Category: General

my mac mini media center

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

since i posted yesterday about my wonderful new over-the-air hdtv antenna, i thought people might be interested in what it’s hooked up to.

namely, my recently assembled mac mini media center.

first, the relevant equipment:

» a Philips 23PF5320 23-Inch Flat Panel Widescreen LCD TV, which i’ve had for a number of years. positives: it’s a great picture, it’s just the right size for our apartment, and it has a vga pc port. negatives: it’s older, it doesn’t have a digital tuner, and it only has dvi, not hdmi.

» a 1.83ghz core 2 duo mac mini with a combo drive, which we purchased recently. i chose to get a mac mini rather than an apple tv because i wanted to be able to watch internet video content (hulu, and the like). positives: came with leopard, just works perfectly with no hassle, no viruses to worry about. negatives: although it has a dvi port, it doesn’t play nice with the dvi port on the tv, so it’s hooked up via vga.

» elgato eyetv hybrid, which is both the digital tuner that the tv lacks, and a dvr to record shows. positives: perfect picture, easy to use software, easy installation. negatives: none.

» philips fr994 receiver, which i’ve had for i think 8 years or so. positives: new enough to have digital audio inputs, wide variety of other inputs, programmable display. negatives: so old that there’s no video inputs or controls, only audio.

i can’t tell you how perfectly all this works together. the hookups are: mac mini vga to tv vga port, mac mini audio out to digital port on receiver, elgato eyetv hybrid usb stick plugged into the back of the mac mini, antenna coax lead screwed into the hybrid. i get broadcast tv, dvr, and internet video all in 1080i hd and 5.1 surround sound, and the only monthly fee i have is the internet access from the cable company. i don’t care about cable channels, so i don’t pay for them and i don’t feel i’m missing out.

i’ve ripped all of my cds, so i don’t need to use the cd player anymore. everything’s in itunes on the mac. and if i did need to play a cd, i’d just stick it into the mac mini and play it. same with the dvd player. we have a vhs player/dvd recorder that we used to dub a lot of kirk’s old tapes, but there’s no need now. just stick the dvd into the mini and play it.

if i choose to get cable somewhere down the road, the hybrid can work with the cable channels, with or without a cable box.

at some point i may want to get an all-in-one remote like the logitech harmony one, but for now i’m good with the remote for the receiver + keyboard and mouse.

i think i’m covered on entertainment for the forseeable future.

unsolicited recommendation: antennasdirect.com

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

we (well, mostly me, because i’m the cheap one in the family) decided when we moved to riverdale to not get cable tv. we’d turned it off before moving from inwood, and had not missed it. a couple of months ago, we had a brief flirtation with getting basic cable tv channels (just broadcast channels), but then i thought, why pay for that when it comes over the air for free?

or so i thought. free is relative. the catch to this was finding an indoor antenna that would pick up the signals. it has to be indoor, because i don’t want to mess with getting my building to allow me to put an antenna on the roof. an outdoor antenna would get me signals with no problem, but that’s way too much trouble and expense.

time is money, and antennas aren’t free, and i spent a lot of time and money trying to find the right antenna. we live in riverdale, in the bronx, about 14 miles from the empire state building, from where the local stations broadcast their signal. and with all the tall buildings and such, it’s tricky to find the right indoor antenna. i tried the terk hdtva, and got nothing, zilch, nada, bupkus. i tried the rca ant525, and got some stations, but not others, and was constantly getting up to adjust the antenna.

i tried buying an antenna amplifier, but as i later learned, if the antenna isn’t getting a good signal, the amplifier can’t magically make it better. all it does is make your intermittent signal stronger, but still intermittent.

so then i called the folks at antennasdirect.com — their number is 877-825-5572. the very friendly, helpful, and informative agent (wish i had her name…) spent several minutes on the phone with me, asking me questions about my specific area and situation. she then recommended the clearstream 2, which she said should work for me just fine. if it didn’t, she said it would be no problem to return it, and there’s no restocking fee.

well, hot damn. the thing is amazing. i get every channel i could possibly get, at full strength (100% signal quality, nothing less than 85% signal strength), with no picture breakup or dropout. i put it by the window, on an old mike stand, and the thing is like a magnet for hdtv signals. i never have to move it ever to get a signal.

antennas direct designs their own antennas, and as far as i can tell they are doing a very good job of it. the best part is, the antenna is so good it doesn’t need an amplifier, which means that you don’t have to plug it in, like all the other ones i tried. so, it’s a green product on top of everything else.

awesome products + outstanding customer service = unsolicited recommendation.

obama’s veep

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

my dream person? al gore.

oddly enough for me, i think that i’d be happy with hillary clinton as well. i’ve calmed down a bit over the last few weeks, and she’d be a great attack dog, which for me is the best quality a vice-president can have.

i like joe biden a lot, so i’d be very happy with him as well.

the rest? i’d need to be convinced. i’m signed up for the text message, and i’m waiting for my cell phone to beep.

kristen hall sues sugarland

~ jamie ~ 5 Comments

from an associated press article a few days ago:

A founder of the country band Sugarland is suing the two current members of the popular group for $1.5 million.

According to a lawsuit filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Kristen Hall was to get a cut of the group’s profits even after she left in 2005 for a solo career. The lawsuit says Hall, who founded the band in 2002, has an agreement with Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush to equally share profits and losses.

Hall says in the lawsuit that she has been excluded from the group’s profits since she left.

this somehow seems un-kristen-like to me, but i suppose she’s entitled to the money if they promised it to her. does this mean that she should continue to share in profits only from work when she was with the band, or that she should get a share of the profit for work that sugarland did after she left? i can’t say that it makes sense to get money for work you haven’t performed, so to speak, but if that’s what they agreed on then give her the money.

i hope she has that in writing.

mccain unable to stay on message

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

even when the message itself is pretty idiotic:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday taunted Republican candidate John McCain for agreeing on the importance of keeping tires inflated as an energy-conservation measure after having joined the GOP in mocking the idea.

“It will be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain,” Obama said as he campaigned in Indiana with Sen. Evan Bayh, widely considered a top-tier candidate for running mate.

When asked about the air-pressure issue during an appearance Tuesday night, McCain said: “I agree with the American Automobile Association. We should all inflate our tires.” Obama had noted that keeping tires inflated and cars tuned was endorsed by both NASCAR and AAA and should be part of any comprehensive plan to reduce reliance on imported oil.

However, McCain had spent recent days ridiculing Obama’s remarks about tire pressure, telling a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D.: “My opponent doesn’t want to drill, he doesn’t want nuclear power, he wants you to inflate your tires.” The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, poked fun at the idea, sending reporters tire gauges with “Obama Energy Plan” emblazoned on the side.

his campaign staff must be ready to slit their throats. completely undercutting your message must do wonders for staff morale. i’ll bet the guy who spent long hours sourcing and distributing those tire gauges must be especially pleased.

obama talks up high speed rail

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amen to this:

“If you think about the Midwest, think about right here, what we’ve got is all kind of towns that we could connect,” Obama said. “All of these cities are, they basically take in the air about 45 minutes to an hour to fly.”

“But by the time you get to the airport,” Obama continued, “take off your shoes, get to the terminal, realize that your flight’s been delayed two hours, go pay $10 for a cup of coffee, and a sandwich for another $10, come back, you get on the plane, you’re sitting on the tarmac for another 25 minutes, you finally take off, you’re circling above the city for another half hour, when you land they can’t find your luggage, and then you get to where you’re going — by the time it’s all done it’s a five-hour trip! …So the time is right now for us to start thinking about high-speed rail as an alternative to air transportation, connecting all these cities and think about what a great project that would be in terms of rebuilding America.”

getting around europe is so much easier, because they have trains and a complete mass transit infrastructure. having given up my car, i can tell you that there’s nothing better than being able to get everywhere with someone else doing the driving. i hate it when i have to drive somewhere, such as when i visit my mom in florida.

let’s hope this is more than just campaign talk.

wake me up

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

…when john mccain breaks 44% in a national poll.

obama leads mccain 47% to 41% in this recent poll.

there have also been some polls that show mccain in the lead.

what do they all have in common? obama goes up and down, but i haven’t seen him go lower than 45% in any poll. mccain stays more steady, but never seems to break 44%. this tells me that there’s a significant chunk of people that lean toward obama, but haven’t solidly decided for him yet. if mccain’s percentage rises above 44% without a corresponding rise in the lead for obama, that means that those obama leaners are starting to break for mccain, which may be trouble. so i think 44% is the target to watch for. when he breaks that, everyone will need to take a hard look at what that means. until then, the polls can bounce around and it won’t mean much.

in my opinion. i’ll put the crystal ball away now.

my quirks

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

great post over at rands in repose, where he (and many others) list their superstitions/ocd quirks. lots of stuff in the post and in the comments, many of which i do myself. here are a few less obvious ones that i recognized in myself:

» volume levels on TV/stereo/etc must be even or divisible by 5

» I always wet the toothbrush before putting toothpaste on it.

» Even after I *know* I’ve put my keys into my bag, I must double-check that they’re there before closing car door or trunk

» I have to start walking with my left foot

and here are a few of my own:

» french fries are eaten in groups of three

» i smell a glass before putting liquid in

» check and recheck that the alarm is set, even though i always wake up and turn it off before it goes off

how many of them do you recognize in yourself? what are yours?

how not to be a douchebag tourist in nyc

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via digg, this guide to not pissing off the natives while visiting new york city, if you care about such things. ok, so the title is too provocative, and the author has waaaaay too much attitude. but for the most part, the tips are spot-on.

many people don’t care if they piss off the locals. that’s fine. just don’t expect much assistance, and do expect to get barked at, at a minimum. you know the saying, “when in rome…”? that’s good advice. kirk and i act differently in new york than we do in paris, say, or tampa. it’s good form to adapt to your surroundings, and pick up on local customs. it shows that you are sensitive about ethnocentrism. kirk and i have traveled in many cities that famously hate tourists, and we consistently have no bad experiences and are frequently mistaken for locals, or at least people don’t think we’re american. i think that’s a good thing. you may not think so. if you don’t, do me a favor.

stay home.

it’s fun to read the comments at the linked article, by the way. so many people miss the point entirely. you can tell who the travelers are, and who the new yorkers are.

cuil.com: not impressed so far

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via daring fireball and others, there’s apparently a challenger to google’s search supremacy.

i’d love for someone to get traction in this space — google is really difficult to work with. they have that same attitude that aol had years ago: we’re king, and you have to do things our way, and the customer is always wrong.

obviously, it’s an uphill climb.

i tried googling, er, cuiling myself yesterday and got no results for either “jamie howard” or “queerspace”. tried later in the day, and got a message saying that their servers were down.

great start.

i tried again today. i’m near the top in google results for “jamie howard”, and for “queerspace”. i used to be #1 everywhere, but i’m not complaining.

cuil?

i’m on the first page of results for “queerspace”. i’m nowhere to be found for “jamie howard”, at least not on the first few pages.

as the owner of jamiehoward.com, you’d think i’d figure in there somewhere.

maybe they will get better. the search results are certainly prettier, though i’d argue not necessarily better for some other things i searched.

good luck, cuil. hope you aren’t tilting at windmills. change has to start somewhere, and your timing is good.

petraeus for obama’s v.p.

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i feel like starting a rumor. or maybe just helping maureen dowd start one. from her column today regarding obama’s overseas trip:

The image of John McCain in a golf cart with Bush 41 in Kennebunkport — with Poppy charmingly admitting that they were “a little jealous” of all the Obama odyssey coverage — was not a good advertisement for the future, especially contrasted with the shots of Gen. David Petraeus and Obama smiling at each other companionably in a helicopter surveying Iraq. (Asked by a Democratic lawmaker a while back why there weren’t more Democrats in the military, General Petraeus smiled slyly and said “there are more than you think.”)

so could he be obama’s pick for vice-president? there’s probably a million reasons why this wouldn’t work, and won’t happen. but it would be a great checkmate to john mccain in a lot of ways.

vote for obama, who has the best graphics

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via ambinder, this is the poster advertising obama’s rally in berlin:

obama poster for berlin rally

is this not an absolute triumph of design? perhaps a little too perfect — it’s a bit scarily close to german and russian propaganda posters, and i’m not sure they want to reinforce the “obama as messiah” message, even if subliminally. i’m sure that will be a theme that the opposition uses when discussing this, and hopefully that meme won’t gain traction.

but purely from a design standpoint, it’s a total thing of beauty.

your tax dollars at work

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via time: brent rinehart is running for reelection as a county commissioner in oklahoma county. that’s in oklahoma. oklahoma city, to be exact.

why should you care?

you shouldn’t, except that he’s distributing the funniest, most over-the-top campaign literature you can imagine. it’s a comic book he wrote himself.

but richie rich or archie it ain’t.

from the associated press article on the subject:

Some Oklahoma County voters can expect to receive comic books in the mail soon, but the subject matter will have a serious tone.

The 16-page publication prepared by Commissioner Brent Rinehart’s re-election campaign lampoons gays and criticizes Rinehart’s political opponents. It also features an angel who supports the embattled commissioner and Satan, who supports his critics.

“It’s more or less a story of my experiences of the last four years of being the county commissioner of District 2,” Rinehart told The Oklahoman, which obtained the comic on Wednesday.

Toga-wearing gays, political figures, trench coat-clad henchmen, concerned residents and Rinehart make up the rest of the comic’s characters.

In one sequence,
Satan says: “If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal!”

The angel replies: “Hey Satan, not with Brent around you won’t!”

the comic book must be seen to be believed. it’s a must-read.

perhaps we should introduce mr. rinehart to larry craig or mark foley, two other crusaders on the evils of homosexuality.

i(phone) shoulda known better

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after all of the hype about the new iphone 2.0 software, and the app store, and all the goodies awaiting me, i went to work today having told kirk to update his iphone when itunes showed the update.

usually i’m pretty sensible about these things. if yesterday you had asked me what to do, i probably would have told you to wait to update. make sure everything is working properly. give it a day or two. but i got caught up in the hype. i figured that as important as this was to apple, and as much as they had advertised and flogged this new phone + new software, they would have their act together. i assumed that updating our original iphone to the new software would be seamless.

boy was i wrong. kirk sat all morning fiddling with this. the last email i got from him seemed to indicate that the phone was updated and activated, but still wouldn’t sync because itunes is still down. so i’d guess that he has a working phone, with no contact info etc. on it. which apparently is better than some people.

should i have obeyed my common sense and told kirk to wait? you bet.

should apple have hyped this new phone + new software to the moon and back, like they did? you bet.

should apple have been technically ready for this onslaught, the one they created? you bet.

will this be a non-issue tomorrow? i’d guess so. i certainly hope so.

look. it ain’t a pacemaker that we’re talking about. small children will not lose their lives because the iphones won’t update smoothly. but it irks me that, due to apple’s lack of preparation, kirk wasted the morning of his day off, and probably still hasn’t finished syncing the phone. lots of people are angry about this, and it’s because a) apple markets themselves as the easier technological alternative, which amplifies their missteps, and 2) people love their damn iphones and are pissed when they suddenly don’t work.

hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow, because he’s leaving for reading, pa for sunday and monday, and it would be nice if he had a working phone to take with him.

update: took my 2:00PM afternoon constitutional, which just happens to take me right past the action. at the at&t store at 54th & 6th, there was a security guard at the door letting people in a few at a time, and ~50 people in line. said security guard was getting yelled at by an extremely old man clutching an iphone who couldn’t connect to itunes. security guard nonplussed. at the flagship apple store on 58th and 5th, a few hundred people in line, stretching around the corner and down 58th by fao schwartz. calm and orderly — i think the store may have been closed to all but iphone shoppers, but i’m not sure about that.

update 2: kirk just called. from his fully functioning iphone. that has all the contacts and info loaded on it. perfectly normal. what’s the big frigging hullabaloo?

wall-e

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

more often than not (especially as i get older) my criteria for going to an actual movie theater to see a movie is: “is it something i must see on the big screen?”

“trumbo” the movie opened this past weekend. i saw the play several times, starting from workshop performances. kirk’s former boss at the westside is the director. and yet we’ve debated whether to go see it in a theater or wait for it to come out on dvd, because it’s a “netflix” movie.

on the other hand, i went to see “speed racer” in the theater. even paid extra to see it in imax. why? it’s something that you want to see writ large, on an enormous screen. the visuals are an attraction to me, and are often the defining factor.

the problem with that, as i forget each time i see a movie on that basis, is that the buzz only lasts so long; with some the buzz lasts longer than with others, but it always wanes. speed racer was stunning for the first fifteen minutes or so, and then i was completely inured to its visual charms. even the monkey couldn’t save the movie for me.

and i love monkeys. oh do i love monkeys.

which brings me to wall-e, which i saw last night. definitely a movie to see on a big screen.

but, for probably the first time ever, the buzz lasted for the whole movie. wall-e is an all-time classic movie if there ever was one. in retrospect, i think i now know what people felt at the turn of the last century, when they saw their first movie. it’s that arresting, that engaging, that challenging, and that different.

because there’s no dialogue for the first 1/3 of the movie or so, and large stretches of movie after that without dialogue as well, the filmmakers had to rely on the visuals to propel the story forward. wall-e the robot is buster keaton, directed by preston sturges. wall-e is gene kelly, directed by vincente minnelli. wall-e is marlon brando, directed by orson welles.

it’s easily in the top ten of movies i have seen thus far in my life. it’s that good. little did i know when i linked to the movie’s viral website months ago that i’d like it so much.

etcetera

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» versions of “gypsy” i have seen/heard prior to last night:

— the rosalind russell movie version
— the bette midler tv version
— the bernadette peters broadway version
— the ethel merman broadway cast recording
— the genesius theatre version in kirk’s boyhood home of reading, pa

kirk could add:

— the tyne daly broadway version
— the betty buckley and debbie gibson version at paper mill playhouse

i don’t think he saw angela lansbury as mama rose, but he can correct me if i’m wrong.

at any rate, to say we had “gypsy” burnout would be an understatement. we really didn’t want to see it this past spring at genesius, but kirk knew people in the cast and we had season tickets, so we went and it was good. even though patti lupone was getting raves in the latest broadway incarnation, we just decided to take a pass.

we were sung out, louise.

but then we saw the tonys, and she performed, and she won a tony, and boyd gaines won the tony as herbie, and laura benanti won the tony as louise, and they were all wonderful and we got chills and so forth, so we looked at each other and said “ok, get the tickets”. so we did, and got a decent deal, and went last night. house was packed — a good audience that we didn’t have to shush. amazingly, i think some of them were unfamiliar with the musical; there were lots of audible gasps when baby june took off at the end of act one.

we really enjoyed ourselves. the staging was good — there was a tattered proscenium onstage which symbolically lifted at the end, making it a “play within a play”. i especially loved the interplay between herbie and louise. the actors gave that relationship an added depth i’d never seen. june was alternately manically perky when “onstage” and bitterly cynical when “offstage” — great job. the most world-weary and ancient electra i’ve ever seen — hysterically funny.

and patti lupone was indeed a marvel. force of nature. complete presence. all the adjectives. two standing ovations — at the end of “rose’s turn” and at the end of the play.

even if you think you never want to see this warhorse (“gypsy”, not patti lupone!) on stage again, it’s worth the money.

» dinner before the show at bocca:

no silly, not the sandwich shop. the italian restaurant in gramercy. very nice experience. we had the prix fixe: for me, pomodori (fresh tomatoes, sliced onions, avocados, olive oil), trota (trout with roasted bell pepper salad and grilled potatoes), and frutta e zabaione (strawberries and bananas served with sabayon); for kirk, polpettine (veal meatballs served with melted truffle, pecorino cheese and veal jus), straccetti (pan seared oregano flavored shredded filet mignon served with roasted cherry tomatoes and wild rocket pesto), and the aforementioned frutta e zabaione. i had a glass of white, he had a glass of red. espresso after dessert (please don’t have your coffee with your dessert, says the food snob. so tacky!) we skipped the bread in deference to kirk, but it looked great from across the room.

everything was incredibly delicious because they did a great job of the one thing i love to see in restaurant food — each dish was just a few extremely high quality ingredients chosen and combined simply and well. not fussy, not cluttered, very clean yet surprisingly complex. good job.

they have a nice drinks menu as well and seem to get an after-work one-drink crowd; kirk started with a really yummy basil-infused gimlet.

total bill with tax and tip was $145 — a splurge for us but worth it.

» weekend update:

we’re going to reading for the second weekend in a row.

last weekend we went, borrowed kirk’s father’s truck and went camping at hickory run state park. we’d planned to hike a lot and be all active, but we lucked into choosing one of only eight campsites that were on the park’s babbling brook (out of 300+ campsites; what were the odds?). so we sat by said babbling brook and read, thursday through saturday. left early saturday afternoon due to impending thunderstorms and saw a production of “the women” in ephrata, pennsylvania. very fun.

this weekend, we’re taking an old steam train with kirk’s parents. it runs from somewhere to jim thorpe, pennsylvania and basically takes the whole day doing it. sounds like a relaxing time — looking forward to it.

next weekend, kirk makes the third consecutive trip to reading for sweeney todd auditions. i think my reading visit streak will end at two.