Dad Revisited

Large screen televisions are the big thing these days. Well, that and game systems. Well, game systems and online video. OK, online video and media servers.

You can see, there is a lot to decide when you are setting up media in your home today. Sure, most people just get a television and a cable box. That’s for the noobs, the low-tech crowd. I would love to be a part of the high-tech crowd, but that means more bank* then I have. Since I don’t have that kind of scratch**, I’ll have to be content with mid-tech solutions.

Before starting the job and implementing any technology, I must first decide what I want my home network to do. I would like my network to:

- serve music and movies files from a central location, not from individual files on individual machines (I guess this is a media server);
- allow my family to save and access their files from a central location simply;
- allow all my devices to see the internet and the network, either wirelessly or via Ethernet;
- back-up user data on and off-site, simply and without user intervention; Read the rest of this entry »

In 1844, a man named Innocenzo Manzetti first conceived of a ’speaking telegraph.’ Only 33 short years later, it had become a reality. Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful phone call in 1877. He made the call because he needed his assistant, Mr. Watson. He understood, even at the earliest stage, that the phone would be used as an extraordinary tool.

I remember growing up, seeing the importance of the phone as I watched television shows. Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry depended on the phone. It was too far to head off to Mount Pilot every time he needed to get information, so he would call Sarah the Operator and she could not only connect him with the State Police office, but could catch him up on all the gossip.

We watched the boys and girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio share the news about Kim Macafee getting pinned by Hugo Peabody. Even Zach Morris knew you had to have a phone if you wanted to get ahead in the world. He would use his big, honkin’ portable phone to order pizzas, plan the undoing of Mr. Belding, or call up Kelly Kapowski to tell her how awesome she was.

Zach apparently knew a great deal. Since those days, we’ve gone from the simple little LED display cellular phones and progressed further than I ever would have thought possible. Portable devices (calling them cellular phones would be doing a disservice to these outstanding tools) allow us to stream on-demand music over the airwaves to our phones. Handhelds let us see the internet from anywhere we want. Blackberries allow us to receive our email automatically, no matter where we are. iPhones give us the ability to send SMS messages, map our location using GPS, and play SuperMonkeyBall. Oh yeah, they also make phone calls.

Early cell phones cost a small fortune to purchase and too much to actually operate. Today they are so inexpensive, you can purchase phones simple enough to lose or replace when you’ve used up the included minutes. Everyone, their mother, and their children has a cell phone. With the proliferation of mobile devices placing them now in the hands of nearly everyone on the planet, I find it hard to believe that anyone would be reluctant to use one in important circumstances. However, I am constantly amazed by the complexities of the human mind and it’s system for managing choices.

One such amazing feat of decision imprecision? Imagine if you were a home contractor of sorts, and you came upon a situation in which an important decision had to be made. You’ve come to a point in the project where, in order to complete a particular step, a decision must be made regarding the disposition of a 100+ year old plant. You, as the contractor, must make a choice.

1. Change the original plan to preserve the plant, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
2. Cut the ancient plant to make way for the project, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
3. Stop work on the project and wait for the owner to return home, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the delay;
4. Pick up any one of the 6 phones on the job site and call the owner to ask “What would you prefer we do?”

All the technological advances you can fit in one’s pocket are of no help if you are not wearing the right pants. Or something like that.

My New Year’s Resolutions include a pledge to lose weight and get in better shape. I’m really bad at working out alone, but luckily my quest for a better bod is supported by technology.

I’m using this Tanita scale, which measures my body fat, BMI, and water content. Last time I got on it my weight was 250 and my BMI was, well, embarrassing. I only weigh myself once a week, as I’m told this is the best way to make sure not to be disappointed. I don’t know if it’s working. I still get depressed when I get on it. I think that’s related more to the fact that I have to look OVER my gut to see that I am overweight. It’s the Sunday Morning Weigh In Double Whammy! Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the theme I began last week, I offer the last of my resolutions for 2009.

Resolution 6- Technology as a Tool, not a Toy.
My best friend is my iPod Touch. When we are together, we find so much to share and so many fun things to do. It’s remarkable how she always seems to be there to help me forget what I was doing, reminding me that I would much rather be playing Spiderette or Penguin Lite than attacking the long-overdue items on my Remember The Milk to-do list.

I have a similar issue with my laptop. Here it becomes a bit of an issue, since my laptop is not only a tool for work but it is also the only entertainment I have. When I sit down to work, I am ostensibly sitting down at my TV, phone, and computer all at once. It’s very easy to say “I can just listen to a few podcasts while I work” which morphs into “I wonder what’s in my Hulu queue” and finally becomes “screw it, it’s too late for me to be working anyway!” My multitasking has now become a barrier to the completion of even the simplest task, and so I must resolve to limit my iPod Touch “playtime” to 30 minutes and my video entertainment time to 2.5 hours each day. That sounds like so much when you say it out loud, but it would be an incredible savings of time if I could do it. I could spend 30 minutes after work and still catch a couple of episodes of online TV before bed.

Resolution 7- Upgrades are not Manifest Destiny.
I am renowned for having a short attention span. My entire school career is littered with terrific first semester performance sullied by near inactivity in the second semester. Someone holds up a shiny object, a new activity, or something that offers a bigger challenge than finishing the last vestiges of a report and I am the guy who will run. If you want a long-term project handled, I am not your guy. If you need someone to keep 8 balls in the air without losing his composure, call me. I can make 15 decisions in 10 seconds, but cannot complete the last task on any to-do list.

This love of shiny things makes computer and equipment upgrades very attractive to me. “Ooo! A new mic would make my podcasts sound slightly better!” “Version 19.2.7 has to be better than 19.2.6!” I spend far too much time, energy, and money on incremental upgrades in my life. I don’t need the next big Social Media site. I don’t need a new mixer. I need to do what I can with what I have. When someone starts writing checks for it, THEN I will upgrade. So I resolve only to upgrade equipment and sofware when it is necessary for a paying job OR to maintain security and functionality of my current setup. To prove how true this is, as I write I am running FORMAT C: on my Toshiba laptop, trying to recover it from the debacle of installing XP on it. It’s built only for Vista, and trying to ‘fix’ by installing XP has completely ruined it. It’s a very expensive mistake caused by my endless quest for more more MORE performance.

If you liked these, you’ll like my resolutions for Family and Faith.

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Infomercials are the used-car dealerships of television. No one believes much of what they say, although if the claims were true, we’d be thrilled! I’ve seen some I’d love to believe, some I can’t imagine are true, and a few so unbelievable I can’t imagine they sell a single unit of stock. That said, there are two infomercials currently running I know to be true. The first is for magicJack.

Do you fight for the phone in your house? I don’t, but my issue is different. I live in a place where I have no landline, and my cell phone get’s spotty service at it’s best. Enter magicJack.

magicJack is a USB dongle. That’s not something dirty, but a device that plugs into your computer. magicJack starts automatically, and allows you to connect a standard telephone to your computer and make telephone calls for a single annual fee. $40 is the initial cost of the device (including one year of free calls) and $20 is the annual cost for future years. I’ve connected my Uniden ELT560 5.8 GHz cordless to the magicJack and have had great results. I get good sound, consistent connections, and free voicemail. They gave me a local number (631) and even have me configured for 911 service in my apartment. If I choose, I can take the magicJack home (or on vacation) and use it in any location where I have broadband internet. magicJack has a full set of features, including away messages, busy messages, call forwarding, and international calling (for an additional fee).

Who would want magicJack? Anyone desiring:

• a second/third landline
• a non-landline cell phone alternative
• an inexpensive alternate number/ voicemail service
• a semi-disposable number for posting in their internet presence (although you might try K-7 for free)

I’m not Billy Mays, but I can tell you this is a pretty good deal.

Last year, just before Christmas, I invested in an Amazon Prime membership. For $75 a year, you get free two day shipping on most of your orders from Amazon.

At first blush, Amazon Prime seemed like a terrible idea. However, I was ordering something last December, and I was in a hurry. I believe it was something like a PS3 game, and I needed it in 3 days. Well, when I calculated the two day shipping, it amounted to nearly half of the cost of an Amazon Prime membership. I did the math, I rolled the dice, and signed up.

Since then, I have completed 44 orders from Amazon. Each of them has 2 day shipping free. Amazon is not dumb in offering this service. I have ordered three times as much this year from Amazon as I have in the past. When I go looking for something on the internet, I always check Amazon. I was getting ready to pay shipping on an ink cartridge for my photo printer the other day when I thought “wow, I wonder if they have a double pack on Amazon.” They did, and while I paid 1.7 times what I would have paid for the single pack, I saved money on shipping, and I will certainly print enough photos to use that extra cartridge.

It’s no small piece of change, and really is not a bargain for you if you don’t really use Amazon, but if you do, review your purchasing history this year and see if a Prime Account will save you money. I calculate that I would have spent at least the cost of membership this year on shipping. I’ll let the account renew, because simply breaking even on two day shipping would be good enough for me.

My house is filled with videos of the family. I have 8mm video tapes I took on my first video camera. Well, it’s not actually my first camera. The first one my wife and I bought from Tops Appliance City. It was not really very good, and it had clearly been opened before. When we decided to go with a different camera (from Jersey Camera) we took that first one back to Tops. They wanted to charge us a restocking fee of 15%. Luckily, my wife was pregnant at the time (we wanted a camera ready for when Skippy was born) so with a little rubbing of the stomach and a lot of looking sad, we got it waived.

And so we have the early years of Skippy’s life (and our Italy trip) preserved on 8mm video tapes taken on that first/second camera. When that camera’s batteries crapped out and could not be replaced, we bought a 8mm Sony Handicam, in the interest of keeping the same format. Well, saying that 8mm camera’s have the same format is like saying that all you need is one lid for all your pots. Just because they are the same shape doesn’t mean all the pots and lids work together. Luckily, I kept the old camera, which works fine with the adaptor (or it did 7 years ago the last time I tried it.) We can still ostensibly view those videos.

The Sony is still our family video camera, but we never use it. I have a drawer filled with video tapes from that camera, and the camera sitting in a bag in the corner. We never use it because we really don’t watch videos after we make them. It’s just not convenient to do. We have to set up the camera with all the cables, hook it to the TV, and watch.

It’s also been usurped by our digital still camera. The Canon Powershot A-series camera does video and stills. They are all saved on an SD card, and can be uploaded, edited, and shared on the computer. This is by far the most convenient way to deal with video. I can edit it together with still pictures, titles, music, and even screen captures. Who wouldn’t want to do that? With iDVD, I can even make DVD’s for the grandparents.

The Canon PowerShot is still not the best video camera (the video is a little low resolution) but it may end up being the solution for the time being. I’d love to upgrade, but I’m not ready to spend $300+ on a camera. That and I don’t have $300+ to spend. I looked at the cheaper FlipVideo Mino camera, but the quality doesn’t appear to be THAT much of and upgrade and I don’t want to be a slave to USB. I like being able to bring a pocket full of SD cards and sort it out at home. Plus, I already OWN a pocket full of SD cards.

What solution are you using? It looks like the Canon PowerShot A-series will have to be the one for us, for now. We need to buy another still camera. The budget says we may be getting a second PowerShot. It’s a great multi-purpose platform, if you want good still and decent video in one inexpensive package.

I’m the worst when it comes to maintaining relationships. There may be only one thing that I do worse- deal with photos.

Lately I’ve found a way to take care of both- Facebook. I’ve met people on Facebook I haven’t seen in decades. I’ve starting singing with a bunch of my friends from High School (many of whom went into the Arts) and just got note from my old college RA. I started out just looking for a new way to connect with podcasters. I ended up resurecting the life I had ignored into submission.

What I’m loving most about Facebook is the Photo application. I can send my own photos there to share them. That’s very cool. The best part is not only can I see the photos I load but if they tag me, I can find other peoples photos of me.

Finally, a way to abdicate authority for my photos. I don’t have to put them in albums- just upload. I don’t have to find the pictures in my drawers- I just have to wait fir a friend to upload their photo and then tag them- they show up on MY page.

If that’s not a great reason to use Facebook, I don’t know of a better one.

My internet went down. 

Funny, I expected creepy music, or more drama as I wrote that. Picture little japanese people running through the streets with giant rubber dinosaur feet in pursuit. Cows and picket fences flying through the air as a pickup swerves madly on the road. Cary Grant face down in the cornfield as a small plane streaks overhead, bullets pinging off the hardpack. A small child, crying on the curb as the masses rush about in terror. 

It was a big deal for me. The internet is my only connection with the outside world. Well, for half the day. I work in a day job where technology could have stopped around 1750 and I would still be able to continue. Give me candles, kids, and a clavichord and I’d be fine. At night, I become an Internet Superstar. (cue fanfare here) 

A minor star, perhaps. I was sitting and interviewing Michael Aaron Rockland, author of “The Goerge Washington Bridge” via Skype when he just… disappeared. I freaked. I checked the connection on my headphones. I wheeled across the room (desk chair, small room) and flipped on the speakers to confirm he was not speaking. Nothing. 

I quit Skype and restarted. Tried to connect. Nothing. RATS! Error 1004. What the heck is that? I’ll look it up on Google. Where is Google? Yahoo? ASK.com? OH NO! I’m cut off! 

I immediately began running around the room (as I said, it’s a small place, so it was many laps over a very short period of time) looking for two things. First, my cell phone to call Mr. Rockland and stall for time. Second, anything I would need to take with me. Suddenly I was one of those people in a California widfire, rushing about the house trying to grab the family photos, the pets, and anything else that I could carry to the local FEMA relief shelter. Except for me, it was grabbing all the electronics and cables I would need to go and live at the local Panera Bread until I figured out what was wrong. 

Then, suddenly, I was struck with a thought. It could, as these things have been in the past, only temporary. If that was so, perhaps I could… do something else. I called my author and rescheduled for the next day. I found my wallet (obscured during my mad dashing about but revealed when I moved my “emergency kit”… er, laptop bag) and went shopping. A low-tech, pedestrian activity. First, off to the Target (pronounced ‘Tar-zhay’) for the simplest of low-tech activities- buying skivvies. Then to the grocery store to pick up my weekly salad makings. All the while, I don’t relax, though. I’m concerned that I won’t be able to complete my Skype interview. I can’t update my podcasts. I can’t finish my blog post. I can’t check my email. I won’t be able to watch my shows on Hulu. My cell phone battery is dying, and I can’t find the charger. Without Skype, email, or cell phone, I might have to spend a night… dare I say… reading a book! Is it like riding a bicycle? Will I forget how to do it? If I stumble, will I have the courage to continue. 
I drove with gullet rising in my throat back to Studio B, hoping that it was a mistake. Maybe I simply forgot to reactivate the wireless, or I hit a shortcut disabling it. Maybe I had to reinstall Skype. ANYTHING! It MUST be something simple….. 

I never found out what caused the outage, but it’s over now. The crisis is past, and I can communicate with the outside world. As terrifying as they are, times like these are important. They separate the men from the boys, the weak from the strong. They show us how much inner strength we truly possess. They tell us, in essence, what we’re made of. 

Apparently, I’m made of marshmallow.

I’ve never been big into politics. Frankly, I bore easily. Hearing broad statements about what we could, should, and would be holds no interest for me. I’m more interested in details. I’m the guy who reads the instruction manual that comes with that cheap furniture you buy at Target. The stuff takes 10 minutes to build, and I spend fifteen reading the instructions. Details are what floats my boat.

Unfortunately, details are not what wins elections. Broad generalities are what wins. This is especially frustrating in re Internet age. Broad generalities were fine when details added up to column inches of a newspaper. Broad generalities may even have been fine when there were only two television stations and a limited amount of time.

Those days are gone. With Fox a platform for the Republican Party and MSNBC shilling for Obama, we can have all the TV time we need to get in-depth coverage. Now that we have the Internet we can publish and discuss the treatise that each of our candidates plan to use as their guiding document for their administration.

Instead we get attacks. It’s easier and more effective (and more accepted) to tell us what is wrong with the other guy. Instead if substance, we get talking points. Instead of plans, we get discussion of who may have been friendly with the candidate years ago. Instead of sound policies, we get sound bites.

It makes it difficult to see just who should lead. Does a prime time commercial mean you will be a good leader? Do five years in a POW camp mean you have what it takes?

I’m not certain. Nonetheless, for the first time ever I voted via absentee ballot. Since I live out of town, I can’t make it to the polls personally. I know who I think is the better man for the job, but that is not the point. Make sure you get out to the polls today. It may be the single most important thing you do this week.