Wednesday, December 31, 1969, 04:00 PM
After starting my helicopter training in earnest in April of 2007, I added a rotorcraft-helicopter rating to my private pilot certificate. I have to say that it was probably the most challenging thing I have ever done. Of course learning to hover was tricky, but the hardest part of the rating for me was 180-degree autorotations. It's especially hard given the low-inertia rotor of the R-22. That said, flying in a helicopter really is a treat and something I'd recommend that every pilot at least tries once. [ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
Friday, July 8, 2005, 06:11 PM - General
The Slingbox is a very slick gadget that allows you to enjoy video from your home on any PC, anywhere in the world, over the internet. It is essentially a smart video digitizer with an ethernet port and some clever software to control streaming and allow remote device control. When you install the software, it provides a virtual remote control to use to control the device you've attached it to (i.e. your TiVO box or cable box). You can use this virtual remote to progress through menus, select channels, etc.
Installation:
It's supposed to work like this: unpack the unit, connect your video source and home network with the included cables (S-Video, Composite, coax/RF & Ethernet), plug it in, install the software and follow the install wizard to configure it. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't quite so simple - because my home theater setup is downstairs and my home network router is upstairs, I had a wireless bridge. When connected to the wireless bridge, the setup wizard would see the slingbox, but it wouldn't show video or allow configuration. I called their tech support who suggested I try connecting it directly to my home network, bypassing the bridge - which worked - but they couldn't figure out how to get it working over the wireless bridge. After a bit of research, I updated my sveasoft firmware, gave the slingbox's MAC address a fixed IP address in the sveasoft/linksys DHCP, and turned off loopback, and configured the slingplayer to use the IP rather than their "finder" service. After all that, it finally decided to work.
I suspect that if I had the standard linksys firmware on my router and not the sveasoft alchemy, it might have worked out-of-the-box, but I'm out of energy to test it that way!
Another note - SlingMedia's tech support was awesome - over two calls, they spent a long time helping me, in spite of my very nonstandard configuration. This is how technical support should be. Contrast that to Linksys - I called them also, and was connected to someone in india who didn't fully understand english and was only willing to walk through call scripts - not try to solve my problem. I am not a newbie and don't need help with the "is it turned on" stuff. I like linksys products, but was not impressed.
Overall:
Highly recommended! One of the best gadgets I've purchased.
Pros:
- Easy to set up (if your home network is fairly straightforward)
- Nice software, looks quite polished for a v1 release
- Video and audio quality is quite good
- Great technical support
- No service to sign up for - just buy it and it's yours
Cons:
- Lag between control inputs and video makes skipping commercials (actually, finding the end of the commercial break) with a DVR difficult.
- I had problems configuring it on my complex home network. Hopefully this won't be an issue for too many people
- Client software only works on Windows XP. They do state that Mac support is coming, and they hint at other platforms (pocket pc, cell phones, etc.)
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Friday, April 15, 2005, 12:50 PM - General
AutoStitch is a very slick application that will take a collection of pictures and turn them into a panoramic shot - entirely automatically. It recognizes overlap in the images, aligns and blends them to create a (mostly) seamless panoramic image. Very cool, and best of all, it's free!
You can download it from here
from The Digital Photography Weblog
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Friday, April 15, 2005, 10:50 AM - Thoughts
A few weeks ago I saw a review of the SleepTracker watch on GearLive. The idea behind it is that you wear this alarm-watch and it will wake you up at the ideal time to make you feel fresher in the morning. It does this with an accelerometer - when you're in the lightest part of your sleep cycle, you tend to move around. The watch senses this - if you're within a specified "window" of the time you've programmed, it sounds a beeping alarm. Because you're so close to being awake during these periods, you'll wake up easily. Amazingly, this thing actually works!
I was very skeptical when I initially read about it, being both hard to wake up and a bigtime abuser of the snooze button on my clock radio. But I was having problems waking up tired in the morning and decided to give it a whirl. I have since used it for several weeks and have been very impressed. I took it on my recent trip to Belize and used it as my only alarm - surprisingly, it woke me up every day without fail. There have been a few times since then when it hasn't woken me up, but that has always been when I'd gotten far too little sleep. Consequently, I use my regular alarm as a backup (the watch just isn't loud enough to wake me in these situations). That said, I think SleepTracker is a winner, in spite if the price.
There's a good interview with the inventor of the sleeptracker on GearLive
You can buy one on the Sleeptracker web site
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Monday, April 11, 2005, 10:43 AM
I found some cool new music on iTunes today, including:Banquet and Helicopter by Bloc Party
Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz
Goodnight Goodnight by Hot Hot Heat
Oh My God by Kaiser Chiefs
Some other selections you might enjoy are:
Work by Jimmy Eat World
Reach For The Sky by Social Distortion
Shallow by Porcupine Tree
An Honest Mistake by The Bravery (oh yeah!)
The War is Over by Trust Company
Getting Away With Murder by Pappa Roach (the entire album is awesome)
Little Know It All by Sum 41/Iggy Pop (Sum 41 and Blink 182 are guilty pleasures for me)
There's No Solution by Sum 41
Wish You Were Here by Incubus
Probably my best source for new music is listening to XM Radio in my car (usually Squizz, Ethel or Mix). It would be great it Apple did a deal with XM so you could browse their playlists in iTunes. With so much media out there, I think it's especially useful to have professionals (like XM's DJs) sorting through it all, because I sure don't have the time to do it myself.
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