Category: Tech

iPadvantage

tastewar let me play with — excuse me, I mean evaluate — his iPad today. (As you can see, my LG clamshell cellphone doesn’t take great pictures.)

  • iPad touchscreen is very shiny. Makes a good mirror when it’s powered off.
  • 802.11g wifi reception is very good, although there are reports of some people having trouble. Maybe they’re trying to connect to 802.11n?
  • Portrait mode is easier to hold in your lap than landscape position.
  • As expected, there’s no Adobe Flash playback, but Safari browser supports HTML5 video, which comes up automatically on YouTube.

  • Netflix Watch Instantly plays smoothly, but on the 1024×768 screen the aspect ratio for 16:9 video is wrong. This isn’t a problem in Windows on my 1024×600 netbook or my 1280×1024 desktop monitor. How did they miss this?

  • The Marvel Comics app has caused something of a stir in fandom. (Where’s the concept of collecting if there’s nothing physical to hold?) I’m mostly not interested in new stuff, but it would be great if the Silver Age reprints in Marvel’s Omnibus series were available on the iPad.

  • Screen doesn’t clear when you hold it upside down and shake. Needs an Etch-a-Sketch app! 😉

Feelin’ Blue ’bout hosts

I’ve been blissfully ignorant about self-hosted blogging. With over 250,000 hits per month, shared hosting services consider me to be a heavy-hitter. I have a new appreciation for my old service, iPower, for allowing me to use so much storage and bandwidth for so long.

I’m on Bluehost now, which runs a customized version of Linux that does something called CPU throttling. So if my site gets too busy, it’s automatically taken offline for a while. I don’t disagree with this approach, unless the servers have too many sites, and they’re robbing Peter’s site to service Paul’s site.

I have a few months before I have to decide whether or not to renew on Bluehost. It would be a big, and expensive, step to move to a hosting service that offers Virtual Private Servers. Once again, circumstances are forcing me to contemplate why I’m blogging, now that I’ve done everything I set out to do with it.

Turning Japanese

Some years back, Panasonic had an ISP business in Japan called hi-ho. They had a series of bizarre, addictive, animated commercials that Eric and I enjoyed watching. I remember Eric wasn’t even a teenager yet, so it had to have been a while ago. This one has a winter theme.

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Eric liked this one…

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…and this was my favorite.

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Tech note: these are the first videos I have made using CamStudio.

Plugging a leak product

A week ago I talked about the leak around the water feed pipe coming into the basement, and my clever way of getting the water to go into a bucket.

The seal around the pipe failed during an exceptionally heavy rain that fell on top of snow, so my next challenge was to plug the gap around the pipe. I used Loctite epoxy putty.

All you have to do is cut the amount of putty you need, then knead it to activate the epoxy. Once mixed, you have 10-15 minutes to mold it before it sets. I don’t know yet whether or not the leak is fixed, but if it is all it took was half of a $4 tube of putty.

Streaming Video on Sony BDP-N460

My Blu-ray player is a Sony BDP-N460. On Amazon.com there is some controversy about its streaming video performance with Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon Video on Demand. I also regularly use a Roku HD for both of these services, and occasionally I watch Netflix with my son’s Xbox 360. Each unit has its advantages.

I have captured 15+ minutes of streaming video from the BDP-N460, so those who may be interested in buying one can see for themselves how it works. There is an old 1 GB flash drive in the back for BD Live, that has no effect on streaming video playback. The Internet service is 25 Mbps Verizon FiOS.

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Follow-up: It has been suggested that a better demonstration would be to compare the BDP-N460 to the Roku HD when playing a HD video from Netflix Watch Instantly. Here is the comparison, taken with a Canon digital camera sitting on top of a Panasonic 720p front projector.