So, I’m off. Apart from the first week in Paris with my family, all I have booked is three nights in a hostel in Amsterdam, and eventually a flight from Prague back to Paris to catch a flight home. Lots of people have given me suggestions (thanks!) but I haven’t had time to research any of it. So I printed out a lot of it and I’ll figure out the rest along the way.
Be good while I’m gone. I’ll be blogging here and there in the meantime.
I gave up on trying to find/install a self-hosted solution to posting photos from my camera phone, so I just installed a Flickr badge, and I’m gonna post my photos there. The badge is on the right where the old mobile photos thing used to be. I guess you’ll need a Flickr account to post comments, sorry.
If all goes well, I’ll be sending pictures during the trip to Europe, so watch that space. Perhaps I will get some especially good shots of all the protesting going on in France.
Well, I was going to write a big, long entry about how I’m making a major change in my life, and what it means, and how exciting it is, but…screw it. I quit my job - Friday was my last day. I’m going to spend the summer working on a couple of ideas that will hopefully turn into real businesses, and consulting here and there.
Yes, it’s pretty exciting, and it’s scary, too. This is a seed that was planted a few years ago, but I never really felt comfortable trying to make the jump. I really feel that now is the time, and it feels right. We shall see - I’ll re-evaluate things six months from now.
Also: I’m going to Europe for three weeks, starting on Thursday. More on that later, as I have not yet really planned anything.
Last night, I went with Hinojosa to see dEUS perform at the Troubadour. They’re a band from Belgium that Steve turned me on to when I visited him in North Carolina back in 2004. He gave me a copy of In a Bar Under the Sea and said it was a great album, but the band had broken up. But last year, they got back together last year, recorded a new album, and are now touring.
The show was pretty rad - they started off a bit slow, but started rocking out after the 2nd or 3rd song. The audience was full of Euro fools, I think - it seemed like me and Matt were the only Americans in the joint. At one point, the singer asked, “So….are there any Americans in the audience?” and the response was quiet.
Once in awhile, I hear a lyric that sticks with me. From dEUS, it’s the opening of Fell Off The Floor Man:
“You gotta be your own dog…don’t let nobody put a leash on you.”
And speaking of being your own dog…I’ve got some pretty big changes in my life coming. Will blog about it at some point soon.
I managed to pull this off yesterday, taking a show I had recorded in MPEG2 transport stream format and burning a DVD of it. Notes for when I need to do it next time:
The original file was 1280×720, HDTV2DVD downscaled it to 720×480. The final output looked a little washed out on the 50″ HDTV we have here (compared to just watching regular cable, which is weird), and it looks like the edges got cut off a little, but it looked pretty decent overall, and when played back on a standard definition TV, it looked fantastic. DVD-R was playable in my Xbox 360 and my hamshack DVD player.
The washed out part is a little weird, since everything’s supposed to be digital, but I guess it’s the conversion the smaller size that did it. Investigate at a later time. Also investigate conversion and burning in Linux.
This morning I opened the fridge to find out I put the cereal in there by accident. At least I didn’t put the milk in the cupboard. Suffice to say, I am looking forward to some R&R.
Supercomputer is now able to record over-the-air HDTV thanks to the pchdtv HD-3000 card and the Zenith Silver Sensor antenna. It was a total pain in the butt trying to get it to work, but thanks to somebody on the mythtv-users mailing list, and my Linux-head co-worker, it’s rolling.
Observations:
So, mission accomplished. The next steps are to try to solve some of the stuttering/load issues, fix some occasional crashes when watching the live HDTV stream, put the components in some kind of HTPC case. Unfortunately the case I want isn’t available yet, so I’ll have to wait for another month or so.
Went to the gym for the first time today, and got worked out by Toby. Man, I’m sore as hell. Things like taking out the trash are really painful. I’m told it’s going to be even worse tomorrow.
Still - working out left me in a good mood. Haven’t been in a good mood in awhile, so I’ll take the soreness.
Supercomputer (aka the MythTV box) has been running for two weeks now, and everything’s groovy. I hooked up dynamic DNS so that I can access the Web interface from wherever there’s Internet access, and I’ve been taping lots of stuff with no problems. Also, I haven’t had to reboot the machine at all, so I guess Linux is indeed as solid as they say. Supercomputer is feeling more like an appliance than a PC that needs to be constantly nurtured.
It’s time to move on to the next stage: trying to capture over-the-air (OTA) HDTV. I ordered a pcHDTV HD-3000 card - it should be here next week. The requirement for the antenna is that it has to be an indoor one, and it has to sit on top of my TV - I’m not going to bother installing an external antenna, and I’m not going to bother trying to run cable all over the place to get the antenna closer to the window. From what I read, the Zenith Silver Sensor is the one to get, since apparently all of the HDTV towers in Los Angeles are located in one place. Went to Fry’s today but the only ones they had were in beat up boxes. If I can’t find it anywhere else locally, I guess I’ll just bust one of those.