Wednesday, October 8. 2008
Movie: Taxi To The Dark Side (Redux)
| I have finally had the chance to view this searing documentary, I strongly recommend that people view it, especially Americans; whether they are conservative, liberal, Republican or Democrat is irrelevant. It is very disturbing and disquieting, to say the least, to see the American government condoning the same actions into law that we normally associate with other countries that are violators of human rights. An interesting footnote is a posthumous interview with Alex Gibney's dad, Frank, himself a former Navy interrogator during WWII, stating, among other things, how some of the laws that the Bush administration put into effect made him lose his faith in the American government. One (among many) interesting point is how John McCain was one of the strong opponents of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, but sadly, was allegedly strong armed by the Bush administration into supporting the Bush bill that effectively pardoned the Bush administration from any wrong doing from Abu Ghraib, after he was threatened with being discredited by the Republican party during his Presidential run. |  |
Thursday, October 2. 2008
iTunes 8.0.1 Released
iTunes 8.0.1 has been released. According to the official Apple Release: iTunes 8.0.1 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including: • Seamlessly plays the current song when creating a new Genius playlist. • Improves syncing spoken menus to iPod nano. • Addresses an issue of deleting HD TV episodes when downloading. • Improves checking for updates from the App Store • Improves accessibility with VoiceOver. • Addresses problems syncing Genius results to iPod. Evidently there were some video problems with iTunes 8.0 (which I haven't experienced) which were also fixed with this release. However, it seems that some people are now having problems with streaming media with this latest update. |  |
Wednesday, October 1. 2008
DVD: IronMan
| IronMan has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray disc and of course I had to pick up the 2-disc Blu-Ray Ultimate Edition. I haven't had a chance to get through the extras yet, but the movie itself looks outstanding. DigitalBits gave a good review (and making note of the Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) issue with the Blu-Ray disc). I haven't had a chance to work through the extras yet, but give me time...  |  |
Tuesday, September 30. 2008
Perian Updated to 1.1.1
| Perian, the utility plugin for Quicktime has just released version 1.1.1 Here are some of the things fixed: • H.264 in AVI fixed • Some anamorphic AVI files are now supported • Performance problems due to PIC fixed with Xcode 3.1 • Incorrect frame skipping on H.264 intra frames fixed • Better character set detection • The update checker is now much more polite • Several parsing and rendering bugs with subtitles fixed • Player freezing while loading subtitles with embedded fonts fixed • Audio fixed for some older MKV files with AAC/FLAC • Strange values in MKV chapters or video sizes are handled better • Initial support for SAMI subtitles added • Worked around a QuickTime bug (#5770288) causing frames to be lost during export • New codecs: DosBox ZMBV, VP6+Alpha, Nellymoser ASAO • FFmpeg: Crashing on PPC G3 fixed • Fraps decoding artifacts fixed |  |
Thursday, September 25. 2008
Java Update for Mac
| Apple has released a Java update for the Mac, for both Leopard and Tiger. According to the official Apple write up: Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 7 delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 and Java 1.4 on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and later. This release updates J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_16 and Java 1.4 to version 1.4.2_18. |  |
Tuesday, September 23. 2008
3G iPhone USB Adapter replacement
| As most 3G iPhone owners have heard by now, there is an issue with the included USB adapter where under certain circumstances the prongs can break off in the electric outlet. There is this explicit notice from Apple as well: Users with ultracompact power adapters should immediately stop using them until they exchange them for a new, redesigned ultracompact adapter. Apple is rolling out an exchange program starting on Friday, October 10, 2008. It sounds like you will be able to exchange the defective USB adapter either in the Apple store or via the online web form. Update (10/10/08): After dutifully setting up an iCal reminder, I have exchanged my faulty USB power adapter at the local Apple store. No receipts needed - just walk in and hand over of the old one. |  |
Wednesday, September 17. 2008
Mac OSX Security Update
Friday, September 12. 2008
iPhone 2.1 Released
| Apple has released iPhone software update 2.1. Among the promised improvements are: • Significantly better battery life • Fewer call drops • Bug fixes • Faster backups to iTunes • No App crashes (maybe should read: less frequent app crashes  ). I have just managed to upgrade it, so we'll see. As a side note, some users (on both the iPhone and the iPodTouch) have been getting sync errors after the upgrade - here is the solution to that issue. |  |
Tuesday, September 9. 2008
iTunes 8.0 Released
| iTunes 8.0 has been released. Among some of the new features are: • Genius Playlists Haven't played around with Genius Playlists or Genius Sidebar yet, but I am liking the Grid View option quite a bit.• Genius Sidebar • Grid View • HDTV (requires QuickTime 7.5.5) As a side note, it seems that NBC has returned to the iTunes store with both The Office and Heroes available again. .Update (9/10/08): I have played around with both the Genius Sidebar and Genius Playlist features and am loving them!! It is always nice to find music in your iTunes library that you had forgotten about. Last feature that needs to be tested out: HDTV (requires QuickTime 7.5.5) Update#2 (9/10/08): It seems that the problem with the iPhone App store miscuing application updates has been corrected as well with iTunes 8. There were several updates (for my 60+ apps that I have currently installed ) and after selecting the updates, the iPhone App store correctly told me that I had all my updates. | |
Saturday, September 6. 2008
Have (and watched) Heroes: S2 on Blu-Ray
The good news: have acquired and watched Heroes: S2 on Blu-Ray. The bad news: some of the special features are for Blu-Ray live, which I don't have yet.  Season 2 was decent, but it did suffer from the Writer's Strike (as did many of my favorite programs). At least I am now caught up and ready for the start of Season 3: Villains starting on September 22nd 2008. |  |
Friday, September 5. 2008
Harmony One Remote
| I finally broke down and purchased the Harmony One Remote, after seeing it at the lowest price ever (online or in-store - it was on sale at Best Buy ) (I have been eyeing this remote ever since it was released, so I don't feel too bad). After installing the latest Logitech software (and a quick call to the Logitech Support center to clone my account, so I could still use my Logitech 880 as well), I was in business with my new remote set up. I have only been using it for a couple of days, but the initial feedback is positive. The touch screen is nice and sharp and is a welcome improvement as is the new key layout). Customizations (with the improved Logitech software) are also very easy to do. Currently, I am hard pressed to find any negatives. (maybe after a couple of weeks...). |  |
Thursday, September 4. 2008
Google Chrome Browser
| Google has entered the browser war with their chrome browser. Looking at a quick demo on a friend's computer, it looks like it has some cool features like being able to view memory usage of individual tabs and even memory consumption of other currently running browsers. Unfortunately, it is only available for the Windows platform (Mac and Linux versions have been promised), however, that hasn't stopped MacNN from putting up a review. (Here is Advertising Age's take on the new browser).Still trying to decide whether I should break down and run it under Parallels or hold out for the MacOSX version. |  |
Friday, August 29. 2008
Slow Updates.....
Sorry about the lack of updates, but life is intervening in an unpleasant way.
Sunday, August 24. 2008
Chiang Mai Thai
| On the positive restaurant review side, Chiang Mai Thai is awesome. So far I have had the Chicken Satay as well as the Curry Fried Rice. It has managed to supplant my previous favorite Thai restaurant Magic Thai (side note: the Chicken Satay is pretty fair at Suptra as well, but Chiang Mai Thai is still tops). |  |
Saturday, August 23. 2008
(Un)Official Obama Running mate picked
| Strong rumor has it that Joe Biden has been selected as Obama's running mate for the presidential elections. |  |
