Links

Categories

Comments

Other Blogs

DVDs

Next 25 movies in the Queue
24
Bewitched
Spaced
If We Had No Moon
Extras
Dexter
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection
Voyagers! The Complete Series
Monster of the Milky Way
Extras
Dexter
Origins
Monster House
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection
Bewitched
Dexter
Voyagers! The Complete Series
World Almanac Video
Reno 911
The Wire
Dexter
Origins
Homestarrunner.com
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 @ 22:16 || Korean Sat TV || Technology

We've had Korean TV via satellite for a couple of years now, from a company called TanTV. It costs about $240 a year, gets about 6 time delayed channels from South Korea, a music channel and about a dozen christian channels and one Fox Network affiliate, never figured out why. I have it wired into the house so the master bedroom gets both the Korean channels and the regular cable.

The dish needs to point straight west at a very low azimuth. I have two problems. I have a two story house to the west, and these large things called the Rocky mountains. That leaves me with very few places to mount the dish. Every place that would be convenient to place it, was either blocked by the neighbor's house or too low to clear the mountains. I ended up placing it just above my son's bedroom window, this leaves it completely exposed to the wind. When we get wind storms like we had Sunday and are having tonight, Sukki can't watch TV. She is really into instant gratification, so hangs out of the 3rd floor window with a broom and bangs the crap out of the dish. She then runs back into the master bedroom to see if it fixed it, repeating the process till she gets lucky and fixes it or gets frustrated and calls me. Often Shane will get involved. He probably is more concerned about his mom falling out the window than I am. I just hope she doesn't fall on my BBQ grill.

Tonight, her TV was out, and she asked me to help before trying to break her neck. We ended up having her hang out the window and whack the disk with a broom. Sometimes if you treat technology right it just works.

link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 @ 14:15 || Twitter || Technology

I'm not sure how often I'll keep my account up to date or if I'll continue using it. For now, if you want to follow me on Twitter, but user name is doyleshawn.

link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 @ 11:08 || Hadron Collider || Technology

What could possible go wrong? Since it's not the year 2012, I'm not too worried. Any investment that pays out after 2012 is probably a bad one.

It's nice to see this project finially go online. It's a shame it isn't one here in the US.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 @ 20:13 || Tech Karma || Technology

I'll have to offer up some VCRs and old remotes as a sacrifice, maybe even a tape recorder.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 @ 21:36 || Fry's || Technology

I found a 4 pack of 2Gig SD cards for $49 bucks. I could have done a little better online, but then would have to pay shipping and not have the fun of spending a couple hours looking at all the cool stuff at Fry's.

I got side tracked at the 2TB storage devices, I'm so going to buy one.. someday, then at the GPS display, a ton at the $249 price mark, a few under and a bunch over. Not quite ready for a new GPS yet. I was there for almost 2 hours, yet forgot to look at a new backpack. Looks like I'll use an old IBM conference backpack till I see something I really like for a long term replacement.

link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 @ 13:09 || diabetes3 || Technology

Science Daily: Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer's memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes.

No wonder I can't remember anything lately. However since my wife stopped poisoning me my memory has been improving.

link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 @ 12:01 || Time Math || Technology

So assuming I figure out how to move an object, like my van, (if I am traveling in time it would be convenient to have a vehicle to drive around, and the van should blend in, in most time eras). The following math seems to apply.

So if I have the van sitting in my driveway, and move it backwards in time say 1 hour. And the earth moves at about 1000 miles an hour, would this also place my van 1000 east of Denver, probably near St. Louis? Need to figure out if time travel is relevant to the current location or if it's fixed in space, meaning not only do I need to figure out how to move in time, but also in space.

In my above question, I assumed I only needed to worry about the earths rotation, and not it's movement around the sun. which is 67,000 miles per hour, so not only am I 1000 east of Denver, I'm also 67,000 miles out in space, which I'll have to modify the van for, not really speced for space, will need more duct tape.

Of course, now I'm assuming I don't need to account for the solar system's movement, 559,224 miles per hour, which I probably would. So accounting for that, if I traveled back in time 1 hour, I would be 1000 miles to the east, 67,000 miles behind the earth and 559,224 miles away from our solar system. Which is too far for my Van to drive back to in my lifetime.

So this equation should be valid assuming we don't worry about how fast our galaxy is moving inside the universe. To make it easier, I'm flattening the universe to two dimensions, odd, since I'm trying to figure out four.

x = 627224t
x = distance from starting location
t = time traveled in hours (negative for going back, positive for forward)
627224= g(speed the sun is moving from our galactic center)+e(earths speed around the sun)+p(earths rotation)

At least I can pinpoint fairly crudely where I think an object moving thru time would end up. One must also be careful to record the starting location.

Scarey, thing is if you go forward in time, it's possible the solar system will crash into you, which will probably hurt.

link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 @ 14:35 || On Off Switches || Technology

Actually, the meeting shouldn't be called a Design Review, as I don't have a design yet, other than , "it should look cool", why have a time machine if it looks clunky? When traveling thru time, one should do so with style.

So, back to the on/off switch. It made sense to me if a system is powered, we should be able to shut it off. What happens if we had a short or a fire in the life support system? Or worse, an alien entity takes over the life support system! That doesn't sound good.

I do see his point, the name of the system suggests that if it were turned off, that would be bad, maybe really bad. Why name it the "life support system" if you didn't really need it to support life, might as well call it the air conditioner.

To tell the truth it wasn't really a meeting, just us goofing around waiting for something good on TV, which never happened. However, I've been in a lot of real meetings that were less productive .

link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 @ 14:19 || Time Machine Project || Technology

I mentioned I wanted to start doing some projects, like some of the stuff found in Make. Especially I want to work on my time machine. Shane mentioned that if I actually do succeed in building a time machine, we probably would have already been visited by our future selves.

Depending on your version of the space time continuum, and the time travel paradox. I don't see the lack of a visit from our future selves as an issue, for the following reasons.

• We're not that interesting
There's probably plenty of stuff our future selves would rather do than visit us now.
• We're kinda jerks
Why should our future selves travel back to help us build the time machine? we should build our own, lazy current selves!
• Worried we might destroy something
Some sci-fi shows make the claim that if you were to meet yourself space/time would be destroyed. Not something I want to be remembered for, tho, if I destroy it enough who would know?
• Probably stuck somewhere
After building our time machine, one of the following happened.
• Broke down in the distance past, need to wait for technology to catch up for spare parts
• Got attacked or eaten, or both
• Got sidetracked
• Ran out of whatever powers the time machine, I'm thinking methane, tho, not sure if that could run out.

Theres probably other reasons why we haven't been back to the present since inventing the time machine, I'll have to wait to find out.

link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 @ 08:59 || RFID chips anyone? || Technology

Interesting article. However it doesn't mention what company, if any, were suggesting mandatory implants. I'm sure there's a boob joke in there somewhere, I'm better at finding the fart jokes.

I've always wanted to toy around with RFID, build my own scanner, find out what people are saving on RFID chips, shouldn't be that hard, the scanners aren't all that big, Maybe when I finish my basement, I'll start some more interesting projects.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 @ 16:47 || To regurgitate or not to regurgitate? || Technology

The question comes down to, should I include more gurgitation or should I stick to boring you about my basement rebuild and work related stories?

BTW: We made another small, 4 trash cans, dent in the debris that was my basement ceiling and walls. Now we are waiting for Friday's trash pickup, then we'll fill up four more trash cans. We should be done with the cleanup in three more weeks. I could speed things up if I got a dumpster or more trash cans, but I'm pacing myself.

link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 @ 11:21 || T60p || Technology

It's really nice traveling with just 1 laptop now. It took me a while to get all the applications and stuff from my old Windose based laptop to my new linux based laptop. I'm still using Thunderbird for email, via the addons, I was able to get all my filters and folder transfered over. I'm using Firefox for my browser. I even got it to support flash, which I've heard doesn't always play well on linux. I'm using pidgin as my IM tool, nice little tool. One of the biggest hold out for me was getting my Sprint PCS card working, which when I finally sat down and did it, wasn't so bad. It actually works better in linux, on windose it disconnects it self a lot and you'd have to click on 'connect' to get to back. In linux, I set the connection time out parameter, so if it disconnects, it reconnects in 2 seconds, without me doing anything.

So far I haven't found anything I really needed the Windose laptop for, but the week is young.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 @ 21:18 || Metal || Technology

The dentist switched me from invisalign to metal braces. In the middle of them gluing the stubs to me teeth, I got thinking that I'm now going to set off the metal detectors at the airport.

According to the dentist, Titanium doesn't set off metal detectors. Really? I found that hard to believe. And I was right, Titanium will set off a Metal detector, however the amount used for dental braces shouldn't, unless the detector is set to be very sensitive. Many web sites claim that the hand wands will be set off by braces, but not the walk thru detectors.

That got me to thinking, how much titanium do you need to make a gun? Clearly you can make one completely out of plastic, do you really need any metal at all? Are the metal detectors just more security theater, even more than we thought? Wouldn't we be better off with hired thugs on each flight, instead of trying to screen the hundreds of thousands of people who fly?

I'm starting to travel a lot more again, it's been nice driving places and staying mostly in Denver. This Sunday I fly to San Jose, CA again. They can't keep me away...

link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment

Sun, 20 May 2007 @ 08:27 || K9 || Technology

He doesn't work well on carpets, but does well on my wood floors at home. His best feature is his nose laser, it extends and makes sci-fi laser noises.

Next I'll have to get a Dalek.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 @ 13:10 || wifi || Technology

I've been fighting this on and off for the last few weeks. I finally hit on the right combination yesterday. Turns out the driver really wanted to write to a config file it's self, once I let it, things started working better.

Now that I have the wifi working I'll start migrating everything from my old windows laptop. That should be fun.

link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 @ 11:20 || Slingbox || Technology

I'm moderately impressed. It works as described, mostly. I had hopes of watching TV on my Treo while waiting in airports. While it has a PalmOS client, the bandwidth required is much more than I get on my Treo. I tested it in the office and it works great, picture quality is very good at the smaller screen size, decent enough to keep CNBC running in the corner of my dual screen monitors. When put to full screen it's grainy and distorted, but not quite unwatchable. It was taking between 300K and 500K of my 1.2MB T1....Which is too much IMHO.

On my laptop, while connected to the corp network, it runs fine, picture quality seems a little better than on my desktop computer. I disconnected my laptop from the network and tried using my SprintPCS card, it connected and I was able to watch TV, but it paused every 20-30 seconds, the bandwidth on the PCS network just isn't enough yet.

I tried this on my Treo, it started, connected to my Slingbox, but never finished "streaming".

I'm a little concerned on the bandwidth, if I'm hogging 300-500K between my house and wherever I'm watching this, how many places am I actually going to be able to use this. The main reason I got this was to keep myself entertained when traveling. A lot of the higher end hotels don't have decent TV. They limit you to 20 channels, most sports and news, and 3 HBOs. That's one of the reasons I like the lower end hotels, it's easier for them to just get local cable and run it "unaltered" to all the rooms. However, it happens, a lot, that I get booked into a hotel with the 20 channels or less. Usually these hotels at least have Internet access, I wonder if I'll be able to get the 300-500K needed for Slingbox. What qualifies as Internet access varies a lot.

Even with the above concerns I'm happy with the Slingbox. I might not be able to use it everywhere I wanted, but we'll see as I start traveling again.

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 @ 11:13 || Laptop || Technology

I got a Lenovo T60p from LinuxCertified. I guess they got it from IBM\Lenovo. I ordered it pre-installed with Fedora Core 6. The first annoying thing I found, KDE was not installed. I probably should have asked for this, but I assumed it would be on by default, I add it to all my linux installs... I figured no big problem, I'll add it via Yum. Well.. Yum failed the first time, with unresolved dependencies.. no big deal, I resolve dependencies in my sleep.. well.. Yum really should resolve these for me.. I crawled around the web for a couple hours installed a lot more packages than I cared to, but finally I have KDE installing with no errors.. at least I think it is. It's still updating Open Office.

My goal for today it to get everything setup in the base OS, to included all the IBM Rational software and licenses, then to set up at least one Windows 2003 VM. I ordered this Laptop with 3G of memory so I in theory should have no issues with multiple VMs. I'm going to try the VM that is pre-installed with FC 6, if that fails I'll jump to VMWare.

link to story || 5 comments || Add a comment

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 @ 14:27 || Bob's Bird Blog || Technology

Bob's Bird Blog

link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 @ 13:44 || Myth busted || Technology

Subject: Have you locked your keys in the car? 

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday.
Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the
spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from
your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and
have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the
mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from
having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be
hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other
"remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

I really doubted this would work, but it was easy enough to test. We waited next to Robert's truck and made him walk around to the other side of the building. He called us, and tried to unlock his truck. Didn't work. Here's why If this did work, you would be able to record the remote and play it back on any media to get the doors to unlock. So anyone with a recording device could hang out in a parking lot and record the 'unlock' then follow you and the next time you leave your car, play back the 'unlock' and your car is now theres.

However, if you had a recording device that worked on radio waves in the 300 and 500 MHz range, this could work. This one in theory might work DS-2300 It would depend on the playback, if a signal recorded at 300Mhz was really played back at 300Mhz.

Looking at the other tricks on this web site, I wonder if it's a front to get people to try the 'free' 411 number?

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 @ 22:10 || Backups || Technology

This worked well enough for the last 5 years or so. Not all of it has been in place that long, it grew as I added and removed servers. Not too long ago, the web server ran out of disk space, due to all the backups. I cleaned up a lot and removed some directories from the backup scripts and figure I'll get another 6 months out of the current system.

Theres some major flaws in my current backup system. The first being that I'd lose all my data if something ever happened to my server room. Even tho I have 3+ copies of everything, it's all in the same room on the same rack. I need at least a backup a month put on DVD or some sort of media to store off site. The second flaw is I'm wasting a lot of space, I don't need 3+ copies of everything online all the time. The third flaw is the coping takes a lot of bandwidth each night, granted not much is happening at 4am when this all happens, but it's still annoying.

I'm finding some interesting solutions, as backups are hardly a new concern. I have some unique requirements;

• 100% automated, I don't always have a IT person in the office
• on-line backups and some form of media for off site
• smart backups, ability to do full vs incremental backups
• reasonably priced

link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment