6 posts tagged “internet”

I don't post videos around here much but...this is just awesome. It's a group of people that apply auto-tune to news casters and politicians normal voices and make a pop type song out of it. Really, really well done

Last night was a very important part of the process of moving into a new apartment. We have...the internet. The cable guy was there by the time I got back to the apartment after work and after some little hiccups regarding the stupid way the old cable company in the area did the wiring for the apartment, we ended up having cable.

He was a good cable guy too. Sometimes the installers can be very hit and miss, but this guy knew what he was doing and he did all the wiring and stuff too, including my room which was difficult because of the location of the cable outlet. He even stapled the wire along the wall over the closet.

Yes, that's right...for the first time I have cable on my personal TV. Yes, it's just standard cable and it's a little fuzzy since it's not digital. But it is cable. I watched Futurama last night! I'm very much enjoying this new apartment for it's little conveniences. Cable, the ability to control the air temperature, dishwasher, garbage disposal.

So far so good. We're actually way ahead of where I thought we would be in the organizing department. Pretty much the entire downstairs is set except for the wall art and things of that nature. I might end up doing something with the chest my 6 gallon fish tank is on as far as securing it to the wall. it's a bit tippy because the floor is slightly uneven so I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about it tipping over if somebody runs by or vibrates the floor in just the right way. I've been researching some things that might work for it though, so we'll see.

Upstairs is a different story. My bedroom is almost organized, as much as I can without having access to my night stand. The spare room is a bit of a mess, but we'll get it settled eventually. That's the next project in line. It was looking organized but then I moved my 20 gallon fish tank into there and there ended up being a lot of associated crap that I haven't quite found a spot for yet.

This week has been no good. Wednesday at work was supper stressful with lots of different projects being thrown at me all at once. And Thursday...well...let me tell you about Thursday.

I was just starting to get ready for work, barefoot because I had just woke up/hadn't taken a shower yet and I stepped on a little shard of glass that was hiding on my kitchen floor waiting to ambush me. I tried to get it out but I didn't have much time so I went off to work and decided to deal with it there. After much proding and poking (and a call to my doctor to see what they recommended) I ended up taking the afternoon off and spending it in the Urgent Care clinic.

After several hours of waiting around, taking some X-Rays and such, the doctor came in and said they'd take it out. However, while she was setting things up to get this done, she almost fell down twice while trying to sit. First on a stool with wheels and second on a stationary chair. This did not bode well. But thankfully her hands were steadier than she was on her feet and she got it out pretty easily.

After that and a tetanus shot, I was sent out the door with a prescription for some antibiotics. Also worth mentioning is the guy who gave me the shot. When he asked if I was all taken care of, I joked that I was glad they didn't have to amputate or something. He said "Oh, we don't do that after Wednesday. Too hard to find people to clean up the mess later in the week". He also scares little kids with the saw they use to remove casts which looks really dangerous but isn't. I like this man.

I returned home to try to get a little work done on a project (took my laptop home from work so I could VPN in) but...much to my dismay, I discovered that my cable connection was now only slightly faster than a 56k modem. I did some troubleshooting steps but eventually just gave up and called Time Warner. After hearing that my connection speed was 137kbps instead of 10mbps like it's supposed to be, they said they'd send a tech out the next day (which is today).

It's a little faster this morning but still not ANYWHERE near where it's supposed to be. I hope it continues to misbehave so that the tech can see it screwing up when he arrives.

But, dah, Thursday sucked.

If you haven't heard yet, Amazon.com just released a new service for downloading movies and TV shows. Prices varry widely. TV shows generally run $1.99, movies can range anywhere from $7 to $20 for a purchase, and from $3 to $5 for a rental.

Yep...rentals. That's the interesting part in all this to me. Instead of buying the movie outright, you can just rent something. It's cheaper, but you need to watch the movie within 30 days of purchasing and as soon as you hit play, you have 24 hours to watch the movie before it gets deleted. It seems to me to be a great way to watch a movie you wanted to see but didn't feel like buying the DVD for. Although, due to pricing, if you watch a lot of movies, a service like Netflix might be a better way to go. For the amount I watch though...it might be handy sometimes.

The quality of the movies are pretty good. I Bought V for Vendetta as my first movie and then rented One Hour Photo since I've wanted to see that anyway. Amazon says the movies are DVD quality, however, it's just a little bit less than that. Very, very watchable. I'm willing to be a lot of people won't be able to tell the difference between this an a DVD. The movies are about 2.2GB in size, and a lot of them (not the rentals) come with a smaller version which was compressed specifically for portable players.

I did have a few problems though. First the player itself. I sometimes have problems with the player application not connecting to amazon to download new purchases. I had to restart my computer to get it working for some reason. Also, the download speed can be kinda slow at times. For a 2GB movie file, 165KB/sec isn't going to cut it ;) It might just be because it was getting hammered with everyone trying it out. You can watch movies as they're downloading but only after a certain amount of the file has already been downloaded.

Onto the movies. The aspect ratio listed for V for Vendetta was incorrect. It said widescreen, however the download I got was pan and scanned *shiver*. Even though One Hour Photo says it has a 5.1 soundtrack, I can't get it to play anything except 2 channel stereo, but I'm still trying ;) And I'm not sure if it's just due to the DRM on One Hour Photo, but I can't skip to a certain time in the movie. You hit play and watch it straight through...if you close it in the middle, it won't remember your spot so you have to watch it all the way back through again. I noticed V for Vendetta allowed me to skip to wherever I wanted. Maybe it's just a rental thing.

Anyway, it looks pretty interesting to me with some reasonable prices for what they're giving you. It'll be cool to see how things end up down the line since all of this stuff is still very early adopter. I'm probably not going to use it much, but I can see myself renting an ocasional movie

UPDATE: This was written before I found out that it installs a service that runs all the time and phones home to Amazon a couple times a day. BAD software. BAD!

I started to download a large file during my lunch break today and I noticed I was downloading at 1100KB/sec which is a little faster than I'm used to...

However a quick search of the Broadband Reports website forums reveals that my cable modem connection was just upgraded to 10mbps download and 1mbps upload. Fast!

I'm way too happy about this...but then again, I'm a geek.

What is it about the Internet that brings out the worst in a lot of people? Is it really so hard to believe that behind the text you're reading on the screen...there's a real person sitting there typing?

Anonymity and the Internet is pretty well discussed. The prospect of Anonymity changes some people. They take it as an excuse to be, well...morons without having to deal with the consequences. Insult a guy online, you're probably never going to see him again, right? No big deal! Of course you would never say the same thing to the persons face.

Maybe it's that the individual has a problem even thinking of someone else they meet online as a person. It's a fairly abstract concept, to be fair. Attaching just disembodied text to a real person might not be the most natural thing in the world. I would hope that people would realize how that text is getting there in the first place.

I dunno, maybe I'm holding humanity to too high of a standard. Luckily, some people still have common sense about this stuff. Perhaps the morons are just the vocal minority.

This whole rant was brought about by reading the PvP forums today on the official City of Heroes forums, something which I usually don't do. For those not familiar with the area, it's the cesspool of the forums, with flames and insults going back and forth at the drop of a hat. It just amazes me that people can behave that way towards one another. 

Sorry about the rant. Slow day at work here.