September 11th, 2009
About a year and a half ago I “cleaned up” the morass of cables living behind my entertainment center. Of course I wound up with some signal cables too close to some AC lines, and since I’ve had a beautiful criss-cross interference pattern on my television when I select the DVD player on the pre-amp. Somehow, the natural beauty created by the current induced on our existing s-video cable is completely lost on the other members of my family. I don’t know why… I mean you can almost use the DVD menu system!
At any rate, I purchased this s-video cable since it was marketed as “quad-shielded”:
and it made no difference whatsoever… This is a very well-made cable – I highly recommend it if you actually need an s-video cable! That wasn’t my problem, however.
I spent some more time crawling around behind my entertainment center. I swapped more cables, tried different inputs on the television, different outputs on the DVD player, removed my pre-amp from the equation, and then finally tried an entirely different television connected directly to the DVD player. The problem is, of course, the DVD player – it just adds the pattern to its own output. It’s always the last place you look…
So I ordered this DVD player:
It’ll be useful in the household for quite a while, I think. It up-converts and has HDMI outputs, so any new televisions will connect without issue. Of course my current set-up is not HDMI-enabled, and I was determined not to turn an $11 cable problem into $4000 of television and A/V receiver. Alas, the final factor in picking this model was that it has both s-video and SP/DIF outputs!
Take a look around for recent DVD players that support s-video. No really, I’ll wait… Not so easy, huh? You’d think that it would be a no-brainer to have the plug on the back, since the signals are already available inside the device. Most current DVD players have HDMI, component, and composite – but no s-video. Well, I can’t video-switch component, there is no HDMI on the television (or anywhere else for that matter), and composite is soooo 1956. Decision made.
After placing the order, I found a fairly complete list of features at CyberTheater, as well as an good explanation of the XDE technology at current.com.
Tags: cable, dvd player, review, s video cable, s-video, television, theater, toshiba, video, video connectivity, xde600
Posted in Reviews | No Comments »
September 10th, 2009
Apparently, the POTUS thinks that American Citizens are incapable of listening to and analyzing the few thousand words of his address on healthcare reform… Never mind that he still doesn’t understand that he is the president of a Constitutional Republic, citing our nation as “…the most advanced democracy on Earth…that allows such hardships for millions of its people.” Well, that’s technically true (the hardship part) – but other nations allow completely different hardships.
It’s pretty clear that government health care is all about consilidation of power. Now they want to remove the most fundamental vestiges of liberty, i.e., health and security of my person. All under the subterfuge of providing for the “less fortunate”. Whatever…
Quincy over at The Liberty Papers has written a line-by-line analysis of a portion of the address. Definitely worth a read:
Tags: barack obama, Government, government healthcare, health care, healthcare reform, potus
Posted in Government | No Comments »
September 8th, 2009
There is a sphere of meta-web technology surrounding weblogs. I mean, there’s entire protocols devoted to making these things talk to each other, increasing the connected-ness of the web – we’ve truly created a blogosphere. I’m not sure that I think about that…
However, my unflagging interest in technology requires that I learn more about how these things work. The site www.optiniche.com that has an excellent post on trackbacks in general – probably the best simple explanation I’ve seen. There’s another page that has a pretty good HOWTO at tamba2.org.uk. There is a more complete Guide to Wordpress Pingbacks and Trackbacks at the Untwisted Vortex site.
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
September 4th, 2009
We own an AT&T cordless phone that supports multiple handsets. It’s pretty old and the batteries are almost shot. I’ve had days where I’ve gone through three of the handsets on different conference calls and then had to switch to my cell for the next one. Not so nice.
I opened up one of the handsets, and luckily they just use rechargeable AA batteries! Then I vaguely remembered that fact being important to me when I bought the phone in 2004, but it wasn’t in my cache so I was pleasantly surprised. So I bought these batteries:
which I’ve been using for about a week now. No more switching handsets! These batteries last all day, which saves me about as much time per day as it took to write this review… 
Tags: battery, cordless phone, rechargeable, review
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September 3rd, 2009
So I added an “application” to my linkedin profile. Allegedly, it re-publishes posts form my Wordpress blog if they have a linkedin tag. We’ll see if this post show up!
Tags: linkedin
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
August 10th, 2009
I came home from working out of town last week to a loud hum emanating from the speakers in our living room. Did I mention that it was loud? It was loud!
So I spent a few hours trying to trace it down, spending most of that time crying because now is not the time for a new pre-amp or amplifier — we’d just have to sit in silence (well near a hum). Luckily, it was the idiots at the cable company! I unplug the cable from the wall and the silence is golden! I can hear the fans form the computer in the other room (which is an entirely different problem)!
After several phone calls, the cable company assured me that nothing had changed in the cable plant in my neighborhood. There were, of course, unable to explain the presence of one of their truck in the neighborhood as I was leaving on my trip — but clearly they think I am an idiot for trying to hold them to a reasonable level of service… I guess they’re named COX for a reason!
So I ordered this isolation transformer from Amazon, installed it, and my problems seem to be gone! I’ve still got excellent picture quality and signal strength, but the nasty ground loop no longer makes it painful to sit in that room.
Tags: cable, filter, review, stereo, theater, video
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July 17th, 2009
Hey, so I’ve finally ditched the horrible rPath appliance for Wordpress! Every third-party virtual appliance I’ve tried has fallen short. For example, there was no good way to upgrade any of the non-OS components of the Wordpress appliance.
My informal survey of friends that have used virtual appliances indicates that most groups creating these appliances just don’t understand system lifecycles — that’s just disappointing.
Tags: blog, wordpress
Posted in Miscellany | No Comments »
August 19th, 2008
Well, we’ll see how this works.
Tags: blog, iphone, wordpress
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
August 15th, 2008
This is a test post so i can divine the post type in the database
Apparently there’s no good/easy uprade path from wordpress 2.0.something to whatever version this is… so I’ve been hacking on the database for a few hours. Almost there, though I haven’t copied over any images or custom CSS. Maybe this weekend.
Tags: blog
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
July 27th, 2007
This is a copy of the response I received from the TSA about my complaint.
Thank you for your e-mail.
The Transportation Security Administration’s current security screening procedures require all carry-on luggage and accessible property be screened before passengers take them onboard an aircraft. Regardless of whether an item is on the prohibited or permitted items list, the Transportation Security Officers (TSO’s) have discretion to prohibit an individual from carrying an item through the screening checkpoint or onboard an aircraft if the item poses a security threat.
Therefore, TSA security screening personnel make the final decision on whether to permit items like a Tide pen into the sterile area of the airport. Should you need additional assistance, feel free to contact us at toll free 866-289-9673.
Please visit our website at www.tsa.gov (http://www.tsa.gov/) for additional information about TSA. We continue to add new information and encourage you to check the website frequently for updated information.
We hope this information is helpful.
TSA Contact Center
Tags: idiocy, security screening, tide, transportation security administration, tsa
Posted in Government | No Comments »
