Let’s talk toys. Specifically media players, or media streamers or whatever you wanna call it. Small boxed that you connect to your TV or projector to play your digitalized movies. I started that project about 3 years trying to find a good solution to it. And I’m still not happy! The closes to “satisfied” that I’ve come is actually Popcorns A110 which is so low tech and “just the facts”-scaled down you can get. But the fewer “cool features” you have the less things can go wrong!
I’ve tried having a PC but in the end with their fans and harddrives it just makes too much noise to have it at the TV. So I’ved tried it with the PS3 and that kinda worked but doesn’t play all the stuff I have and some stuff bugs out. Lately I’ve tried two “Xtreamer” products. First I tried their “Pro” which was suppose to be media player and network storage all in one, so I could have 2 2tb harddrives in the same machine where I store the movies, awesome to combine them. But their idea of “network storage” didn’t exactly jive with my idea of it so after playing with it over the weekend I exchanged it for their “media player only” product “Sidewinder 2”. So far it looks awesome and it plays everything I’ve thrown at it…. BUT!!! they have a major error in their software. Either that or they have a weird since of “interface”! Because their “Back” button is really an “Up” button. For example, I have shortcuts that points directly to my Movies directory on my server. And I have a shortcut pointing to my TV directory. When I go into the shortcuts menu and click “TV” I come to the TV directory fine. Now when I click “Back” I, and I believe the rest of the world, would expect to get back to the shortcuts menu. But instead I’m take to the parents directory of “TV” which is just wrong and I have to go back to the home screen to go into the shortcut menu to go to the movies catalog again. It’s messed up and you’d think a very small thing but it’s actually a big deal when browsing around!
This all just means I’m left wondering … “how hard can it be!? Why don’t I get together with Ricki and Jimmi and design one ourselves and just make three copies of it for ourselves and leave everyone else wanting one”…
This is what you’d in sweden call an “i-lands problem”, a small insignificant problem that someone in Africa would say “I wish I didn’t have bigger problems than that”. But it still annoys me!
Saw a really good story yesterday on the TV4 News about abusing online identities, in this case for political purposes. It’s basically about two young “everyday” women who found out that someone have set up Facebook pages in their names, using their personal details and photos and joining political groups. And the person doing the story, Lena Sundström, got some first hand experience about this when someone set up a fake Twitter account in her name pretending to be her. Ofcourse there’s nothing new about fake Twitter/Facebook accounts, that’s a rather old story but using it for political purposes was a new angle for me! Especially with Lena Sundström (who’s from South Korea but raised in sweden since she was like 6 months) who have done numerous stories about Sverige Demokraterna, a political party in Sweden who wants to send all immigrants back home and it’s been interesting to see her meeting people and they having no idea she’s an immigrant until they meet her for the interview.
I’m pretty grateful that even though I’ve had an online presence since -98 when I set up my first website and started a blog nothing like this have happened to me. Maybe that’s because I’m too boring, I dunno…
You may remember a few weeks ago I made a post that we were now “leasing” a car instead of owning it so we wouldn’t have to worry about stuff. Well what I forgot to mention was that we did have another car, a Volvo that has server us well. I bought it 2 1/2 years ago for 30k SEK (it really was 40k but I got 10k for handing in my old Mitsubishi) and it was the car on all our photos of when the house was built. It was the car we raced to the hospital in when H was going into labor. But it was also the car that last year cost us 10k SEK in spare parts alone (thanks to H’s brother the work was more or less free). And now was the time for it to go through the annual inspection. And the verdict was surprisingly good – green across the board! That’s only happened to me ONCE that my car went through on the first try and that was so many years ago I can’t even remember it!
And right after we got the all clear I called the car dealership where I bought it and asked if they wanted to buy it. They said “sure, bring it by and we’ll have a looksy”. We were expecting to get like 10k for it but asked for 15k.. and we actually got 15k! Well needed 15k! First thing we did was buy a sulky for Sam since our old stroller was a bit too cumbersome for the new car. But that too served us very well for these 17 months!
And then we went to Stinsen to blow some money on clothes and stuff and the rest I guess goes to our house account that’s bound to take a beating soon.
Been busy the past week. “Deus Ex : Human Revolution” was released last friday and I gave it shot and got stuck right away. And man is it deep!! The gameplay was really good and the story is really good but when I finally got to the end there are four different endings to it and they are all unique views and opinions on the old question of ethics and technology. The story centeres around “augmentation” which is basically either enhancements to a human or replacing an entire limb. The technology can ofcourse be used for good and for evil and in the game you run across them both. And then the speeches in the four different endings, it’s like they are arguing against themselves. One ending is very “pro-tech/pro-capitalism”, one very “pro-tech but controlled”, one very anti-tech and let anarchy rule and the last one “let the people decide for themselves”. I loved it! And the replayability of the game is also great, gone through it 3 times now and still discovered different things!
Just a small quick little “rest in peace”-note about Stefan Liv (1980-2011). Never knew the guy, but I saw him play a lot of hockey since it DIF played against HV71 alot back when he played in Sweden. And I never missed a game when Sweden was playing so saw him alot there. And even though they guy stopped DIF from winning the trophy at least once he did it in style and he did it with raw talent and skill. There was not much luck with that guy, he was simply the best goalie. And in 2006 he helped the Swedish team not only win the world championship but also the Olympics. And he always seemed like a nice guy in all the interviews.
And then he goes and board the wrong jet and dies.. such a damn tragedy. And after watching alooooot of “Air Crash Investigation” episodes on national Geographic I’m pretty sure that once the cause has been determined it will seem even more pointless.
Just sad when stuff like this happens and it reminds you of what really matters. So what if the train is 10 minutes late, atleast it didn’t crash…