_troy

Following me

2008-07-14T21:13:00.002-05:00

It's been quite a while since I've updated this blog. The two people who read it are probably not surprised by that. There are various reasons, but the main one is that I just don't generally spend much of my time writing, as there are other things that occupy it, like work, family, etc.

Anyway, I wanted to point out that I have however become a Twitter-er. I follow several people on Twitter, and post a couple updates a day on average. You can see the three most-recent ones on the sidebar of the webpage that goes with this blog.

So if you have any interest in what i might have to say, in small, bite-sized, 140-character increments, following me on Twitter is probably the best way at the moment. Having a native Twitter app for my iPhone (and having a faster 3G iPhone to use it on) will probably make me continue this trend for a while in the future. The main thing that keeps me involved there is that I now have a few friends/coworkers who are also on "The Twitter", so we end up sending tweets back-and-forth.

Anyway, if logging into twitter.com regularly or running one of the plethora of Twitter clients is not your thing, there's also an RSS feed that you can subscribe to from the Twitter website, either for a single person or for the set of all of the people you follow, so that might be a useful alternative.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll still occasionally find something to blog about here. For example, I've been wanting to post an entry about the color picker "plop-up" in the forthcoming Lightroom 2 (previewed in the available beta version) for a while. If so, I'll probably also link to it with a tweet.

iPod nano Games ... or not

2007-09-06T22:26:00.000-05:00

So, Apple released its new generation of iPod classic and iPod nano yesterday to much fanfare. I picked up a new nano today (actually, Melissa and I each got one: hers red and mine silver).

This evening, Melissa wanted me to load the games I had previously bought for my 5G iPod onto it. There are a couple nice ones like Bejeweled and Zuma, for example. This is when something I hadn't considered happened: There was nothing to be found under the Games tab in iTunes.

So, I went to the iTunes Store to see what was up. Did I have to buy the games again for the new device? Well, the note there says:

iPod Games are compatible with fifth generation iPods (with video) only. They cannot be played in iTunes or on the iPhone.

COMING SOON: Tetris, Ms. PAC-MAN and Sudoku will soon be compatible with iPod nano (video) and iPod classic.

Well, there you have it. For whatever reason, all those games I bought for my fifth generation iPod apparently aren't compatible, and there aren't even new versions available for the new iPods. This is a downer, especially for those of us considering upgrading our 5G iPod to an iPod classic (inso upgrading you'll lose the ability to play your games), but also for those who thought the new Nano would be cool as a tiny game-playing device as well as a music/video player.

Hopefully it's just a matter of time until most of the games are made available. Since the resolution is the same, and speculation is that the Nano and Classic use a modified version of the previous iPod software, not something based on the iPhone/iPod touch version of OS X, one wouldn't think it would be that hard. Also, hopefully I won't have to re-buy all of those games...

And while on the subject of iPod games, I just can't stop writing without mentioning how badly the iPhone (and ultimately the iPod touch, too) needs games. Pretty much all cell phones these days have games available, and unofficial things like Lights Off and even the web-based games like Bejeweled, Sudoku, and BattleFleet show that games are nice to have on the iPhone.

Still, without native gaming, we're left with non-smooth animations, a lack of sound effects, and limits on the types of interaction that are allowed (Bejeweled, for example, really wants to support tap-and-drag to swap jewels), and of course there's the desire to have games available when the web is not available or not practical to use (such as when playing a game with lots of graphics with only Edge available).

Of course, games on the iPhone will need to be at least somewhat different from games on the iPod, as the touchscreen interface really demands a different type of interaction than the scroll wheel. But again, hopefully we're just talking about a matter of time, since this just seems so obvious.

Travel -- mm, love travel!

2007-08-11T08:52:00.000-05:00

I'm attending the C4 conference in Chicago this weekend. I figured that since it's in Chicago, and I live in the Minneapolis area, I'd drive over, because, you know, it's not really that far... Well, it's about 6-7 hours (which I knew going in), and I left late morning. Of course, doing the math, that meant that I would hit Chicago precisely during rush hour.

At one point, just as I got to the city, I had to go through the last of the toll collection points, and I hit one that was backed up. This is when things came to a crawl, and while I had made good time getting to the Chicago area (it had taken me just over 6 hours with a few quick stops for gas and food and coffee along the way), I actually happened to reset my trip odometer and found that it took me over 45 minutes to go 0.3 miles.

I knew that registration was from 6 to 7 (mostly), so this is when I started to get a bit nervous. Things were pretty slow going all the way into the center of the city where the conference hotel is, but it turned out that as I got out of my car and looked at the time, it was 6:58. I checked in before going to the registration desk, so I ultimately was only about 10 minutes late, but for a while I was worried it would be worse.

I should probably also mention, that I just flew back from our 2-week vacation in France on the day before this (it was a long day -- basically a 31 hour day since there's a 7-hour difference, and we were flying with the rotation of the Earth). But at least I got a full night's sleep before the drive. Still, a 7.5 hour drive the day after an 8-hour flight: not highly recommended.

The first evening of C4 was pretty interesting. I'll hopefully blog about that in a little while (although, one might notice that the last time I blogged was over 8 months ago, so we'll see how well that idea works...).

iPhone

2007-01-16T01:51:00.000-06:00

Well, Apple finally did it. Looks like a great device. It will be my next cell phone (I just took back the KRZR I had been messing with for a few weeks and went back to my "old" Treo 700 until the iPhone is available). Yes, I know that means I have to switch from Sprint to AT&T (aka Cingular), that the speed of my data access will go down to EDGE speeds, etc., but frankly, I don't care. I've been waiting for a phone with a killer UI like this for a while now (I've been becoming increasingly disappointed in the Treo and in what Palm is doing and looks like they will be doing with it).

Now if they would just come to their senses and make it into a development platform rather than just an isolated device. And I'm not talking about a closed only-our-friends platform like they seem to be doing with iPod games. I'm talking about a document-it-and-provide-tools-in-Xcode platform like they have with the Mac.

If they really want to compete with the Windows Mobiles, Palm Treos, and Blackberries of the world, this seems like an important next step. Now, I don't expect that they'll be fully ready to completely open up development for the iPhone the day it's first released. I expect (well, at least hope) this is something that would incrementally be exposed over time.

So, Apple, start by giving us the ability to at least write widgets with icons that can be accessed from the main menus on the iPhone. And we can go from there.

Apple WWDC Dead Technology Day

2006-07-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

I'll be going to Apple's WWDC (WorldWide Developers' Conference) in a couple weeks. I didn't go last year since it was mostly a Tiger rehash (except for that Intel bombshell they dropped on the first day), but this time I'm looking forward to hearing about all of the new stuff coming to a computer near me in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

One thing that I've always thought would be fun at WWDC would be to get people to coordinate their wardrobes for one day of the conference and wear T-shirts from various dead technologies that Apple has come out with in the past, advocated, and since abandoned.

Now, I have to admit, when I was at Apple, I worked on OpenDoc, one of those same dead technologies, so I don't personally escape unscathed.

Unfortunately (actually, fortunately) this idea has recently become a bit disingenuous, as Apple's recent track record for not killing technologies has been downright stellar. However, for those of us with a number of dead technology T-shirts from the less-happy days, I still think it's an idea with some potential, so...

I hereby declare that Thrusday, August 10 will be Dead Technology Day at this year's WWDC.

There, since so many people read my blog, I'm sure this will catch fire.

PhotoshopNews visits... our house

2006-06-19T08:13:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a little while (okay, more than a little while) since I've posted here. As you might guess, I've been heads-down working on various things in Lightroom all year (by the way, Beta 3 has recently been released on the Mac).

Still, the article Jeff Schewe wrote at PhotoshopNews is pertinent enough to Melissa and me that I thought I should come out of my blogging coma for a minute to post about it. In it, Jeff visits the Adobe Minnesota office that we work in as well as our house.

A Visit to the Adobe Lightroom Engineers

Adobe Lightroom is now available

2006-01-09T22:19:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted to this blog in quite a while. One of the reasons for this is that I'm generally not very good at frequent posting. The other, even bigger problem of late has been that I've been really busy for the last month or so working on our project at Adobe. Today we released the first public beta version of that project, Lightroom.

So far the reception has been fairly favorable, it seems. We'll be watching the feedback and continuing to work toward the final release over the coming months. Hopefully I'll have more time to post to my blog on occasion now that the push for the first public release has been completed...

Apple's Latest - New iMac, iPod, etc.

2005-10-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

So, Apple had another one of their press events today. As was widely expected, they finally announced an iPod with video support. I've read some of the coverage and material, and have watched the event. I'll skip most of the obvious and concentrate on a few of my observations.

The new iMac's big hardware feature (aside from its thinner, more angular profile) is that it has a built-in iSight camera. The feature I found more interesting personally, however, is that it's also the first (to my knowledge) Apple computer to have PCI Express built in. It's interesting that the iMac should get this before the desktop line. It's about time, however, that Apple started adding this, as it's been available on PCs for a while now, and the additional speed it provides will be increasingly important for GPU-intensive software.

FrontRow is a very nice front end for viewing content full-screen. The experience is pure Apple, with the way the existing contents of the computer screen move out of the way as the FrontRow UI slides on, the unique sound effects for the different types of content that can be viewed, the way things animate as you go into a media type with the text sliding up and the icon moving and scaling, the iPod-like menu system, and the simple, elegant remote control.

The FrontRow interface looks ideal for viewing things on TV. Sure, you can view them on your computer screen, and in a dorm room that might even be interesting, but for most people, getting the content on the TV is really where it's at. Now, the new iMac has video (VGA, S-Video, and composite) output, which is fine if your computer is near your TV, but it often isn't.

Further, while it's cool that the new iMac has this feature, there isn't any (technical) reason this application couldn't be available for other computers. As far as I can tell, though, it's not (yet, at least). My guess is this is because Apple wants the iMac to be able to hold the spotlight with this feature exclusively for now.

However, all this leads me to believe that we're just seeing the start of Apple's living room plans. It would be possible to put a Mac mini in your component rack (some people already have) and control it with the remote and FrontRow. However, that still has the problem of trying to use a computer that is connected to a TV instead of at a desk. Instead, I think the real opportunity is with a device that was rumored last week. I was really expecting it to be the "One more thing" as I heard reports of the video features coming from the event. The devices I'm referring to is a version of the AirPort Express with video output capability. Such a device (which I have to expect is in the pipeline) could come with a copy of FrontRow for any Mac and allow them to connect to it to send video and audio to a person's TV over a wired or wireless network.

PhotoBooth is also a cool little app. It certainly has the Apple Polish(tm) we've come to know, with the countdown before taking a picture, the white screen flash, and especially the Polaroid-style image dropping into the space at the bottom. This is an app that could pretty easily have been a third-party shareware application (if it were, it could have had this much polish, but it probably wouldn't have). It's interesting seeing Apple do a small app like this. Like FrontRow, there's no reason this shouldn't work on other Macs.

As for the new iPod, I'm not terribly fond of its shape. I prefer the previous generation, which had a curved front as well as back. I understand the change to maximize the screen real estate, and I've always been a fan of the thinner iPods, so I'll reserve final judgement until I can see and hold one myself.

I also noticed the new iPod doesn't have the previous generation's remote control port. According to the tech specs it seems to only have USB. Based on the way the front looks, it might share materials with the iPod nano. I wonder if it will have the same propensity to pick up and show scratches (which is something I have personally experienced with my own nano). As to its video features, I'm glad they're there so everyone can stop talking about them. I have feelings that are similar to what Steve has said in the past, which is that I don't believe watching video on a screen that size will be a compelling experience. I think the PlayStation Portable is about as small as a screen can be and be good for video. At least it's still a music player first and foremost.

Regarding Disney, there were some interesting quotes from Steve like "I know these guys", and he mentioned that he has had the "great fortune to be working with" them. He also said he'd "gotten to know Bob Iger really well in the last few months". Iger also made a remark about Pixar (and that they weren't announcing a deal with Pixar today). All this, and the previous changes at Disney lead one to believe that work has been going on to repair the Pixar/Disney relationship.

Finally, I like the idea of being able to buy TV shows the day after they're broadcast for a couple bucks. Obviously, I'll still use my TiVo(s) to record things, but it's a nice option to have for things that are missed, pre-empted for weather coverage, etc. But come on, only 5 shows? That needs serious expansion to actually be interesting.

Booting Mac OS X from CD

2005-09-06T17:37:00.000-05:00

When booting from the Tiger install DVD, it would be really nice if Apple could change the startup screen (the gray apple logo on the gray background with a progress spinner) to somehow indicate that a CD/DVD is being booted from.

I was getting a kernel panic on boot the other day, and I had put in the DVD and was holding down the C key (to boot from it), and was still getting the panic. I thought there was a hardware problem, so I proceeded to pull memory, etc. without avail until I realized it was because my keyboard wasn't plugged into the keyboard extension cord I had plugged into the computer (I normally use a monitor switch, so don't often use the keyboard extension cord), so it wasn't getting my message to boot from the DVD.

Any kind of boot-time difference in display for booting from CD would have helped in this case (as I wouldn't have been seeing it, so I would have known it wasn't properly trying to boot from the CD). Back in Mac OS 8/9 days, there was a special desktop pattern that would indicate this state. I'm sure Apple could come up with something more attractive these days, but I'd like to see them to something here.

Auto Body Experience

2005-08-18T00:14:00.000-05:00

The Auto Body Experience is a local band that performs often-humorous music. Their latest CD was just released last week, and Melissa, Sabrina, and I went to the concert (along with Melissa's sister). It was a fun time, as Auto Body performances always are.

Anyway, one of the songs on the new album is named "Terry Gross", named for the host of the NPR program Fresh Air. Well, it turns out that the song actually got Scott Yoho (the lead singer and an awesome guitarist who writes the music and lyrics and happens to also work in the local computer industry at Coda) an interview on that show today.

I should also note that the saxophone player, Max, is a coworker of mine. We worked together on ImageReady a few years ago, but have moved on to separate projects at this point.

You can buy tracks from their previous CD, A Tribute to Carhenge from the iTunes Music Store. I don't know if the new one will go on iTunes or not, but it can be purchased from CD BABY. The CD doesn't quite capture the energy of a live performance, but on the plus side, I can hear Max's saxophones more clearly.

I think my current favorite track from the new album is "Tom Fixed His Spit Valve Spring" -- I mean, how can you not like a song with the lyric: "Tom became a cross between McGyver and E.T."? Of course, it's also the newest (to me) song, as I hadn't heard it before last week's concert. Other good tracks include "EDAJTC" (Everyone Deserves A Job That's Challenging), "Annie" (a 'love song' about the CPR dummy), "Inside Out", and "A Cave Beneath My Cube". (The above links are 2-minute sections of the songs in pretty highly-compressed form.)

In the Bay Area next week

2005-08-17T19:40:00.000-05:00

I'm flying with my wife and kids to San Francisco on Friday. We're going to drive down to Scotts Valley and stay there for a few days (going to Shakespeare Santa Cruz on Saturday and the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Sunday.

Monday, we drive to San Jose where we're staying until Friday morning. I'm probably going to be going into the main office (the "mothership") for a couple of those days to get some work done (so that I only have to take 5 days of vacation for our 10 day trip).

On Friday, we're going to Grass Valley with a friend of ours to stay at her family's house/ranch near the mountains for the weekend. It should be fun.

If anyone in that area reads this and wants to get together while we're in town, give me a call (cell phone at this point), send me an e-mail, or post a comment.

New Gadget: Mighty Mouse

2005-08-02T21:55:00.000-05:00

Apple finally released a respectable mouse (with a cute name: Mighty Mouse), today, and I was able to pick one up at a local Apple Store. It's been a long time coming, but in common Apple fashion, it isn't just an ordinary two-button mouse with a scroll wheel. Instead, Apple was able to retain the simplicity and clean design of their one-button mouse while adding multi-button support and a two-dimensional scroll ball.

While I wasn't sure if I was going to like this new mouse, I've been getting used to it for only a couple hours today, and it's already becoming comfortable. I'm not sure whether I'll ultimately replace all four of my Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorers (or is that IntelliMice Explorer?) with Mighty Mice just yet (and even if I wanted to, it seems that the local Apple Stores sold out of the new mice within a few hours of them having been announced), but it is a possibility.

One of the things that I particularly like about the new mouse is that clicking with your full hand on the mouse causes it to act like a one-button mouse. If you try that with a standard two-button unit, you end up clicking both buttons at the same time. Even still, it's easy to perform a right-click (or left-click if you're a lefty -- another nice aspect of this mouse is that it is shaped and can be configured for right- or left-handed use).

I'm not sure if the "grip" button will get much use from me, but then I also don't tend to use the side buttons on other mice, either (even though I have them hooked up to Exposé). I heard an interesting idea about programming the grip action to allow moving a window by gripping the mouse anywhere within the window. Apple's software doesn't allow this, but it would be a great hack for someone else to write.

Clicking the scroll ball works great, but it will take some time to get used to the entire mouse performing a click operation (it feels like you mistakenly clicked the primary button, but you didn't -- that's just how clicking the ball works: the mouse "knows" what part you were clicking). Again, I don't tend to make use of the ability to click to perform an action on other scroll wheels, either, but tying this click to the application picker is an interesting option Apple provides.

So anyway, in summary: new mouse = good. Now if Apple could just get started making something like the Optimus keyboard, they'd really have a first-class set of input devices.

New gadget: 1GB SD Plus Card

2005-06-21T20:50:00.000-05:00

It's been my intent to post about interesting gadgets that I see or buy. Since I started this blog, I've missed blogging about a new iPod (or two), a new Bluetooth headset that uses the same power connector as my phone, a replacement stylus for my phone that has an ink pen embedded in the top, a PlayStation Portable, and probably several others. It's probably time that I actually started to post about these things (at least it gives me something worth posting about -- though often it's a lack of time, not necessarily material, that has caused my posts to be so infrequent.)

Well, my latest purchase is, in a way, similar to the pen/stylus. That is, it's a Treo accessory (again) and it combines two things into one device, replacing the need for another item that I've often been carrying around. It's a SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus Card.

You might ask: "What's so cool about that? After all, it is just a memory card." Well, in addition to being an SD card, it has a flip out USB connector (actually, only about half of a USB connector, but enough of one to work in a normal USB port). In addition to meaning that I no longer need a separate USB or PC Card adapter to read the SD card on my computer, it also can serve to replace the need for a USB key fob. I've been carrying an Iomega Micro Mini USB Drive, which I also wholeheartedly recommend (I'm on my 4th one, I think) if you need that kind of device -- and they do come in handy from time to time. Now that I have one of these SD cards, I no longer really need to carry that on my keychain.

I had been waiting for a 2GB standard SD card to double my Treo's capacity, but I think this card is a better choice, as I'm not using much more than half of my 1GB card, and its USB capability is more useful than the additional space. It will probably be a while before a 2GB model is available given how much space on the card is devoted to the USB connector, but 1GB is plenty of storage for many uses.

Trivia contest this weekend

2005-04-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again (no, I don't mean the time of year that I post to my blog -- it only seems like I only post on an annual basis) -- time for the big Stevens Point, WI trivia contest that our team, "Freshly Squeezed" participates in.

We have the trivia pictures, and they are up on the wiki (for those of you who know where to find that -- if you don't, I don't want to post the address publically because we need to keep it from getting seen by Google and other such things, but feel free to send me an e-mail via tgaul at mac dot com and I can send you the URL). The contest starts this Friday at 6 PM central time and goes for 54 hours straight until Sunday night. There are instructions on the wiki for getting access to the audio stream and our IRC server if you want to play along. If you have any such desire, feel free to join us whenever it is convenient for you and for however long you'd like.

If I have time, I'll try to post something about the custom Cocoa app I built for helping our team with a couple aspects of the contest (I may not have time this week, as I have to make some improvements to that app, but hopefully I'll at least be able to talk about it next week).

Vanity web address

2005-03-06T12:49:00.000-06:00

I probably haven't posted enough here to warrant it yet, but since i have a blog that I'm posting to occasionally, I finally broke down and purchased a vanity web address: troygaul.com. (Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have put a link to that page here yet since I haven't built a real page for it yet...)

I originally had wanted something more general, like gaul.com, but all of the interesting variants of that were taken. For a while in the past I owned gaul.cc, but at some point that lapsed and now someone else owns it. It seems like using first and last name for a web address is pretty common these days, however, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

One of the other reasons I bothered to do this is that I've recently been working on a new "toy project". This project, a Mac OS X front end application for the Cisco VPN service that we use at work, has been a lot of fun and I'll blog more about it in the near future. Anyway, the manner in which it fits into the vanity website issue is twofold:

First, when making a new application for Mac OS X it is necessary to provide a "bundle identifier". This is a string that is supposed to uniquely identify a product, and is used for things like the preferences file name. The way Apple recommends people assure this uniqueness is to use a reverse domain name. In my case, that would be com.troygaul.ProductName (this is an approach that was made popular by Sun's Java, which suggests it for package names). If everyone does this and uses names registered for a website, then it works pretty well. It was fairly unlikely that even if I didn't officially register troygaul.com that my identifer would not have conflicted, but I still thought it would be prudent to do so.

Second, I wanted to be able to post builds of my project for my coworkers to download (the project itself doesn't make use of any company-specific code or anything, so I thought it would be okay to put it on a publically available website rather than only posting it internally), and I wanted to be able to send them a URL that I would continue to maintain in the future, and that would "look nice" (by some definition).

So, all of that resulted in it just being the right time to make this change. It has also given me yet another project to work on, as I need to produce some HTML pages for my main page and for the VPN project. It also gives me a place to put up some other web pages I've been meaning to produce (like a list of the electronics we have that we'd be willing to sell, since every now an again someone asks us about that).

Hey, it might even encourage me to post to my blog more often, and that can't be a bad thing, right?

New URL for this blog

2005-03-05T12:53:00.000-06:00

This blog has been moved. You can now find it at: http://troygaul.com/blog.

All future postings will only be made on that site, so if you want to keep following my (occasional) posts, make sure to update your bookmark, news reader feed, or Address Book (did you know that Address Book on Mac OS X has a URL field, and that if you fill it in you will get an Address Book submenu in your Safari Bookmarks menu?).

SplashBlog

2005-02-22T23:33:00.000-06:00

Seems the folks at SplashData have come out with another Palm app, this time allowing you to post photos taken by a cell phone camera like the Treo's. I just downloaded it, but haven't taken the time to install and run it yet. I am, however, a registered user of both SplashPhoto and SplashID, and know that they do good stuff. I'll post something done with it here once I have something worthwhile (assuming I can get it to work with my Blogger account).

New PowerBook

2005-02-08T22:13:00.000-06:00

I'm typing this post on my new PowerBook. I had planned to wait until the G4 PowerBook hit 2 GHz (or maybe 1.8 GHz -- I still feel Apple might come out with another speed bump of the PowerBook G4 before being able to move to a G5 due to heat and power considerations.) However, seeing the 1.67 GHz, 15-inch model introduced last week made me decide to not put off the move, not due to the speed increase (I'm moving up from a 1.25 GHz model), but for the availablity, via a build-to-order option, of a video card that is able to drive my 30" monitor.

There are a few other improvements that are nice to have as well. It has a faster, larger hard drive, an acceleration sensor to protect the hard drive in case of a fall, and a trackpad that supports scrolling by using two fingers on the pad instead of one.

That last feature is also something I appreciate. I have been using a utility named SideTrack on my PowerBook for some time now. It is a replacement for the Apple trackpad driver that adds several features. It supports scrolling by dragging on the edges of the trackpad (and can be set to support horizontal and/or vertical scrolling). I also discovered just today that the latest version also allows the corners of the trackpad to be programmed for things like right-clicking, extra-button clicking, etc. (I wish I had noticed that before). If you're a PowerBook user (I'm pretending here that people actually read this blog...), I'd recommend downloading a copy and trying it out for yourself -- using it can become second nature. As for myself, I'm going to try living with just the new Apple scrolling support for now, as I expect that using SideTrack on the new computer might disable the two-finger scrolling feature. But I might try installing it just to see.

One thing about the trackpad that is a little odd is that it's more sensitive to movement horizontally than vertically. The distance of motion will move the cursor further left-to-right than top-to-bottom. My previous laptop doesn't seem to behave that way (though it is using SideTrack...).

HD TV and HD DirectTiVo

2005-01-24T21:16:00.000-06:00

For the most part, I really like our HD, DirecTV TiVo. Most of the shows we (well, mostly I) watch from prime time television are available in HD, as we are able to receive all of the local stations' HD channels except for the WB's.

The WB station does have an HD channel, but it apparently is broadcasting at a pretty low power, and even though we live only about five miles from the broadcast tower, we can't get it. I actually found a picture of their signal strength graphed out on a map, and the lobes of strong signal radiate in the opposite direction from our house, leaving our area in basically a dead spot. The only show I follow on the WB is Smallville (which is available in HD), so I've learned to live with it after trying a number of different antennas and still not being able to get enough signal.

Also, the local UPN station, though it has a digital channel, is not yet broadcasting in HD, which means that I miss the HD version of Enterprise that is available in other markets.

Anyway, due to these missing HD channels, and some satellite channels that aren't available in HD like the Sci Fi Channel (where I watch the Stargate shows and now Battlestar Galactica), we have to record some programs in old-fashioned standard definition. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, and the HD TiVo is still a good way to record such shows because it provides the best picture on our Samsung DLP TV in the family room (unfortunately, however, it's not hooked up to the video distribution system like the ReplayTV and SD TiVo are so it can't be watched in other rooms in the house). The "problem" with all of the shows I've listed here, however, is that they are now broadcast in a wide screen, letterboxed format, even when they are viewed in standard definition.

This should be nice with our TV, which, as an HD set, has a wide aspect ratio. Unfortunately, however, neither the TiVo nor the TV allows an HD signal to be zoomed in upon. The result is that instead of seeing the program filling the screen, it gets black bars not only on the left and right (like normal SD content), but also on the top and bottom, so there's a big black box around the picture. That just won't do.

The alternatives I've found so far in order to avoid this problem work, but are less than ideal.

One approach that I take is to record the shows on the ReplayTV or SD TiVo in the basement and watch it that way. These devices are moduled on channels that are "broadcast" throughout the house, and I can tune into them on the family room's TV. However, due to the composite video connection to the modulator (and the composite nature of a modulated signal anyway), the video quality suffers this way, and using the zoom mode on the TV makes this particularly noticeable.

Another, trickier solution is to record the programs on the ReplayTV (we have a 4000 series, which can be accessed via our Ethernet network). Then I can use ReplaySix and CinemaSix, programs that run on our Roku HD1000 ("PhotoBridge"), to stream the show from the ReplayTV. This is nice because the output of the HD1000 is 720P, and CinemaSix is able to scale the video to that resolution while zooming in on the content. So this works nicely, but has a couple minor annoyances. First, finding material on the Replay can be tedious, as the UI of ReplaySix is pretty simple. Second, the skip ahead and back functions of CinemaSix are slow compared to the other DVRs (it is streaming MPEG2 across Ethernet, after all, where the DVRs have access to the data via a hard drive). Also, there isn't a good readout of the location in the show while you're watching it. And finally is just makes things that much more complicated, as I have to switch devices, use a different remote (I should really program the Roku into our Harmony remote).

Finally, because of the input we use on our Samsung TV, we can't see the TiVo if it's outputting to 480i, only 480p, 720p, or 1080i. With those inputs, the TV doesn't support zooming in on the image. We could hook the S-Video output of the DirecTiVo up to the TV as well, and tune to that input to watch this content. That should work, but it wouldn't look as good as the component output, and it would require us to change the TV input (and TiVo output) depending on what content we were watching. I may still do this eventually, but I also don't look forward to pulling out the TV and TiVo and fishing yet another cable through the tunnel between them.

Maybe a future software update to the HD TiVo will add the ability to zoom in on the image. Yeah, that'll happen (not). Oh well, if this is the kind of problem I have to complain about these days, then things must be going pretty well.

Mac mini keyboard "accessory" needed

2005-01-20T21:03:00.000-06:00

The Mac mini is a nice little computer. According to the tracking information I got, ours should be arriving tomorrow. I did, however, already get to play with one at the Macworld Expo last week, and its performance seemed pretty respectable (heck, its CPU is faster than the PowerBook I'm writing this on).

Anyway, I was reading a blurb about Walt Mossberg's review and noticed that he hooked his up to an HP keyboard. I've used Macs that have been attached to PC keyboards in the past, and it always throws me for a loop. In fact just today I was in Melissa's office trying to help with something on one of her Macs, and the PC keyboard connected to it stymied me. So when I read this article tonight, it reminded me of an idea I had after hearing about the mini last week.

Some enterprising third-party accessory provider (there are several already making add-ons for iPods and other Macs) should come out with a "Mac Keyboard Sticker Kit". The idea would be that it would contain a few stickers that would have Mac icons, like the Apple logo and Command key graphic (a clover leaf symbol), as well as the word "Option". These stickers should be produced using some means that would make sure the text was durable and would not wear off after repeated use. They could even include a few different sizes to handle a wider variety of keyboards, and they could include some versions with both PC and Mac text on them (i.e. both "Alt" and "Option", both the command symbol and the Windows key symbol, etc.) for users who are still using a PC (perhaps via a KVM).

Christmas

2004-12-27T18:00:00.000-06:00

I figure since I put this URL in the Christmas letter we sent out, I really should go and post something to it once in a while (or at least once)...

Well, we've survived another Christmas gathering done at our house. We had family of different combinations visiting (and staying overnight) from Thursday until Sunday. It was nice to see the family again, exchange gifts, and enjoy each other's company.

Also, the telecast of the Augsburg Advent Vespers service performance I was in early this month was aired a few times over the course of last week. It was a nicely-done compilation of several of the pieces we performed. It didn't quite have the same flow and continuity of the complete service, but when you condense a 1:30 event to fit in an hour-long TV program, it is necessary to leave out some elements. If you missed the broadcast, it's possible to order DVDs from the Augsburg music department. Information can be found here.

As for Christmas gifts, I received several nice ones. My wife got me a portrait grip for my Canon 20D SLR camera. The kids gave me a tripod. My in-laws gave me a cool device that can charge a car or pump up its tires and is portable and rechargeable (we've been using Al's, and I've been wanting one of our own). I also got some DVDs from my Amazon wish list, and so on.

HBlogger

2004-11-25T22:06:00.000-06:00

Turns out there's an app called HBlogger for the Palm that works as a blog posting client and purports to support image posting.

Let's try that image again:

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Picture mail

2004-11-25T19:11:00.000-06:00

This is mostly a test post. It is simultaneously testing posting via e-mail, posting from my cool new Treo 650, and including a photo from the phone.

Note that it's a holiday themed photo.

Update: the test was unsuccessful. Anyone know how to easily send a post to Blogger from a Treo with an attached photo? I'll have to do a bit of Googling...

First blog posting

2004-11-25T18:49:00.000-06:00

I know what you're thinking: "Just what the world needs. Another blog from some random person on the Internet which will probably last for all of a week and then never see another posting." Well, you're probably right.

But I've kept saying that I should start a blog sometime to post things that I think are interesting. Even if it's not useful to anyone else, it can at least act as a place for me to post things that I find interesting so that I can easily find them again later. Well, we'll see.