Minnesota Winter Hits Hard

I’ve lived in Minnesota for 12 years now, with an extended period of duel citizenship with Iowa, so I’m no stranger to extreme cold weather. From piles of snow to inches of ice, for nearly two decades I’ve seen just about everything one can experience living in the area the movie “Fargo” took place.

Today though was something a little different. The wind chill dropped to levels that according to some estimates I’ve heard has reached -40 degrees or so. Frightening.

I felt it first hand waiting for the gas pump to kick in, $12 of gas never seemed so far away. I ended up stalling in the gas station building, trying to hold onto the last few minutes of warmth before jumping back into the car and driving 30 miles - knowing the heat wouldn’t kick in until I was at my destination.

I’m one to complain about the cold, but rarely the heat. I love hot weather, I’ve talked about this before. And yet, this region is home. I couldn’t imagine, at least at this point, moving into a major metro area on the east or west coast. I won’t say never because I don’t believe in absolute statements, but I will say my personality would have to change.

My camera phone was going to capture a few moments of the cold today, but the thought of holding a semi-metal item in my bare hands just sounded like a bad idea, so I hope this paints the picture for you. I’m still can’t fully feel my lips - it’s that cold.

We’re supposed to see a warm up in the coming days, it can’t come soon enough for me. Only a few more months until we’re hitting the 90s again. I can’t wait.

Cleaning up my downloads folder

Earlier today I downloaded a QuickTime video from Tekzilla, a Revision3 video podcast on technology. I watched the 30 some odd minute HD video talking about MacWorld and some of the fun things that were introduced.

After watching it I went to my downloads folder to delete it, finding a folder filled with nearly a gig of PDF files, wallpaper, unused shareware and a few other video files. Generally speaking, the majority of the files fell squarely in the “I don’t need or use these” category.

There were of course a few gems in the rough, which I moved to a more permanent “documents” or “pictures” folder, but for the most part the files that served no real purpose ended up in the trash.

Some of the files dated back to over 6 months ago, many duplicates of HDTV manuals I downloaded looking at feature sets before selecting my Vizio.

It’s an interesting metaphor for life I think, we often accumulate stuff we don’t need and every so often we need to purge ourselves of some unneeded stuff.

That said I backed up all the files, even the unneeded ones, onto a DVD-R. So no, I won’t be getting rid of that second copy of Dogma anytime soon. I’m too much of a pack-rat.

U2:3D, New design, etc.

I’ve been a bit quiet lately on here, tough I guess. I’ve been working in the background on a few ideas that will come together as a new layout and focus for the blog. I think it should be kind of interesting, I hope you’ll enjoy it.I really want to see U2 3D. I have about every concert film the band has put out, never seen them live. I hear this is the next best thing. Exciting stuff. 

Gizmodo seeks attention, gets it?

The Consumer Electronics Show seems to draw more and more attention from main stream media each year. With the popularity of HDTVs exploding and every other person owning an MP3 player, technology is no longer relegated the the geeks and nerds in the AV room.

With more media outlets and the growth in the tech blogging community, the competition to be “your source” for news at CES has never been more fervent. Some source did live blogging, others did creative videos, while at least one blog made a complete fool of itself.

This year, Gizmodo did a stunt at CES. Using a gadget advertised on late night TV that turns off all televisions within a certain radius. Said blogger took the device and shut off dozens of flashy new HDTVs throughout the show and interrupted a press conference. This of course annoyed vender’s, organizers and generally everybody with any sense of common decency.

The individuals responsible for the stunt over at said tech blog have made claims of civil disobedience to prove their independence and not being part of the establishment. The problem comes in that this particular blog is part of a major corporation that is seeking as much traffic as possible - note advertisers paid the bills that allowed the bloggers to do this prank.

Any claims of civil disobedience as a reasoning behind the stunt is pure posturing. This was all about page views, click throughs and visibility. This particular blog has a history of such antics drawing both curious attention and negative attention. As time goes on the site has lost a great deal of credibility. While their competition (Engadget) has almost always taken a journalistic high road, avoiding such stunts and recognizing what credibility is really about.

I have to be honest, I have never been a fan of Gizmodo. Its always felt a little less tasteful or honest in comparison to its competitors. This incident just serves to prove the point. While its competition have run into controversy - including one reported rumor that likely caused a serious, all be it short lived, dip in Apple’s stock price on Wall Street - Engadget has generally felt more trust worthy.

As a professional journalist I question the tactics and explanations from the perpetrator. From posting a “comedy” video of the clips to their “response” to the criticism that flooded the tech community in recent days.

In the end, if they wanted to get attention, they’ve obviously made their point. As for their journalistic credibility - I’d argue they never really had it.

Rough week, cough cough

This last week has bee a pretty rough one. On Tuesday night I started getting what became my first major migraine of the year. Of course it won’t be my last, but it’s never fun to deal with.

While I normally make an effort to go into the office and work through it, this one laid me out. Compounded on top of it I caught some sort of a cold. Wednesday was spent for the most part in bed. I made a point to go back into work on Thursday despite the progression of the cold. Of course once I got home from work I quickly made it back to bed.

I’ve discovered the audio commentary from “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” make for good background noise while sleeping. For the most part the rest of my down time this past week was spent sleeping.

Today I’m feeling about 90 percent better. I’m still dealing with some congestion and a mild cough, but I’m up and about. I was even so bold as to install my new TiVo Duel Tuner - replacing the single tuner in the living room. For the time being the old TiVo will live in the bedroom until I decide what to do with it.

See kids, this is why I hate winter.

Give me Sling or give me something

I’ve been out of commission for the last few days with headaches and colds but that hasn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on things at the Consumer Electronics Show. The big CES event this year showed off a couple things that caught my eye.

SlingBox has been a product I’ve been interested in for a while. I intend on picking one up in the near future to hook up to my TiVo for viewing when I’m traveling. The SlingBox connects to your television or DVD player or TiVo and lets you watch and control it through your computer.

This year the fine SlingMedia folks came through with their long discussed SlingCatcher. This new product will let users send from the SlingBox to another television - taking the computer out of the equation. Interesting idea. I plan on using this to watch TiVo’d shows in another room. Good times.

Then there was the death of HD DVD. I saw it coming before it happened but I am disappointed it happened the way it did. I have some thoughts I’ll expand on it later, but I have to say - Warner Bros. doesn’t have the consumer in mind. It’s a money thing, and that’s a shame. Oh well. I still have a nice upconverting DVD player at least.

Signal Fire

I keep putting off doing a blog post, I’ve been increadably lazy of late, but I feel compelled to put something out there. I want to share with you the Snow Patrol song “Signal Fire” as featured in Spider-man 3. The song is fantastic and this might be the sweetest video I’ve ever seen. Enjoy.