I have been developing a new philosophy on cold weather, and since the temperature here has plummetted to the 30-40s and we are expecting snow today, I figured I would share.
When I was younger, I would talk about how the cold didn’t bother me, and how I liked the cold. As I have grown older, though, I have realized that this is not entirely true. While I do enjoy the cold, it is only when that cold is tied to snow that I truly enjoy it. See, cold without snow is wasted cold, taunting me with the chapped lips and bad skiing. A cold day without a snowball fight is worthless, it is all the discomfort without any of the fun.
So, in my old age, I have decided that it should either be cold-and-snowing or spring-like, and never cold-without-snow or hot-as-nuts.
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)