Post Tales?

just trying this out, you can ignore it.

In Hollywood tonight

Sham Art Show at the WOW Store front

We're rolling out a new flash player for WOW TV. There's a whole lot of video to convert, but it's not too shabby.

iPhone

I'm posting from my iPhone. So far the thing is pretty amazing. Haven't used the edge network yet but wifi is smooth. Already typing with two thumbs and the predictive keyboard seems to work really well. My only complaint is with the safari URL entry.you have to delete the old URL before you can enter a knew one. Without being able to select text its a little slow. [update] I'm an idiot, there's an X that clears out the url.

My other complaint is with the at&t purchasing experience. They made everyone buy extras (a charger, a case) in order to get the phone. If you refused to buy the extras they said the would send you a phone in 3 to 4 days. Seemed sketchy to me (and a few others). I'm going to try and return the extras tomorrow. If they don't take them back it's complaint time.

The Lotus

After only 7 days I've made my first modification to the car. Yesterday I installed a JVC KD-NX5000 stereo / navigation unit. It's 1 DIN so it fits into the stock opening and using a Passat wiring harness, the install took about 30 minutes. Most of that time was spent fishing the cable for the GPS antenna behind the dash. It also took me another 30 minutes to solder all the connections to the wiring harness. I could have just used connectors, but I wanted to be secure.

I also installed the JVC iPod adaptor and have the my iPod mounted inside the dash. The Elise has a small panel on the right side of the dash that hides a little space where you can fit the iPod adaptor box and the iPod itself. You need to remove two screws to get in there, so removing the iPod isn't easy. But since I really only use the iPod in the car (use a shuffle while walking around), it's perfect for me. This way I don't have to worry about removing the iPod every time I park.

I still need to do a little tweaking. The RF cable for the GPS antenna broke when I was fishing it, so right now it's just hand wrapped. It needs to be secured better. Also, it's really tight behind the head unit, so getting the cables all in was hard. I need to work on it a little more, the head unit sticks out about a half inch too far. I'll take care of those two issues next week, but in the meantime I'm really enjoying the car.

I meant to take pictures of the install, but I ended up doing it on Friday and didn't have my camera on me.

Haven't had a chance to put too many miles on it yet, but tomorrow I'm going to drive north a few hours along the coast. Should be a few hundred miles. I need to get to the 1000 mile service before the first week in May, when I'm driving to Chicago.

A new toy

Picked up my new toy today. Just a few quick pictures.

Oh, the joys of TV

I've had an interesting week when it comes to my TV. On Friday, the construction crew working on that building outside my balcony built another floor. Turns out that it blocks my Direct TV dish. It's perfectly aligned, brilliant really. Since my building only allows you to install a dish on your balcony, not the roof, I no longer have Direct TV service.

Joy.

So I make a call to Time Warner Cable, which just happens to be the only cable company offering service in LA since they bought out Comcast and Adelphia in August. You have to love it when a utility company doesn't have competition, the service gets so good!

Since I already have Comcast Time Warner cable for my internet it was pretty easy to add new service. The tricky part was getting them to give me two Cable Cards, not two cable boxes which they were so kind to tell me I must have in order to get all their great PPV offerings. Great, but I want Cable Cards, and yes, it does in fact work with HBO and HD.

An appointment was made for Tuesday between 10 and 12. At 11:58 on Tuesday the installer shows up. He has never installed cable cards before and it took me a while to explain that they do, in fact, go in the TiVo*.

Before he puts them in, he hits the power switch on my surge protector. With everything being on.

Joy.

Once the cards are in, he calls in the numbers to activate them. He does a quick scan of the channels and promptly leaves. When he's gone, I start to enter my favorite shows, blah blah, and I notice that I'm getting grey screens for almost all the channels.

I place a call to Time Warner support and they inform me that there is an outage in my area. I try to explain that I'm getting all the basic channels and I'm getting internet, but I'm informed that it's just an outage. At this point I really need to go back to work, so I give up.

Joy.

When I get home, I call again. This time I'm informed that it is something wrong with my Tivo. I try and explain that the Tivo is fine. That the real problem is that the cable cards were not activated. That's why I get all the basic channels but none of the encrypted digital channels. Heck, it even says so on the Cable Card menu. No luck. So I get off the phone and call again. This time the person agrees that the problem is not with the Tivo, but insists that they need to send a technician out to activate the cards. No matter how hard I try and can't seem to convince them that, no, cable cards are activated from the office, not the home. An appointment is made for Friday.

Joy.

I thought about waiting till Friday, but I just couldn't do it. I caved and called again. This time I got a technician who actually knew what a cable card is. He also knew that something was wrong on their end. Ten minutes later, my Tivo was getting all the channels in HD glory, including HBO.

Actual Joy.

*On Sunday I went out and bought a Tivo Series 3 because there was no way in hell I was using that piece of shit Motorola DVR again. I love it.

Technorati Tags: Comcast, DirectTV, HD, tivo

A new computer

My dual 867 G4 has been good to me for the last 4 years, but it's due for a replacement. I wanted a new Mac Pro, but with new monitors it pushed past my budget just a tad. And there's no way I'm going to keep my two 22" CRTs after having a couple Apple cinema displays at work. Those LCDs are just too nice.

So today I bought a brand new Intel 24" iMac. This should be a pretty big jump forward in speed, so I think it will make me happy. I'm going to try and use it without a second monitor and see how I do. I don't do that much at home, work is where I push the limit, so I think I should be fine. Will miss not having to move any windows around though.

Here's hoping it doesn't take the estimated two weeks to arrive.

Technorati Tags: apple, imac

Recompression

See, I'm working on this project that just happens to involve a TON of video. We're talking countless hours of video here. I'm plowing through it, got Compressor working it's tail off on 7 different systems*. For reasons that should be obvious, all the compression settings are iPod compatible, which isn't as high a quality as I would prefer, but iPod support is more important.

So what does Apple do right as I'm about to finish? They release an update for video iPods that supports much higher quality video. Ugh, good yes, but now I have to redo a lot of work. I've been looking at Compressor nonstop for weeks now and I thought I was nearing the end...time to dig in.

With that said, I watched a WOW project compressed at 640 x 480 h.264 1100kbps on my 42in plasma, and it looked pretty damn good. It's not broadcast quality, but it's more then watch-able. Tomorrow I'll try it at 1500kbps. Should almost be as good as my Direct TV at that rate.

P.S. I really need a new computer, this dual 867 G4 has a hard time playing these files. Not to mention my 60gig hard drive.

*We did have a cluster setup, but Compressor 2.1 has a bug in it that removes the audio from video compressed using the H.264 iPod setting. They released Compressor 2.3 today, so we'll try that again.

Technorati Tags: apple, DirectTV, ipod, world of wonder, wow tv, wowtv

Just a Few Updates

I've been missing in action for awhile now, so I thought I would make a quick update.

WOW has a few shows on the air right now or starting soon:

Million Dollar Listing on Bravo

TransGeneration on Sundance

Generation Boom on TV Land

WOW TV is coming along nicely and should be launching this month if all goes well. The blog has started, but there's not much there yet.

I was on Ring My Bell a few weeks ago. I was drunk.

The building out my window is up to it's second story. Sorry, now pick because I lost the charger for my digital camera. I need to buy a DSLR anyway...

Technorati Tags: bravo, tv land, sundance, ring my bell, world of wonder, wow tv, wowtv