Hand held remotes for TV's and such. Always make the case ASYMMETRICAL allowing users to tell which way round the remote is pointed by touch. New TV remote is symmetrical, and I get it backward in the hand, point the wrong end at the TV, and nothing happens. PITA.
While we are on industrial design, DON'T mold tiny little labels into black casework. Nobody can read them. Mold the labels standing up from the case and paint the tops of them white. That's readable. As it is, the back of the TV has fifty plugs, all of them with unreadable labels. Makes hooking up the VCR and DVD so pleasant.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Green Jobs are make work
What's green? Wind power and solar power apparently. If either technology would work, at an affordable price, investment would flow into the business and people would get hired. Trouble is, neither technology makes money. Wind power leaves you in the dark when the wind doesn't blow. Solar power leaves you in the dark when the sun goes down.
There is no technological fix for either problem. No power is no power. I'm looking at two feet of snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures. If my juice goes out my furnace doesn't run and my pipes freeze. I can't use power that goes off when ever it feels like it. Neither can anyone else.
We can build a vast green industry, producing mountains of unsalable stuff. Train people to work in the industry. But it's just make work, the industry is producing stuff that cannot be sold.
The Soviets used to do things like that.
There is no technological fix for either problem. No power is no power. I'm looking at two feet of snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures. If my juice goes out my furnace doesn't run and my pipes freeze. I can't use power that goes off when ever it feels like it. Neither can anyone else.
We can build a vast green industry, producing mountains of unsalable stuff. Train people to work in the industry. But it's just make work, the industry is producing stuff that cannot be sold.
The Soviets used to do things like that.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Glacier on the porch
The geology books say that glacier ice comes from snow, packing down into ice. It's happening on my porch as I write. I had 25 inches (real inches, measured with a yardstick) Sunday when the snow stopped falling. That has settled over the past few days. It's only 18 inches today. That's all compression and settling of the light powder snow, it ain't melting, it hasn't been warm enough to melt.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Home made turkey soup
I did it. Rather than pitching the Christmas turkey carcass after doing the dinner, the sandwiches, the left overs, and more sandwiches, I made it into soup.
It's dirt simple. Break the carcass up small and boil it in your largest kettle. Throw in any leftover gravy and stuffing. Spice to taste, Bell's Poultry Seasoning is good, thyme, sage, pepper and salt. Cook at a low boil (just the occasional bubble) for four hours.
At this point the turkey meat has cooked off the bones. Fish out the bones and discard. Add chopped onion, celery, and carrots. The carrots add a lot of eye appeal and flavor. A little rice and simmer for another 45 minutes to a hour, or until the rice and veggies are soft.
That's it. Makes a LOT of very tasty soup.
It's dirt simple. Break the carcass up small and boil it in your largest kettle. Throw in any leftover gravy and stuffing. Spice to taste, Bell's Poultry Seasoning is good, thyme, sage, pepper and salt. Cook at a low boil (just the occasional bubble) for four hours.
At this point the turkey meat has cooked off the bones. Fish out the bones and discard. Add chopped onion, celery, and carrots. The carrots add a lot of eye appeal and flavor. A little rice and simmer for another 45 minutes to a hour, or until the rice and veggies are soft.
That's it. Makes a LOT of very tasty soup.
Avatar
Got to see it last night in Lincoln. Fun flick. It's set in the lush and colorful jungles of Pandora. The jungle night is filled with deadly beasts, gorgeous glowing super fireflies, and the Nahvi, a race of noble savages, all tall, lean, and beautiful despite blue complexions and thick noses. The Nahvi ride on "horses" and fly on dragons, hunt with bow and arrow, and except for being blue, look a lot like American Indians. They dwell in/under/around a humungeous and sacred tree that reaches up many stories into the sky. The scenes of jungle travel on foot, hunting, riding, flying and living in the jungle are fantastically well done and keep your attention.
The charm of this movie is in the excellence of the sets, scenery, and Nahvi. The acting is difficult to assess, when you suspect all the Nahvi facial expressions come from the depths of a computer. In fact this is not an actor's movie. The main characters are all Nahvi and are computer generated/augemented/whatever. The Nahvi are done with bits and bytes and pixels, not makeup and costuming. It's well done, the Nahvi are very believable. Give the CGI folks a few more years and we won't be able to tell live actors from CGI ones.
The plot is pure space opera, the good guys (Nahvi) and the bad guys (earthmen) clash in spectacular fashion. Characters are cardboard, who cares about the bad guys motives, we just enjoy watching the fight.
Lots of electrons have been spilled on the web about the deep inner meaning of this flick. Me, I don't think there is one, the movie puts on a great show, I enjoyed watching it. It's like Westerns or Bond movies, fun but not serious. Enjoy it. I did.
The charm of this movie is in the excellence of the sets, scenery, and Nahvi. The acting is difficult to assess, when you suspect all the Nahvi facial expressions come from the depths of a computer. In fact this is not an actor's movie. The main characters are all Nahvi and are computer generated/augemented/whatever. The Nahvi are done with bits and bytes and pixels, not makeup and costuming. It's well done, the Nahvi are very believable. Give the CGI folks a few more years and we won't be able to tell live actors from CGI ones.
The plot is pure space opera, the good guys (Nahvi) and the bad guys (earthmen) clash in spectacular fashion. Characters are cardboard, who cares about the bad guys motives, we just enjoy watching the fight.
Lots of electrons have been spilled on the web about the deep inner meaning of this flick. Me, I don't think there is one, the movie puts on a great show, I enjoyed watching it. It's like Westerns or Bond movies, fun but not serious. Enjoy it. I did.
Monday, January 4, 2010
First Purchase a Piggy Bank
Front page story in the Saturday Wall St Journal explaining how economists are cheapskates. Children of economists recall how tight fisted their parents were. Things like keeping the thermostat set so low the wife threatened to move into a motel, private label groceries, off-brand tennis shoes, and a 1995 Subaru with a piece of electrical tape covering the "check engine" light.
Wow. I must be an economist. I do all those things and more, like buying at thrift stores.
Wow. I must be an economist. I do all those things and more, like buying at thrift stores.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The last tube bites the dust
Big heavy Samsung 27" TV started to die. Picture flickered and the sound cut in and out. Damn thing was only six years old. So off to Walmart and home with a new 32 inch LCD Sony. Infinitely lighter. Could be wall mounted with just molly bolts thru the sheet rock. It has threaded holes in the back to accept eyebolts. Only trouble is the eyebolts are a non standard Japanese metric thread, not available at Franconia Hardware.
Plugged her in and went thru that "find the active channels" thing that digital TV's do. I'm on cable and the TV found all the analog cable channels AND discovered 16 digital channels that I never know were there. The digital channels all have strange numbers with a decimal point in them, like 89.104 or 123.2. The remote has a decimal point button. Some of them are second copies of analog channels, like the TV Guide channel and Vermont PBS. Others might be worthwhile, one was playing a movie that didn't seem to be on any other channel. I cannot find the digital channels on TV Guide, either from the cable or from the Internet, which means you gotta channel surf to see if they are playing anything watchable. The channel numbers are up to 7 digits long, which strains my memory. I'll probably make up a cheat sheet.
The 32" LCD is an inch smaller than the 27 inch CRT it replaced when playing ordinary video. Plain Old Television Service (POTS) has the familiar 3:4 aspect ratio. The LCD Sony is 16:9. Playing POTS video you get a letterbox effect, a pair of vertical black bars on the sides. Active picture area, excluding the black bars, measures 26 inch on the diagonal.
If you don't like black bars, you can stretch the picture sideways to fill the screen and make all the actors look short and very stocky. Not to say fat. Or select "stretch both horizontal and vertical" cropping off the top and bottom of the image. This makes the "crawl" go off screen.
Video quality is quite good. Lots of resolution good color balance. Viewed from TV watching distances, it's beautiful. Viewed from computer monitor watching distance you can see some fuzziness on the POTS video. The few high def digital video channels are sharper and nicer.
The Sony has all sorts of gozintas, S-video, composite video, component video, digital video, USB video, laptop computer video, plenty of connectors to hookup the DVD, the VCR, and the stereo. Some of the lesser LCD TV's lacked the composite video input, which you need for the VCR. If you have a VCR and a collection of oldie but goody tapes, make sure a new TV has a composite video input along with all the fancier ones.
Plugged her in and went thru that "find the active channels" thing that digital TV's do. I'm on cable and the TV found all the analog cable channels AND discovered 16 digital channels that I never know were there. The digital channels all have strange numbers with a decimal point in them, like 89.104 or 123.2. The remote has a decimal point button. Some of them are second copies of analog channels, like the TV Guide channel and Vermont PBS. Others might be worthwhile, one was playing a movie that didn't seem to be on any other channel. I cannot find the digital channels on TV Guide, either from the cable or from the Internet, which means you gotta channel surf to see if they are playing anything watchable. The channel numbers are up to 7 digits long, which strains my memory. I'll probably make up a cheat sheet.
The 32" LCD is an inch smaller than the 27 inch CRT it replaced when playing ordinary video. Plain Old Television Service (POTS) has the familiar 3:4 aspect ratio. The LCD Sony is 16:9. Playing POTS video you get a letterbox effect, a pair of vertical black bars on the sides. Active picture area, excluding the black bars, measures 26 inch on the diagonal.
If you don't like black bars, you can stretch the picture sideways to fill the screen and make all the actors look short and very stocky. Not to say fat. Or select "stretch both horizontal and vertical" cropping off the top and bottom of the image. This makes the "crawl" go off screen.
Video quality is quite good. Lots of resolution good color balance. Viewed from TV watching distances, it's beautiful. Viewed from computer monitor watching distance you can see some fuzziness on the POTS video. The few high def digital video channels are sharper and nicer.
The Sony has all sorts of gozintas, S-video, composite video, component video, digital video, USB video, laptop computer video, plenty of connectors to hookup the DVD, the VCR, and the stereo. Some of the lesser LCD TV's lacked the composite video input, which you need for the VCR. If you have a VCR and a collection of oldie but goody tapes, make sure a new TV has a composite video input along with all the fancier ones.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)