Glenn's Junk Chest

iPad App Recommendations

2010-05-12T22:51:00.004-05:00

I've created a fairly extensive list of my favorite iPad Apps and done it up as a nice PDF.

download it here.

Let me know if you find it valuable.

1.01 Update: Minor fixes, added ToDo app, suggested new comic reader.

The Four Series

2009-11-15T23:31:00.004-06:00

Some series I'm considering reading to my girls.

The Deed of Paksenarrion, 1st book: Sheepfarmer's Daughter, by Elizabeth Moon.
The Honor Harrington books, 1st book: On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
The Belgariad, 1st book: Pawn of Prophecy, by David Eddings
Arrows of the Queen, 1st book: Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey

Something I Once Said on Slashdot

2009-06-22T09:45:00.004-05:00

"We are not, and never have been, a nation of laws. Laws aren't at the top of the hierarchy, and hopefully never will be. We are a nation of principles, and all our laws are subject to adherence to those principles.

When someone breaks a law in pursuance of those principles, they do our country a service. If they have the courage of their convictions, they may even be able to get the law overturned. If, on the other hand, it is determined that those principles do not support their action, the law will be upheld, and they will be held accountable for violating it."

I wrote that on Slashdot in May of 2006, and I just stumbled over it again today, re-read it, and thought it wasn't bad. link

Computers: Building a PC with my Daughter

2008-12-27T22:18:00.028-06:00




Me, my daughter Ivy, & her new PC

A few months ago, my daughter and I were discussing technology, and talking about the various things that people can do, and somehow the topic came around to putting computers together, and I assured her that if she wanted to, it was something we could do.

"Really?!?" she asked.

"Yep," I foolishly affirmed.

A few months later she reminded me.

"Remember that computer we're going to build together?"

So... As we ramped up to Christmas, Ivy and I talked about the kinds of projects we could do, from building a small circuit board with transistors, to putting together some kind of simple computing device from chips, to assembling a PC from parts. After some discussion, she opted to build a PC.

Our Project Requirements

A "real" computer. Uncrippled, updatable, and useful.
Runs Linux as primary OS.
Capable of running World of Warcraft
Useful as a home theater media box
Not horribly expensive.

Selecting and Acquiring the Components

Our first stop was at the Computer Store West, out by Frugal Muse on the west side of Madison. They've got a lot of computer parts, cases, and advice, and Ivy and I found it very helpful. After some discussion, we decided to select a motherboard, and work out from there. The store sold a nice little board, the "Asus P5N-EM HDMI Motherboard" It's a Micro-ATX motherboard with a 775 socket. (The 775 socket is a pinless socket that accepts Intel-manufactured chips).

You can look at it here: Asus P5N-EM HDMI Motherboard. $100




ASUS P5N-EM motherboard & CPU fan

This board was attractive to us because of the low price ($100), the integrated graphics card (nVidia GeForce 7100) and the built-in HDMI support, which meant easy hookup to a HD television. It also supported a wide range of powerful (and not so powerful) processors, as well as a wide range of DDR2 RAM.

Unfortunately, despite a desire to buy locally, the premium on some of the individual pieces was too much, and they didn't carry everything. Our goal was to get the minimum specification on every part, and it didn't suit our purposes to spend twice as much to get a slightly better part when we knew a cheaper (and slightly less powerful) part was readily available online.

So, we purchased the following pieces online from TigerDirect:

Thermaltake Black LANBOX Micro-ATX Case. $120

We liked this because it had clear sides. (If you're building it yourself, this is a plus, so you can show it off.) It also has a nice carrying handle, and a cool blue light when it's on.

Intel Celeron Dual Core 1.6ghz CPU. $40.

This is the cheapest processor readily available that will fit in a 775 socket. One thing I like about the route we took here is that if we need more power later on, we could replace it with something like this, a $500+ 2.93ghz quad core processor.

A Masscool 775 CPU fan. $20

Apparently modern CPUs need fans right on them. A heat sync alone won't do anymore.

2 DDR2 667mhz 1gb DIMMs. $24

I figured 2 GB of RAM, would be enough, and by picking the slower 667mhz stuff, it's another place where we could improve the computer's performance in the future by acquiring a more expensive set of DIMMs.

A Power UP 550 watt ATX power supply. $30.

Relatively low power, simple, and cheap, but it has all the needed connectors, and I don't think we'll need bigger for quite a while.

I didn't want to buy anything I didn't have to, so I started scrounging around for leftover hard drives, optical drives, keyboards, and mice. I've got extra monitors around the house, and part of the idea is that the thing should hook up to our TV as-is.

My brother was kind enough to supply a 330gb hard drive that had been dropped and that he no longer trusted for business purposes, even though it passed tests. I ended up purchasing a new mouse with Ivy, and while I was going to purchase a straight DVD-ROM, Ivy threw in her X-mas money to get me to go up to a Blu-Ray optical drive. For now, we're just using old crummy keyboards scavanged from older computers.

Scavenged Maxtor 3.5" hard drive. (PATA, 330gb), $0

Logitech wireless USB mouse. $20

LG blu-ray optical drive. $120

I'm still not sure (see below) that this thing will play blu-ray movies as is. But it comes close, and it might allow ripping them, even if it doesn't allow direct playback.

Total parts cost: $474

So, without telling Ivy, I ordered all the parts, boxed them up, and carried them as wrapped gifts down to the in-laws for our Christmas visit. I think it's telling that we could have shaved $100 off the price by going with a regular DVD instead of the blu-ray. By staying away from the cutting edge on a project like this, you can save a lot of money.

Assembly




Ivy screws in the Hard Drive

On Christmas, we opened it all up, and Ivy and I set to the assembly with a will. Mostly, this is just a physical process of plugging things into other things, screwing things into other things, and spending a lot of time looking at the manual to make sure that everything that needs to be hooked up is hooked up.

One observation I have about this process is that most connectors are keyed, so you can't connect them backwards or to the wrong thing. The only exception I noticed was that the firewire and USB connections to the motherboard look the same, and you can apparently damage the motherboard by hooking them up incorrectly. We didn't have firewire on this motherboard, so I tucked that cable out of the way.

Everything else was pretty straightforward. Including mounting the drives, which required a little ambitious positioning and screwing, but nothing too out there. It was especially convenient that our case had lift out mounts for both the power supply and the drives, which meant we could pull them out to screw things in. Very nice.




Still not done, but happy.

Our only hang-up during initial assembly came in connecting the "power" light on the case to the appropriate pins on the motherboard. The case manufacturer thinks that an ATX motherboard power light connector should have three pins, and the important ones are 1 and 3. The motherboard from ASUS, however, had two pins as part of a grid of many connectors. I had to reconfigure the power connector by pulling loose one of the wires and reconnecting it, and then jamming into the available space, with part of the connector hanging out over the edge. Inelegant, but it works.

After we wired it up, we plugged it in in the kitchen for the smoke test, and had no trouble. We then hooked it up to one of my father-in-laws monitors and keyboards, and we were able to boot to the bios configuration screens, where the computer promptly froze.

A little research revealed the only significant misstep Ivy and I made in the entire process. The motherboard has three DIMM slots for RAM. One of which is a different color than the other two. I put the two DIMMs we had into the two slots that had the same color. Turns out that the 3rd slot is a different color because it requires a DIMM to be inserted there. After about 15 minutes with the motherboard manual, I figured this out, moved one DIMM to that slot, and then I could boot to BIOS configuration without crashing. Huzzah!

Configuration and Installation

Since my goal was to create a linux-primary machine, I then installed Ubuntu linux on it. I cannot stress just how easy this was. Unfortunately, I also wanted to be able to boot Windows XP, because A) That's the easiest way to play World of Warcraft, and B) The blu-ray video playing software only comes for Windows.

Sadly, it would turn out that this was a mistake on my part. Important tip: To create a dual-boot system with windows, install windows first. The dual boot manager I'm using is called "grub", and if you install Ubuntu after you install windows, it ends up properly installed, but if you install Ubuntu first, Windows blows it away during its own installation.

In my experience, new system configuration is always a hassle, and this was no exception.

Problems Overcome:

It passed the smoke test!
Couldn't get grub reinstalled after Windows blew it away. Fixed that by running it from the command line in Linux after booting Ubuntu from the live CD. However, the grub menu didn't show Windows as an option. Had to modify the grub boot config file to add Windows to the list. Solution: Some messing around at the linux command line. Annoying, but not too bad.

No sound on Windows XP. For whatever reason, the default configuration after installation didn't have Windows using the nVidia sound hardware. Solution: Changed settings in Sound control panel in windows.

Ubuntu didn't have nVidia drivers, so maxed res at 800x600. In addition, the automatic installation program in Ubuntu doesn't currently work for this. Solution: Found and downloaded current drivers. Had to boot Ubuntu in recovery mode to install them, since the installer wouldn't let me do it while x-windows was running.

World of Warcraft and its two expansions took 8 hours to install. I kid you not. Solution: Excessive patience.

Problems still outstanding:

Blu-ray software "PowerDVD" won't play blu-rays. When I first installed it, I put in the Dark Knight blu-ray, and it played at a reduced frame rate. I fiddled with the settings trying to get better performance. Then quit and tried installing an updated version of PowerDVD. Since then, and despite a full reinstall of PowerDVD, when I put a blu-ray disc in and try to play it, PowerDVD quits without generating an error message. Very frustrating, especially since it worked once. mini-update: It worked again when hooked up to HDMI instead of VGA. Could it be a copy protection thing?

All photos courtesy my wife, Liana Loos-Austin.

20 Good Things: 4 - DiSalvo Sauce

2008-03-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

http://www.disalvosauces.com/sauces.html

You won't be sorry.

Fun: Be Warned

2007-11-05T14:32:00.001-06:00

check the Metahuman Activity Map

Glenn Loos-Austin

SoonIWillBeInvincible.com

Fun: Test Embed

2007-10-08T08:23:00.000-05:00

UPDATE:
Here's a new version that's in development (and might have some bugs):

We added the ability to embed stories from storybridge.tv on other people's websites. This is a test of some embed code:

Here's some more.

and here's another:

iPhone Hack - The Lightest of Tethers

2007-07-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

One of the limitations on the iPhone is that it doesn't support "tethered mode", which is where you hook it up to your laptop (either by bluetooth or cable) and use it as an external modem to get your laptop online.

The reason for this limitation is probably threefold. 1) AT&Ts EDGE Network is slow, and possibly overburdened for this purpose. They may have been reticent to have a bunch of bandwidth-hungry laptop users with shiny new iPhones flooding onto it. 2) AT&T charges extra for this service. 3) The phone plays big to people that are often in Wi-Fi enabled areas. Such people don't need a tether, and may chose another phone anyway, thus making heavy R&D investment in this space a dubious investment.

The most galling limitation of this, for me, proved to be in composing email. I'd want to send an email from a non-wifi area, and could either compose it on my laptop and wait to send it later, or compose it on my iPhone, which doesn't allow for easy composition of long email messages. (little keyboard, small view space, no cut and paste, etc.)

So, the question in my mind became, how do I write an email on my laptop, then sync it to the iPhone and send it? The mail sync on the phone syncs only account info, not content. The notes application doesn't sync. You could write the message into an address book entry (maybe) or a calendar entry (maybe), but without cut and paste, there's no way to get it into the mail program. In fact, the only content that syncs from your computer to the iPhone that you can send via email is photos. This does work, if you put your email body into a 320x480 image file, sync it to the iPhone as a photo and then email it, people can get your message as an image. It's a terrible kludge, but with photos being the only synced and mailable content, there was no other way.

Or was there?

The iPhone allows for one more data type to be synced. The Safari bookmark. (It allows IE bookmark syncing on Windows, but I haven't tried that.) For sending email, this offers two possibilities.

The first is that you could create or use a web service somewhere that allowed messages to be encoded in the URL used to access the service. Such as:

http://www.fakeemailservice.com/email.php?body=This+is+my+message!

Make this into a bookmark, sync it to your iPhone, and then use the service to send the email. This solution has a lot going for it, but wasn't quite what I was looking for. I wanted to use the mail program (already configured on my iPhone) with the accounts found there.

The second (drumroll please) is that you could encode the message as a "mailto" link, like so:

mailto:glenn@theMediaNinja.com?subject=Test&body=This+is+my+message!

When you make such a link into a bookmark in Safari, sync it to your iPhone, and then select it from the iPhone's bookmark menu, it pops up the mail interface, with addressee, subject, and body intact. You can then send it right from the iPhone. I don't know how long such a bookmark can be, but it's at least several thousand characters.

In order to take advantage of this capability, you'll need to URL-encode the body of your message. (this is because characters like & and % are reserved, and because you want to replace spaces and carriage returns). The iPhone also has a slightly non-standard way of converting mailto links, in that it doesn't use %0D or %0A for carriage returns, but instead likes "<br>". (This suggests that you might be able to use this technique to build more complete HTML to send from the mail program, but I haven't tried that yet.)

In order to make this more palatable, I have created a quick-n-dirty flash movie that does the proper URL encoding, you can try it or download it from:

http://www.themedianinja.com/linked/textprocess_iphone.swf
(option-click or right-click the link to download it.)

Remember to download it if you actually want to use it at some point. Hope this helps someone out!

Suggested improvements welcome.

Family: Ivy the Grandmother

2007-03-16T14:55:00.000-05:00




Ivy Channels Grandma-Power

Ivy's 2nd grade class gave their musical performance yesterday, and Ivy and her friend Kathleen were chosen to dress up for the song "Grandma's Chicken Soup". The video link takes you to an edited-down version of the event that runs about 5 minutes, and shows the Ivy-centric highlights. If you're interested in the full half-hour 2nd grade program, you can download it here. (It's an H264-encoded MPEG4 document.)

You might also consider comparing this with the muscial performance Ivy put on in Kindergarten. I blogged about it.

Apple: 10 Burning Questions about the iPhone

2007-01-09T16:50:00.002-06:00

Update: I've updated some of the answers as of 3/14/08

The just-announced iPhone looks very very cool. So cool, in fact, that if you'd told me all the features before the announcement, I would have called you a damn liar. This post may not make sense if you aren't already familiar with the baseline, so you might want to check out the link to see Apple's multimedia presentation on what the phone will do.




The Apple iPhone

That said, the announcement (and my subsequent reading) has left me with some questions. None of these are necessarily make-or-break deals, but I'd dearly love to know the answers.

1. Is the storage space expandable?

It comes with either 4 or 8GB, but that's not much when you're talking about full length movies and tv shows. There's a slot on the side, can you put some sort of memory card in there to expand its storage?

Answer: The iPhone does not have memory expansion, which means the video-playing capabilities are a little dubious, especially if you have a lot of music you want to keep on the device as well. I'd say to figure the 8GB model as a must if video storage is in the plans. That will let you get 2 or 3 full length movies on there at any one time. More if you skimp on either quality or other data.

Update: However, if you have wifi, and the wherewithal, you can compress a movie in MP4 so that you can play it in the web browser. I've compressed a good chunk of my library in this way, so I can watch movies on the road from my home server.

2. Can you access the unix command line?

One of the very cool things about OS X is that when you need to, you can fire up the terminal and access the basic unix command line. The new phone "runs OS X" but that's only an advantage if it offers the same sort of accessibility that makes OS X what it is.

Answer: Not yet. Someone has hacked shell access using the port on the bottom, but that's a far cry from command line access on the device itself.

Update: Yes, if you hack it. The hack, called "jailbreaking" has improved to the point where you can get true shell access. However, it does involve either a fair amount of work to keep up to date, or a commitment to not updating to the latest firmware at every chance. Apple's upcoming official solution for third party apps will doubtlessly not include shell access.

3. Does it support ssh?

A device that allows me to make a ssh (secure shell) connection to a server at my office is easily worth half again as much as one that doesn't.

Answer: Kind of. There's no way to do it on the device itself, but, since it supports a pretty powerful web-broswer with SSL, you could connect to a secure web service that provided a terminal window. It's clunky, but doable. I still hope for a real ssh client to be added at some point.

Update: Yes, if you hack it you can install a true ssh client, and it works quite well. I imagine that there will be an decent ssh client that runs in the 2.0 firmware as well.

4. Does it support video to an external TV?

One of the super cool things about the current video iPod is that with an inexpensive cable, you can hook it up to a TV and use it as the source for watching a movie or show. I'd hate to lose that capability.

Answer: This is not possible with any existing iPod peripherals or cables. I'm still not sure whether this means that the capability is truly gone, or if it just requires a new peripheral of some sort.

Update: Yep, it just required new cabling, which is now available. However, you do have to watch out for GSM interference on the audio from the cell phone. Putting it in airplane mode will solve this if you're doing a presentation or the like.

5. Does it support the iTunes music store?

If you can use the device itself to buy music from the store, and then transfer that music later to your other devices, that would be pretty nifty. If you could use the store to buy games, movies, and tv shows as well, even better. (but see question 9.)

Answer: No. However, this capability could easily come as a software update. The presumed problem here is AT&T's desire not to have their limited EDGE network bandwidth taken up by this kind of traffic. This might be a feature that waits until a G3 version of the iPhone hits the shelves.

Update: They added this capability in a firmware update (1.1.1), and the addressed the bandwidth concern by making it something that only works over wifi, not over the cell network.

6. Is it compatible with the games already released for the G5 iPod?

I own three of these. Admittedly, they're not expensive, but I like them, and it would be really nice if I could bring them along, and one more reason to make this my portable device of choice.

Answer: No. Doubtlessly there will be games for it eventually, but there were none at launch. There are now some games that can be played in the Safari web browser, but none of them are especially grand.

7. Does it support Adobe Flash in the browser?

Sure, it's Safari in name, and looks like a pretty good browser, but a browser that doesn't support Adobe Flash is essentially crippled on today's web. Lots of video sites rely on it, many web games rely on it, heck, even some web comics now depend on it. What degree of Flash is supported? (For that matter, how well will it work with web 2.0 apps?)

Answer: Actually, this isn't turning out too badly. The answer is still no, but A) web 2.0 support is decent. and B) Flash is rumored to be coming as a future update. Wait and see, I guess.

Update: Still not too bad, but it doesn't look like flash is coming.

8. How open will it be to third party developers?

This is a biggie. One of the nice things about many of the palm and windows-based smartphones is the ability to install applications written by independent developers. From useful utilities to entertaining games, this ability is nearly crucial, but Apple won't even talk about what kind of processor the device has yet, so it seems like it's not exactly approaching the development community with the most open of arms.

Answer: No. Apple is calling it a "Closed Platform". Steve Jobs told the New York Times: "These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them." Which is obviously bullshit, since I put stuff on my PDA, my computer, and my PSP, and all of them continued working just fine. Jobs told MSNBC: "Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.", which is, I suspect, closer to the truth. The deal-with-the-devil AT&T exclusive probably required some compromising, and crippling the device so that user apps couldn't be installed was probably one of those compromises. This may be simply to proctect AT&T's various fee-based markets. I wouldn't use SMS messaging at all if I could install an AIM chat client, for instance. I hope this position changes, or that (at least) it allows for widgets and/or Adobe flash programs. Even decent support for HTML or Web 2.0 apps running from local memory would be better than nothing, here. (Web apps so far only run from the web, not from local storage.)

Update: Well, Jobs relented, and the SDK for writing applications is now available. Full application support is coming in June with the 2.0 firmware. While there are some caveats, I think it will address this point quite nicely.

9. What will the monthly service cost?

This is a pretty big deal. With the capabilities of the device, you're going to want unlimited (or nigh unlimited) data transfer. What kind of a monthly pricetag is that going to amount to? Especially important because of the two year contract.

Answer: $60 for 450 minutes with unlimited data. Not too bad, actually.

10. Does it support easy net access for my MacBook via Bluetooth?

One of the grails of cell phones for me has been the transparent ability to set it up next to my laptop and get my laptop online through the phone's access to the net. This has, historically, been way more difficult that it should be. This phone seems to have all the pieces, but I've seen that before.

Answer: Nope. I'm guessing that AT&T didn't want this because they charge a lot more for data plans that allow "tethered" access of this sort. I've crafted a way to write an email on my laptop and send it using the iPhone, which takes part of the burden of this restriction away. Would be nice to see this capability added.

Update: It is possible to do this with a hacked iphone now, but it's against AT&Ts terms of service, so is probably not a good idea if you want to keep your cell phone plan.

Bonus Q: Will I be able/want to get one?

Despite my initial skepticism about some of the devices limitations, the fact turned out to be that I needed a phone. With that as a baseline need, and the surprisingly reasonable monthly rate, I decided to spring for it. Its email capabilities are really what I needed in way of data, and it's phone features are just what the doctor ordered. The rest of the built in capabilities vary from cool to great, and that makes it a pretty good phone for me. I'm still hoping to see some of the shortcomings fixed, either by new versions of the device or by software improvements. Time will tell.

Fun: The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Meme

2007-01-05T13:25:00.000-06:00

One of the blogs I occassionally read (Chronicles of Bean) recently posted a copy of the Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. I thought I'd take a break from pondering HDTV and participate.

The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, ~~strike~~ through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a * next to the ones you love.

I'm doubtlessly way late to the meme party, but I couldn't resist such a tasty list of books.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.*
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson*
24. The Forever War, Joe "Robot Jox" Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
~~29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice~~
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin*
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
~~32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny~~
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer*

A few interesting observations. My favorite books in the whole world are the first two books in the Harper Hall trilogy. They didn't make the list, but Dragonflight, set in the same world, did. My second and third favorites, The Chronicals of Thomas Covenant and Snow Crash, made the list at #23 and #43.

I quibble with #48 being on the list at all. I've read it, and it seemed way too derivative of #1 on the list to be seriously considered of significance. It's a fun read, and later books in the series are much more original, but still...

#4, and #20 almost earned strikeouts. I took a lot of valuable stuff away from the first, but didn't exactly think it was a fun read, and #20 was brutally difficult for me to get through. I kept thinking it was about to start making sense, and then I'd lose the thread.

I haven't read #28, but I did read a graphic novel based on it.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see how highly a Canticle for Leibowitz rated. It's a great book.

20 Good Things: 3 - Samsung 46" Widescreen Slim DLP HDTV

2007-01-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

Specifically, the HL-S4676S model.

As many of you probably already known, We recently took the plunge and decided to purchase an HDTV. Knowing what I knew about video, I had some specific expectations going into the experience, some of which were validated, others of which... weren't. If you're interested in the ins-and-outs of the current state of HDTV, read on. If not, I'll simply say that the model I name above is a very very good compromise on all of the possible pros and cons.

For those who want to know more, here's the skinny. HDTV is the new standard broadcast model. In the next few years, all of the existing NTSC broadcasts will cease, and people with old sets (who don't have cable or satellite or whatnot) will need to buy a new tuner in order to continue to receive broadcast television. The old broadcast standard employs a system of sending images that works like this: Every 60th of a second, one half of the image is sent as a series of horiztonal lines. On the odd 60ths, the odd lines of the image are sent, and on the even 60ths, the even lines are sent, to be slotted into the empty spaces between the odd lines. This alternating between even and odd lines is called "interlacing". The end result is an image with an effective resolution of about 720x480, and an effective framerate of about 30fps. Toward the end of the SDTV (Standard Definition TV) era, certain sets have become capable of dealing with images that weren't interlaced but rather were "progressive" with all the lines coming in a batch that started at the top and worked down to the bottom. When you see a "progressive scan dvd player" it means it is capable of outputing in that new format.

HDTV starts with this and goes up, but they give everything names:

480i - 720x480 30fps interlaced video, as above.
480p - 720x480 30fps progressive video, like what a progressive scan dvd player can output.
720p - 1280x720 30fps progressive video.
1080i - 1920x1080 30fps interlaced video.
1080p* - 1920x1080 30fps progressive video. (The grail of this quest)

(*1080p is not part of the upcoming broadcast standard, and sets aren't required to display it, but it obviously represents the best possible display in this space.)

But of course the format of the data is only part of the equation here. While the HDTV specification has slowly crept into more and more sets, other market forces conspire to add confusion. Heres the high-level list:

1) Video hardware - There's DLP (and many other variants on rear-projection), CRT (glass tubes), LCD (like a laptop screen), Plasma, and finally there's front-projectors of at least two kinds.

2) Gaming consoles - The Nintendo Wii will only do 480p, the Xbox360 renders many things at a maximum of 720p, but outputs them at 1080i through upsampling. The PS3 handles certain video improperly on 1080i-only sets.

3) Inputs - There are four ways to get HDTV-resolution content into a set. Component, DVI, broadcast, and HDMI connectors. There are also legacy needs for s-video and composite video. Finally, audio signals come in two channel and multi-channel formats, and some of those are digital formats while other are analog formats.

4) Most broadcast channels (in Madison, at least) are at 1080i, but some are at 720p, and some legacy content is at 480p or even 480i.

5) Older PVRs (like Tivo) work at 480i.

6) DVDs are usually encoded at 480p, but non-progressive DVD players can only work at 480i.

7) The screen is a different shape. Old TV was 4:3 (4 units wide by 3 units high), but HDTVs are all 16:9. New DVDs are encoded with this aspect in mind (16x9 enhanced) but old DVDs especially from 20th century fox and Disney, often weren't. Broadcast TV is an almost indecipherable mashup of widescreen, non-widescreen, 16x9 and 4x3 content. Even DVDs that encoded properly for 16:9 sets often have 4x3 content for the extras.

8) Cable and satellite services you already have are probably 480i. You may be able to get a lot of that content in HD instead, but you'll probably need to pay more per month, and you'll need new equipment up front.

9) If you're going to be dealing with a mix of input resolutions (and judging by issues 8, 6, 5, 4 and 2 we are going to have to) it's important to consider which resolutions the set can display natively, and how it deals with content that it can't display except by scaling it.

*whew*

So, with all this to consider, how did I decide to get the Samsung?

Having decided to purchase a set, I decided to concentrate my initial attention on the first issue, which kind of TV technology to invest in.

...To be continued...

20 Good Things: 2 - Tsuro

2006-12-30T01:51:00.000-06:00




The Game Box

There are a lot of boardgames out there. My wife, working in the gaming industry as she does, brings home a lot of them. Most of them are either too difficult, take too long to play, or suffer from poor game design. And even when you find a game that you like, it's all too often for the wrong number of people.

Tsuro is none of those things. It's fantastic. It takes only about 20 to 30 minutes to play a game, whether two people or eight people are playing it. It takes about 5 minutes to learn the basics, and the rules are elegant, simple, and fun. It's got enough strategy to satisfy, and enough randomness to keep the min-maxers from ruining the experience.

On top of all that it has fantastic design, from the terrific Asian theme to the awesome physicality of the playing stones.




The Game Board

In short, it comes very close to being the best board game I can imagine and if you're only going to own one board game, I think it should be this one.

It even has a really low list price of $24.99, and you should be able to find it at any good gaming store. It's still in print, and comes from WizKids, the same people that produce the Heroclix line of miniatures-based gaming products.

Seriously folks, the next time you find yourselves considering purchasing one of the 1,238 specialty-themed versions of Monopoly, buy this instead. You'll play it more often, and have time to do something else besides.

20 Good Things: 1 - Lego Mindstorms NXT

2006-12-28T22:40:00.000-06:00

Well, as part of the Christmas festivities, my family picked up the new Lego Mindstorms robotics kit. As someone who owned the old kit, allow me to say that they've made a lot of cool improvements.




Our Tribot

For one thing, they've switched from a brick-based building primitive (the studded bricks used in traditional legos) to a girder, pillar, and beam based system, and it's a big improvement. The problem with the studs was that an operation that produced a lot of torque would have a tendency to disconnect the bricks, meaning that over time, your robot would literally tear itself apart. The new system isn't like that at all. It's still easy enough to build (and take apart) but it's also very sturdy once built.

The second notable improvement is the CPU and the associated programming language. While there's still a lot of alternative systems for doing the truly powerful development, the basic NXT-G development model isn't bad. I worked with Ivy on it for a while today, and was very impressed.

While the sensors are predictably improved, and the addition of the new ultrasonic rangefinder is pretty cool, I really want to mention the improvement made to the servos. In the old design, the motors didn't really deliver enough torque to do many of the tasks that were needed, so building a robot often meant spending hours trying to figure out exactly how to get your gears all placed properly so that you could gear down the motor. In the new kit, the gearing is all inside the servos, and they are very robust. If you want to use one to move your robot around, for instance, you can just stick a wheel right on the servo itself. In fact, you can have a working basic robot (the tribot) in about an hour out of the box, and if you've got another hour, you can add the sensors as well.

Finally, this time around the software that comes with it is Mac-compatible, which means I get to use it without having to find a special machine. There's a problem with my Intel-based Mac CPU communicating with the brick via Bluetooth, but the USB cable works fine, and isn't too cumbersome, and hopefully the Bluetooth thing will get fixed soon too.

Right now I've just built the Tribot, and am working on programming it to do fun things. If I build anything else interesting, I'll try and get a photo up.

News: Akuuuuuuu.....!

2006-07-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

The Asian-American actor Mako (Mako Iwamatsu) just died, at 72. I don't usually mention such things on my blog, as I like to use this for more creative work, but I'll confess, I was bummed that the CNN article didn't mention his role as the voice of Aku on the animated series Samurai Jack.

Ah well, at least they mentioned his role in the Conan movies.

My Photos on the Web

2006-07-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

Used with a Creative Commons License:
- in an Open Political Protest Letter. (Machine translated from Spanish)
- in a weird blog entry that uses my fireworks photo (oddly) to represent a dangerous party mishap with an acetylene-filled balloon.
- as a humorous photo entry in a blog.
- in an admiring blog post about my Body Language photo.

Used in ways that are probably "fair use" under copyright law:
- in one of those blogs that aggregates links to pictures of pretty women.
- in a blog's list of interesting links for 6/6/6.
- in a blog's photo of the day for May 5th, 2006.
- in a blog's discussion of a hail storm that struck our area (links at the bottom).
- in a photo blog cherry picking photos that were in flickr's top 500 interestingness for a day.
- in a photo blog cherry picking photos self-identified by their posters as being some of their better or more interesting work.
- My photo of Rose's last days at preschool was featured on a website about South African Montessori schools. It looks like they rotate through images, so it probably won't be there forever.

Used with permission
-On the Isthmus paper's thedailypage.com website, as one of their Madison Snaps.
-A portion of a photo of plaster buddhas is now being used on the Media e Società web page. (Here's a babelfish translation from the Italian.)
-A photo of Polly and Ivy is being used by the Kansas University Special Education department website.

Used without permission in ways that don't technically constitute fair use, but which I've no real objection to:
- in a blog post about Arizona's cyber education initiative.
- in a blog post about the madison chapter of the Belegarth foam fighting organization.

Finally, the photo of my daughter Rose eating sushi was apparently used on this Japanese blog page, but I can't find where. Perhaps it's been taken down.

Storytelling: Photo Job Disasters

2006-06-22T00:38:00.000-05:00

So when I discuss my career as a photographer, people are always asking me about the worst things that have happened. I suspect that secretly they're hoping for a tale of epic disaster, something like the groom not showing up, or the bride and groom fighting at the altar, or possibly even someone objecting in the middle of the ceremony, hollywood-style. But nothing on quite that scale has ever occurred. This is not to say that nothing untoward has ever occurred, however. On three separate occasions, someone has fainted during the ceremony, once even a coworker. But when the subject of jobs gone wrong comes up, I have the following stories to relate:

The Lonely Bride

I arrived at the job expecting a typical wedding for my area. 3-7 attendants on a side, 100 to 300 guests. Typical wedding stuff.

I noticed that right away that the bride and groom were kind of simple. They didn't talk much, and what they did say wasn't very interesting or engaging. They only had 3 total attendants, 2 for him (brothers) and 1 for her. I'm thinking this is strange. I take the pictures, and she's got no family. I mean, no sisters, no brothers, no parents, no cousins, no personal attendant, nothing. In fact, it turns out she doesn't even have a friend. The bridesmaid is a relative of the groom's.

When the ceremony is starting, I'm staring at the church in amazement. There are maybe 16 guests. And all of them are sitting on the groom's side. (Obvious advice: Skip the whole bride's side, groom's side thing. If you get few guests, it looks like you're keeping score, if you get a lot, you'll have to seat wherever space is available anyway.)

Anyway, the ceremony is normal enough, and then they hit a few bars on the way to the reception, which is also normal for my area. But I'm already speculating about the reception. I mean, maybe their friends just don't like church ceremonies? But no, the reception is the same. They have a full hall, and food for at least 100 people. They have a DJ, a dance floor, and a big cake.

But no guests. There's literally less than 20 people in a setting where I'm expecting at least 5 times that. There's no critical mass, so they all just stand around. The DJ is practically in tears. I photograph everything I can think of. A portrait of every person there. Pictures of every decoration. I keep count of my shots until I know I have the barest minimum needed to fill the planned album, and then I flee. To this day, I wonder what the deal was. Did the bride run away from home to marry this guy, or what?

An Excuse to Boss the Clients Around

It was a normal job. Couple from a family we've worked for before. Church we get along with fine. Standard setup. Pretty bride, handsome groom, nice and friendly. Heck, they've even decided to do the formal portaiture before the ceremony, which always earns lots of points with me. What could go wrong?

I'm sick. One of the problems with wedding photography is that unless you've got a photographer lined up to pinch hit, you've got to do the job unless you're in the hospital. So I gather my gear and go. But I feel bad. Really bad. I start the portaiture of the bride and groom, but I just keep feeling worse and worse. My stomach is roiling, and all the sudden, right up at the altar, I realize I'm about to puke. "Excuse me," I blurt to the bride and groom, "I'll be right back". And I start sprinting for the back of the church, where I know that there's some bathrooms just off the lobby. About halfway down the aisle, I realize I'm not likely to make it. I force myself to hold it (ew!) until I clear the carpet of the sanctuary and get to the marble floor of the lobby, and then I blow chunks all over the floor.

Standing there are all of the early-arriving guests. The bride's parents, the groom's parents, a few bridesmaids, groomsmen, and ushers. They're clearly lucky I didn't splatter their shoes. They stare at me in suprise and horror. I consider my options and straighten up.

"Hey," I say to everyone, "I'm really really sorry about this. But I'm the photographer, and I'm in the middle of photographing the bride and groom, and I feel terrible. I have to get back to work, and I'm sick as a dog, so I'm not sure if I can get everything done with the time I have. If someone could clean this up for me, that would be great."

And then I turned and went back in to the sanctuary. I didn't feel well for the rest of the day, but I did harbor a little secret amusement at having compelled complete strangers in formal clothing to clean up my vomit off a marble floor.

The Enemy Encampment

Not a wedding, but certainly a disaster. We were booked to photograph and videotape a concert. This came up from time to time, and my parents (photography is the family business) had a lot of experience doing this in small venues. They wanted me along because I was younger, and since the job was 3 hours away they figured they could all use the extra support for moving stuff around.

We arrive at the venue and start setting up. At first, everything seems cool. The people we talk to are reasonably friendly, relatively photogenic, and accomodating. The manager for the record label that's hired us explains the details of the job. They're to be 4 or 5 bands from the label performing, from about 8:30 to 1 in the morning. But as more and more people begin to show up, the real picture starts to become clear.

It's a white power label. All the bands do "white power rock" and all the attendees are white supremacists. My Mom, Dad and I put our heads together and try to decide what to do. Finally, we decide to forge ahead and record it. But it was weird. All my enthusiasm for doing a good job was just gone. I didn't want to conduct interviews, do portraits, play with lighting, I just wanted to get the hell away from these people and their hateful prejudices.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I think most of the young men involved were just deluded. They were polite and relatively friendly, but any inclination they had to act to better the world around them had been completely mischanneled. It was tragic. We got a lot of footage and left during the last band's set. I only remember one song, a ballad titled "While the Snow came down" apparently about the "tragedy" of the defeat of Nazi Germany on the Russian front.

My father made a deal with the label after the fact. We felt like the situation had been misrepresented, and that our existing arrangement didn't have any legitimacy. He said they could have the raw footage of the event if we could use the footage as well to make a documentary about the event. They agreed, and that's what we did.

Family: Ivy's Photoblog

2006-05-14T15:14:00.000-05:00

Ivy wanted to do a photo of the week, so I've created a blog and flickr photoset to support her ambition.

Update: Ivy has now posted her second photo of the week.

Update 2: And Ivy has now posted her third photo of the week.

Politics: The Wisdom of Slashdot

2006-05-12T11:03:00.000-05:00

So the NSA is indeed spying on us all by watching our phone traffic. Practically all that they can use this information for is abuse of our civil liberties, it has no other function. Yet, according to a recent phone poll by the Washington Post, 63% of Americans don't care. I'm aghast.

Reading the feedback to the poll news on Slashdot, there are several cogent observations. One reader (GigsVT) mentioned that he didn't think it likely that phone polls were a good way to get valid statistics about what people thought about phone privacy. Are the ones that value their privacy actually answering these polls?

Amusingly, Myrrh writes that this could be the solution to our nation's energy problems:

As more and more civil liberties are trampled upon, faster and faster will the Founding Fathers spin in their respective graves. If we attach magnets to each Founding Father, then wrap copper wire around each of them, we should have a potentially unlimited energy source.

More seriously, boldtbanan writes "The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born."

And again and again, as our civil liberties erode, I see the following two quotes in discussions of what's happening. Quotes that seem to me should enlighten anyone as to how deeply we're wounding the principles our country should be built on.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
--Thomas Jefferson

Let's hope we can act on the truth of the former before we're forced into the harsh realities of the later. But still, that 63% of people, however they were surveyed, could say this is OK? I'm horrified, and if the citizenry at large doesn't know to fight this, I think we're in real trouble.

Gaming: Rules Presentation on Google Video

2006-05-11T12:47:00.000-05:00

I did a presentation at work in order to test out our MediaLandscape Presenter software. It's a package that allows for a presentation to be captured, along wtih associated materials, and then combined together and published in a variety of ways. One of those ways is to make the presentation into a single video that's suitable for portable devices. I published my presentation this way, edited it slightly to show a little bit of how the presentation was recorded, and then uploaded it to Google Video. (You can see it, along with downloadable versions, here.)

The presentation itself is about movement/combat rules for my Role-Playing game. It has a a bunch of slides of explanation, followed by some examples that I photographed miniatures for.

Fun: The Heights of Pretension

2006-03-20T22:37:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of serious topics I could discuss. There are things that excite me, like the newfound ability to run Windows directly on the intel-based Macintosh hardware. There are things that anger me, like Marvel and DC's shameless attempts to claim trademark on the term "Superhero". Hell, there are things that amuse me, and thus should (by extension) amuse you as well, such as this gravity game.

But instead, let's talk about pretension.

Now don't get me wrong, I like "art". I consider myself an artist, I produce artistic works of various kinds. However, I've noticed that no matter what the medium, there are people that take themselves far far too seriously. They annoy me. Since I've been dealing with photography a lot lately, I've been especially noticing pretentious photographers. ("The horizon is tilted and the foreground is out of focus because I'm making a statement about the transient nature of relationships, and anyone that can't see that is a soulless hack.")

However, I'm pleased to announce that I have found something that buries the needle on the pretention scale, and I'm going to share it with you. I believe that in the future, we will be able to measure anything by comparison, treating this as a "10" and rating everything else against it.

It's a movie trailer, for a movie named "Drawing Restraint 9". A good trailer distills the essence of a movie into a 2 to 3 minute segment. Here, that distillation has produced something so purely high-falutin' that it beggars the mind. It has everything. Random imagery, something vaguely disgusting portrayed as art, unpleasant music, jarring editting, association of physical things with intangibles, and Bjork. Here's the blurb:

The core idea of Drawing Restraint 9 is the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity, a theme it symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid Vaseline, called “The Field”, which is molded, poured, bisected and reformed on the deck of the ship over the course of the film.

And here's the link to the trailer itself. Enjoy it, I dare you.

We'll find a way to violate the Superhero trademark a little later, OK?

Politics: Welcome to China

2006-02-21T10:28:00.000-06:00

If you're in the United States, visiting this video at Google's video service currently presents you with this stark message:

This video is not playable in your country.

No reason is given. No avenue of appeal is suggested. It's not clear whether this is due to government action, google's own self-censorship, or some obscure feature of the political landscape. Go ahead, visit the realms where someone else decides what's suitable for you to see or hear. It's not a good feeling.

Now, the fact of the matter is that this sounds like it may be an option available when a video is uploaded. Some yahoo checked the option for "Don't show this video to visitors from the US". They probably did it to make a point, and as far as I'm concerned, the point is successfully made.

Governments and organizations need to stop trying to filter content from other countries at the border. I don't care if it's comic books being shipped to Canada, offensive cartoons published in Europe, yahoo auctions of world war II nazi memorabilia, or opinion articles about taiwanese independence. If free expression is a fundamental human right (which I certainly believe it is) then placing restrictions on who can access other's expression is just as much a violation of that right as stopping the expression itself.

Video: DVD video onto a PSP using a Mac

2006-02-07T13:20:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been looking into this a lot lately.

An MPEG4 file that is playable by the PSP has the following characteristics:
1) It is 320x240, 368x208 or 400x192
2) It has a framerate of 29.97 or 14.985 fps.
3) It has stereo AAC audio at 24000 hz.
4) Its total bitrate is no greater than 768 kbit/sec.
5) It is named in the format "M4V#####.MP4", where ##### are numerical digits, and placed on the PSP's memory stick in "/MP_ROOT/100MNV01/"
6) It has properly formed PSP-friendly headers.

Optionally, there can be a second "thumbnail" file accompanying the MP4, which is a 160x120 jpeg image named "M4V#####.THM", where the ##### are the same numbers as used for the video file. This file is entirely optional and has no other features.

If any of the above 6 things are not true, it won't play. If you're on a Macintosh, and you have arbitrary source material that Quicktime can read, I recommend using the altShiiva application. (google translated version). Since it reads files using Quicktime, it's very input friendly, and, once you figure out its quirks, quite dependable. If you produce output that is 368x208 or 400x192 you'll need to run it through a command line utility called PSPREZ before it will work, since files at those resolutions require deliberately malformed headers in order to work. (no kidding.)

I, of course, totally hate it. The documentation is in Japanese, it doesn't appear to be frequently updated, and there's no provision for saving your settings, so you have to make sure you get them right every time you launch the app. Many people prefer to use ffmpegX on the mac, but I find it buggy and the UI confusing, and some of what it's doing under the hood really perplexes me. What I really want to do is use ffmpeg from the command line, because that way I can simply record the command line I used and reuse it, modified as needed.

Here's what I currently do when I want to go from a DVD to PSP on my Mac. I capture the video using Handbrake, to a reasonably high quality MPEG4/MP3 AVI, typically at 480x272 resolution. I do this because I figure if I keep this file, it's a useful resolution for playback on my TV or Mac, and if I gain the ability to compress a better PSP version in the future it's already at the PSP's native resolution. (I also like this format because it will play on my PS2 over the net using the media player software from gameshark. In general, I find it a good format for legacy devices.)

Then I use the ffmpeg command line that's built in to the PSPWare application. ffmpeg can be compiled in a bunch of different ways, with a bunch of different options, but the one in PSPWare is already compiled with the necessary libraries and extensions to do proper PSP output, and is capable of reading the AVI I just created without modification.

I then issue a command like this:

./PSPWare.app/Contents/Resources/PSPWareHelper.app/Contents/Resources/ffmpeg -y -i /Vid_Movies/SteamBoy480.avi -title "SteamBoy" -s 368x208 -r 29.97 -b 450 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ar 24000 -ab 32 -f psp /Vid_Movies/M4V10102.MP4

The "-i /Vid_Movies/SteamBoy480.avi" is the source
The "-title "SteamBoy"" is the name that will appear in PSP menus
The "-s 368x208" specifies the video size.
The "-b" is the bitrate for the video
The "-ab" is the bitrate for the audio
The "-f psp" switch tells ffmpeg to do proper PSP output, and it does proper headers so there is no need for PSPREZ.
The "/Vid_Movies/M4V10102.MP4" is the output file name, already in a PSP-acceptable format.

ffmpeg has a lot more options, but I find that this is a pretty good starting place. I rarely use the others except sometimes for cropping or padding video.

As a bonus, the ouput of this command will work on a video iPod without further modification, though you'll probably want to change the filename to something less crufty.

If you're interested in compiling your own ffmpeg that will do this, I suggest you look at the one in PSPWare. It displays the following information when it is run:

ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1-based-MobileHackerz030, build 4743, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --enable-faac --enable-a52 --enable-gpl --disable-ffserver --disable-ffplay --enable-memalign-hack --disable-vhook --extra-cflags=-mtune=970 --enable-pthreads --enable-faac --disable-mmx --disable-audio-oss --disable-audio-beos --disable-v4l --disable-debug --disable-pp --enable-g726 --disable-network --disable-gprof --extra-cflags=-force_cpusubtype_ALL --disable-strip --disable-shared 
  built on May 22 2005 23:36:15, gcc: 4.0.0 20041026 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 4061)

Sometimes, I want to do a compression from DVD to PSP overnight, without being on hand to initiate the second step of the two-step process. When that's the case, I often do something like this on the command line:

sleep 13800 ; ./ffmpeg -y -i /Vid_Movies/SteamBoy480.avi -title "SteamBoy" -s 368x208 -r 29.97 -b 450 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ar 24000 -ab 32 -f psp /Vid_Movies/M4V10102.MP4

This tells the shell to do nothing for 4 hours, then run the command that comes after the ;. Since I can count on handbrake being done by then, this allows me to have it happen without intervention. If I'm ripping multiple things from a DVD, I can even queue them up with multiple commands, separated by semicolons.

Update: My company, Clotho Advanced Media, Inc., has now written a command-line utility for OS X that allows for Quicktime conversions on the command line. Using it, I can now convert from a much wider variety of sources into PSP (and thus iPod) playable formats. In order to do this, I first convert it using our tool into an intermediary format that ffmpeg can process, and then use ffmpeg to convert it into PSP format. This is proving pretty succesful for us, and we're likely to put it together into a commercial offering at some point in the near future.

Copyright: Ownership?

2006-01-03T01:17:00.000-06:00

The media giants have been very clear in their position. You don't own your content, you have a license to view/use it from them. In their eyes, you're not allowed to make a backup copy, install it on your iPod, watch it on a device built for a foreign region, etc., because the license they set all the terms for doesn't cover that.

This isn't fair in any eyes but theirs, of course, but let's say, for the purposes of argument, that it's all true.

Now, take one of those shiny discs, with the content you've licensed. Gaze at it warmly. Fondle its smooth digital surface. Hold it up to the light and marvel at the way the light refracts. Take out a key, and put a big scratch across it. Try to play it in your device. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Doesn't work anymore, right? But you paid good money for the license to view that content. Call the content owner up, and ask for a replacement. Patiently explain that since you already paid your $25 for a license to use the content, and they said you couldn't back it up, that you should be entitled to a new copy for the $1 or $2 cost of the media alone.

Did they say no? Fancy that. Where is all the convoluted language about licensing and right-to-view now? Is it possible that when the media is intact, you license the content, but as soon as it's scratched, you own it? Looks like it to me.

Could it be, in the end, that the huge quest to control your ability to copy content you buy, all in the name of preventing piracy, is really all about selling you the same thing over and over again?

Photos: Ivy Goes Ice Skating

2005-12-22T15:56:00.000-06:00

I recently had the pleasure of going to watch Ivy and the rest of the first graders at her school ice skate at the Madison Ice Arena. It was pertty cool. Some of the photos will probably end up as photos of the day, (In fact, one already has) but if you're interested in seeing all of the photos, here they are.