Author Archives: feeling entropy

It may be a bit out dated now, but years ago when I purchased cable and submitted chunks of my life to MTV reruns Tom Green had a TV show. The Tom Green Show was the quality stupid entertainment that MTV thrives off of. Tom does not have his own show anymore, but he’s not in hiding. Tom is an avid blogger these days, inviting the world into his life to tell the story he sees each day. The story is more along the lines of what his DV cam sees, as Tom Green has what is also known as a vlog.

There’s a mathematical proof to express what a vlog is:

Web + Log = Blog

Video + Blog = Vlog.

Simple math never hurt anyone.

Vlogs are the up and coming thing according to the Seattle times. Vlogs are pushing boundaries of the web, entertainment, and lifestyle. I hope to just find a cute girl who has a vlog!

Adobe Bought Macromedia recently, that’s a pretty big thing to happen, 3.4billion big. If you want more information on this big ol’ story I’d suggest using our buddy Google, I’m into the vlogs!

Since XM and Sirius radio have linked up with different auto makers I’ve decided to see what the fuss is all about.

Monday at 3:20pm I whipped out the Sirius Radio Sportster along with the ‘Car Docking Station With Car Antenna’ (CDSWCA) for installation into my Honda. I’ve installed stereos and amplifiers in cars before. I didn’t call upon any of the acute skills acquired when installing car audio systems for the Sirius CDSWCA easy install.

The contents of the CDSWCA were as follows:
Sirius Holster, External Antenna, Cigarette Lighter Adapter, Mounting Arm, Alcohol Swabs, 6 Screws, an FM Out Antenna, and Instruction Manual.

After a thorough read through the small instruction manual that accompanied the CDSWCA I started to mount the external antenna to the outside of my car. The antenna comes with bottom side adhesive, as well as a nice strong magnet to keep the channel grabber secured to your vehicle’s external shell. I opted to mount it on the trunk and hide the wire up through to the center console.

Next up, where to mount the holster? Since this is not a permanent install on my vehicle, I attempted to find a would-be permanent spot on the dash for informational purposes. The mounting arm has 4 degrees of freedom, allowing the holster to be placed on most surfaces at almost any angle. Adhesive accompanies 2 screw holes for dash fastening purposes. I decided that the cup holder would make a comfy temporary home for my temporary Sirius radio.

There are two ways to connect the Sirius radio to your car stereo: FM transmit, and line out. The FM transmitter emits a signal for your car’s FM stereo to pick up and playback as it does with radio stations (the popular iTrip does this exclusively for iPods). This method requires finding a frequency that is open and tuning both your car stereo and the Sirius radio to that same frequency. The line in feature requires an auxiliary input built into the car stereo itself.

My Factory car stereo comes equipped with the option to add an external CD changer. P.I.E. makes an adapter that turns the CD changer input on my stock stereo into an auxiliary input.

I connected the line out on the Sirius Radio to the P.I.E. adapter which leads into my car stereo and two of my three connections were in place. What’s left you ask? Power.

Connecting the cigarette lighter style power cable yielded a warm amber glow on the Sirius screen with scrolling text and a doggy with an antenna tail (Sirius Logo).

Within about 10 mins of use the audio from the Sirius stopped. Silence fell over my car and I had no idea what I did to kill the sound. After surfing a few channels with only blurbs of audio I decided that we needed a reboot. Unplugging the power and re plugging remedied my anti audio issue and I was commenced rocking out to Disney Radio.

I will try the Sirius Radio with the Line In feature as well as with the FM Transmitting feature for a proper feel on how the two compare to each other.

More to come! Stay tuned folks. Same Bat time, same Bat channel, same Bat URL, not the same Bat corny ending. Continue reading →

While the USA is on it’s trek to bring porn to mobile phones, Saudi Arabia is not only talking about fining 100,000 riyal, up to 12 years in prison, and to top it off… up to 1,000 lashes. Lashes? I’m assuming that we’re talking about the -shirt off, tie your hands, and whip you in the back a thousand times- type of lashes.

Saudi’s don’t approve of women being uncovered in public: heads, torso’s, legs, elbows, (I suppose hands are ok). Since this rule is in place, the capturing and distribution of such vulgar obscenities will not be tolerated. Mobile phones with video and photo capabilities make the transfer of such material much harder to

I wonder if it would be possible to send porno shots to your enemy and then turn him in for having illegal images on his handset!

Computer Aided Hunting (CAH) as I like to refer to it, has been outlawed. Anyone who carries a concealed laptop or mouse with them without proper permits will be given the death sentence!

Maybe I have over exaggerated a bit. “Virtual Hunters” who remotely control guns via the internet may become extinct sooner than later. HR 1558 is the bill that, if passed, will outlaw this real life version of Duck Hunt.

I have questions here that don’t have answers. Why are the computers hooked up to real guns that shoot real animals? If you’re at home on the internet, is the difference if you really killed a deer or if you hit an image of a deer in a game that looks realistic? Does someone go out and gut, then hang, the carcass in preparation to send it FedEx to your residence?

Let’s take a trip down memory lane: the scene for myself is middle school, the transition from 80’s to 90’s was going down. Basketball was booming and Michael Jordan was slam dunking his way into everyone’s heart. The shoe companies had great ideas, let’s make a shoe called the “Nike Air Jordan”. I’m not a shoe historian, but as I recall from personal middle school experience, shoes named after people were huge then. I had a pair of $130.00 Nike’s made for and named after Charles Barkely, they were earned from M&D by completing a semester with straight A’s.

Basketball players have endorsed many different products and services. Yao Ming was in an Apple commercial along with “Mini-Me” promoting the 17” Powerbook. Yao has stayed in the technological product endorsing line of work by signing a contract with Garmin International. Garmin produces navigation and communication products for just about every medium of travel: air, sea, and land. I can’t picture how they’ll make the commercials but I’m waiting for something a bit more clever than the “Yo” “Yao” commercial that they had going for the Visa check card and Yao Ming.

It’s such common knowledge that the iPod reigns over any other portable music player that bushmen in central Africa are spending hours online looking for the perfect iPod accessories. Numark decided to offer something for the ever expanding market (iPod, not the bushmen -that was a joke). Numark is a DJ gear manufacturer, and decided that it’s time to jump on the iPod band wagon.

The iPod mixer allows 2 iPods to be hooked up and played simultaneously. In the early days it was 2 turntables and a mixer. With the abundance of CD’s soon came 2 CD players and a mixer. Digital music and the internet showed up, and adding a laptop to the mixer now replaced the 2 turntables. The obvious trend here is to take the newest medium of music and throw it through a mixer. Numark wasn’t blind when they saw the iPod being used everywhere by everyone. If Sirius and XM radio take off, I wonder will Numark prototype a satellite radio mixer? Would you need 2 subscriptions for that?

I was always baffled at the uncanny detail that video game manufacturers used when creating a game. I can reach back into my memory banks and pull out instances such as the day I bought Street Fighter II for the Super Nintendo Console. I remember looking through the character profiles (and after several minutes of awe over Chun Li’s measurements) I noticed that they even went so far as to include blood type.

Blood type! Wow, I don’t even know my own blood type, but I know Dhalsim, M. Bison, and E. Honda’s blood type.

Until today it just didn’t make sense, and I let it go. But in this article I realized that there is a significance to blood type. The concept was Japan born in 1927, and hit the pop culture in 1971. I don’t know my own blood type, but I’m guessing from this article that I’m type O, the outgoing / expressive / passionate type. Apparently type B’s are getting a bad rep for their “strong personalities”. Regardless, I’m scrapping that “what’s your sign” pickup line for the new “what’s your blood type” *eyebrows moving up and down*.

Dwango Wireless, one of the big wigs when it comes to mobile entertainment, has found an alliance in the Rap Olympics. You didn’t read that wrong, the Rap Olympics is similar to the freestyle competition that you saw when Eminem’s movie 8 Mile came out.

Where does Dwango Wireless and the Rap Olympics fit in with LIVE Digitally? On your mobile phone that’s where! The winners are offered a few different prizes but the one that caught my eye was the downloadable ringtones deal.

It’s so geeky that I love it, a few years ago customizing your phone was looked upon as nerdy, something that children and losers with nothing better to do did. (Can you see that I was tormented for that flashy red phone case I had). Given a bit of time for people to realize what was going on, and now it’s fun, everyone jumps in. Even the Rap Olympics want a piece, can’t say I saw that one coming.

Mobile phones are not a luxury anymore, they are a must in this digital world we live in. that’s why I’ve been reading about the Firefly mobile phone directed towards children. This phone has the parental approved limited dialing and big cute buttons to phone mom or dad or home.

Safety for children is the marketing strategy used for the promotions of this phone, but I’m smelling different motives here. How many 8 year olds will find themselves with a flat tire on the highway in need of a mobile phone? How many 8 year olds do anything besides school, soccer practice, and video games? Where does the mobile phone come into play here?

I say that the mobile phone companies are mimicking the tobacco companies and “hooking them while they’re young!” That’s right, I’m calling them on it (pun intended, please just a small chuckle)!

They are trying to hook our youth, but I also personally feel that if I were the youth, I’d be screaming “hook me –up!”

Corsair has introduced their new Corsair XMS Xpert CMXP512-3200XL memory and it can almost talk. The PC3200 DDR modules don’t shy away from a slight overclock, but that’s not their forte. These modules have LED displays that enable the user to program exactly what it is that they want to see on the memory chips. This wouldn’t be worth the time and money for someone like me who doesn’t have a window, or a 100% acrylic computer enclosure, to view the guts of my processing tower. But there are tons of people who do in fact have that window and could get a one-up on those with regular old boring DIMM slot no-LCD-having memory modules.

Trusted reviews gives out the nitty gritty on these programmable displays of memory. Maybe it’s time for me to dust off the dremel, purchase some fiberglass, and start making a window so I “Live Digitally” can be displayed on my two 512 sticks of Corsair XMS Xpert memory.

Ok, we haven’t done anything… but Apple has! That’s right kids, Apple has set a date for it’s newest OS to be released. OS X 10.4 aka Tiger will be released April 29th. With the growing popularity of the aesthetically pleasing alternative choice computers, comes the most anticipated* OS update this decade.

Apple boasts more than 200 new features and some reports say that the OS is so much faster that your socks just may catch fire if you’re not careful. Orders are being placed for $129.00 on Apple’s online store starting today. Mac lovers are about to fall in love all over again.

Sometimes I forget that we live on a huge rock with a hot magma core. I usually disregard the molten lava flowing under my feet when it’s 55 F outside and I’m wearing a beanie and mittens. The IDOP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) hasn’t forgotten about it though, and they’re doing something about it.

In eight weeks time, the IODP drilled an amazing 4,644 feet below the surface of the ocean floor. Apparently the surface of the earth (aka the crust) is thinner on the sea floor than on dry land. This is the 3rd deepest hole in the ground that man has dug. I feel like these guys, the IODP, are Bruce and Ben from Armageddon, so then where’s Liv Tyler in this story??

There’s also mention of learning the Earth’s structure and composition helping us to understand how the earth evolved and is changing, but I lost focus when I couldn’t find the Liv in this story.