Entertainment

Moving The Bike

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Today I finally took my bike (a Trek hybrid) out for the first ride of the season. That meant I needed to air up the tires since the bike sat dormant in my bedroom for the entire winter. Yes, you read this right it sat in my bedroom. When I moved into my new building they didn’t have a bike storage spot, so i found a corner in my bedroom for it to go. So in addition to taking the bike out for my first ride of the year, I got a space in the new bike storage room that opened in my building. It is now safely hanging on a wall somewhere. it is actually kind of cool.

I didn’t ride around that much on my first trip out. It was a beautiful day and I rode down by the water near my apartment. It was nice. I have to find a good route to ride for a work out. When I was in Manhattan, I just rode to central park and biked half the loop. I am too far to feasible do that now. I will need to explore a bit.

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I also checked out the pool in my building. It wasn’t as nice as I thought, compared to other apartment complex’s I have been in. Oh well, this is still one of the nicest buildings I have ever lived in. If the weather is nicer I will take a dip next week.

The New Digital Camera

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I totally forgot to write that I got a fantastic new digital camera. The Saturday before Mothers Day I went out and bought a Canon PowerShot SD750. What is funny is as digital camera's go it is a very inexpensive one. I only spent like $179 on it. What is crazy to me is that spending under $200 got me a 7.1 mega pixel camera that takes fantastic photos, and video's. After doing my research I got this model because it takes good video at 640×480, 30fps. The trade off was not having a manual view finder, but I was worth it for me. The digital display is really big so I don't mind. The only gripe I have is that even though for a camera in it's class it takes pictures fast, it is still slow compared to a digital SLR. It does have other limitations but for what I want, it was small and perfect. It is light years better than my old 1.3 mega pixel Sony Cyber shot I got 8 years ago and spent almost triple the price for!

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State of Play

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I am not sure if it is me or it seems like the BBC has more good shows out compared to any US network. There just seems to be more and more shows or specials I watch from the BBC that are just good. I am watching State of Play DVD from Netflix this week. I had no idea that this series was made back in 2003, but I recently found a review for it on another DVD so I put it in my queue. I am glad I did. It is fantastic. I am up to episode 4 (out of 6) and it is fantastic so far. This series adds to the long line of other great series I have watched from the BBC. Recent favorites are Foyles War, Spooks, Hustle, & Torchwood. Then there was Red Cap, The Vice, Doctor Who, and the list goes on!

Weekend Update

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Friday night I went out with a ton of people from work. It wasn’t an official going away party for me, but it felt like it. We ended up at Windfall to start. We hung out there for a while until the crowd thinned out. After that about 6 or 7 of us went to a Japanese Karaoke place. I am not a fan of Karaoke, but I had a good time. I cannot confirm or deny if I sang anything.

We started drinking around 5pm, and I finally stopped around 11:30pm. Starting early like that can kill you. I rested most of the day Saturday because of it. I did run out to do a little shopping. See a future post about the antics involved in getting a new watch band.

Saturday night I meet up with Danny to see Iron Man. I haven’t wanted to see many movies in the past few years, but I have been waiting to see this one. It looked fantastic, and I was also a fan of the comic when I was growing up. The movie was really good. Afterward we went to Heartland Brewery for some drinks and dinner. I shied away from the drink after Friday nights festivities.

Today was a hang at home and relax day!

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The Harmony

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I am like most people (or at least people that I know). I have allot of remote controls needed to watch TV. At last count I had 6. I have wanted a universal remote for years, but for almost as long as I can remember there have been universal remotes that just haven’t done what they were supposed to do. I remember my teenage years at home and my dad had at least 3 “universal” remotes sitting along with the remotes for the TV, VCR, & Cable. None of them did everything they were supposed to. I have also had the same problem, so for years I gave up.

I had almost lost hope in technology solving this problem that it had created, until I read the reviews of the Harmony 1. I had read and heard great things about the Harmony remotes, but they were expensive and seemed difficult to teach the remote how to do stuff. Because of that I avoided them. Then I read about the Harmony 1, and I was impressed. Now granted it did seem that other of the more recent Harmony remotes by Logitech did the same thing, but 1 was the latest model that was in my price range. After reading CNET’s review and talking to a friend or two I went and shelled out the $250 for the remote. Yes you heard me right, it was $250 plus tax for a remote control. Let me tell you it is worth every penny!

I have what you would call a slightly more complicated entertainment system setup than most. I was skeptical that it could be programed easily enough for all the stuff I have. I can safely say now more than a week later that this remote works as advertised. It took me about 30-45 minutes to program in all my devices, and activities but after that it worked on the very first attempt to use my setup. My entertainment setup is complicated because I have a TV, Tivo HD, stereo receiver, DVD player, Apple TV, Xbox 360, and a HDMI switcher (KVM) to cycle between everything. That means the Harmony needs to know to switch the KVM to one channel, the receiver to another channel, use the receiver to change volume, use the Tivo to change channels and know all the special Tivo buttons just for me to watch some TV. It also needs to know what to do when i want to switch to the Apple TV to watch TV and listen to music, but like i said on the very first attempt the remote knew what to do. I was amazed. The only remote the Harmony needed a little extra assistance understanding was my Tivo remote. Everything else it knew how it functioned right away. The online database of devices was very thorough. It even knew my HDMI switcher model. I was impressed and still am. I am waiting for the day I come home from work and the Harmony just gives me a run down of what I missed on the TV that day!

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Deduplicate Photos

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My entire childhood memories are stuck on 35mm slides and tons of photos stacked in baskets at my parents house. The storage of the photos has caused allot of damage to the photos. It has also caused everything to be disorganized. I have tried to get my dad to scan as many slides and photos into the computer as possible. I have also taken as many photos as I could and scanned them. I figure i have the ability to do it, so why pay someone to do it. The issue is it is time consuming and not a perfect system. I have had a problem with duplicate photos in my photo archive for some time. It has been really annoying, but I haven’t put any effort into fixing it. This morning after cleaning up my apartment I decided to figure out how to solve my issue. 5 minutes of google searching later I found Duplicate Annihilator for iPhoto.

One dry run with their shareware version of the software got me hooked to buy the full software that will scan my entire iPhoto library. For $7.95 it was worth it! My only issue is that I keep the original photos and my iPhoto archive. I don’t trust a program that won’t let me get easy access to my original data. My paranoia paid off a few months ago when my iPhoto library got corrupted and i needed to restore an old one and then re-import the more recent files i created. Once I am done de-duplicating my images I now need to export what I have from iPhoto to replace the stand alone files.

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Mass Effect

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My Thanksgiving vacation saw allot less free time than I thought I would have due to my recent purchase of Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. It is very addictive. I have spent an undisclosed amount of time in the past week playing. The good news is that since I have been back at work that my play time is almost non existence. So I am confident I am not addicted:) So far I give the game high marks for graphics, sound, and game play.

Tivo HD

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For a few years I have been using a computer based DVR. I would like to say it was cheaper than a Tivo, but in the end the hardware costs were probably more, but I didn’t have any monthly recurring costs. The other major advantage was that I could do whatever I wanted with the recordings since there wasn’t any DRM on them. The downside within the past two years was that I have a nice 40″ LCD HD TV that I am not getting much benefit out of since I am not using it with HD. That was why back in March I got a HD DVR from my cable provider, RCN. I personally disliked the device. It only held a small amount of HD content. The screen would go blank when you fast forwarded too much with HD content and then took almost 10 seconds to come back to normal all while you hear what is going on in the background. It just seemed like a half baked device, but it did HD so I kept it.

Between March and July when I moved my computer DVR got used less and less until right before I moved I wasn’t using it at all. In July Tivo announced an affordable HD Tivo, and the FCC rules allowing anyone who wants a CableCARD to ask for it from their cable provider. It was perfect timing for me since I was moving. My new place also has RCN, so I didn’t want their HD DVR again so I asked for a CableCARD, and went out and ordered an HD Tivo. I had Tivo for over 3 years before I went to a computer based DVR and that wasn’t until my Tivo died. I did go out and buy a Tivo Series 2, but it wasn’t the same by then so the series 2 actually sits in my closet to this day unused. Having a Tivo again I remembered how much I liked that device! No tinkering involved. For a while I liked the flexibility of a computer based DVR, but now I just want a product that works. That is part of the reason why I have a Mac at home and no windows PC anymore. I tinker enough at work, that I don’t want to have to at home. That is why I am very happy with my new Tivo!

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Xbox 360

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Just this week I ebayed my Wii since I didn’t use it that much. It sat in the box for a month after I moved, and sat idle for 2 months before that at my old place. I was able to get a great price for it with the 2 games I bought, so off it went. I figured I would put that money back into savings, but that was not in the cards. Halo 3 comes out in a few weeks, and as much as I am not a huge gamer, I do play Halo. I will go through phases of heavy play, and then nothing for months. I have been like this for years. If it wasn’t Halo 2, it was Halo, or Half Life, or Dume, Duke Nukem, etc. I play till I get dizy from all the movement. I know I shouldn’t do it but I do.

It was because Halo 3 is almost out that I went out and bought a new Xbox 360. I picked up Rainbow Six Vegas to hold me over until Halo. Vegas is cool, but hard. The Xbox graphics are fantastic, but I am still not sure if $349 plus tax is worth it to play Halo! Right now I don’t care, I am just going to pre order Halo now!

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Weekend Recap

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Sleeping on the air mattress in my parents apartment did a number on my back. Once I got my parents AC working in their bedroom i slept in their room, but my dad is back tonight so I will be back on the air mattress for 2 nights until i move.

I was supposed to go on Doug’s boat today but I had a head ache and he ended up canceling so it wasn’t in the cards. I did get to go out to Manhasset (can’t spell it) to do some shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond and Linen’s and things. Unfortunately neither place had allot of what i was looking for to put in my new place. I did get a few little things but need to go online to order the majority of stuff.

Friday I went out with people from work to a bar for a while. I drank more than i would have liked, but all in all i had a good time. Everyone is pretty cool to hang out with. Saturday I slept most of the day away and then i went to see the Bourne Ultimatum by myself since i was out by my parents. It was a good movie.

Now I just have one more full day before i move!

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