TrevorCarpenter.com

As you’ve read here before, I am a huge fan of cutting edge television technology. More specifically, we Tivo, Netflix, and some times even torrent programming. Early on, after we got the Tivo, we tried Amazon’s Unbox service. Not bad, but they had a tiny selection. Since our Tivo is not an HD unit, we quickly looked at other choices.

Then we got Netflix. Sweet! I love Netflix. At first I used it almost entirely to watch the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica. I found BSG at the beginning of season 3, and wanted desperately to watch all the earlier stuff. However, with me only benefiting, I saw the wife loosing interest quick if I didn’t sweeten the deal. So, every so often I’d include some kid’s movie that we missed in the theater. Then we went from one-at-a-time to two-at-a-time. That really helped. I tried hard to make sure that I had one and she had one with each turnover. Once we found House, about the same time I caught up on all the BSG episodes, she really started enjoying Netflix. I knew she had accepted it when she would navigate through the queue and prioritize the upcoming movies for herself.

Somewhere in there we got our HDTV. That really was a massive step us for us, as it pertains to entertaining ourselves. We upgraded to HD cable just after that and have really enjoyed our network programming in HD and even the occasional cable show, like Discovery’s Planet Earth. Then the Xbox Marketplace started adding movies we actually wanted to watch, and our HD movie watching experience began. What fun that has been. Now, I won’t even consider renting a movie that doesn’t have an HD option.

Then, for the few of my Twitter and Pownce friends, you saw me mention last week that I gave an already cancelled Sci-Fi program a shot; Firefly. Holy cow! How did I miss this one?

I quickly found a way to get the entire season, plus extras, and started watching it. However this one proved to be a little challenge. It also gave me the chance to try out my new set up. Just last month, I reinstalled OSX on our extra Mac Mini and hooked it up to the HDTV, via the DVI. I stripped off all the applications that would be unnecessary and simplified the extras I knew I would need. This system would become my very own, more powerful Apple TV. No hacking required for web browsing and access to things like Divx/Xvid support, alternative media viewing with VLC, and more freedom with my iTunes media. It took less than 30 minutes to get all the correct codecs installed and to set up my dock just right. I have a bluetooth mouse, for navigating, but no extra wireless keyboard. Now if only I could figure out a way to navigate the OS, simply, with the Apple remote. I digress. Firefly…

So, I had set this up a few weeks back and hadn’t really had a chance to give it a try. With my newfound interest in Firefly, I decided that it was ready. The weakest link was the audio quality. For now, all I have is a simple 1/8″ to RCA cable. This is plugged into the audio out of the Mac Mini and into our audio system, stereo only. For now it will have to do. (There’s a chance I may have a used Logitech USB audio interface coming my way. It has optical input/output and some other nice features.)

I have stored the entire season of Firefly on my primary computer’s external hard drive. They are wrapped in an AVI container in a nice Xvid format. With the right codecs installed, these files should play just fine in Front Row. For some reason they don’t. No problem, that’s where VLC arrives to save the day. Yes, yes, I could try and troubleshoot the first problem, but I just didn’t have the energy. Someday, I’ll figure it out. This time, I just wanted to watch Firefly.

Quickly using the mouse, I opened up the first episode of Firefly, over the network, in VLC and hit the full screen button. It started just fine. Now in all it’s compressed/HD glory I sat back and enjoyed Firefly for the first time. Additionally, to my satisfaction, the fancy little Apple remote works just fine controlling the playback in VLC. Mmmmm, technoligic.

I’ve also watched a few of the iTS purchased episodes of The Office, which play quite nicely. Now all I have to do is try out renting a movie through iTunes, to see how easy that works.

I’m ready for DVD’s to go away, and have no plans on playing around with HD-DVDs or Blueray-discs. I’m going to skip them all together.

Here’s a lesson for all those greedy, communists running the huge media companies. I’ll buy it or rent it, if you offer it through one of the dependable, high quality alternatives. But, if I want to watch it, and you’re stuck in 1990, then expect me to get the content I want, where I can. I’ll pay for it, if you let me.

Then, recently I bought a PSP, (the special edition Darth Vader one!). I thought that I’d give the little thing a try for playing some games. It came with Star Wars Battlefront II and I got SOCOM II to go with it. Without reviewing each game here, I enjoy them both and am glad to have them. One thing holding me up has been that I failed to get a Memory Stick. So, I couldn’t save any of my games or update the software when the Skype addition came out last week.

That just would not do! I found a sweet deal at Circuit City’s website for a 2gig Memory Stick Duo Pro ($30) and then shot over to my closest one to pick it up. Yes! I’m in business now!

The next day was my first chance to try and load up a movie. I loaded up ffmpegX and re-encoded the Firefly AVI’s into the perfect PSP format; mpeg-4. ffmpegX actually has the perfect settings built in as an option. No messing around. Even cooler, that sweet open-source app names your new movie following the PSP’s lame naming convention. It’s hard to find the right movie file, but I don’t care. I can now watch movies on my PSP!

The very next change I had, I watched the second episode of Firefly, on the PSP. Awesome!

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Months ago, my two oldest, The Princess and The Padawan, got themselves a Webkinz stuffed animal. Do you know what that is? Then you don’t have young kids.

Basically this is a hybrid of beanie babies and Facebook, for kids. You get the real toy, then go to the website. Parents may have to help here. Set up an account and enter the code from your toy. Now your kid has a semi-virtual world, where they manage the life of the toy. They name it, build it a room, and feed it. They also get to go around and earn Webkinz money to spend on their animal. They do this by entering contests, playing games, and taking trivia quizzes. OK, now you’ve got the picture. It’s actually pretty cool to watch my two playing, enjoying themselves, and learning a bit about using the computer.

The problem we’re having is that my daughter’s login is screwed up, and nothing, I mean NOTHING we’re doing makes any sense. I’ve been an online adventurer for years. I understand the basic principles of logon and account management. The one thing that the Webkinz team has failed miserably at is that they are unreachable. I dare you to go and find a real email address for me to use, or a telephone number! Even their help/complaint system is a preset list of questions, without providing you with any way to enter your own question. And to top that off, the preset questions each require you to log in to your “home” to go find their answer. WE CAN’T GET HOME, you &#*@&!@!!!!!

So, here I am blogging about it. I know I’m no Scoble, who can get it done with a little bad publicity. But, I thought I’d give it a try.

**************Update**************

Well, just a bit after I blogged my tantrum, and many of you had commented, The Princess’ logon miraculously began to work again. It worked just fine the rest of the day. A unique thing though is that I learned a bit about website customer service. Let me tell you, if a company runs a website, they sure as heck had better make it easy for me (the customer) to get ahold of them. Thanks for all your help and support!

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I tested out Ustream today. Pretty cool. Quite easy. Tomorrow I’ll be doing my very first professional photography shoot. I’m going to try and Ustream it. If there’s internet where I’ll be, you should be able to watch me. Take a look at today’s test:

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So, it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about my Ubuntu travels. Well, it hasn’t gone away, I promise. I ran out of money and time in building the older machine. However, we did get a couple of Mac minis, which are Intel boxes, and perfect Ubuntu testers.

So with that in mind, I’ve loaded up the Fiesty Fawn Live CD a few times, playing and testing. It’s amazing!  Even on the Live CD, all I had to do to get the desktop effects was check a box in the settings. Sweet! Also one of the coolest is that I get the Flash plugin, since the Mac mini has an Intel chip. (The pre-Intel Mac’s have processors that are not supported with the Flash plugin.)

I must say, I’m ready to dump OSX on one of the machines. My wife’s is probably the most likely candidate, since all she has that is Mac only is a bunch of iTunes purchases.

My machine is used for a bit more, like Garageband, iMovie, etc. I’m also quite comfortable with my Mac’s podcasting software apps. And since I’m getting ready to record my last Scribe Music Show, but also getting together the stuff to launch a new show, with a coworker, I’ll need my podcasting stuff. Until the Linux multi-track audio editors get much better, I may need OSX for quite a while.

The only thing holding me back right now is the iTunes purchases. I’m stuck on having my music library on this exact Mac, so, moving it to my machine is out.

I’ve scoured for some open-source tool that will easily convert my DRM’d AAC’s to plain AAC’s or MP3’s, but nothing works with the newest iTunes. We also have too much to just burn to CD and then re-encode. So what do I do?

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So, years ago, I learned a little HTML. I checked out a few web sites that showed me the basics and I just barely began to understand. Having absolutely no programming experience, I had no place to start from. This spiked my interest and I enrolled in a community college course on basic web design. It really wasn’t a design course, since we never covered any design priciples. It was just an HTML course. I’ve still got the text book.

Having learned the basics, I had just enough to be dangerous. However, what was most important was that I had learned how to deconstruct a webpage. This was when my learning began. I probably learned more over the next few years, just from “View Source”-ing my way through a page. One big feature I never picked up on was CSS. There were more, but this one has come back to bite me on more than one occaision.

So, things have changed quite a bit. Now everyone is using PHP, or some other tool to make web development smoother. Of course CSS is important, and I’ve been in the dark. To top it off, these whole CMS apps have really emerged as a great tool for organizing information.

Well, back in 2005, when I launched my first podcast, I learned that blogging tools would serve the podcast well. So, I tossed together the easiest WordPress install I could find. But, as time drug on, I decided that I wanted to customize my WP. Not as many plugins existed yet, so I had to do it by hand. I checked out the wiki and slowly began to realize that I had a lot more to juggle this time around. The code I was reading was similar in style, but it wasn’t anything I had learned in HTML. I quickly discovered what similarities PHP had with HTML, and I found a some good online help to learn the basics of customizing WP.

The problem I found was that I had began to learn about just the code that was used in WP. This wasn’t helping me learn how to code in PHP, generally. Since I wasn’t learning good PHP skills, I still had to use help for any problem that emerged with my WP.  This began to frustrate me.

Additionally, I’ve been observing the amazing Web 2.0 shift. Great tools and services are started everyday. I’m a big fan of Zooomr, you know this. There’s others like Zoho, Pownce, Twitter, and Facebook. All of these, being web applications, were developed with some amazing tools that I want to learn.

Am I to become the next Kristpher Tate? Probably not. But much of the bread and butter of web development isn’t on the front page of anything huge. I just want to fit in.

Do you have any input for me? Where do you think I should start? I’m working on a follow up post, one that details my plan of attack. I’ve got a Lynda.com hook up, so I’ll be taking several of their online courses, to get started. Today, PHP basics.

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You know what they say about opinions, right? Well, mine are strong and I want to share them. I really enjoy blogging and I’d like to continue my growth with the medium so I’m thinking about launching a news oriented online magazine. What do you think? I think something that focuses on the top news stories and current events, with a little commentary might be good. However, trying to cover the world or our country might be biting off more than I can chew. So, once we get moved, I think I’ll try to use this as an opportunity to learn more about the Pacific Northwest.

Most of the opinion blogs, especially the politically oriented kind, tend to be one-sided. And, well, that would be my tendency too, but that’s been done already. Whether you like them or not, those programs with two talking heads, like Hannity & Colmes, really do have strong viewership. There’s no reason why I couldn’t strive to put together a balanced team of contributors.

I went ahead and purchased, NorthwestFreePress.com, in the anticipation that I may do this. So, are you in the Pacific Northwest? Are you interested in joining a team of diverse thinkers who want to chew up and spit out their opinions on everything that’s current? Comment away, or email me. (See the sidebar for my email.)

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Jeff Jarvis, at BuzzMachine, wrote a good post today.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m pretty conservative, politically. In fact, I’m more conservative than most of the main stream Republicans. I’m not going to bullet point list out my views on the issues, I just wanted to get that clear.

So, now, let me point out that my party seems to be running in fear of the internet. I read and follow many political and technology oriented blogs. Others too, but those are pertinent to this post.

I can’t tell you how much I’ve read and heard lately that demonstrated how each of the top liberal candidates for president are using the internet and its tools to communicate with supporters, potential voters, and the media. Yes, the Edwards camp had their fiasco with their bloggers early on, but at least they had bloggers on staff who were doing something! Does McCain have any staff bloggers? Guliani? Romney?

In fact, I think Ron Paul is the only one who knows that the internet isn’t just for porn addicts and 14 year old pimple faced nerds.

Ron Paul has a Facebook page. Ron Paul sat down, townhall style, at the Googleplex recently. Ron Paul is posting YouTube video on his presidential campaign page. I like Ron Paul.

I can’t say that I agree with each of Ron Paul’s opinions. However, he is taking a stand on some of the important ones. And to top it off, Ron Paul has created a mighty stir with the techo-leftists of Silicon Valley. And since, they’re the ones developing most of the internet, that may come back to be a blessing no one saw coming.

So, GOP, “Why are you afraid of the internet?”

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I just discovered the most rockin’ new DVR replacement.

For several months, I’ve been using Transmission. It’s a great torrent app that is straight forward and pretty easy to use. Go to it’s site for more information about that app, I’m not reviewing it here today.

However, I don’t know where I heard it first, but a newer app called TVShows was brought to my attention yesterday. So I checked it out, since I’m addicted to the television. Well, it rocks! Basically you start the app, and it presents you with a very long list of almost everything on English speaking television. You scroll through and “subscribe” to all the programs that you want, telling it which episode you want first. In the preferences you set where you want the torrents stored.

When you quit, it loads a daemon that finds the torrent files for the programs you’re subscribed to, downloads them, and then loads it in your default torrent app.

Legal release: I do not endorse, encourage, insight, or cause anyone to download copyrighted content, nor do I do such things. This whole post is simply a “what if?” and is to be used for educational purposes only. DON’T BREAK THE LAW PEOPLE!

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Yep! You read that right. I said it. No one was man enough to blurt out the presence of a big fat hairy elephant in the room. Now, I’ve done it. PodTech may have figured it out too.

You know, I’ve been a fan of the video podcasting model for quite some time. In late 2005, when I launched my own audio podcast, I began to sample almost every podcast, video and audio, that I had any interest in. Sometimes, I’d even check out a show that had some hype, even if it didn’t appeal to me. In short order, I had an iPod w/ video that served me well during my commute to work. I carpool, and quickly discovered that I could even watch a show or two on my non-driving days.

So, here we are, almost two years later, and I’ve only seen a few video podcasting shows or networks emerge as a viable alternative to mainstream television. Revision3, TWiT, & PodTech are the top three.

Of course, the majority of the programming is non-fiction, mostly documentary in nature. While I love that kind of programming, my Tivo has proven that with every episode of Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, etc., I also love a good story. And the traditional story-telling based programming has yet to emerge in the internet television world. Now, I’m sure that many have tried, but so far none have succeeded. Now, don’t freak out. I’m fully aware of Ask A Ninja and TikiBar TV. Those shows are popular, creative, and tell a story, sorta. My point is that you don’t see any kind of sit-com, dramady, or serialized drama replacement on the horizon. The new programming doesn’t have to follow hollywood’s format, they just have to be good enough to replace them. And, face it, it doesn’t take much to replace Hollywood. They’ve been deciding for us what we like for so long, they have no idea what will be a record-breaker. Take a look at The Office. It took the British to bring us that one. Hollywood hadn’t done anything that caught a cult following since the mid-90’s, Seinfeld/Friends. (They’re one in the same. Just written to a different audience.)

Last year, at a family function, I met an experienced Hollywood musketeer. Chuck’s path has been solid and varied. Out of that meeting came several great conversations, mostly about the topic of video podcasting and its influence upon mainstream television.

One thing Chuck had said that stuck with me was his focus on the quality of content. I can’t remember his exact statement, but it was all about the quality of content. A couple of inexperienced young guys can’t expect to develop a Seinfeld. He didn’t say that exactly, but I think that’s kinda what he meant.

So, now it’s up to a couple of guys (or gals) to prove him wrong. Now it’s time for a small team of bright and talented creative types to develop, write, cast, produce, AND market at top quality program. This program could be a drama or a comedy, but it would have to be good enough for TV. Now the real catch would be when they started turning down opportunties from the big-whigs. Yeah, it’s one thing to get noticed. It’s another when the MSM starts to talk about you. But, it’s a whole new enchilada when they offer you the chance to cross over and you say, “Na, we want to remain independent.” It would be great to be able to later say, “Yeah, ABC wanted to sign us, but we didn’t want ___.”

I have more Google News alerts coming in than I have time to read. Included in my long list of catchy, hip words is, “video podcasting”, “iptv”, and “internet television”. That means, each day I get overloaded with all the top news articles, worldwide, that have talked about those issues. Rarely do I read each article. Most of the time I simply read the title and make a mental note. Of course I also look out for those topics being discussed on my favorite blogs.

Recently, I saw this topic discussed over at Wired. Jim Louderback, the former Editor-in-Chief at PC Magazine, who is now the CEO of Revision3, was interviewed. There’s two important things to note from this interview. First, A MAINSTREAM HONCHO WAS HIRED BY AN INTERNET TELEVISION COMPANY. That’s huge news. It shows that there is a future for internet programming, and I don’t mean repurposed TV programming. I mean programming that was created for the internet. Now, I’m not going to discuss today the art of getting this programming onto your televsion. When my new Mac mini arrives, I’ll talk more about subscribing to an HD video podcast in iTunes and watching it in Front Row with my 42″ HDTV as the monitor. I digress.

The second thing that is important to note from this interview is that Jim is the first of the big internet televisioneers to mention that tech-related programming is not the-end-all-be-all.

So we’re not going to be TechTV reborn. We’re not going to chase ratings for ratings sake, and we’re not going to be limited by just technology-related programming. We’re about building programming that appeals to a wide range of viewers’ passions - thus we also have shows about music and comic books, with more to come. I don’t watch G4 these days, but I think the whole “gaming” and “laddie” TV market is pretty saturated. As for TWiT, Leo’s stuff is great, but we plan on being broader than just core technology.

Yeah! If you think about it, once you have a great idea, producing a show like The Office or Scrubs wouldn’t be all that hard. The costs would be very low. The set could be an existing structure, even someone’s home. The cast could be a hand selected group of friends and family. You could even start small, with just those that are good enough. Then you could grow your cast as you grow in popularity.

The few production tools that limit this team would be special effects and access to copyrighted content. You couldn’t have any RIAA protected music playing, for instance. (We know what they’d do if you did.) You also couldn’t easily pull off an explosion, legally.

But even with these limitations, you still could produce a large variety of programming.

So, what are you waiting for?

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Text Generators are cool, and annoying at the same time. I’m sure you’ve seen this Web 2.0 logo maker, it was dugg a gazillion times. One thing I’ve noticed about the huge number of the Web 2.0 companies is the ommision of vowels. Kinda old-school Hebrew, if you ask me.

Here’s another, what do you think? (make your own)

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I must say, I haven’t laughed at the mocking of socialists like that in a long time.

Tonight, I was watching The 1/2 Hour News Hour, on Fox, for the first time. It’s OK. It’s not amazingly hilarious. It’s not nearly as well produced as The Daily Show. However, it’s not nearly as goose-steppingly in sync with the facists’ talking points either.

I would say that it cements FNC’s which-side-o-the-aisle choice.

What did catch my attention was the Dennis Miller break. I don’t recall the exact format, but I know they had this break near the end where Dennis Miller offered up a few minutes of commentary on a plethora of issues. He seams to blend them all together well, and kept my attention from my Powerbook and the great wide world of the internets.

Below is one of Dennis Miller’s peices. He doesn’t start until about 1:40.

Also, The 1/2 News Hour has these “I’m the ACLU” clips too. I laughed a bit with that part too. Give it a try.

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My pal, Darren, over at the Digital Photography School celebrated his first anniversary today. Way to go Darren!

The Digital Photography School is a wonderful community for digital photographers who want to push the envelope. Nearly each article has something to offer me, and I learn a whole lot more at their forum. Darren’s celebratory post details some of his top articles of the year. Check that one out, it’s a good introduction to what DPS covers.

For the digital photographer it is one of the top 3 websites you should be frequenting on a regular basis.

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