When passing through Boonville, CA, you must stop at the Anderson Valley Brewing Company, home of the excellent award-winning ale, Boont Amber.
AVBC just release a wild new ale called Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema. I've never had another beer like it. It really has a very smooth, cream-like texture, without tasting carmely sweet. It is so hard to describe, yet so easy to drink that I definitely recommend giving it a try, if you can find it…
(That link to Boonville above is actually a satellite picture of the Brewery)
Last weekend, I was in the organic produce section of the local market, and I saw a sealed plastic package with four apples in it. Plastic is a strange sight to see in the organic section, but more strange was the title on the package: Grapple! Pronounced like Grape + Apple!
At first I thought, 'wow cool, they've genetically crossed grapes and apples! Neato, I've got to try this!'
Then I sniffed the package.
It stank like the Barbie aisle at Toys 'R Us.
A Grapple isn't a cool result of bio-engineering. A Grapple is an apple dunked and soaked in artificial grape bubblegum flavoring. Eww.
I now have four shows on my Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes] that will neither play nor allow me to delete. The Comcast DVR has so much promise, but it is so damned clunky and buggy that I can't believe I still deal with it sometimes. But jeez, once you get hooked on a PVR ![[Answers]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
, you can never really go back.
What I like:
PVRWhat I hate:
Wow, that was fast! Ron over at the mt-daapd project followed up on my entry about streaming lossless WMA to iTunes by adding full WMA metainfo support to the mt-daapd project. Sweet!
So what does that mean? It means that if you set up a patched version of mplayer on a Linux box, and install the latest 'nightly' of the mt-daapd software, you can encode all of your CD's in the bit-perfect Windows Media Lossless format, and stream them to any computer on your network that has iTunes. As a matter of fact, you can stream them to any device that supports Apple's Rendezvous protocol, such as a Roku Soundbridge. Awesome!
Did I mention that mt-daapd also supports FLAC and Apple Lossless formats too?
A Whole House Music Storage [musicstorage4, musicstorage6, musicstorage1, musicstorage2, musicstorage-solved3, musicstorage3, musicstorage-solved1, musicstorage8, musicstorage-solved2, musicstorage5, musicstorage7] solution? Yup, mt-daapd puts us just about there…
I've been thinking of a solution for cellaring wine at home. I do have room under the house to build a proper cellar, but I won't have time to do a big project like that for many years to come. So in the mean time, I've kept my eye on those 'Wine Cooler Fridge' things that are popping up everywhere from Costco to Expo Design Center. The prices range from $100 to infinity, but none of the cheap ones mention anything about two important specs: noise and vibration. The last thing I want is a noisy fridge that shakes vintage wine bottles.
Today I stumbled across a wine cooler at Beverages and More made by Urbina Design. Instead of a traditional refrigerator pump, their cooler actually uses a solid state peltier cooler with a finned heat sink on the back. A small fan circulates the air inside the cooler, and supposedly silently keeps temperatures between 12'C and 18'C.
Pretty cool (ha!) choice for a cooler under $300.
I believe I fixed the tiki formatting in writeback [writebacklfbug, writebacks, writebackformatting, writebacklfbug-fixed]. Turns out, I still had some legacy code that escaped special characters and newlines to prevent 'tomfoolery' in my pre-tiki support. Tiki already escapes that stuff, so I was getting doubly-encoded writebacks.
BTW, since I put up this blog/wiki, I'm amazed at how many times I've reached for my Linux in a Nutshell book. (And ironically, my blog runs on FreeBSD 
).
Some jackass is sending spam to several Brazilian TLDs (like gov.br) using a spoofed mikeyp.com reply-to. This seems to happen to me a couple of times a year, and those of you with your own domain names have probably had a similar experience. The result is that I get a pile of bounced emails to addresses that reject the spam. This tends happens in a flurry, with garbage e-mail headers and URL's pointing to 'anonymous' domain registrations. It's all over in a day or two, as I suppose the spammers quickly move on to some other unsuspecting domain holder to avoid being tracked. If I could get a real brick and mortar address, I believe I can legally sue these people.
Each time this happens, the spammers get more clever. This time, they are using dictionary attack scheme to forge a variety of mikeyp.com reply-to addresses. Luckily, this makes the bounces easy to filter, but I wonder how many servers are erroneously blocking mikeyp.com now?
For fuck's sake, when are we going to replace our ancient e-mail protocols with something that prevents this? And why does the IANA make it so easy for spammers to hide behind anonymity?
Sorry folks, I seem to have a bug in my writeback [writebacklfbug, writebacks, writebackformatting, writebacklfbug-fixed] hack for tiki support. Linefeeds aren't being stored properly, which causes a variety of Tiki formatting errors.
Workin' on it… ![:-\](/images/blog_buttons/disappointed.gif ":-\"){kind=small}
If you are looking for a nice overnight escape from the SF Bay Area, head up the coast to the Albion River Inn. Located about 15 minutes south of Mendocino , the Albion River Inn has a set of charming cottages perched atop of a cliff overlooking the mouth of the Albion River. Most rooms have fireplaces, and some have whirlpool tubs, but all have spectacular views. Sunny days are simply breathtaking.
The Inn also has an award-winning restaurant on-site, with great meals that compliment a terrific wine list and amazing stock of Scotch Whiskeys.
Note that this is the Northern California coast, so the temperature and fog is totally unpredictable. Luckily, cold and foggy days make this place even more cozy.
Got a few hundred bucks and a weekend to spare? What are you waiting for?
No sooner did I recommend and upgrade to the latest version of Xiino [xiino3.4, xiinodead, xiinooffline] than the Xiino Dataserver went offline.
What does that mean? To save bandwidth and screen real estate on the Palm, Xiino uses a special proxy server they call a 'Dataserver' to downsample images on-the-fly and correct the corresponding image links in the HTML. It works very well… if the proxy is online. If the proxy is down, you don't get images. Period.
Xiino's dataserver URL is pds.mobirus.com, which was at address 221.186.135.43 yesterday. Go ahead, ping it, if you can.
Hey Mobirus, why don't you let me download the Dataserver so I can run it on my own hardware? Wouldn't that save you bandwidth and server costs? Wouldn't it speed up my browsing if my image requests didn't have to make a round trip to your server in Japan? Wakarimashitaka?
Update: The proxy seems to be back online. Hmmm, Monday afternoon in Tokyo. Think anyone was watching the server over the weekend?
Those courtesy earbuds that Apple included with your iPod are acceptable, but if you want to hear some real bass and a warmer and more accurate high-end, you'll want to step up to a pair of headphones.
I was looking for a solid pair of portable headphones that were priced where I wouldn't cry if I lost them in an airport. I bought the Sennheiser PX100 headphones for about 40 bucks.
The PX100's are an open air design, but still manage to get a powerful bass response and a defined mid-range that is suited nicely for rockin' guitars. They also have a warm and distinct top-end without any piercing or harsh fatigue. These things really come alive at volumes just below the level you'd rationally consider dangerous.
More info about the PX100's and other headphone options can be found on the very informative HeadRoom site.
If you're a guitar fan, you're probably a fan of Joe Satriani. And if you're not, well, you will be after listening to Joe's latest album, Is There Love In Space?
This album is a dangerous one to listen to while driving. Things get started quickly and funky with Gnaahh, then the fretboard explodes with the ballsy rhythm and soaring melody on Up In Flames. By the time Hands In The Air gets cranking, I find myself literally driving 90MPH with my hands extended out the sunroof. Not recommended. Take the train.
In the world of electric guitar, Joe Satriani resides up in the rarefied air of superstar geniuses, and his latest album proves that he'll be there for a long time to come. Is There Love In Space? Satch knows the answer…
There is a lot of baseball being broadcast in HDTV this year, and I'm loving every minute of it. I get HD via an antenna on my roof (OTA ) and via Comcast cable, but since most HD baseball is shown only on Fox Sports, I usually end up watching the feed via cable.
There is a noticeable amount of 'tiling' and 'blockyness' on just about every Comcast HD channel, and I find it especially noticeable when watching sports like baseball. Why is this the case, and why is it that I don't see this degraded picture quality when watching sports via OTA?
A fellow HD enthusiast asked Fox Sports the same question, and Fox confirmed our suspicions: Comcast does indeed re-compress the already compressed HDTV digital signal. The full reply is posted on the Yahoo HDTV-in-SFBay group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HDTV-in-SFbay/message/17145
Add that to yet another re-compression step in the Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes], and you have one crappy HD picture.
Did you catch the news that Dell is rebranding the slick and tiny Samsung Q30 as the new Dell X1? 2.5 pounds, 1280×768 12" widescreen, and 6+ hours of battery life. If the workmanship is better than the typical cheapo Dell laptop, this thing could be a nice alternative to the ultraportable Thinkpad X40 (which I have).
A new version of the PalmOS web browser Xiino was released last week, and it is a very nice update. Xiino 3.4 improves page rendering by adding support for colored, sized, and emphasized text, as well as including a new 'image preview' option that allows downloads of low-res gray-scale placeholder images. This is a really nice addition to Xiino's already bandwidth-friendly image loading feature set.
Most importantly for Zodiac, Clie UX-50, and Tungsten users, however, is support for landscape mode. Finally!
This update makes Xiino, in my opinion, the best PalmOS browser available.
However, is everything perfect? No. Sadly, landscape mode in Xiino 3.4 does not seem to play well with one of my essential Palm apps, Fonts4OS5. When I use fonts smaller than the default '22 point' Palm font, Xiino's landscape display cuts off lines of text in paragraphs that are longer than 3 or 4 lines. This does not occur in the default display mode, so I can only guess this is a glitch with the new landscape support. This is a very disappointing, but not so much as to prevent me from recommending this otherwise excellent browser.
Blame StickyC for digging this one up. This is just what I needed to hear today.
http://www.latke.net/mahnamahna/mahnamahna.mp3
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2665140?htv=12
More proof that the 70's was far more happenin' than we give it credit for, eh? Now if I could just find the Benny Hill version of this tune. UPDATE: Wanna see a nasty example of Google spam? Check this out: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=manahmanah+benny+hill
I bought the SanDisk WiFi SD [idlesandiskwifi, sandiskwifisd] card for my Zodiac, but I've found that I never use it. As a matter of fact, I never even carry the WiFi card with me. Why?
rocks. Even though Bluetooth is slower than WiFi, it works perfectly with my cel phone as well as the Class 1 Bluetooth Access Point I set up on my Linux box. Since I always carry my phone, and I have an unlimited data plan, I have ubiquitous internet access with my Zodiac.About the only time I use the WiFi card is when I sit on the far end of the sofa in my living room, which is just outside the range of my Bluetooth Access Point.
I'm not really a boxing fan, but you don't need to be one to love Fight Night: Round 2 from EA. I've never played a game that felt this viscerally satisfying. If you're ever in the mood to just pummel the crap out of someone, you won't find a better outlet than Fight Night: Round 2.
Graphically, FN2 is stunning. There are seemingly limitless ways to customize your boxer, and the face close-ups are so realistic its eerie. When your boxer is sitting in the corner between rounds, breathing heavily and sweating (or bleeding!) profusely, you really believe an honest-to-goodness fight is happening.
I originally played Fight Night 2004 on the Xbox, but found the game so difficult that I gave up in frustration (I'm playing Fight Night: Round 2 on the PS2, where the controls feel better to me for sports games). The learning curve and game balance has improved tremendously in Round 2, particularly if you skip the tempting 'Quick Fight' and 'Create a Champ' options and go straight to 'Career Mode'. And the addition of a Haymaker punch really opens the game up.
As with Fight Night 2004, the audio production is superb, with excellent surround sound, thundering hits, and some of the best play-by-play voice-over I've ever heard in a sports game (and far better than the annoying hip-hop guy in FN2004). Fight Night: Round 2 is a game that should make EA proud.
I installed an OmniFi DMP1 in my 2000 Audi A4 this weekend. Well, 'wired up an OmniFi' would be a better way of saying it, as I haven't found an appropriate mounting location for the controller yet.
Interfacing the OmniFi with the Audi stereo is very simple, thanks to an adapter from BlitzSafe and an extremely useful pre-wired DB25 in the Audi trunk. I reused an adapter that I made for my iPod, and added the wiring for the OmniFi. It took me about 30 minutes to wire up. Here are some pictures: http://www.mikeyp.com/a4omnifi/
One of the coolest features of the OmniFi DMP1 is the ability to sync music from your computer via WiFi . Unfortunately, this only works if you are logged in to your computer and running the included SimpleCenter software (which of course, runs only on Windows XP). My garage is also on the fringe of my WiFi network, and I've only had a successful wireless sync once. Luckily, the hard drive in the OmniFi is housed in a removable USB cartridge, which allows you to sync quickly via USB… as long as you don't use the included USB cable.
When the car engine is not running, I can hear a 'hissy' noise floor, but I'm not sure if this is from the OmniFi, the BlitzSafe, the Audi, or my own wiring. Luckily, when driving, the hiss is obscured by wind and road noise. However, I also hear some high-end distortion or overdrive, which again, I'm not sure of the cause. I can hear it during one of the solo guitar breaks in the Joe Satriani song, Up In Flames on the album Is There Love in Space . Not terribly distracting (yet), but I do hear it.
Other than the hiss and the overdrive, the sound quality of the OmniFi is a actually better than my iPod, even with MP3s. This may be due to using the headphone output on the iPod (no line-out was available on my Gen 1 pod), as well as the much-discussed anemic iPod bass response. The OmniFi has deep-sounding bass and a very well-defined mid-range.
As with the OmniFi DMS1 Home Audio Player, I can't seem to get Lossless WMA files to play, which is a shame. Thankfully, 256Kb VBR MP3s still sound far better than FM radio, which is more than acceptable in a moving vehicle.
The OmniFi DMP1 is a nice solution for in-car digital audio, at least until this stuff is built-in to the next generation of cars (hello, Audi!). So far, I'm having fun with this thing.
Ever wonder what would happen if your DVR wasn't aware of Daylight Savings Time? Those of us on the west coast with Comcast DVRs just found out:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HDTV-in-SFbay/message/17063?simple=1
http://www.dvrchatter.com/viewtopic.php?id=219
Trader Joe's is always a great place for tasty organic snacks. Lately, I've become hooked on their Old Fashioned Blister Peanuts.
From the label:
Generations ago folks soaked peanuts in water to remove the red skins prior to roasting. This caused the peanuts to 'blister' during roasting, resulting in an incomparable crunch.
I can only describe these things as tasting snappy. I just know I'll be inhaling a ton of these during baseball season, starting now…
Continued from musicstorage [musicstorage4, musicstorage6, musicstorage1, musicstorage2, musicstorage-solved3, musicstorage3, musicstorage-solved1, musicstorage8, musicstorage-solved2, musicstorage5, musicstorage7]
Among the requirements I've set for a Whole-House Music Storage system, two are:
iTunes has native support for three bit-perfect formats: WAV, AIFF, and Apple Lossless Encoding. Of the three, WAV is the most widely supported among other audio players. Unfortunately, WAV files are not only large, they also do not contain meta-data like you'd find in an mp3 file. Meta-data is used to search and display song titles, artists, genres, and other information. Luckily, as I found in my research on audio server software, there are other ways to get music playback in iTunes, including support for other audio formats.
Thanks to the efforts of the open-source community (and Apple themselves for open-sourcing some key technology), you can stream audio to iTunes from a seperate server. This is done by installing and configuring software from either the daapd or mt-daapd projects. Both compile on Linux and other Unix-ish operating systems (like OS-X !), and both allow you to stream digital audio to computers running iTunes. They can also serve audio to other players that support Apple's streaming audio system, such as the Roku SoundBridge. mt-daapd is the more mature software, as its multi-threading ability gives it better performance. But there's more…
Recently, mt-daapd gained the ability to transcode audio on-the-fly. This means that, in real time, mt-daapd can convert various digital audio formats to the WAV format, which is natively supported by iTunes. This gives mt-daapd the ability to serve any type of audio file format on the server to iTunes. Currently, mt-daapd has built-in support for FLAC and Ogg Vorbis audio files, so if you wanted, you could encode your whole music collection in the Lossless FLAC format and listen to it via iTunes. This works even though FLAC is not natively supported by iTunes. How cool is that? But there's even more…
The transcoder in mt-daapd is easily extensible. By editing a simple configuration file and a helper script, you can add support for new audio formats. With a patch to the powerful open-source media player MPlayer [mplayer, mplayersilent], I am now able to stream files encoded in the widely supported WMA Lossless format to iTunes! (More details here). Awesome! Meta-data from WMA files is not yet supported (as mt-daapd uses its own database to store meta-data from various audio formats), but there's nothing stopping this from happening soon other than some dedicated time from the enthusiastic mt-daapd developers.
For me, this makes mt-daapd one of the killer apps in a Whole-House Music Storage system, as it solves a key problem of using a single lossless compression format supported by all possible audio players. Way to go, mt-daapd crew!
