Kevin's Musings

As you know, I am now working in New York City and have been trying to keep my eye open for celebs. Yesterday I ran into Nathan Fillion (from the TV show Firefly) at the Rockport shoe store in NYC at Columbus and 67th. I talked to him just briefly (didn’t want to take up a bunch of his time). Took this pic on the sly so he wouldn’t have to do that awkward pose with the gawky fan thing (the other guy in the picture is a Rockport sales guy, I think). Anyway, he was very nice, asked me my name, I told him I was a big fan of the show and really looking forward to the movie. I told him I hoped they brought the show back and he said he hoped so too, as he would like to be a house and work with Joss Whedon more. Anyway, seemed like a really nice guy. Very cool celeb spotting. Unfortunately I didn’t have a good camera with me, just my Treo 650, so quality is kinda mediocre.

My weekend was relatively relaxed. Took the wife to the airport and went to the local DMV to get my car registered… I decided after a few months it was time to do it. Getting the address on the title changed and registering the car were both pretty easy, fill out a few forms and give them $121 — only slightly highway robbery. Then, I had to take the vehicle for “inspection” — note that this vehicle is less than a year old. Anyway, after waiting about 40 minutes they complete the inspection and give me a rejected because (a) the light that illuminates the license plate in the back is apparently out and (b) my insurance is still New Mexico. Both problems are easily remedied and I have 43 days to take care of them and get reinspected. The nice thing is that vehicle inspection in NJ is free if you have it done at one of the government run places (not a private place).

Saturday afternoon I went to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose which I really enjoyed. It is very well done, quite creepy, not preachy, good effects used sparingly. I highly recommend it if you can handle the subject matter. It is an interesting different take on the exorcism subject.

Saturday night I spent some time figuring out how to run XBMC. After some mucking, some fussing, some frustration, and some hair pulling I finally figured out the correct voodoo. My initial impression was that it was incredibly unstable, but, after switching dashboards and upgrading XBMC to a newer version I find it to be quite stable and a real joy to use. I am using it “streaming” from my PC (over a hard wired 100mbps network) and it works flawlessly, plays pretty much anything you throw at it, has a great UI, the control is very nice. I am incredibly impressed. Comparing it to PS2Reality or Gameshark Media Player is really a laugh, they don’t even come close to comparing… the different in ability and quality is night and day, black and white, apples and oranges. If you find yourself with a bunch of media files (audio, video, pictures, etc.) on your PC that you would like to play on a TV elsewhere (as long as you have the network connection going to the elsewhere) this is absolutely a great solution. That said, I don’t know how well it would work over a wireless bridged connection and initial setup, while not difficult, isn’t for the meek – the instructions aren’t bad but they are by no means comprehensive (but much better than they used to be).

I am now completely caught up with Battlestar Galactica season two, watched episode 9 yesterday. This continues to be a really stellar (pun intended) show. So much better than I ever expected it would be.

Until next time…

I received my Gameshark Media Player tonight… it works really well! The quality, speed, and stability is SO much better than PS2Reality Media Player. The two programs provide almost the exact same functionality, but, the Gameshark Media Player is much better. If you have a lot of Divx/Xvid/MP3 files on a PC that is networked to a PS2 and want to play the files on the PS2, you should definately consider getting this. The advantage of new newer slim PS2 is that the networking is built in, which is great for using this software. This must be one of the most under-utilized PS2 programs out there. The only things this software doesn’t do that PS2Reality does is support USB hard drives and thumb drives, but, because streaming over the network is so much better, it really isn’t necessary.

Until next time…

Recently it was announced the Rio, the makers of some of my favorite MP3 players, will no longer be making MP3 players any more. The actual details are more complicated, but, we are out of luck. I have been using the Rio Carbon for about a year now I still think it is the best thing going in the 4-8GB hard drive based players. My wife uses a Rio Sport 256MB (with an extra 1GB) and she loves it, too.

I probably wrote a while back about my experience with the iPod mini during a point when my Carbon was broken. During that point I did a lot of looking at what Apple, Creative, and the others were offering. Nothing else really compares to the Carbon in terms of features. While the iPods support MP3 and Audible, they don’t support WMA and they requires you to upload via iTunes (or Winamp via a plug-in). The biggest problem with the iPod is that it doesn’t support bookmarking (except for Audible content) — which is vital since I often listen to very long files and/or audio books. What is great about the Rio Carbon is that when you plug it in (USB) it just looks like a hard drive, drag MP3/WMA file to it and when you unplug it they appear in your available music list. No special software needed. The Carbon also supports Audible, which is very nice.

This is all too bad because eventually my Carbon will break and I just don’t see a worthy competitor out there. I like the look of the new iPod Nano, but, without bookmarks it just doesn’t compete, not to mention the other missing features. Oh well.

On a somewhat related note, I found a great free MP3 file splitter, mp3splt. Good for splitting long MP3s into short ones, and it can place the splits during silent points. Cool stuff.

This weekend we went up to Springfield, Mass. We drove up Friday night and stayed at a somewhat mediocre Quality Inn in West Springfield. It wasn’t a bad hotel but much of the attention to detail seemed to be missing. The plus side, the room had a great two person hot tub (payed extra for that, of course). All bathtubs should be this big and nice. On Saturday, we went to Six Flags New England. It is a smallish park compared to Six Flags Great Adventure, Six Flags Over Texas, and Six Flags Magic Mountain. The nice thing was that lines where much shorter. They had a few good coasters and one great one (Superman). We did use a Q-Bot to avoid standing in lines, but, we hardly needed it as the lines wouldn’t have been more than 15-30 minutes, generally. After Six Flags we went to see The Transporter 2… it was, at best, ok… it wasn’t a bad movie but when you are watching an action/fighting film and you are constantly saying “come on, impossible” or “oh how stupid” it just takes away from the movie.

On Sunday we went to the Prime Outlets at Lee (an Outlet mall). Bought some clothes and walked around. Afterward, we went and saw the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden in Springfield (very nifty) and drove home. It was a nice weekend.

I am almost finished watching season one of Battlestar Galactica. It has been really good. I watched the show as a child and they have really done well with the new series. I look forwarding to watching season two.

We had a relaxing long weekend. On Saturday we just relaxed around the apartment. On Sunday we went to see The Constant Gardener and The Brothers Grimm. On Monday we had a Firefly marathon, watching the first eight episodes of season one. The Constant Gardner was really good, a thought provoking film — it was well cast, well written, and well put together. The Brothers Grimm was interesting and had great effects, but, could have been somewhat clearer… it was definitely a Terry Gilliam film. Not his best but it was interesting. Firefly was as good as always — hopefully we will get it all watched before Serenity comes out.

I received the flip top case. It is clear and looks really great, but, the eject button isn’t really any better (or worse) — it is really the same case, just looks cooler.

I’ve been playing with PS2Reality Media Player to play video files via the network and via a USB drive (I couldn’t get it to play video files from a DVD-R disc). To stream over the network it uses a java program running on the PC that hosts the video files. Streaming over the network works so-so… I experienced frequent pauses and startup and resume (after a pause) was slow. Playback from USB drive seems to eliminate the pauses during playback and speed up the delays at startup and after pausing, but, it is still strangely slow. Maybe it is some flaw in the software? I really don’t know. I am going to be trying the Gameshark Media Player — should be interesting to see how it compares when streaming over the network (not sure if it supports USB drives).

I finished the game Ratchet and Clank and started Ratchet and Clank 2. Ratchet and Clank was very good, but, it did have its flaws… the save points were generally too far apart and much of the boss battles were far too difficult (but nothing an Action Replay cannot solve). I am also still playing Dungeon Siege II, which is lots of fun… I mentioned the user interface differences, but, they turned out to be no problems, just simplifications — it is a solid game.

Until next time…
Continue reading Our long weekend…

I am always amazed and annoyed at web sites that decrease their “promised” level of service. It has become that I am not even really surprised at it anymore. For a period of time I was using a free hosting service that offered “free PHP / Postgres hosting for life”. I used them for about a year and then they changed their tune, and wanted to charge about $50/year for hosting. I had been putting up with their moderate instability and speed for a few months, but, at $50/year I was not going to, so I switched to another provider which was more modestly priced, about $30/year. They worked great until they decided to change something or another and then I would frequently not get emails for days, or emails to me would just bounce. I stuck with them for about 4 months of problems, but, finally gave up when their email and their hosting became incredibly unreliable. I am pleased with my current hosting provider. The price is reasonable, speed is good, support is responsive.

The same that has repeatedly happened with email. I used mail.com for a while because they promised a free account and forwarding for life (I am a major supporter of having an email address that will live for year, even when you have to change hosting providers or service providers). After a couple of years they decided that forwarding would be a premium service for $3/month. I tried their “free” web client (which most major features still requiring a monthly or yearly payment), but, found their interface really lacking and their spam filtering quite atrocious). It is ultimately thanks to them that I decided to get my own domain name and hosting. For $3/month I can get pretty much everything — the domain, the hosting, etc. Yes, I have to manage the domain myself, but, I am capable of doing that.

Ultimately, I now pay for an email client (I am using Fastmail.fm for my email), but, that was because their web email client is really fantastic, fast, secure, etc. and now I don’t worry about backups of email on my desktop machine — and can access my email anywhere. But, I also use Google Mail for work which continues to improve. Maybe someday I will just move to Google Mail? Who knows. Google Mail and Fastmail have both really upped the bar for web email.

This is all not to say that I don’t understand why companies flip from free services to pay-for services. They go into the market either knowing they cannot sustain the free service, or, not realizing the costs involved with running an Internet-scale service. Some sites can use ad-based revenue to pay for everything, some cannot. Also, ad-based revenue probably doesn’t bring in what it used to. I just hope they realized that their changing model will often drive people to rethink what their needs are and often reevaluate the competition. If you are the best thing going, raising your fee may not be a problem. When there are a dozen competitors with just as strong a product or have a stronger product, you may be sunk (no surprise to anyone, I am sure).

It was my wife’s birthday this last weekend and our son was visiting from Albuquerque, so, we had a walking-packed, touristy time. On Thursday they went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Afterward, we met, had dinner, and went to the top of the Empire State Building (to see the city at night — pretty spectacular).

On Friday we spent part of the day down at Pier 17 walking around, seeing the sites, etc. Friday night they went to a Yankees game while I went to see The Cave (we only had two tickets to the ball game). They really enjoyed the game. I enjoyed The Cave, the cave scuba diving was pretty notable — while I am sure they didn’t get it 100% correct they did a good job. The movie has been called Aliens: Cave Edition, which is relatively accurate.

On Saturday we went to Six Flags Great Adventure. We rode pretty much all of the roller coasters except Kingda Ka (the new coaster that has been shut down more than it has been running). At the end of the night we went to see if the Kingda Ka line was reasonable and found it only had about a 40 minute wait time. This was great news as it commonly has had 4 – 8 hour wait times. We got in line and about 25 minutes later, when we were actually seeing the end of the line, the ride broke. We waited about 30 more minutes hoping they would fix the problem, but, they just ended up shutting it down. Oh well.

On Sunday we came into the city, went to church, had a nice lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant, spent some time in Central Park, came back to New Jersey and had some dinner and spent the rest of the evening at The Back Porch.

Also notable, I finished listening to the audio book Next: The Future Just Happened by Michael Lewis. This was quite interesting. I started The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which I am enjoying. We also watched season one of Coupling, which has been a lot of fun — looking forward to season two.

It was a fun weekend.

I finally got around to watching episode one of season two of The Ultimate Fighter. It is a more of what season one was, which was a lot of fun. I do have one big complaint… but, I don’t know who to direct it at. Should I be mad at SpikeTV or should I be mad at Comcast? I am using the Comcast HD-PVR, their version of TiVo. It usually works great, but, it decided to cut off like the last 5 minutes of the episode. ARGH. Maybe they ran long, maybe the Comcast HD-PVR has trouble with oddly-timed shows, who knows. I did manage to watch the end of it, but, how frustrating.

Our son is visiting from Albuquerque this weekend. We’ll probably take him to do touristy stuff, maybe Six Flags. I think they are going to the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island this afternoon. We’ll probably go to the Empire State Building for sunset this evening.

I ordered a clear case for my Slim PS2 that should be arriving in a day or two. It has a flip lid so it should make it easier to change discs… my biggest complaint with the Slim PS2 is that I am always having to grope for the eject button and the lid seems somewhat flimsy. Maybe I will like this better. Supposedly it is really easy to install the new case. I will let you know how I like it. Yeah, replacing the case will void the warranty, but, since I bought it used it doesn’t really have a warranty, anyway.

Until next time…

We have been watching HBO’s Six Feet Under since the first night it aired, never missed an episode. We just finished watching the final episode and it was a great wrap up to the series. I think they really did a good job this season solving issues (adding new ones) and wrapping it up in a satisfying way. If you haven’t watched the show before, the bulk of it is out now on DVD (and I am sure the rest soon to follow). It was a very well written, very well cast, very well acted show. It will be missed.

On a lighter note, we are finally finally getting caught up on Arrested Development (season two) which we have been also watching from the start. This is a hilarious show, one of our favorites. The writing is so solid and funny, especially if you have a sarcastic, dark sense of humor. I was pleased to hear season three starts on September 19th.

We have also been seeing previews for a new show Surface, which I have high hopes for. It also starts on September 19th.

And even sooner, the new season of Ultimate Fighter starts on August 22nd.