ChromeCast Presentations

Over the past couple of months I did a couple of ChromeCast presentations on Sender apps and Receiver apps at Ottawa JS. The presentations don't have much extra content than what you would get on the main Google ChromeCast site but it was a great excuse for me to play around with the SDK. I love my ChromeCast and I'd love to program a game for it sometime when I can generate some free time.

Six seasons and a movie. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Wilkins Coffee Ad's

It's amazing to think these commercials were done by Jim Henson of The Muppets fame. It does make me want some Wilkins Coffee.

Starbucks Paid Product Placement Gambit

Starbucks is paying $10 million to become the official beverage of MSNBC's Morning Joe. $10 million to have vapid morning TV show hosts sip your coffee? Come on Starbucks, wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere.

MAKE: Your Own Espresso

The wonderful people at Make magazine have made some free pdf's available that show you how to make your own coffee roaster, espresso tamper, and temperature control. These projects are for the serious coffee nuts and makers.

Make editor in chief, Mark Frauenfelder, appeared on the Martha Stewart show on Monday to demonstrate these inventions. Once you click on the link look for Inventions 1 in the bottom left to bring up Mark's segment.

Obligatory Olympics Post: Unfair Judging

After reading Ryan's LEAGUE OF MELBOTIS: Obligatory Olympics Post: Hyperbole and NBC I figured I needed to weigh in my two cents on Olympic judging. It's crap! I know this is happening to other countries but I'm taking a Canadian perspective here as in the past two days two of our athletes have been screwed by the judges. On Tuesday Jason Burnett was awarded the silver for mens trampoline after pulling off a more difficult routine, with no mistakes, than the eventual gold medal winner from China. Then on Wednesday Ivett Gonda lost her first round taekwondo match after being shut out by the judges even though she quite obviously scored with some good kicks.

Originally I thought I'd have a hard time caring about the Olympics as they are all on steroids but the excitement in the pool and on the track have pulled me in. Now I have to think that I will avoid any sport with judging and stick to ones that can be measured objectively instead of subjectively.

As Grandpa Tom used to say It's all fixed!

My WD 500 GB MyBook Crashed!

I was getting all geared up to watch the second season of Heroes so I flicked over to the PVR to cue up the first show. Only I was greeted by a Windows error dialog stating "delayed write failed". A quick investigation of the system showed my Western Digital 500 GB MyBook did not show up as a system drive. No biggie I figured I'd just run the WD diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, that didn't do a thing for me so when in doubt, reboot, which I did to no avail.

Anything I tried to get the MyBook recognized failed. I even decided to plug it into a couple of other computers we have at the house to see if I could get it recognized but again no luck.

I did some research on the web and discovered that this is a frequent problem with these drives. Apparently the USB hardware they use to interface between the hard drive and the computer is pretty crappy and fails quite regularly. This tickled my memory as a friend of mine went through this same type of problem a few months back. He was so incensed he swore off Western Digital equipment all together.

Doing some more research led me to believe that the hard drive within the case was fine and if I could extract it I could put into into my PVR as an internal hard drive. I found an excellent posting about how to do exactly that.

After successfully extracting the hard drive I ran into my next problem. It was a SATA based interface and my PVR was an old IDE machine. So I ran out to the store to get a SATA to IDE converter. Unfortunately, it was not to be as they were sold out of this piece of kit.

A few days later the part arrived so I popped open my case to install it. What a nightmare it ended up being. The SATA to IDE interface plugged directly into the motherboard at the secondard IDE port which was problamatic for two reasons. It didn't fit too well between the primary IDE interface and floppy interface and the interace would effectively take up the entire secondary IDE channel so I would lose access to a DVD ROM.

After much fiddling to get it to fit and multiple reboots to get all the drives recognized I ran into the next problem. The SATA to IDE bridge showed my drive as unformatted. This was a huge problem since I still wanted to get access to all the TV I had recorded.

So with that experiment a failure I ran out to PC Cyber and bought a new USB hard drive enclosure. I had the whole thing up and running in 15 minutes with full access to all my old recordings. Don't ask me why I didn't do this in ther first place.

In summary, after my experience, my friends experience and my research I can no longer recommend a Western Digital MyBook as an external storage solution.

Lost Season Four Trailer #2

Lost Season Four Trailer

Can they re-capture the magic? I'm still not sure how I feel about the third season finale. I vacillate between it ruining or re-kindling my interest.

Veronica Mars Season 4 Preview

Alas, it is not to be as the show is officially canceled and Kristen Bell is currently in the second season of Heroes.

Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Promo

Veronica Mars Season 1

So we finished watching Veronica Mars Season 1 and we were really impressed. So much so we will be looking for seasons two and three of this critically acclaimed but canceled series.

The premise of the show is quite unique. The titular character Veronica Mars, played by Kristen Bell, was once popular in her high school, that is until her best friend is brutally murdered and her father the town sheriff pursues the dead teen's family as murder suspects. Since this family is rich and powerful they use their influence to get him removed as Sheriff. The dogged persistence of the Mars family to uncover the true killer ostracize Veronica from her boyfriend, the dead girls brother, and all of her popular friends at school.

Now she works with her father at his detective agency while going to school and trying to fit in to her new role as an outsider.

In each episode Veronica solves a case usually brought to her by the outcasts of Neptune High. The back story of the first season deals with the hunt for the true killer of Lilly Kane.

The show is excellently written and acted. The scripts do not pull any punches and deal with adult themes lacking in most shows dealing with high school. It's very entertaining and I recommend everyone picks it up.

Doctor Who Season 4 and 5 News

Please do not read until you have finished watching the third season of the re-launched Doctor Who. You've been warned.

Doctor Who returns for a 5th season, Yay! But not until 2010, Boo!

Doctor Who: Season 3

WARNING There may be spoilers in the following post so if you haven't watched all of the third season of the re-launched Doctor Who then you should skip reading this.

I had myself a Who-athon this weekend and completed watching all thirteen episodes of Doctor Who Season 3. I had originally planned to watch only one or two episodes a night to savor them but they were so good I powered through them in a day and a half. I blame it all on one remark, You are not alone that the Face of Boe makes to the Doctor at the end of the third episode Gridlocked. The ramifications of that line kept me watching and watching.

I was bowled over by the character Martha Jones who is played by Freema Agyeman. I really liked that the Doctor has a companion who is smart and educated.

Overall season 3 was a very strong season. The stand out episode for me was Blink! The amazing thing about Blink is that the Doctor and Martha don't have much screen time at all. It all centers around a young woman named Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan, who is investigating multiple disappearances at an abandoned house. It really is a wonderfully scripted episode and incredibly creepy. I will never look at weeping angel status the same way ever again.

One thing I was disappointed in was the two parter that has the return of the Daleks. I would have liked it they took a whole season off from the Daleks as it is getting a bit stale for them to be completely obliterated only to show up again and again.

However, the final three parter that re-introduces a major villain was written beautifully. Hopefully they will find a plausible way to bring him back again.

Updated 2007/07/16: For those of us in Canada we can watch the episodes on-line for a month after they were broadcast on the CBC. Currently, episodes one through three are available.