A Qik video from boardgaming last night
I use the “Qik” iPhone application last night on my jailbroken iPhone to stream some live video to the ‘Net. You can see all my awesome videos over at qik.com/rae.Ow
I did something to my leg. No idea how. Maybe the long-ish bike rider over the weekend? Whatever the reason, it’s now hard to walk. I may have to take time off work to let it heal, or something. Sat around all weekend at Tony’s cottage up near Minden feeling about as useful as a doorstop. Managed to get 2/3 of the way through “The Bourne Identity” though. The book is very different from the movie. And still good! I was amazed that I actually managed to get an EDGE internet connection up there. Ronnie starts D&D camp at the ROM today. He’s loaded to bear with his Warcraft III Monster Manual and bag o’ dice (my bag o’ dice, actually).David at Bat in Wasaga
“Southland Tales”
Iron Man
Posted by rae in entertainment
at 12:52 am on Wednesday, 7 May 2008
I went to see Iron Man on Thursday, the day before the erstwhile opening day.
With me were Andy, Jeff K and Craig.
Overall, it was quite a fun movie, which required the usual comic-book suspension of disbelief.
A quick explanation of why Tony Stark was able to ignore inertia would have been nice.
“Engage inertial dampeners” would have sufficed.
Definitely recommended.
I certainly enjoyed it enough to go see it again on Saturday with Luisa and Ronnie.
(Ronnie had piano practice on Thursday night)
at 12:52 am on Wednesday, 7 May 2008
This year’s April Fools
Posted by rae in entertainment
at 11:43 am on Tuesday, 1 April 2008
at 11:43 am on Tuesday, 1 April 2008
- Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars
- YouTube changes all “Featured Videos” into RickRolls
- xkcd goes to the wrong comic
- GMail Custom Time
CBC distributes “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” via torrent
Wow, not only did the CBC
use BitTorrent to distribute the show,
they also encoded it as a 545 MB, 720×486 Xvid AVI (as well as a smaller, 320×240 MPEG4 version for iPods).
I was half-expecting wmv or QuickTime…
And to top it all off, they put the torrent file up on Mininova!
How cool is that?
Apple TV Hacking: success!
Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, hardware, homeowner, software
at 2:11 am on Tuesday, 25 March 2008
at 2:11 am on Tuesday, 25 March 2008
I managed to get ssh working at last.
And then I tried to
enable USB storage,
but that was a mistake.
I thought it meant I could plug in a USB drive and the Apple TV would play content off of it.
But no, it meant rebuilding the kernel so that any USB drive plugged in to the Apple TV would have its main disk copied to it.
The idea is that this external, much larger disk will be the new boot volume.
But that’s not what I wanted at all.
So the Apple TV got stuck, so .. I reset to factory settings (that’s a brilliant option, btw).
So, I know I can do it now.
The scripts “out there” are pretty rough and tumble.
I’m thinking I may create a Mac OS X 10.4.9 partition on my Mac Pro, just so that I can copy over all the missing frameworks and libraries so that I can get things like wget to work..
Apple TV
I just popped out to the
Apple Store in the Eaton Centre
and bought myself an
Apple TV (take two).
I got the smaller model since Apple charges over $100 for 120 GB more storage.
For $143 I can get a 210 GB more storage
from Canada Computers.
Many thanks to Iain, who pointed me at
appletvhacks.net.
It needs to be hacked, to add support for other codecs like DivX, XviD, and mkv (Merikovian? Merovincian?)
Rogers ‘unlimited’ cellphone plans rake in the dough
Posted by rae in entertainment
at 2:53 am on Tuesday, 12 February 2008
(with apologies to CBC News )
at 2:53 am on Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Toronto-based Rogers, Canada’s largest cellphone provider, quietly announced a plan last week that would allow “unlimited” internet browsing on certain cellphones for $7 a month. The company also introduced a “Communicate Suckage” pack for $20 that bundles the browsing with text messaging, voice mail and call display features. Rogers spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton said the prices reflect the changing state of the gullability of cellphone users. “We’re in the business of financially raping customers for trivial functionality. As subscribers grow, as applications actually do something, we can really rip customers a new one,” she said. “We’re finding new ways of gouging them all the time.” Both plans allow customers to browse whatever websites they want on their mobile phones, .. except for really good ones, which aren’t approved by Rogers, like Google Maps. The plans also do not apply to anything with a CPU in it, and do not cover e-mail, since Rogers wants to introduce another $20 “E-mail Suckage” plan for that. Rogers really, really hopes that customers don’t read the fine print and try using their cell phone as a modem, so they get raked over the coals with per-kilobyte charges. Critics said the plans were Rogers’ latest attempt to confuse customers, this time by misrepresenting the word “unlimited.” “What appears to be a good deal on the surface is actually complete shit,” wrote Marc Lostracco, assistant editor of the Torontoist website. “Customers need to remember that a company calling something ‘unlimited’ is obviously out to get you.” Hamilton disputed the criticism and said the plans fit the uses that Rogers allows. “It’s actually an excellent cash cow,” she said.