Month: February 2008

Very interesting read about PBS and HD

I added an amplifier to my house antenna, which means I now get all the Baltimore digital channels, but one of the things that has been frustrating me is why I don’t get the same programs on the WETA-HD as I do on on WETA’s analogue channel. I now have a better idea after reading this article. Which explain that the master PBS feed has a lot to do with it. Personally I would love it if WETA would flip there HD main channel or even a sub channel to match their analogue, that way I don’t have to suffer a crappy analogue channel. One of the reasons I put in the amplifier was to get MPT which matches its analogue channel to its HD channel by upscaling the signal to HD. Oh well, even if it is not HD the quality of upscaled is better than analogue so it is the lesser of the evils.

The weekends fun packed events

Left work a little early to go up to a house concert at Wendy and Sukumars in Baltimore. They were at a Four Shillings Short concert a couple months back and asked if they ever do house concerts and they said yes. So 4 Shillings Short put on a private concert for them and 50 of their closest friends. Then Saturday I dropped HY at the airport and joined the Society for Preservation of Beer from Wood (SPBW) for a trip round the Fredrick Wild Goose Flying Dog Brewing Company in Fredrick then on to Brewers Alley for more beer and excellent Macaroni and Cheese. Sunday was spent redoing the insulation in the basement. I knew the basement was cold I didn’t realize that there was a hollowing gale blowing throw the gaps between the cinder blocks at the top of the foundations. I also managed to drop a staple gun on my foot, my wife’s response was maybe we should get you steel capped shoes, my response, maybe I should be wearing shoes. I don’t think I have broken anything but I have a lovely bruise on two of my toes, which make a matching set with the bruise under the nail of my big toe from stubbing it a month back on the stairs. So very productive weekend

Xkcd

I only recently started reading xkcd, I discovered last week that the cartoons have an alt tag that continues the story or adds more context to it.

Check out today

http://xkcd.com/382/

then leave the mouse over the cartoon, you should see the extra text. (doesn’t work in IE, but does work in firefox and safari)

Missing servers in DC

I heard on the radio this morning that two servers were found by the trash and was kind of shocked. My first reaction is how can anyone miss to servers, if they contain current information then they are probably in use so someone would notice them going offline. Then I read the Washington Post Article. According to the DC Tax office the machines haven’t been used for 5 years, which makes me feel a little better, but it will be interesting to see what is currently on the servers, my guess is that they were sold off as surplus and have been used somewhere else for the last 5 years until the current owners decided they weren’t worth the power to keep them running and junked them. What I am really hoping is that the machines were truly wiped before being retired by the DC tax office. I know that very few companies have a good asset retirement policies.

Skiing in Killington

I have been looking for a good way to share my GPS data from our last skiing trip. It turns out that Garmin has a website called motionbased.com that goes a good job. I had to gzip the Garmin Trainer export file before it would upload.

I tried a couple things with the GPS, on Saturday I would hit start at the top then stop at the bottom, on Sunday and Monday I would just hit lap at the top and the bottom. Hit lap means that you see the lifts as well as the skiing, interesting for checking with chairlifts are the fastest.

Saturday

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4893479

Google Earth

Sunday

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4893480

Google Earth

Monday

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4892981

Google Earth