Trotz.com

So, get your Xbox connected to your TV, and then on the same wireless or wired network subnet. Plug the infrared receiver into an unused controller port on the front of the Xbox (it's just like the DVD kit sold by MSFT), and drop the DVD into the tray and boot the Xbox.

After a few prompts, the Xbox reports a startup code you will need to enter back on your MCE 2005 box. Then fire up the Setup CD in your Media Center, mine being a Qosmio laptop across the room. After a typical Windows application install process of just a few minutes, several EULAs (who reads these?), and numerous progress bars, the installer asks first for the lengthy product key, then the startup code. Reboot the Xbox, and you should be up and running.

It seems to work quite well - although some buttons and interface elements gracefully degrade to have less animation, etc. to optimize performance over the terminal services connection being used. I found television to look quite good, most third-party apps to function just fine as well. More reports to follow!

Posted by jetrotz at 03:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Exploding Lava

Do not, do not, repeat DO NOT under any circumstances attempt to 'jump start' your Lava Lamp by heating it on a stove. Mortality may ensue, as with this sad case in Kent, Washington. Unbelievable. LINK (via Boing Boing).

Posted by jetrotz at 03:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sportsmen of the Year

Well, Sports Illustrated made the right choice this year, bestowing their time-honored tradition of selecting the outstanding sportsman, men or women title on the Boston Red Sox and their fans. And, in a first, SI.com hosted a year-long poll to select a Player of the Year, none other than Curt 'Stigmata' Schilling. I approve, despite Schilling's shilling for 'W' right after the big win. You can't be perfect, I guess.

Posted by jetrotz at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 29, 2004

Parade QTVR

Ah technology. Panoramic QuicktimeVR of Spongebob at the annual Macy's parade (via BoingBoing). This is a welcome way to experience Spongebob Squarepants in all his 3-story-tall glory! I've always been a fan of QTVR, ranging from my own work at several Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue shoots (which I'd link to if SI.com hadn't moved these behind their subscription wall) and of the Augusta National Golf Club. The VR is from NYC POV - a great site with many interesting NYC panos to check out.

Posted by jetrotz at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marvin Prototype

Okay. So I'm a total geek. Fine. Get over it. Anyway, I found this clip showing a test of the Marvin the robot in the upcoming HHGTTG flick. Once you get over the fact that there's a little person in there, the body language says it all. I think they capture his despair quite well, don't you? You can just hear him droning on about how life is so terrible, etc., etc., etc......

Posted by jetrotz at 05:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 26, 2004

HHGTTG - The Movie - Finally

Opening May 6, 2005 - Let the countdown begin - but don't panic!

As one of the most original, laugh-out-loud while-thinking how-odd-the-universe-really-is type-of-books, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, has finally made it to the 'wrap' phase of production. Douglas Adams, taken from us at far too young an age, unfortunately died without knowing that his beloved novel would go on to become a motion picture after over ten years of heartbreak at the hands of the Hollywood machine. Head on over to the official movie site to see the teaser trailer. Or click on the image above to download some spiffy wallpaper.

Along with some of my other geeky high school friends, I found HHGTTG an amazingly refreshing piece of fiction ten year before that. Funny, thoughtful - and very *real* despite being sci-fi. I used a quote from Marvin the Paranoid Android in my senior year high school yearbook. 'Life! Don't talk to me about life....' Funny - that quote still holds water today.

My only hope is that the film doesn't suck - the directors, known as 'Hammer and Tongs' made up of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, have some interesting work in their past, but not much in the way of feature films. Jennings was an actor in Shaun of the Dead, and has directed quite a few music videos ranging from Blur to REM - so that's all promising. Arthur Dent seems to have been cast well - Martin Freeman from Love, Actually steps into Simon Jones role from the BBC Series. Mos Def play Ford Prefect - an interesting call there. Sam Rockwell plays Zaphod, and Zooey Deschanel (from Elf and The Good Girl) plays Trillian. Another alum from Love Actually, Bill Nighy, plays Slartibartfast. Here's to keeping your fingers crossed...

For more background on the trials and tribulations of getting this film made, read this note from Roger Birnbaum, the co-chairman of Spyglass Films who bought convinced Disney to buy the right to the book back in 1995.

Posted by jetrotz at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 24, 2004

Qosmio

Yesterday I recieved a new laptop - the Toshiba Qosmio F15 Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 multimedia machine. Amazing little laptop, that - integrated TV tuner, PVR functionality, 80GB drive, Pentium M 745/1.8ghz, NVIDIA GeForce FXGo5700/128MB, etc. Early reactions are that it's fairly HUGE (14.7"x11.2"x1.7") and HEAVY (8.6 lbs, plus adapter). So it's not quite the svelte machine that my TiBook is. But then again, this machine is much faster, has better video, and can watch/record tv. The Media Center apps are an interesting acoutrement, too. Got it up and running pretty easily, but was confounded by *two* audio streams from my DirecTV box. Turned out that you have to mute the line-in audio signal, otherwise you get audio piped directly through to the speakers *and* the encoded audio from the MCE video recorder. Was proud that I figured that out. And what is the deal with user manuals only on the HD for $2500 pieces of gear? That's B.S., thank you very much. More detailed review soon.

Posted by jetrotz at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dad feels a kick!

Today, Joey was able to feel baby kicking up a storm inside Amy's stomach. An awesome moment, really. Now I'm talking to the baby every night. I think baby likes human voices - seems more active when I do that. Wicked cool!

Posted by jetrotz at 01:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 23, 2004

Watchmen Movie?

One of the best graphics novels ever, created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon back in the mid-80s, looks to finally be moving closer to becoming a movie. Slashot covers a Reuters report that Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass is taking the helm after another director dropped out of the picture due to scheduling conflicts. I care for two reasons. The first is that this crime drama could make for an amazing, if somewhat geek-centric film. The other is that I bought this baby at a rock-bottom price on HSX.com, and hope it adds a few million more to my Hollywood Stock Exchange portfolio. For those of you who haven't seen this thing - it's rather like a fantasy stock market game for movie buffs. Buy low, sell high, short options - I've been playing this thing since 1998. I started with $2M of their 'Hollywood Bucks', and have a portfolio worth over $150M now. If that had only been real money...sob.

Posted by jetrotz at 02:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 22, 2004

Blogging from Iraq

The photographer who captured what could be the Eddie Adams moment of Gulf War II has posted a personal explanation of those events, addressed to the members of the squad he has been working and living with for many months. 'Kevin Sites | Blog' is a must read, offering insight into not only how a journalist must function in a war zone, but into the human side of this conflict. Now, in what is reportedly the first New York Times news story built entirely around a blog entry, the Gray Lady is covering this report (free registration required) in detail in today's edition.

Posted by jetrotz at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 21, 2004

Fritata!

I wanted to make something different for my pregnant lady since she'd been away for a few days, so I broke out the Silver Palate cookbook for a fritata recipe. Artichokes, mushrooms and cheeses, oh my!

Posted by jetrotz at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 20, 2004

Boston's Other Big Dig

Look at what's happening inside Fenway Park! After 86 years, we take the pennant - and the entire outfield is stripped down to dirt. I, for one, would like to own a patch of that grass! Anyway, this work is all part of the park expansions announced earlier this year. Click the image to see an up-to-date view of the activity at America's best ball park.

I'm keeping tabs on the construction in one of the rotating webcams I monitor with the super-spiffy Konfabulator application. Since my office is a bit of a cave, it's nice to know what the world outside looks like. Konfabulator is a small application which runs desktop 'widgets', you know, like the feature Apple is ripping off with their concept of widgets in Tiger, the next version of OSX. Anyway, I run a couple of windows from the very flexible Web Images widget. In one, I keep the local ABC affiliate's downtown Atlanta webcam there all the time. In the other, I rotate Atlanta weather radar, home page images from CNN.com, SI.com & ESPN.com, as well as a few webcams around the country. I've got Mount St. Helens, a Manhattan cam, a few in Savannah, GA and several from Boston. One is a Fenway Park cam from Weatherbug's 'Instacam' service.

Posted by jetrotz at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 19, 2004

Madden 2k5 on the Treo

I'm a bachelor today. Amy is playing in Columbus, GA, returning Saturday night. Guess I'll get in all my Halo2/GTA:San Andreas/NFL2K5, eh? Speaking of football games -- EA has just announced a version of Madden 2005 for the freaking Treo! It will have an update soon to play over Bluetooth or 802.11b -- (guess I have to get that 650 after all).

Posted by jetrotz at 06:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 18, 2004

First Video

Gotta love the technology - but it still seems odd to have no audio. Kinda like a silent movie. Anywho, here is the very first video of our baby, the advanced ultrasound taken at twenty weeks. The little one passed with flying colors, and you can count ten fingers - and ten toes! Baby rolls around a bit, moving hands, legs, and generally just looks like a perfect little one! Click here or on the image to watch the video.

Posted by jetrotz at 11:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Now Playing with Fire!

In searching out cool things I could do with this blog, I happened upon the concept of using Kung-Tunes, a spiffy app written by a fellow living in Japan. Not being a PHP wizard, I struggled to get this to work correctly. Googling away on the subject, I happened upon a summary which looked intriguing. Damn - 403 forbidden - no help. I checked the Google cache, and viola! A *great* guide to using the HTTP-post feature of Kung-Tunes to send my currently playing iTunes track to a 'track-back' url in the blog. Confused? Read on for the background I grabbed from the Google cache.

kung-tunes primer, borrowed from s-phase.com

It really is straightforward. First download the application from here. Then check out the author's instructional blog entry.

This is oriented to Movable Type users who have the TrackBack function built-in. Normally this is a cool way for weblogs to easily refer to one another by pinging to a .cgi script. The latest version of Kung-Tunes takes advantage of this by using the "HTTP POST" method to ping iTunes info to the mt-tb.cgi in your Movable Type installation.

So, once you've downloaded the app, go to your Movable Type website's control panel and select the appropriate blog (assuming you have a couple). In the sidebar on the left, select "Manage/Categories" and create a new Category called "nowplaying". Click on the "Save" button and wait for the screen to refresh. Now "nowplaying" is added to the list of Categories you already have running. Click on the "Edit category attributes" link next to the "nowplaying" field. Here you can add a description of "nowplaying", but the key is to scroll down to the section "Incoming Pings" and click the "On" radio button for "Accept incoming TrackBack pings?" Click the "Save" button. The screen will refresh and you'll see below the "Incoming Pings" section a new section headed "Trackback URL for this category". In the box below will be an URL that looks something like:

http://www.yourfavoritewebsite.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4

This will vary depending on how you installed Movable Type, and the numeral after mt-tb.cgi will vary (I think). Copy this URL into your clipboard.

Now go back to your blog's management sidebar and click "Templates" and select "Main Index". At this point, for prudence's sake I'd copy the original "Main Index" template to TextEdit in case you goof. Now Kung-Tunes's author doesn't recommend just cutting and pasting the HTML that inserts your iTunes track info directly into your template, but assuming your template HTML is straightforward (e.g. the standard column layouts), this is quite doable. I have a heavily modified version of one of the templates that come standard with Movable Type and knew exactly where in the right hand column I wanted to insert my "Now Playing" section. Here's how it looks for me:

<div class="sidetitle"><br /> Now Playing<br /> </div></p> <div class="side"> Below are the tracks I'm currently listening to on iTunes 4:<br /> <p><MTPings category="nowplaying" lastn="5"><br /> <$MTPingExcerpt$><br /><br /> </MTPings><br /> </div>

So the "MTPings category" is the new "nowplaying" category we created where "lastn" refers to the number of most recent tracks you've listened to.

Now open Kung-Tunes and select the "Preferences" panel from the Kung-Tunes Menu. Make sure the "Upload" tab is selected and that the "Upload Method" is HTTP. Paste in the TrackBack URL into the "URL:" field. Make sure you delete the "http://" from that URL. Kung-Tunes automatically inserts this and otherwise you'll be left scratching your head why you keep on getting "Type 6 Errors" whenever you try to upload iTunes data to your blog. It took me an hour to find this boneheaded error. Click the "Save" button. As is advisable with any program, if a "Console" is available, open it if you're having trouble; it's much easier to spot silly syntax errors if you can see what the application is telling the server.

Otherwise, the defaults in this panel are fine. Next, select the "Formats" panel from the menu and delete everything from each of the fields and paste

title=itunes&url=foo&blog_name=myblogname&excerpt=^t by <b>^p</b> (^a)

into the "Format for currently playing track" field. You can play around with the tags later if you want to customize how the tracks are formatted. Also make sure to enter your own blog's name where you see "blog_name" above. It's the name you specified in the Movable Type control panel. Click the "Save" button.

You should be set now. Fire up iTunes. Kung-Tunes should show your track info. Click the "Upload" button and a small bit of text with your track info that's saved in your /Library/Preferences directory should be sent to your Movable Type installation's "mt-tb.cgi" and published on your website.

This primer isn't radically different than the author's own directions, it just clarifies some points.
Posted by erich at May 04, 2003 03:27 PM

Posted by jetrotz at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

1,000 Words

So, I installed the MTPhotoGallery Movable Type plugin today. See the results at the upper left of the home page of the blog. Spiffy, no?!? This plugin allows display of image files based on various parameters. In this case, I've set it up to pull a non-thumbnail sized image from our honeymoon photo gallery. There are a few hundred pics in there - so repetition shouldn't be too frequent. On top of that, I installed the MT-Rebuild module. That let's me setup a cron job to regularly regenerate the blog, and update the picture. It's supposed to update just after midnight - but it seems to update more frequently. More reading on CRON required now. Yawn...

Being only an amateur geek myself, I had to do some serious googling to figure out how to edit the crontab, and more frustratingly, how to exit the editor within my ssh connection. For those geeks out there, here is a recap of the commands.

Crontab editing commands:
crontab -e - generates a new crontab if none exists, or edit the existing one.
crontab -l - lists existing crontabs
crontab -r - deletes all existing crontabs

Once you are in the editor (vi? em? I just don't know what it is, actually), you can type 'i' to begin inserting copy, and ctrl-c to return to 'command' mode. Once you have your entry correct, typing :x exits, saving changes while :q! exits, ignoring changes.

Here is the crontab I have running for this blog to run each day at 12:05am:
05 00 * * * /mt/mt-rebuild.pl -all

Posted by jetrotz at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

In Record Time

Amy had a visit with Dr. Lee today. In at 1:30pm, out by 2pm. Wham bam thank you, er - doctor. Baby's heartbeat is 145 - reportedly normal, but that sounds fast to me! What are we gonna raise, a hummingbird or a baby? The kicks seem to continue, although yours truly has been unable to feel them his own self.

Posted by jetrotz at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

A bout of gout but no trout

This thing is getting old. With seemingly no direct cause (a steak four days ago?), I have come down with another Seussian bout of gout. Unlike the day we had the goodbye lunch for David Balcom, there was no trout on the menu. I've managed to do most meetings from my desk. The only real issue has been the few trips up and down the Crow's Nest stairs. Did I mention that it's the right foot this time. Ack.

Posted by jetrotz at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)

Another Test

Here we go again. I hope this one works in one way or the other. Lorem ipsem dolar. Mmmmm.

And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like. And in this case, I really want to see what a linked entry looks like.

Posted by jetrotz at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2004

Kickin'

Amy felt the first kick from the little one last night, and a few more today. One while eating Mexican food, the other watching the Order and Law. I can't wait to feel them myself - but for now, Amy doesn't mind my warm hands on her belly!

Posted by jetrotz at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)