yay for TV on my powerbook (again)

I had some issues with the previous version of iRecord so I haven’t messed around with TV on my mac in a little while.

Last night I decided enough was enough, and I endeavored to get it working once again. Why let a lovely 23 inch Apple cinema display go to waste?

It seems the software formerly known as iRecord is now FireRecord. This is a nice little piece of software for scheduling recordings from a firewire video device, in this case a Motorola DCH-3200 cable box which I get free from work. I had some issues searching for iRecord initially since some other company stole the name, but once I searched on Ammesset Software I was set.

I previously had a DCT-6400 but that died, and iRecord didn’t play nicely with the fancy new DCH-3200. With the updated software release all the issues seem to be resolved , and I recorded The Daily Show and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia as a test. Everything recorded without issue as I slept, so now I look forward to more TV watching and recording.

Recording over firewire isn’t the most elegant solution since it seems the only software to support this is FireRecord and VirtualDVHS, which is included in the Apple firewire SDK. I like the fact that this solution is free for me, but I would rather have more fully featured software than simple channel changing and scheduled recordings. At some point I want to get an HDHomerun dual tuner device, which works with Elgato’s EyeTV.

Now that I’ve recorded the show, I used the trusty MPEG Streamclip software to pull out the commercials and rip the video into an iphone friendly file format. I decided  to do this on a MacBook at work since it would probably take at least 8 hours to rip on my feeble old 12 inch PowerBook. It may be portable and good to use for surfing the web and other easy tasks, but ripping video into h.264 is not its strong suit.

I can once again watch TV (except for premium channels) on my computer. Yay. All I need now is a computer capable of ripping video in a reasonable amount of time and I will be in an amazing video wonderland!

Tags: Iphone, Powerbook, television

I’m afraid of Americans

I saw a link to an article on Time.com which states that according to a study by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion

Guardian Angels Are Here, Say Most Americans

This scares the shit out of me. In a beautiful time such as ours, where we have the technological tools, education, and access to a world of information via the internet people still believe in guardian angels. I guess this helps explain why people think George W. Bush was a good candidate for president, and why people think the Large Hadron Collider was going to destroy the world.

This makes me question if people are superstitious, looking for something fantastic to believe to help liven up their boring lives, or just plain ignorant of reality. I struggle to understand why so many people believe in something that is so obviously not real. Maybe a lot of people are taking large doses of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD.

Tags: Religion

what is my motivation?

The other day the roommate was quite depressed and asked me about what motivates me. It seemed like she wanted a quick, easy answer. The desire to make more $ motivates me! The desire to nail broads motivates me!

She wanted me to say something simple and profound that could help her realize deep inside what she needed to motivate her. For some reason she needs motivation to help her do whatever it is she wants to do.

I told her I have different motivations for different choices. Fundamentally though, I feel no real existential or fundamental motivation to accomplish anything. I am motivated to work harder to make more $. I am motivated to cook because I like to eat, and I don’t want to pay others to cook for me normally. Most of my motivations are to accommodate my creature comforts. This was a terrible surprise to my roommate.

This may have been a surprise, but it didn’t compare to what came next. I dropped the bomb. “Life is busywork. I go to work to get $, so I can pay rent and eat food. A good portion of my day is spent at work, to make $ so I can live. It’s all busywork.” There is no “point” to my existence. My parents fucked, I was born. A god did not put me here to do his/her bidding. I am not here to save people or change the world. I can do nothing but try to go throughout my life without causing discomfort or troubles for other. If I am lucky, I will make them laugh or help them see something they haven’t before. I occasionally try to help people when they need it, since they are just like me.

I don’t think she wanted to hear that I could be a bodhisattva, peacefully loitering to help my brothers and sisters find their inner light.

The dude abides.

Tags: Roommate

p-p-p-p-p-powernap

Lately I’ve taken to eating my lunch while working so I can enjoy a nice little nap in the car. It makes me feel much more refreshed and productive. I think we would all be a lot more happy and productive if everyone relaxed for a bit during the work day. It makes me much less likely to respond crankily when coworkers don’t do their job or try and avoid doing work, or when extra work gets dumped onto me from the awesome software development machine that is my job.

It also helps for the times when your drunken roommate wakes you up to complain about how they are bored and miserable for an hour until they fall asleep in a stew of vodka. Being sleepy because I got drunk the night before is okay, since I got to have some fun. Being sleepy because you live with someone who pickles their depression with a depressant is another story altogether.

Tags: Roommate, work

son of pwnage 2.1

I’ve been using the updated software and I noticed a few things. All around the software seems more responsive. There are less stutters when switching apps and when apps are initializing. The keyboard also seems snappier and more responsive. Snapture still doesn’t work. One annoying thing I’ve noticed is that now if apps are hanging the phone is more likely to spontaneously reboot. I don’t know how bad that is though, since before it would just freeze the phone for a while. Genius is cool, and the backup that happens when you sync is much faster now. From a purely aesthetic perspective I also like the new Edge icon. I still want Dan Marks to build his golf app that tracks the course and overlays a map of the course, I need to play at Sedgley Woods to test it.

Tags: Apple, Iphone