Brandon Wirtz's Digital Mix

Just ask Yahoo, and Google, they will tell you that the Greatest Living American is Brandon Wirtz.

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I am launching a Video blogging site. Sorta. It is really a site that hosts all sorts of articles that interest me, and also has HD Video of Game Reviews, How To's and what ever else amuses me. Check it out.

There is a newer version of the VC1 DMO bundled in WMP11 Beta 2. No news on what changes were made.

Just checking.... Seems I can carry nail clippers but not pop under the new rules for flying. And a Father can't take food for his baby. The rules only allow mothers to carry formula, and only if they are willing to drink it. Which is also stupid. I can think uppp lots of things that blow up real nice that would be perfectly drink able.

I don't think they should be able to arrest people until they have done something. Not that I think plotting to blow something up is healthy or good, but it is a big difference between owning a gun and being willing to kill someone. Watch Minority report.

I was home for a week. Did you miss me? Well at least lie and tell me you did. It was hot. And not in that over used Paris Hilton cliche way. 99 with 90% humidity. Ugh. I mended some Peacock fence, and worked on the tractor. The whole farm experience, I miss it. My Cats missed me. I'm sure my room mate relished in having the place to herself.

I bought a Microsoft vx-6000 because it promised to do 1.3 megapixel video. Well... it does do 640x480 at 30fps it does 800x600 at up to 15, and 1280x1024 at 15. So this is not the cheap build it my slef HD Cam I was hoping for. Still a cool camera, and not bad for $99, but I have seen better cameras, that have less noise, and offer IR-LED's for low light.

If I stole the vet med laptop with all that credit data, I'd make sure people thought it was faound and un tmapered with. What good are the names if they are being monitored. You want to go after easy low risk targets. The Best hacks are ones no one knows about.

Chris "Lockergnome" Pirillo and I generally have somewhat similar views on things, but this time I think his idea is just dumb. The Concept behind freedbacking is that you vent publicly, and the feedback gets to the developers and they fix your issues. The problem with this scenario is who the hell are you to gripe?

Chris, and I, are not on the same playing field when it comes to our ability to get our opinions read. It would be like comparing John Madden to Tim Stout, Rush Limbaugh to Carlos Watson. And me to most of Chris's readers is as much a gap.

When Chris or I bitch about Windows Vista Microsoft listens, sometimes ignoring and sometimes sending us feed back about why something can't or shouldn't be changed. When I was an MVP the same was true. But the average reader doesn't have that report with Microsoft, and as such their opinion in a public gripe isn't tempered with years of respect and report.

For the average guy getting your feed back heard should be more about finding people who are accessible and championing them to carry your most important complaints, or feature requests on your behalf. Forums are a great way to get feed back on your ideas, because honestly most the time developers aren't stupid and didn't leave a feature out because they hate you, nor did they implement a feature specifically to piss you off. More likely you were just not part of their test scenario and so the way you want something and the way it is implemented it are different.

Some Examples... I have a friend who suffers Red Green Color Blindness his company had a database program written not too long ago and the person creating the UI made the forms green red text 7 days before and after Christmas to be "Festive" the result was the UI was all but impossible for him to use. The lady with 13 cats who does data entry thought it was the best feature ever.

If you have a complaint with software don't gripe to the masses until you have talked to the manufacturer. Then if your Freedback is blown off use forums to bolster support for your idea.

Girls who wax must be insane... In my attempt to be a little more metro, or atleast a little less hick I have been making a concerted effort to do things like make sure I keep my eyebrows groomed, and that the occasional random hair that decides that my adams apple is a good place to grow gets plucked. So one of my friends recomends Nads, whichis this strange Green gell that you put on and then use what looks like a piece of t-shirt to press and rip the hair out "with minimal discomfort". As some one who has had some fairly painful stuff happen... I can say... It ranks up there. It took my hair, my skin, I think there may have been chunks of bone...It certainly gave me worse razor burn than shaving, and my little bits of "t-shirt are now blood stained. I'll stick to tweezers.

So a lot of friends are on Myspace. I'm thinking I may need to develope my Myspace account a bit. It looks like it would be a good way to network if I were willing to invest the time in it that I should. You can see me here

I don't actually read the comments on my blog any more. Mainly because they are spammed to hell. Wonder if they are boosting my Page Rank on Google or not. Would be interesting to know. I'm sure they don't get click throughs from me. I also wonder if I could get money suing the people who post them.

All interesting questions I don't have answers to.

I like my Xbox 360. Don't get me wrong. And I'm sure later I will love it But I'm not loving it yet. I play the games some, but they don't compell me. No slam dunk glad I spent nearly a grand on the system games at this point. Perfect Dark blows chunks. Kameo is Ok if you are in to that kind of game. Call of duty is such a camper's game that it doesn't fill my blood lust, and there are no button mashers as DOA4 is not out yet. Sure there are racing games, but come on, how many car games do I need? Forza makes me happy, and PGR is well not Forze.

I got the Media Center Extender stuff working and like that a good deal. I'm working on making that more useful, but as my MCE and my Xbox are literally stacked on each other their is no extending happening.

The Trailer downloads are neat. I liked the X-men 3 trailer, but most the trailers look like they were encoded by... Um... yeah even my grandmother would have done better. No one I know could have done such a poor job. I think maybe they used a Tarrarri card. That is the only likely answer.

In any event. It has helped me meet girls. More than one girl has come over to play Xbox 360. Not the chick magnet my Toshiba Libretto is, but still.

So wow. I have my Xbox 360. The setup was easy enough once I figured out that there was a switch on the video cable. One of the interesting things was That there is Support for downloads of movies in HD, to the box. we watch Chronicles of Narnia trailer and the experience was quite good. I'll do a full review later, but wanted to mention that this would be an Ideal Competitor to any of the STB solutions that do download and play from the internet.

I was playing Star Wars Battle Front 2 last night, and there are interlacing artifacts in the video cut scenes. It used to be that you knew when a game was showing cut scenes because the video got better. You would think that with Xbox using a DVD as its media that you could have amazing cut scenes. DivX, or WMV, or Bink Compressed Video on a DVD would allow for DVD or better quality video in the 6-8 hour range and still leave room for the game itself. But it seems this facet of games is ignored a great deal.

It will be even more interesting with Xbox 360 and Ps3, Will 1080i games have 480i cut scenes? The Xbox 360 I tried out at the Best Buy had 480p Cut Scenes, Maybe that was just a demo disc and not represenative of the finished product, but I some how doubt it.

Mark at Sysinternals Has discovered that Sony's CD DRM Scheme basically works the same way as a Root Kit, Or malware. Not a real suprise considering DRM relies very heavily on Obfuscation. But Sony's CD DRM actually works by HiJjacking your CD-ROM Drivers and reading a "Bozo Bit" off the CD that says I am protected, and then prevents you from certain IO operations.

Mark's experience of blowing up his PC trying to undo what they did to his machine lends to an interesting debate of what means can a distributer take to protect their content? After all this story is mild compared to what a HASP driver might do to your machine when you install Carbon Coder or many other USB Dongled Sofware.

Not that it is a big deal, or that any of you need to know about my underwear choices, but I recently bought a package of underwear that is lacking the "barn door" that is common on mens underwear. While it seems a non-issue, it perplexed me none the less that Hanes would make a "Premium" line of boxer briefs that would be missing this "Feature" is it a feature that they don't have it? Who decided we didn't need it? And shouldn't it be advertised that they don't have it? Just perplexing.

BrightCove to bring Broadcast model to IP Space

The model is working under the same assumption that Broadcast uses. In a world where Bandwidth and storage are cheap enough, Ad revenue can support the delivery cost and one only needs to bet the storage costs when building what in theory could b viewed as an infinite channel TV station.

So I think the Model is sound, I think this implementation is flawed. To really make this work you need a strong DRM solution, Targeted ads, based on both content and User profiles. And you need to have enough unique and compelling content to bring in an audience.

The big trick even if you get the economics right, is that when a TV or Film distributor picks up content they want to make that content exclusive. You dont see Desperate house wives on both Fox and ABC, and you dont find movies on DVD and in the Theatre. Content currently only lives in one Media at a time. And until that philosophy is change it is unlikely that this will be a viable business. Yes the music labels are doing CD and iTunes/Napster, but they are not happy about it, they scream and yell all the time about it.

Pat Robertson says he wasn't advocating assassination... Maybe kidnapping or dating... I know when I walk up to a girl and tell her I'd like to take her out, she doesn't usually assume I'm going to kill her. She figures on dinner and a movie. Pat was clearly thinking that Hugo was under a lot of stress and a trip to Sizzler and then on to the Cineplexto see "Wedding Crashers" would help to make him a bit less cranky.
Pat was just trying to be a good Christian and love thy neighbor. Pat did think we should assassinateSadam, but I think Pat forgets that martyrdom might actually advance these guys causes. Worked for that Jesus guy that Pat is always talking about.

Not much to say beyond that... Trillian still works, but it thinks it crashed and if you click ok on the crash message it disconnects... I hate when things only think they crashed but continue to run.

I use w.Bloggar for posting blogs. And I love it. And I like that MSN Spaces supports Blogging from e-mail... Now if only w.Bloggar would support e-mail blogs, I'd be set I could Blog once to both locations... Which I know is cheating... but come on... I want it all, MSN to have my blog, and Griffin, and sometimes VC1hd.com. Oh well.

Granted Laura isn't the most Girly of Girls... but she is female, and I have her addicted to GuildWars whichs is fun. But it reminds me of why I don't play MMORPG's that much... They Suck your life. Laura is on like 8 hours a day... And I'm on like 4 so that I can try and keep up with her leveling... yeah if all the guys at the office played my life would probably get sucked up.

But it is hilarius to watch some one who is so new to gaming pick up on it so fast... though don't count on Laura finding her way home... we ran the same trail 20+ times cause we were getting our butts kicked and she got lost every time...

Of course we can't change Iraq in to a democracy over night. I'm not necesarilly for Communism, but when you are basically a third world nation Democracy doesn't really work. The Common wellfare doesn't work in a place where the natural resources can be owned by a select few and the rest of the enconomy has to be based around selling services to those few with the money.

I'm not saying the Iraqi way of life was good, nor that I think the religous extremists are a good thing, quite the opposite, but creating a democracy that thrives in Iraq is not going to happen in the next 20 years. Unless some one creates an economy that is stable and supportable people are going to act like animals.

Menlo's Hierarchy of needs. Pure and simple.

So this school is selling iBooks for $50. You'd think they'd offer them to students first. But instead they creat a mob by putting 1000 laptops up for $50 a piece. If they should have known atleast 1000 people would show up. This wouldn't happen with 4 year old PC lap tops. Just goes to show us PC users are more Sane than our Mac counterparts.

I was reading Register and came across this gem. While I won't comment on any of the Technologies or Features... I will comment that MSFT will succeed in the IPTV space for several reasons, I don't think any of which have to do with MSFT's patents, or cool features (and there are a lot of them). The biggest thing going for MSFT in this space is completeness of solution, and guaranteed compatibility.

MSFT won't recomend a peice of hardware, middleware, or software, even something as seemingly trivial as a network switch for the home, until they have validated it. Using an Open system you can't guarantee that every piece of the puzzle will work seamlessly, nor can you guarantee that every piece of the puzzle exists end to end.

You could build an IPTV network with Video Lan, and a Linux Set top box, and a multicast enabled switch... But you'd be missing content management, and fast start, and DRM, and MacroVision, and Uptime Monitoring. You'd basically have a system that would eat all your profits in support headaches.

I won't publish what MSFT has set its uptime goals to, nor will I mention what they are currently. But I will say that the MS IPTV solution is easier to use than TIVO, and does more. And coming from a Die hard TIVO fan with an HD Tivo Unit, that is saying something.

Oh, and Go see the HD Demo of IPTV at IBC. I did the encoding, and there is a segment on Praying Mantis that looks very nice.

I was reading Register and came across this gem. While I won't comment on any of the Technologies or Features... I will comment that MSFT will succeed in the IPTV space for several reasons, I don't think any of which have to do with MSFT's patents, or cool features (and there are a lot of them). The biggest thing going for MSFT in this space is completeness of solution, and guaranteed compatibility.

MSFT won't recomend a peice of hardware, middleware, or software, even something as seemingly trivial as a network switch for the home, until they have validated it. Using an Open system you can't guarantee that every piece of the puzzle will work seamlessly, nor can you guarantee that every piece of the puzzle exists end to end.

You could build an IPTV network with Video Lan, and a Linux Set top box, and a multicast enabled switch... But you'd be missing content management, and fast start, and DRM, and MacroVision, and Uptime Monitoring. You'd basically have a system that would eat all your profits in support headaches.

I won't publish what MSFT has set its uptime goals to, nor will I mention what they are currently. But I will say that the MS IPTV solution is easier to use than TIVO, and does more. And coming from a Die hard TIVO fan with an HD Tivo Unit, that is saying something.

Oh, and Go see the HD Demo of IPTV at IBC. I did the encoding, and there is a segment on Praying Mantis that looks very nice.

I'm psyched the list includes a couple of Titles I'm really hot for... Final Fantasy most notably, but Ridge Racer has always been an addcition of mine, and I am a sucker for DOA... With Atleast one Fighting, Driving, RPG, FPS, and Sport game, at launch everyone should be able to find 2-3 titles to get their fix for the first month until other games start to ship.

I was talking with some friends in the industry, it seems Xbox 360 is a breeze to develope for, with a solid hardware platform, and a well developed / Complete SDK. Sounds like PS3 is PITA to work with right now.

Amped 3 (2K Games)
Call of Duty 2 (Activision)
Condemned (Sega)
Dead Or Alive 4 (Tecmo)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda)
Final Fantasy XI (Microsoft)
Full Auto (Sega)
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft)
Gun (Activision)
Kameo: Elements of Power (Microsoft)
Madden NFL 06 (EA)
NBA 2K6 (2K Games)
NHL 2K6 (2K Games)
The Outfit (THQ)
Perfect Dark LE (Microsoft)
Project Gotham Racing 3 (Microsoft)
Quake 4 (Activision)
Ridge Racer 6 (Namco)
Saints Row (THQ)
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (Activision)
Top Spin 2 (2K Games)

So it isn't Joss Whedon, but it almost takes cues from his stuff. Lost features a story. But the story is really a chance to tell the story of its characters. Just like Firefly, or Buffy, or Angel, the the Plot of the episode is not the important part, the history and interactions of the players is.

In a lot of ways Lost is like blogging at Microsoft.... No I won't go all Scoble on you, but think of it like this, Lost is a show about the lives the people left behind as much as it is about the lives they are living. The trials and tribulations they face are just their "Front Porch" you learn why they feel and act the way they do based on who they used to be. And that appeals to me. Sure it is a forced confession of who they are, but the lessons about community that those survivors find are the same lessons that the people in a user group face when fighting to survive an install, or a buggy product... Plus it looks nice in HD :-)

This is stupid. So you patched your game so it could be porn and now you are going to patch it so it can't be? Who comes up with this stuff.

I way a full 80 pounds more than I did when I was a camp director, and am trying to get back on track. Yesterday I biked 2 miles before work and 5, after and while I didn't "Feel the burn" I did realize there are a lot of muscles I haven't used in a while. I have changed my daily schedule so I start earlier an go to bed earlier. I also cut a lot of sugar out of my diet.

I'm not doing the Atkins, or south beach but I feel better, and each day I find I can excercise a bit harder.

I listened to an interesting debate about 4 year University educations compared to going to a technical school where you would learn your trade in 6 months to 2 years.

As someone who has been in college for 8 years off and on, I think I have a unique view.

I found at MSU that the value of college was dorm life. We learned more about engineering and computer networking living in a dorm of geeks than I did in classes.

At Lourdes College I learned the most from the varying perspective that students many of whom were non-traditional, brought to the table from working in the education field as most of those in my education classes were already working in the industry to some extent.

At University of Pheonix I don't think I learned anything. The teachers were little more than unsucessful business people looking to pad their income, and the students were unsucessful business people looking to pad their resume.

All in all I think my philosophy of education is the best. Get the College experience go to a big univeristy find what is out there for a year. Meet lots of people and take a varied set of classes to find out what you are interested in. Transfer to a smaller college and either finish your degree or get the classes you need to round out your vocational knowledge of the career you are interested in. I for example took accounting because I needed it for my business. I took writing for business for the same reason. I took Logic and Reasoning because I wanted to be better at presenting arguments and finding holes in the arguments of others. These weren't required classes but were easily the most valuable I have taken.

The problem with curriculum based solely on your industry is that it doesn't teach you to see the big picture, and it doesn't teach you how to interact with management, or clients. The problem with a curriculum based on teaching you to be well rounded is that you often don't have a deep enough set of experience to really shine in your first position.

So much of todays job hunting is that you are only as good as your last job. If you don't end up getting a good break out of college people assume there is something wrong with you. This is why a school like Kettering where internships are so highly valued as part of the curriculum are in my opinion the best path for a student that has direction. The hard part of a school like Kettering is that if you change your mind you will find it hard to find another good internship, and can expect that you will lose most of the progress you have made, so it is easy to turn a 5 year course study in to 8.

In a lot of ways I think apprentiship is overlooked. It used to be that if you wanted to learn a trade you worked for a menial amount apprenticing under someone with the role you would like. This makes a lot of sense to me, and seems that it would work well for many students who go to school and never get a taste for what the job is really like. Most computer progamming students think that they are going to be the next John Romero, but most end up being a dungeon dwelling code jocky creating database applications.

The problem with all educational paths are that they train you to be something, not anything. I think that having a background in education I can learn to do anything quickly, because I know how I learn. This allows me to step in to roles quickly. Others I know have difficulty switching gears from Engineer to Presenter, Manager to Laborer, and the like. This creates problems when an industry busts, or injury creates a need to switch roles. What does a balerina do after a car crash, or what does a Web programmer do after the Dot Com Bust?

Tramatized by the over reaction from the media.

I tried to buy a copy of GTA:San Andreas at Target, but they wouldn't sell me the copy that I found on their shelves. So I went down to EB where they were happy to sell me a copy. I downloaded the Hack, drove over to my girlfriend in the hood's place, picked her up on my BMX bike, rode down the street to the bar, came back, got invited in and then... well to say it was pornographic would be a stretch... "Playboy the Mansion" was a helluva lot racier. And is only an M. Basically my "Ken Doll" in boxers gets it on with a barbie with a few features painted on. I apparently have no rythm because the minigame ends about 10 seconds after it starts. Then I'm back on the street, alone with my BMX bike.

When it all comes down to it... Your 12 year old is more likely to see something worse on TMC, Sho, Cinemax, or HBO. In fact the "PG" rating that was on the 1968 Rome and Juliet (one of my favorite movies) would slip past a v-chip and features a topless Juliet.

I would let a 10 year old play GTA before I would let them watch American History X or American Pie.

I'm not buying that you can learn to do car jackings from GTA as is stated by Thompson.

"These are murder simulators. Manhunt has been called the video game equivalent of a snuff film," Thompson argued. "I am working with an Oakland, CA prosecutor in a murder trial in which the older gang members used GTA 3 to train teens to do carjackings and murders. The Army uses these games to break down the inhibition to kill of new recruits."

You want to have kids that are well adjusted? Make them bail hay, or some other "real" job. I play a lot of violent video games and I'm well balanced, except for the occasional urge to knock off a 7 Eleven with my hooker girl friend in a stolen tank.

And apparently carjacking in video games will turn me into a thief, but Power Rangers won't turn me in to a Ninja. Let me tell you how you let your kid play GTA he will play "cops and robbers in the back yard" you let him watch Power Rangers he will play "boot to the head" in the back yard. Pretend bullets don't lead to stitches, Pretend kicks often do.

Ed Sims definitely gets that if you teach a man to fish he doesn't need you any more. As a VC you want to find drug dealers to invest in. There might be a more politically correct way to say it but you want something people can't live with out, and that they will pay you over and over for.

But what I think Ed is missing about the value of .Net is code portability from Standalone application to Web application. Realistically most programmers can write a monolithic standalone application, that uses installers, and has a massive UI for doing everything you ever wanted it to, but porting that to a web application is generally hard. But with .Net it is easy to convert your code from monolithic standalone application to a web application with either a similar interface, or a dumbed down interface.

Sure you can do that with Perl, but perl makes for sucky standalone applications. Same with Java. .Net lets you write once and modify slightly for repurposing your application.

People might argue that other languages are more powerful, or support more OS's but when it comes to how fast you can write an application .Net easily allows for the fastest developement time, and that is like having an assembly line for your Meth Lab.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from work yesterday and this lady is talking about being a localvore. She claimed she only eats food grown with in 100 miles of her home. And that the fuel this saves, is good for the environment and that it is good for the economy.

Maybe if you did all your shopping at a farmers market you could not die from scurvy, or boredom shopping from all local growers, but where are you going to get bananas? or Sugar? Flour? You might live somewhere that you could get some of these items, but not all. And if there were a large adoption of this practice you'd suffer the same fate as the pilgrims that come winter you'd be eating mostly beef jerky. Especially if you live in Minnesota or somewhere else that doesn't have year round crops.

I grew up in a farming community, but I'm not so ignorant to think that locally grown is best. We thrive on interstate commerce. Sugar cane is grown where it thrives, and wheat is grown where it thrives. Cows don't do well in jungle, and Bananas don't do well in the snow.

In an economy where we are talking about outsourcing labor to rural communities, and are recognizing that technology companies benefit by getting resources where resources are abundant, are we thinking that agriculture should have the reverse model?

I had an interesting discussion the other day about what the price for admission to a community production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" cost.

Part of me thinks in terms of Movies where the sucky low budget ones cost $8.50 to go see and the really awesome ones cost the same $8.50. And part of me thinks in terms of DVD's where the really good ones cost $26 and the really sucky ones cost $3.

Chad who did the lighting for the show, commented that "No less effort goes into a community production than a broadway production." Which I can agree with, but I didn't have the heart to counter that the talent in the Broadway production would be better, but I did mention to him that the hard part is that Broadway can amertize their investment in the show over years, not 5 weeks, that a community run is.

So should we be paying for what a show costs to produce? Should we pay what the entertainment it brings us is worth? Or is it a flat hourly rate?

It seems strange that while Cars, and Computers, and Lawyers all cost different amounts based on quality, we don't translate that to entertainment for the most part. Sure Actors and Set Designers all get different rates based on their skill, but the ticket buyer doesn't pay differently based on the quality of the show, only the quality of the seat.

I'm reminded of my thread on Public Domain software. Theatre is often done for the love of it, and the admission only covers the cost of the venue. Andy who is staying with me this week is doing a show in Scottland for the love of it and taking a loss.

My thought that Open Source software done "For the love" was not viable long term because the type of people interested in doing that work were not likely to procreate, but I don't think Theatre suffers that since it has a good deal of women, who seem ok with their geeky theatre boyfriends. And it doesn't appear to have changed from the "Starving Artist" days of Shakespeare.

So go see some community theatre. Donate to it, so that the artists only need starve figuratively.

Higher Resolution isn't always better. Especially in a world of Digital Displays. In a perfect world upscalers would do an amazing job and could devine from adjacent frames and motion vectors what the image would look like at a higher resolution, but most upscalars do little more than a bilinear upconversion. The nice ones do a bicubic, but both of these methods result in either a softer image than a display running in its native resolution, or some jaggies around the edges.

Because I use DirecTV I run in 720p on my DLP. If you use ATSC in an area where most of your content is 1080i then I'd recommend a large CRT, but right now there is no compelling reason to get a 1080p display unless you work with Digital Dailies or anticipate the majority of your home theatre viewing to be from HD-DVD.

Many people wonder why I didn't get a projector for my home entertainment, and the light goes on when I say that I don't really want to watch the news in the dark.

If you have a dedicated space for movie viewing a 1080p display or a DLP projector can be an amazing experience. But if you have to use the same tv for watching digital cable or standard definition sattelite be prepared for being able to see every artifact and realizing how ugly your signal is.

Lately there is a lot of talk about how PS3 is better than Xbox 360 because of the 1080p support on PS3. While I might hold the lack of HDMI or DVI out against the Xbox360, 1080p is not going to improve framerates, just reduce jaggies. When a Game developer is writing a game one of the things they have to way is Polygon count against Framerate. If you have to support a higher resolution you have to make the lower resolutions look suckier, because unlike when you write for a PC where you can write a game that no one could play day one, but with a console you have to assume that the console will not gain any additional capacity and so you have to make certain that the video modes you support are playable out of the box.

I love Univerals HD, and Hate it at the same time. I love that they have all these great shows inHD and commercial free. But It is also really frustrating to watch re-runs of Battle Star Galactica Six months after they are on SciFi... You realize how sucky they look on Standard Definition.

If I had patience I would just wait for them to be on UHD and not watch them in SD. Same with some of the TNT shows. But Alas I need my fix.

Seeing the King Kong and Serenity trailer on UHD rocked.

Now that I'm back to having a work week less than 50 hours long, I'm going to force myself to start blogging again. So be aware. My thoughts on HD, and IPTV are soon coming.

Akimbo shipped, we are on Amazon.com. And you can order off our site.

We met with a big Nas provider today, and it is expensive as hell. Especially when you look at the could building your own. Oh well. I learned a new term CAS which is roughly the equivalent of storing your content in a database. You reference the content by MD5 hash. (Yippee).

The long and the short of it is that Hard Disks are cheap, Storage is expensive.

So I moved!!!! or I atleast Left... So Don't ever take a 2400 mile trip in a Wrangler with 2000 pounds of your posessions... it is just a bad idea. 40 hours on the road and over the mountains is not much fun at all.

A Break down of what we saw....

Indiana, Flat road with Corn.
Illinois, Flat Road with Corn and some soy beans.
Iowa Flat road with Corn, and cows.
Nebraska, Hills with mostly cows and patches of corn.

Utah and Nevada are desert. then you hit Tahoe/Donners pass as you approach California and you fear for your life as your Jeep slows to 30 mph on the way up the hilll and yhou fight to keep it under 100 on the way down.

Sacremento was HOT.
San Fran you have to have cash to cross the golden gate which we were lucky we had 15 cents to spare afterwards.
San Mateo is nice enough.

There are no Lone Star. TGI Friday's Sucks, California cuisine is mostly rabit food. Service sucks every where out here. Groceries were expensive. We need to get a CostCo member ship fast.

I'm living in the Extended Stay America with Macy the kitten.

We found an place to live but it isn't available until September 1st. $1900 a month is sticker shock.

Akimbo is nice will take some settling in to.

Business is done differently out here which I don't like. but i'll get used to.

I can't come to work in my Pj's any more ;-(

We saw the Village last night. I was worried it was going to be too scary for Ang, but in truth it was about as scary as an episode of scooby doo, and actually the premise is the same.

The Premise of the movie is that this group of people left the cities to start a community that would be peaceful, and that then a crime is commited and the victim needs anti-biotics, but to get back to civilzation some one has to travel through the woods that is inhabited by "The ones we don't speak of" And while there are 2 Make you jump moments, there is nothing to leave you scared of the woods at the end of the movie. This is not "Sixth Sense" level of scary.

I don't know what the Straw that broke the.... Never mind, not the right expresion to start this thread with.

I had a good friend visit for a few days last week, and while I knew she was very much pro Christian I didn't realize she was Anti-other religions. I don't know if this was just because she didn't know too many people of other religions, or if it was because she just had such a bad experience because of the media surrounding non-christians but I was shocked.

I was glad to see that The Grid included a character who was Islam and who was actively fighting terrorism. I was also glad to see his swiss banking cousin exchange dialog about how he watched Camel Racing, but had never seen a real camel because the weather in such places disagreed with him...

In college I had to take classes on integrating multi-culturalism into my class room. The Class should have been called StereoTyping / Racial Profiling 101. We learned about African traditions, and Mexican traditions, and not a whole lot else... I really bothers me that we went from 5 years ago when we passively ignored cultural diversity to now where we just assume if you are of a certain race, or religion you are a certain way.

There are Anglo Saxon Muslims, and there are Inuit Christians, and there are African American Jews.

My Big complaint with The Grid is that while it did temper its stereo typing with some exceptions it still set up an anti-Islam Anti-Middle East scenario. Rather than dealing with one of the many terrorist organizations in the world it picked the easy one. Why not pick one of the Korean groups, or one of the groups here in the US that are just Anti-government?

I miss the Reagen Years cold war. We knew who to be afraid of, and we knew what they had. We had spies in their ranks so we knew what they were planning. Life was easy. And what was better was that the "Hate" was for the governments, not the people... We wanted to bring democracry to free our enemy. I'm not so dumb as to think it was really a noble cause, and yes I know about all of the things that came with the cold war that weren't good... but step back for a minute... Wasn't life easier when your fear was much more rational? You worried about bombs falling from the sky, and you had a fall out shelter that you knew was a safe place. In today's world we worry about if they put Seran in our after shave, or Anthrax in our baking soda, or mail. When we were fighting russia you were never scared to open your mail, or worried about nerve gas in your perfume.

The Cold War you had the possibility that the Star Wars project was going to keep you safe. A defense system protecting us from attack. With our new enemies there is none of that.

You didn't live in fear that you might have a Red, or Orange Terror Alert. And when there were threats they were identified we had information about what was going to get us. You could say to your self "Cuba won't blow up Florida, its to close to them, so I don't have to worry, but my friend in New York Might," and you could rationalize your safety.

So barring anything really weird it look like I'm on my way to San Mateo to work at Akimbo.com as Senior Business Developement Manager. None of you knew I had mad Biz Dev skills did you? Well apparently I do. Griffin will continue to exist, as it is Angela's company, not mine. And it will probably do alright being based on the west coast. We are sad to not be moving it to West Clay, the social aspects of the community really appealed to us. We will be sad to be leaving our friends in Indy, but I think Akimbo has a bright future and I like the idea of getting in on the ground floor. (or close to it)

If any one knows of great places to live let me know. If anyone who reads me lives near there let me know. If anyone wants a Washer, Dryer, Dish Washer, or numerous other random odds and ends that I'm not going to take with me say so.

I can't even get people to move to v6... Oh well leave it to a country that has mandatory population controls to plan for a time when we will run out of IP addresses.
The Inq has the story

I'm in the process of reworking alot of the Griffin site, so if you get weirdness don't worry I won't take too long. You may notice that the main page has an i-frame that is because Frontpage didn't like me doing an include. I don't know what it's deal was but it wasn't happy. So anyway, I'm switching to the Centered layout. I'll likely use the side space for something, but not right away, I have to reformat all of the pages, because they are really hard to read right now.

But hopefully the new site will be faster, more compatible, and prettier.

BBC is reporting that Indian rail will offer Wifi, free at first but after it has users hooked it will up its rates.

ZD Net has a great video on what the future of Photo Management looks like. Notice the 3d, and the Metadata interface.

What if you could sue anyone who made a product that could be used in a crime? If a drunk driver gets in an accident is that Ford's Fault? If your neighbors glue sniffing son breaks in to your house with a hammer, is Craftsman liable?

Currently the answer is no. If you make a product that has even one legitimate use, that product is legal. So the idea that the Induce Act might make it possible to sue makers of Portable media devices, CD-R's, and other devices that could be used to disseminate pirated content, is stupid. I use a lot of DVD-R's and none of them get used for pirating DVD's or MP3's. The same is true of my Dell DJ.

When I use my Craftsman Hammer it is not to rob my neighbors, and while I do use my Jeep a few miles per hour generally less than 5, over the speed limit, I don't generally set out to break the law, and Jeep shouldn't be liable for my actions.

You think the above ideas are possibly defendable positions? Try this:
   Clothing manufactures liable for pockets because a Shop lifter was able to use them to hide merchandise.
   Flight Simulators for training terrorists to fly.
   Mc Donald's for Obesity.
   Mt. Dew for tooth decay.
   Klipsh for Hearing loss.
   White Snake for hearing loss. Skip that... RIAA for Hearing loss. Ok. Now maybe I can be for this bill after all.

I was reading an article about Automation after seeing a piece on NBC last night about robot house construction. You have to wonder if Automation is a bigger threat to jobs than India is.

Will we end up with a society where the upper class owns the machines, the upper middle designs things for the machines to create, and the Middle class performs maintenance. There is no Blue Collar workers, and huge numbers of people are unemployed?

While history shows that the Cotton Gin, helped the economy not hurt it, and that the assembly line also helped, it is easy to say that automation will further help the economy, but it seems at some point things become automated to the point that you only have professionals, and unemployed. I think we are still a long way from that right now, but look at the wonderful world of star trek where food prep is automated, agriculture is not needed becuase you just re sequence raw materials to create food. You don't need a car because you "beam" from place to place. So what does every one do for a living? Lounge on the beach and the government gives you a Soy Lent Green pellet and a Unitard so you can do what ever you want the rest of the day?

At Griffin we built an automation system that lets us process Video Capture, Compression, and Cleaning at 4x realtime. With some practice a worker can expand that to 6-8. The studio down the street works at .75x realtime, and doesn't have the ability to expand that to even reach realtime. They employ 4 people and do less than we do. Because one person does the work of 6 does that mean I cost the economy 5 jobs? I'm not sure. But as far as a good corporate decision goes I don't think we'd turn off the automation in exchange for giving those workers a job.

Carter is talking about how Microsoft is forced to ship a boat load of PC's to a tech conference because they aren't sure they will have Broadband at the venue. It still amazes me that we don't have some sort of access that works anywhere in the US for broadband. Before you say DirectWay, the latency on it is 3000ms Minimum, many network demonstrations time out before that. The Idea that fast internet via cellular towers, or DSL that works from any phone line doesn't exist yet is mind boggling.

Dad lives with internet that is lucky to break 33.6 because phone quality is so poor in his area. I can't imagine having less than 300k of upload.

One of the problems with 4 year degrees today is that they take 5 years to get. A big part of this is the result of colleges and universities trying to cover all of the information for all of a given field, rather than tailoring the degree to waht a student actually wants to do with their life. A good example of this was Angela's situation. Angela wants to work as a Camp Director. Typically people in this field get a Recreation and Leisure degree, where they would learn about facilities management. The problem is that a Summer and Outdoor Education Camp aren't like managing a conference center, because you manage the Program as well as the facilities. A camp director is 1 part Teacher, 1 part Manager, and 1 part Sales / Marketing. A director weak in any of these three area's won't be successful. But you can't really go to school to get the experience you need, although you should be.

There are a lot of jobs that require cross disciplines. Especially with more and more organizations swithing to a customer oriented model that has more midlevel managers, or workers who self manage. While the current logic is that you either pick the additional training up in the field or you go back to school to get additional training, it seems that with the nearly $100k that a degree from anywhere reputable costs that you'd have to have a pretty large pay increase to make the additional schooling pay off.

One of the things I really dislike about the statistics that we are often presented with about the difference in income between those with and with out a degree, is that they include those who didn't even qualify for college. If you looked at the numbers for people who scored 1100 or better on the SAT and how they faired with and with out a college degree I think the numbers would be a little more fair.

The idea that you come out of college ready for the work place is absurd. You can't prepare a student for everything with curriculum, most of your Prof's haven't been in the work place in so long they don't even know what the current trends are. There isn't a college in the World that offers a program for my current position: Encoding Gorrilla. Which requires Video Engineering, IT Infrastructure Management, Automation Programming / Scripting, and Audio Video Compression. As I add monkey's to the ranks below me Management and Instruction will be added to the list of requirements. As I attempt to add customers Sales will be important. To get all of this trainging in a classroom I'd need about 10 years of college.

I live in a house that is isolated. Surrounded by trees away from my snobby neighbors. But we are going to move. The place we have our eye on is a community. It has poker nights and icecream socials, and a swim team, volley ball tournaments and more. It is called the Village of West Clay, and it is an interesting setup. Rather than living in a place where you try hard not to know your neighbors it is a place designed to help you meet your neighbors. I like the idea. Apartments may not have a front porch, but the local poker night might do just as well.

The midwest is an untapped resource for labor, tech support and a lot more. Everyone is looking to India, Mexico, and other places where labor is cheap, but the truth is labor is cheap in the midwest. In my home town if you make $40k a year you are at the top of the heap. People would line up and thank you for a $15 an hour job and would work hard with little complaint. It is the difference in work ethic between the East and West coast and the Midwest.

I come from a community where for the most part you are a Farmer, or a Factory worker. If you live in Branch or Hillsdale county Michigan chances are you either work the land, or work the line. There are few IT jobs in Hillsdale county. And in Reading my home town, there are only about 4 IT jobs. 2 for the school, 1 for the factory, and 1 for the rest of the town.

I'm working with a company that is based in California, and I don't think they fully get the difference in price.

In Indy I don't have AC, and only wish I had it 4 days a year.
My Electric bill is $120 or so a month.
Rent is about $.50 a square foot.
I can get a college educated Semi-technical laborer for $10 an hour.

In California you can atleast double all of these numbers.

So why outsource overseas when there is so much untapped potential in farm country?

I have Road Runner Cable from Bright House. And My service was down... I hate "We will arrive between 9 am and 1 pm" especially when they arrive at 1:10 But it gets worse.

Pulls in to my drive way a Tattooed guy wearing a Wife beater, in a Blue Pick up with its bumper bungie chorded to his truck, being cheaufered by his tattooed Girl Friend. Nothing says "Boy I want to let this guy in my house like this guy does" Even the neighbors dog didn't like him.

So he wanders around for 3 hours and then announces that he and his supervisor found the tap at the road, and that the "tap is bad"

90 minutes later (5 minutes ago) a much more proffessional looking guy in a cherry picker shows up and tells me it is fixed. Has me verify that it is working and wishes me a good day.

Some say Americans will find a better economy by outsourcing things we can get cheaper elsewhere. The problem is that if we outsource all the Labor intensive jobs, and all the Intelectual jobs, and leave only the Services jobs the US will be Jamiaca in no time. What I mean by that is that only jobs requiring physical proximity are left. The truth is Americans are lazy, and we are cheap. We don't want to do the manual labor, and we don't want to deal with customers with problems so we out source IT, Programming, the manufacturing of Soccer balls, and any other job that we view as tedious to countries where people are anxious for work and greatful to have a job.

That isn't to say that some of the sweat shops that American companies run under the guise of providing for those nations are a good thing... But in many cases American's aren't greatful for alot of jobs that we should be happy to have. Having worked in a Call center doing Tech Support I can tell you it beats factories and it beats McDonald's. And actually I could teach any McD's worker to do it.

American's believe we are the best at everything. And that we are too good for a lot of these jobs. The Truth is when you outsource to India with the possible exception of some difficulties understanding the accent on otherwise beautiful English, the work is done better, more consitantly and with more respect to the customer. I'm not for outsourcing mind you. There are lots of times a better product at a cheaper price is not what I buy. I buy local. When my local economy thrives I thrive. If we didn't have Silicon junkies flipping burgers because the Tech industry isn't generating enough jobs, I'd be all for outsourcing, but we don't and I'm not.

Boston Globe is reporting That MSFT will offer free licenses for Machines used only as fail overs. This is great! It makes what a lot of IT department do with having a ghost machine ready to go at a moments notice legal.

I'm not necessarily one of those people who thinks you should ignore the guy looking to spend $5 in your store, but I'm certainly one of those people who think that if a customer has a cart at the CompUSA you should be considering assigning someone to help them.

I was shopping for some upgrades for my farm of computers the other day. I have a big project and need a little more beef if it si going to go well. So Ang and I grab a cart and start shopping the CompUSA. We've got some UPS's, Several Gigabit Nics, a Gig Switch, Cat6 cables, and an External Hard disk. And we needed some ram. The store was empty except for us and two other shoppers. So it wasn't like they were busy but we stood at the Counter for 5 minutes while an associate looked for some one to open the case that was unlocked. Then it took 5 minutes to convince the service manager that a 200 pin SoDimm would not work in place of the 184 Pin DDR Dimm that I wanted to buy. Then 5 minutes to explain that the item was non-returnable and that if I brought the machine in with in the next 14 days they'd install it for free.

Ang hates the CompUSA, but loves Game Stop where we got 3 used titles for $22. So her hate of CompUSA has nothing to do with her Geekiness.

Screen shots of the new Codecs.

The Player the SDK's

What Am I missing? It seems to me that c# is so close to VB that I can scarcely tell them appart. Yeah there is that nasty Having to treat variables as what they are... so you have to know if you have a String or a Long, or a TimeSpan. But other than that and the whole case Sensitive thing they are practically the same.

I think I might like c# better if it was Smart enough to know that For, FOR, and for are all the same to me, and that I'm never going to be dumb enough to name my variable "for". Yeah Some Idiot might decide that he needs to name his variable the same as it is in the database and the idiot who named the Client column "For" as in who the work is For, might want to name a variable for, but that would be dumb.

In that same vein I really like whidby. I wish I could be running it now, but I need to develop for now machines and not soon to be.

Sorry for the long delay since my last sets of posts. Griffin is going back in to the Encoding / Conversion business. Gearing up to turn over hundreds of hours of video each week is a lot of work. I'm looking forward to it though. It plays to my strong points, automation, encoding, and compression. And I'm excited about the client I'm working with. So once I'm rolling you'll start hearing from me on a regular basis again... When you are just sitting and watching tape roll you have lots of time to do things like read a book, blog, or count your nuckle hairs.

Ang is like, so you are going to get paid to watch Videos all day? And you aren't editing them just converting them from tape to Windows Media? And you get paid for this?

If the content is interesting it can be fun... And hopefully it will be, but still 12 hours a day will drive you insane. I'm going to have to buy and exercise bike for the Studio. That way I can atleast work out while I'm doing it. I'll be hiring "Monkeys" soon. If you are in my neck of the woods and want the glorious fast paced life of an encoder monkey drop me a line.

Removed.