Month: March 2007

Apple TV and why I want one

I causally mentioned to my friend at work who is also an Apple user that I may get the Apple TV when it is finally out. His reaction was, "What? Why would you want to watch video blow up?"

I explained to him that I want to watch my video podcasts on the TV instead of in front of my computer, despite the fact I have a very nice 24" LCD monitor. My friend just rephrased his question and wanted to know why I would want to watch low resolutions video on my 46" HDTV.

Then I realised that he thought all the video podcasts on iTunes are sized for the video iPod. He did not know some video podcasts are in hi-def, such as MacBreak which is in glorious 1080p. Others such as Diggnation and Merlin Show are in decent quality 480p which should scale OK on the big screen. But the most important of all are the TV shows that we've bought from iTunes: Smith, NOVA, etc. which we would not watch unless it is easy to put onto the big TV.

Yes, there are cheaper ways to get video from our macs to the TV but Apple TV takes the hassle out of the whole equation. Do I really want to figure out how to stream video from my Mac Pro to my PowerBook (probably using VLC), then onto the TV using S-Video (i.e. no HD)? How would I control the playback? Certainly not through a remote control and an onscreen display that Apple TV would provide. Do all these worth $299? To me definitely, probably not for most of you geeks out there. But then, I just want to watch video from my computer on my HDTV, not doing my annual geek certification exam.

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Next big green thing: LED lighting

In Switzerland, Migros is the first supermarket to switch to 100% LED lighting.

The energy saving from LED is currently around 90% of Compact Fluorescent Lamp, which in term is about 8 times more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulb, i.e. LED is about 80 times more efficient than regular light bulb.

When we move to the new apartment this week, I am going to experiment and purchase some LED lamps for the desk as well as the living room from Koncept Technologies. The saving should be substantial but currently LED 'bulb' is about 10 times more expensive than CFL so only the most used lighting will be justifiable purchase.

Read more on eartheasy.com and TreeHugger.

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6

Are Americans Ignorant About Religion?

From The Gospel of Prothero on MSNBC:

In Prothero's utopian world, Americans would have enough religious
knowledge to debate ethics positions using holy texts, to understand
Biblical references in political speeches, to question their own
beliefs about God—and to encourage others to question theirs. Only then
will we enjoy one of the greatest privileges of the educated, which is
to change our minds.

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Back online, phew!

I posted way too soon! I decided to get out of bed after sending previous post from my cell phone, and when I walked to the living room I noticed that the DVR was showing the correct time. Strange, I thought so I turned it on and it showed channel 2! I quickly turned on the TV and sure enough we had TV back but only basic cable channels. Knowing that it may be a provisioning problem at the head-end, I rebooted the DVR and couple of minutes later all the channels were back! Same with the cable modem after a reboot!

Thank the maker! I can't imagine going through the weekend without any internet connection.

Now I am stuck in a phone queue with Comcast…

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Life line

For a 21st century family like us, internet connection is just part of life's essential services. So when we lost connection to the online world around 7:40 last night, we didn't know what to do with ourselves with all these 'free' time!

Time Warner didn't think it's an area problem and the earliest they can send an engineer out to check is next Wednesday! We would have moved out for a day by then so that's rather pointless!

And with our ongoing problem with signing up with Comcast @ our new apartment, we may not get TV and internet for at least another week!

How would we survive?

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