Dr. House Won Jeopardy!!!!

Big congrats to Dr. House!!!!  Worthy of an update to this silly blog!!!  Best of luck for tomorrow too!

-Bob

The Real Liz Lemon

Anyone watching the “Next Food Network Star” reality competition show on the… Food Network… ?  One of the competitors, Amy, looks, talks, and acts totally like Liz Lemon from 30 Rock.  Not just Tina Fey, but Liz Lemmon.

It’s awesome.

-Bob

Apple – DRM = More money?

Apple announced that they are now selling Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free music on iTunes for $1.29 a song, as opposed to $0.99 for DRM songs.  Currently, the DRM songs can only be listened to on computers that you have activated on your iTunes account – you are limited to five active computers at any one time.  On a positive note, the new “iTunes Plus” songs will have twice the bitrate as old iTunes songs – 256kb/s vs. 128kb/s.  You can upgrade your old iTunes songs to new iTunes Plus songs for $0.30.  Apple will still offer $0.99 standard songs.

Yeah, this is a move in the right direction… but it’s silly to make people pay to get rid of the arbitrary copy-protection scheme Apple put on their songs, especially when you can get rid of the copy-protection yourself by burning the tracks to a CD and ripping the CD to MP3s.  Apple should have offered DRM-free music from the get-go but I’m glad they are offering it now – especially with higher resolution recordings (ahem… which is another thing they should have done from the start).

The part that puzzles me about this announcement is the $0.30 upgrade for your current songs.  Before, once you purchased a track from iTunes, you were SOL if you deleted the file.  That’s right, you couldn’t redownload a song you purchased.  But you needed to connect to the server to validate your account in order to play the song in the first place.  That’s a lot of back-assery!  Another nice move would be the availability to access your iTunes account and download songs from any activated computer.  Unfortunately, Apple seems to be raking in the cash with their current user-impaired model so it’s unlikely they’ll change anytime soon.

-Bob

Meet the new addition to the extended clan!

Nope, there’s no BobKate Junior to announce. BUT, I’m excited to share that my cousin Jennifer and her husband Mark are adopting a baby from Guatemala. The process is amazingly long and they are ready to have little Max come and stay with them forever but they have to wait for the paperwork to go through. To hear a tale of the international adopting process and to see some cute baby pictures, check out their website: http://maxyoder.homestead.com/

-Bob

Snow

It snowed yesterday and today in Boston.  It’s interesting to think about how much I loved snow as a kid and how much I fear it now that I have a nine mile commute through the back roads of Belmont.  It’s very difficult to get up and go to work when there’s a warm lump of Kate slumbering through a snowed out day.

Snow ball fights are still fun though!

-Bob

P.S. Yup, this is actually Bob posting.  He’s alive!   His list of things to do: Write more blog posts, communicate with people from his past life, illustrate (!), and write more blog posts.

Apple TV too little for too much

Steve Jobs unveiled the final version of Apple TV a couple days ago at Macworld and I’m not really impressed. The sleek $300 device syncs to your iTunes library and allows for streaming video to your TV. The concept is awesome but the problem comes down to price and features – a $400 XBox 360 does the same thing and also plays video games and Slingbox has a new unit coming out for $200. Also, the Apple TV only outputs in high definition, which will reduce the market of the product. On the plus side, the device does include a 40GB harddrive, looks sexy, and will undoubtedly have a slick Apple interface. I have no idea if the device supports DIVX or if you’ll need to install some custom programs ala the 360 in order to stream your backup movies.

It’s clear that Apple has goals at getting into your living room via video content delivery on iTunes and now the Apple TV. Microsoft’s already in my living room via the XBox and I already have all the media connections plus next gen gaming. At CES, Billy Gates announced the 360 will soon be capable of streaming TV over IP. So I’m going to say that this is one case where Microsoft is doing a much better job than Apple at their goal. Why would I pay $300 for a slightly slicker device when I can pay a little more for great gaming and better accessibility or a little less to get the same thing? Apple needs to do something to make this product stand out in the crowd.

Happy Wednesday!

-Bob

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I hope you’re all having a great time with family and friends.  Kate and I are spending time in Iowa City seeing both of our families and friends.  Lots of fun!

-Bob

Studio 60 – Yeah!Boo!Meh…

I finally caught last week’s Studio 60 episode over the weekend it was probably my favorite episode of the show so far.  I really don’t know what to think of this show.  Some episodes like this past one, the pilot, and “The West Coast Delay” work extremely well do to quick pacing, witty banter, and clever plot development.  Other episodes fail miserably because of horribly heavyhanded storytelling.  I never realized there was such a bad reaction to “Christians” and Sorkin shoving it down my throat doesn’t make me believe it.  “Nevada Day” Parts 1 and 2 were probably the worst episodes of the series because of incredibly stupid plotting and cookiecutter characters.  Does everyone in this world have to have a heart of gold or be pure evil?  How about some shades of grey?  How about some more witty banter and less father being mad at his son in comedy?

But still, when this show works, it really works and lately it’s been working really well.  There’s a break for the holidays and then the show’s back.  As long as we keep the sentimentality to a minimum, I’ll keep tuning in.

-Bob

Welcome!

Welcome to Bob’s Wacky Thoughts version 1.2 with the new leaner and meaner (longer and geakier) title of Bob’s Pseudo-Random Meanderings! Though my dastardly absence says otherwise, I really appreciate all the comments wondering about my whereabouts these last four odd months. I’m just weird and selfish I guess. I get in phases where I’m all into something and then the next day I’m totally immersed in another project and then feel so ashamed about ditching the first one that I run away as to hide my lack of work on it from myself. Probably nothing a good bit of psycho-analysis and old fashioned Ridalin couldn’t take care of but I’ll probably continue with the old-old fashioned technique of just sucking it all up.

So what else is new? I’m as busy at work as ever and am currently tackling three projects. I’m really enjoying pieces of each of them so I’m at a normal level of chicken-ladyness. The Kate’s keeping a dreadful schedule with her full time teaching job in addition to taking graduate classes at Cambridge College for her teaching masters degree. Classes are winding down now but during October and November, she’d be teaching from 8:30-3:30 and then be a student until 10pm. AND she had to find a place to park in Cambridge when going to class which is about the worst thing I can think of. She also has been busy doing homework so the poor lady’s been quite tired.

And I’m looking to go back to grad school now. Woowee. I just about have all my applications finished and then it’s the long, nervewracking wait until April until I find out where I can go. I’m hoping to stay in the Boston area because Kate has to do a practicum in the fall of 2007 here to finish up her degree. I don’t think I could live with myself after dragging her out to the big city where she needs a masters degree to teach and watching her take all the classes just to leave a semester before all her work will actually pay off. Maybe credits could transfer somewhere else but she’d still have to do some more work so it may be better to just finish things off here. So my top program is still at the MIT Media Lab and I’m really hoping I get in but I have received a delayed admittance from last year to University of Connecticut, which has a very strong 3D display research group. I’m also looking at Boston University which has some research in the display arena and has a very strong optics center. Steve may appreciate this: Saleh & Teich, the authors of the electro-optics textbook, teach there.

Kate and I moved from our old apartment in Somerville (just north of Boston) to Watertown (just west) in August. We have a lot more space here and also have a lot fewer miscreants about. The commute is a lot better as well, being a consistent 20 minutes for me (as opposed to 30-90) and 30 for Kate (as opposed to 45-60). The consistency is the really nice thing for me. I couldn’t stand finding a random traffic jam and being stuck for over an hour. I think the longest its taken me from the new place is about 25 minutes and there was an accident.

Well, my mother recently got proficient enough with the internets to do a search and found this blog.  Needless to say, she was less than impressed with my, ahem, command of certain four letter words.  For the sake of posterity I won’t go back and edit my posts, but I’ll also be spending much less time developing colorful phrases to describe my thoughts about DVD re-releasing.  Yeah, I’ll probably still think these things up, so if you’re reading this Mr. Rumsfeld, there’s no need to do another investigation when a big grin appears seemingly randomly on my face.  You know what I’m thinking.

So there ya go. Welcome to the new Bob’s PSRM and count on me posting regularly… for at least this next week…

-Bob