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.
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.
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.
Microsoft may now have a worse public relations problem than Toyota has:
I don’t automatically take Windows updates. I set XP to notify me and then I click “Advanced” to review them. That way I can ignore Office-related changes that don’t apply to my home computers. But yesterday all of the updates looked like necessary security fixes, so I took them on my desktop and netbook computers. If I have to deal with this BSOD problem I will be very, very unhappy.
Follow-up: It seems that if the first restart of Windows is OK after the update for KB977165, you won’t go BSOD. I updated my Dell Inspiron 530 desktop and Acer Aspire One netbook, and both were OK after restarting. I have not yet updated Carol’s laptop and Eric’s tower PC, and for now I think I’ll leave them that way.
I don’t know how widespread these crashes are. The update was released two days ago, and news of the XP failures doesn’t seem to be in the non-technical media.
Follow-up: Microsoft has pulled the patch.
Follow-up: Appears as though the affected machines might have already been infected.
Last week, Stephen Colbert was shamelessly (when isn’t he shameless?) begging/pleading/demanding to be given an Apple iPad — or, as he called it, the Tampad. Last night he whipped one out at the Grammys.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2010/FEB/Colbert_iPAD.flv 512 288]
I have a bunch of Google Alerts. One that I deleted was for the Beatles, because thanks to Beatles News there wasn’t a need for it. One of the active alerts is for my not-so-secret shame, K3, and in today’s catch I was expecting something like this…
… but instead I found this.
Dedicated eBook readers have, I feel, a rather limited number of potential customers. The extended battery life with e-paper when the transmitter is turned off is nice, however. I’m not very sanguine about large, backlit LCD touch panels, either, because the battery life will undoubtedly be poor. Which is why I’m intrigued by something that was pointed out to me by tech-savvy tastewar.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/the-pixel-qi-display/
