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shawn (at) phantompower.org
February 5th, 2010
We spent the New Year’s weekend moving things around. The plan was to take the stuff in the back room, and swap it with the stuff in the front room. I had the idea to do this last November, because I thought it’d be good to move the studio into its own space, and to make our living area a little more open and comfortable. We’ve been living with this new configuration now for about a month, and we like it. Read the rest of this page »
December 11th, 2009
I was walking somewhere this morning. As I crossed over what I thought was a clear corner between a parking lot and a sidewalk, something grabbed my right foot. I went down on to the concrete. It wasn’t a particularly hard fall, and I had managed to shift my weight on to my left side, which somehow helped to disperse the impact’s energy. And in that hurried moment just after the fall, as I was laying there on the wet ground (we’ve been having some actual weather this week), I watched in slow motion as my iPhone tumbled through the air, landing on its back, right next to me. I mentioned above that I had managed to fall on my left side. And I almost always carry my iPhone in my left coat pocket, and I almost always keep that pocket zippered up. But for some reason, this morning, I hadn’t zipped the pocket closed. A couple guys nearby, who witnessed the fall, asked if I was OK.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. But my phone’s not.” I could see that the iPhone had been damaged. I picked it up to get a closer look. Here’s what I saw: Read the rest of this page »
November 15th, 2009
I went for a walk this morning and did some recording. I talked a little about my weight loss efforts and a lot about nerdy stuff.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 19:24 — 13.4MB)
October 31st, 2009
We don’t have cable. Sure, it was part of the plan to get cable after we moved to California. But financial conditions conspired against us, and we’ve just never been able to afford it. Fortunately, not long after we got here, on-demand TV over the Internet was just starting to mature. Back in 2007, my sister gave us an old Medion computer she no longer needed. We were incredibly lucky that the computer’s video card included a composite video-out port so it could be connected directly to our TV. After adding a Wi-Fi card to the Medion, we were able to stream shows from sites like hulu (which was still in beta at the time). It worked well for awhile. But eventually, the video card stopped working with the TV. I gave the Medion away (to Andy Melton – I wonder if he’s still using it?) and, being an Apple enthusiast, decided to replace it with a used G4 tower. I performed some upgrades on the G4 to make it as powerful as possible. But its performance was always inconsistent. I blame it on the fact that the machine is just too old to handle streaming video over Wi-Fi. (I still have the G4 and have been trying to sell it.) From there, I moved on to using the PlayOn server software to stream online video to my XBox 360. And PlayOn isn’t a bad solution. But, like the G4, it tends to be inconsistent. Especially with hulu. (I really do like PlayOn, and I think it’s got great potential, and I’m not entirely giving up on it, yet.) Really, the best way to get online video on to a TV at this point is to have a good, fairly modern computer connected directly to the set. Late last summer, we purchased an ASUS EEE PC Netbook, as Jen was in the market for a laptop. It dawned on me a couple weeks ago that we could probably use the Netbook to do the video streaming. The challenge would lie in getting it connected. The Netbook has a standard VGA-out port, and our eight-year old Toshiba TV only has composite video and S-video inputs. Some type of signal conversion would be necessary to make it work. Some quick googling turned up a converter box on Amazon Read the rest of this page »
June 24th, 2009
I realized recently that my desk was in pretty sad shape. I think that, over time, it had become overloaded with too much stuff. There were cables and wires everywhere, creating small jungle-like thatches that would’ve challenged even the most formidable of machete attacks.
Last Saturday, I decided to tear the whole mess apart, with the hopes that I could reassemble it into a more orderly situation. This is how it looked in the beginning:
June 8th, 2009
I recently upgraded my Mac Mini to the latest version of OS X, 10.5.7. Within the next few days, I started noticing that my USB-based devices were acting funny. I needed to tweak my HP printer to get it working again. Then, a memory card reader and an external hard drive I had connected to the computer through a USB hub were no longer being detected by the Mini. I initially blamed the lack of detection on the hub, as it is a cheap three-dollar thing I bought from an eBay vendor in China. But today, I needed to use the memory card reader. Since I knew it wasn’t working over the hub, I plugged it directly into the Mini. Still nothing. Later, I did the same thing with the external hard drive (a Seagate model) and the same thing happened. The problem wasn’t the hub after all. I did some searching and found that many people are reporting similar issues. The current line from Apple, as far as I can tell, is that the company has updated the I/O software for USB connectivity, and it’s up to everyone else to comply. I suppose it’s possible that Seagate might release new drivers/firmware for the hard drive. But I don’t think I’ll see any fixes for the rest of my USB gear. I still have a couple devices that I haven’t tested. But at this point, I’ve got no access to a 500 GB hard drive or the photos from my digital camera. That’s enough for me to want to downgrade back to 10.5.6. It’s not a huge deal to downgrade, but I’d rather not do it unless I have to. I could hold out, hoping that a software fix will come. Maybe with the release of the new “Snow Leopard” OS. Or I should just accept the fact that I’m going to be stuck with 10.5.6 for awhile. Unless I’d like to buy all new peripherals, of course (and I don’t). One thing I will say for Windows is that it usually has much better support for legacy devices than OS X. But, hey. If you want to hang with Apple, you’ve got to stay on the cutting edge. Even if it means having to buy all new stuff every time an OS update comes down. I mean, we all must already be rich to even afford these shiny Macs in the first place, right?
April 13th, 2009
Our Australian friend Erk is taking a two-month long trip across the U.S. Last week, he stopped in San Luis Obispo for a few days to visit. Erk produces several podcasts, one of which is called Erk Pod. During Erk’s second day here, we drove around in his rental Jeep and recorded an episode of Erk Pod. Normally, I don’t like to syndicate other peoples’ content. But given my history of doing mobile recordings (and the fact that Shawnogram grew out of my old audio blog which was all mobile recordings), I’ve decided to add this episode of Erk Pod to the Shawnogram feed. Here’s a few pictures I took during Erk’s time here:
Erk searching the Internet at Best Buy, using an Apple laptop.
Erk and Jen at Mother’s Tavern during karaoke.
You can see a couple more pictures here and many more at the entries linked above. The original entry for this Erk Pod episode can be found here. Also, we recorded an epic podcast of our own with Erk which can be found here.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:23:13 — 57.2MB)
November 18th, 2007
This video is a sequel to my Mac Mini upgrade part 1 audio podcast. In the video, I document the process of upgrading the RAM in my Mac Mini. These sites were very helpful in demonstrating the upgrade process:
This is also my eighteenth podcast for NaPodPoMo.
Podcast: Download (97.1MB)
November 17th, 2007
Here’s a short podcast where I give my initial impressions on using my new mixer with Apple’s Logic Pro software. This is my seventeenth entry for NaPodPoMo.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:52 — 2.7MB)
November 9th, 2007
In today’s podcast, I talk about a failed attempt at upgrading my new Mac Mini. This is NOT the end of this story. Stay tuned for more news about the upgrade. This is my ninth podcast for NaPodPoMo.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:28 — 2.6MB)
