I was not able to get the dog outside before it happened.

Nothing kills a good morning like a cold puddle of grass-filled doggie puke, so I decided to get rid of the mess right away. A few paper towels later I felt better and went back to bed. 4:30am happens to be very close to my usual wakeup time and I opt to reward myself with an in-bed, early morning movie. Netflix often tells me about stuff “I’m going to love” and sometimes I add the new found love to my Instant Viewing queue.

“Gigantic” was one of the last items that appeared in the queue by recommendation. It was also one of the first ones that had the pleasure to be played on the new LG42HL50 (more on that in a separate post).

Five minutes into the movie, I’m not sure whether I should go back to sleep, get up and walk the dogs or keep on watching. Obviously I kept on watching. What unfolds afterwards is a quirky (take that, you Netflix comment Nazi!) comedy that has some of the most absurd lines and scenes I’ve ever seen before.
You are either going to love that movie or you are going to hate it. There’s no middle ground. I had a number of lough-out-loud moments only to silence myself quickly enough to make sure I wasn’t missing anything else. How those four dudes could keep a straight face during the “Happy Ending” scene, is way beyond me.

Synopsis, you ask? Hmm – 28-y/o single mattress salesperson bumps into weird girl and decides to pursue her while adopting a baby from China and being chased by a stalker who happens to be a figment of his imagination. There you go! And if you ever figure out the stalker-part, please let me know, because I’m torn.

I really hated Sarah Michelle Gellar. Everything she did seemed to be shallow and not worth watching. But it appears that she has grown up – grown up big time.

During one of my spouts of insomnia I decided to watch “Veronika Decides to Die” (coming soon to Netflix) and expected to fall asleep during the movie. I was wrong, so very very wrong.

Sarah portraits a depressed, suicidal woman who happens to survive her suicide attempt and ends up in a mental institution with a bunch of other people in the same position. She’s different, because she has only a short time left on this earth.
What follows is a startling path to self-recovery that turns into a heart-warming love-story. I don’t want to tell you too much, because you have to see if for yourself.

This is one movie that has spoken to me unlike any other recent picture. And I used to hate Sarah …

… and if you still have room in your evening prayers, consider including me

And to clarify (because I’ve been asked): this is the original patent filing and not the grant

Michele was recently here and Pia was allowed to feed her daughter Isabela. Much better than just feeding a doll.

Isabela and Pia

Here’s a special weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. Looks like we need to get the mittens out for Thursday/Friday this week. I’m going to stock up on food today and hope it does not get too bad. Some say we may get as much as 2 feet (60cm) of snow.

It’s the second time now that I see the Santa Fe New Mexican doing a “Live Blog” session on their site. The current one can be seen here, but this link is likely to disappear soon.

I found both sessions to be surprisingly useful. The “Live Blog” is a page that continuously updates. Both SF New Mexican staff as well as readers can contribute. I learned a great deal about the road conditions today from the reader submitted comments. Next time we have a storm come through, go check it out.