Archive for August, 2007

After a few weeks with a PS3….

Published on August 31, 2007 in Gaming and Techno Geek. 1 Comment

…I like the system a lot and have only a couple of reservations. The hardware is great - really solid, the bluetooth stuff for peripherals works better than I expected it to, and the peripherals I’ve gotten for it (DVD remote and headset) both work well. On the software side, the UI on the thing is decent. I have reservations about how the file system works - over time I think it’s going to get too cluttered - but it’s very easy to work with and looks nice. On the game side, SuperStardustHD is literally almost worth the price of admission alone, ridiculous as that sounds. It’s a remake of an old Amiga game which I had heard of but never played, it cost me $10, and I’ve played more of it than anything else on the PS3. It’s best described as a mashup of Asteroids and Robotron 2084, with jaw dropping graphics, amazing physics, and sweat inducing fast paced shootemup action. I absolutely love it. The other games I have are either mediocre (several of the downloaded $10 ones) or decent but unexceptional (Resistance and Warhawk). The machine’s pretty good at online play and I’ve been giving that a lot of time as well. Resistance is great online and I can consistently find 40 player games to run around in. Warhawk just came out and there’s a bug in its server browser (it’s usually lying about how many players are in a server, so 9 times out of 10 you try to connect to a server that appears to have free slots and are booted with a ’server full’ message.), which is annoying, the more so because the game is a pretty cool battlefield-esque 32 player shooter that features ‘warhawks’ which can transform from jet to helicopter and are a blast to scoot around in.

For movie watching, the ps3 is great. As a DVD player it’s far superior to the dedicated Samsung DVD player I used to have in my stereo rack, and as a BlueRay player it’s equally great. Image and sound quality are both fantastic, there are tons of options for output for audio and video in terms of filtering, upscaling and so on, and the thing is MUCH faster than my older player in terms of getting to the point where a movie is playing and in terms of menu access to all the options. I actually use the PS3 as a video player more than anything else so far, and it caused me to sign up for a netflix account.

As an aside - BlueRay itself is superb, but only when the movies are well mastered. I watched Apocolypto and the quality was fantastic, but I also watched Goodfellas and there were issues. The image quality is so high that with Goodfellas, I could actually see the grain of the film stock and I actually think a fuzzier DVD looks better than Goodfellas did in BlueRay because of this issue.

My biggest concern about the machine remains software - there’s just not that much out there. That’s ok for now, I’ve got things that interest me between now and ~January, but I’m not sure how well I’ll be liking the machine in the gaming wasteland that usually starts in late February. Guess time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m pretty happy with my expensive toy.

MRI results - tendon tear

Published on August 30, 2007 in Health. 0 Comments

First, the MRI was not as unpleasant as I had expected. I had it last week. It took about 30 minutes, was mildly uncomfortable, and did not involve nasty injections or consumption of vile fluids. I can see how some folks could get claustrophobic in the thing but it didn’t bother me much. The biggest issue was how loud it was so close to my head, and the attendant’s request that I be as still as possible. Whenever someone says that, you know your nose/eyebrow/something is going to start itching, so most of the time I lay there wishing my nose wouldn’t itch and wishing it was all done.

The results showed that I have a tear in a tendon in my right shoulder and have to now go consult with an orthopedic specialist. This really wasn’t a surprise to me in that I’d google’d the heck out of this and was already pretty sure that’s what was wrong with me, it just took an expensive MRI to confirm it. The worse news is at least from my general practitioner’s point of view, I don’t have a great shot at being a candidate for surgery for the issue - once you get past 35 I guess your chances of healthy recovery from repairs of this nature is not great. I’ll remain optimistic until I talk to the specialist though. Who knows - I’m in great shape, take care of myself, and know how to be disciplined about exercise/physical therapy regimens when I need to, so maybe surgery remains on the table for someone like me. I should find out in a couple of weeks.

speedup utility for acrobat

Published on August 29, 2007 in Techno Geek. 0 Comments

So a day or two after I mentioned the slow bloat that is acrobat reader on windows, I notice this post over on downloadsquad.com, which links to this acrobat speedup utility. All this tool is actually doing is letting you control which plugins Acrobat loads when it launches, which is the source of most of its speed issues (cause, you know, I really don’t need a 3d renderer in my acrobat client, thanks!) and anyone with even a modicum of technical skill can do this for themselves by simply moving the plugins around in the filesystem, but if you want a tool to manage this or need something like this for your significant other/tech clueless friend/whatever, it works as advertised.

Dailylit - a nice change of pace for your day

Published on August 27, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

I’ve been reading a few paragraphs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World each day thanks to the novel service provided by dailylit, which will send you a small section of a book each day. You can choose whether to have it sent to your email address, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed. I’m a little surprised by how much I’ve been enjoying this. It provides a nice break in my RSS reader from what is otherwise a pretty dense collection of tech related feeds, and it only takes a few moments to read the segment I get each day. They have a decent selection of works available, including old stuff like Doyle and Verne, but also modern books from folks like Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Worth trying if you want something to break up your day and you can find something you’re interested in in their collection.

More evidence that I have the coolest dog ever

Published on August 27, 2007 in General. 2 Comments

I’m calling this one joie de vivre:

joie de vivre

Skitch invites for mac users

Published on August 27, 2007 in Techno Geek. 6 Comments

Usually when I have these to offer they’re for the PC, and Skitch is eventually coming to PC as well, but right now it’s mac only. It’s this great little photo editor/screen capture/ftp/ssh/dav/more client that’s integrated with the OS and with a variety of web tools. Grab a photo from anywhere - a screengrab of your machine, a jpg/gif/whatever, retouch it, then post it to your website/blogger/facebook/whatever. It sounds pretty geeky but it’s actually really well designed and extremely handy and well worth checking out.

I have 2 invites. Mac users, get your game on - first 2 to post in my comments get the invites, preference given to folks I know versus folks who find this via google (sorry, got to hook up the friends first). I’ll hand out the invites on Wednesday after folks have a chance to react.

Second phase of the project at my new(ish) job goes live

Published on August 24, 2007 in General and Techno Geek. 0 Comments

A website for every course and faculty member, consistent listing of curricular information across all departments, consistent terminology and navigation across all departments. Someone who doesn’t work in higher education would think these things are a given and would be surprised to discover they’re somewhat controversial in higher education. And yet they are. Despite this, after about 7 months of work we’ve managed to roll out the above and more as the second phase of the refashioning of my employer’s website.

This is the third school I’ve tried to do this for, the second I’ve succeeded at to some degree, and, depending on how you count, the 4th-6th time I’ve done it. It’s gone smoother this time than it has in the past, partly due to my years of experience, partly because I have more authority in my current position than I’ve had in the past and am able to push through some areas of resistance, and partly because I have a better collection of tools political, technical and human resource-wise than I’ve had in the past.

You can check out the top level of (most of) the new stuff in the areas of study section of the college’s site. There’s a lot more going on than what I mentioned above, but most of it’s locked away behind authentication systems. We’re working to displace the use of the college’s Learning Management System (LMS, we happen to use Blackboard) for a number of reasons, so there are a lot of features bundled into what we’ve done that are designed to assist instructors - things like integration of course materials from the library and the college’s streaming video system, the ability of faculty to easily create web content and post reserved readings, syllabi, course schedules and similar materials on their own, and support for most of the kinds of filetypes and applications they work with - from .doc to podcast to blogs, we’ve tried to support a ton of functionality. All of this is tucked into a framework of easily manageable access permissions, so that instructors, departmental coordinators and web assistants, students, librarians, staff, and others can all get at and be additive to the materials they need without impacting the other groups. A student can post a weblog entry that another student can read but not edit whilst the instructor can read em all and edit as they see fit, by way of example.

I gave myself a B-/C+ on the first phase of this project, and I’m giving myself a preliminary B+ this time around. So far the feedbacks been almost all positive, a shocker in the world of higher ed at least from my own experiences, and all that remains is for the en masse return of the faculty in a week. If I survive that the B+ stands.

One important note: I know our design sucks. I’m still working on that. As with the other schools I’ve worked at it’s a thorny political issue and it’s going to take some time to bring everyone along. In my defense we were able to get agreement on some incremental improvements to the college’s look and feel. Compare the new look to this, by way of illustration, but the real change will come by way of the fact that we’ve budgeted for and gotten political agreement on the college undergoing a true and comprehensive redesign process. At a guess it will be over a year before the website displays the fruits of that effort, but the process is starting.

Check it out if you’re interested. Next up are the college’s admission materials coupled with privileges for our applicant students, along with some integration of financial aid materials, lots more administrative departments moved over to the new system, and possibly the library, all likely going live in early April of 2008.

Cheap eyeglasses - risking my $20 so you don’t have to

Published on August 16, 2007 in Health. 5 Comments

So I experimented. I’d run across a few ‘optometrists are ripoff artists’ exposes over the last couple of years which talked about the huge markup on frames and how glasses should be cheap and accessible, not ridiculously expensive. My last pair of prescription glasses was a little over $400, which does seem ridiculous even though my insurance covered sit. So. I dug around and decided to try eyebuydirect.com. My optometrist had given me my prescription when I got my $400 pair, so I signed up for eyebuydirect, plugged in my prescription, accepted their default for the measurement between my pupils (the one fact the optometrist will not give you) and bought a $20 pair of glasses. The end result is: me in cheap frames - in other words, decent. I wouldn’t necessarily be seen out in public in these, but they’re perfect to take as a backup pair on camping trips, vacations, whatever. They’re also decent vision-wise. eyebuydirect.com makes a printout you can use to try and measure the distance between your pupils, and I suspect if I had done that they would be even better, but even as is they’re perfectly acceptable. Also I chose the cheapest everything when I purchased these - cheapest frames, no lense coatings, cheapest type of lense, etc - and had I spent more I would have gotten a pair I could feel comfortable wearing in public. They even carry name brand frames like donna karen and calvin klein, and the prices are still really low. eyebuydirect is not the only company trying this business model. Bottom line is, if you’re looking for a new pair of glasses, this is worth a try, especially if all you need is a backup pair.

If anyone knows how to score one of those devices used to measure the distance between pupils inexpensively, let me know. One device shared among friends could literally save us thousands of dollars a year. Not to suggest skipping one’s annual eye examination, but skipping the every couple of years $2-500 pair of glasses? Definitely.

And the health hits just keep on coming

Published on August 14, 2007 in Health. 4 Comments

So I had a Doctor’s appointment today, and ironically I woke up in the middle of the night tossing my cookies. Still, I went, after clearing my stomach of everything. In July I did a faceplant into the sand while body surfing, worst I have ever done in more than 20 years at Robert Moses, and it turns out that it created a cyst on the inside of my lower lip which I will have to have surgically removed. Meanwhile my shoulder is still screwed up so next week I have to get an MRI, and to top things off I’m having chest pain when I exercise, so today I had an EKG for the second time in my life. All was well with that so now they think it’s cartilage or tendon related in my chest.

If that’s not bad enough, I took Soolin for a walk and there was bright red blood in her poop. She seems to have caught the ‘dave is cursed to have oddball health troubles’ disease. I’m off to the vet this afternoon to get this looked into, here’s hoping all is well with that.

MA has a sales tax free weekend…

Published on August 13, 2007 in Techno Geek. 2 Comments

…and I buy a Playstation 3, against my better judgment. The tax free weekend saved me $30-40, and was the catalyst for me deciding to buy it this weekend, but the real reason I bought now was because Sony is phasing out PS3’s with hardware emulation built into the machine. I have over 100 PS2 games and a PS1 game collection that’s similarly large. The newer PS3 models, ushered in with the current 80GB + free copy of Motorstorm, use software based emulation which debuted with the European PS3 model, and there have been countless tales of inadequate emulation, crashing games, graphical glitches, etc.

Meanwhile what I really want is an XBOX 360, but MS has had a terrible reliability problem. Supposedly the models designed to address this finally rolled into retail this week, but based on past performance I’m going to play wait and see for a while. Plus they have a model coming soon with a smaller die (65nm) cpu that will be much cooler and hopefully quieter as well. Since heat is almost definitely the culprit in all the 360 hardware failures I’m waiting for that to come to market.

So…all that by way of explaining that I bought the PS3 with pretty low expectations. It’s been deservedly catching a beating in the press for its price and its lack of games. Have to say after spending a weekend with it that I’m pleasantly surprised. The hardware is great - nice design, good looking, and it feels like a solid piece of kit. Software wise, I assessed this before I bought it and here’s the thing  - it’s true there are a lot more games for the 360 than the PS3, but I only have so much time and can’t play them all anyway, so the question became, did the PS3 have enough games between now and Christmas to keep me interested. The answer was yes. I mapped out a game a month for now through December and there were more games than I was interested than I could handle buying.

There are also some pretty slick features on the PS3. It does DLNA networking so out of the box it saw my Windows-based picture and MP3 collection and could use them, and some twiddling later and Tversity running on my PC was streaming my video collection to the PS3 as well. It also has a built-in browser and online store with downloadable games, and one of them, Super Stardust HD, ended up eating most of my weekend.

So, first blush 72 hours later and I’m really liking the machine. I’ll post a bit later about the games I’ve been playing.

Corrupt memory card or lost files? Try Recuva

Published on August 9, 2007 in Techno Geek. 0 Comments

I noticed that the developers of CCleaner, the excellent windows system cleaner, have a new product, Recuva, that can recover accidentally deleted files from drive volumes in windows. As with CCleaner it’s free (donationware) and though I haven’t had a chance to test it thoroughly, based on CCleaner’s long track record of excellence I have more than a little faith in it. Free, small download, and worth a look.

Sumatra - svelte little freeware windows pdf reader

Published on August 9, 2007 in Techno Geek. 3 Comments

Sick of the bloat which is acrobat reader on windows? Give Sumatra a try. If all you need to do is occasionally read a pdf file and you’re tired of the sluggish bloat that is Adobe’s Acrobat Reader, it’s great.

Hard Knocks back on HBO wednesday nights

Published on August 7, 2007 in Movies-n-music. 0 Comments

Hard Knocks, the HBO series that follows an NFL team’s training camp, is back after a several year hiatus. This season they’re following the Kansas City Chiefs around. It’s a really great series if you’re an NFL fan or curious about the inner workings of professional sports. They covered the Cowboys and Ravens in previous seasons. I’m not sure why they dropped it for several years but I’m glad it’s back. Check it out, 10pm wednesdays starting the 8th of August.

I’m back

Published on August 7, 2007 in General. 2 Comments

Vacation was great, definitely one of the best AGCW’s to date. The weather was perfect, blue skies for the entire time, temps in the low 80’s up into the mid 90’s, and great sites about mid-way along Black Mountain Shore on Lake George. I’ll post pictures and more as I have time this week.

Off for my annual vacation

Published on August 1, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

My friends have been getting together annually to camp since 1985. I didn’t start going until the early 90’s, and I certainly haven’t made it every year, but I’ve been to a bunch at this point, and it’s that time of year again - AGCW 2007 commences today. I’ll be back Monday. In the interim, check out our ‘official’ website, or some of the photo galleries of previous years’ festivities: [2000], [2004], [2005], [2006], and imagine us enjoying ourselves.