A Yankee in Texas

As I mentioned yesterday I have been converting my DVD’s to digital format. Last night I decided to test out a couple of the files by watching them on my TV. I am using a demo version of a program called Connect 360 on my Mac and my XBox 360 to stream the videos from my computer to to my living room TV over my wireless network.

I watched parts of the files on my computer and they looked great. Then came the real test, streaming them. At first everything looked good then the video started “chugging”. I let it play a bit more and hoping the buffer would be able to catch up, but the chugging never got better. My first thought was that on a wireless network if you don’t have a strong signal it drastically reduces the amount of data you can transmit. (more…)

While I am sleeping and at work my Macbook is working away ripping and converting my DVD’s. Now let me state for the record these are legally purchased DVD’s not rentals or not copies. A few years ago I converted all (or most) of the CD’s Nicole and I own to MP3. If I would of been about it smarter I would of made lossless copies also.

I am making digital backups of my physical DVD’s. I am also making a high res. version to stream to my TV and a slightly lower res. version for my iPod. The three resulting files for each movie take up approx 11 gigs depending on the movie length. Which has me thinking about storage issue I am going to find myself in pretty soon. 50 movies will take up 600 or so gigs of Hard Drive space which is well beyond the capacity I have available to me right now. So I am looking for some flexible, but affordable solutions.

I will let you know what I find.

– Jeremy

Well the domain name is anyway. It’s a domain that I have owned for more than 5 years. At one time I had developed a dating site. My buddy Jassen and I had hoped we’d make our dot com fortune in the online dating industry, but it never happened and the dream that was once Matchrocket.com has faded. It’s still a great domain name, but we have no desire to develop it.

So in hopes of funding future projects I have listed Matchrocket.com on Sedo.com. I dunno if we will get what we want for it and if we don’t no big deal we will just hold on to it. So if you have an extra $20,000-$30,000 and want a great domain for online dating site let me know.

– Jeremy

“Still Alive” is the song that plays during the credits of “Portal”. Portal is a game that is part of Valve’s “Orange Box“. “Still Alive” was written by Jonathan Coulton who also wrote the song “Code Monkey”. Anyway while I don’t understand exactly what the song is about since I haven’t played Portal it’s still great!

Take a listen:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI[/youtube]

– Jeremy

Just about anyone who knows me knows I love listening to music preferably all the time. I have an iPod (of course) and a decent set of in ear “monitors” from Ultimate Ears. The one piece missing is a headphone amplifier. Now I know what you are thinking “But there’s an amplifier in your iPod” and true there is, but have you seen how thin iPods have gotten? There isn’t much room inside that thing. The point is a headphone amp provides a cleaner form of amplification. I admittedly don’t completely understand it all yet, but I am learning.

A while ago, when I first purchased my Ultimate Ears phones, I was looking in to headphone amps and I came across a DIY approach called Cmoy. Cmoy amps are apparently fairly easy to build and have decent amplification properties. I thought about building one, but my soldering skills have faded and I lack any electronics knowledge. So I hopped on to Ebay and found these Cmoy amps. The guy selling them seemed to have sold a bunch and the price was approx. $41 with shipping (the parts for the Cmoy are around $20 with out shipping) it was no brainer. I would like to build my own some day, but for now it’s worth the extra $15 to have someone else build it and know it works.

I got my amp yesterday in the mail and I haven’t been disappointed. The amp is contained in a repuposed breath mints tin and runs on a 9 volt battery. I might need to invest in some rechargeable batteries in the near future. I would like to replace the cheap Radio Shack cable I purchased with something that connects to the iPod Dock port. The dock port provides a line level source which bypasses the internal amp. I think I also might put one of those hook and loop (Velcro) dots on my Nano and one on the amp so they can be attached to each other.

– Jeremy

Late last night/early this morning Nicole and I beat Rayman: Raving Rabbids on the Wii. Granted this isn’t all that exciting since Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2 is already out, but it’s the first game we’ve ever beaten together and the first game we’ve beaten on the Wii.

I guess now we will have to pick up Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2. If you have a Wii and haven’t played Rayman it’s definitely worth checking out it’s a bunch of fun mini games which once unlocked in story mode can be played in score mode. Playing head to head in score mode is fun for parties since the Wii is very easy for non-gamers to play.

Speaking of that… there is a mini game in Rayman where you have to trace shape the closer you get to the shape the more points you get. When we were playing I said to Nicole they could fairly easily make a Pictionary game for the Wii where the Wii was mainly the canvas and maybe used to keep score. If you make games for the Wii feel free to steal my idea just send me a free copy of the game.

– Jeremy

Nicole and I had Ben and Gina and Eddie and Eric over for Thanksgiving. We cheated a bit and got a pre-cooked turkey from Rudy’s, but I am glad we did it that way it was no muss no fuss. It took about 3 hours to re heat the bird and it was very tasty. We also had stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and of course canned cranberry sauce. The Wii got a lot of use and a few Guitar Hero 3 jam sessions too place. Not your traditional Thanksgiving activities, but we had fun none the less.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday!

– Jeremy

So I put in 12 hours at work today… not because I had to, but because we have deadlines to meet and I hate missing deadlines. It’s going to be a tough 4-6 weeks for the Jaduka Boys, but I know, personally, I’d rather put in 12 days now and not be stressed out in couple of weeks when we are behind. Plus one of the projects is for a customer so there is no time for slacking off.

That being said I meant to write a nice post about my thoughts and goals for 2008, but that will have to wait till tomorrow because now I sleep!

– Jeremy

Good friends of mine Pat and Sara welcomed in to the world their son Eli William Hepfer.

Eli was born at 6:03 PM EST.  He was 9lbs 7oz and 22 inches long.

I just posted a picture of the him on Pat and Sara’s blog.

Congradulations Sara and Pat!!!

Welcome to the world Eli! I can guarantee there will be no shortage of people to love you.  Your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a motley crew of “aunts and uncles” who are almost family.

And some day when your old enough we’ll have a beer and I will tell you some crazy stories about your old man.

– “Uncle” Jeremy

So 6 or 7 is a good age for kids to start drinking beer right? (Just kidding…)