Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Internets, Complacency, And Me.

This entry has been baking for a long time, while I have been gathering evidence against myself in observing my lack of new adventures on the world-wide-web.  While my writing upon the subject may not be all that lengthy, I think it bears some scrutiny even if only for my own self examination.

The leading indicator of my home-grown personal epidemic lies in the lack of new bookmarks and websites I actively use to check the pulse of the Internets.  There was a time when I would check in on up to 20 different websites in the course of a single day, and most of those were "news" sites, featuring a short blurb and a link to the actual content on other websites.  Now?  I only have 3 sites I chick with any regularity:
  • CNET's News.com
  • The Inquirer
  • My personal iGoogle page.
Granted, my iGoogle page has multiple tabs, and each tab has lots of gadgets and feeds, but there are only a few links from there that actually get clicked on in any daily fashion.

A lot of the reason for my compressed internet schedule is due to my own changing habits.  I no am no longer worried about how to get the ABSOLUTE MOST game out of my computer.  I'm wowed more by the new tricks on the TiVo and XBOX 360, for which my computer may be considered a conduit, but other than that isn't really used with the same regularity.

Another reason for the lack of adventurous reading comes from many of my former favorites either being bought by other sites (possibly changing the style), disappearing off the map, or maybe I just don't feel I need it any more.  For instance, I used to check PCMag.com (when I wasn't subscribing to their magazine) on a regular basis, but then CNET bought them.  I had already been a regular user of various CNET sites, so with the exception of checking in on John C. Dvorak on occasion I don't have much use for PCMag.com any more.

So tell me, Internets, where my new adventure?  What's the next Holy Grail for me to search for?  I'd like to know. 
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Monday, January 12, 2009

e-Tools Quick Take...

Just a quick update, here:

I found a work-around for Blogger's inability to keep completed tasks from showing up in my "Blogs to Be" sidebar gadget. This was coming from a Remember The Milk task list, and has probably only been read three or four times in the correct manner. I found out how to change the feed from Atom (default) to RSS, and now it works! At least there is a workaround for Blogger's ineptitude.

Since my favorite browser, Flock, has now integrated the photo sharing services of Tinypic into its Media Bar, I have signed up as well. Another member of my household has been a longtime user of this service, for stuffing her blogs full of pictures, so I have some catching up to do.

I've added a Digg feed to the sidebar, but unlike the gadgets referencing the most popular articles on Digg, these are just my own most recent diggs. You're here (all 2.5 of you) to read my spewage, so you deserve to see the "garbage-in" side of me as well. Look for "What the heck is kEnny reading?" on the right.

...

On a somewhat unrelated note, something funny happened between last night and this morning. On a whim I decided to look up the ShamWOW guy, Vince Clortho Offer. I found his Wikipedia page and used twitter to make note of it. This morning I got an email from twitter announcing that _VINCEOFFER_ was following me on twitter! How very interesting!!
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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Now (or at some point, at least) It's Gonna Get Serious

... of course it will be in a fun & geeked out way. We now have two multimedia powerhouses connected to our "Home Theater," in the TiVo HD and XBOX 360, with the capability to add back the HTPC at some point as well. Both devices can stream audio and video from the our network and the internet. I'm determined to find some cool stuff to do with them.

I've been watching NAS (Network Attached Storage) trends for a long time, and there are some very compelling devices out there that are friendly to both the XBOX and TiVo, which can feed them with pictures, audio, and video. We've got lots of pictures and music already, and could conceivably be downloading TV content (instead of paying the cable company so we can record it on the TiVo) from the web.

As home networking options gain new features and speed, we'll be looking for the proper direction to go to replace our router and add a NAS box of some sort. Our current router, as steadfast and trusty as it may be, can be overwhelmed at times by the number of bandwidth hogs currently connected to it. We will need to step up to Gigabit speeds to make it through all the cross-streaming mess, and a finalized high-speed wireless standard would be nice as well. Using a stand-alone NAS should bring power savings over simply running an HTPC all the time, and keep the overall packaging smaller and easier to handle.

After reading an article on CNET about a family who dropped their satellite TV to save money, we're going to be examining some similar options. Most of the TV we watch that isn't broadcast over the airwaves is available for download or streaming. The first trick is determining what we can receive with a terrestrial antenna. If we can kick Comcast cable TV to the curb, we'll be golden!
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Saturday, January 03, 2009

X Barks The Spot!

I'll be the first to admit it. In terms of game consoles, our household has been living in the dark ages. We've had the same Nintendo Gamecube since before either of our children were born. We've been mulling over what to do about it for quite some time, but the options had been somewhat daunting for most of that time. Some consoles had cooling or noise problems, some consoles had only "family" games, etc. After lots of deliberation and putting off the purchase, we took my brother-in-law's advice (Thanks, Brandon!) and bought an XBOX 360.

I had been thinking for some time about the optimal way to add the 360 to our home theater, considering the way things had been connected and set up before. I really wanted to use the HDMI output for the video, rather than using the questionable component cable supplied with the 360, but because our TV doesn't pass through the audio data from HDMI we needed to still have a separate audio connection to the reciever. One solution I had come up with previously was to use seperate HDMI switch, but I have only found a few that I was interested in, and those didn't seem to last long. My idea was to have a 4 or 5 port HDMI switch, with SPDIF or TOSLINK connections to handle all the source switching. Our TV has to toggle through the first HDMI input to access the second input when selecting by remote control, so using more than one digital input on the TV can be a bit of a hassle, hence the search for the outboard switch. Unfortunately it seems rather hard to find one that is both well recommended and less than $100.

The simplest idea for now, was to just replace the DVD player with the XBOX. This kept the console in an area of the TV stand that was open from both the front and back (for better cooling), and made for easier game swapping as well. There was one little problem preventing us from using the same HDMI and TOSLINK cables from the DVD player, which would seem to have been done on purpose by the XBOX 360 designers. The A/V connectors on the back of the 360 were too close together, not allowing the simultaneous use of the HDMI port and the multi-purpose A/V pod that came with our unit. The huge plug on the A/V pod was almost completely blocking the HDMI jack. Luckily the internet came to our rescue. Microsoft offers a $50 solution to this problem, in the form of an HDMI cable kit which has an A/V pod of reduced size (offering only audio connections) and the requisite HDMI cable. From the state of current HDMI cable price gouging, this might not be such a bad deal, but as a customer of Monoprice, I'm not about to settle for that kind of robbery. I found a number of "tutorials" for getting around this small problem. Simply removing the plastic casing from the plug of the A/V pod made enough room for both connections, and we were in business.

The next task was to program the universal remote control. Okay, maybe I should stop here. This was actually done before the I figured out how to get the HDMI connection going on the 360, but for the purposes of our story we are going to pretend that this was done afterward, K? Our remote control, while definitely not glamorous, is a very versatile beast once you have found the right software tools for manipulating it. It is a LONG throw from any Logitech Harmony, but it gets the job done very nicely, thanks. While it has no recharging stand, the batteries last for many months on end with no problem. I've programmed upgrades into it for the TV, TiVo, receiver, old DVD player, and now the XBOX 360, so that we have a 3rd way to control the console (remember that we want to watch DVDs on it, too?) for when a game controller doesn't seem quite right. While this remote control is much older than all of these devices, there are many avid fans who have spent hours of hard work on the programming tools for these remotes, so I could spend $35 a few years ago on the remote and programming cable and not need another remote for a LONG time. Just as with a Harmony, our remote is set up for task based usage, giving you access to the controls you need for the particular media you are enjoying. No, it doesn't have a battery-eating LCD screen, but it still works great and keeps things simple.

Another interesting highlight of getting the new "DVD player" has been Allie's inquisitive side turning its attention to the XBOX. After a friend of hers recommended we get an extra cooling unit for it, and us discussing it at length, she took off and found out which exact components our 360 was built with, any known weaknesses associated with it, and what we needed to look out for in general. I would normally get around to these things, but it was nice to be beaten to the punch. She's pretty awesome that way, when it comes to things she has taken an interest in. It turns out ours is not in very great danger of succumbing to overheating issues.

Today marks the first full day the kids will be able to spend with the XBOX, after Allison and I had it to ourselves for almost a week. I'm glad we didn't have them under foot for the first few days, so we could have a chance to get it all figured out for ourselves. I still have some tweaking to do with the remote control, but other than that, it all works great!!!
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