Misc techy, DRM

I’ve been recording some shows from This American Life. Why? Well, I seem to always forget to tune in on a Sunday, and streaming is just a pain in the ass. When I’m not using the audio on my computer, I play a show stream (RealAudio, but I use MPC with the Real Alternative 1.41 plug-in. I can not stand RealOne Player or whatever piece of shit/bloat/spyware Real are putting out these days) and record the output using OpD2D – Direct to disk audio recorder. I use the mp3 plug-in and find that the max record time of 54 mb at 128k is just the right length for a show. Start the show, start recording, and leave it alone for an hour. Streaming isn’t the best quality, and the solution is not exactly elegant, but it gets the job done.

MakeZine reviews the Super Tangent (shuffle clone, but with recording, radio, and cheap). Ipodlounge has a reader give it bad marks on a review, but I suspect it is tainted with a bit of fanboyitis. I’m tempted to buy one. 1 GB, drag and drop USB, FM, and decent recording for 100 bucks.

HOW-TO: Add an auxiliary jack to your car. I am quite surprised a jack hasn’t been standard on car decks for many years. It seems like it would be such a simple thing to add, but really distinguish your product from others.

HOW-TO: Run homebrew apps on your PSP. If they can get this to work with v1.51-1.53, and get a keyboard working with it all, I’m sold.

Running with the homebrew PSP theme, we move onto DRM news:

Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips. “Microsoft and the entertainment industry’s holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset”. As if I needed another reason to use AMD.

BMG Cracks Piracy Whip. Supposedly DRM on CDs. I expect it to be hacked soon.

Anand takes a look at HDMI. “The weakest link narrows down to the user’s ability to transcode on demand media on the PC into something more portable, or the user’s ability to digitally rip the signal off the DVI interface! With Intel’s HDCP tied into the HDMI specification so tightly, manufacturers and content providers would be insane not to push HDMI out the door to replace DVI. The additional perks for HDMI are still there: it’s a smaller cable, can run longer distances without issues, and obviously, the integrated ability to transfer audio too. However, when a tier 1 OEM decides to build their next HTPC, they will certainly come under considerable scrutiny to provide a secure platform if they expect backing from the content providers. The fact that HDMI protects video and audio signaling is enough for content providers to lean on PC manufacturers to adopt the standard over DVI”.

Hollywood foots bill for LAPD spy cams in Santee Alley. More here, and here.

MIA

I’ve been MIA for a while. Lots of commitments at home and work have me just vegging when I finally get some spare time. Also, GTA: San Andreas is addictive. I love exploring the game world.

Yesterday and today are not much fun. Anna had a lot of stomach pain throughout Friday. We figured it was a bad meal or something. But the pain didn’t go away, so we called up the 24 hour nurse at UCSD in Hillcrest. By the way, the 800-688-6161 number listed on their website now goes to a “Call now to make friends!” number. You have to call the main hospital number (619-543-6222) and get routed to them that way. No more direct line. Update your page people! Fast forward to midnight and we were headed into the ER so they could check her out. Anna went in back and I sat in the waiting room. They had Married with Children playing a full volume, much to the delight of drugged/drunk up folks. Unfortunately, I the only influence I was under was sleep deprivation, so I booked it out to the car.

Four hours and a blood test later they told her she probably had gastritis (an inflammation of the stomach). Gave her some meds, a prescription and sent her on her way. But seven AM rolled around this morning and Anna was in a lot of pain as the meds had wore off. The prescription they gave doesn’t kick in for two days. Google to the rescue. Using it I found the over the counter meds she could use to keep acid levels down, and that she was not supposed to be taking certain pain relievers for the symptoms. She had been taking Advil, which is a no-no for this type of stomach issue. The ER didn’t make mention of any of that information. It only took me a couple of minutes to find it on the net.

Do it yourself

Prefab and you don’t want to do much work? Target might have something for you. Actually, it looks like the work (done by Christopher C Deam) might just be a “modern trailer park“. Somehow I think a wall of glass is going to sell less well in an actual trailer park, vs. someone who bought an acre of land out in the boonies.

Ready Made Mag had Edgar Blazona (of modular dwellings fame) make them a back yard shack for $1500. They have full plans in their store. This is structure is designed to be a low cost extra room for the backyard. As a result there is of course no plumbing, electrical, or insulation. The structure would make a fantastic office, studio, or guest house. If you need full amenities, he has also designed a nifty granny flat named the MD280.

Usually in prefab, massive chunks are constructed at the factory and assembled at the build site. Master fit takes a different approach. Smaller pieces, everything is numbered, everything fits. The goal is to allow unskilled people to be able to easily put up a frame. The materials are more expensive than usual, but you will save on labor. The frame also ends up being stronger because of the fit.

If you really want to get involved in building your own house, you can go the straw bale route. Here is a site of a guy building one in Baja, and here is a site for a woman who built one in San Diego county (Ramona). The one in SD was featured on the Green Built tour. Reading through the sites you will notice some very different building experiences between them. In the US there is a lot more red tape and bureaucracy. As an example, in SD they won’t let you use straw as load bearing walls (despite their strength and earthquake resistant nature). Instead, you have to put in posts and beams for the roof.

Straw bale not out there enough for you? Fine. How about a tree house? Perhaps one made of books?

Links, get your hot links here!

Exploration:
The photos are older (2002), but the subject is quite fascinating – Jason Levine explores the high line. I had never heard of the high line, but I don’t live in NYC. The high line is an elevated set of tracks that span 22 blocks, from 34th Street to Gansevoort Street. Having long been abandoned by trains, there is 6.7 acres of raised space in NYC that was just sitting there, overgrown. It has been threatened with demolition since the 80’s, but now it looks like they will be converting it to public open space. This could be really cool for New York.

Underground Ozarks visits an abandoned Nike missile site near Pleasant Hill, Missouri. This is a really great read, its amazing some of the stuff is still working. Long live UE!

Photos:
Photos of digital camera dealers in Brooklyn. A lot of these are bigger names, and if you have ever done a pricegrabber search on a camera, you will recognize them. It is surprising how small and dank some of them are.

History:
Selected Civil War Photographs Collection – A great collection of photos and text from a time when photos weren’t so easy.
Images of the American Civil War – Some more photos of the Civil War
American Civil War submarine found near Panama – A unique boat from 1864 may have inspired Jules Verne to create Captain Nemo’s vessel
Is this Blackbeard’s pirate ship?
The mega list: UNESCO’s World Heritage List sorted by country. It is interesting to browse through them all. Surprisingly, I’ve actually been to a few of them.

My move to wordpress

Well… I’ve finally moved over to wordpress. Please let me know if anything is broke. The new site feeds are atom: http://www.chrisnelson.ca/feed/atom/, or RSS: http://www.chrisnelson.ca/feed/. You can also set feeds based on the category.

Why? Well, I had a lot of existing content (static html pages, photos, blogger, gallery) but no organization or structure behind it. This meant that a browser was reliant on google or another search engine to find specific content on my site. Now, it’s a bit easier. The majority of my photos and comments are in gallery (www.chrisnelson.ca/gallery, and the majority of my writing, news, and links are in wordpress (where you are right now). The search page lets you search wordpress or gallery – but not both at the same time. I wish wordpress would work with gallery to get some sort of symbiotic mojo going. It would be very nice to integrate the users, search, RSS, etc between the two platforms.

You can also find posts on my page by using the categories or archives. The archives list all content sorted by month. The categories list all content sorted by the category(ies) the post was put into. For example, if you wanted to browse all posts that talked about books, you would click on the books category. I’m still playing with the categories, so if you see something that doesn’t fit, please let me know.

Was it easy? Yes and no. It was very easy to install wordpress (assuming you have some basic web experience), the five minute install is not a lie. But customizing wordpress to do what you want, and figuring out how to store your content was a real time sink. Skeltoac’s blogger import worked well, but I hit a snag with my data. Blogger did not force you to use titles, and I didn’t. WordPress needs titles for stuff like permalinks. You can see where this is going. I had to go through and add titles to all my posts. A pain, sure, but I would have to do that to change the categories for posts anyway. But I wasn’t very bright. I made the title changes in blogger, rather than wordpress. This messed up my blogger permalinks, making a smooth transition impossible. Ah well, live and learn.

I’ve roughly categorized my old content within wordpress, but I have not fixed up existing blogger pages (www.chrisnelson.ca/blog/*). I hope to have some redirects to the newer wordpress version of the content soon. I suspect it will be a manual job though. Strong back, weak mind.