Loosening the TV's grip

In preparation for the arrival of our first child I have switched to basic cable as a way to encourage us to watch less "frivolous" TV. There seemed to be too much just turning on the TV and watching whatever was on, rather than choosing a few shows to watch and trying to get something done. I realized that not everyday has to be a completely filled day with measurable goals achieved, but I was sick of night after night of just coming home and turning on the TV rather than getting the house in order for the arrival of our child, or just finish some of the many miscellaneous computer projects that I have started, and just need to apply some of my time to complete.

For the first time in a long while everything north of channel 30 is snow, and I am really fine with it.

Fireworks are cool

Happy explosion day has come and passed, but the desire to blow stuff up remains!

What is a geek to do with this desire to explode things coupled with some available capital to pursue such a desire? Make fireworks and learn about the chemistry that makes them work!

In the great tradition of North Idaho and the fantastic fun that can be had trying not to blow yourself up go forth and play pyro!

Native video support for HTML 5 Scrapped

I read this Slashdot article that makes me sad. Enabling browser to natively implement the video tag to eliminate the number of plug-ins that create a broader attack surface would have been single-handedly the best step the HTML standard could have taken to protect the security of the internet. H.264 would be as poor of a choice as standardizing on mp3 for native music support (given the licensing nature of the standard). Ogg and Theora both stand as open independently developed standards that at least would not have required a royalty payment, and would have helped take us one step closer to a Flash free internet. The performance of Flash coupled with it pervasiveness make this one of my least favorite technologies, but what really gets my goat is that it takes focus (it is an application loading inside of another application) and breaks my keyboard navigation of websites.

I believe that Apples "licensing" concerns have much more to do with that they have put significant motion into supporting the h.264 codec with their video players, and are not interested in trying to duplicate that for Theora.

I met someone from AIG

This is not intended to be news, and I don't make any money on the stock market so I have no personal interest in this subject. I just encountered a person that spoke candidly about where they where at in a circle of friends. I doubt he intended it to be repeated, but thought it was weighty enough that I didn't want it to end with just me.

So friend of a friend of a friend this weekend while I was out for 4th of July festivities turned out to work for AIG. He introduced himself as working for a failed financial institution, but his friend refused to let him get away with it so lightly and insisted that he tell the whole story. He started there in September and is working in the infamous risk management group, now given his recent tenure I will assume that he was a late comer that had little to no impact on the eventual (one month later) collapse of the company; but what struck me was that he was previously employed as a mechanical engineer. It immediately jumped out to me given my business school requiring me to take a finance course that both jobs where basically just math, so learning new equations to a scientifically minded individual would be a fairly natural transition. The draw of the job was that he moved from a small boring stodgy old town to New York, and claims that the dating pool is much better. I tend to believe that this is true, and can see the appeal to someone under 30 and still single.

His insight into the company is was that given that his direct manager of the group that his is associated with has yet to directly communicate any form of strategy, or relay any info about their future path, or really do anything even remotely manager-like is an indictment of the whole management staff. His manager only arrived 1 month before the chap that is the focal point of this story did, and has yet to have a single strategy meeting with the group, much less send an email outlining what the company was going to do to pull itself up from the hard times that they got themselves into, and he theorizes that he never will. He suggests that given the amount of fuck off time he has, AIG won't be rising from the ashes. They are no longer the bankable name they once where, and are not doing anything to improve that status.

Cookbooks of interest

I have been looking at new cookbooks for a different range of foods to cook. The Momofuku[?] is interesting; the sample recipe on the Amazon page is an noodle dish, like nothing I have ever made before. I like some parts of Asian cuisine, and this seems to focus on the parts of that style that I can get my arms around.


Another book on my list is Ad Hoc at Home[?]. This book looks interesting and seems to be filled with the type of prep intensive cooking that I am coming to love.

Apps change everything

Slow again I know, but I did love this article and thought it deserved a share.

Apps for the Apple TV by Gizmodo is probably one of their best original/idea pieces the blog has produced. Not only is original and a great idea but there was no mention of boobies or anything else that makes them the blog of choice for people that are as mature as middle school kids.

Boxee on the Apple tv shows that there is value in this type of setup, and I believe makes what is a marginally underpowered, but pretty good for the price media device and makes it into the iPhone type of game changer. I think that Apple lacks the vision to pull this off, and only has the attention span to pull of one "killer product" at a time. This is likely due to Mr. Jobs egomaniac micro-management need to control the moment style of product dev that leaves little room for them to innovate simultaneously. Don't get me wrong I think that this style of management has netted them some big wins in the design of products (The original aluminum MB Pro laptops for instance) but doesn't seem to sustain great products over the long haul (current non-aluminum macbook pros), so with the iPhone been the Apple of Apple's eye I doubt you will see native app sdk on the AppleTV even though I would probably buy one.

Super tiny usb storage

Seriously do want, this is great for the netbook crowd. My mini 9 has 3 usb ports that basically do nothing most of the time, and this is as big as the solid state drive I have running in the mini 9.

via gizmodo