Sunday, July 29, 2007

Water Lilly Bloomed

Finally, I am able to photograph the pond's water lilly with a flower. The last few flowers only stuck around for a day or two, and they opened up during work hours so no chance for a picture. This one landed on a Sunday, so check it out.



Sunday, July 22, 2007

Return of TiVo

Woohoo !! TiVo is back in the house. We left TiVo to get HD DVR capability from the cable company (via the Scientific Atlanta HD-8300 box). Although we eventually adapted the the cable company dvr, it was no TiVo. Now with the Series 3 TiVo box, we get the TiVo interface and capatibility with the cable feed via cablecards. Instead of getting a wireless adapter, I ran ethernet to the location and have the TiVo box connected directly to the broadband router.




Belgium Independence Day or "July 4th" celebration on July21st

The EuroCor sends these picture. Looks like they went all out with the celebration with the helicopters, jets, and crazy tall people. (July 21st marks "Arrival of first king (Leopold of Saxen-Coburg) on Belgian territory in 1831.")







Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Riddle #2

Vincent told me another riddle worthy of a blog posting.

Here goes:

A young lady (let's say her name is Janna), buys her first house. On the second floor there are 3 incandescent lights, and in the basement there are three switches. The previous owner told her that each light is controlled by one of the switches, but he could not remember which switch controls which light. So, how can Janna conclusively determine the light to switch relationships with just one trip from the basement to the second floor? (BTW, she can't see the second floor from the basement, it is raining so she can't go outside to look at the second floor, all of her friends are at work, her neighbors are at work, her cat, Merlot, can't speak english so can't tell her which light is working etc etc).

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

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Transferring Digital Video

I have been helping my friend John spec out a new computer with the primary goal of having something fast enough for digital video editing. His son Ryan (not the brainiac who answered the Riddle) is a very good wrestler, and John uses the videos to archive Ryan's season as well as as a coaching tool.

Transfer of digital video should be fairly straightforward ... plug the camera into the firewire/1394 port, use a program like Windows movie maker, Sonic DVD, or Adobe Premiere elements to transfer the video. However, on his current machine, the transfer would start to dropped frames after about 4 minutes so he has to transfer things in very small segments which can be a PITA.

So, I ran a series of experiments on my machines of various speeds to determine what is best combo for video transfer without dropping frames. in all test scenarios, I shutdown all extra programs and services like Norton antivirus, realplayer, etc. On a dual core P4 with 1.5 gb of ram, 2 SATA HDs (one for the OS and one for the transfer), I was able to transfer 50 minutes of video with about 200 to 600 dropped frames. It was random when the drops happened but I am guessing it has something to to with HD access on the SATA channels. I switched the transfer HD to an external USB 2.0 HD and transferred the entire 50 minutes without a single dropped frame. Woohoo!!!

For these experiments and for future use, I highly recommend winDV to transfer your video. The program is tiny (less than 100kb) and it does one thing and does it very well (transfer digital video). This minimizes the software footprint on the computer's RAM and therefore gives more room for the transfer itself. Once on your computer, you can use any editing program you wish. Last, this link has some very helpful hints.

Answer to Riddle

Someone with the mysterious handle "Ryan" successful answered the Riddle . Congrats Ryan you win a T-Phone provided you bring the smartphone, Ipod and digital camera. I'll do the rest.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Zermatt Marathon

The blog's Cardiovascular Correspondent (yeah, I know, he looks a lot like the European Correspondent) ran the Zermatt Marathon this weekend. Just in case running 26.2 miles is not hard enough, this one goes up a mountain.








Friday, July 6, 2007

The t-Phone

$600 is a bit too much for me to spend on an iPhone unlike some people ... not jealous :-)

So instead of fretting, I made my own tPhone device. It has all the features of the iPhone and then some extra:

Ipod music player: Check
Phone: Check
2 MP digital camera: Check
Touchscreen: well, one of the three screens is ... so Check

So there you have it: the tPhone does everything the iPhone does and it comes in a handy, larger size so it makes it harder to lose. If there is interest, I can post instructions on how to make your own tPhone with spare gadgets you have around the house.


Antwerp in April






Here are some pics from Antwerp that the Euro Cor (European correspondent) took when I visited in April.


Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Imported Beer in Prague


This is what you get if you order an import in Prague.

Pictures from the blog's European Office






Thinh's blog European corespondent took a trip to Prague. These are some of his photos of the beautiful city.


Monday, July 2, 2007

Cleaned up the wiring in the PC upgrade



Check out the fresh and clean wiring inside the PC.