Plaidophile

Yesterday while grocery shopping I noticed that Trix were on sale so I got a box out of misplaced whimsy. Just now I noticed they're advertising the "new shape! same great taste!" and of course the "new" thing is that all of the cereal nuggets are little balls, like Kix, rather than having any association between color and some vague fruit shape. This means that Trix have finally dropped the last conceit that the flavors had anything to do with real fruits, and all that's left is the conceit that the different colors represent different flavors.

(I also presume that this "new" shape was solely to cut down on production costs, since now they only need to change out dyes, rather than dyes and molds, and they can probably reuse the molds from other cereals now too.)

Since my carpets were getting cleaned today and I hadn't ridden my bike in nearly a year, I decided to ride to the beach. It's about 3.5 miles each way if you do it right, and of course on the way out I didn't which added in an extra mile or two of hills.

(Note to self: that area with all the trees? it's a really steep hillside, and not somewhere that might have a bike trail.)

So, Speakeasy's Seattle connection went down, which is why all my sites were down. This is why I don't host email off my home connection, and why I really shouldn't host websites off it either (fortunately it's not like any of my things really need high availability).

On the plus side, this is the first outage I've had with Speakeasy in the two years I've been with them, and as annoyed as I was at their automated phone-based tech support thing (which suggested I go report the outage at the website, which is a neat trick considering, you know, outage), when I did get to their prerecorded explanation for home support which explained the situation it was fine. (Of course the first thing I tried was their "report an outage" thing which just sent me to some message with some incomprehensible technician with a heavy accent AND a speech impediment, so it was a bit frustrating.)

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For amusement purposes, to see how much high-contrast resolving power your eye has (obviously it's easy to cheat). When can you tell the plaids apart? What's the smallest number you can read?

Traditionally, members of a symphony have dressed in black suits so that they wouldn't visually stand out and distract the viewer from the performance, since the performance was to be heard, and not seen. So it's ironic that now there's such an emphasis on making a visually stunning presentation which focuses on the individual performers — which actually does make it more interesting and therefore easier to watch.

Of course the audio quality is somewhat better than on an analog broadcast.

So, all the video output stuff on my Sony receiver just crapped out, since I guess it didn't like me re-plugging stuff around for probably just the third time since I bought it two years ago. The receiver itself is under warranty but in order to get it serviced I need to ship the receiver to Texas at my own expense, and need to find a proof of purchase date, which will be rather difficult since I bought it on Amazon via a third-party merchant and even if the merchant did provide an invoice (which I don't think they did), who the hell keeps packing slips two years later?

For now I'm just using my TV's plethora of video inputs, and only using the receiver for switching audio, which of course is more of a pain in the ass since now I need to remember what things are hooked up on BOTH sides. Also when the Wii arrives I'll either need to get an HDMI-based upconverting DVD player (which would be nice), or demote the PS2 to S-video (which is more likely since really it's not like I play the PS2 that much and most of the games I do play don't support 480p anyway). (5:53 PM Or, duh, I could just use my Mac mini to play DVDs, and just find a 5.1 output thing for it, even if that means switching to VLC as my player app.)

Dear technology: why do you have to be so annoying?

Getting to see majestic beards in glorious detail.

Pluses: even the analog SVGA input looks great at 1080p. Everything else looks fine too. AppleTV at 1080i is quite nice (of course all my AppleTV content is in 360p or 540p so there's no weirdness when upconverting). The color quality is nearly as good as the CRT it replaced (of course the black point isn't quite as nice but oh well), and it's also very tunable with respect to quality and which enhancement features to turn on (and it even has a little demo mode where you can see a splitscreen view with enhancement on vs. off).

Minuses: upscaling from 480i could be better, and there's no HDMI passthrough for audio (apparently that's a common sore spot with today's hardware for stupid DRM and CODEC reasons) so I still need to hook my components' audio up directly to the stereo. I only have one HDMI device at the moment anyway though. Also the available resolutions for SVGA are a bit odd (it supports the standard 4:3 SVGA ones up to 1280x1024, and 1080p, but no 720p) but SwitchResX takes care of that for me (of course it uses the graphics chip's built-in bilinear scaling for that which looks pretty crap-asstic).

It seems to be just the right size for my living room, and for the record I can still see the individual pixels on a 1080p display even though it's "only" 40" and about 10 feet away. Not that it matters since I don't have any actual 1080p content and don't see that happening for a while, but of course it's useful when it's my mini's monitor.

Also I'm surprised at how lightweight it is. The delivery guy and I had no trouble getting it up the stairs or onto my shelf.

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I've replaced some of the lights in my home with compact fluorescent. The newer CF bulbs actually have a slightly warmer profile than the incandescent bulbs they replaced. But the really cool thing is how you can immediately tell the difference just by looking at their reflection in the data side of a CD or DVD.

SCIENCE! (after the cut)

Today I decided to wander up to Lynnwood and go to Circuit City and CompUSA. Circuit City was as always an exercise in frustration, but CompUSA was kind of odd. All of the CompUSAs around here are shutting down (except the Bellevue one, I think) and the Lynnwood one was more or less gutted of all its useful merchandise, though there were several shelves full of compressed air (which I bought three cans of) and DVD-Rs (a 50-pack for $15!). Meanwhile, they did still have some okayish LCD TVs for sale, and the salespeople were all watching Arrested Development on them, which isn't the sort of thing that would have happened when the store was still in business.

(Technically it's also illegal since it's a public exhibition of a DVD only licensed for private use, but I won't tell the FBI on them.)

Seeing as how the Wii "family bundle" at EBGames had pretty much exactly what I wanted to get to begin with, I just ordered that. Of course it's a little more expensive than buying the things separately (since they add on a stupid "handling charge" at the end), and I could have done without the compulsory purchase of Sonic the Hedgehog or the 1GB SD card (though the former could be resold and the latter can be used in other things as well) but now I can at least look forward to when I can finally freaking play Twilight Princess.

So which will arrive first, the Wii (estimated shipping: 4/23) or my new TV (estimated arrival: 4/25)? THE RACE IS ON.

Two of my guilty pleasures, together at last:

The Only Difference — obviously I don't expect this to be the final arrangement that the producers make of it, should they accept it, but I couldn't manage to make it actually sound like the overwrought epic chorus that they'd want to turn it into. Also the drums are kinda meh but they're just a bunch of loops. This is basically a sketch, which is what the Idol folks said they wanted.

Contrary to ucblockhead's expectations, I just sold my old TV for $200. For the next week or two (until the new TV arrives) I guess I'll only be able to watch stuff on my G5, which means I might actually get more comic done. Woo.

So the one show that I have my DVR record every day is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, because, well, it's a pretty cool show, and Fred Rogers left such an amazing legacy. But it can also be kind of twisted if you look at it with a certain adult perspective. For example, this week, Neighbor (Chuck) Aber, toymaker, has been visiting the Neighborhood of Make-Believe with his puppet H. J. Elephant. On Monday, H. J. was clearly a puppet under Aber's control, but on Tuesday, he seems to have gained some autonomy. And later on in the same make-believe segment, H. J. is talking to all the other puppets in school and Daniel Tiger notices Aber's head underneath, so Aber reveals himself, and points out that H. J. is a toy — which sends the other puppets into an existential crisis, with Daniel in particular wondering if he's a toy. (Aber's response: "Well, in make-believe, a toy can be real too.")

So, I decided I'd outgrown my toaster oven and wanted to reclaim some counter space, so I got an ordinary $10 toaster (which is all I used the toaster oven for anymore, aside from the occasional broiling which I can just do in my oven) and on Saturday decided to list the toaster oven on the "free stuff" section of Craigslist, for the first time ever (aside from when I had my TV on it for all of 30 seconds last time I considered upgrading).

Today at lunch, my coworkers and I had the opportunity to see what really happens when the Heimlich maneuver is performed on a choking person.

You know how in cartoons and TV shows and so on, the piece of food flies out like a cork from a champagne bottle?

That's not quite how it goes in reality.

Yeow

I find it interesting that all of the AppleTV hacking has focused on physically interacting with the device. Has anyone explored exploiting the iTunes link? I bet iTunes has some as-yet-undiscovered mechanisms for installing new software onto the AppleTV directly, especially considering the long-running rumors of it eventually gaining gaming functionality or whatever.

Also, AppleTV supports a software update mechanism which would almost certainly be exploitable (via DNS spoofing).

I'd explore it myself but I like spending my free time on things which don't resemble work.

First course: Take everyday vegetables and one exotic ingredient and sauté them together as a filling. Roast a vegetable, and stuff it with the filling. Toss some of the remaining ingredients into a bowl, put the stuffed vegetable on top of them exactly in the center, then ladle a pureed soup base (either pea or acorn squash) around it. For bonus points, drizzle heavy cream on top.

Interlude: Talk about the spirit of Jazz and how it applies to cooking, especially with how every instrument is equally important.

Second course: Take yesterday's stale bread, lovingly make fancy croutons out of them, then pulverize them into bread crumbs. Stir the crumbs into a vinaigrette. In another bowl, make a salad out of beans and expensive imported ham. Toss with olive oil and lemon juice. Add some microgreens and "beautifully caress" them. Arrange it on a plate in a "random" fashion (make sure the long pieces are sticking up just so). Add hard boiled quail eggs. Drizzle the vinaigrette on top and in patterns around the salad. Keep on fussily arranging every little bean and egg and sliver of radish and whatever until it looks perfect (especially the little bits which have "randomly" fallen around it).

Vacuum pumps work great. Just evacuate the bottle as much as you can and then store it in the refrigerator. I've had open bottles last for a month with these things. You can get them at any decent restaurant supply and even at some grocery stores (though grocery stores usually charge way too much for them).

Obviously they don't work for sparkling wines (the best thing to do with excess champagne is to turn it into vinegar, as champagne vinegar is a great addition to many recipes!), but for everything else they're great.

I used to have trouble with even small amounts of cheese going moldy or stale before I could use it all, but then I learned this technique, and haven't lost any cheese to spoilage in months:

Remove the cheese from all plastic wrap (which traps moisture in and makes it easy for mold to develop). Wrap it instead in wax paper, held loosely closed by a large rubber band, and then store that in a plastic zipper bag which has been "burped" (meaning, crack it open a little bit and then roll the contents up to squeeze the air out before sealing it all the way).

The wax paper keeps the moisture away from the cheese, and the plastic bag keeps the moisture in the bag, so now even large loaves last forever, or at least long enough for me to use the whole thing.

new contest — should I try entering? The $10 fee isn't a big deal to me but I'm not sure any of my current songs are suitable, and I'm not really feeling very musically-inspired right now, especially not them wanting something to be sung on the finale which sums up the emotional journey that the contestants went through. (So obviously "tw3rp" is unsuitable, though that's the poppiest song I have.)

I guess I could enter tw3rp and also write something new for it. There doesn't seem to be an entry limit or anything, and it's not like $10 is a huge deal for me.

The movie trailers section is pretty darn cool. What would make it really cooler is if it got a minimal Sherlock-like thing in it so that you could get it tied to local showtimes - show local theatres and showtimes of the movies on the summary, or also look at trailers for what's showing nearby.

Sherlock already has that in it, and if they added that to Apple TV, that'd just be really neat.

There's plenty of stuff on the web already about the Apple TV and of course plenty of stuff about how hackable it is which I'm not doing (at least not until there's a way to do it without swapping the hard drive out physically) but I just want to add to the fray:

• The video and audio quality are excellent, even over analog outputs
• Stuff also looks better than on the mini via DVI
• It works great with eyeTV content (especially with the latest eyeTV beta version which sets the file attributes correctly)
• Read the manual for remote control instructions, since the fast forward/rewind controls are a little counter-intuitive but also really handy (for example, 10-second skip mode — put it into fast forward, then when you get past the end of the commercial break you can just skip back 10 seconds at a time)
• Streamed movie trailers work great (much better than when I was running a hacked version of Front Row on my mini)

I was debating inviting people to dinner at my place on Sunday since Marcus was visiting but he wasn't sure he'd be able to stay for dinner tonight, and then finally he said he could so I invited a bunch of people over yesterday. Then later yesterday he backed out since he and his girlfriend wanted to get back to Idaho sooner (which is totally understandable). And of course because of the short notice on the invite, the only people who HAVE gotten back to me have said they couldn't make it or they'd try to but it was doubtful, and so everyone else is in this indeterminate state and so now I have a feeling I'm going to be eating leftover enchiladas and soup for the next two weeks. Hooray!