Another Word for Nerd

I’ve gotten two emails this week with publicity for the “Chapeau Blog Awards“. I’m not impressed at all.

Upon review, it appears to be similar to the “Who’s Who” publication scams (I’m looking at you, “Madison Who’s Who”) in that it requires entrants to pay from $195-250 to be considered for an “award” of dubious merit.

I feel sorry for those people who are so desperate for recognition that they’ll fall for this scam and end up doing nothing but lining the pockets of the people running these “awards” with money.

I lived in this house as a kid from 1978 to 1984.

415 East Wade, El Reno, Oklahoma.

Google Maps Street View is neat.

I may not support all the policies of the current (outgoing) presidential administration, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t support our troops.

Military folks, whether you currently serve or are a veteran, thank you for all you do and have done for your country.

I finally broke down last night and bought an Apple TV. I got the $229 model with a 40G hard drive as I don’t need much local storage.

Got it home, got it setup and working in less than ten minutes, and then proceeded to follow the directions on the atvusb-creator web page and make a USB “patchstick”.

Once the unit was patched and SSH enabled, I was able to SSH in and install NitoTV Take 2. NitoTV has built-in installers for the Perian codecs and other utilities. After that was done, I shared my “TV Shows” and “Movies” directories on the Mac Mini via SMB and mounted them via the GUI interface on the AppleTV.

Now, to watch any of my DivX/XviD/MP4/AVI movies, I just pick “NitoTV” from the main AppleTV menu, then go to “Files” and then browse the “Movies” or “TV Shows” directories and hit PLAY.

It couldn’t have been any easier to setup (certainly easier than other “hacks” I’ve seen for commercial devices) and the output looks great on my 42″ plasma TV (an Akai PDP4206EM - it’s not HD, but does 480i “EDTV”).