timojhen

Happy (belated) Birthday Maximum RocknRoll

2008-02-16T11:01:00.002-05:00

Wow, 25 years. That's nuts. We're all getting older every day, but it's things like that which really push me over the edge. Had the same weird nostalgic "holy shit" feeling a couple of years ago when I realized that I'd seen Black Flag 20 (!!) years previous in Syracuse NY.
Good stuff either way... lots has passed, there's been some good times, and I can't complain.

Footnote : As my friend Tom recently commented, my taste in music hasn't changed much in 20 years. Not sure if that's good or not, but quite true....

AppleTV

2008-02-16T10:05:00.004-05:00

Managed to win (!!) a 160GB appleTV recently. Was a give-away for people who registered and downloaded white papers, so was a complete surprise.

It's the ideal type of thing to be given, since it's not something I'd pay full retail for, but I'm interested in it. Having had it set up for a couple of weeks now, think I could see myself becoming attached to it over time. Maybe Apple should offer a "rent-to-own" option for these, since they haven't captured the general publics attention.

Here's what I think it does well :

Pictures :
It's easy to set up a folder to sync to the appleTV which is convenient. I have it configured to sync a single folder, and planned on dropping content specific to TV viewing in that. (Have too much to have it sync everything).
The picture quality is great (connected to HDTV via HDMI) and the slide show is functional. There's no "edit" capability (even delete) which would be nice to have it as an editing method, but we were able to look through vacation pictures without huddling around a laptop.

Music :
Much like the Pictures sync, it's easy to set up sync'ing from iTunes to the appleTV. This would include podcasts and smart playlists. I've set it up to sync everything I've added in the last month (again, too much to do everything) and several playlists which we'd use in the living room. I like that shuffle is the first option for playlist playback (since I prefer it for most albums), and the album artwork is large, clear and looks great.

I've not played with Video yet. I'm not someone who'd purchase video content from Apple, but plan to explore the YouTube linkages a bit.

All in all, it's a lot like how I feel about the Chumby. It's interesting, and I could easily see it becoming something that I'd find value in. Unfortunately, the price point is still high enough I'd struggle to measure the ROI on both favorably.

Update : 02/23/08
A week later, and I'm really beginning to like the appleTV. It's great to have access to my mp3 catalog in the family room, something which wasn't possible with iPod docks etc (too small). The YouTube integration works (search-able, can sign in etc), but it's the same crap YouTube quality as the web, so it's really obnoxious on a TV. The pictures sync works as expected, and it's great to be able to view photos on the larger screen.
Still unconvinced I'd pay for it, but think there's probably a market for this, if only it was possible to demonstrate the value effectively.

paying for software

2008-02-10T09:08:00.001-05:00

Found myself paying for software recently (Office 2008 for Mac) which (honestly) would have been unheard of some years ago. I thought of software companies as monolithic entities which didn't need or deserve my support, with the exception of some great shareware ( Graphic Converter, TidyUp!, and MP3 Rage being several which come to mind immediately).

It's a (sorta) weird thing for me to think about, since I'd been so lackadasical about it in the past. Didn't mind paying for hardware, but was always so ambivalent about software.

Guess aging is doing something to me (see post about preferring to buy CD's vs downloading, even when the downloads are legal).

Footnote : I still have limits. Everyone I know (who's serious about photography) loves LightRoom. I can't get over the fact it's $300, so still doing lousy things using Graphic Converter instead....

aging

2008-02-10T08:39:00.000-05:00

Have been thinking a bit lately about responsibility, especially as it relates to digital media. I'd spent about a year using soulseek extensively, and managed to find a ton of great (old) punk which never made the transition from vinyl to CD.

It became somewhat cyclical.... I'd troll around, find a record that I'd completely forgotten about like old metalcore records from Canada (i.e. Sudden Impact's "No Rest for the Wicked") and be psyched to relive musical experiences from years ago.

In the end, there's something unsatisfying for me about completely digital media. I still get a kick out of looking at a CD (or vinyl) and having the full package -- artwork, liner notes, etc.

Ended up buying about 50 CD's (mostly used, and most for <$2.00) at Ameoba last weekend while visiting family in the Bay Area. A new stash of loot to dig through!

Mailordered more Destroyer records yesterday, so looks like I'm back to buying my music. Something enormously more satisfying about holding actual media I guess.

Troy's photo experimentation...

2007-09-03T08:54:00.001-05:00

Troy's been playing with a camera we gave him for christmas (small fischer price digital) and it's been fun. He's gradually getting the hang of it, though it's been fun to watch, since he doesn't really get the concept of a viewfinder yet, so he just holds the camera in front of his face and takes them blind.

I'd be psyched if he kept an interest in this, since it'd be fun to keep seeing things through his eyes.... (even when they're closed!).

Tm

macro photography...

2007-08-25T08:36:00.001-05:00

DSC_0218
Originally uploaded by timojhen

Been spending some time playing with macro photography around the house. It's been especially interesting to me since many things which I don't really notice catch a lot more attention when you're looking at them up (really) close.

Was able to do it on the cheap -- combined Nikon BR3 and BR2A adapters, allowing for mounting a cheap 50mm lense backwards. Gives an effective 1:1 focal length to the CCD size for about $20. That said, it also removes all focusing from the lense, so I end up moving the camera closer / further from the subject to get focus.

Fun stuff, especially for low $$.

more samples....

damn apple pricing

2007-07-02T19:39:00.000-05:00

Have been moving parts around here at home to get RAM where it needs to be etc. My G5 "seems" due for an upgrade to me. Actually sitting here and watching it.... I'm crazy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this thing, and it's rarely underpowered.

If only the new Mac's weren't so expensive. I just built a Vista box for several hundred dollars (and donor parts from a dated XP box) which is more power than I'd use on that front. Paying >$2K is hard to cope with for a new mac. Time to go the Hackintosh route or something.

<1>/Users/timojhen> uptime
20:41 up 9 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.50 0.35 0.19

hmmm... guess I can't defend a new one on those grounds!

where does all the time go?

2007-06-30T22:23:00.000-05:00

It's amazing to me how I seem to have no time, anytime. I remember thinking when I moved from San Francisco to Purcellville (i.e. 2 stoplights... one of which was blinking when we landed here) that I'd have a ton of time to do things I couldn't find time for in San Francisco... like do more perl etc.

Haven't posted on this in six months. Like so many things, that was an extremely short lived effort -- like a week.

Thinking again that I should ramp this up -- especially for the shoutcast streams. When people (i.e. Alternative Tentacles this week) send me promos of stuff that's more than just listenable (but actually great, like the EAT and MENTALLY ILL promos they swung my way)... it's unfortunate that I don't have a proper platform to give them props.

Lord knows the killedbydeath.org site could use a facelift -- what's there was temporary two years ago, it certainly shows...

christmas -- not a protest!!

2006-12-09T07:02:00.000-05:00

Nancy and I talked about doing this some time ago (her idea) and put it into action after Thanksgiving.

In my predictable fashion, I planned on totally over-engineering the whole thing. (Was going to weld a frame to hang the trees from). Ended up just using a couple of pipe fittings and wood screws. Either way, totally amped on how it turned out.

Some of our neighbors asked if we were protesting Christmas. Not quite the case! With a 2 1/2 year old, Christmas is getting a lot of mileage around this house! Ha.

virtualization.... interesting, or just the next fad?

2006-12-09T06:58:00.000-05:00

Started playing with virtualization last night. Using vmware, since I have a windows desktop that rarely gets used, and wish I could get more mileage out of it. Sits unused primarily because I have too many computers, but y'know...

Installed Ubuntu on it last night in a VM container. Once I understood how vmware interpreted toggling the mouse between environments, wasn't too bad. Some confusion on the mounting of the CD drive in the client vs host computer, but kinda expected that. Haven't tried any remote management yet, but that's next.

Maybe I'll end up reducing the 12 computers in my basement (a year ago) to 5 (now) to just a couple! Since I've stopped hosting anything from the house (gave up the static IP), it strikes me as frivolous to have so many running but getting so little use....

updates are hard

2006-11-24T12:50:00.000-05:00

When I started doing killedbydeath.org, I dumped about everything I could think of in. Turned out to be about 2500 tracks, which seemed reasonable.

Been thinking lately that I should be more aggressive about updating the content -- there's a ton of great stuff that I just don't know about -- thinking of things like Kugelberg's top 100 punk singles.... blazing material from some band no one's ever heard of.

Maybe if I inherit some time somehow...

2006-11-24T10:55:00.000-05:00

thinking about this. not sure I'll have enough to make this worthwhile, but who knows!

API's are enticing -- not having to manage this locally certainly makes the overhead a lot less.