More photos posted

I've posted the photos from Dublin Day 4, Leaving Dublin, and London Day 1 to my flickr page. Enjoy!

Dublin Day 1 and 2 highlights

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

ttyl

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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!

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