Archive for August, 2009
Filed under: Comm
I kind of got lost for a while in the app store. Lots of fun looking stuff! Great free stuff! Which is very nice, my wallet really likes that! There are also, of course, a lot of apps that require payment but some of them really seem to be worth it. I already picked up a couple, mainly because they were currently like eighty percent off, figured if I was interested in them, now would be the time to get the app instead of waiting until it goes back to full price. I saw a few others that I want, but need to check into before getting as they are a bit more expensive. Ok, going to go try and finish stuff so I can go play just a bit.
WhooYa! Finally, my own iPhone! I waited for what seemed a long time but needed to get a business line, which is different news, and I went ahead and upgraded my phone. The old phone was really at the point of falling apart. I had about three buttons on it that were cracked completely through the button and it was having some issues dealing with some of the stuff I was trying to do. Texting was a serious pain, though I did a lot of it. However, texting on my new iPhone is a really easy. Quick, fast to type and easy to cut, copy and paste if I want. I am really enjoying it so far and I have only had it for like a day. I am very anxious to play with it for a bit but I have a few things I have to get done so playing with it is having to go on hold until I finish those things, afterwards I can play with it some.
Tags: app store, apple, iphone, new toy
Filed under: General, Internet
I complained a bit about having an antenna and how frustrating it can be sometimes to try and watch TV with it. But, I didn’t really talk much about IPTV, and I am sure many of you were thinking about that while reading my complaint post on antenna TV. Just getting TV over the internet would actually meet both of my requests, having more stability and being able to pretty much watch when I want to watch instead of being restricted to a schedule around TV. I like the idea but you have to have your computer connected to the TV or a big enough screen that you can use it as both a monitor and a TV. I bet, though, that they have other things out that are all in one items, where you can surf through your TV. The only ones I can think of in that regard, though, require you to have cable television as well as the internet. I will take a quick look. I am sure there are other options besides having to have cable and SDSL.
I just did a real quick search and in the UK and in the states you can find several places online that will let you watch TV. That’s pretty neat! Might save me some money. I also know that the local stations tend to offer many of their shows online for watching as well. Actually, one of the things I like about the local stations online is the way they handle their advertising there. The advertising online for the local channels is much more focused. Each show normally has only one or two sponsors so that is all you get as far as commercials, plus the amount of commercials you get is cut down a lot. It makes for a much more pleasant viewing experience to be honest, don’t forget, you can pause online as well.
Tags: air broadcast, nice online tv, Television, tv
Filed under: Comm
HDTV is a great thing, and I really miss cable! The antenna work and receives HD signals over the air but it really drives me nuts that the signal is so weak. It goes in and out, depending on the channel. What is worse is the one channel I watch daily has real, actually most of the channels, have real problems when the microwave is being used. If I run the microwave then I lose the signal to the TV, it gets weaker and is a big pain to try and watch. I have thought about trying to tune it with a baseball bat but figure I would really regret it later when I couldn’t watch anything. I was thinking maybe I should try and find some sort of technology forums, was thinking I might get some better ideas than the baseball bat fix. I haven’t tried that yet, mainly because, honestly, I just thought of it. Feel kind of stupid as I use the internet most all day and that should have been one of the first things I thought of doing.
It’s just really getting frustrating. I will probably hold off for a bit before getting the cable or satellite. Probably cable as the signal on it is fairly stable. Holding off, cause of course, I want the more expensive options. Yep, the DVR. Have to have that, makes watching TV so much more convenient! Being able to record the shows and watch them later is very nice. You get used to it after a bit, then you get spoiled with it and really miss it when you move. At least I did. Ah, well sooner or later I’ll break down and get it again. Then I can start watching more TV. Right now so much to do I don’t get much chance to watch a lot but if I could record things and watch them when I wanted to, like at lunch, that would definitely fit my schedule!
Tags: antenna, frustrations, need cable, tv
Filed under: General
Don’t you hate studying? I mean the school required class type studying. Learning itself can and is normally fun, especially if you are learning something you are interested in, but having to learn stuff only because it is required for your degree is a bit of a pain sometimes. Really, sometimes more than others. Like when you have other stuff you want to do, but you know you have to get this done. It makes it even harder to focus on the required class stuff. What really sucks is that if you don’t do it and study for the stuff you could care less about, you will be stuck with it again. If it’s required for your major you have to have it. Cleps and other college test out things have saved me some pain, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and deal with the agony of college class requirement induced boredom.
Normally, I find myself getting over it about the last day of the semester when I can dump all the crap I had to learn that I will never use again, but still some stuffy fellow or lady somewhere decided it was good stuff for the program, people needed to know it to be successful. Yay, right. Most of the times it is only in their dreams and in their pasts where what they are requiring to be a part of a given degree path is really relevant. Seriously drives me nuts. And yes, you guessed it by sitting here typing to you about how annoying it is I am procrastinating, putting it off and basically trying to ignore it as long as I can. I know that is a pain when I am rushing at the last minute to finish things, but, heck, I still do it. Only for so long though, cause I really don’t want to be stuck doing it again next semester. Speaking of which I am kind of down to the wire here, so time to go put something together fairly quick.
Tags: boredom, required classes, school, study
Filed under: General
Football is getting ready to begin. American football. I enjoy watching it, but not really pre-season football. Pre-season football tends to be fairly boring to watch. I never really get into it as all it is, is the announcers running their mouths, kind of like me with my keyboard at the moment. They talk about whatever really strikes their fancy, although they do tend to keep the talk generally around the idea of football, it just seems like one monologue most of the time. Since I am not really a diehard fan of American football it just tends to bore the heck out of me, puts me to sleep. Plus the games tend to be a bit boring as well, so I normally don’t bother with pre-season games. I find the regular season games great fun to watch, though! They are really enjoyable to plan a small party around.
The regular season is great fun to watch, even though I do not have a favorite team. I do have some teams I prefer over others, but nobody I am following day to day. I have thought of the fantasy football league things, as I know a few people who do that but I think it probably would be a waste of my time to set up as I really doubt that I would pay attention to it every week. Watching the games, though is easy and fun because all I have to do is turn them on and sit back and enjoy. They make great white noise as well, when I am working on things I can just turn them on and half way watch the games. That, of course, only works when the game is not very exciting or it is not one of the teams that I do enjoy watching. I used to like Green Bay mainly because of Brett Favre but he has been such a disappointment in his actions and attitude recently that I don’t think he is worth the effort to watch anymore. Although, he will do fine as white noise.
Tags: american, football, green bay, pre-season
Filed under: General
Writing can sometimes be challenging. Trying to decide what to write, can take up large amounts of time if you let it. I think a lot of it has to do with your current state of mind. I find that many times when I am stressed, kind of like now, it is hard to hold focus to write about any particular thing. Problem being I need to write, it is great practice and it keeps me in food, so it is kind of an important thing. Many times I try to stare at the screen but it is almost like it sometimes has some sort of deflective field around it. You try and focus but your mind is gently shunted off on one or two of a million other pathways. You find yourself wandering down different thought lanes and something seems interesting so you take a minute to bring up explorer or firefox or chrome or whatever you use and then you do a search and see what you can find about whatever has caught your fancy. Then before you realize it you look at the time and an hour or so has already passed. So, you think a few swear words and bring the blank page back up. But, of course, it has that deflective field working still. You find yourself another hour later swearing one again, with perhaps a sigh of resignation as you realize that whatever field that blank page has, you must get through it.
I have heard many people say that the blank page is often a scary thing, but in all honesty it is not scary it is tricky. The blank page is extremely sneaky and a master of redirection. The only way to get past it’s initial defenses is to relax into it. Regardless of whether that means with a deep breath or a sludge hammer, it is just a matter of breaching that initial redirection and moving down the road of thought on screen.
Tags: blocks, pages, write, writers block, writing
Filed under: house
After looking into changing my bathroom and picking up a couple things for the place I came across some pretty neat stuff. I guess many of you are probably familiar with electric showers. It was one of the few times I have heard of them. But they looked interesting and there seems to be a claim that they are “green”. Which would be great but I am not sure about the electric part. I could find a few sellers and some sites were saying that they are perfectly safe. There was even a site that showed how to check to verify the wiring was good. However, I am still a bit nervous about that. The idea sounds good. I guess for somebody who is used to it, they probably sound great, like shower enclosures. But, for somebody, like me, who is really new to the idea, it sounds a bit strange to be doing. Although, I guess it is probably about the same as the whirlpool spas and stuff. They need electricity of some sort to get the bubbles and jets going, don’t they?
All the checking on bathroom stuff and fixtures and other things is making it easier to know what I want in a bathroom. I at least have a good idea of what is out there. Although there are still things I am unsure of there are many good ideas and neat gadgets that can be used to make the bathroom experience more luxurious and relaxing. You can basically, if you have the money, have your own spa experience at home. Letting my imagination run wild, I would like a bathroom with a rocky outcropping that a waterfall of warm water flows from. I wonder if you could do a continual flow but just continually purify and recycle the same water? You would probably have to add some new water every little bit to account for evaporation but it should be doable. I may have to look into that.
Tags: bathrooms, decorating, fixtures, waterfalls
Filed under: Hmmm
They have a great thing over in the states. It is called Redbox and allows a person to rent most new movies for 1 dollar a day. When I am there I make liberal use of it, but I saw an article about the big movie companies like fox and universal demanding that wholesalers not sell to the company because they are not getting any type of profit sharing. I say B.S. on those companies. Redbox is suing and I hope to god they win, because the greed of the movie studios in this case is sickening. Seriously so. People are getting a great deal, and to be honest, the Redbox thing is what made me actually rent movies again because otherwise you pay a ridiculous price for like five days. I don’t need a movie for five days, so I felt like the rental stores were ripping me off by forcing me to take a movie for five days so I just stopped renting movies.
The idea that they are upset because somebody is making money legally that they don’t have their greedy, slimy hands in just really rubs me the wrong way. If they did get Redbox stopped I would stop renting movies and then campaign to get everyone else I know to boycott those studios and all their releases. Why the heck don’t they just move to compete with their own type of Redbox and give people what they obviously want instead of trying to suck everything they can get? That would make a lot more sense than pissing off all the people, customers, who really appreciate what Redbox offers, legally. The movie studios were saying that it undervalues their stuff, well they are seriously overvaluing their stuff. I enjoy movies but, you know what, you stupid movie studios, I could live without them and you.
Tags: greed, movie rentals, movies, prices
Filed under: Comm
Talking about cameras again today. I was told that I shouldn’t quit my day job. I apparently don’t know much about cameras, let alone a CCTV system. I was thinking about getting one, although I am probably not going to worry about it, least not right now. If I can’t handle a regular camera I would probably have trouble with a CCTV camera. Although, I do know they are different but the principle is the same, right. They both record images in some way. When I get a house I want a CCTV system for security, but until then I probably should learn how to use a regular camera.
I was recently told that I should not quit my day job to be a photographer. I, sadly, would have to agree. I was taking pictures of a friends ceremony, and all but three or four of the pictures I took are fairly blurry. I guess night mode indoors is not a good choice. I tried different modes but those images didn’t turn out much better. I honestly wasn’t sure what mode to use, and I think that was my biggest problem. I have the point and press button part down. But choosing which mode to point and press button with still confuses me. If I did a lot more photography than I do I would probably take a bit of time to figure out what is what, but currently I just don’t do that much, which is probably why my friend said what she did. She thought it was funny, but I felt kind of bad because the photos turned out so bad. I wanted to get some good ones, which is why I was messing with the modes, but that was a mistake. Luckily I did get a few that were usable , just not very many. Maybe I should take a class.
Tags: cameras, cctv, new job, recording
Filed under: house
Looking at doing a little redecorating for the apartment. I seem to be running out of room for my stuff. Not my regular stuff, but the groceries. Dry goods and stuff, things you want to buy in bulk and keep around for a bit as you use just a bit at a time. Especially if there is only one or two of you. If you buy in bulk you better have some storage otherwise there is a very good chance you will be wasting a lot of food. I tend to have that problem with vegetables when I make a run to the farmers market. I have recently been about cutting in half what I normally buy, so that I will use all of it. I do seem to just make more trips to the farmer’s market but that is ok, it gets me out and about.
I would like to have more than one bathroom, as multiple bathrooms are especially good when you have family over or if you are living with someone. Having to share one bathroom isn’t really cutting it anymore. The bathroom is one of the places I want to do a little redecorating. Just add a few bathroom accessories, like a large towel rack and a little shelf. Keep it simple. I want to drop a cabinet in my office room and in the dining room, they would help to increase organized storage and keep pets out of places they shouldn’t be going. Cardboard really doesn’t impress the guests. I currently have cardboard boxes set up to keep pets from getting to things they shouldn’t, but it doesn’t do much for giving a good image when people come over. Heck, it doesn’t do much for giving a good image every time I see it. It shouldn’t cost all that much for a couple of small cabinets and a towel rack, then I can think about drawing some pictures to put up. Really decorate the place!
Tags: bathrooms, cabinets, choices, storage
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