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The secret ending to “Attack of the Show”
So sometime in 1999 our cable company got ZDTV. I loved that channel, and watched almost every show on it, my favorite being The Screensavers. It was like finding “my people”. It was before blogs, so it was harder to meet people online. I was on dial-up back then, so being online sucked. I was jealous of the people that were able to get broadband.
Shortly after ZDTV switched to TechTV, my cable company dropped the channel. I was pissed. One of the main reason I have DirecTV now is because of my hatred for the cable company for dropping TechTV. I think I went a year or two without The Screensavers before the cable company got TechTV back.
Then TechTV was sold and changed to G4 and sucked. The Screensavers was changed to Attack of the Show, and was removed from my Tivo. By then broadband was more-or-less everywhere and podcasting was just getting started. The good people from TechTV started TWiT and Revision3, and life was good. Well apparently Attack of the Show has ended now too. I think I only watched the first episode, but it was nice that they gave Patrick and Leo the final words. It’s finally an end to an era that was over long ago.
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The math behind my favorite card trick
I like card tricks that are based on math. They are easy to do, and work every time without any fancy trickery done with your hands. On today’s Numberphile they explained my favorite card trick.
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Forty-Two U.
I’m a sucker for any Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy shirts, so obviously I had to buy today’s Woot! Shirt.
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Verizon charging more for less
So Verizon announced their new Share Everything plan earlier this week. Everybody seemed pretty pissed because now they are going to have to pay more for less. I was going to wait on commenting until I did the math myself.
I think it’s great that they are streamlining their plans, but man they are spendy, and yes I’m going to have to more for less.
I couldn’t care less about unlimited minutes and messages. I use maybe 20 minutes a month, and probably 4 messages a YEAR. The data is what’s going to kill me, and it’s so hard to judge how much you are using.
I looked back six months, and some months I used .5 GBs, and others I was close to 2 GB. So what plan am I suppose to get? Plus you have to double those data uses since my Wife is also using data at about the same rate as I do. So my usage will vary from 1 GB to 4 GB, and it’s trending upwards. So that means I could probably get by on the $60 and watch my data use closely, but that’s no fun. Or I could go with the $70 plan and pay for more data that I won’t be using most months. I’m glad I’m almost always on wifi, I couldn’t imaging how much data I would be using if I wasn’t.
My current bill is $143 with $20 of that being taxes and fees that I’m sure wont be changing. If I went with the cheaper plan it would cost me $160; $60 for the plan, plus $80 for two smartphones (which is ridiculous), plus $20 taxes and other fees.
So my $143 bill will go to $160 if I want to limit my usage, or $170 if I don’t want to worry, too much, about my usage. All the commercials I have seen say the new plans will save people money. I don’t know what kind of fuzzy math they use.
That being said, I’m not too against the plans. I like how it simplifies everything, and while the data prices are a little spendy, it’s the $40 per smartphone that kills. Why so much for something that just shares the data you are already paying for, and will probably force you into a higher plan? If all devices on the plan were $10 or $20, I would probably be totally happy with the change. You know that’s never going to happen though. What cell phone company wants or has happy customers?
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Large number craziness
I love math and numbers. I am also intrigued by how little humans understand large numbers. Most people probably don’t know what comes after Trillion, and really, that’s so large that nobody really needs a number much larger than that. I knew my number system up to decillion. I had to turn to Wikipedia to see what was next. Growing up as a kid without Wikipedia I thought a googolplex was the largest number. I knew a googol was a 1 followed by 100 zeros. I didn’t really know what a googolplex was. Now that I got Wikipedia I know we have numbers way bigger than googol and even bigger than a googolplex. There is such a thing as a googolplexplex. And actually, the googol named numbers are just special named numbers. A googol is really 10 duotrigintillion. A duotrigintillion is 1099, so 10 of them would be 10100, or a googol.
A googol is so large that there are less atoms in the observable universe. The estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is 1082 (or 10 sesvigintillion if you care), much less that a googol. Now onto a googolplex. A googolplex is 10googol. It has more zeros than there are atoms in the universe making it impossible to even write out long hand, and yeah, a googolplexplex is even larger.
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Backing up with rsync and Automator
The beginning of this year I re-thought my backup strategy. I’m crazy about my backups, maybe a little too much. This year I’ve actually cut back on some of my backups. Last year I got a CrashPlan family plan to back up my two main computers. It works great. I love CrashPlan. Now thanks to iTunes Match, I was able to downgrade my CrashPlan to a single computer plan.
I’ve been slowly upgrading all my music to 256 kbps, from the crappy 128 kbps that I originally ripped all my music to back when hard drive space was more limiting. It’s been great to get them upgraded without having to re-rip the 1400 cds I own. That’s another reason why I make sure to have good backups. I dread having to re-rip my cds. iTunes Match serves as a great backup too. The $25 for iTunes Match is actually saving me money. Downgrading my CrashPlan account saves me $84 a year, adding the iTunes Match fee and I save $59 a year. Plus I don’t have to upload most of the new music I buy. It is just matched, and I have a backup.
So what about my other files on my iMac that need backed up? Well, I wrote an Automator script that uses rsync to backup my documents folder over to my Windows machine, which is then backed up to CrashPlan. Everything is also backed up to my NAS. Yeah, I’m anal, but I have a great system and will never lose a file. Here is the simple shell script that I used:
rsync -aE –delete ~/ Documents/ /Volumes/Users/mace/Documents/iMacBackup/ Documents/
I made an app with Automator that runs that script and just just put it on my desktop. I could have gotten more fancy and scheduled it to run with iCal, but I’m happy enough just clicking on the app once a day. Automator is so powerful, yet underused.
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iPad 2 dropped in lava in the name of marketing
via news.cnet.comI usually hate when people destroy products for marketing. I guess what I liked most about this video is the up close shots at the lava. I was there in Hawaii two years ago running around in the harden lava. It was amazing to see. I wasn’t lucky enough to find any lava flowing over land though. Probably because I obeyed the hazard signs.
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What music service is for me?
It’s an exciting time for music online. They’re more ways to buy and consume music than ever. I’ve tried many of them, but I’m still on the fence with which one I’m going to use. For some people subscription services are perfect, but they’re not really for me. I paid for Spotify for a month, and it’s really cool, but sometimes I don’t know what I want to listen to, and I like to just browse my collection. It’s not as easy to do with Spotify, and many times when I knew what I wanted to listen to, it wasn’t on Spotify. If you’re more of a casual music fan, and listened to mostly popular stuff, Spotify might be for you. It’s not really for me.
The two services I’m really excited about are iTunes Match, and Google Music. I’ve been on Google Music since the first day the beta launched. It took me four months to get all my music up there with my slow ass Internet, but now that it’s up there it’s pretty cool. Like most Google products when they launch, It’s ugly looking and could use some improvement. I love the new music section in the Android Market. It will make it so easy for bands to put out their music themselves. Screw the record labels. On the Android Market they will make 70% profit. The one downside about Google Music is it’s not as good on iOS. There is a third party app that I have been using for a while to listen to my music, but it’s buggy and not perfect.
Monday when iTunes Match launched I started getting my music up into the iCloud. It’s still grinding away. I’m not sure what it’s really doing. After the first match it only matched 3000 songs, leaving me 13,000 to upload. Since then it’s timed out, and reset a bunch of time. Maybe it matched more, I don’t really know. It’s just grinding away, and will be done someday. I don’t blame iTunes though, I only get 500 Kbps up from my cable company. So far with what’s been uploaded, I really like the Apple solution. It’s nice to be able to delete all my music from my phone, yet I still have access to all of it. Their “streaming” isn’t really streaming; songs download as they play. That can be good and bad. It’s nice because you have instant, and offline access to the songs you listen to the most. The bad part is that it could start to fill your phone up, but you can easily delete songs on the iPhone now too.
For the different music services it will probably come down to whatever phone you have. Google Music will probably work best on Androids, and iCloud on iPhones. That’s not too surprising, but I’m going to keep my music in both camps. Once Google products become more mature, they are usually my products of choice. I use Google for my calendar, mail, and contact syncing. I don’t really care for any of the other iCloud products. It’s really exciting times. I’m glad I can finally have access to all my music in my pocket. It’s like we are living in the future. Where’s my flying car?
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iOS 5 upgrade
I love software upgrades. No matter what it is, I always have to have the latest and greatest. It’s like a free present. Many upgrades I have had regrets doing, but I still always get them as soon as possible.
Today was a big day for upgrades. iOS 5 came out. I upgraded my phone already, and am working on getting my iPad upgraded. I like the new features so far. Lifehacker has a great article about all of the new features.
Now it’s time to play!
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So long, and thanks for all the Gadgets Steve
Yesterday is a day I will remember forever. Like many people, I heard of Steve Jobs death on an Apple device. I was shocked, but not surprised when the news alert popped up on my iPhone. I went straight to Twitter. The Tweets were non-stop all night, and everybody had great things to say about Jobs. We knew he was in bad shape to have to step down from CEO of Apple, but I don’t think anybody expected him to go so soon.I always have mixed feelings when everybody praises celebrities when they die. On one had, thousands of other great people that nobody knows about died yesterday too, but Steve Jobs was more than just a celebrity. He was our generations Thomas Edison. He may have just created gadgets, but his gadgets changed the world.
I don’t really consider my self an Apple fanboy, but I am surround by Apple products. I am typing this up on my iMac, with my MacBook and iPad next to me, my iPhone in my pocket, and several iPods in my drawer. I don’t buy Apple products to be part of some cult, but because they are great products. Even if you have never owned an Apple products though, your products are still influenced by Apple. Who knows what Windows would be like today without being influenced by Apple. What would smart phones be like without the iPhone? Are there any other MP3 players than the iPod? Chances are we wouldn’t have tablets. Microsoft tried to make tablets, but failed. I’ve had an iPad since day 3, and couldn’t imagine not having one.
One thing that isn’t being mentioned much, and is something we all should learn from Steve Jobs is his use of “alternative medicine” early on in his diagnosis. Steve had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is actually quite treatable if caught soon enough, which he had. He chose to treat it with a special diet, and other alternative therapies prescribed by a naturopath. Once it was learned that that wasn’t working, he started using conventional medicines, but by then his chanced of beating it were slim to none. Would he have beat it if he used conventional medicine right away? We will never know, but his chances would have been better. Alternative medicine kills folks. If alternative medicine worked, it would be called medicine. Steve Jobs taught us all to “think different”, but when it comes to medicine, you don’t want different, you want the stuff that works.
