Stop! Codon: August 2009

Sunday

I spent most of today eating Advil and lying on a hot pad. Apparently I screwed up my back during my workout Friday. Yesterday I took a ride up into the mountains and forgot sunscreen...so I look like a raccoon again.

The dogs are antsy. I should have taken them to the dog park today, but just walking was painful. A Sunday of nothing was the result.

A couple from CL came by today and looked at the big TV. I tried explaining the basics to them but only got as far as a "1080 what?" I guess they're not really up on the whole HD thing.

The theory is they are picking it up Tuesday. We'll see. I was planning on working at home Tuesday anyway, so it's not that big of a deal. I told them to bring some friends, since the fucker weighs 280 pounds and I'm semi-crippled.

You know what I want? I want to wake up early and go work out. That would be an awesome way to start my week. Instead I'll crawl out of bed and go chew some Advil. After waiting an appropriate amount if time, I'll go to work. Entropy is skanky disease ridden whore.

QAM in the clear and tivo desktop

Cable companies broadcast content using QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation). Over the air uses ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee for digital television transmission). My tivo has both a ATSC and a QAM tuner. Of course, the ATSC coax connection is tied to my antenna. I did some research and found out that not all QAM channels are encrypted. For example, some QAM channels are sent completely in the clear (called clear QAM). Therefore, no set top box, no cable card required.

So I wondered...did my 'terminated' cable service still carry clear QAM? In fact, it does. I ran a tivo channel scan and located 23 additional clear QAM channels. Most are duplicates of the local channels on the ATSC tuner, but some are completely new.

In other news..I found an application called tivo desktop. The app lets you download video to your tivo so you can watch it on your tv. Tivo supports a number of video formats, including:

* Windows Media Video (.wmv)
* QuickTime Movie (.mov)
* MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4, .m4v, .mp4v)
* MPEG-2 (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpe, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpv2)
* DivX and Xvid (.avi, .divx)

This means I can d/l content and just transfer it to my tivo to watch. That's pretty sweet.

I'll have to wait to try it after I set up my wireless N bridge and put the tivo on my wireless network.

Now things get more interesting when you start capturing video streams on your computer. For example, hulu streams video in a flash based format. There are capture programs that will capture the stream and save it to your computer. Now, this may be a pain if you had to capture in real time, or for example, wait your 30 minutes to capture a 30 rock stream. I've read that this isn't required. It seems that the capturing occurs as fast as hulu buffers the video to your computer.

After that, you convert the flash to a tivo format and d/l it to your tivo.

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a hulu centered application that captured your subscriptions, converted the files, and sent it off to your tivo automatically. That would be pretty interesting.

With my new setup supporting (or soon supporting) ATSC, QAM, tivo desktop, and netflix streaming, I think I'm well covered in the 'waste time in front of the tv' department. Monthly cost? $21.

u is sooo pretty

Maybe a 58 inch plasma in my future?

Random from the web

Too funny

Random from the web

pulse oximeter monitoring

I found this interesting gadget this morning...a pulse oxygen monitoring unit which also includes a data recorder. For under 200 bucks you can monitor your pulse rate and oxygen saturation levels while you sleep.

Since I've never had a post CPAP sleep study, it would be interesting to see how well (or not so well) I do during the night.

I am

Dreaming of the beach.

Arm stuff

Ok, I'm back. I'm always bummed when I come back, but not too thrilled while I'm there. Actually, it was kinda fun those last two days. Maybe it was the lack of 6 out of 9 dogs. Who knows.

About....5 years ago I refinanced the house under a 5 year arm. I was divorcing at the time, and the loan saved me 20 grand in finance charges over the 5 year term (relative to a fixed 30yr loan). Truth be told I was sure I'd be gone and into a bigger house by now. The house is fine for one dude, and I like the neighbors, so I'm not going anywhere soon.

Anyway, I have a 12 month adjustment period, meaning that every year my rate can adjust. The nice part is that it went from 5% to 4% this month. That cut my payment by 200 bucks a month. Good for a year. The rate is calculate from the 1 year average LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) which is currently 1.39. The one month LIBOR is 0.27, so we haven't even found the bottom yet.

If the world imploded and my rate adjusted to the max (which would take 4 years, based on my max rate adjustment cap per year), I'd only be paying another 400 a month anyway. Not a big deal.

Anyway, I guess I'll have to figure it out sometime.

Finally

IP blocking goes away, headset and skype works great, and my TV has a tuner....but it's an NTSC (old skool analog) tuner and not an ATSC (digital) tuner. Oh well. Maybe I'll try an internal card in the computer before coughing up 300 bucks for a tivo for the TV downstairs.

Tomorrow I'm off to MN for a week.

Sat

The usual yard crap: mow, spray weeds, trim bushes. Also, media blasting engine parts, painting, assembling my engine test stand. I need to work at some point this weekend...so I'll probably live it up today and do that tomorrow.

Isn't science spiffy?

"In this work, we reveal that, upon correction of the premature termination codon in theta-defensin pseudogenes, human myeloid cells produce cyclic, antiviral peptides (which we have termed "retrocyclins"), indicating that the cells retain the intact machinery to make cyclic peptides. Furthermore, we exploited the ability of aminoglycoside antibiotics to read-through the premature termination codon within retrocyclin transcripts to produce functional peptides that are active against HIV-1. Given that the endogenous production of retrocyclins could also be restored in human cervicovaginal tissues, we propose that aminoglycoside-based topical microbicides might be useful in preventing sexual transmission of HIV-1."