News and Views

Mozilla has released a new security update to Firefox. If you are set to receive updates automatically, it may have already happened for you. Check to see that you are using version 1.5.0.2 (Help, About).

Nothing noticeable has been changed, it just improves your security. All my extensions are still working fine.

Derek is doing the long jump, high jump and triple jump this year in track.

Last week there was an invitational track meet with 8 schools participating. Derek won the long jump event with the longest individual jump of 19′ 7″. Not bad to be the best out of 8 schools!

There is an asterisk, however. This was a “minor” invitational, and a couple of the more competitive schools were saving their best for the major invitationals. Nevertheless, it was still an excellent performance.

I wish President Bush would learn to pronounce “nuclear” correctly.

Well, my 60″ Sony TV is going back from whence it came.

The picture was beautiful, colors saturated, excellent detail. But that “grainy” overlay (the much lamented “Silk Screen Effect”) was just too intrusive for me. Whenever I sat down to watch, I’d be absorbed in the show, and then suddenly the grain would pop out at me and ruin the effect. I tried it for a month, but it’s a no-go.

It looks like the only way I can go is either Plasma, or LCD. Ken has been advising me, and strongly recommends Plasma. However, currently Plasma isn’t full HD resolution (HD requires 1920 x 1080, while current Plasmas are typically 1366 x 768). But if I can wait until late summer or early fall, the real HD plasmas will be out.

In fact, there’s a nice 65″ LCD at Ultimate Electronics that looks beautiful to my eyes, but for $20,000 I think it’s a little out of my price range!

So looks like I wait a few months until either new Plasmas come out, or LCD prices come down. In the mean time, I am back to my old 50″ standard definition TV.

Sometimes life is hard!

Here’s some more free software that I’ve used recently. Why pay money, when there are such good free alternatives!

I’ve used the commercial program “Retrospect” backup software, and it works OK, but I’ve recently discovered a free backup program that I like even better. It’s Cobian Backup. It will back up the files on your hard drive to another hard drive, to CDs, to a network drive, or even to an FTP (internet) location. Conversely, you can use it to back up the files on a website down to your local computer, automatically, at regular intervals, using FTP. Compression is an option, using standard ZIP instead of proprietary formats, and encryption is also an option.

Google Earth has begun adding higher resolution graphics of some areas. Take a look at downtown Las Vegas — you can make out some of the types of cars, and even see people’s arms and legs in their shadows.

Nero is still probably the best CD/DVD burning software out there, but it’s not free like it was a few years ago when I started using it. Since it comes bundled with new CD and DVD burners, that’s not usually a problem, but if you lose it or for whatever reason don’t have a copy for a particular burner, there is a free alternative: CDBurnerXP Pro 3. I haven’t personally used it, but Donna has and reports that it is “great” and “very easy to use”.

Recently I suggested that “MyACDSee” was an alternative to the commercial “ACDSee” image viewer. I’ve had some problems with MyACDSee and can’t really recommend it, but I have found a free alternative that seems to give ACDSee a run for its money: FastStone. Just like ACDSee, it has a thumbnail viewer and slideshow, but even better it will do image editing, type conversion and emailing, with on-the-fly resizing and recompression during the emailing. FastStone has some other free image utilities, such as FastStone MaxView that is a small, simple quick image viewer. You can set it as your default program for opening image files, and then when you double click on an image in Explorer, or from Email, will open it instantly.

FoxIt Reader is still better than Adobe Acrobat, and has some newer versions that fix some minor bugs, especially with printing. If you’re already using it, make sure you have the latest version.

DVDShrink will make copies of your DVDs, even shrinking them as necessary to fit on a standard single-layered DVD. You have to have DVD-burning SW already on your hard drive for it to create the copy, but even if you don’t burn a new DVD with it, you can just copy it to your laptop hard drive and have movies to watch while travelling. Of course, this is only legal with DVDs that you own, and even then you may be in a gray area.

If you work with networked PCs, here’s a neat utility: Angry IP Scanner. It will scan a range of IP addresses and look for connected computers. Very useful for determining who is connected to your network, for troubleshooting or finding free-loaders. Pressing two buttons will load the range of your local subnet, and a third button starts the scan. One note: The default is to list ALL ip addresses, whether there is a connection or not. Go into Options and set it to show only ip addresses that have connections, otherwise it’s too hard to wade through the big list.

Another related utility is NetStumbler. This is used for “War Driving” (the practice of driving around looking for unprotected wireless networks), but has legitimate uses too. Running on a computer with a wireless connection, it will continuously monitor all the wireless signals it can detect, constantly updating readouts on strength of signal, encryption status, and many other parameters. If you are setting up or troubleshooting a wireless network and need to optimise the layout, this could be a very useful tool. You’ll probably be amazed at all the signals flying through your house, even though most of them will be too weak to connect to.

Now that I’ve got an HD TV, my old Tivo seems very deficient. I can’t record any of the HD signals, and the defects in the picture from the Tivo show up much more on the high-def screen.

What to do, what to do? Tivo hasn’t said much about when they will introduce an HD version (other than the DirecTivo).

Besides the Tivo, I’m missing the few programs that my satellite provider broadcasts in HD since my satellite receivers are only SD.

The solution seems to be Dish Network’s new “VIP622” DVR. It is quite similar to the DirecTivo that Richard and Don (?) have in that it is a satellite receiver and DVR (like a Tivo) in one. Nice features are that it can record 3 HD or SD programs (2 satellite and one OTA — over the air), and play back to two separate TVs, all at the same time. It seems to have most of the features that I love on my Tivo, though I’m sure I’ll find things that I will miss.

They are on back order, so it’s three weeks out. I’ll publish here after I get it with impressions.

In the mean time, anybody want a Tivo with a lifetime subscription and upgraded hard drive?

To all you basketball fans:

CBS claims that they broadcasting all the games this year if you have digital television. Our local Channel 5 has 3 digital channels available and the schedule is full of games starting Thursday morning.

I understand that Cox and Cable America will also be carrying all the games.

Arizona tips off against Wisconsin on Friday at 10:30 am, MST.

I got my SXRD TV for my birthday last week. I am both ecstatic and disappointed.

It’s a 60″ Sony HDTV using “LCOS” technology (a kind of microdisplay rear projection similar to DLP or LCD Projection). At its best, the image is astounding, jaw-dropping. The local PBS station broadcasts full HD (1080i) travel, cooking and gardening shows that I have been watching just because the picture is so amazing. It’s really almost like looking out of a window. Color, clarity, definition is just about perfect.

However, it suffers from a defect common to all microdisplay rear projection TVs: something called the “silk-screen” effect. One way to describe it: it’s as if the image is being projected on a frosted glass surface (which might be near the truth). Most of the time you are not aware of this surface; you’re looking through it at the image behind. But sometimes with a light-colored moving surface such as a cloud you’re suddenly aware of the texture of the surface that is standing still as the image moves over it, and it can be distracting.

I think that most people don’t notice this effect, or if they do it doesn’t bother them. I’m afraid that I’m not in this majority. I’ve decided to give it another week or two and see if I get used to it. If not, I may have to take it back.

I’ve considered Plasma (too expensive, poor contrast, burn-in problems) and LCD (too small), DLP (I don’t like the picture as well as the SXRD, and they also suffer from the silk-screen effect) and Front Projection (too dim). There are other technologies coming out in the next few years (SED looks very promising), but nothing else available now or in the near future that looks any better.

So here I sit, both ecstatic and disappointed.

The newest Intel CPU (due out in the fall) leap-frogs AMD in performance. See here.

It has 20 – 40% better frame rates on games than the AMD chips, and outperforms generally across all tests. This is very good news for Intel — AMD has been kicking their butts for a couple of years, especially on games, and Intel has been losing market share.

Of course AMD could surprise by announcing a new chip next week that will take back the crown, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

Here’s a cool extension for Firefox: IE Tab

There are a few web pages that don’t work right in Firefox, and you have to open them in Internet Explorer (IE). IETab will open them in IE embedded in a tab in Firefox. Furthermore, you can tell it once when a site needs to use IE, and in the future it will always open that site in an IE Tab. The result is seamless browsing where you can do everything in Firefox, but IE will automatically be used when you need it, though you won’t even have to know it.