unwiredben

One of the first things people notice when they visit my house is my huge shelves of DVDs. I've collected quite a few since I bought my first disc back in 1999, and with my pending move to Brooklyn, I've got to get rid of a large number of them. I've got my collection divided into those I keep, those I put online for sale (mostly via my bencombee account on half.com), and those that aren't worth putting online because they don't fetch very much.  Right now, there's about 250 discs in that "don't fetch much" collection.

Here's where you come in.  If you live here in the Austin area and think you might want to pick up some discs, let me know via email or comments and I can setup an appointment for you to come over and graze.  I'm charging $1 a DVD or $10 for a dozen,  There's a lot of crap, but there are also a lot of good movies that just happen to be have really big print runs.  What I don't sell will probably be sold bulk to a place like Cheapo where you'd have to pay $5 for the same movie.

My taste in films favors a lot of comedies and indie films, with a smattering of action and sci-fi.  You've probably heard of a good chunk of what I've got for sale, and just think, you could own it for less than it costs to rent it from a chain video store.

I may make a list for online peeps, but not until my local friends get a chance to check things out.

This was annoying.  I'd noticed some feeds that I read weren't showing up as updated in NewsGator Online.  I checked the "My Feeds" page in my account settings, and I found a fairly large number of them marked as "error at source" or "not authenticating", with the system indicating that it hadn't checked them since mid-to-late May.  Fortunately, there's a "ping" button that lets you make the system go and check the feed again.  In some cases, I found that the feed location had changed without a redirect being provided.  In other cases, the system must have hit a server error and decided that the feed was stale.  I ended up deleting a few feeds, fixing the address of another ten feeds, and just refreshing the rest.  I hope the system's unclogged now.

If you use NewsGator or FeedDemon, you might want to check things too just to see if it's all OK.

If you're using the Google Photos Screensaver on Windows to view photos from an RSS feed, you may notice that it doesn't seem to update those feeds so you're always stuck with that's there when you first added it. There's no "Update" button in the settings either.

I found you can get it to refresh by deleting the screensaver's cache directory. This may be hidden from view in Windows Explorer if you don't have the "Show Hidden Files and Folders" option turned on. You can find it by looking in

C:\Documents and Settings\{Your User Name}\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\GBScreensaver

There's a folder called rsscache here. Just delete everything in that folder, and the next time the screen saver activates, it will download fresh content.

Occasionally, I'll find a page that just won't render well using the Treo's web browser, Blazer. Often, it will look OK, then when the CSS is applied at the end it will go all wonky. (I'm looking at you, Wikipedia!)

I've been following a mobile startup called Mowser for the last few months, and I found myself manually invoking their reflow engine from time to time to make pages more readable. I'd go to the Page Info, copy the URL to the clipboard, then add the Mowser prefix before it.

This afternoon, I realized I could automate this using a bookmarklet, a chunk of Javascript that lives in a bookmark. In Blazer, they don't work directly from the "Go to a URL" bar, but they do work if invoked from a bookmark, so I made one to "Mowserize" a page.

Here's how you can do this:

1. Open the Bookmarks view
2. Select a blank bookmark to bring up the edit screen.
3. Title the bookmark "Mowserize" or something similar.
4. For the URL, enter this text, replacing the original text:

   javascript:window.location.href="http://mowser.com/web/"+unescape(window.location);

If you've got that entered correctly, then when you hit a page that Blazer just handles poorly, you can just go to bookmarks, select this one, and get a nicely formatted version that works great in Blazer's Netfront-powered HTML engine.

scottbateman is a cartoonist and animator who is pretty active here on the LJ. I first got into him a couple of years ago when he was doing a lot of political cartoons, then I started following his Sketchbook of Shame postings and watching his experiment in daily Flash animation, the Bateman365 project. He even animated a voice recording I made for one of the 365 entries.

He's got a new self-published DVD out called "Scott Bateman: Re-animator" featuring about 30 different animations made in the last year. I got my disc in the mail today and watched a few this evening, and they looked and sounded very ncie. While you can watch them online, they're beautifully recreated at high resolution here, and you get a unique hand-drawn cover by Scott with the disc. I highly recommend getting one for yourself and maybe one to give to a special person by going to http://www.batemania.com/2007dvd.html. It's only $15. If you like "Flight of the Conchords", there's a great story about Andrea Rosen flubbing an audition for them, and another bit features the actress that plays Mel on the show animated as a tower-building and kitten-hating femme-bot. There's also a few cool Scottmanimated music videos on the disc, including one by Sarah Shannon, the former singer for Velocity Girl.

One of my favorite casual strategy games of the last few years is Oasis by Mind Control Games. It plays like a cross between Mine Sweeper, Civilization, and Tower Defense. You have to explore a small board, link together cities, figure out from where the barbarian attackers will arrive, find a glyph, and research new technology all with a limited number of moves. A single round lasts a few minutes, but the game links multiple rounds together to form a complete game session where you're trying to collect all of the Glyphs and make your desert civilization prosper.

I bring this up because I had it installed on my laptop, then when I updated to a newer Dell a few months ago, I wasn't able to run it anymore because of the DRM on the downloaded copy. I couldn't find my receipt or any registration info, so I assumed I'd be without. Then, at lunch today, I stopped by the local Big Lots! store looking for some shipping supplies, and I found several boxed copies for $6 each. I picked up one and it installed and worked without any problems.

I learned something new today about finding more efficient battery chargers and power supplies.  If you look at the label on your phone charger or laptop power pack, you'll see lots of regulatory symbols and certifications.  The fancy "CE" means it's been tested against the European Union's rules, while UL indicates Underwriter's Laboratory testing, and so forth.  One of the recently added marks is the wording "Efficiency Level" followed by a roman number in a circle.  My Dell laptop's power supply is a "III", while the supply for one of my newer devices was a "IV" (higher numbers mean better efficiency).  Most of the adapters I saw around here didn't have a marking, alas.

The new Energy Star standard for chargers is "V" which means that the energy used when it's plugged in but not actively charging is at least 35% less then the energy used when it's active.  Obviously, it's better to unplug or switch off the power supply, but these changes should make a difference, and the standards get equipment manufacturers thinking about ways to make devices more efficient.

Less geeky version: change your router password from blank, "admin", or "default" or your computer and network could get hacked.

More geeky:  Security researcher Bruce Schneier describes a newly discovered attack where malicious Javascript code on a webpage can change the settings on your home networking router.  These are commonly used with DSL or cable modems; I've got one on my home network, and most of my friends use one too.  I just read through the paper, and the attack is pretty clever, using image and script tags to find out information about your router and to send commands to it.  The takeaway from this is simple: make sure you change any default passwords on devices on your network to something else.  For companies that make routers, the lesson is that you need better security on your commands -- don't let them respond to HTTP GET requests and add a session token to the commands to authenticate requests as actually being originated from the router configuration forms.

Here's a useful tip that I just worked out. To make NewsGator Online appear in the list of online news readers that Firefox 2.0 supports with its RSS/Atom discovery, open a new tab and go to "about:config". Then, add the following new entries using Right Click/New/String

browser.contentHandlers.types.6.title:
NewsGator Online

browser.contentHandlers.types.6.type:
application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed

browser.contentHandlers.types.6.uri:
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=%s

You'll have to restart Firefox, but it will then appear in the Options panel under the Feeds tab, and in the preview feed tab if you use that setting. You might need to use a different number than 6 in the names if you have other feed extensions installed; just pick the next number that's available.

The Bateman365 DVD will be released soon; you can get details on pre-ordering it and see the list of clips on Scott's LiveJournal. Among the 69 clips chosen from Scott's year of animations is the classic "Ben Combee's Robots Are Go!" where I narrate a story about seeing robots in the grocery store as a kid. If that's not enough reason for you to pre-order the disc, you also can get your name in the credits of the Bateman365 movie by ordering it before Friday. Then, you'll be famous too!

My publisher let me know through a bulk email that my collectible and almost completely obsolete book "Palm OS Web Application Developer's Guide" is on special for $9 through August 31st.  It comes with an ancient CodeWarrior for Palm OS V8 demo CD as well hundreds of pages of screen shots and code listings from the old Palm VII, VIIx, and i705 devices.  Almost every detail in the book is no longer valid, as those devices haven't been made for several years and the software I talk about doesn't work on current devices.  There may be some useful info for designing for small screens and creating Palm OS application plugins, but that's about it.  Get them while they're stacked up in some warehouse taking space!

I had not intended on spending many hours of this weekend working on computer problems.  I thought I'd do some shopping, see a movie, go on walks, and do some reading.  However, on Friday during a lunchtime visit to Fry's, one of the specials caught my attention.  That led to two more trips to Fry's and hair-ripping frustration.  I think it's over now, but I wanted to document everything before heading to bed.


My fingers are crossed that I don't have any more problems with any of this equipment.  kazanya gets back on Tuesday night, and I don't want to be knee-deep in personal computer problems when I could be spending time with her. :)

Thanks to a tip from jessi_leigh, I've found a new love.  Specifically, I've found the handmade crafy items of http://mathilde.etsy.com/.  Plush screaming carrots.  Happy thundercloud pins.  Eight-legged tranvestites.  Big honkin' happy play knives.  Clever and vegan.  They're just brilliant, and the artist has her own crafting journal at parsnippity with more pictures of her creations.

Coming early Wednesday morning, about an hour after midnight: 01:02:03 04/05/06. Be sure to remember where you were so you can tell your children.

I diagnosed a problem with how my Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD digital video recorder (DVR) interacts with my TV and my DVD recorder over the weekend, and it needs to be documented in case other people see this.

The DVR talks to the TV over a HDCP cable. This is a new digital standard that carries both video and audio data and allows two-way communication between the set and the recorder. Part of this had the DVR authenticating that the set has the right encryption keys so that the bits aren't sent in the clear where they could be intercepted by someone wanting to "pirate" the material.

My DVR also has a S-Video output which I route over to my DVD recorder to record shows. It downsamples the content to standard video resolutions, but it doesn't downsample the original data, it does this processing on the frame buffer that's being sent across the HDCP connection.

I setup my recorder to dump out a 30 minute show, a Lisa Loeb performance that had run on HDNet. I started the record, checked the S-Video output, and everything looked great. A few days later, when I checked the DVD-R, I noticed that about three minutes into the dump, the screen had changed from the video to a "HDCP Copy Protection failure" message which persisted for the rest of the recording.

What happened? I turned off my TV. That prevented the TV from responding to the HDCP signal, so the DVR put up the failure message which then got sent over the S-Video connection to my recorder. Frown.

I can fix this in one of two ways: first, don't turn off my TV when I'm outputting programs. Second, use the "Copy to VCR" feature on the DVR to output the show, although that has other problems because you can't cancel it once it starts and you can't just output part of a program.

I finally finished up my taxes tonight and got them all printed out. However, when reviewing my itemized deductions list on schedule D, I noticed that I'd neglected to include the Texas state sales tax that I paid. The 2005 code allows deducting either state income tax or state sales tax, but when I ran through that part of TaxCut, I'd missed the interview question that would have allowed me to enter this information. There's a standard calculation for computing this deduction if you've not tracked your purchases, so I used that methodology and ended up with about $300 added to my refund.

Now, this is only useful if you're in a state with a high sales tax and low income tax. Texas qualifies; I think Tennessee and Florida also fall into this group. It's also only useful if you itemize, but I deduct my mortgage interest, so I'm already doing that. I've you've not yet filed and fit that profile, double check your return. You might find yourself paying less or getting more back.

The weather is really quite nice today, so I took a walk to Bear Creek for lunch (good soup, lackluster sandwich). On the way back, I noticed a bit of trash around the elementary school and in front of the condos, so after returning to my unit, I grabbed a kitchen bag from under the sink and spent a half hour doing garbage patrol, covering the perimeter of Brigadoon and the perimeter of the elementary school grounds.

Trash duty tells you a bit about the area where you're living. For the most part, it was small paper trash. I picked up a few aluminum cans, mostly discarded beers, and I found a six pack of little Sutter Home wine bottles by a fence. There were lots of straws along with some wrappers from fast food and snacks. Multiple dryer sheets that had probably blown away on garbage day.

The oddest thing I noticed was a run of coax cable coming out of the fence by one our our units, snaking along the ground, then going back through the fence a couple of units down. I'm not sure what they're sharing, but it didn't look like a professional job.

By the time I got home, the bag was about 1/3rd full. It was good to get some more walking in, and it certainly made me more observant about the area around my house. Maybe I'll take a bag with me the next time I walk out to lunch and do some more trash pickup along Amherst.

Combine a 52" widescreen television with iTunes streaming SomaFM's indie pop channel on my Mac Mini and the GasLight visualization plug-in running in 1280x720. Sit back and enjoy the shiny lights and pretty music.

Any recommendations for other iTunes visualizers that will properly scale for HDTVs? While I like the built-in visualizer, it forces the video mode to one of the 4:3 resolutions, so it won't do widescreen.

I'm a frequent customer at Fictionwise, my favorite online e-book store. They both sell complete books as well as shorter works. I love being about to play a dollar for a cool short story, and having plenty of reading material around on my Treo 650 has been really useful at times. Last fall, I let my paper subscriptions to Analog and Asimov's lapse, instead renewing them as e-subscriptions through Fictionwise. I don't get all the neat artwork or the ads, but they're so much easier to carry around and I don't lose my place if I'm reading while having lunch.

Each year, Fictionwise has done a promotion where most of the short fiction on the Nebula ballot has been available for free download from their site. They're doing it again for the 2006 nominees. Once you've added the books to your cart and checked out, they're available on your "bookshelf" for as long as you have your account, and can be downloaded in PDF format, as well as a bunch of formats for mobile devices. I usually use eReader Pro for reading on my Treo, although the software could use some adjustments to work better with the Treo's five-way navigation.

I've not been writing much lately. My job has been taking up most of my creative energy, with several long sessions with the laptop and the new couch since I returned from California. We're making good progress, but there are several deadlines coming in the near future and so many different things to juggle. I'm making an effort to manage the stress level, mainly through walks in the evening and working at different locations during the day, but I fear it will just keep going up as we get closer to ship time.

I'm really looking forward to this year's SXSW conference. Last year, I really enjoyed all three festivals; I hope to repeat that this year, seeing a good chunk of the sessions in the interactive fest, going to a bunch of films, and hearing some great music. It looks like I'll have a few friends to attend things with, and I'm also taking vacation so I won't have to worry about work while the festival is running (although I probably still will).

My reorganized kitchen has been the site of several experiments. I'm quite happy with my new-found talent at making refrigerator pickles, especially using the 3/$3 English cucumbers from Costco. I'm finding myself really enjoying the process of peeling vegetables. Less successful was my attempt to make tabouleh from a mix -- I found that the olive oil I used had been rancid for a while, so I had to throw everything out. In the middle was "veggie sausage helper", a ingredient mash-up that was slightly edible; however, it made for an interesting conversation with zen_elf which led to a much better and fresher recipe that I'll have to try out soon. I think I'll try some blender experiments this weekend, perhaps of the gazpacho variety.