Cable (and Optical Media) Free for 4 Years

Our family has been cable free for close to 4 years now and just wanted to share how we did it.   I advocate cloud based technologies in the business and aside from the privacy concerns (which dont get much better with local storage anyway) it has worked out well personally.

It all started when we simply got tired of paying for channels we dont use, paying/leasing for local content storage devices, frustrated with poor quality content and commercials our kids were exposed to, and wondering why content needs to be live when almost 100% of our viewing was DVR'd previously.  We simply wanted entertainment "our way".

While cord-cutting it isnt necessarily either the cheapest or easiest way to get access to content, we are reminded of the quality of entertainment difference when visiting a Cabled friend.  We have access to almost all movies / series / music / YouTube commercial-free, on-demand instantly, curated, beautiful HD quality, and accessible via any device in our house or in our possession. 

It started for us in 2010 with Roku, possibly one of the best initial cord-cutting devices ever produced.   Having convenient access to Netflix on-demand was a huge benefit alone at the time with an unexpected ability to curate the shows made available to our younger daughter via restrictions on the watchlist.   Soon after Amazon instant video augmented our Netflix selection with pay-per-view content that wasnt available anywhere else.  In the months following, we used cable-tv less and decided to give it up completely shortly after.

We now enjoy our Roku and Chromecast boxes on every TV giving us access to Netflix / Amazon VoD / Hulu Plus / Vudu / Ultraviolet / Google Play / NASATV / Pandora / SmugMug.   

Sports / News / Olympics - Anything that we need to view live or not available via internet content delivery comes over Broadcast HDTV.   We simply use the existing Coax wiring in the house to provide that to all devices that need it.    We watch the news every morning, saw most of the Olympics, and watch a few other sporting events on occasion (Football / NASCAR).    If I have the urge to watch something not available, I usually head to a pub and enjoy the event with others ;)

After a week of research I selected the ClearStream 2V  antenna for our Attic.  This simple looking antenna had great reviews and I have to say works extremely well over the 4 years we have owned it.    In north Charlotte we pull in over 30 stations (some even in Greensboro) and the HD quality is absolutely fantastic!    In fact, aside from some BlueRays, watching an NFL game in uncompressed Broadcast HD will blow your mind compared to the compressed mess that is available via TimeWarner.

To setup the antenna direction I initially used a few online services such as AntennaWeb, but found that the easiest method was simply placing the antenna on the rafters, taking a small HDTV upstairs (something similar to this that I got for $50 at target once), and rotating the antenna slowly watching the screen to achieve the best mix of channels I needed.    There are a few stations that I could not pull all in together and thought if I cared that much about Broadcast TV I would eventually purchase an additional antenna and combine them in the attic at a different direction.

In conclusion,  we don't have any media stored locally whatsoever.  We dont even have a DVR, although at times we may have a cached movie on an Android device. 

TIPS: 

• I will mention though that if distributing an antenna to multiple TV's or via long > 40ft distances I would highly recommend using an amplifier as close as possible to the antenna.   You want to get the amplifier close to avoid amplifing noise generated from the long cable run.  I re-used an existing Motorolla Cable Amplifier which surprising works well in the Broadcast HDTV frequency range as well. 
• It didnt dawn on me till much later after purchasing a few movies from VuDu that you can get them far cheaper by buying the UV codes from various websites such as UVSwap.com
• Old Rokus still support a "BETA" front-end for Netflix which restricts the selection to just movies from your watchlist if you are into content filtering for young kids.  This option is available from the system / netflix screen.
• Vudu is the only cross-platform (Roku / Android / PC) downloadable movie format of the services I listed.   We tend to buy movies only from here although Google Play is a close second.
• Get a surge-suppressor for the antenna in case of lightning.  Place it near a ground (green wire) somewhere between the antenna and the point at which it enters the house wiring.
• You will need approx 4Mbps per TV if watching 1080p simultaneously

ToneMatrix - Mini Flash Web Sequencer

Just stumbling around the WWW this morning and ran across this cool little Flash based audio sequencer called "ToneMatrix" created by Andre Michelle:

http://tonematrix.audiotool.com/






A melody that I created this morning:
http://tonematrix.audiotool.com/_/400.0.40.0.209.0.20.0.8g.0.18.g0.0.g0.255.20

Raspberry Pi Installation into Neato XV11 Robot

Just put the finishing touches on installing the Raspberry Pi embedded Linux computer into the Neato XV11 robot.

Following the guide at Dave's Home Robotics Notes I disassembled the Neato Vacuum, tapped the battery for 5V using a DC-DC converter per Ben's idea , and installed a Raspberry Pi in place of where the dustbin usually goes.

Cable management is extremely important in this configuration as the Pi is more consumer friendly with its plugs which means a bit of pain for us electronic geeks wielding soldering irons.   Having said that I didnt want to solder directly on the Pi board, so I managed to jam most of the cables / DC-DC into the blower area underneath the turret.  Because the Laser ( LIDAR ) is so close to the top of the robot, I needed to make sure everything in the dustbin area is as flat as possible.

Unfortunately I discovered that there doesnt appear to be an API command for the robot to return to its charger, and  signal strength may not be available through its API as well for a more obvious solution, so I would appear that my first task is to get a spatial Neural Network setup for this specific purpose.  More on this later....

First Foray into Balloon Photography

With the help of my daughter, we managed to build and fly our first photography balloon! 


I got the idea from reading an blog post months ago about people using balloons to get aerial pictures to enhance maps.  My daughter and I put our heads together and came up with a simple prototype with the materials we had on hand.  I have since found this site that gives a really good overview of a design:  http://publiclaboratory.org/tool/balloon-mapping.

From the prototype we flew today we discovered the following issues and thus our next design changes:

• Wind drag - Reduce to just one large balloon as the two were catching turbulence from each other as well as from the wind.   The balloon didnt make it all that high due to it being constantly pushed away from us.
• Stability issues - Follow the design from the Public Laboratory link to add stability arms and a better center of gravity.
• String Management - Using a simple spool made it difficult to deploy / retrieve.  Definition going to get a hold of a cable reel.
• Height - Definitely need more than 200 ft of string to get a better angle on the ground

Is this the beginning of the end for the iPhone Fad?

When it comes to usability, generally everyone would agree Apple has always been the king ranging all the way back to the early 80's.  The iPod turned cellphone -- iPhone seemed to de-throne the Palm Treo as the new king of the smartphone world shortly after its introduction.

But does usability carry a product long-term for Apple?  The AppleII series, Lisa, Macintosh,  Newton, PowerBook, Quadra, QuickTime, AppleDesktopBus, all products that made a lot of noise when released, some were quite successful, most now hold a minority marketshare if any.

Now I read that Samsung has now shipped more smartphones than Apple this past quarter, evidence of a profound change in mobile computing again.  Human beings now choose Samsung over Apple smartphones.  Do people really prefer functionality over form long-term?

Using Apple's product history as a guide, once they lose top marketshare has any Apple products recovered dominance?

The end of personal data storage?

My house server's 1TB hard drive is giving me SMART drive warnings that the disk is about to fail.  I immediately started looking for its replacement and looking into SSD storage which of course costs substantially more.   It was then I realized what do I need this space for anymore?

Once upon a time my entire life revolved around data stored on my server:  Source Code, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, Software, etc.  That landscape for me has totally changed in the last couple of years mainly brought about by faster Internet connectivity (currently have 50 / 5 mbps).

I am (or *will be soon) using:

• Google Docs - Documents
• Amazon/Netflix/Vudu - Movies / TV
• Smugmug - Pictures / Personal videos
• Grooveshark / Slacker - Music
• Linux - Every program I use is either online or comes from apt repositories
• *Github - Personal projects / source code
• *Google Drive - Miscellaneous?

Basically, I dont have any need for personal data storage anymore.  Quite frankly I am curious why anyone else has need of local storage anymore?  Trust?  Re-acquisition costs? Internet Speed?

How about you?

Three Best Paper Gliders

Just saw an article on Slashdot about what is the best paper airplane.   Piqued my curiosity as  I use the Paper Airplane Factory Game sometimes when I am presenting on Agile / Lean processes.

Of the designs presented in the post, I have narrowed it down to the following three that interest me the most.

1.) The "Harrier", built for stability and speed
2.) The "Bat", built for entertainment
3.) The "Ball", a crushed paper ball that will sometimes out-perform even the best plane designs ;)

New Type of Aircraft has great potential - D-Dalus

Uses four mechanically linked turbines to produce propulsion at any angle.   Probably not going to be the fastest moving aircraft, however, it should prove to be the most versatile for maneuvering.



http://www.gizmag.com/d-dalus-uav-design/18972/

MAME Simultaneous 2 thru 4 player Games

I built myself a nice 4-player Arcade cabinet at home that runs MAME with Ubuntu and just thought Id make a list of MAME Simultaneous 2 thru 4 player Games: (From various sources on the net) http://mame32.livejournal.com/12853.html http://www.0x61.com/forum/post2352293.html http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.arcade/msg/3405642328d2e007?dmode=source&hl=en

Two Player - Action
1943
Aero Fighters
Aliens vs. Predator
Arabian Magic
Armor Attack
Atari Football
Basketbrawl
Bubble Bobble
Crime City
Contra
Cotton 2
Dead Connection
Dragon Breed
Dodon Pachi
Don Doko Don
Double DragonD&D Shadow over Mystara.
D&D Tower of Doom
Elevator Action Returns
Giga Wing
Gun Bird
Joust
Karate Champ
Klax
Marble Madness
Mario Bros
Metal Slug
Millipede
N.A.R.C.
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Kids
Penguin Brothers
Puzzle Bobble
Qix
Robocop 2
Smash TV
Space Duel
Space Invaders 2000
Space War
Tetris
The Combatribes
Time Soldiers
Two Tigers
Victory Road
Vindicator
Wizard of Wor
Xybots

Connect Microsoft Kinect to Ubuntu (Mouse Control)

Just purchased a used Microsoft Kinect on Ebay for $75 in hopes of integrating this as a robotic vision device. In the mean time, I got it hooked up to Ubuntu for a sort of "Minority Report" Mouse Control.

Here is what I did to get it installed with Ubuntu Meerkat 10.10:
1.  Add the PPA for Freenect from https://launchpad.net/~arne-alamut/+archive/freenect
2. Install the following:
$ sudo apt-get install freenect libncurses5-dev libglut3-dev libX11-dev libxtst-dev libxmu-dev cmake git
3. Plug in Kinect to usb port on machine (unplug/replug if it already was)
4. Test the installation
$ freenect-glview
5. Should see a depth / video feed appear on the screen confirming the usb driver works

6. To get mouse cursor working (from https://github.com/Ooblik/Kinect-Mouse):
$ mkdir ~/kinect
$ cd ~/kinect
$ git clone https://github.com/Ooblik/Kinect-Mouse.git
$ cd ~/kinect/Kinect-Mouse
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
7. Run mouse client
$ ./kmouse
8. Enjoy mouse cursor control.

*Notes: The mouse control only works at a certain depth range. The video window will show whatever is "in-range" by highlighting it in red. To "click" you need to stop moving briefly and it will auto left-click.

As much as you would like to wave your open hands in the air to recreate Tom Cruise in the movie, I find that just using a single finger tip in range is usually the best method of control. :)

Create animated .GIF images with GIMP

Create animated .GIF images with GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/

Fifth Element: Who is Finger?

Just happened to be watching the HD version one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies "Fifth Element" and noticed again the scene where Corbin is talking with his boss "Finger".   At one point he picks up a picture of the mysterious person and it would appear that a bit of the picture is disclosed.   I took a few stills to try and get a glimpse of what the movie producers used as a picture. Looks like it was a legit picture, just never got to see it from the camera angle.

Here they are (Around frame 26,000 if you would like to peak as well):

Front side:

Backside (translucent).  You can almost make out someone with a handle-bar mustache.

Picture of Corbin Dallas at the time for a frame of reference:

Star Wars Rap: Galatic Empire State of Mind

Galatic Empire State of Mind

"What happened to the fat one? I think he died of heart disease." :)

Amazing Modern Warfare 2 knife throw!

One of those incredible game moments ;)


Modern Warfare 2 Amazing Knife Throw Kill - Watch more Game Trailers

Turn your child's drawing into a real doll

http://www2.shidonni.com/

My Arcade Machine

Someone asked me for pictures of my arcade machine and here are a few.

Config:
- MAME 1.31
- 4 sets of controls (8 way joystick + 7 buttons)
- Trackball
- Light Gun
- Spinner
- 4 way joystick

Mysterious Lights seen off the coast of Norway

Thousands of people saw and recorded this lightshow off the coast of Norway.

Robotic Air Jet for your entertainment.

Tiger Woods accident re-creation

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