chillin' with j-town

Netflix Blu-ray vs. DVD confusion

2011-08-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

I have Blu-ray enabled on my Netflix account, and have the option set to prefer Blu-ray discs, which is what I want 95% or more of the time. Recently, I was trying to get the DVD version of Rango.

I went into the DVD queue and set the format to DVD, and was surprised that they sent me a Bluray. I proceeded to try again on another sub account and the same thing happened.

So today I called Netflix customer support to find out what the deal is. Apparently they must have had a firestorm of complaints from people about getting DVDs of movies that have Blu-rays available. For example, if you added a movie to your queue and only DVD was available at the time, and then a year or two later they make a Blu-ray of it, it used to be that they would just send the DVD because that was the chosen format. Now, they *ignore* the format that you choose in the queue and just send Blu-ray always if available, assuming you have the automatically send Blu-ray option enabled.

In order to get a DVD of a movie that is in Blu-ray, you have to change to manually choose Blu-ray, which means each time you add a movie to your queue you have to pick the format. Or you have to turn the option back and forth whenever you want to get a DVD.

I can understand that there are customers that may want to always get Blu-ray but it seems to me that this problem could be much more easily solved in a way that would meet my needs as well as the "always Blu-ray" and the "mostly DVD, occasionally Blu-ray" folks.

Basically, they would just need to remember whether you had ever manually changed the format in your queue, and if so, respect that. The preference would simply set what your default format is, either DVD or Blu-ray. Then the list would indicate for each item in the queue whether it was DVD, Blu-ray, or Default (which could parenthetically indicate the preference, or that could be mentioned above the list once, or both).

You could very easily migrate people to this new setup by doing the following for all items in the queue which have a choice of format:

For manual mode, all items that are set to DVD should instead be set to Default (DVD). Blu-ray items stay as Blu-ray.
For automatic Blu-ray mode, all items are set to Default (Blu-ray), regardless of the setting in the queue because that is actually how things behave today.

So for those who never visit the queue to set the format, everything behaves as it does today, but if you do set the format, it is respected. There could even be a popup menu on the queue to set the default format easily, which would update all Default items to indicate the proper format.

If Netflix does not change to something like this, I think they need to change the presentation of the queue when you are in automatic Blu-ray mode, so you know that you never ever will get a DVD for any movie which has Blu-ray available... perhaps just don't show the popup menus at all and show things as Blu-ray, and have a link to turn off the option. Alternately, show popup menus with all of them having Blu-ray, and if you try to change it then it should prompt you to turn off the automatic Blu-ray setting.

Without one of these two approaches, the queue is very misleading because what it shows as the format that you will get is completely ignored in automatic Blu-ray mode.

How to use alternate from addresses with Gmail on iPad or iPhone

2010-06-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Gmail has a neat feature that you can associate alternate from addresses with your account and then send as any of those addresses from the web interface. Unfortunately this feature is not available from the mobile web interface for iPhone or iPad. There is another way to do this using the Mail app, however.

You need to set up your Gmail account as a generic IMAP account (not using the Gmail selection). Then simply copy a comma character, and then paste that into the address field and enter all your from addresses separated by commas.

Video stores are in trouble

2010-05-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Traditional brick and mortar video stores are toast... looks like Redbox and Netflix are taking over. See page 13 of Coinstar's quarterly results for a comparison of Q42008 vs Q42009.

http://www.coinstar.com/US/Webdocs/A5-1-16/$file/Q4EarningsCallSlidesUpdateREV022310.pdf

More on dollar coins and modernizing US currency

2010-02-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest toy:

It's a Portsou coin holder. It is from a Canadian company... apparently US and Canadian coins are about the same size. It makes paying with exact change and using dollar coins very convenient. Here's a video of it in action.

I was able to get about $20 in Presidential dollar coins at the bank and so I filled up the top two slots with them. I've used them a few times so far and had no problems getting businesses to accept them. Since $20 won't last very long, I decided to order a box of $250 Thomas Jefferson dollar coins from the US mint. They have a special offer with no shipping charges to encourage more coins to be introduced into circulation.

I've talked about things which the US could learn from other countries before. Since then I learned about the Coin Coalition and Save the Greenback, two groups that lobby our federal government both for and against dollar coins. The Coin Coalition is mainly the vending machine industry, and Save the Greenback represents the Bureau of Engraving and Printing employees as well as paper and ink suppliers. I've also read that polls indicate that the public prefers dollar bills to coins. I suspect this is mainly due to ignorance. Most people have probably never seen the new dollar coins, and many think that "In God We Trust" was removed when it was really just moved to the edge. (The latest presidential dollar coins moved "In God We Trust" back to the front of the coin.)

Here's what I would like to see happen to modernize our currency:

1) discontinue the penny
2) stop printing the dollar bill
3) increase production of dollar coins
4) increase production of $2 bills

Doing #1 and #2 opens up space in cash registers to put dollar coins and $2 bills both of which exist and are underused. Eventually I think it would make sense to transition to $2 coins like the rest of the English speaking countries of the world have, but this would be an easy change to do now. Also, increased production of $2 bills might placate Save the Greenback somewhat. Getting rid of the penny will also open up space in pockets and purses for the dollar coin.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2000 that switching from dollar bills to dollar coins would save about $500 million dollars a year due to the much longer lifespan of coins (30 years vs 18-22 months for bills). Getting rid of the penny would probably save some money as well. Printing more $2 bills could offset this somewhat, but that would be worthwhile to get us moving in the right direction. Perhaps after one successful bill to coin transition, the government would be more likely to see the benefit of a $2 coin.

If this transition ever happens, my Portsou will be fine because I can just put a stack of dimes where the pennies are today. This is how it is used in Canada. Also, if we ever create a $2 coin, hopefully it is just slightly larger than the current dollar coin in which case I could put it in the upper left slot where the Canadian $2 coin goes.

What to do when you get a chain forwarded email

2010-01-14T20:25:00.000-08:00

This is a public service blog post.

Step 1)

Do not immediately forward this to all your friends/family/coworkers.

Step 2)

Skim the message enough to get the key idea and do a simple Google search to see if there are any web pages about this email. A good site to look at is snopes.com.

Step 3)

Assuming that the email is a hoax, misleading, old news, etc., reply to the sender (and optionally the other recipients) of this message about what you found. That will save everyone a lot of time.

Citibank putting ads in my recent transaction list

2009-12-22T00:32:00.001-08:00

Look at this lame move by Citibank:

Is nothing sacred? Is Borders that hard up for business that they need to advertise that they have free shipping on orders over $25? Right next to a transaction with Amazon? I have Amazon Prime so I don't really care. Even without Amazon Prime, this deal is no better than what Amazon does.

A month or two ago there was an ad like this for Dell next to a transaction at the Apple Store. Again, not like this ad is going to change my mind.

They also put ads for signing up for electronic statements and enrolling in some annual fee program to get your credit checked. One more reason I'm going to stop using this credit card and just use my USAA card which doesn't pull this kind of crap on me.

Things the US could learn from other countries

2009-12-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

Every time I travel internationally, I notice some things that other countries do better than we do that just make sense. Here's a few of them.

Credit cards - Standardized PIN pads

In Australia and New Zealand, all PIN pads have the same layout of buttons and the sequence is always the same. Swipe/insert card, press button for payment type (cheque/savings/credit), then enter PIN or press OK. Additionally, they can use a PIN for credit card transactions which is quite convenient. US credit cards do not support this feature and require a signature.

Cash

Additionally, cash is much easier to deal with in Australia and New Zealand, for several reasons:

include sales tax in advertised price - this leads to round number pricing on most items. It is very common for prices to be whole dollar amounts.
no pennies - this one is a no brainer. Just round everything off to the nearest 5 cents (or 10 cents in NZ). Because of reason one above, this is often not even necessary.
50 cent pieces and 20 cent pieces - this reduces the number of coins you need to make change for a dollar. In NZ you only need 4 coins max - a 50, two 20s, and a 10. In Australia it's 6 coins - a 50, a 20, two 10s, and two 5s. In the US you need 11 coins - three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and 5 pennies. Almost half the coins in that scenario are pennies. Update: if you remove the constraint that the total be exactly a dollar you can do it with 10 coins: 3 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickel, and 4 pennies. That's $1.04 total.
Dollar and two dollar coins - we have dollar coins and two dollar bills in the US but try aren't really used much for some reason. This is silly because we end up having to replace one dollar bills often due to wear. Coins last much longer than bills. Additionally, the two dollar coin allows you to make change for a 5 with just three coins - a one dollar and a pair of twos.
50 dollar bills - when you withdraw cash from an ATM in Australia or New Zealand, some or all of it comes in 50s. Any business will commonly make change for a 50, even for a small transaction. In NZ, you get a mix of 20s and 50s from the ATM. When dealing with $300 it is really nice to have less bills - six/nine instead of 15 in the US.
Plastic money - leave it in a pocket and send it through the wash - no worries.
Different color for each denomination - we are moving this direction with the new versions of bills but in other countries each bill is fully a different color rather than just green tinted with some accent. Makes it easier to distinguish and sort bills.

Metric system

I can understand the barriers to change on this but the metric system makes so much more sense. It seems to be intelligently designed rather than random or haphazard iike the Imperial/statute/whatever system that we have.

In addition to making things hard on ourselves dealing with unit conversions, we have to adjust to metric when traveling.

Not to mention our low performance in science education and trade deficits with the rest of the world... I have to think that switching to metric would at least improve our situation.

Cupertino Election 2009

2009-11-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it's November again and that means it's time for another election. This time it is all local to Cupertino. I voted a couple weeks back, as I am a permanent absentee.

Let's go through the various issues:

Measure B

Measure B is an update to the Utility User Tax, which is not supposed to change anything about our current taxes, but simply to define terms to correspond to current usage. In skimming through the proposed changes, the only thing that stood out to me was that VoIP was specifically included as a telecommunications service in this tax, but I guess that is already the case.

Verdict: YES

Measure G

Measure G is an update to an existing $98 per parcel additional property tax assessment which expires in 2011. The changes are to allow this additional tax to increase by 2% per year (or the rate of inflation, whichever is higher), and to no longer have an expiration date.

The argument against this is that this is an unfair tax and that it will go up too quickly. The tax will go up a minimum of about $20 in 10 years. There is an exemption for seniors already in place that is carried over to Measure G.

Personally, I believe that our schools deserve funding, and to have a small tax which keeps up with inflation does not seem unreasonable at all. In fact, I believe it will benefit the property value and the schools to have this funding secured. A few extra dollars a year is not a big deal to me but will make a big difference for our Cupertino schools.

Verdict: YES

Cupertino City Council

There are three open seats for Cupertino City Council, and seven candidates running. This is definitely the toughest decision I had on this election. I watched two debates with all the candidates, and read a lot of campaign mailings and websites.

In the end I decided to vote for Daniel Nguyen, Darcy Paul, and Marty Miller.

Daniel Nguyen is a Cupertino native who went to Cupertino public schools. He brings a different perspective than many other candidates, being the youngest candidate this time around, and I was impressed that he has a facebook page in addition to the usual candidate website.

Darcy Paul impressed me in two ways: 1) he only sent one campaign mailing on a small card (pointing out that this was to reduce environmental impact), and 2) he was the only candidate that in the debates suggested implementing a school bus program. Growing up in Texas and taking school busses for granted through most of my years in school, I am amazed that in one of the top school systems in the Bay Area we don't have bus service. This creates huge traffic problems at our schools when all the parents have to come pick up the kids at the same time. An additional benefit of a bus program would be that parents would not have to adjust their schedules to pick up and drop off kids, except if the kids needed to get to school early or stay late.

Marty Miller has many years of experience on the planning commission. He seems focussed on ensuring our sales tax revenue is increased and that we keep costs in check. Revitalizing Vallco and filling up our empty office and retail space appears to be his top priority, as well as controlling spending.

Verdict: Daniel Nguyen, Darcy Paul, Marty Miller

Cupertino Union School District Board

This one was easy. There are four candidates and you can vote for three of them. Three of the four provided information in the sample ballot and one did not. Also, apparently two of these three are already on the board and one is heavily involved in the PTA.

Verdict: Gary McCue, Ben Liao, Anjali Kausar

Cupertino Sanitary District Director

Again, an easy choice as only two of the four candidates provided any information in the sample ballot packet. These were also the only two candidates which mailed information to me.

Verdict: Don Sun, Steve Andrews

How to set up port mapping for iChat video chatting

2009-05-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

Here's how I set up to be able to receive incoming connections for iChat for video chatting (or audio chatting or screen sharing). These instructions should work for a Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, or AirPort Express.

Step 1 - Set up static IP addresses

The first step is to make sure that all computers on your home network have static IP addresses. The easiest way to do this is to simply have the AirPort Base Station/Time Capsule hand out the same IP address via DHCP each time. You can do this using AirPort Utility. Select your base station and go to Manual Setup. Under Internet -> DHCP -> DHCP Reservations you should add an entry for each computer.

You will need the Ethernet MAC address for each computer, which you can get in System Preferences -> Network. Go to the interface you use to connect (AirPort or Ethernet) and click Advanced... and go to the Ethernet tab. There will be an Ethernet ID listed which is a sequence of numbers and letters A-F with colons. This is what you want.

Copy and paste this into AirPort Utility, or retype it as appropriate. Then assign an IP address which is below your starting DHCP range. In my example, the dynamic range starts at 200, so anything under 200 would be fine. I use 100, 101, etc. for the statically assigned addresses.

Repeat this process for each computer on your home network that you want to use iChat video chatting/audio chatting/screen sharing with.

An alternative to this would be to use the use DHCP with manual IP address option in System Preferences -> Network. This option works best with desktop machines, since laptops may move to different networks and the static IPs you assign will likely not be valid on other AirPort networks.

Step 2 - Set up port forwarding

Now that you have the IP addresses assigned, you can redirect incoming connections to these static IP addresses as appropriate. This is done in AirPort Utility as well, under Advanced -> Port Mapping.

The port range for iChat is UDP ports 16384-16402. Starting with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, iChat will first try 16402, and then continue with the lower numbered ports down to 16393. Earlier versions of Mac OS X use 16384-16392 as well. If you just have one machine you can map the entire range, but if you have more than one, just assign one port to each and then the remaining ports to the computer that is most likely to be used for chatting. Here are some examples:

As you can see, you can enter both ranges of ports with a dash, or a list of ports with commas, or a combination.

Other routers

For other routers, such as LinkSys, you have to use the web configuration interface (which is usually just the router's IP address). As far as I can tell the standard LinkSys firmware does not support static DHCP reservations, but custom firmwares like HyperThibor do.

Port mapping on the LinkSys is done under Applications & Gaming -> Port Range Forward. It is not as flexible as the AirPort, so you will need one line for each continuous range of ports.

Time Capsule update

2008-11-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went ahead and completed the switchover from my old LinkSys WRT54G to the new 1GB TIme Capsule as the primary router for the home network.

On the Time Capsule, I had to set up port mapping to match the previous configuration of the LinkSys. I also set up static DHCP mappings to match what was already set up. Enabled PPPoE client and DHCP server.

LinkSys changes:
- reset to defaults
- disabled WiFi
- disabled internet/WAN connection
- disabled DHCP server

I also needed to connect one of the LAN ports of the LinkSys to one of the LAN ports of the Time Capsule.

After setting all this up, I noticed the AirPort menu extra started showing the connected time for the PPPoE connection, which is a bit annoying. Luckily I was able to figure out that you turn this off from a submenu that shows up from the network name in the AirPort menu.

Another discovery I made was that with Leopard it is now possible to have multiple computers on the home network set up to do video chats. The secret was to map different incoming ports to different computers. In Leopard, iChat will try port 16402 and then continue trying lower port numbers down to 16393. Given that the Time Capsule is more flexible with port mapping, it was easy to set aside 16401 and 16400 for the laptops, while leaving all the old iChat ports for the Mac mini.

Already Voted

2008-10-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've been a permanent absentee voter in California since the switch to electronic voting machines... given a paper trail for accountability and recount purposes I'm no longer opposed to electronic voting, but I just preferred the level of privacy and ease of referring to my sample ballot that the old method allowed.

This election is the first time I am actually turning in my ballot before election day, however. Kathy and I went through the propositions today and made our decisions. It's tough when there are 12 statewide propositions and 4 local propositions. Seems like we are doing the legislature's job for them sometimes.

In the end, I voted no on most of the propositions, though I did vote for a few. I also found a cool new website called Ballotpedia with lots of information for anyone who hasn't voted yet.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_2008_ballot_measures

How to transfer local Time Machine backups to Time Capsule

2008-08-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

I was able to successfully transfer the backups from our 500GB external FireWire drive to our new 1TB Time Capsule. This was not easy, so I decided to document the process for anyone who is interested.

1) Connect the external hard disk and the Time Capsule (via gigabit Ethernet) to the same computer.

2) Complete a backup to the hard disk, then turn off Time Machine while doing the conversion.

2a) If you have other computers backing up to the same hard disk, make sure those have a current backup as well before continuing.

3) Unmount the external hard disk.

4) In Disk Utility, create a new disk image from device from the external hard disk. Select the partition rather than the whole disk. I saved the image directly to the Time Capsule. This will take a long time. In my case, it took over 12 hours.

5) Unplug the external hard disk.

6) At this point, you have a .dmg with the complete contents of the external hard disk. This needs to be converted to a .sparsebundle image. This can be done using "hdiutil convert -format UDSB harddisk.dmg" on the command line. The sparse bundle will be smaller than the .dmg since free space is not copied into the sparse bundle image. In my case, I had enough space on the Time Capsule to fit both images at the same time.

6a) After the conversion was completed, I removed the .dmg file, and made another copy of the .sparsebundle. This is because I was backing up both my MacBook and Kathy's MacBook to the same external drive. In a single computer case this is not needed.

6b) Next, the two images need to be fixed up to only contain the relevant files and free space on the Time Capsule. I mounted each image and deleted the inappropriate set of backup files. This seemed to work best dragging the top level folder under Backups.backupdb to the trash and then doing rm -rf in Terminal on the files. Emptying the trash might work as well but seems to be slower.

6c) After removing unneeded files, to free up space on the Time Capsule, unmount the disk image. Then run "hdiutil compact image.sparsebundle" in Terminal. This will remove unused band files from the sparse bundle.

7) Configure Time Machine to use the Time Capsule and start a backup. Once a disk image is created, stop the backup. The image should be named <computer>__<uuid>.sparsebundle. Remove this image and rename the sparsebundle you created to match the name. Then do a backup again. You should still be doing this over Ethernet.

8) After the first backup, wireless backups should be fine.

The only other consideration is that the image size may not be correct (500GB vs. 1TB), but I don't suspect to run into that limit any time soon, and it is easy enough to resize using hdiutil.

Time Capsule arrived

2008-08-06T22:46:00.001-07:00

We finally took the plunge and got a 1TB Time Capsule to replace our current 500GB Maxtor hard disk which has been backing up Kathy's and my MacBook since we upgraded to Leopard (around the time of my last blog post actually - yes I am lame for not blogging for so long).

So far I am liking the Time Capsule. Right now I have it set up in bridge mode and am still using the LinkSys WRT54G as the main router. Here are some of the tradeoffs between the two routers:

* Time Capsule has a built in hard disk which can be used for wireless backup
* Time Capsule supports USB printer sharing (thinking of moving the inkjet printer to be shared this way - it's currently shared by the Mac mini)
* LinkSys supports dynamic DNS which I am currently using... Time Capsule supports Back to My Mac, but doesn't seem to support dynamic DNS
* LinkSys has 4 100Mbit ports plus 1 uplink port, Time Capsule has 3 Gigabit ports and 1 uplink port
* LinkSys is 802.11g, Time Capsule is 802.11n
* Time Capsule requires a reboot for any configuration change, which takes 30 seconds or something. Config changes on the LinkSys happen much faster.

Overall, I think I should be able to totally replace the LinkSys with the Time Capsule, but the first challenge is to transfer our last 9 months of backups over to the Time Capsule. This is not as simple as you might think because the Time Capsule needs backups in sparsebundle disk image format, and the backups we have are just stored as files on the hard disk directly. I have an idea for how to get this working which is taking a while. If my plan works I will post an update on how to do it for anyone who's interested.

Thanksgiving preparations

2007-11-20T22:31:00.000-08:00

We're having Kathy's family over for Thanksgiving again this year so today was spent doing a lot of preparation work... we did the big Safeway trip (got there around 5 so the store was not crowded yet - yay), and last night I replaced the dimmer switch that burned out recently with a better one that has a separate slider and on/off switch, plus replaced the bulbs in the track lights. I wasn't able to find CFLs that would work so I just went with 60W halogens for now. Maybe later I will get some different fixtures for the track that can hold a dimmable CFL flood (which seem to only come in the long neck versions of the bulbs).

Also, is it just me or is it really, really annoying that everyone seems to have forgotten about waiting until the day after Thanksgiving to start the Christmas music and decorations? In some cases, Christmas stuff was out even before Halloween.

Recent upgrades

2007-11-10T21:15:00.001-08:00

Since my internal hard disk in the Mac mini indicated it was failing two months ago, I switched over to running it off an external hard disk. The internal drive wasn't giving me any problems, but I also wasn't using it. Recently I noticed some strange noises coming from the internal drive so I decided to go ahead and replace it. It seems the best option for the old ATA/100 2.5 inch drives is a 160GB Seagate, so that's what I got. I figured since I was going to have to open up the machine I might as well max it out by getting an 8x dual layer SuperDrive and 1GB of memory (good preparation for upgrading to Leopard as well). I also had to pick up a putty knife to pop the top off.

The upgrade turned out to be both easier and harder than I expected. Getting the top case off was fairly easy, but dealing with the bluetooth and AirPort antennas and the plastic cage that holds the optical drive and hard drive was harder than I expected. Still it didn't take too long and now the mini is running nicely from the internal hard disk.

The other upgrade I did recently was to switch over compact flourescent bulbs from incandescent for most of the lights at home. The 60W and 40W equivalent bulbs work pretty well now (come on instantly, no noise, soft white light). And, they aren't that expensive. A 4 pack was about $7 at Home Depot. This is still more than conventional incandescent bulbs, but the 75% savings on power consumption and longer life end up making them cheaper over the life of the bulb. And less power consumption is better for the environment given that a large percentage of our power is generated from coal power plants.

The only remaining lights that are still not CFL or regular flourescent are two 75W flood lamps on a dimmer switch and a 30/70/100W 3-way bulb in the lamp by the bed. I have yet to find a 3 way CFL that is anything other than 50/100/150W equivalent, which ends up being really huge to be able to put out the top light level. That would be fine except it won't fit in the lamp I have. Dimmable flood CFLs exist as well but it looks like they may not fit exactly in the track light fixture I have.

Daylight Savings

2007-11-04T13:23:00.001-08:00

It's cool to get the extra hour of sleep and all, but I am always annoyed by the lack of daylight in the evening after the clocks are set back. To top it all off, the nice "set and forget" wall clock I got last year is now obsolete due to the brilliant idea Congress had to move the dates when Daylight Savings Time changes. Now instead of just having to set the clock twice a year for a dumb clock, I have to change it four times a year since it changes to and from DST on the wrong days now. Lame.

Not a good way to start the day

2007-09-06T21:42:00.001-07:00

Arg. My Mac mini internal hard disk is on the way out. By some miracle I happened to run Disk Utility in time to be able to back up all the data. I guess it's time to upgrade it a bit.

Schmap Dublin Guide

2007-07-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

One of my pictures from my trip last year to England, Ireland, and Scotland was included in the new Schmap Dublin Guide. It's a picture of Eddie Rockets, a restaurant I thought might have some relationship to Johnny Rockets.

Apparently Schmap looks through lots of flickr pictures to find those they like the best to make up their guide. Pretty cool!

Big News

2007-06-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Some of you have already heard, but I am now engaged! I proposed on Memorial Day weekend. I planned a "mystery" getaway and took Kathy to the Point Reyes National Seashore area and we stayed in a little town called Olema. I proposed after dinner at the Olema Inn and Restaurant.

The date is set for June 21, 2008. More information to come!

OK, I'm officially surprised

2007-05-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out the Warriors were not able to execute down the stretch in any of the close games with the Jazz, and they lost the series 4-1 last night. It was sort of painful to watch all those times when they came so close to winning and weren't able to come up with it. What made it even worse was the fact that the Warriors lost their cool in several situations in the playoffs and got themselves fined or ejected. There's just no excuse for that, regardless of what is happening in the game.

On the plus side, I'm still hoping the Spurs can pull it together and advance past the Suns and then eliminate the Jazz on their way to the NBA finals. Assuming the Spurs are out, I would rather see the Suns in the finals.

Warriors make history

2007-05-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

After blowing a late lead in game 5 Tuesday, the Warriors came home to Oracle Arena and put together one of the most dominant third quarters I've seen to close out the series and send the Mavericks home.

Everyone at the game got a yellow "We Believe" t-shirt and sign and the effect of this looked quite intimidating for the visiting team. I hope they continue this in the second round. They even hung a huge version of the t-shirt on the outside of the arena.

Apparently the entire crowd stood for the second half and at times it was so loud that it was difficult to hear the announcers' commentary.

At this point, I think it's fair to say I would be surprised if the Warriors did not make it to the Western Conference finals.

Warriors vs. Spurs in Western Conference Finals?

2007-04-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but is it possible we could see the Warriors in the Western Conference finals? It looks like the Mavericks have their backs to the wall at this point since the Warriors have gone up 3 to 1 and still have a home game left (plus yet another win in Dallas would not be that surprising given recent history).

So, the Warriors would play either the Jazz or the Rockets in the second round. In either case they would have to win on the road but they were 2-1 against the Rockets this year and 2-2 against the Jazz. More importantly they won their most recent game against both teams which was after the big trade.

Assuming the Spurs capitalize on their 2-1 lead and put away the Nuggets in the first round, they would most likely face the Suns in the second round. The Spurs were 2-1 against the Suns this season, winning the most recent matchup. Assuming defense prevails over the Suns high scoring offense, we could see my two fave teams in the Western Conference finals.

At that point I think I would have to give the edge to the Spurs though I did see the Warriors lay down a major blowout earlier in the season against the Spurs at Oracle Arena. Probably sealed the Spurs fate on that one by talking them up to Kathy before the game.

New movie theater

2007-04-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

The new Cupertino Square 16 AMC theater opened this weekend so Kathy and I decided to check it out.

I'm not usually a Nicolas Cage fan, but I went ahead and saw "Next" anyway since it's based on Philip K. Dick story. The movie was pretty entertaining and Cage wasn't annoying enough to bother me. I'm not sure why the movie is getting such bad reviews. The ending was not quite what I was looking for, but I don't think that's a reason to skip the movie.

The theater is pretty nice, and only a few minutes drive from home. Maybe even walkable if I was feeling ambitious. I'm looking forward to the former Vallco Mall coming back to life, which hopefully the theater will jump start.

Warriors shine, Spurs disappoint

2007-04-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a night for the road teams, at least in the two NBA playoff series that I'm interested in. The Spurs couldn't quite come up with a win. You know it's not a good sign when the big three of Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili all can't come up with more than 20 points (especially Tony). Hopefully this will be a wake up call and things will change in game 2.

Luckily for me, the Warriors continue to stun the rest of the league, toppling the Mavericks in their first playoff game. So, apparently whatever the Warriors secret was to get three wins against the Mavs in the regular season (two of which were not "given" to them like the last one was), is still working for them. Go Warriors!

Warriors in the playoffs!

2007-04-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe, but the Warriors beat Portland last night in the regular season finale to get the last playoff spot. It's their first time in the playoffs since 1994. To give you an idea of how long ago this was... I was still in high school when the Warriors were last in the playoffs.

The more impressive thing is the Warriors beat the Mavericks in all three of their meetings this season, which is something no other NBA team was able to do. I think a lot of that success has to be due to Don Nelson's coaching and previous experience as Mavericks head coach. I'm hopeful the Warriors can upset the Mavs in round one of the playoffs and clear the way for the Spurs to win the championship.

Apple eWaste Recycling Event this Saturday

2007-04-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

FYI... free computer and electronics recycling at Apple this weekend.

Community Recycling Event
Saturday, April 21 - Cupertino

Apple is sponsoring a public eWaste recycling event on April 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the parking lot behind De Anza 3 (10500 De Anza Blvd Cupertino CA.). Tell all your friends and neighbors about the Saturday event so that they can take advantage of this free recycling opportunity.

All are invited to drop off and recycle their unwanted home computers, monitors, related computer peripherals, TVs, stereos and other small home electronics such as fax machines, printers, DVD players and cell phones (no home appliances please).

Note - Local, state and federal hazardous waste laws prohibit us from taking computer or TV monitors with cracked or broken screens and batteries of any type that are not integral to a computer system.

catching up on flickr

2007-04-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'm working my way through the last few months of photos to get flickr up to date on everything that's happened. Here's some of the recent photosets that I've added.

Thanksgiving 2006

Christmas 2006

Bethlehem 2006

Ohlone Nursing Christmas Party 06

Texas Trip 2006-2007

Tahoe Jan 2007

Hopefully I can catch up the rest of the way in the next couple days.

goodbye, Ken

2007-04-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Last year around this time, my girlfriend Kathy lost her brother Steven. This year, I lost my longtime coworker and friend of the last seven years, Ken, to colon cancer. His memorial service was this past Tuesday. He was only 46.

Ken, I miss your laugh and your smile. They always brightened my day at work. I will miss being able to ask you for advice or just talk to you. Your time with us was too short. You were one of a kind.

My heart goes out to the family and all who knew Ken and feel the pain of losing him.

Adventures in Gmail Importing

2007-03-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months I have been transitioning all of my subscriptions from my Yahoo webmail account to my Gmail account. It occurred to me that it would be nice to get the roughly 500 messages copied over to my Gmail as part of this migration.

I discovered an interesting technique for doing this which involves taking advantage of Gmail's support for checking POP accounts. Unfortunately, Yahoo discontinued free POP access a while back in an effort to force people to use their webmail interface to get more ad revenue. However, it seems that some industrious open source developers decided to write their own POP to Yahoo email gateways. I set up a program called MacFreePOPs, which is a POP server that uses the Yahoo webmail interface behind the scenes to access the data. After I set up Gmail to connect to my computer, it was a quick matter of importing the mail.

A day or two later it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to import my old mail which I don't have space for in my .Mac account into Gmail as well. I have emails dating back to 1994 when I first started college in Microsoft Entourage, which I used to use for mail before Apple's Mail.app. It was sort of a neat "blast from the past" to look through some of these old emails from family and friends as part of this process.

I have imported this mail into Gmail using the following technique, which unlike using Gmail Loader will properly show the original dates on the messages:

1) export email to mbox file (in Entourage, drag mailbox to desktop to do this; in Mail.app, select messages and Save As using Raw Message Source option)
2) convert to Unix line endings since Entourage saves using Mac line endings (using tr '\r' '\n' < infile > outfile)
3) copy to /var/mail/, which is where the ipop3d looks for mail (part of UW IMAP server package)
4) have Gmail log into the POP server on my computer to download the mail

There are a few caveats about this approach that I've run into so far:
- Gmail throttles the POP checking to roughly 200 messages per hour, so large imports take a while
- To get sent mail to show up properly under Sent Mail in Gmail, you must add the email address as an alternate from address in Gmail. It only seems to work if you are able to confirm the address (which was not possible for all of my many email accounts over the years)
- It's a good idea to label and archive the incoming Mail to keep your inbox from getting unwieldy.
- I've found a few really old emails that Gmail renders strangely (missing Date: header shows date Gmail fetched it, text only message shows as an attachment, some attachments don't load), but for the most part everything worked great

AppleTV as an alternative to cable

2007-02-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Last month when my cable bill went up again to about $55 a month (thanks Comcast), it occurred to me that it might actually be cheaper for me to just buy TV shows from iTunes... today I decided to see if this was true. It turns out that the shows Kathy and I watch would cost either $35 or $45 per season, for a grand total of $220 for seven shows for one season. As compared to $660 for standard cable for a year that's only a third of the cost... there's enough savings to pay for an AppleTV in the first year.

Also, I could just copy the video files to my iPod to watch, and there would be no commercials to skip through like I have now with the TiVo.

Unfortunately, this isn't all the TV we watch... iTunes doesn't yet have Smallville or House, and doesn't have much content from Discovery Channel or much variety of sports content, so for the immediate future we're stuck with Comcast. Still, it's an interesting option.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I'm visiting my family in San Antonio, Texas for the holidays. Kathy is coming to visit tomorrow and will stay until we return to California on January 2. I'm looking forward to showing her around where I grew up and went to school before I came to California eight years ago.

I hope the holidays are treating everyone well!

Stanford vs. Oregon State

2006-11-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

I decided to go to a Stanford game this year with Kathy and a couple of her old friends, Katie and Matt. Unfortunately, Stanford's train wreck of a season continued with a 30-7 loss. On the bright side, we had pretty good seats (about 5 rows up from the field on one of the goal lines). I was watching the recording of the game on my TiVo to check some controversial plays (one where an apparent interception by Stanford was called an incomplete pass). Turns out that the refs were right because the left foot clearly landed out of bounds from the video replay which we didn't get to see during the game. The other surprising thing is that we actually were on TV in a quick pan of the crowd after that.

Pumpkin patch

2006-10-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Kathy and I went to the pumpkin patch at Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont last weekend and I uploaded some of the photos to flickr.

Geotagging on flickr

2006-09-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've been sleeping under a rock for a while or something, but I just noticed a new feature on flickr when going through my old photos to add some tags and descriptions. Apparently it is now possible to tag each photo with a latitude and longitude (either you could record this from your GPS, or just use the obviously Google Maps inspired UI to find the location after the fact). This is pretty cool because you can then look at a map of all your photos and see where they all are throughout the world.

So far I just tagged a couple photos from my recent Angel Island trip... the main problem I see with this is that it's a bit labor intensive to go back through a thousand photos and try to reconstruct where they were all taken... perhaps we need some way for a camera and GPS to communicate over BlueTooth and store this data in the image file. Or, better yet, have some sort of combined device that was both a GPS and a camera that could automatically geotag your photos for you.

Five months

2006-06-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Kathy and I have been together five months as of today... I'm a pretty lucky guy. Here's a shot of us with the Columbia River Gorge in the background from our trip to Oregon this month.

Dublin Day 1 and 2 highlights

2006-05-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've posted some photos on my flickr page of days 1 and 2 in Dublin, Ireland. Check them out!

ttyl

2006-05-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

I saw a weird book on my San Jose to Dallas flight... a young girl (maybe 13 or 14) was reading called "ttyl" by lauren myracle. It is a story about three girls which is told entirely through their IM conversations... they have screen names of SnowAngel (Angela), mad maddie (Madison?) and zoegirl (Zoe). It looks almost like a screenshot of an AIM window or something with different fonts for each person and they use all the usual chat abbreviations like lol, ppl, ttyl, etc.

It's a strange world we live in when there are kids that grew up with instant messaging and make it so much a part of their daily lives... stuff like this makes me feel old.

Bad Luck

2006-05-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

I can't believe my luck lately with technology stuff... it appears my 12 inch powerbook hard disk has failed again (second time in less than 3 months I've had the new version). I ended up splurging on a 15 inch MacBook Pro for the Ireland/England/Scotland trip... I'll decide which of the two I want to keep when I get back.

My LinkSys router appears to have given up the goat as well so I replaced it yesterday. Luckily I was able to figure out how to configure the DSL modem (can't believe these have web interfaces now too) to stay connected always instead of on demand since somehow the router doesn't appear to be the same as a computer to the DSL modem and it disconnects from the Internet after a few minutes.

I'm starting to wonder if this was the exact same problem I was having with the cable modem and it actually would have worked if I plugged the computer directly into the modem.

Go Spurs Go

2006-04-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

It's looking like it might be a tough road to the NBA finals for the Spurs this year (Kings first round, Mavs second round, Suns third round and then Pistons in finals). Those are just my predictions of course but it's a pretty strong team they're facing in each series if it turns out that way.

That being said, I watched most of game 1 with the Kings today and it was a pretty resounding victory. The final score was 122-88 after they had a 73-39 halftime lead. It's pretty clear that adding Van Exel and Finley has improved the Spurs' depth over last year.

Rain Rain Rain

2006-04-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

I heard the other day that we had 29 days of rain out of 31 in March this year which is a record for the bay area. And now that we're into April it still feels like someone played a mean trick and teleported us to Portland or Seattle. I really wish the rain would stop and the clouds would clear... I'm ready for spring and blue skies.

The Big 3-0

2006-03-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess my days as a twentysomething are over. Today is my 30th birthday.

It's also the 170th anniversary of Texas independence.

Update: Here's a picture from my "Over the Hill" party at El Burro.

Trying out Flickr

2006-03-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a good way to share photos online so I'm trying out Flickr. So far I've posted some photos from my skiing trip to Tahoe with Kathy last weekend. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Environmentalism going mainstream?

2006-02-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see GM's commercial for ethanol from the Superbowl... in addition to the Toyota Camry Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid commercials.

It's almost like being environmentally responsible is becoming mainstream or something. Next thing you know they will be advertising compressed natural gas vehicles like the Honda Civic GX or something.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-25T16:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a recent picture of the nice Christmas tree in front of my condo building. Hope everyone is having a good holiday!

The Art of Selling Stuff on Craigslist

2005-12-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

So, believe it or not, I've never yet used eBay to buy or sell anything. Somehow dealing with shipping and faraway people that you don't know is a bit intimidating. So recently I got inspired to sell off some of my old electronics/computer stuff and decided to try using craigslist to do it.

This has a few nice benefits:

- posting an ad is free
- there is an email anonymizer which protects you from getting your information harvested by spammers
- many people are open to doing a face to face transaction for cash, and some will even come to me to do it

So far I sold my old Samsung i500 cell phone and a D-Link 802.11b card I was using in my old TiVo. I'm on the verge of selling my old DVD player and my old G4 tower.

A few tips for anyone that wants to try this out... put "cash only, local pickup" in the ad if that's what you want to do. Some people actually read the ad. Also, I started asking for a contact phone number in the ad which is another way of filtering out spammers.

Anyone that doesn't give a phone number or asks the condition of the item when it is stated in the ad can be safely ignored as a spammer. Anyone whose area code I don't recognize can be easily located using a Google search. I've gotten a few responses from places in New York, for example.

Rock climbing

2005-11-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

By popular request, here's some "action shots" from my most recent indoor rock climbing session last weekend at Planet Granite.

TiVo overlap protection

2005-11-10T23:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday when I sat down to check out the TiVo I got a message about a new feature that was just enabled in a TiVo software update called "Overlap Protection". It seems they finally listened to the customer feedback and allowed for shows which conflict by a minute or two to both be recorded. The conflicting part is recorded for the higher priority season pass.

This is pretty cool, although right now the only case which has this problem on my schedule is Everwood vs. ER. Everwood is 9-10pm and ER is 9:59pm-11pm.

WB does it again

2005-11-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

OK, those of you who know me know that I watch a bit of WB. So much that I could almost be confused with a teenage girl I guess, at least judging by the commercials they run.

Anyway, in this brave new world of TiVo and Bittorrent and downloading TV shows from the iTunes Music Store, WB has once again come up with a neat way of merging content and marketing. Podcasting. Yes, there is now a podcast which is done by one of the characters on One Tree Hill, which is an extension of the story within the show. It is also an opportunity for that character to talk about her latest favorite music which also just happens to be the featured Warner Brothers music they also advertise on the show.

While this may not be quite the masterstroke that Pepsi Smash was, it is still pretty creative.

moto4lin on Mac OS X

2005-09-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to quite a bit of help from the lead developer for moto4lin (who hails from Ukraine), I was able to get moto4lin compiling and working on Mac OS X, and I've solved 2 of my top issues with my new phone due to this through SEEM editing.

It turned out that there were quite a few obstacles to getting this working. I had made an attempt at this a while back with no luck. I assumed when I couldn't compile p2kmoto because libusb was missing that it was futile because libusb was a Linux specific library. Later, I saw a post on motomodders.net from a moto4lin developer (Dion) which claimed that moto4lin could be ported and asked for a Mac user to help test it. I later was able to chat with the developer through Jabber over the course of the past couple weeks.

First we were able to get libusb compiled and installed since this already had Mac OS X support. Next, we started by trying to compile the p2kmoto library and associated p2ktest command line tool. This is the lowest level device interaction code. At first I couldn't compile at all due to the autoconfigure stuff having some problems. Finally I hand made a makefile to compile the two files of interest.

Then there was a lot of back and forth testing p2kmoto. At first, it was able to switch the phone into p2k mode, but not do anything more after that. The phone would freeze until I either removed the battery or unplugged and replugged the USB cable several times.

A bit later we realized that the p2kmoto code was assuming the host system was little endian, which was causing problems since the phone is natively big endian and it was swapping the bytes unnecessarily. I then fixed part of the problem and was able to get a slightly different error and not lock up the phone. A couple days later Dion provided me with a fixed p2kmoto.c and I was able to run through the full test successfully yesterday evening.

Then we started working on getting moto4lin compiled and working. Once I had Qt installed, this was actually not too bad. Dion ported the changes over from p2kmoto to moto4lin and sent me updated files for that, and I made a couple small tweaks to get the build environment working. So currently I have a working moto4lin.app which I was able to do seem edits and browse the phone filesystem with.

So far I've fixed the dashes not showing up in phone numbers, strange SMS messages for voicemail notification, and turned off the startup animation. I also had to turn off the voicemail dial for the 1 key in order to keep my automatic password entry. I just added a phone book entry with the voicemail number and password and assigned that to speed dial 1.

Now, if only I could figure out some way to deactivate the side buttons when the flip is closed.

Update: I was able to deactivate the "smart" button on the side by editing the key mapping SEEM. No more unintentional ring mode changes! As a bonus I didn't have to disable the volume up and down buttons so everything else works as before.

New TiVo arrived!

2005-09-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

The new TiVo arrived a bit more quickly than I expected. Things are working well so far and I think I have most of the season passes set up again. (I ended up hooking up my 15 inch Apple display to the old TiVo and doing a sort of poor man's picture in picture to make sure I had things correct on the new TiVo.)

A few observations for now... more later once I've had it running for a while:

- TiVo's activation web page went down right around the time I started trying to get activated… I'm not sure if it took or not, and of course TiVo's support number closes at 8 pm and it was about 8:05 when I realized this. Oh well. Luckily there's a grace period for a new box before it gets grouchy about that.
- You can't watch a DVD before guided setup completes as far as I can tell (though I didn't actually try)
- There's no subtitle button… it's buried inside the Settings. Bummer. Instead I get the Angle button on the remote… does anyone actually use that feature?
- I can't figure out how to show time remaining on the built in display when playing a DVD.
- Picture quality seems fine to me so far. Using the component inputs probably gives it somewhat of an advantage over my old TiVo which uses S-Video.
- Playing DVDs with the TiVo UI is pretty cool (time bar at the bottom, instant replay, slow motion, etc.)

New TiVo ordered

2005-09-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

I finally ordered my new TiVo/DVD Recorder combo... a Humax DRT800. The guarantees on delivery time are not that impressive (usually within 4-6 weeks but could be as much as 8-10 weeks). I'm hoping this is a case of underpromise and overdeliver, since I already goofed and just barely missed the number of points needed to get the DVR on last month's credit card bill and had to wait an additional month due to that.

So, it looks like I'll be taping some stuff to start the season due to conflicts.

blogging from the front lines

2005-09-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

I don't even know where to begin on what is happening in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It has to be the worst natural disaster the US has seen in my lifetime by far. Probably ever. The area has apparently become essentially a war zone where it's every man for himself. Not to mention the lack of power or communications, and much of the city is 10 feet or more underwater. Thousands are crowded into the Superdome and the Convention Center waiting to be bussed out. The Astrodome is already full and turned some busses away.

There's a group in an office building blogging "from the front lines" so to speak that has a generator and internet connectivity. The photos are hard to believe. I hope there's still a chance that we can turn this around before it gets any worse.

Cell phone waiting area

2005-08-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

So, I noticed yesterday when coming back from the San Jose airport that it now has a "cell phone waiting area". Rather than having people circle the airport over and over again since they don't want to pay for parking, this allows them to simply wait in the designated lot for up to half an hour for free. They just wait for a phone call from whoever they are picking up before leaving the lot. So far, it seems to be unknown enough that there's no problem finding a space.

Simple, yet brilliant. I can't wait to use this the next time I have to do a pickup at the airport.

Hybrids in the carpool lane

2005-08-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

As of last Wednesday, it is now possible in California for hybrid owners to apply to use the carpool lane with single occupancy. It requires an EPA rating of 45 MPG or higher which currently is only met by the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and Honda Civic Hybrid.

This is pretty cool, but unfortunately it seems that the various SF bay area bridges currently allow compressed natural gas and electric vehicles to cross for free during carpool hours, but there was some concern about lost revenue if this was allowed for the more than 57,000 hybrids registered in California. So they came up with the clever idea of requiring bay area residents to also sign up for FasTrak (an additional $40 for the transponder plus whatever money you put in your account) on top of the $8 fee for the special sticker you have to have to take advantage of this law.

The dumb thing about this is that many people that would like to take advantage of the carpool lane rarely use the bridges (like me), and some that do use the bridges live outside of the bay area counties that are affected.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12355793.htm

Primer

2005-07-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

I saw a movie called Primer last night, and I have to say it was pretty awesome. It's a sci-fi movie but was done on a $7000 budget and revolves around the story of some friends working on a project in a garage and what happens when they discover and explore an unintended side effect of their invention.

It was quite confusing after about the 3/4 mark when some significant plot twists occurred, but after reading some of the material online about it I think I mostly understand what happened. Probably will have to do at least one more viewing to fully absorb it. I think this is the first movie I've seen since Memento that really had a quite original and challenging to understand story.

In the interest of not spoiling it for anyone I'll avoid giving you any more detail other than that.

New car musing and blog title pronunciation

2005-07-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed in the four months since I've had the new Prius is that I'm much more often the driver for group activities... previously I had a 1990 Honda Accord and it was much more rare to have more than one passenger.

This is a good thing in some ways. I'm getting around 45-46 MPG on average, so the environmental impact is lower to take my car. It just wasn't a change that I ever expected when I was shopping for a new car.

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to clarify how to pronounce my blog title. It's "coop-town" even though it's spelled like the u is short. This is the same as the first syllable of Cupertino, since "cup-town" is an affectionate nickname for Cupertino. Hope that clears things up.

Prius Invasion

2005-07-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

I was leaving from the Stanford pool yesterday and saw a couple other silver Priuses so I had to move my car into position for a picture. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out which one of the three is mine.

Upcoming TV show conflicts

2005-07-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

It seems like every season I invariably have at least one or two conflicts between shows I want to watch. Fall 2005 is going to be no different even though some of my shows were cancelled or ended their run in 2004-2005. It seems that the networks have conspired to move shows into conflict anyway.

Here's how the current lineup looks (in ranked order of show preference):

1) Monday 9pm-10pm: 24 (Jan 2006)
2) Wednesday 9pm-10pm: Lost
3) Wednesday 9pm-10pm: Veronica Mars
4) Friday 10pm-11pm: Battlestar Galactica
5) Thursday 9pm-10pm: Everwood
6) Thursday 8pm-9pm: Alias
7) Thursday 8pm-9pm: Smallville
8) Wednesday 8pm-9pm: One Tree Hill
9) Sunday 10pm-11pm: Grey's Anatomy
10) Thursday 10pm-11pm: ER
11) Friday 8pm-8:30pm: What I Like About You
12) Thursday 8pm-8:30pm: Joey

Out of these, notice how the evil networks managed to create a conflict between Lost and Veronica Mars (my number 2 and number 3 shows) as well as a conflict between Alias and Smallville (my number 6 and 7 shows). The unfortunate thing about this is I came up with the ranking before I had seen the schedule grid, so it really is a toss up on both of those conflicts.

Hopefully I'll have a second TiVo set up by the time the season starts. If not I suppose the VCR will be placed back into service.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much.. last season I had conflicts between 24 and Everwood, One Tree Hill and Veronica Mars, Lost and Smallville, Enterprise and What I Like About You, and life as we know it and Tru Calling. Based on what I've seen about the new shows coming out this season, there's not much that I'm interested in picking up in my schedule. Also, even among the returning shows above, from number 8 on I'm not 100% convinced that I want to keep the show for this coming season.

So, it kind of sucks that with 18 different hour long timeslots for each network that my top 7 shows yielded two conflicts.

Farewell to Summerland

2005-07-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Today was the last episode of Summerland, a short lived show on the WB set in a Southern California beachside community called Playa Linda (which is "beautiful beach" in Spanish). Anyway, I haven't yet watched the finale but it's waiting for me on the TiVo. I'm definitely going to miss the cute theme song... here's the lyrics in case you've never seen it:

Summerland theme

when i see you smile
i know everything's ok
when i hear you laugh
it's always a brighter day
gonna do my best
forget the rest
as long as you're with me we'll be alright

it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
such a beautiful day

Ukraine Matters

2005-07-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

My old roommate from my first year at Stanford has started his own podcast on Ukraine called "Ukraine Matters". Check it out.

It's also available on iTunes.

RSS feed: http://profiles.blipmedia.org/Serhiy_Kudelia/podcast.xml

Apple Third Quarter Results

2005-07-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

I think the numbers speak for themselves. $320 million profit on $3.52 billion in revenue. Oh, and $345 million in software revenue. Yowza.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jul/13results.html

Tips for phone number porting

2005-06-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

Here is a small addendum on the new cell phone experience. When switching cell phone providers you need to take a bill from your current provider when signing up for the new service. This is necessary so you have the old account number available.

Also, if you are switching from Sprint, make sure to change to paper billing if you are on electronic, because you will not be able to log into the Sprint PCS website after your number is ported. This is because the phone number is used to log in and you can't log in to check your bill once the phone number is deactivated in the Sprint system.

My new bling-bling

2005-06-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

I finally made the jump from Sprint and my Samsung i500 Palm phone. I'm now on Cingular with a Motorola V620. This phone is not officially available in the US but there are a few places in New York that import it and either Cingular or T-Mobile can set you up with a SIM card to use it on their service.

After having the phone for nearly a week, here's the rundown of what I've noticed:

Pluses of the new phone:
- works with the built in Bluetooth headset support in my Toyota Prius
- snazzy metal case
- external caller ID
- situational lighting
- easy to upload backgrounds, movies, or sounds
- can sync with iSync over Bluetooth
- can store addresses as well as phone numbers and emails (although this info is not syncable at the moment)
- camera and video capabilities (this is not a big deal to me really)

To expand on my points above, the Prius integration was my primary motivation to switch to a new phone. I've given up that either Samsung or Sprint will get on the ball anytime soon on this issue. Being able to receive a call by simply pressing a button on the steering wheel is amazing, and the sound quality seems pretty decent as well.

I was sorely in need of external caller ID on my old phone, to the point that I set it up to not answer when I opened the flip so I could see who was calling. Having an external display is a huge improvement there.

The situational lighting consists of some concentric circles around the Motorola logo on the outside of the phone, which can light up in different colors. For example, when charging it is white, and when Bluetooth is active it is blue. I've set up categories so I can get different colors when the phone rings depending on which category of contact is calling me.

Transferring files to the phone is as easy as opening up Bluetooth File Exchange and sending a JPEG, MP3, or 3GP video file over. Apparently the best resolution to use is 176 x 220 for a background, or 176 x 144 for a movie or photo you want to have available for browsing. MP3 ringtones can be 22KHz mono 32 Kbps.

I'm hopeful that at some point I will be able to sync addresses, since that was one of the reasons I picked this phone over the V551. For now, I can enter them on the phone when needed.

So far I haven't really used the camera/video features much, but I'm sure there will be some case where it comes in handy. Occasionally I see something interesting and wish I had my digital camera to take a picture, so maybe the camera phone will suffice the next time that happens.

All that being said, the move has not been without its problems.

Drawbacks:
- does not scale as well with a large phonebook as the i500
- required programming to check voicemail
- voicemail notifications show up as text messages from _@
- no dashes are shown in phone numbers
- less custom software available

The phonebook UI is a step backward from my i500. I had to prune down my address book to get it manageable on the V620, while I was syncing over 400 contacts to my i500. The main problems are that it is only possible to scroll using the first letter of the name (which is the first name, not the last name like I'm used to), and there's no way to scroll a page at a time. On the i500 the volume up and down buttons scrolled a page at a time.

I had to program in the number to call to retrieve voicemail. Had to ask Cingular tech support twice before I got the right number. On the plus side, this allowed me to work around the annoying voicemail password requirement. I just added a pause and the password and a pound sign to the end of the number and now I have the "one touch" voicemail checking I've been used to for the past five years on Sprint.

The next two issues are specific to getting a European phone I believe, and from what I read on the internet it is possible to customize the phone to avoid these problems using some Windows software to edit "seem" files using the USB cable. I'm still debating what to do about those... there's also the moto4lin project which may be able to do the seem uploading and downloading but I have no idea how hard it would be to port to Mac OS X.

On the Palm I could get any application imaginable and I had quite the software library built up. On the new phone, there's some basic PIM functionality built in but the only expansion available is Java games. Maybe I can find some games that won't nag me to send in $15 like some of the Palm games did.

Spurs Win Championship!

2005-06-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it didn't happen as quickly as I expected, but the Spurs pulled off an amazing performance to close out the second half, showing the kind of defensive intensity they had been missing since games 1 and 2 in this series. And once the defense was clicking like it usually does, the offense worked itself out.

Way to go Spurs!

Spurs win pivotal Game 5

2005-06-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

What a game it was tonight... it came down to Robert Horry making some clutch threes down the stretch and the Spurs defense stepping up at the end to win by one point in overtime.

This game reminded me somewhat of one from the 1999 playoffs when Sean Elliot hit a miracle three while falling out of bounds at the buzzer to win... at that point you could see that the Spurs were destined to win the title that year. At this point I think it's pretty clear that the Spurs have what it takes to win a close one with the Pistons, and I expect Game 6 on Tuesday to be another battle.

Go Spurs Go!

Dateline Stanford: Moving Out

2000-08-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

So, after nearly two years in Blackwelder, I've graduated and for some reason Stanford wants to kick me out. Anyway, I'm moving to Santa Clara on the weekend of August 12-13. Here's my new contact info, effective August 12:

141 Saratoga Ave. Apt. XXXX
Santa Clara, CA 95051
(408) 985-XXXX
(650) 274-XXXX cell (active now)

Keep in touch!

Dateline Stanford: Graduation!

2000-06-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

So, Sunday was the Stanford Commencement 2000 and I have now completed my Master's degree in Computer Science. I will be working at Apple starting June 26.

I am staying at Stanford through mid August... here's the contact info for now:

126 Blackwelder Ct., Apt. XX
Escondido Village
Stanford, CA 94305-7514
(650) 497-XXXX

Please note that my primary address for personal email is now
my mac.com address. Please update your address books.

Dateline Stanford: Thanksgiving

1999-11-30T01:54:00.000-08:00

The Thanksgiving break is over... and there's lots of news. Some of it is old...

So what am I thankful for this year?

Improving health:

For any of you who haven't heard, I broke my left collarbone about a month ago biking in the foothills. I was going down a steep bumpy hill, lost control and flipped sideways and landed on my shoulder. Anyway, I've been gradually regaining range of motion and function in my left arm and doing much better. I haven't been wearing any support or taking any pain medication for the past couple weeks.

Stanford football:

I must admit that after we lost our the opening game of the football season to UT by a score or 69-17, I really wasn't expecting much. But here we are, capping off an 8-3 season, winning the PAC-10 championship for the first time ever, and going to the Rose Bowl. Unbelievable. Oh yeah, we're also ranked #22.

I went to the Big Game last week which was a cool experience. We won of course (31-13), for the fifth year in a row. Berkeley students are starting to forget what the Stanford Axe even looks like. :)

Halfway through the third quarter about 100 police officers paraded in with billy clubs in hand and stood in front of the student sections for both sides. The announcer mentioned that there would be "zero tolerance" of anyone trying to rush the field after the game. Twenty Berkeley students were arrested for throwing bottles, rocks, and eggs at the officers, and no
one managed to rush the field. (I heard that two or three years ago some Berkeley students beat up the Tree and/or the band after Big Game, but it still felt a little totalitarian.)

Saturday, we beat Notre Dame on national TV, with a field goal on the last play. 40-37 isn't a pretty win, but we were on the other side of quite a few of those last year and it was great for us to pull it out.

Stanford athletics in general:

At halftime of the Notre Dame game, we were presented with the Sears Director's Cup for the fifth consecutive year. This award is presented to the NCAA Division I school with the best overall athletic program. Although we only got two national championships last year (compared to a record six in 1996-97), we had 6 teams finish second in the nation, and many more in the top 10. After the presentation of the award, the Temptations showed up in a double decker bus and sang a few songs, including "Rose Bowl" to the tune of "My Girl". And there were fireworks of course...

Friday night I caught the tail end of the women's basketball game vs. Tennessee. We had a two or three point lead with under four minutes to go, but Tennessee started a full court press and we couldn't get the ball past halfcourt. It was a close game, but Tennessee prevailed 79-73. Even so, I thought we gave the defending national champions a pretty big scare... and Maples Pavilion was totally full. People were standing in the aisles. I've never seen that for a women's basketball game before. Very cool.

Friends and Family:

(This means you...) Thanks for being there... don't be a stranger.

Quarter is almost over:

I managed to stay fairly busy with my TAing and keeping up with classes and the occasional fun. Less than two weeks to go until the break...

Dateline Stanford: Women's World Cup & Pictures

1999-07-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, yesterday the US Women's soccer team won the 1999 Women's World Cup down in Pasadena. It took overtime and a PK shootout, but the US won 5-4 with good PK shooting and a save by the goalie. (Too bad the goalie didn't get any more recognition for the save.)

The really funny thing was that I watched the game in the Blackwelder TV lounge, and the Chinese fans outnumbered US fans two to one.

Anyway, I went to the semifinal game where the US played Brazil last weekend... we had 73,123 in attendance, which is about twice the crowd we get for Stanford football games. So it was a packed house and a very exciting atmosphere. Everyone was chanting U-S-A and doing the wave, etc. The US won 2-0 and Briana Scurry (the goalie) had 6 saves and got the most valuable player award for the game. Natalie was in town and came to the game also.

I have expanded my old school pictures section on my web page. It is now sorted into three groups chronologically. Check it out.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/oldschool/

Dateline Stanford: Summer!

1999-06-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

Well, summer has arrived for me here at Stanford since I finished up my projects on Monday this week. If you want to see the slides from the junk email project, go to:

http://homepage.mac.com/townsend/lin239b/

Thanks for all the extra junk mail everyone sent! It was a great help. You can stop now. :)

I've also put up some more cool pictures on the web page. Thanks to Natalie, I now have a page of "old school" pictures. I also have some pictures from the top of the Hoover Tower of various parts of campus.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/oldschool/

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/hoovertower/

In other news, we have our first public release of ESCOT Runner, which I have been working on part time since January. This will be used for three Problems of the Week on the Math Forum website this summer. If you have a relatively speedy
machine (at least PowerPC or Pentium based, faster is better) and at least 32MB of RAM (64MB is preferred) you can try it out. Also, please pass this info on to any middle school students you think might be interested.

I recommend downloading the installer with VM... most computers do not have recent enough Java support.

http://forum.swarthmore.edu/midpow/

http://cricket.ctl.sri.com/escot/dist/mathforum.2/Escot_EA2_Installers/install.htm

For more information on the project, go to this URL:

http://www.escot.org

Dateline Stanford: Star Wars, etc.

1999-05-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

I saw _Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace_ this week. The cool thing about that is that I went to the 12:30 AM showing on Wednesday (Thursday morning technically) and only bought tickets an hour and a half beforehand over the phone. To think that some people camped out for over a month to go only 24 hours earlier than that seems sort of insane.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, and am looking forward to a second viewing in the next few weeks. I'll avoid spoiling any of the plot details for those who haven't seen it.

In other news, the Spurs defeated the Lakers 103-91 today to take a 3-0 series lead. Can you say "championship"? I knew you could.

Oh, and I also found out today that I got lucky in the housing lottery and will be able to stay on campus next year, possibly even keeping the room I already have.

Dateline Stanford: Junk mail

1999-04-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings once again from sunny Stanford, California! Spring is upon us here and I am wearing shorts once again.

My project for one of my classes this quarter is to write a program to automatically identify spam (also known as junk mail). So please forward any unsolicited commercial email you receive to me. Really. I'm serious. The more training data I have the better.

Here's a cool picture from a while back that I scanned in for my web page:

Oh, and if you haven't seen _The Matrix_ yet, it is awesome. If you see only one movie before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, this should be it. The super slo-mo "bullet time" effects are incredible.

Dateline Stanford: New Toys, Old Faces

1999-03-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while since my last update. In the past couple weeks some cool things have happened here... for one, I turned 23 last Tuesday.

Also, I bought a CD Rewritable drive and some rewritable CDs so now I do a full backup of my computer once every week.

I also got an old PowerMac set up as a version control server (using CVS). So now I can put all of my programs in the server and keep track of changes very easily. It's also a huge help for team programming projects for class since it helps with merging everyone's changes together.

The other day I ran into Kurt Franke, a friend from high school who was on the math team with me. He's getting a PhD in Physics here after doing a dual major in Computer Science and Physics at Rice. Small world.

Obligatory sports news:

The men's basketball team clinched the Pac-10 title for the first time in school history (Pac-10 has been around for about 20 years).

Tonight, the women's basketball team beat Oregon... very intense and exciting game. Best attendance of all the games I've been to this year I think.

Dateline Stanford: Oh no, baby!

1999-02-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

Well, Dick "oh yeah, baby" Vitale came to Stanford for the big game against #1 UConn today. The tents were up around Maples Pavilion again this week, and they had barricades in place for people waiting in line that showed up a couple hours before the game started.

With all that hype, it was pretty disappointing to see them lose a close game, especially since they came back to tie the game after being down by 18 points. Oh well. I watched on ABC...

Earlier today, I went to the women's water polo home opener. They took on defending national champion UCLA, and came out with the 4-3 upset win. It was drizzly this morning, and actually is still raining as I type this. A flood watch is in effect.

In other sports news, the women's basketball team traveled to Berkeley and beat the bears once again. Oh yeah, the men's basketball team beat them too. Not much of a suprise. We have a 15-2 record against them this year.

My only midterm was on Thursday. I think I did well. I watched _Pleasantville_ last Sunday. A weird, but cool movie. Kind of inspirational actually. That's about it I guess, other than lunch with Kerri Strug last Thursday...

Dateline Stanford: Back to the grind

1999-01-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since my last update...

I'm settling in at work... I actually biked there one time last week. It's a good excuse for me to get in better shape and enjoy the outdoors here more. Plus parking is much easier that way, since I usually arrive at work around 10:30 and the good spots are all gone.

This past week I went to the men's basketball game against Washington State. At the end of the first half we had about a 10 point lead, but we blew it open in the second half, leading by as much as 50 at one point. It was still a cool game because they really put on a show making a bunch of three pointers and stealing and fast-break dunking. Saturday, Arthur Lee came up with a three pointer, a steal and some clutch free throws to put away Washington. I watched the game on TV. 13 wins in a row. Undefeated in the PAC-10. Can you say "It's Cardinal Chaos, Baby"? :)

Sunday I went to see _What Dreams May Come_ with Robin Williams. It was a very surreal movie. It felt like the whole thing was a dream.

Yesterday we had a mini poster fair thing in my Interdisciplinary Interaction Design class. The topic was Human-Food Interaction. My group did a poster on "Virtual Meality" - a restaurant chain with videoconferencing so you can have a meal with someone across the country.

BTW, if you're interested in Stanford athletics, you can point your web browser at www.gostanford.com.

In other news, be sure to check out Apple's ad in the SuperBowl on Sunday. It features HAL 9000 from _2001: A Space Odyssey_ and will air during the first commercial break after kickoff.

Dateline: Stanford - Scott McNealy, Kerri Strug, and Job

1998-12-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a hectic week, and tomorrow is my first final. Here's a quick update.

Last Thursday, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems gave a talk at the Stanford Business school. He is quite a character and it was really neat to hear his thoughts on the computer industry, especially since the AOL-Netscape-Sun deal just went through a few days earlier, and Sun's continuing involvement in the antitrust and Java cases against Microsoft. McNealy got an MBA at Stanford in 1980, but said he should have dropped out like Bill Gates and gotten a head start on the competition.

Also, I will start a part time job in January, working at SRI (Stanford Research Institute), working on Java component software for middle school math curricula. I'll be lowering my course load a bit for Winter and Spring quarters.

SRI pioneered areas such as modems, TCP (one of the first two nodes on the ARPAnet, predecessor to the Internet), magnetic ink encoding, hypertext, artificial intelligence, and wireless networks, among other things. I will also get a PowerBook as my computer, and be able to bring it home with me. :)

And the suspense is finally over... today I met Kerri Strug. She was just leaving to go jogging and I managed to catch her and say hi. She seemed like a pretty nice person.

Oh, and in sports news, the men's water polo team plays USC for the national championship today. And women's volleyball beat SE Missouri State and Notre Dame to advance to the Sweet 16. Next up is Texas...

OK, back to work...

Dateline: Stanford - Big Game & Star Wars

1998-11-24T17:32:00.000-08:00

Well, the big news of the weekend was that the much maligned, embattled Stanford football team pulled out the 10-3 upset victory at UC Berkeley in the 101st Big Game to keep the Axe for the fourth consecutive year and spoil Cal's bowl hopes.

In other sports news: the women's basketball team beat #1 Purdue; men's water polo beat Cal as well; women's volleyball continued their PAC-10 dominance and clinched the conference championship by beating UCLA; men's soccer advanced to the next round of the NCAA playoffs; finally, men's basketball blew away SW Missouri State to head to Madison Square Garden for the NIT Semifinals. All in all, the Cardinal kicked some major butt this weekend.

Also this week, Lucasfilm released the trailer for the new Star Wars prequel which is due May 21, 1999. A QuickTime version was posted on their website and shortly massive network congestion ensued.

I am mirroring a few versions of the movie at different sizes and quality levels. There is an unofficial list of mirrors at:

http://countingdown.com/mirrorlist.htm

If you'd rather come directly to my computer, it's:

ftp://starwars:trailer@cable.stanford.edu/

Dateline Stanford: Sports extravaganza weekend

1998-11-16T21:52:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a sports extravaganza this weekend. We went 3-0 in games that I attended. Friday night the women's volleyball team swept Oregon in three games. On Saturday, men's water polo demolished UC Davis 19-3. It was the final home game of the season. The football team managed to win their second game of the season 38-28 later on Saturday to move into second to last place in the PAC-10. I didn't go to the game.

And the big news of the week was that I was picked to get tickets to two men's basketball games in a lottery of leftover tickets. The first game was Saturday night versus UC Davis. I got to sit in the UC Davis section. :) Luckily for me, we beat them soundly 76-49. (Getting tickets to a men's basketball game is impressive because people were willing to sleep out for _two weeks_ to get season tickets. Stanford is ranked #3 and made the final four last year.)

And Sunday night I went to _There's Something About Mary_ at Flicks here on campus. Hilarious movie. The theatre was packed.

Today in White Plaza on my way back from class I noticed the band was playing. One guy was dressed up like the Crow and had impaled a teddy bear on the fountain. It's some sort of spirit thing for the big game against UC Berkeley, which is this weekend.

chillin' with j-town

Netflix Blu-ray vs. DVD confusion

How to use alternate from addresses with Gmail on iPad or iPhone

Video stores are in trouble

More on dollar coins and modernizing US currency

What to do when you get a chain forwarded email

Citibank putting ads in my recent transaction list

Things the US could learn from other countries

Cupertino Election 2009

How to set up port mapping for iChat video chatting

Time Capsule update

Already Voted

How to transfer local Time Machine backups to Time Capsule

Time Capsule arrived

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Recent upgrades

Daylight Savings

Not a good way to start the day

Schmap Dublin Guide

Big News

OK, I'm officially surprised

Warriors make history

Warriors vs. Spurs in Western Conference Finals?

New movie theater

Warriors shine, Spurs disappoint

Warriors in the playoffs!

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catching up on flickr

goodbye, Ken

Adventures in Gmail Importing

AppleTV as an alternative to cable

Merry Christmas!

Stanford vs. Oregon State

Pumpkin patch

Geotagging on flickr

Five months

More photos posted

Dublin Day 1 and 2 highlights

ttyl

Bad Luck

Go Spurs Go

Rain Rain Rain

The Big 3-0

Trying out Flickr

Environmentalism going mainstream?

Merry Christmas!

The Art of Selling Stuff on Craigslist

Rock climbing

TiVo overlap protection

WB does it again

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New TiVo arrived!

New TiVo ordered

blogging from the front lines

Cell phone waiting area

Hybrids in the carpool lane

Primer

New car musing and blog title pronunciation

Prius Invasion

Upcoming TV show conflicts

Farewell to Summerland

Ukraine Matters

Apple Third Quarter Results

Tips for phone number porting

My new bling-bling

Spurs Win Championship!

Spurs win pivotal Game 5

Dateline Stanford: Moving Out

Dateline Stanford: Graduation!

Dateline Stanford: Thanksgiving

Dateline Stanford: Women's World Cup & Pictures

Dateline Stanford: Summer!

Dateline Stanford: Star Wars, etc.

Dateline Stanford: Junk mail

Dateline Stanford: New Toys, Old Faces

Dateline Stanford: Oh no, baby!

Dateline Stanford: Back to the grind

Dateline: Stanford - Scott McNealy, Kerri Strug, and Job

Dateline: Stanford - Big Game & Star Wars

Dateline Stanford: Sports extravaganza weekend