Merry Christmas!

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

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

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

TiVo overlap protection

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!