Jasbone's Thoughts

I am the holy roller

ross@jasbone.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:14:53 -0700

So to make a long and sad story as short and funny as possible I give you my new car "accessory". The short version is I ordered some car parts (exhaust and suspension) from a friend and one of the two boxes had four of these in it. Not exactly what I was expecting to make my car faster. DHL somehow switched the labels at some point during shipping (which we're trying to track down). Now that my tears of sadness/rage have turned into tears of laughter I just had to share what I actually got.

Wonder how many HP Jesus is good for? I'm guessing at least 20 or so...

Firefox 3.0

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:49:04 -0700

Hopefully if you're reading my blog in a web browser you're using Firefox (and if you aren't you really should be). If you haven't been reading the tech press today let me clue you in - today is Firefox 3.0 day.

I've been playing with the Firefox 3.0 betas and release candidates for a few months now getting ready for the upgrade to 3.0. I've found them to be fast, stable and very feature rich. One of the main issues with older versions of Firefox was memory usage - if you left it open for long periods of time (I generally leave it running for days if not weeks) with lots of tabs open (I generally have between 8-20 tabs at any moment) it would eat memory like a fat southern guy at an all you can eat BBQ buffet. That is to say a lot, in the hundred of megs of memory (I've seen as high as 800MB). Firefox 3.0 is supposed to fix all that.

There is however one huge problem with Firefox 3.0 - Google Browser Sync support has been discontinued. For some reason Google has decided not to update the extension for FF3 and is going to discontinue support for the entire app at the end of this year. To say this sucks is an understatement. If you're not familiar with Google Browser Sync let me explain - it is easily the best, most useful extension ever written for Firefox.

What GBS does it take just about everything about your browser (bookmarks, cookies, saved usernames/passwords, history, etc), encrypt it and transfer that data to Google's servers. Then any other machine you're on (regardless of the OS) now has all your browser data available. This is huge if you use more than one machine - no matter what machine I use my browser is the same. If I register for a site on one (and save my password) that information is synced across all my other computers. Once you get used to this you can't live without it. Well I guess I'm going to have to.

I haven't yet downgraded to FF2 but I probably will as this is already driving me crazy (after only 10 minutes). My sincere hope is that Google will come to its senses, update the app and continue to support it long term. Hopefully there will be a big enough back lash in the blogger community that they will be forced to.

When customer service gets it

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:06:02 -0700

As it's been quite a while since I've posted anything I've been looking for something that would get me started blogging again. Given that I can be hugely critical of bad customer service I decided I should be equally complimentary when someone gets it right. Men's Health (and their publisher Rodale) gets it right.

I've been a subscriber to Men's Health for about 8 months now and really enjoy it. Easy to read, informative and very useful. A few months ago I got a random letter from Rodale (their publisher from what I can tell) that I owed them $49.95 for the Men's Health Total Fitness Guide, something I never ordered nor received. At the time I pitched it in the trash assuming it was some sort of error or way to get me to order the books. When I got a second one that listed my account as delinquent I decided I better take action.

Today I called up the customer service number ready for a fight. I explained to the rather polite lady that I'd never ordered these books nor had I ever received them. She immediately apologized for the trouble, noted this in my account, canceled the order and confirmed for me that I was all set. "Are you still there?" she said, as I sat there stunned that it was so easy. As I thanked her she commented "it's nice to help cheery people" - to which I explained I was ready for a fight and stunned that I didn't have to have one.

Not really sure what this book is but now I may actually want it. Well done Rodale, well done.

Sooner or Later - new Soul Patch CD

ross@jasbone.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:29:06 -0700

If you know me fairly well you know I'm a big music fan (and was actually a jazz music major in college). While I still play a bit for fun I haven't played seriously in many years. Fortunately that isn't the case for some friends (and co-workers of mine) who have spent the last 6 years recording their band Soul Patch's latest album, Sooner or Later. This is their second release, their first Summers in Rangoon is one of my favorite albums - Arabic Ska is a particularly fantastic song.

Sooner or Later is a more mature album than Summers in Rangoon was, you can really hear how much the band has grown in the playing. Since Summers they've really found their own style and groove which I really enjoy. The first thing I thought when hearing the new album was that it sounded like a modern day Steely Dan with flavors of some of the great jam bands of modern times (Phish, Widespread Panic, etc). There are several guitar solos that clearly show Ryan's appreciate of Trey Anastasio (lead guitarist of Phish). Jason's vocals on Lose My Mind are especially nice, as is his extremely skilled drumming. While I think Soul Patch is definitely a band for musicians they do a great job blending that into something that just about anyone could enjoy.

So be sure to snag a copy on CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon or just about anywhere else that sells music online. If you're around Boulder feel free to swing by our office, I'm guessing someone will play you a few tunes if you ask nice enough!

Ripping Bluray the easy way

ross@jasbone.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:33:54 -0700

About a month ago I got my Bluray drive all setup in my Vista Media Center PC. While I've had some issues with playback (about every 3rd movie locks up at some point) in general it's working very well and looks amazing. The primary reason I bought a drive for my PC vs. getting a shiny new PS3 is so I can rip the disks that I own (that and I just couldn't be a single guy who owns a Wii, XBox360, and a PS3!). With Bluray disks the only reason I want to rip them is to make playback easier/faster. Each time I've watched a disk from the drive it will lock up at some point, when I rip them they rarely lock up.

When I got the drive I had not been following the ripping scene very closely so I figured this would be something I'd have to wait for. I've been using AnyDVD and DVD Shrink for years to do all my DVD ripping, I'd heard that AnyDVD was releasing an HD version so I went to check it out. I'm happy to say that not only have they released it I've happily been using it to rip my disks for a few weeks.

The issue with this is you need about 45GB per disk to store the rips (if you rip the entire disk). From what I've seen the movies are usually around 15GB and all that extra space are the other audio tracks and the special features (of which I don't care about). So I went looking for a replacement for DVD Shrink and was very pleased to find one, TSRemux. TSRemux lets you pull out the audio and video streams you want and save them to a single .m2ts file (the new file type for Bluray). You can then play this file back in Windows Media Player - no extra or funky software needed. While I've been using PowerDVD to play back the disks I find that using Windows Media Player is much more reliable.

I purposely kept this fairly high level, if anyone reading this would like a step-by-step guide just leave me a comment and I'll write a post up for that too.

Listen to my blog with Blogbard

ross@jasbone.com — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:45:25 -0700

Here I am writing another post thanks to David Cohen, this time for sharing BlogBard with me. He's got it installed on the ColoradoStartups blog and I just added it to mine. You'll see a little player over to the right where it says "Listen to my Blog" (cleverly hidden I know).

Give it a listen, I actually think the digital voice is really good, one of the best I've ever heard. The phrasing is especially nice, it feels more like a person with a robot voice than a computer (pausing at the commas, periods, etc). Pronunciation is also very good saying "I - T" instead of "it" (when things are capitalized). I'm already finding it useful by playing blog posts in the background while I do things around the house.

You can subscribe to the audio files using iTunes therefore syncing them to your iPod or iPhone. When creating an account on their site you can manage all the various blogs you want to listen to by providing RSS feeds for each. It works similar to Newsgator Online but with sound (and of course a LOT less features).

So let me know, is it just my inner-dork that likes this or is it actually useful.

Wireless connectivity in Boulder/Denver

ross@jasbone.com — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:02:29 -0700

I got an email today from David Cohen asking me about high speed wireless options for his laptop. Since I answered him in email I figured I should at least get a blog post out of it too. To clarify we're talking cellular wireless here, not WiFi, etc. As I explained to David there are three good options, at least in the Boulder/Denver area.

You can choose from the three major providers (T-Mobile being the exception here, they don't have a 3G network just yet) - they all cost roughly the same ($60). They are all roughly the same speed although AT&T's HDSPA network is theoretically faster than Sprint and Verizon's EVDO networks. The issue with AT&T is coverage, while they've turned up a large portion of the country their coverage doesn't match Sprint or Verizon.

We've been using Verizon's EVDO network for about 3 years now and have never had any issues with it (other than the occasional dead area). If you need always-on high speed access when you travel get it, you'll love it.

As for connectivity you have a few options. Many of the newer laptops come with these wireless cards built in (generally referred to as a WWAN card for Wireless Wide Area Network) but if you've got an older machine you're not out in the cold. You can either use many of the PC Cards available (if your laptop has a slot) or a USB dongle if not (Verizon even has one that you can put a MicroSD card in for double duty).

Thin is in: Macbook Air vs. Lenovo X300

ross@jasbone.com — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:31:56 -0700

So apparently I'm not the only thing that's gotten thinner over the last year as laptops are getting smaller and lighter all the time. Recent Jason, Ryan, and I all got the new Macbook Air from Apple. Wow, what an amazing machine. Brad had one for a few days but just couldn't get used to the glide pad (vs. the track point on a Thinkpad). While I agree with him and hate glide pads the Air is just too amazing not to use. It's one of those products that you just have to hold, feel, touch, and play with to appreciate.

Yesterday when I got into work I was greeted with a new Lenovo X300 - this is the Thinkpad answer to the Air. So how good is their answer? Well on the coolness factor they aren't even close. While the X300 is an awesome machine it just doesn't match the form factor of the Air. Yes it's very thin and light but we've seen thin and light laptops before (the X61 isn't much thicker/heavier than this). Where the X300 shines is in it's features. Let's do a little side by side shall we?

	Macbook Air	Lenovo X300
Weight	3.0 lb	3.1 lb
Thickness	0.16" - 0.76"	0.79"
USB Ports	1	3
Ethernet	USB Dongle only	Built in
3G Cellular Data	N/A	Verizon / AT&T
DVD Drive	External only	Internal (removable)
Removable Battery	N/A	Yes (2)
Pointing device	glide pad	glide pad & track point
Keyboard Backlight	Yes	N/A
Screen Resolution	1280x800	1440x900
CPU	1.6 / 1.8 GHz	1.2 GHz

As you can see from the specs it's no contest, the X300 wins almost every category (other than CPU). However with machines like this it isn't all about the specs, not by a long shot. The Air is just so much cooler, so much sexier that it just smokes the X300. When I got my Air I knew the X300 was coming and I was really worried that I would love it to the point that I wanted to swap my Air for it. Don't worry Jason, I want my Air. If I'd gotten the X300 first I'd be happy with it but after having an Air for a few weeks there is just no substitute. I'll be finishing the X300 up today and giving it to Brad tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see what he thinks (my prediction: he'll LOVE IT).

Here's a few pictures I took of the two side-by-side. Sorry they aren't better, it's the best I could get with my crappy camera.

Seafood Cioppino - 8/10

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:25:40 -0700

I've been wanting to do some healthier tomato based dishes so tonight I decided to try a seafood cioppino (a cioppino is a seafood stew). I headed to Whole Foods to see what looked good in the seafood department and fortunately they had fresh muscles. I also picked up some fresh shrimp and some more of the fresh hake fish that I made last night. The only thing I would change was using a red wine instead of cooking sherry (I didn't have anything that I was willing to open and cook with). I didn't want sherry to over power the flavor so I used just a little and it came out great. I think it would definitely be better with red wine (like a syrah) so next time I'll plan a bottle with the meal. Be sure to serve it with a nice french baguette or a good sourdough roll.

What you need
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 medium onion, quartered
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 California bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
1 (14-ounce) can crushed roasted tomatoes
1/2 cups water
1/2 cup full-bodied red wine such as Zinfandel or Syrah
1/2 cup clam juice
1 1/2 pounds of fresh seafood (fish, shrimp, scallops, muscles, calamari, etc)

What you do
Coarsely chop the fennel, onion, and garlic in a food processor. Heat the oil in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then stir in chopped vegetables, bay leaves, thyme, red-pepper flakes, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Cook, covered, on medium heat, stirring a few times, about 4 minutes until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the tomatoes, water, wine, and clam juice and boil covered for 20 minutes. Stir in your seafood and add a pinch of salt then cook uncovered until the mussels open wide, 4 to 6 minutes (discard any that remain unopened after 6 minutes). Check your seafood frequently and serve as soon as the last pieces are cooked through (so you don't over cook others).

Vista Service Pack 1 - Disappointing

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:39:38 -0700

If you've been following my blog for a while you know that I've been waiting for Vista Service Pack 1 for quite a while, with high hopes that it would make life with Vista a lot better. A few weeks ago I was able to get my hands on the final copy of SP1 and I've been playing with it as much as I can since then.

While it seems to be a bit better it is not the vast improvement I have been hoping for. Things are still slow, copying files over the network still sucks, window focus is always going screwy, and in generally it's still just a slow dog. Even with all the GUI shit turned off. So far I'm very disappointed, how could it be that the largest software company on earth would not only release Vista when it wasn't ready but more than a year later and after the first service pack have it still suck.

I haven't yet taken any machines back to XP since installing Vista SP1 but I'm doing that now to do some testing. I'm getting really tired of this game, really tired of Microsoft making me look bad. If only OS X and Linux were real options. I hope to soon post real world benchmarks between Vista and XP on the same hardware so I can see which is better. I'm guessing it's going to be XP, wouldn't you think?

A cable is just a cable

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:19:20 -0700

So this is going to be a little bit of a rant as this is a huge pet peeve of mine. Ever since I've been into electronics (AV stuff specifically) I've been a fan of just about the cheapest cables I can get. I usually get my cables at Home Depot and the best advice I got a long time ago was to use lamp cord (you know the bulk stuff you can buy to rewire lamps and such). I've argued this a lot with people, mostly with sales guys trying to sell me the expensive stuff. There have been study after study (and even a $1 Million dollar bounty if you can prove the difference) that show that the human ear (or eyes) can not hear the difference these extremely high end cables give.

While this is a little hard to argue for analog sources, for digital the argument is totally ridiculous. Recently a salesman at Best Buy tried to sell me a 3 foot $265 Monster HDMI cable. I burst out laughing when he suggested it and tried to explain to him "if it's digital, then it's digital". He just couldn't understand that if ones and zeros are flowing then ones and zeros are flowing - the fucking cable makes no difference whatsoever. Then yesterday I find this great post on Engadget showing that not only can people not hear the difference between Monster cable and cheap cables they went one step further and used COAT HANGERS to connect the speakers! And guess what, no one could hear the difference between the coat hangers and expensive Monster cable. Hey, anyone want to buy some $100 coat hangers???

Next time you need cables get the cheapest ones you can find, especially if they are HDMI. Don't ever let the sales guy talk you into the expensive stuff no matter how hard he pushes. If you need HDMI cables here are the ones I have, I have about 5 of them and they all work great (oh and they are $4.99 each!).

Baked Hake Fish with Tomatoes and Ginger

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:39:52 -0700

Sunday night I made yet another fantastic dish (man I am really on a roll I must say). It is a very easy dish to make, just a bunch of chopping and then baking. I did some wilted spinach with roasted garlic and mushrooms on the side and it came out great too (just be sure the spinach is as dry as you can get it before wilting it). I'll definitely make this one again, very easy and very healthy. Next time I'll probably use trout or a slightly meatier white fish, the hake was a tad mild for this recipe (I'd never had it and they didn't have any fresh trout at Whole Foods)

What you need
2 fresh white fish filets (trout, cod, hake, etc)
1/2 cup chopped seeded cherry tomatoes
2 green onions, chopped
2 large, fresh shiitake mushrooms caps, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 large garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil
Fresh cilantro sprigs

What you do
Preheat oven to 400°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil; coat with nonstick spray. Sprinkle fish with salt and pepper. Place fish skin side down on foil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix next 5 ingredients in bowl with a pinch of salt. Lump the mixture over fish, drizzle with soy sauce and sesame oil, then top with cilantro sprigs. Bake uncovered (pulling the foil up around the edges to save a mess) until fish is opaque in center, about 20 minutes.

Snowboarding 2008, Day 1: Not dead yet...

ross@jasbone.com — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:57:52 -0700

The great snowboarding trip of 2008 is off to a awesome start. No, that's not me - it's Richard and he's fine fortunately (he generally has the funniest crashes you've ever seen but manages not to kill himself). While my shoulder is super sore right now I didn't take any spills at all today so it's mainly just sore from using it. Oh and the boarding gods shined on us this afternoon (via Chris Wand, thanks Chris!) and gave us 2 free passes for Vail tomorrow. Eldora was great today (even got my 08-09 Eldora pass today, if you get it before 4/30 you can use it for the rest of this season too!) - something tells me Vail will be little better than Eldora...

Oh and yes I'm rubbing it in just a bit...

Thank you Eldora Ski Patrol!

ross@jasbone.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:17:33 -0700

If you've been following my blog for a while, or know me, or get within 100 feet of me you'll know that I've become addicted to snow boarding. I've been about 12 times in the last 7 weeks and have been getting pretty good at it. Saturday I had my best day yet. Got first tracks on 4 runs at Eldora and was in control and fast all day long. Sunday unfortunately didn't go so smoothly...

I got to Eldora late, about 11:15 (decided to go at the last minute). On my thrid run down (on my way to Corona lift) I ate it. Hard. I was near the bottom of a black (Mule shoe) and was going the fastest I've ever gone. I pushed too much and caught my toe edge. I went flying forward at 25 mph at least and slammed my left should right into a big patch of ice. I separated my left shoulder and am borderline for needing surgery (although tonight it's feeling quite a bit better). This finally leads me to my point...

During this terribly painful event something entirely unexpected happened. I met some of the nicest, friendliest, genuinely kind people I've ever met. From the guys that stopped to help me (Jamie, who I hope to buy a beer soon, spent at least 30 minutes helping me get on my feet), to all the snow patrol volunteers and pros. They had to sled me down to the bottom of the run then tow me behind the snow mobile all the way back to base (oh it was fun being the spectacle at lunch time let me tell you!) Then the medics at Eldora and the paramedics in the ambulance (oh yeah, left in the ambulance so I could get the "good" drugs) were more of the same; amazingly friendly, helpful and genuinely good people.

I hope to have beers with Jamie sometime soon to repay a little of the kindness he and his friend Adam showed me (I sat there for at least 5 minutes before they came by). I'm also trying to think of an appropriate gift to take up to the guys at Eldora (thinking something like muffin, etc). If you've got suggestions please post them, I'd love the input.

Just had to share this story, it sure is making my shoulder feel a lot better...

Installing Vista on a MacBook Air using Imagex

ross@jasbone.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:18:18 -0700

I've written before about installing a Windows Image version of Vista onto a MacBook Pro using imagex.exe so I figured I'd write an updated post on doing the same with the Air. It's fairly straightforward, and I've found what I think is the fastest (or at least sure fire) way to get it done. Here's how:

Create a partition for Windows using Bootcamp (I created a 55GB one since I'm going to use Windows 90% of the time)
Reboot from the standard Vista install DVD. Format the partition you created and complete a normal Vista install. You'll need to do this so the boot sector is written properly. I've tried stopping right after you format it, and have even killed it right after the file copy starts (neither worked) so I'm guessing the boot loader gets written at the end of the process.
When you reboot be sure to press and hold the mouse button after the Mac bootup "ding" sound. When the disk ejects quickly put in your WinPE DVD with imagex.exe and the image you'd like to install. You may have to boot back into OS X first. If so restart the Bootcamp assistant and choose install Windows.
Pay close attention as it boots so you can "press any key" to get WinPE going.
Once you boot into WinPE you'll need to reformat the disk (which doesn't mess with the boot sector). So run the following commands:
diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 3
format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=c
quit
Now you're ready to put the image on the machine. For this you'll run:
imagex /apply IMAGENAME.wim 1 c:
Now go get a cup of coffee (or several) while it puts the image in place. When that's done reboot and go get dinner (and then maybe breakfast) as Vista starts up the installer for the image.

That should do it. If you're not experienced with imaging technologies like this, and you work in a corporate environment you should start reading about it. We may only have 11 employees but given the amount of times I've used my image (easily 100+ times) the amount of time it has saved me is staggering. Also the added benefit of all my users being on the exact same platform with the exact same tweaks is, well, huge.