caffeineslug.com

DIY video scaler

Seeing this article on Engadget makes me wish I had a reasonably quiet extra computer around. The only extra stuff I have is now considered "fairly old" (900-1000 MHz), and runs hot enough that all the fans would make it too loud for living room use. The prebuilt hardware solutions at the end of the article are fairly expensive, I think the cheapest was $700 or so.

Bah, I was hoping for some cheap improvements in Tivo video quality. :-\

HD Tivo on the horizon, and cheap Integra parts

Tivo showed their Series 3 at CES last week, and I'm really looking forward to it. HD support, 300gb internal storage with an external SATA port for expansion, and almost best of all, two cablecard slots. Goodbye evil cable box!

The A/C in the Integra has been out since the end of the summer, with the shop telling me that both the compressor and condenser need to be replaced. This weekend I found a compressor for sale on a local Integra board with 30k on it, picked it up for $50. I'm practically halfway there! :-P

So, a couple months ago, I started thinking about trying mountain biking. I know a number of people that do it, they seem to enjoy it, it sounds like fun. Due to some interesting circumstances, I ended up with a 2004 Haro XLS R3 for a great price a couple weeks ago. Now, up until I got the bike, I've ridden maybe half a dozen times since I got my drivers license, so I'm considerably out of practice. I used to be fairly confident in my abilities back when I was riding to school every day, but now, not so much. I spent a few days riding around on the streets just getting used to being on a bike again before venturing on to dirt.

Yesterday I stuffed the bike in my car (very happy it fit!) and went over to Evan's place, as he has some desert with a trail running through it that people regularly use for biking. Aside from a steep rocky section at the beginning, it was mostly pretty flat stuff. Overall, it did good things for my confidence levels. There are loads of skills that need improving, but I really need to get the confidence up. That said, I'm really not looking forward to my first fall, though I know it's inevitable.

Perhaps I'll get up the nerve to hit a real trail some day. :-P

Too much sleep

Don't wake up at 1pm and think you'll get to bed at any kind of reasonable hour. It just doesn't happen. >:-O

I actually slept a lot over the long weekend, and as such, didn't get much done. I should have checked Autozone to see if they rent pressure testers for the Integra, but that didn't happen, so I might stop by after the gym today.

Played poker one night with a different group of friends than usual, that was interesting. We started with 6, and after 3 hours there were still 5 people left. I finally got one good hand, the guy next to me goes all in with about $3k, and I call him...except I can't cover about $75 of his. I win, but he's left with $75. That later comes back to get me, as he wins a few lucky hands, gets some money, and he eventually put me out of the game! Bleh.

I also spent some time this weekend trying to burn some tivo'd shows to dvd, to clear out some hard drive space. Victory by Design and Good Eats episodes were taking up about 70gb on a 160gb drive, and I only had 10gb free, so that was no good. I finished off the VBD, and 5 episodes of Good Eats. At 5 episodes per disc, I only have about...14 more discs to go. Awesome.

The good news is that as I use it more, the less I hate Nero for basic video editing. It's pretty easy to take commercials out, so on a normal tv show, it just takes a few minutes now. VBD has about twice as many commercials breaks as a usual show (though they're about half as long as usual), so it takes twice as long to take out the commercials. Thanks VBD.

HD golf and Tivo (unrelated)

I probably watched about 8 hours of the PGA Championship over the weekend, being on CBS in HD (well that, and I like golf). Not all of the cameras were HD, and it wasn't necessarily the best HD, but it still looked pretty nice. ;-)

Also, it looks like you can now send videos to your tivo! People always asked me if this was possible, and now that it is, I'm wondering what videos I'd want to watch. The best application I can imagine would be downloaded tv shows, but I don't do that, so I don't know. :-P

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

Blankness no more!

blah...site has been blank for a week, and I haven't posted anything since January 12th. Nice.

Well, last time I posted, I talked about just getting a Tivo. So what's new with that? The Tivo is fantastic, as expected. I'm no longer missing episodes of Good Eats or Mythbusters. I picked up a USB network adapter, so now I can listen to all of my mp3's in the living room, which is nice, and as soon as my Tivo gets the upgrade, I'll be looking forward to copying shows over to the computer. :-D

Christmas was good, got some nice stuff. I somehow received 24 cans of tennis balls, which I know will be put to use. I used some Christmas cash to buy myself a new racket as well, thanks to a good Big 5 sale. Used a little more of that money to buy a new softball glove as well just the other day, but I haven't had a chance to actually play with it yet.

Car stuff - went to a weigh day, got a chance to weigh and cornerweight my car. I was stupied and filled my gas tank before I went, so I didn't really try for perfect cornerweights. I think we got them to within 19lbs, and I raised the front of the car as well, so I don't think there will be any more tire/fender rubbing issues. The biggest pain was just getting the swaybars reconnected. :-P I was all set to have some offset bushings made as well, but it looks like that won't be happening. There's just not that much camber to gain at the upper arms, and getting camber at the lower arms means increasing the track even more than the wheels already did. So the stock UCAs are going back in soon, and some poly bushings have been ordered to replace the stock rubber bushings with 130k on them.

So what's next? A frigid autox in Tucson this weekend, and hopefully the El Paso NT at the end of February. I think I'll be happy if I don't finish last. ;-)

Early Christmas

I finally got my Tivo! An 80hr unit from Costco. I'm quite excited. Need to pick up a usb network adapter now, and I'll be all set. :-D

Also got some pics online of the new race wheels, which I mentioned the other day: