Successes Both Mechanical and Technological
The weekend isn’t even halfway over, and already I’ve achieved two significant project successes — or at least, I hope I have. (One of them has yet to be proven out). Since at least one of these has been something I’ve tried to achieve for a long time without any success, I thought I’d post how I got it done in case it helps others.
The Technological
This is the one that I think others might be interested in. Here at home, we have a TiVo HD DVR that we use to record HD programming that we pick up from a Channel Master 4228HD over-the-air TV antenna. While this works a treat, the problem is that I don’t have a second TiVo HD in the game room upstairs and thus can’t watch my favorite shows like Fringe on my new plasma TV up there. However, I do have a perfectly competent PS3 Media Server running on my computer, and the plasma TV has a built-in DLNA client that can stream programs from my server with ease. Surely there’s a solution here somewhere.
TiVo records shows to MPEG-2 files that are encrypted using your TiVo Media Access Key (MAK). It’s a simple matter to decrypt these things, but that’s as far as I could ever get. Simply dropping the decrypted .mpg file into my PS3 Media Server folder doesn’t work; client players can never reliably play back the file. Either I’ll get picture with no audio, or sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes the video would play back on a computer, but I’d often have problems with the audio and video getting out of sync, especially if I fast-forward or rewind. I’ve tried free tool after free tool to convert these stupid things and I’d always get these same problems. I did manage to figure out that something about TiVo’s .mpg files isn’t exactly “industry standard”, in the sense that there is some incorrect, missing or misplaced information in them that causes video tools to choke or work improperly.
Well, recently I discovered a handy-dandly little Java program called kmttg. This program purports to be an all-in-one solution for copying, decoding, re-encoding and transferring TiVo files. Sounds great, I thought. kmttg is one of those great apps that amalgamizes several other tools and utilities to reach an end goal in an automated fashion, and best of all, it downloads and installs almost all of those tools for you without any manual intervention. So I set it up and unleashed it upon the first episode of Fringe’s fourth season, told it to convert to a nice .mp4 file with AAC audio, and hoped that this time I would get lucky.
Lesson plans
I have a degree in education, and I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was in high school. I love my job and am thankful to have a job that I truly enjoy, especially in these tough economic times. I hear teachers complain quite a bit about the pay, the large class sizes, and the impossibly high standards we are supposed to get our students to reach. However, I do not think the pay is that bad considering how much time we have off. I do not think large classes are the end of the world, although it would be a lie to say that smaller class sizes does not make teaching easier. And while some students will never reach the standards, there are many students who are smart, capable, and motivated who are sitting in my classroom every day. I have my internet through clear Bremerton at my home, and our district provides us with access to lesson plans that I can work on from home. I feel supported by my administration and the district. It is a rewarding job with some negatives but also many positives. I would not want to be doing anything else.
It’s Wünderful Stuff
I don’t know what kind of admen (madmen?) it takes to create a TV commercial as incongruous and random as this, but I am completely in love with the cinematic treatment applied to our dear old pal KITT in the opening moments. That’s somebody’s KITT replica based on a ’91/’92 Trans Am (the swooping lower rocker design and slightly shorter taillights are a dead giveaway of the model year), and yes that is William Daniels providing voiceover, except that it’s not a new recording and is simply a clip from Knight Rider’s third-season episode “Knight Strike”.
OK, yeah. Knight Rider fan nerdgasm over.
Nevertheless, the entire ad campaign is a love letter to we children of the ’80s who grew up on this high-octane zaniness and are now in charge of children of our own. In the last few years I’ve seen staples of my childhood fall squarely into the crosshairs of big ad executives seeking to poke my nostalgia gland and sweet-talk me into buying their wares with sights and sounds that I once held very near and dear. This suggests that I have now officially entered the age bracket of well-to-do and spendy parents who have lots of money to blow on themselves and their kids.
I don’t know about the “lots of money” part, but I love nostalgia, so bring it on.
Oh — and in case you couldn’t figure it out, it’s a commercial for yogurt. Who knew.
Keeping Busy (with New Problems)
Another busy weekend under the belt. Somehow, I guess I expected to have a few somewhat less hectic weekends between the conclusion of our Saturday childbirth classes and the birth of our baby, but as they say, nature abhors a vacuum. And whatever vacuum I might have had this weekend was mostly filled with good things, with one notable exception which I’ll cover later.
We started Saturday with lunch at La Finca Chiquita, which is quite simply the best Mexican restaurant that either Apple or I have ever been to. It’s also the smallest, but it’s small in a charming sort of way. (Actually, it occupies what used to be the original U.S. Post Office in the heart of historic downtown Allen.) It’s literally two blocks away from the Allen Birthing Center where we’re going to have our baby, and we discovered it one day after childbirth class and fell in love with the entire menu. Apple, in particular, enjoys the shrimp soup so much that she orders it every time we go, and this weekend she ordered a second bowl to take home and eat later.
We then continued the food-capades by visiting two grocery stores so that we could stock up our house with several weeks’ worth of goodies. Apple picked out her favorite Asian specialties at the Asia World Market, and then we drove over to the new Kroger Marketplace that just opened up near home. We found a lot of good deals on stuff, some new things we hadn’t seen before at our usual store of choice, and we picked up a half-gallon of freshly squeezed orange juice from the Kroger juice stand. The juice was so good that it’s basically gone now.
Food shopping took most of the day, and I was still pretty full from lunch, so I spent the evening taking apart the GTO all over again in preparation for my Sunday morning appointment at Car Toys of Frisco. Last weekend I installed the new JVC KW-XR810 double-DIN stereo in the GTO, but wasn’t able to make the steering wheel control adapter work without some decent soldering, so I decided to let a shop do it. They said they’d cut me a break on the price if I brought the car in already disassembled and ready to go, so since I’d already taken the thing apart and put it back together about eight billion times, I took them up on it.
I also washed the car thoroughly on Saturday night, which it was in desperate need of, especially after someone’s kid apparently decided to play patty-cake with it this past Thursday night when Apple and I were out grabbing dinner at Pho Que Huong. It was great to see the car all cleaned up, vacuumed and dusted, but unfortunately, in the process of soaping off the tail end I discovered a problem.
Oddball Review: JVC KW-XR810 Car Stereo
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally equipped the GTO with a new stereo head unit this past weekend. Although the stock Blaupunkt (not “det face”) head unit was passable, it lacked any sort of auxiliary input, MP3 support or other technology that most vehicles are coming equipped with these days. As a gadget lover and someone who has a wide variety of fairly eclectic audio in digital format, as well as a smartphone capable of streaming still more audio over the Internet, I was feeling left out of the party. After spending a few months working on side projects and saving up some money, I finally had everything in place to do something about it.
History shows that I’ve always chosen my cars for one purpose above all others: driving excitement. It’s no wonder, then, that they’ve all been Pontiacs. All of them. Going all the way back to 1995. However, where I was wanting for nothing in the horsepower and torque department, most of Pontiac’s performance vehicles from the last two decades had little in the way of mobile entertainment options. A 12-disc CD changer in the trunk with a combination tape deck up front was the most exciting thing I’ve ever owned. This was little consolation when you wanted to listen to something that you just downloaded from iTunes but hadn’t burned to a CD yet, or stream a radio show from another part of the country that you can’t get over the air locally. Not gonna happen.
So a couple weeks back, with money in hand, I ordered a JVC KW-XR810 Double DIN Dual USB/CD Receiver, as well as the Axxess ASWC Steering Wheel Control Interface so I could retain my all-important steering wheel controls. I got the whole setup from Crutchfield, which — although they may not have the most rock-bottom prices online — always throws in a ton of very good stuff for free. This included:
- The Crutchfield “master sheet”, which gives you pictorial instructions on how to swap out the head unit and speakers for your specific vehicle
- A custom wiring harness that allows you to plug your new stereo into your factory harness without cutting off any connectors or doing anything destructive
- An antenna adapter, if needed
- A double-DIN bezel that’s designed for your car
I also scrounged up a $20-off coupon code for Crutchfield just before checking out, so I was pretty pleased with the total.
A Christmas play that’s a little different this year
Every once in a while you simply have to do something a little different to keep people interested. Now that isn’t necessarily the case for Christmas plays, but every few years at church we like to do a different Christmas play that still shares the message of the Christmas story. I’m in charge of the Christmas play this year and I found a really great play for that purpose.
I looked on the internet to find the play and while I was doing that about a month or so ago, I ran across some info on Miracle Ear Locations in CA. After I looked through it a little bit, I decided to go and get fitted with some hearing aids.
I was really impressed with this Christmas play and the kids seem to think the same way. Hopefully all of the other people will feel the same way too. Plus, I think it’s something that may attract people who don’t go to our church to come out and watch it, which is always an extra bonus.
