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Jul. 16th, 2007 08:50 amI've capitulated, as some of you have already worked out.
Jul. 16th, 2007
Busy weekend, didn't quite do what we expected, but we did do other things.
Saturday - generally wandered around. Got the car washed at the seminal Seattle landmark Elephant Car Wash. Then we had a walk around South Lake Union and had a look at the sales office there. Ouch. If somebody expects me to spend $1.6M on a flat I want a lot more property than they're offering. Finally we ended up in town and on the spur of the moment went to watch Harry Potter. It's not my favourite of the books, it's not my favourite film. No, audience, it didn't need a round of applause at the end - it wasn't that good.
Sunday - worked on getting the Media Center working. Mixed bag of results. The application to hook into iTunes works, but I'm getting poor performance playing the iTunes video. I'll have to play with that more. In the afternoon we were due around to friends to have home made sushi. Rory captains a vessel for pleasure trips and took us out to the pumping station for a short trip across Lake Union on the Schooner Mallory Todd. It was fun. Getting back to the car park and finding their car, with our sushi and my copy of Glasshouse in it, had been stolen, was not as much fun.
We ended up having Sushi in Wasabi in Belltown and then came back to ours to watch Goodness Gracious Me, which rounded off the evening nicely.
Saturday - generally wandered around. Got the car washed at the seminal Seattle landmark Elephant Car Wash. Then we had a walk around South Lake Union and had a look at the sales office there. Ouch. If somebody expects me to spend $1.6M on a flat I want a lot more property than they're offering. Finally we ended up in town and on the spur of the moment went to watch Harry Potter. It's not my favourite of the books, it's not my favourite film. No, audience, it didn't need a round of applause at the end - it wasn't that good.
Sunday - worked on getting the Media Center working. Mixed bag of results. The application to hook into iTunes works, but I'm getting poor performance playing the iTunes video. I'll have to play with that more. In the afternoon we were due around to friends to have home made sushi. Rory captains a vessel for pleasure trips and took us out to the pumping station for a short trip across Lake Union on the Schooner Mallory Todd. It was fun. Getting back to the car park and finding their car, with our sushi and my copy of Glasshouse in it, had been stolen, was not as much fun.
We ended up having Sushi in Wasabi in Belltown and then came back to ours to watch Goodness Gracious Me, which rounded off the evening nicely.
Boring Blood Pressure Stuff
Jul. 16th, 2007 11:04 amSo far, so good. According to my little machine I'm running under 120/80 pretty much all the time now, down from 140s/high 80s. I've had a couple of 117ish/75ish which is really good. I've also been exercising regularly for the first time in months and months.
So, it'll be interesting to review this with the Doctor in a month and see what we should be doing.
So, it'll be interesting to review this with the Doctor in a month and see what we should be doing.
MCE Tunes...
Jul. 16th, 2007 11:11 amSo, I've loaded the MCE Tunes application into the Media Centre and so far so... well, good is the wrong word. It's not as well integrated as the My Movies application, which appears in the main Media Centre menu structure as an option. You have to go to "More Programs" and then start the application. It also doesn't automatically update, so you have to run the library merge function first.
I had expected to be underwhelmed by the video quality on iTunes, but it looks like they've upgraded it recently. On my 42" LCD panel, the picture is crisp and equivalent to broadcast HD - although I suspect its actually something like 420p resolution. Still, it's better than I expected. I'd say there might be hope for iTV, but actually, looking at the functionality, the Media Centre still has it there. What they really need is a lower cost, better put together package for the Media Centre.
It looks like it's reasonably easy to write plug-in applications for MCE - so my hope is that the BBC iPlayer content can be integrated to the Media Center, that is when they let people outside the UK access it. The BBC (and C4) are pretty anal about blocking access to download content for, I assume, copywrite reasons. I've tried a whole bunch of work arounds with proxy servers and UK relays but nothing has worked. I wonder if anybody can think of a way around that?
I had expected to be underwhelmed by the video quality on iTunes, but it looks like they've upgraded it recently. On my 42" LCD panel, the picture is crisp and equivalent to broadcast HD - although I suspect its actually something like 420p resolution. Still, it's better than I expected. I'd say there might be hope for iTV, but actually, looking at the functionality, the Media Centre still has it there. What they really need is a lower cost, better put together package for the Media Centre.
It looks like it's reasonably easy to write plug-in applications for MCE - so my hope is that the BBC iPlayer content can be integrated to the Media Center, that is when they let people outside the UK access it. The BBC (and C4) are pretty anal about blocking access to download content for, I assume, copywrite reasons. I've tried a whole bunch of work arounds with proxy servers and UK relays but nothing has worked. I wonder if anybody can think of a way around that?
Books - 2007
Jul. 16th, 2007 02:26 pmBelieve it or not, I have actually got a lot done so far today.
19 - Brasyl - Ian McDonald: I'll be honest and say that I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to, or as much as River of Gods (a book on which Ian was, IMHO, robbed of the Hugo) - that said, it was an excellent read so it might not be entirely the book's fault. I didn't have the time to sit down and finish in one sitting, so I ended up reading it peacemeal and frankly, there is too much crammed in here for that. It's a fantastic tale of Jesuits, Multiple Universes and Reality TV. A huge amount of stuff is crammed into a fairly standard sized novel, and perhaps what it needed was to be 80,000 words longer.
20 - The Salaryman's Wife - Sujata Massey: PIcked up by accident in a second book store this was more interesting for its view of Japan through the eyes of a Japanese-American woman, than for the relatively pedestrian whodunit. She's strongest in the sections of the narrative which look at the contradictions of life for ex-pats in Tokyo than she is with the actual items which move the dectective story. Unlike the Marcus Didius Falco books, I don't see myself buying into the series as I wasn't left with a huge amount of interest in the protagonist.
21 - The Last Colony - John Scalzi: Set in the same universe as Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, Scalzi returns to the protagonist of the first book and his new family. Persuaded to lead the founding of a new colony, for the first time to be established by members of the existing human colony world's and not from "old Earth". John Perry finds himself caught in the middle of a political game between the Colonial Defense Force and basically the rest of the galaxy. Whereas previous Scalzi novel's have attracted serious praise from the right-wing sides of the blogsphere, this one probably won't as he looks at the military and military planning in more detail, and this moves away from being purely mil-SF. It's a good read. Better than The Ghost Brigades. However, I'd like to see what else he's got in him.
22 - My Life in Print - Emmett Watson: A compilation of anecdotes and columns from the career of Seattite Emmett Watson. Some amazing stuff in here from his early sports columns, through chance meetings with Hemmingway, to his views on Seattle and national US politics. Fascinating stuff. Interesting to see that the conflicts inherent in modern Seattle life (Eastside/Westside/Old Seattle/New Seattle) have been around for decades. I've still to finish his autobiography.
19 - Brasyl - Ian McDonald: I'll be honest and say that I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to, or as much as River of Gods (a book on which Ian was, IMHO, robbed of the Hugo) - that said, it was an excellent read so it might not be entirely the book's fault. I didn't have the time to sit down and finish in one sitting, so I ended up reading it peacemeal and frankly, there is too much crammed in here for that. It's a fantastic tale of Jesuits, Multiple Universes and Reality TV. A huge amount of stuff is crammed into a fairly standard sized novel, and perhaps what it needed was to be 80,000 words longer.
20 - The Salaryman's Wife - Sujata Massey: PIcked up by accident in a second book store this was more interesting for its view of Japan through the eyes of a Japanese-American woman, than for the relatively pedestrian whodunit. She's strongest in the sections of the narrative which look at the contradictions of life for ex-pats in Tokyo than she is with the actual items which move the dectective story. Unlike the Marcus Didius Falco books, I don't see myself buying into the series as I wasn't left with a huge amount of interest in the protagonist.
21 - The Last Colony - John Scalzi: Set in the same universe as Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, Scalzi returns to the protagonist of the first book and his new family. Persuaded to lead the founding of a new colony, for the first time to be established by members of the existing human colony world's and not from "old Earth". John Perry finds himself caught in the middle of a political game between the Colonial Defense Force and basically the rest of the galaxy. Whereas previous Scalzi novel's have attracted serious praise from the right-wing sides of the blogsphere, this one probably won't as he looks at the military and military planning in more detail, and this moves away from being purely mil-SF. It's a good read. Better than The Ghost Brigades. However, I'd like to see what else he's got in him.
22 - My Life in Print - Emmett Watson: A compilation of anecdotes and columns from the career of Seattite Emmett Watson. Some amazing stuff in here from his early sports columns, through chance meetings with Hemmingway, to his views on Seattle and national US politics. Fascinating stuff. Interesting to see that the conflicts inherent in modern Seattle life (Eastside/Westside/Old Seattle/New Seattle) have been around for decades. I've still to finish his autobiography.