freeform goodness

We rebooted our Muxtape over at moodmat, and I took the opportunity to push a long overdue refresh of my personal mux at the same time. No criteria here, it’s just a bunch of music I like. No themes or genres or anything else, just tunes.

:: Dave Walker 16:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/entertainment/music]
:: tags: music

:: Comments (0)

I’ve been told (by the people that it irritates most) that I can tune out anything and anyone. This is, for the most part, true — if someone is talking and I’ve decided that the conversation isn’t relevant to me, I am able to “check out” almost immediately. The one exception, I’ve found, is when that background chatter is in a language that I don’t speak. In that case, what invariably happens is that my ear keeps refocusing on the conversation. What I think happens in this case is that I keep context-switching back to the other conversation, waiting for them to fall back into English, at which point I can determine whether I need to pay attention to it or not. What’s important to note here is that it’s completely out of my control. Even when I try to ignore this conversation, I can’t.

I’m sure some linguistics doctoral candidate has written papers on this, but I know this is real…

:: Dave Walker 13:13 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/cognition]
:: tags: cognition

:: Comments (2)

I spent about 10 minutes in Dashcode (and really, that’s all it took) making a better Mobile Safari version of this site. It’s nothing fancy, it just repurposes the Atom feed and wraps it in some CSS and JavaScript.

It’s probably not useful to anyone other than me and Dad. :)

:: Dave Walker 06:28 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/administrivia/weblog]
:: tags: weblog

:: Comments (0)

I posted a throwaway a few days ago, implying that it was a bit silly to be watching Helvetica (2007) on Blu-ray.

How silly of me. Typography is all about precision and detail. Of course it makes a big difference to watch a film about design in a crisp high-resolution “print”, and Blu-ray on a high-def screen is the best game in town for that sort of thing now.

The film is great, anyway, for anyone who’s ever had even the slightest interest in 20th century design. Highly recommended.

:: Dave Walker 11:18 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/entertainment/movies]
:: tags: movies design blu-ray typography

:: Comments (1)

If you’re a free software kinda person who feels guilty about your heresy/iPhone purchase, you can always try to ease your karmic burden by rocking the Free Software Song as a ringtone (128k, no copyrights claimed.)

:: Dave Walker 15:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

:: Comments (0)

:: Dave Walker 07:09 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

:: Comments (0)

:: Dave Walker 14:20 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/humor]
:: tags: humor netflix blu-ray overkill

:: Comments (0)

Putting this here for Google’s sake — the information is out there, but scattered…

You can play the High Definition videos from Apple’s Quicktime Trailer site on your PS3 (maybe the Xbox 360 as well — I don’t have one to test.) This is nice, as Apple’s trailer site has about 10x as many trailers available compared to the PSN store. The HD videos are internally MPEG4 conformant h.264 video and AAC audio. I believe Quicktime Pro is also required. In theory this should work in either OS X or Windows, but I only have OS X to try.

1. Click one of the links (depending on your TV’s resolution, of course) and the trailer will load in QuickTime Player. Depending on download size, it will take anywhere from a couple of seconds to an eternity for the movie to finish downloading. I recommend allowing the trailer to download fully before trying to export it.

   
2. Make sure you set the viewing window to “Actual Size” — as far as I can tell, QuickTime wants to export the movie at the same resolution as the current window.



3. Choose the “Export” option in QuickTime Player’s file menu.



4. In the resulting dialog, choose to export the movie with both audio and video set to “passthrough.”







5. Move the resultant MP4 file to your console via network, using something like MediaLink or MediaTomb, or via a thumb drive.

:: Dave Walker 08:35 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/ps3]
:: tags: ps3 playstation quicktime movies

:: Comments (4)

I complained about Netflix streaming to video game consoles being a Microsoft exclusive. The Hacking Netflix blog talked to Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings.

Why the Xbox 360 instead of Sony’s PS3? It includes a Blu-ray player. The Xbox 360 is outselling the PS3 domestically about 2 - 1.

For all I know Microsoft waved fat stacks of cash under Netflix’s corporate nose for the exclusive. OK, whatever, that’s what companies do. Please don’t try to insult the intelligence of your audience by spinning it as a market share thing, or else you’d be on the Wii first.

:: Dave Walker 16:30 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/entertainment/tv]
:: tags: tv

:: Comments (4)

I’ve owned an iPod touch since the beginning of the year and it’s a pretty cool device— it does the expected iPod stuff with a very nice screen for video and the bonus of being a WiFi enabled handheld web browser. I also, for work, carry the world’s worst mobile phone. That’s actually probably a little unfair— it’s probably not so much worse than all the other shitty little phones billions of people carry around, but I do hate the thing — horrible UI, poor battery life, impossible to find accessories (sync cables, chargers) for, etc.

Back to positive things, as mentioned above, I really do like the iPod touch, particularly the net-enabledness of it. As ubiquitous as WiFi is, though, finding a quality clear and open connection when I’m out and about is always a bit of a crapshoot. Watching the prerelease hype for the 3g iPhone, I finally decided that what I really wanted was an iPod touch that had an always-on connection. A few months back I looked into getting something like the CradlePoint PHS300, but quickly realized that then I’d be carrying 3 little devices around all the time, and that’s just silly.

So, I, um, bought an iPhone (Tammie did, too.) We hit the sweet spot in terms of availibility — we purchased at the Somerset Apple store on Saturday. This meant that the Friday launch day activation disaster had been resolved (a friend and I talked to a guy Friday who spent 6 hours waiting for a phone), but there were still actually phones available (most stores sold out on Sunday.) We got in line @ 2:30 PM and were inside the store at 4:00. We walked out with two working phones a half hour later.

• What’s to like
  • It’s teh Internets, in mah pants. Duh.
  • It’s still a great iPod
  • Remote
  • I get to make Sven smile
  • Safari is a great mobile browser. The fact that it works everywhere now and not just when I get lucky is officially :)
  • The already way fun Maps application that I knew and loved from the iPod touch gains immensely in utility when paired with even the halfassed GPS in the phone. I may never be lost again.
  • Syndicated feeds and Twitter and and Flickr and all that crap are a natural fit, and the new apps for them in the App Store are largely pretty good, if a mite buggy.
  • The lack of Flash is a feature.
• What’s not to like
  • If I turn on all the advertised goodies (3g, WiFi, location services, paired Bluetooth headset support) the thing plows through a battery charge like Lindsay Lohan though an eightball. I’ve quickly learned to take advantage of charging opportunities when I get them.
  • 2 years indentured servitude to a phone company
  • Freetards yell at me for not donning a mobile hairshirt instead.
  • Accessories (cases, etc.) are thin on the ground — manufacturers are still converting over their lines from the 1st-gen iPhone.

:: Dave Walker 10:52 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

:: Comments (2)