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Galleon pics

Last night I decided to take some pictures of the stuff that Galleon offers (when it's working properly, of course). So...onward with the pics! As always, click for the larger pic.

These are some of the applications you can run from Galleon. In addition, there are apps for Shoutcasts, checking your email, and a few others. Note that "Desktop" basically just sends you a screenshot of your desktop. :-P

Weather check!

A different "now playing" list. Lists the total size of the shows you currently have, and the amount of free space. If you select a show, it'll say how much space that show takes up, and give you the option to send it to your PC (rather than choosing shows from the PC and retrieving them).

Decent photo viewer.

I like the Music Organizer app. I had my mp3s folder broken down by artist, then album. It checks ID3 tags, then goes online to retrieve album art and information.

The file then plays in winamp, and using a standard winamp skin. Pageup/pagedown selects the previous/next song, and the pause and play buttons work.

Some songs also have available lyrics. Of course, there's no guarantee that said lyrics are actually correct. ;-)

Unexpected packages

Those are always nice. Yesterday I got a fleece blanket from Saab that they've been sending out to new buyers. Because that's exactly what I need when it's 110° out.

Also finally received my copy of 25 To Life for the first public beta of the game. I think it'll just be multiplayer only, but it should be fun. Too bad I don't have a USB headset.

So I tried Galleon last night, as I mentioned yesterday. It's definitely a cool program, but still needs a fair amount of work. I had to reboot my tivo for Galleon to recognize it, and when you add apps to the list, they don't always show up on the tivo. The music player is cool...it can organize your mp3s based on ID3 tags, then it uses those to go online and get album info and cover art - sometimes even lyrics, if they're available for that particular song, which I thought was a nice feature. I just read about this software yesterday, but I heard that the developer releases new versions pretty quickly. I look forward to the next update. :-)

I know I normally don't post links to outside news, but I particularly like this one: AMD sues Intel. :-D
Edit: Here's a direct link (pdf) to AMD's complaint, worth the read IMO.

Green chiles, tivo, Integra repairs

Traded cars with Teresa this weekend in Albuquerque - the Saab made it there fine, no problems at all. Had about 1200 miles on it when I got there. The way back in the Integra wasn't quite as comfortable, but it wasn't bad, either. I think it was almost an hour shorter going the Payson->Heber->Holbrook->ABQ route vs. Flagstaff->ABQ.

In the state known its chiles, they were available on pretty much everything. I think I had green chiles in some form with every meal, except for the stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Good stuff.

Now that my car is back though, I need to do some repairs (some sooner rather than later). The most immediate concern is the clutch slave cylinder, which will probably fail the next time I look at it wrong. The radiator hoses need to be replaced after that blowout a couple weeks ago, and replacing one with a poorly-fitting hose from Autozone. And of course, I really need to replace the gasket between my header and the cat, as the noise from the exhaust leak has transformed from annoying to embarrassing. :-( But those parts should all be purchased today, with their installation dependent on who's available to help me when (well, the slave cylinder at least).

I mentioned tivo in the subject, as I'm interested in trying Galleon when I get home. It seems to offer some of the things I always liked about an HTPC, like RSS feeds, weather, and email on the tv. Hopefully it'll work ok. :-)

Related to tivo, I finally got the whole dvd burning thing working, I think. I was able to convert my .tivo files to mpegs, cut out the commercials, and burn two episodes of Victory by Design to a dvd. Nice. :-D

Site update, a rolling ball, and some pics

Not an update to this site, mind you, but I finally started the azsolo2 update project last night (you can see it here). I found a free drop-down menu program, and I started to integrate that. The colors and such will be changed, of course, but the idea is there. None of the options in the menu work yet, but that's easy to fix. I also added a random picture to the page (which might end up getting made smaller), and added Google's free site search. I think the calendar and recent forums posts sections will be the toughest to add, so we'll see how that goes.

I ended up buying Katamari Damacy last week, spent way too many hours playing it, and beat it a couple days ago. Really fun game, I wish I could take some screenshots of the stuff I rolled up. There's little more satisfying than rolling through a town and picking up every single building. :-D I should still try to do better on the constellations, but whatever. As far as I'm concerned, I already got my money's worth and then some. Of course, I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel, whenever it happens to come out.

Picture time!

Rest stop along I-40, just inside of New Mexico. Fire hydrants for the dogs!

The stupid radiator hose that broke on the way there. >:-O

Several images from the SLAC tour I went on at my sister's graduation. The building in the first picture is over 2 miles long!

Finally, big wheels of cheese.

Options...

I was at Best Buy yesterday helping my sister pick out a new camera, and saw a couple video games that interested me. Both $20.

1. Katamari Damacy for PS2. Click the link, then "what is katamari damacy" for an explanation. It's a strange game, but I hear it's a lot of fun. Major retail stores haven't carried it until just recently, even though the sequel isn't too far away I hear.

2. Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox. The latest iteration of the game is due out in a few months, so I was thinking of trying the older version, since (a) I've never played any of the Rainbow Six games, and (b) given (a), I'm not going to pay $50 for the new one.

Update-o-rama

Laziness has once again gotten the better of me, obviously. My updating skills are lacking.

Break-in of the new car is going well. Over 600 miles as of now, probably closer to 700 by the end of the day thanks to an expedition out to a new kart track on the west side this afternoon.

This past weekend I was in Palo Alto, CA for my sister's graduation. It was interesting to really see the Stanford campus (I had been once before, but didn't see much of it). Lots of large old buildings and huge trees. :-P They offered a tour of SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. They claim it's the longest building in the world, at around 2 miles long. It really wasn't much to see, as the outside of the buildings aren't kept in particularly great shape. Overall, perhaps a bit disappointing. I took a couple camera phone pics, but of course, they're still on my phone.

The commencement ceremony was a bit odd at times. It seems that the tradition is for students to go out on the field, not in an orderly manner, but rather in whatever unusual way they can think of, and just do crazy stuff for about half an hour (something like this). Some of my favorite things to see were people dressed like Lego men, some dressed as Domokun's, and a large group playing tetris. Again, pics on the camera phone. Steve Jobs was the invited speaker, and that was kind of odd. Wired offers a pretty decent summary of his speech.

I'd say the most interesting part of the whole weekend was noting the differences between a state-run university, and a university that can throw as much money as they want at pretty much whatever they want. I'm sure they spend way more than ASU just in day-to-day activities and operations, yet probably have a third to half as many students.

Played Halo 2 several nights last week, and playing regularly was definitely helping. I still didn't like the fact that we kept being matched up against people at least 5 levels higher than us in other game types, but whatever. Hopefully the skills learned won't wear off too fast.

Plans have been made to update the azsolo2 site, and I think that will really turn out well. I'll probably start keeping whatever I'm working on at azsolo2.caffeineslug.com or something, but nothing of interest has been created yet. I'll post updates as the new look progresses.

This is where I lament the fact that I don't update more often, as I can't really remember what else I was going to put here. Maybe the fact that Evo's are awesome, I don't know. Probably something along those lines.

Woo free stuff

Apparently I won a cd on the radio today without doing anything special - I didn't even know until someone told me! :-D Check the right side of the screen. Not the best prize in the world, but come on...free!

Money has changed hands

Much more than any previous transaction, at least. My first post in a week comes bearing news of a new vehicle in our garage...news that anyone who at least semi-regularly reads this probably knows already. ;-) We picked up a 2005 Saab 9-2X Aero, practically right off the truck. Manual transmission, Deep Blue Metallic with the cloth seats, and the non-optional cold weather package. We've put about 250 miles on it so far, with another 750 to go until break-in is complete. It's the first new vehicle for either of us, and the first time we've had car payments. With $7k in rebates, the dealer wasn't offering any kind of special financing, but fortunately we got a pretty decent rate through Costco.

So what happened to the Neon that is being replaced? Well, we're still going to hang on to it. It was giving a check engine light for the O2 sensor the day after we got it running, but the other day that stopped. Took it in for emissions testing today, and it thankfully passed (tags set to expire today). It still needs a new coolant overflow tank, but the part just arrived at the local dealer, so that should be taken care of soon. The a/c works now, so that's good. Once we're confident it's in good working order (or at least, close to it), the car should be back out for autocrossing, hopefully in time for the fall season.

Again with the unusually-large purchases, we bought a tv a couple weeks ago as well. Again, excellent deal through Costco (it's like I go there a lot or something). Panasonic 43" 16:9 LCD rear projection HDTV, 720p native res, lots of inputs. The day after we bought it I went to the Cox store to swap out cable box for the HD box, and now we're enjoying all that HDTV has to offer (and occasionally find it hard to go back to regular programming). Our dvd player does upconverting as well, so it's nice to take advantage of that, and get 480p/720p/1080i in the various video games that support those resolutions.

Now for some other random stuff that I just never posted earlier.

My grandparents in PA moved in January, and sent some of their stuff out to my parents. Of the truckload of stuff that was unloaded, we got two of the coolest things:
First, the largest pepper mill I have personally used. I think it's probably about 3 feet tall.

Second, this what we called a "smør bucket", where smør is Norwegian for butter. I believe it was last regularly used at the house my grandparents used to have in Norway. So now we have a place for butter.

Finally, pics of the free box I received to house all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movie. Come on, free! This came in the mail months ago, and I took pics, just never did anything with them.