2007s
- Red Glasses Make Water Taste Wrong
- I got Obsessed with Twitter, and then Abandoned Twitter.
- We took our first weekend away from Mazie in Chicago.
- I started my Apple TV obsession and got an iPhone.
- Tammy went away for a trip and I was Mr. Mom!
- I started playing with time-lapsed video: Drive to Work, Table Assembly, Christmas Tree.
- We had a great 2007 Olson Family Weekend.
- We had a great time at the Winnipeg Folk Festival.
- I went to Canada fishing with my brother-in-laws courtesy of my father-in-law.
- We got some awesome avatars!
- The keyboard was designed for children (duh!) and is really small. Wow!
So far I haven't been able to get it to join a WPA2 WiFi network.- It’s really cute.
Western Digital 1TB My Book
A long, long time ago I decided to do an experiment. I built a server with 1 terabyte in storage. I wanted to see if the average person could deploy a terabyte of storage. The answer to my question was a solid no. That was April 2004. It cost a little over $3,000 and was painful. Oh times have changed.
I was loitering around the Apple Store the other day and I saw this nifty little Western Digital 1TB My Book. I was hesitant to purchase this since I figured mail order would be a better deal. I whipped out my iPhone and surmised that I was going to pay a $30 “convenience” cost to walk out of the store with it right then. Off I went.
I realize it sounds kind of “old man” of me to say that I’m amazed I can get 1 terabyte in a single disk. But, I am amazed! This is a decent drive too, supporting FireWire 400 and 800, as well as standard USB. As an added bonus it supports eSATA. I have it on my FireWire 800 port with the Mac Pro and it’s nice and fast.
I’m not brave enough to let Time Machine take this drive and have it’s way with it. I’m going to keep on using Chronosync to backup home movies, photos and iTunes media to it. I also need to find a place to put the raw DVD rips of 300 discs that I’m planning to start soon. More on that another time…
If you are looking for a big, huge disk to have around this is an easy alternative. Surely a lot easier than building a horrific box with 8 SATA drives. Ugh!
It's a Wii Christmas
It’s very possible that my friends and family think I need to have more fun. There must have been a vast conspiracy to hit me with a bunch of new games for my Wii this year. And how completely great! Here are the additions to my Wii gaming library from this Christmas. These games are all new, so I haven’t played them extensively yet (unlike Guitar Hero III.
Super Mario Galaxy
How can you not like the Mario series, and with a game that is rated 5 stars by all the major publications (IGN: “The greatest Nintendo platformer ever?”) Super Mario Galaxy is a must have. Mario continues his never ending mission of saving Princess Peach from Bowser. Galaxy is set in space and you leap from various planets. It’s Mario in 3D which I’m usually not a huge fan of, but this is done really well. After about 10 minutes of setup you are into the game and having a great time. The integration with the Wii controls is intuitive and really nice, which you would expect from Nintendo anyway. Must have for any Wii owner.
Wii Zapper with Link’s Crossbow Training
This combo pack is really cool. The Wii Zapper is a plastic mold that you place the Wiimote and the Nunchuck into and in concert they make a gun. A really nice gun too. It’s a little small for a big guy like myself, but still really playable. I’d possibly actually enjoy a first-person shooter with this setup. The included game, Link’s Crossbow Training, is light on any story and really just filled with action for you to learn how to use the crossbow. I need to do some research on any other games that use the “zapper”, but it’s a very fun play. The lack of story insures that this will be a favorite when friends come over and just want to play the Wii for a little while.
Zack & Wiki Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure
Zack & Wiki is a ridiculous name for this game. It’s as if they went out of their way to find something that would discourage you from buying it. I didn’t even know about it until a friend of mine IM’d me a link to a review (IGN: “Buy it. Now.”) that was off the charts. After playing it for even a short while, I concur with the review. This is a great, fun game. The characters are well done, the game play is superb and you could easily see getting lost in it for hours. The game is setup sort of like a movie, so it has a decent amount of setup time and getting to know the plot. But even that is enjoyable. I highly recommend this game.
Super Paper Mario
As I said above about Galaxy, I’m not a huge fan of Mario in 3D. I still think of Mario in my old platform 2D world. Always going from left to right (always!). Paper was really interesting to me because it has much of that classic 2D platform experience. Again, there is a decent amount of setup in this game like Galaxy and Zack & Wiki. In fact, there is a lot of setup. I think it was 20 minutes before I was actually playing. The cool thing about paper is that the entire game world is both 2D and 3D. Early in the game you earn the ability to “flip” into 3D, but you can only do it for a little while at a time (like holding your breath underwater). The result is a game with puzzles that require you to flip and explore in order to proceed. Way cool! Plus, for some reason, to me the graphics look stellar in the 2D mode. I love the crisp and vibrant colors.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
I’ve been a long-time fan of the Tiger Woods series. I’ve played the games on a couple of different consoles as well as versions for the PC and Mac. This is a great continuation of the series with wonderful adoption of the Wii control system. I can see this game being very playable right away, and in fact the intro sequence you run through to get familiar with the swing gets you almost all the way there. I don’t groove on the funky character customizations all that much, like different shirts and setting how long my facial hair is. I sort of yearn for integration with the Wii’s Mii system, but that doesn’t make sense since they are far too cartoon-like to appear at Augusta. I’m looking forward to playing this some more and if you are a fan of the series it’s worth it. (Note, I borrowed Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘07 from a friend before and I would be hard pressed to tell the difference between ‘07 and ‘08. It’s likely not worth the cost if you already have last years edition.)
Beat Guitar Hero III on Medium
Big day today! I beat Guitar Hero III on medium. Wahoo!
I don’t think I’m even going to attempt hard. It just seems rather insane. I’ll be happy with this milestone and enjoy my medium fame.
If you want to play some time, my friend code is 5026 3031 4382.
Merry Christmas 2007
Christmas 2007 is a wrap! Great time with family. Mazie really started to grok the holiday this year and was pretty excited. She loves presents. In honor of the season and Dad traditions, here is a time lapse video of me and Grandpa Don assembling Mazie’s new doll house. She’s totally digging it.
Awesome Bluetooth Headset Dude!
I got my brother-in-law Denny a new Bluetooth headset for Christmas and my brother-in-law Hector showed up after putting in a mandatory morning at the office and just loved his new headset. Words cannot do his reaction justice. This short movie attempts to capture the moment.
2007 Holiday Letter
Tammy and I are both pretty shocked that we got a holiday letter out this year. It just sort of happened. Tammy started writing something and it just appeared. After a night of tweaking, adding some photos and an online printing order to Kinkos we had ourselves a letter! A bunch of these went out in the mail, but I wouldn’t dare deprive the dedicated blog reader of this great content as well. Read the 2007 Holiday Letter right here.
As a special bonus for the web I’m going to highlight a selected set of blog posts from this year as well.
2007 Highlights from thingelstad.com
Vimeo Solves Video Problems
I have been searching for a good video hosting service for a while. Something that solves my online video problems like Flickr solves my online photo problems. At first blush you probably think this is silly, YouTube is the obvious answer. Well, not really.
After a while searching I found Vimeo and have been delighted. My first test for video hosting services was to upload the 13 minute fishing video from Canada. YouTube denies this video because it is over 10 minutes long. Google Video couldn’t transcode it to Flash after several attempts. Sadly even the .Mac video hosting couldn’t reliably receive the upload from iMovie (sad). Vimeo on the other hand took it with ease and got it transcoded on the first try.
I’m very happy with the quality of video from Vimeo. You get privacy controls if you want them. Embedding it in your blog is simple and easy. Plus you aren’t surrounded by trashy videos like on YouTube. I’m happy to finally find a place to plant video.
Over the course of the next few weeks I’m going to migrate anything from YouTube to Vimeo. While doing it I’ll likely recut some of the video that looks a bit rough.
Guitar Hero III - 497 Note Streak
I’m still having a blast on Guitar Hero III. I played for a while yesterday trying to clear some levels before the big Christmas Day extravaganza with my brother-in-laws where I expect much GH3 action. While playing I saw the notice for a 200 note streak pop up and freaked out. I knew I was hitting the song, but when it was all over…
497 note streak! That is on the medium difficulty in the 4th “level”. Unfortunately the Guitar Hero site doesn’t rank streaks so I have no idea how big of a number that is, but I thought it was pretty impressive! Check out my profile page if you want to prove this isn’t rigged. 🙂
"All In" On Apple TV
I thought about naming this post “I have a dream” but I figured the SEO impacts would be all wrong. The idea though would be spot on. I decided to go with this title and its gambling reference because I’m quite positive that I am gambling a little. I just bought my third Apple TV and set it up last week.
Yes, I read a bunch of different blogs and I do not have my head in the sand. You don’t have to go very far to read an article about how the Apple TV has already failed and is doomed to sit next to the Newton on the shelf of shame at Apple HQ. In fact, simply buying an Apple TV doesn’t give you a lot of assurance the product is doing well. The unit I just bought and installed still had the 1.0 software on it. The 1.1 release was made a long time ago so you know this unit was sitting on the shelf for a while.
However, I find the allure of these little boxes to be too strong. The promise is
great. Integration with the iTunes ecosystem. Great user experience. By
far the best "ten foot" user experience I've ever seen. The integration
is great. You can watch part of a movie on a plane, come home and sync
your iPhone and then sit down on the couch and the Apple TV will offer
to resume where you left off. For music, it's a great device with nearly
no issues (please add rating from the Apple TV!). It falls down in
video, and that is really where the entire iTunes world falls down.
I’ve decided to continue betting all the way to three of these units for a few reasons. First, as part of the iTunes world it is not easy for Apple to just shove it aside. I don’t expect that there will be a breaking change that will cause them to stop working for a long time, if ever. Additionally, I really like the form factor and it’s complete lack of noise (although it’s hotter than nearly any device I’ve ever owned). If it really got ugly, I also feel comfortable that I can hack the thing wide open and do some of the stuff that Apple should be doing for me already on it.
Now, I’m just hoping these rumors of significant Apple TV enhancements at WWDC in January come true!
New Apple Store in New York
I was out in New York last week and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to check out the brand new Apple Store on 14th Street. It’s worth a visit if you are in town. It’s far more spacious than the Fifth Avenue store and the glass spiral staircase is impressive. It has three floors which are nice to segment the store up.
Dow Jones Disco Party 2007
Oh my. Really. Wow. Absolutely fabulous!
That is the only way to start any post on the 2007 Dow Jones Disco Party that we had this year. This years party was a complete blast. I had given a preview of the Disco Theme in another post and people did not hold back at all in going all out.
Great food. Amazing band, Boogie Wonderland. Disco music. Awesome people! How can you go wrong! Party along with this video!
Every year it gets better and I really cannot imagine how next year could top this one.
Christmas Tree 2007
We’ve been a bit slow getting our Christmas tree up this year. We finally got one today and I figured it was a great time to do another time-lapsed video!
You don’t get to see much of Mazie because she’s blocked by the table most of the time.
OLPC XO-1 Arrived
My One Laptop Per Child XO-1 arrived today! I haven’t had any time to work with it so you will all have to wait to hear my thoughts on it. Some things that jumped right out though include…
To tide everyone over, here are some pictures of Mazie holding it. She’s a kid after all! :-)
Nintendo Wii Servers Overloaded
It seems that delivering Wii’s to stores isn’t the only supply problem Nintendo has. Every time they release new versions of the software for the Wii, and even some of the pay titles available in the Wii Store, their servers get overloaded for days.
I tried updating my system a dozen times and it finally just worked today, a few days after the update went out. I still can’t get some of the titles in the Wii Store to successfully download. I’m trying to get Check Mii Out now and that fails on every attempt. It spits out these errors about your network setup, but it’s really just that their servers are totally overloaded.
Somebody at Nintendo needs to wake up and sign a deal with a content distribution network.
Guitar Hero III Rocks the Wii
I’m totally obsessed with my Wii all over again and it’s because of Guitar Hero III - Legends of Rock. In between attempts to update my Wii software, I’ve been rocking out with Guitar Hero III. I can’t remember the last time I played a single game for over an hour – until now.
This is a seriously fun game. Think of Dance Dance Revolution, but without a silly dance pad and way better music. Oh, and I can actually play Guitar Hero, unlike DDR. It comes with a plastic “guitar controller” that you mount the Wiimote in and you start playing away. I was hooked pretty much instantly. It’s a must have Wii game, particularly for the air guitar sort.
If you are playing Guitar Hero already connect with my profile and let’s shred!
Blog Cred to Dictionary Evangelist
My RSS reader is filled with a lot of technology stuff, a variety of Apple websites and a ton of friends that have blogs. I recently subscribed to a new blog that I had to create a new group for. The group is called Interesting, and the blog is Dictionary Evangelist.
I got exposed to this blog by watching Erin McKean’s presentation at TED entitled “Redefining the Dictionary” via their podcasts. The video was fun, and her posts are “interesting” and fun as well. Erin is a lexicographer, which is to say she makes dictionaries. Cred’ out to Dictionary Evangelist (Add Feed).
What’s in your “Interesting” group?
Winnipeg Folk Festival Finale Study Guide
I have given myself and a couple of my friends (him and him) a task for the upcoming Winnipeg Folk Festival. There is a tradition on the final night that all of the performers at the festival come on stage and conduct the finale. The three songs that comprise the finale are The Mary Ellen Carter, Wild Mountain Thyme and Amazing Grace. The assignment is to learn the lyrics to these songs, especially the Mary Ellen Carter, so that everyone can sing along without looking at the lyrics in the songbook.
Now, when I say sing along I mean sing along with gusto. Think of an Irish bar 30 minutes before closing time and the whole place rocking and singing to a traditional reel. That’s the idea.
This post is the study guide for this assignment. I’ve compiled the lyrics for these songs and validated them against specific tracks from iTunes to make sure they are correct.
The Mary Ellen Carter by Stan Rogers
The Mary Ellen Carter (iTunes) is a pretty amazing song. On the Wikipedia page for the song it is credited with savings someone’s life! The lyrics for it are substantial and have some areas where emphasis is needed (highlighted in yellow). This will take a while to get it right. I’d suggest focusing most attention on this song.
She went down last october in a pouring driving rain
The skipper he’d been drinkin’ and the mate he felt no pain
Too close to three mile rock and she was dealt her mortal blow
And the Mary Ellen Carter settled lowThere was just us five aboard her when she finally was awash
We’d worked like hell to save her, all heedless of the cost
And the groan she gave as she went down it caused us to proclaim
That the Mary Ellen Carter would rise againWell the owners wrote her off, not a nickel would they spend “She gave twenty years of service boys then met her sorry end.
But insurance paid the loss to us, so let her rest below”
Then they laughed at us and said we had to goBut we talked of her all winter, some days around the clock
She’s worth a quarter million a-floating at the dock
And with every jar that hit the bar we swore we would remain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise againCHORUS: Rise again, rise again
That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men
Oh those who loved her best, and were with her ’til the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
All spring now we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend
Three dives a day in a hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends
Thank God it’s only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
Or I’d never have the strength to go belowBut we patched her rents, stopped her vents, dogged hatch and portal down
Put cables to her fore and aft and girded her around
Tomorrow noon we hit the air and then take up the strain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise againCHORUS
For we couldn’t leave her there you see to crumble into scale
She’d saved our lives so many times living through the gale
And the laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave
They won’t be laughing in another dayAnd you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again2ND CHORUS: Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken your life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again2ND CHORUS
Wild Mountain Thyme
This is a traditional Irish song. As such, the lyrics are modified by various performers. This recording by Carl Peterson (iTunes) isn’t the best but it’s a good one to learn the lyrics with. It’s really slow, and you can go along at your own pace without any issue.
Oh, the summer time is come,
And the trees are sweetly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.CHORUS:
Will you go, lassie, go?
And we’ll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather,Will you go, lassie, go?
I will build my love a bower
By yon clear and crystal fountain,
And on it I will pile,
All the flowers from the mountain.CHORUS
If my true love, she were gone,
I will surely find another
Where the while wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.CHORUS
Oh, the summertime is coming
And thre trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.CHORUS
Amazing Grace
I’m sure you know most of the words to Amazing Grace. This recording by Anne Murray (iTunes) is a good one to hammer the lyrics in with. I know, Anne Murray? Yes, I know. It is what it is.
Amazing grace!
How sweet the sound,
That sav’d a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Welcome Chase!
It was nine months ago that we added Izzy to our family. Today we added another dog to the family. His name is Chase!
We adopted Chase today after visiting him on Thursday night. He is about 5 months old and is a Border Collie/Black Lab mix. His color is all Black Lab, and his face has a lot of the Collie in it. He was born in South Dakota and found his way to Minneapolis with a couple of siblings. We found Chase on the Internet (with the unfortunate name of Lurch), while casually considering getting another dog. After visiting him we pondered it for a while and decided to take the leap.
Chase arrived today and for about five hours he and Izzy just ran around chasing each other. Complete and total mayhem. I’m pleased to say that as I write this though they have settled a bit and Chase is actually laying down. First time today.
Chase is going to be high energy and will be a good friend for Izzy. Izzy loves other dogs and will appreciate the company. Chase is going to be very smart, and even at his young puppy stage he’s already learned a few commands. I get a sense he is going to be much easier to train than Izzy. He should get to 40-50 lbs fully grown.
Tammy and I are both considering our moment of insanity. :-) Getting Chase is reminding us how much Izzy has grown since we got her. Welcome to the family Chase!
iPhone Screen Broken
On Thursday of this week I experienced a disaster. I got a phone call and while taking my iPhone out of my pocket it slipped and I fumbled it ever so oddly, culminating in it hitting the plastic arm of the chair I was sitting in. I flipped it around and to my horror the glass had cracked!
The image above is not my phone. I was not able to get a picture of it. The image is from GeckoAndFly.com under the Creative Commons license. See the post where this picture originated.
It was really odd. I had dropped my iPhone before, and in much worse situations, and everything was fine. This was a minor hit, and on a plastic surface no less. I think the issue was that it hit exactly where the cutout for the speaker is, on one of the corners. It would make sense that this would be one of the weaker points in the glass. Same exact hit that is in the picture above.
Distraught at my lack of a perfect iPhone (it worked fine with the broken glass BTW) I headed to the Apple Store. I wasn’t optimistic that it would be replaced gratis. Upon arriving my assumptions were proven out. Apple replaced it with a “replacement only” unit that cost $249. A big $50 savings off of a brand new unit, and you have to immediately hand over your broken unit (hence no picture). The money aside, the replacement was flawless. I came home, docked it, and iTunes quickly restored exactly as my previously broken one was.