Guess who is going to be at the Coolidge Corner Theater on May 11th? None other than Mr. John Waters! He is doing a stand up act and also screening the new Director’s Cut of Female Trouble… I couldn’t afford the \$75 Meet & Greet tickets, but it should be a fun time just hearing him doing comedy… :)
I bought a copy of the Brain in the Wire box set from Jon Whitney the other day, and it certainly is wonderful… One of the better comps I have listened to… Fortunately I picked it up at it’s preorder price, it is selling for something like \$40 now…
Awhile ago I ordered ER-20 HI-FI earplugs from Etymotic Research. Those earplugs made such an impression on me, that I wanted to purchase their ER-4P earphones right away. Fortunately, their \$300 pricetag caused me to put that purchase off indefinately.
I recently have been reading reviews of Etymotic’s new ER-6 Isolator earphones, which are the “cheap” version of the ER-4’s at \$130. I just got them this morning, and they sound amazing… They do such a fantastic job of blocking eternal noise, and the fidelity of the audio is fantastic. They are some of the best sounding earphones I have ever listened to (yes, they are in the league of the Grado’s, which aren’t shabby at all, mind you). I think the key for me is the fact that they block out external noise…. I no longer hear the ominous din of the server rack 10 feet from my skull (which I am sure was causing permanent hearing damage.. :P), Instead of several conversations layered on top of each other coming from around the office, I hear a faint muttering in the far distance…. Now I only hear my music, and the quality of it is amazing…
I can only imagine how nice the ER-4s sound, but I can’t say I enjoy having the \$150+ in my pocket. :)
Does anyone reading this know of any free tools for Windows that will allow me to do VERY simple editing on MPEG2 files? All I need is something that will open the file, allow me to delete sections of the file (say, for example, commercials… :P) and then save the file again?
I am currently researching my next project here at work, so I can hopefully provide somewhat accurate estimates of how long it will take me to complete. I am not exactly sure how fun this project will be, but I fully understand that it will be a big improvement in our product, so I won’t be unhappy working on it. Unfortunately, it will cause me to have way too close of an adjacency to MS products for a prolonged period, which is something I haven’t been forced to do in awhile…. I hate digging up APIs from those bastards…
I hate when I order something online, pay for speedy shipping, and then the people take a day or two to process the order anyway…
I played around with the ExtractStream software a bit last night, but it was getting a bit too late… It seems like decent (although completely unrefined) software, but I couldn’t test it because I couldn’t find a mkfifo binary for the TiVo hardware… I could have built one, but it was late and I just went to bed instead. Tonight I will punch down the network jack in the living room, as right now the TiVo is disconnected from the world… I was kinda upset to see the announcement of v3.0 of the TiVo software today, because it probably means that I will have to go thru all of this all over again once that upgrade makes its way onto my machine.
I got my TurboNET card installed in my TiVo and I am beginning to figure out the various ins-and-outs of what I can/can’t do on the little bugger… I got the TiVo Web Project installed, which allows you to control various aspects of the tivo from a regular web browser… Seems to work rather well, I can do all of the stuff I expected to do from it… The NIC also lets me grab the daily listings off of my broadband connection as opposed to the modem built-in to the TiVo.
I am going to play around with the Stream Extraction software, although I don’t think I will ever use it too much for anything real (Although a DivXed collection of Good Eats episodes might be nice…. :P)
While I don’t think he reads this, I don’t really care if he does…
Our air-conditioning isn’t working at home, so I called the landlord to let him know that something was screwed up. He left a message for me this morning to let me know that he was infact ignorant and that THE COMPRESSORS HADN’T BEEN INSTALLED YET. You know, the compressors, the big box that sits outside of the house that makes warm air cold. HOW COULD YOU MISS THE FACT THAT
compressors hadn’t been installed?!??!! I mean, the concrete slabs they sit on aren’t even there… AARRGHAHAHHH!!!!
Supposedly everything is supposed to be in by friday, but my shower door was supposed to be in a month and a half ago, and he has been yanking my crank on that as well….