`So today marks day 2 of the summer of bike to work. The weather is finally cooperating. This morning started off bad when about a mile into the ride, I discovered that I had not placed my water bottle on the bike. This is not a trip to go drink less and I was too far in to the ride to turn around for it. $1.82 for some Gatorade. Oh well.
So the one thing that I picked up from my rides last year was that it is a bad idea to run full tilt the entire way. It's more about maintaining a decent average speed. Earlier I would race downhill as fast as I could, or burn rubber on the flats only to be burnt out when the big hills came. Now I let gravity do the work on the downhills, then maintain a higher pace on the flats. Then when the hills come catch a good gear and for God's sake, breath!
You need to establish a good deep breathing pattern to keep a good flow of oxygen to the legs. A lot of people breath incorrectly and burn out. Either they breath too shallowly or too erratically. This wastes energy and results in early fatigue. So the lesson today is practice regulating your breathing when cycling.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Why Cablevision will cease to exist
So it's July. It's time for Tour De France. If you want to see it live, and live in NJ you have two choices:
1) Versus Streampass which allows you to watch the coverage live over the internet or
2) Versus channel 408 on Cablevision.
Now I would go route #1 but I'm not keen to sit in front of my laptop to watch the stream and as I said in my last post next year will be a Mac Mini running media instead of the AppleTV so I'll be good then. So I'm stuck with option 2 which is the topic of this post.
Now anyone with IO digital service knows that you have this box that you "rent" from the cable company. This box has a card that "validates" the connection. With this box you can run up on a channel and press a button and have on demand video. Cool technology this is. Right? Right? Well not so much.
See in order to get Versus channel 408, you have to have the "family pack." I have basic cable. That is regular broadcast. Why do I pay for that? because after 9-11 reception went to hell. 20 bucks for guaranteed reception wasn't going to break me so no problem. Besides I don't watch all that much TV.
Anyway. So I have to go up to the "family pack" which runs fifty odd bucks a month just so that I can qualify to get charged another $5.95 for Versus. 60 bucks to watch one channel for all of 3 hours a day. Oh yeah, and some technician has to come out to my place and fiddle with a box to activate all this. I kid you not.
Someone please explain to me how, in the age of video on demand and two way validation boxes and TCP/IP, is it not possible to press a button, activate a channel for 24 hours or whatever (or even call customer service to turn on a channel) and be done? Seriously. CableVision: this is bad business.
So here's the addendum to the Mac Mini plan: While On vacation next week I will be purchasing a digital converter box and I will hook up my active antenna and I'll see if I can get reception. If I get reception, when the Tour De France is over, CableVision will have permanently lost a customer.
I told the customer mugger..sorry, customer service fellow that I understand that he's just doing his job, but that this was an example of why people are ditching cable and getting their content over the internet. And maybe he ought to let his higher ups know that their business model has no future.
Of course I fully expect that the cable companies will try to give the public the "Boxee" treatment in order to protect this racket they have going on. I even expect that these execs will try to get congress to pass laws requiring laptops and other portable computing devices to refuse to play video on anything but the main screen or to probe the attached screen for it's ID and if it doesn't match up with some sort of valid string the video will refuse to show. 'Cause you know, it's never that the business model is wrong. It's the customer that "doesn't understand."
Well I understand and in the near future CableVision will have had it's hand removed from my wallet. Enjoy that 60 bucks.
1) Versus Streampass which allows you to watch the coverage live over the internet or
2) Versus channel 408 on Cablevision.
Now I would go route #1 but I'm not keen to sit in front of my laptop to watch the stream and as I said in my last post next year will be a Mac Mini running media instead of the AppleTV so I'll be good then. So I'm stuck with option 2 which is the topic of this post.
Now anyone with IO digital service knows that you have this box that you "rent" from the cable company. This box has a card that "validates" the connection. With this box you can run up on a channel and press a button and have on demand video. Cool technology this is. Right? Right? Well not so much.
See in order to get Versus channel 408, you have to have the "family pack." I have basic cable. That is regular broadcast. Why do I pay for that? because after 9-11 reception went to hell. 20 bucks for guaranteed reception wasn't going to break me so no problem. Besides I don't watch all that much TV.
Anyway. So I have to go up to the "family pack" which runs fifty odd bucks a month just so that I can qualify to get charged another $5.95 for Versus. 60 bucks to watch one channel for all of 3 hours a day. Oh yeah, and some technician has to come out to my place and fiddle with a box to activate all this. I kid you not.
Someone please explain to me how, in the age of video on demand and two way validation boxes and TCP/IP, is it not possible to press a button, activate a channel for 24 hours or whatever (or even call customer service to turn on a channel) and be done? Seriously. CableVision: this is bad business.
So here's the addendum to the Mac Mini plan: While On vacation next week I will be purchasing a digital converter box and I will hook up my active antenna and I'll see if I can get reception. If I get reception, when the Tour De France is over, CableVision will have permanently lost a customer.
I told the customer mugger..sorry, customer service fellow that I understand that he's just doing his job, but that this was an example of why people are ditching cable and getting their content over the internet. And maybe he ought to let his higher ups know that their business model has no future.
Of course I fully expect that the cable companies will try to give the public the "Boxee" treatment in order to protect this racket they have going on. I even expect that these execs will try to get congress to pass laws requiring laptops and other portable computing devices to refuse to play video on anything but the main screen or to probe the attached screen for it's ID and if it doesn't match up with some sort of valid string the video will refuse to show. 'Cause you know, it's never that the business model is wrong. It's the customer that "doesn't understand."
Well I understand and in the near future CableVision will have had it's hand removed from my wallet. Enjoy that 60 bucks.
Monday, July 6, 2009
From Apple TV to the Old Powerbook G4
And so this weekend, after discovering that Hulu once again, does not work on Boxee, leading to aborted attempts to watch new episodes of Burn Notice, I went and purchased a DVI to HDMI cable and hooked up the old Powerbook G4 to my TV.
At this point I truly regret purchasing the Apple TV. I admit this is mostly my fault since Boxee wasn't releaseware (perpetual alpha-beta) and that a Mac mini, while costing me about twice as much would have resulted in a far more capable media center.
But many people would have to admit that the draw for Boxee was full screen on your TV Hulu. It was and is the cable replacement for many of us. But alas, because the people at Hulu have decided that somehow watching Hulu content on your TV represented some major threat to their business model, Hulu on Boxee is all but a dead case. Of course I still watch Hulu on my TV and I still don't have "premium" cable content. so I'm not sure how Hulu wins here. And it's not all that inconvenient either. The biggest obstacle being that the PB does not have a remote so I have to use it's keyboard and trackpad. This could be alleviated with some bluetooth device but I won't go there. If Hulu continues to not work on Boxee I'll be ditching the Apple TV and purchasing a Mini to take it's place. I'll probably see some power savings too given how warm the ATV can get.
At this point I truly regret purchasing the Apple TV. I admit this is mostly my fault since Boxee wasn't releaseware (perpetual alpha-beta) and that a Mac mini, while costing me about twice as much would have resulted in a far more capable media center.
But many people would have to admit that the draw for Boxee was full screen on your TV Hulu. It was and is the cable replacement for many of us. But alas, because the people at Hulu have decided that somehow watching Hulu content on your TV represented some major threat to their business model, Hulu on Boxee is all but a dead case. Of course I still watch Hulu on my TV and I still don't have "premium" cable content. so I'm not sure how Hulu wins here. And it's not all that inconvenient either. The biggest obstacle being that the PB does not have a remote so I have to use it's keyboard and trackpad. This could be alleviated with some bluetooth device but I won't go there. If Hulu continues to not work on Boxee I'll be ditching the Apple TV and purchasing a Mini to take it's place. I'll probably see some power savings too given how warm the ATV can get.
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