TV around the house

When we set up our new home office arrangement, one of the things I was most excited about setting up was distributed TV. Our Media Center system is in the living room and does all of the recording. It's hooked up to the big antenna outside and has the horsepower to handle multiple HD recordings.

But we don't always want to watch TV in the living room, so once we had two desks set up in a permanent location (as opposed to using laptops on the couch), one of the first things I did was set up some TV sharing. I had an extra antenna laying around which I hung on the window. The line then runs into a splitter and then into the two extra USB tuners I had.

Both of our computers are running Windows 7, so setting up the TV tuner was quick and easy. So now both computers could watch live TV. The next step was to share the recorded TV and movie libraries. After some brief network troubleshooting (lots of running back and forth between computers), all was up and running.

Rant: Buy a Bluetooth headset. Please.

I'll keep this short and to the point: Bluetooth headsets are sickeningly cheap. Please, please buy one and use it when you drive. Yesterday, I was almost killed three separate times by other drivers. One was a guy who almost changed lanes right into me, one was a woman who almost rear-ended me, and one was a guy who slammed on his brakes in front of me to make a left turn from the right lane. All three of these drivers were talking on cellphones.

There are literally hundreds of these drivers on the road and since they refuse to stop talking while driving (despite mountains of research saying driving while on the phone is unbelievably dangerous), then maybe at least they can use a headset.

Yes, I know that there is also research saying that using a headset is very little, if any, safer than holding a phone to your ear, but it's better than nothing. I honestly don't understand why people refuse to use headsets, especially considering they're so cheap. ($8.50, $9.00, $10.00, etc.)

So, that's all I really have to say. Please buy one, use it, and stop trying to crash into me while I'm driving.

Our new home office setup

cross-posted on RyanAndShelsy.com

When we first moved into our apartment in Florida, we set up one of the bedrooms for my office, complete with computer desk and workbench. It was a good setup, but it left a little to be desired. So, several months ago, we got small couch to put in there, so Shelsy and the baby would have somewhere to sit. That worked well, but it still wasn't perfect. The biggest problem is that whenever Shels wanted to work on her computer, it required bringing in the laptop, plugging it in, then sitting with it on the couch. It worked, but it was far from ideal.

We discussed ways to rearrange the room to give Shelsy her own desk, but we couldn't come up with any good ways to make it work. Then inspiration struck. Taking design cues from one of Lifehacker's featured workspaces (more pictures here), we set out to make a dual-desk room.

Use Feedburner to improve your blog

Over the past several years, a number of my friends have gotten married, moved across the country, or both. As such, they have all been starting blogs to share details about how their lives are going. Blogs are nothing new, of course, but most people are still using their blog the way they did several years ago. The tools and features have improved dramatically, and yet the majority of blogs still hearken back to the days of Xanga. Most people change the background color, or pick a design theme and leave it at that. Very few do anything more, even though the tools are there.


Most blog owners probably have no idea how many people actually read their posts. We assume that a few people probably visit the site itself on a regular basis, that some people read it from the links we share, and that maybe a few people read the RSS feed. (Though, if I had to guess, I'd say that most blog owners don't even know what RSS is).

Switching back to Pinnacle

I love video editing. It's something I've been interested in for a long time now, and I've always sought to further educate myself in the field and improve both my skills and equipment. That's why I got a Mac a few years ago. I figured that since Final Cut is one of the most widely used editing programs in the industry, that I would be wise to learn how to use it. So I spent the better part of two years trying to learn Final Cut as throughly as possible and spending all my time using OS X.

It recently occurred to me, though, how much I've been avoiding it. Over the past several months, I've been doing less and less editing and avoiding editing the backlog of videos I have. When I stop and think about it, it's not editing I'm avoiding...it's Final Cut. Not to say that Final Cut is bad or anything, because it's certainly not. It's an incredibly powerful piece of software and one that I'm glad I learned how to use.

Google ceasing operations in China?

The Internet is all abuzz over the news that Google may be completely pulling out of China. The news came yesterday, and was quite a surprise. On their official blog, Google detailed the story of why this has all happened. In a nutshell, they detected attacks on their servers in China and investigated. Server attacks are, of course, nothing out of the ordinary for large websites, but apparently this attack was different.

Google was able to learn that the attacks were targeted at human rights activists within China. Their blog post goes into far greater detail, and I encourage you to read it.

Disqus comments

After more than 350 posts here at The Dastardly Report, I have finally moved to a more robust comment system. Blogger's default comment system leaves a lot to be desired (though it did get much better back in 2008) and it's not nearly as intuitive as comments on most other platforms across the Internet.

Disqus not only has a much cleaner and easier to use commenting interface, it also brings a slew of extra features. You can now log in via Facebook, Twitter, or  your Disqus account. If you have an account at Disqus, you can track your comments across all sites that use Disqus and your profile stays the same no matter what site you're commenting on.

A number of popular websites use Disqus, including Mashable, PaidContent, and AllThingsD.

So this change will allow for easier commenting, and may even drive some new traffic my way. If you read this via a feed reader, the comment count at the bottom should continue to stay correct. This is somewhat of a work in progress, so bear with me as I make these changes.

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Social sharing, RSS, and the news

The Internet is a pretty big place and can often be difficult to understand, especially for those who are less tech savvy. There are dozens of technologies out there that are extremely powerful and extremely useful, but are fairly confusing for the average person to understand. As such, technologies like this often have a much slower adoption rate and may never gain mass popularity.

RSS is a great example of this. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it provides a way for websites to alert other services when information is updated. Users can set up feed readers where they only have to visit one site to read all the newest content from their favorite websites. Personally, I have nearly 150 different websites that I read through a feed reader, including mainstream sites, photo updates, and even friends' blogs. If I had to individually visit all 150 of those sites every day to look for new content, I'd obviously be overwhelmed and never read most of them.

TV news gets too much wrong

photo by Paul McGuire

This is just a short rant...I'll try not to get too angry. But I have to ask...why is it so dificult for TV news stations to focus on accuracy as opposed to sensationalism? No, you don't have to answer because, sadly, I know the answer. The reason is that they're trying to draw in viewers. Much the same way certain websites will write headlines specifically to encourage clicks, TV news creates sensationalist stories out of otherwise boring or normal news.

For example, the Early Show recently ran a story about the new updates to Ford Sync, the super awesome hands free system where the driver can do everything from playing music, to making phone calls, to getting directions all by voice command. The tease went something like, "A new system brings gadgets into the driver's seat and can be even more distracting than texting! Coming up next!"

The Skiff Reader, the Alex Reader, etc.

UPDATED, see bottom of post
After 3D, the next big push at CES this year is definitely ebook readers. It seems like everyone wants to get in on the game that Amazon has so expertly profited from. And why not? Amazon sold more Kindles this holiday than any other item. That's pretty darn impressive.

The market had previously been dominated by Sony and Amazon, with a recent entry by Barnes & Noble. So now, dozens of other manufacturers are interested in getting into the game and it's even getting attention from major players. I'm not going to cover all of them here, just two of the more notable ones. If you're interested in reading about all the newly announced ebook readers, head over here.

3D TV is here and it's here to stay

This year at CES, 3D TV is all the rage. It's been discussed for months (and years), but this is the first year that all the major TV manufacturers are announcing retail TVs that support 3D. In addition, the Blu-ray 3D specifications have recently been finalized and they even unveiled their new logo this week.

Opinion on 3D seems to be very firmly split into two camps: those who are excited about it, and those who dismiss it as a gimmick that will fade just as quickly as it appeared. Almost universally, those who have seen the tech in person are super excited about it, especially for things like movies and sports. I have never personally seen it (unfortunately), but I firmly believe that 3D is the next big thing in the TV market and that it will very quickly rise in popularity.

Nexus One and the future of Android

Google held their much anticipated Android event yesterday where they officially announced the Nexus One. The device itself had been rumored, leaked, previewed, and pictured for weeks, but yesterday it finally became official.

Numerous sites have already written extensive and excellent reviews of the device (here and here), as well as expert coverage of the event yesterday (here and here), so I won't recap any of that.

My quick impressions of the device? It's a solid Android phone that really moves the platform forward and is a great sign of things to come. The screen is nice and bright (but will look terrible in the sun); the phone is super thin (but doesn't have a real keyboard); it's really fast (but not that much faster than the Droid). In every respect, it's pretty much just a really nice Android phone. It's not the "end all, be all" Android phone as was rumored.

CES Week!

Today marks the beginning of CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Tech and gadget companies from around the world will be announcing and showing off all kinds of new products and services this week. Unfortunately, I don't have the lucky privilege of actually attending, so all the info I attain will be gleaned from other sites. Dozens of various tech blogs will be doing live coverage of the various events. If you're interested in reading all the new stuff that happens this week, I suggest reading Engadget, Gizmodo, and/or Gdgt.

Someday, I hope vow to attend CES myself as a professional tech blogger. I love trade shows and the whole showfloor atmosphere. But for this year, at least, I will simply be reading.

I intend to write specific blog posts here about some of the more major announcements, including the Nexus One, 3D TV, Android in general, the Skiff ebook reader, etc. So stay tuned for those posts in the coming days. I'm also working on an opinion piece about RSS and news reading, so watch for that next week.

The Dastardly Report is back and you can expect regular posts from here on out. :-)

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