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Disney does digital right with ‘Frozen’ Blu-ray

Macworld logoI was pretty happy with how Disney handled digital copies on their Frozen Blu-ray:

What with the recent Veronica Mars/UltraViolet debacle, you might think all studios still live in the dark ages, and just don’t get it. Thankfully, as I discovered with my purchase of Frozen—the kids’ “Dad, you gotta buy it!” movie of the month—not all studios opt for such an anti-consumer path.

Frozen is available for purchase via iTunes as well as traditional retailers. At the time I bought, iTunes was asking $20 (with iTunes Extras included), which is the same price BestBuy was asking for the Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy bundle.

Read the rest on TechHive.



Shedding some light on the cost of lighting

In our home, our kitchen is lit with eight in-ceiling flood lights. Each uses a 65W incandescent bulb, and it seems to me that at least one of them is burned out at any given point in time.

Frustrated by the never-ending replacement cycle, and aware that there were longer-lived and more-efficeint options out there, I decided to look into replacing the incandescent bulbs with either CFL (fluorescent) or LED lights.

I was curious as to whether CFL or LED would be the better option for us, and how much it would cost to switch, in both the short and long term.

tl;dr summary: If you can afford the up-front costs, switch your lights to CFL or LED now. You will save a lot of money, and spend less time replacing bulbs. Read on for a full cost analysis of my kitchen light replacement project.

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Sugar detox: Day three

Day three is nearly done; the meals today were scrambled eggs for breakfast, leftover chicken with broccoli for lunch, and for dinner, I splurged on a nice steak with some steam cauliflower. Water all around, of course.

Day three was easier than day two in some ways, but harder in other ways. It was easier in that I had fewer all-out sugar cravings, which was a nice change. On the other hand, it was harder because of monotony. And really, looking back on the three days, that's the biggest challenge: eating according to the very-limited three-day "no sugar at all" diet is just really, really boring, which makes it hard to keep going.

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Sugar detox: Day two

Day two was definitely tougher than day one. Breakfast was a tasty (if flat) omelette with nothing but pepper for flavoring, and water to drink. Lunch was some ground beef, which I was going to make into a hamburger—then decided that a hamburger without cheese, tomatoes, and a bun would just be depressing. So I just mixed it up with some spices and ate it that way, along with some broccoli and water (of course).

Dinner was roasted chicken breast with a touch of lemon juice and other spices (edible enough), and some celery sticks (without peanut butter, I don't like celery nearly as much!). Snacks during the day were pistachios and peanuts.

Again, I had no issues with feeling hungry today, and physically, I feel fine. But today, the taste buds were (are) definitely screaming for some sugar.

Opening the fridge, my eyes seem to only see the things with sugar, and not my shelf of special food. Drinking a glass of water, my mouth is letting me know it'd really rather be having something flavored. After dinner, the dessert bell rang loud and clear in my mind. I even had a thought of eating a donut, and I don't even like donuts.

Tomorrow could be a challenge!



Sugar detox: Day one

Yesterday, Dave Hamilton posted this intriguing Tweet:

Despite his Tweet reading somewhat like a late-night infomercial (sorry, Dave!), I clicked the link, and found that Dave's blog entry discussed and linked to an article titled I'm Kicking the Sugar Habit!. That article explains how to free oneself from sugar in foods, starting with a brutal-looking "three days without sugar" detox period.

During this period, you're not allowed to eat or drink anything that has sugar in it, whether naturally occurring or artificially added. This basically eliminates 99% of my normal caloric intake. Yikes!

But between Dave's endorsement, the comments to the article, and my own curiosity, I decided I'd give it a try, starting today. Not really a New Year's Resolution per se, but just something to try. To keep myself honest, I decided to write about each day's experiences.

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Demonstrating iMovie’s stabilization feature

On our flight home from Denver last week, our 10-year-old daughter had the window seat. So I asked her to record the takeoff (using a Canon pocket cam with 1920x1080 video). I gave her no tips (she'd never tried this before), other than to minimize any reflections off the window and to try to keep the camera steady.

The results weren't bad, given her lack of experience at such things, but they weren't really usable. So as with my early-morning Portland take-off, I fed the raw video to iMovie's stabilization routine. The end result is nothing short of amazing, with some caveats as noted after the video:


(Also available on my YouTube channel.)

At first glance, the changes are nothing short of extraordinary. The raw video is almost unwatchable in spots, due to the extreme camera movement. The stabilized video, while jumpy in those same spots, is infinitely more watchable. There are some tradeoffs, of course, to get this stability.
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Aviation geekery: Rainy early morning PDX departure

Earlier this fall, the FAA decided to allow use of electronics below 10,000 feet on flights. As an aviation geek, this was great news; not because I could now use my iPod or whatever all the time, but because I could use my camera to record takeoffs and landings.

In particular, I think takeoffs are amazing events, wherein a huge multi-ton semi-controllable beast of a machine on the ground transforms itself into a powerful and graceful master of the skies, seemingly weighing nothing and covering vast distances at over 500 miles an hour. But I wax off-topic…

I don't fly all that often any more, and yesterday was my first flight since the rule changes went into effect. It was also a very early departure (5:40am takeoff), so it was pitch black outside. Plus it was overcast and a bit rainy.

Nonetheless, I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by, so I recorded the takeoff and initial climb out of Portland. There's even a bit of commentary, for the sake of my daughter sitting next to me.

(For the best visual experience, click the gear icon to choose 1080p, and then zoom to full screen.)

Despite the darkness and rain (or perhaps because of it), I find the resulting video to be mesmerizing…but that's mostly because I am an aviation geek, and love this stuff. If you'd like the technical details behind the video, keep reading.

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So I’ve been doing this podcast thing…no, really!

As someone who works at home and has younger kids, I've found it difficult to get into listening to podcasts—it just seems there's never a good time for them. During the work day, I find it impossible to listen to a podcast, probably because my brain is easily dist…hey, look what's on reddit now…er, wait, what was I saying?

And in the evenings, the kids tend to take up much of the free time, and once they're in bed, I'm not usually in the mood to listen to a podcast.

In any event, given that background, you may find it surprising to learn that I'm involved in a new weekly podcast. Not only that, but that I've been involved for six full episodes now, as of this week's show. Surprising, indeed, but it's true.

Here's the tl;dr version: I'm co-co-hosting a podcast with Ian Schray (@idschray) and Tyler Poage (@tylerpoage). It's called The Committed. So what's it about? It's about tech, and things related to tech, and occasionally garbage cans (no, really).

We typically record on Monday, with the show being available on Tuesday. The exceptions are weeks where someone is traveling and unavailable, or if there's an event set for the Tuesday of that week (as with the upcoming October 22nd event). In those cases, we record on Tuesday for publishing on Wednesday.

During our roughly one-hour show, we strive to share useful information and tips in an entertaining manner—which are pretty much the objectives of every podcast ever created. But still, they're good goals to have, and we're doing our best to achieve them.

I'd love it if you could give us a listen and let me know what you think; never having done this on my own, I'm curious to know if you find what we're doing informative and entertaining—I think we've put together some good shows, but one's comments on one's own work don't really count as usable feedback.

Read on if you'd like more details about why someone who isn't an active podcast listener has chosen to become involved in podcasting, and for more information on the show, its focus, and the cast.
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What Lance Armstrong should say…but won’t

If it's true that Lance Armstrong may confess to doping, here's what I think he should say:

For years, I lied, cheated, and stole my way to the top of professional cycling. I was the key man in a wide-ranging effort to field the strongest, fastest, and winningest teams in the history of the Tour de France. I contracted with doctors, trainers, and other riders who shared my vision of cheating and domination. For years, I lied to everyone about my efforts, even going so far as to sue those who would question my authenticity.

I have shamed myself, embarrassed my friends and family, and let down the millions of people who looked to me as their idol. I deserve every bit of anger, disappointment, and resentment that people have heaved in my direction. For all of that, I am sorry for everything I've done, and have nothing but regret for the choices I made in my cycling career.

I cannot change the past, but I can hopefully change the future. Today I start that process by returning all of my prize winnings, all of my salary, and all of the proceeds from my advertising partners from the years I was cheating. Of course, I cannot conceivably do this in one chunk, but that's where my efforts will lie in future years.

I will also start working with USADA and other anti-doping organizations to teach them the tricks our teams used to bypass the testing processes, in the hopes that they can catch future cheaters early and often.

Finally, I will begin working to earn the respect and trust that millions heaped upon me solely due to my drug-enhanced Tour de France victories. I cannot do this through professional cycling, of course, but will attempt to do so through my work with cancer patients, my fundraising efforts for various charities, and my work with anti-doping agencies.

In closing, I stand before you in shame, offering no excuses for my historical actions. Going forward, though, I will do my best to earn back your trust and admiration through my actions.

Of course, it won't come out that way…

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The wild world of WordPress plug-ins

A couple weeks ago, our family visited the Evergreen Air and Space Museum. Being an aviation geek, I took a ton of pictures, and wanted to post about 150 of them here on my WordPress-powered blog.

Years ago, I used to make such albums using an app on my Mac, which I'd then upload to my server, reference in a blog entry, and that was that. It's been a while since I've done this, and I know that WordPress' gallery had improved, and that there were tons of extensions that would also create and manage galleries.

So I set off looking for a plug-in to handle my gallery needs. I thought I had a pretty simple list of requirements:

  • Ability to batch add images at once via WordPress' built-in Media tools.
  • A grid view to easily sort and caption large numbers of images.
  • Control over title, caption, and metadata—both customizing those fields, and whether or not they appeared.
  • Support for more than one gallery per post or per page.
  • The creation of a thumbnail index page must be optional.
  • An understandable user interface that didn't have a steep learning curve.
  • No reliance on Flash, but with some flashy features via jQuery or similar.
  • Ideally, the plug-in would create slideshows that scaled nicely based on screen size/resolution.

So I went to the plug-ins section of the WordPress interface, and ran a search for slideshow.

overload

Yikes, 432 plug-ins?! Problem number one: an overabundance of choice. As I started digging, though, I found numerous duplicates as well as entries for plug-ins that hadn't been updated in years. Problem number two: cruft in the search results reduces their usefulness. I scanned the results, focusing on those with high numbers of positive user ratings.

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