so long, Blu-Ray

I updated my Xbox 360 last night with the NXE update. One of the first things I did (after creating my avatar, of course) was set up Netflix streaming. So Allison and I sat down and watched an episode of Heroes. As it started buffering, the screen indicated that it was in HD.

We watched an episode. Streamed. In HD. I used my Logitech remote for playback controls.

HD on-demand streaming! Seriously, how cool is that? We had watched some previous episodes via Netflix streaming on my laptop, hooked up to the TV via a DVI cable, and the HD streaming looked much better. There is now no reason whatsoever for me to buy a Blu-Ray player.

Of course, Sony are being assholes about letting Netflix stream their content, but they haven't exactly been looking out for consumer rights lately.

The interface isn't perfect - we can only stream content from our main Netflix account, not the other profile we have set up on it. It's kind of a pain to have to open up a web browser to finangle with the queue to find something to watch for it to show up on the Xbox. But they'll eventually get those issues worked out, I'm sure the interface will improve. They have the delivery mechanism in place that makes the cable companies obsolete.

Oh, and I'm finding the third season of Heroes to be cheesy and disappointing, and I feel like I'm just watching it out of habit now.

PDT -> PST

It was great to get an extra hour of sleep this weekend, after Halloween festivities on Friday and attending a beer tasting at the Rogue Ales Public House on Saturday. I was actually confused for about 5 seconds this morning as I walked out the door to catch the bus to work - it was light out! And on the flip side, that got me wondering just how super early that it's going start getting dark out.

I've also been wondering for a while how San Francisco's latitude compares to Washington DC's, and the time switch finally motivated me to find out. According to this, San Francisco is at 37° 47', and DC is only slightly more northern at 38° 53'. So, yeah, during December it looks like the sun sets before 5, but this should be pretty much what I'm used to.

Rock Band 2 awesomeness

I picked up Rock Band 2 this week. It kind of snuck up on me, and I wasn't all that excited about its release date. I've started playing it a bit, and the thing that's stood out to me the most has been the new system calibration they've put in.

In the first Rock Band (and all the Guitar Heros, for that matter) I'd have trouble hitting a long string of successive notes. I know it probably has to do a lot with the fact that I have no rhythm and whatnot, but it was always a problem for me.

Somehow, Rock Band 2 has magically solved this with their calibration. Unlike the first Rock Band, they have both an audio and video calibration. When I went through the calibration process, it claimed that I had no video latency in my system, but I had 110 ms of audio latency. Hm. That's odd, I thought. But I went with it and started playing.

WOW. What a difference it made! I now actually feel like I'm hitting sequential notes when I strum them, and I'm able to hit long repeated sequences with way fewer problems than before. Thanks, Harmonix!

The calibration and the Rage Against The Machine song have totally validated my purchase!

not so famous, yet

I'm on Google Maps!

3 whole Gs of iPhoneness

We finally, finally, finally got iPhones on Saturday! We got down to the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco at about 10:30. We waited in line outside for about an hour, during which time an Apple Store employee went down the line and handed out cards to reserve the particular model you were interested in. (Allison got a white 16GB, I got a black 16GB.) Once we were ushered into the store, we waited in line for about 30 minutes inside. Then the whole purchase and number porting process took about half an hour or so. I didn't know my Verizon account number off the top of my head, but I was able to log in to my account on the 24" iMac right behind us.

Other than the wait, which I fully expected, I was really pleased with how smooth the whole process went. I had heard that people have had problems porting numbers to AT&T when their billing address was outside the area code of the number they were porting in, but we switched over our 703 numbers without any hassle. Additionally, it took only a couple of minutes for the number to actually become active on the new phones.

As far as the iPhone itself - I am still really excited to have one. I added a link to my home screen to the next Muni train at the stop near our apartment, so now I can check before we leave the apartment if we have to hurry to catch the next train or if we should wait a few more minutes. I've got two minor gripes (of course). First, AT&T cell coverage sucks inside our apartment. We get phone service towards the back, but not in the front. And second, the Google Maps native application doesn't do public transit directions - for that, I've got to open Safari, and punch in my current location manually.

Overall though, I'm not going to complain too much. :) I've been lusting after an iPhone for the last year, and my dreams have finally come true.

%s/Windows/Linux/g

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to warm up to editing in vim. I've been using the Windows-centric arrow keys/home/end/page up/page down for, well, forever it seems, and old habits die hard. Since there really aren't any good arrow key editors for Linux (I tried to get Notepad++ working under Wine, but that wasn't so successful), I bit the bullet and have been using vim as my primary editor for the past couple months.

And you know what? I kinda like it. I've been so used to ctrl-arrow key to move between words in a line. It's taken a while, but I finally have my muscle memory trained to w and b. I'm starting to get there with ctrl-f and ctrl-b for page up/page down. Hitting the period to repeat the last command rocks. And I'm dipping my toe into the water of regular expression search and replace, and it's quite powerful and not as scary as I thought.

I've got to say I'm glad I've had the opportunity to use Linux as my primary OS after a few months. It was super intimidating at first, but I'm starting to appreciate how awesome of a software engineering environment that it makes possible. Granted, the UI isn't all that impressive, and I wouldn't think of not using OS X at home, but I've never had a better development environment.

On another note, I figured out how to tunnel my X session over ssh and run X apps remotely on my Mac. So cool.

(My geekiness has increased by 1 point after this post.)

new version of X Resource Graph

I just happened to see that there's a new version of X Resource Graph available. I love this little app. I keep it sitting in the lower left corner of my screen to keep an eye on my CPU load and network usage. Yes, I'm a nerd.

old houses

I noticed that Google updated Street View last week to include Buffalo! So of course I had to go check out what my old houses look like now.

257 Fawn Trail (formerly Gay Drive). I lived here from when I was born until 1985. 23 years later, it looks a lot different. There used to be a huge tree in the front yard that I would climb as a kid. There was also a large tree to the right of the driveway whose trunk my dad carved my name into. The last time I went back to see it (maybe 5-6 years ago), the trees were still there. Also, the house wasn't yellow when I lived there, it was more of a greyish blue from what I remember.

8 Kristen Meadows. I lived here from 1985 until 1993. The horrible pink shutters are different, but the rest of the house looks about the same. There were two trees in the front yard where the little circular pink flower beds are now.

Browsing through my old neighborhoods is bringing back some memories, and it made me realize that I haven't lived there for fifteen years. It sounds and feels like a long time ago.

one benefit to Pacific time

I've had a hard time adjusting to working and living in Pacific time and following sports back on the east coast. It's been really strange having NHL playoff games start at 4PM out here. (I imagine football at 10 AM will be even stranger.) Well, one benefit to being out here is that late games aren't that late. The Penguins just beat the Red Wings in 3 OTs, and it's not even 10 PM yet. Cool.

fixing Home and End keys on OS X

Recently at home I've started plugging in a full-size keyboard to my MacBook Pro. The default behavior of the Home and End keys on OS X (go to the beginning/end of the document) is totally counter-intuitive to years and years of muscle memory built up on Windows (and now Linux), to go to the beginning or end of the current line.

I found KeyFixer today and installed it. It's been a lifesaver so far - now my Home and End keys work the way I expect. Now, I just need to figure out how to remap Ctrl-left arrow and Ctrl-right arrow to jump to the previous/next word, and I'll be all set!

the cake is a lie...

So I finished Portal last night. What a cool game! It was a great change of pace from every other FPS I've played. With other games, I sometimes get frustrated or annoyed at the puzzles and then give up and just search for a walkthrough on the Internet. I didn't get that from Portal. I thought the puzzles were challenging enough to be fun, but not nearly as obtuse as those in other games.

Also, I was quite satisfied with the length of the game. As I get older and grumpier, I find I have less patience and less time in general to waste on video games. Portal was just the right length to keep me busy for a few nights, but not too long to feel like work.

Overall, it was a great game. And now my gaming plate is clean, just in time for GTA 4. :)

odd

I was self-Googling tonight and I came across this. Odd but cool.

assimilation complete

I'm at Google now.  It's even cooler than I imagined.

Watch It Shred!

Even better than Will It Blend? - Watch it Shred!

thanks, EA!

I'm always quick to bitch about how terrible a company EA is, so I figure I should give them a little praise when they deserve it. My Rock Band guitar that I bought on launch day was defective. I submitted a request to replace it the next day. When it took them a couple weeks to actually get the replacement, they offered me a free game to apologize for it taking so long.

So my copy of NHL 08 showed up yesterday. I haven't played a hockey video game in while (I got blisters on my thumbs from playing NHL 98 in college), so this will be fun. Thanks, EA!

oh yeah, some big news

http://sf-adventure.blogspot.com/

rm -rf /

We have a table at work for older hardware and other electronics that's up for grabs. I've been getting rid of some old machines lately, and I wanted to donate one to the table. I didn't have anything particularly sensitive on it, but I wanted to wipe it for the next person.

I've always wanted to rm -rf / just to see if Linux really would delete pretty much everything. Well, it does. :)