need help getting daily del.icio.us posts on blogger

So, I've been using del.icio.us a lot recently, and it's come at a cost to my posting here on the blog. Via Shrook, my feedreader, I've seen others like Ross Mayfield include their del.icio.us links in their feeds, and I want to do the same.

Much easier said than done.

The del.icio.us folks have provided a handy widget to generate daily blog postings, but in creating the widget, you must know full URL of the XML-RPC interface for your blog. I have yet to find said URL for my Blogger blog. I've checked the Blogger Help Groups and the closest I can get to an answer (LucyG asked the same question) is the unhelpful helpful tip to look here in the Blogger Data API Overview.

A helpful answer would have been "here's the URL just swap out NNNNN for your blogname." But it appears no one's yet cracked the code.

Has anyone seen a successful automatic post from del.icio.us to a Blogger hosted blog? As soon as I find the answer, I'll post it here. Talk about search keyword gold...

planet earth as an hd showcase

I love it when all the technology in our living room functions as it should...

Our HR20 DVR has been faithfully recording all the episodes of Discovery Channel's new Planet Earth series, and it's been delightful to watch these high-def tours de force on our plasma TV with the sound streaming through the Harman Kardon AVR245.

Not only are the sights and sounds stunning, but the editing is top notch, too. You can hear the surrounding low rumble of volcanoes and the twitter tweet of all kinds of insects and birds as if they were in the room with you. The flyovers of mountains are as if you're looking out the window of the plain yourself.

And to the editing: as a father of two young ones, I really like how the chase scenes (wolf chasing caribou or leopard chasing goat) are shown up to the moment of the catch but not through to the disemboweling and consuming.

My daughters are mesmerized by these shows and I think they'll be leaving a lasting impression on them for years to come. Way to go, Discovery Channel.

Planet Earth should be the marketing campaign for all things High Def.

lessons on surviving winter travel to boston - redux

A week ago, I was in Essex, MA (just outside Boston) looking out at six inches of fresh snow topped off by a little ice and sleet feeling grateful I hadn't paid attention to Lesson Number One from my nine lessons.

Instead of being booked on the first flight out, as Lesson Number One had taught me, I was on the penultimate flight out. And if not for that, I'd have been desperately trying to live lessons Three through Nine all over again, just two weeks after I'd learned them the first time.

Thanks to the winter storm that hit the Eastern Seaboard on March 16 and 17, United canceled its evening flights on the 16th and many of the morning flights on the 17th.

My St. Pat's flight was untouched, and thanks to my Mileage Plus Premier Exec status, my upgrade request was honored well before the cancellations threw bookings into a tizz and filled the flight to overflowing. Sitting in First Class never felt so good.

Perhaps my upcoming trip to Boston (third trip in six weeks) will yield more travel lessons. I just hope there's no snow involved this time. I'm in the mood for spring having sprung.

flickr photos under creative commons license

After I uploaded my Stockholm pictures to Flickr, a good friend pointed out that (until today) I have not been practicing what I preach regarding content being available for others to build on in the Creative Commons. My own pix were under regular old copyright until just now. At last, I've put my own Flickr photostream out there under a Creative Commons license for others to use as they see fit (with attribution to me, of course).

Now, I chose the Attribution license for my own photos, as it allows for others the most creativity possible, as long as they attribute the original photo to me. But there are six different Creative Commons licenses available for employment on Flickr, and the Creative Commons web site has a very useful CC license FAQ that details the difference between each license.

Want to add your own photos to the Creative Commons? Here's how in six easy steps:

• From any Flickr page, click on your account name to get to your account settings page
• Scroll down to the Defaults for new uploads section and click "EDIT" next to "What license will your photos have?"
• Choose your license from the dropdown and click the "Set Default License" button
• IMPORTANT: once the license is set, you need to click "EDIT" on the "What license will your photos have?" again to change the license on all your existing Flickr photos.
• Once you're on the license page, choose the "batch" link in the grey box above the dropdown.
• On the new "set a license default for your photos" page, choose your license and click SAVE.

Voila! Your Flickr stream is now part of the Creative Commons set on Flickr for all the world to get jiggy with!

timely verizon wireless notice

So, we've just experienced our first "early" Daylight Savings Time switch, beginning March 11 and ending November 3.

What should I find delivered in the mail on Monday, March 12? The following IMPORTANT NOTICE from the good folks at Verizon Wireless [with my italicized comments]:

Please note that Daylight Savings time is going to take place 3 weeks earlier and end 1 week later this year as a result of the Energy Policy Act that Congress has passed. [read: don't grouse at us about this change]

Daylight Savings Time will begin on Sunday, March 11, 2007 and end on November 3, 2007. [what, this is a one-time gig? no change in 2008? cool!]

Although Verizon Wireless network is ready to seamlessly support the change, you may be required to update your device if you use a Blackberry®, PDA or Smarphone running Palm® OS or Windows Mobile®. [seamless, save remembering to send this reminder out on time]

Updating your device helps ensure that your calendar and time stamp calculations remain synced up with the United States and Canada. [Wait, Congress passed an Act that affects Canada, too? do they know about this? ]

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your continued support. [and kindly overlook the blatant inconvenience of sending this to you late]

To get the required updates, please visit verizonwireless.com/dst and follow the directions. [and here's hoping you can still access the web after the fact!]

Yer palz at verizonWireless

Funny how they never send out a bill late, huh?

refreshing change of perspective

It's been over two years since I traveled outside the United States, and this trip to Sweden has served as a powerful reminder how refreshing it is to immerse yourself in a different culture.

Even though traveling to Scandinavia is far from the culture shock of a trip to say, South America or Southeast Asia or anywhere in Africa, the culture here is different enough from my daily American experience that I'm reminded just how insular my life is in California.

Among the biggest differences I've noticed:

• I've yet to see any trash anywhere on any street in Stockholm (I'll keep looking)
• The Swedes are very style-conscious, but in a sense of personal pride way, not in a "look at me" kind of way
• The food is portioned perfectly on the plate... no heaping American-style servings spilling over the sides of the table here
• Tax is included in the price you see on the shelf... no complicated additions at the cash register
• There's a very strong push to mind how big a footprint one makes on the environment... I can't believe how green the adverts and marketing messages are here in Stockholm. It'll be interesting to see if the Dutch are as green as the Swedes seem to be.
• Kaffe is king: If only I could fit the industrial-strength coffee-making machine at the GWP offices, there'd be a vacant spot where the machine now stands come tomorrow evening :-)
• Politeness and courtesy overwhelms me everywhere I go: not in a sickly-sweet manner, but in a "I respect you and expect you to do the same of me" manner.

I've got to figure out how to bring this home with me.

madmundo: what rights for women?

In today's Global Action Network meeting, we were treated to content created by Patrice Barrat of the Bridge Initiative.

In celebration of International Women's Day, here's a snippet of video seen on his Madmundo site about Chahinaz, a young woman in Algeria, exploring why women don't have the same rights as men in her own country and how her experience is (or is not) shared by others elsewhere in the world:



Patrice also had a great idea, that's not as "out there" as it might seem: in conjunction with the upcoming Olympics in China, have an Olympiad for Change, where the competition would be about how to effect change in the world... we'll see how this unfolds.

flying (to the) dutch, man

After a harried morning at work, I arrived at SFO with time to spare to take KLM flight 606 to Amsterdam. It's a code share flight with Northwest Airlines, and I had signed up for flight status notification at the Northwest web site. Having used United's EasyUpdate service for many years, I thought NWA's service would be similar.

Wrong.

Two hours before the flight was due to leave (and I was already in queue to go through security), I got the following email in my box from nwa@nwa.com:

Flight information is not available for NW flight 8606 scheduled to depart at 3:20 pm on March 6 and arrive in AMS at 10:55 am.

Luckily, the flight information notice, or lack thereof, was the low point of my experience flying KLM to Amsterdam. Flight 606 is a ten-hour nonstop flight aboard a McDonell Douglas MD-11. Depending on which flyer forum you visit, the MD-11 is either the last of a graceful line of three-engine long range aircraft, or it's a dying breed that should be parked in the deserts of Arizona without further delay.

Aside from lacking power ports at any seat on the aircraft, I found the aircraft to be rather comfortably appointed and unless I was looking really really close, I couldn't tell the aircraft hadn't been delivered in just the last couple years (in reality, the last MD-11 was delivered to KLM in 1997).

I'd been assigned seat 6G, an aisle seat, in the World Business Class section, and this sums up the experience:

• the seat has 150 degree tilt, so is much more comfortable than coach, but in no way a comfortable position for sleeping
  
• it has its own video monitor, so you're able to choose among 7 movies and 7 television program packages that run on a 2 hour loop
  
• you can learn a surprising amount of useful Dutch by reading the captions to a spoken-english movie
  
• shortly after boarding, you're given a convenience bag (with eye blocker, cabin socks, etc), noise-canceling headphones and breakfast menu to make your selections for the next "morning"
  
• within the first two hours of flight, dinner is served, cleared and the shades are down and lights lowered to facilitate sleeping (or learning Dutch-by-caption for those of us who are restless)
  
• the food was decent fare and the coffee and wine were actually quite good
  
• the attending crew are polite and efficient at their tasks
  
• the parting "gift" for the business class folks is a miniature model of Old Dutch Houses filled with "the famous Dutch young jenever, distilled by Bols Distilleries." Nice gift for me (at the hotel) and the girls (emptied for home)
  

In all, quite the pleasant transatlantic experience and I wouldn't hesitate to fly them again (after I return home Sunday, natch)

My Schiphol airport experience can be summed up in one word so far: smoky. What a difference from the clean-air US airports.

directv hr20 dvr needs customer support

The latest software upgrade for my DirecTV HR20 DVR was downloaded on Feb 28.

I'm now running version 0x134, which has finally fixed the dreaded IKD bug, according to the Level 2 Tech Support supervisor I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with.

Was it a coincidence that on March 1, the day after the software upgrade, my HR20 failed to record either American Idol or Survivor like it was supposed to? Instead of finding them waiting in the playlist for me, I had to go to my History list and see that they've been registered as "deleted" with the following error message:

This episode was canceled because of an unexpected error. (2003)

Evidently I've discovered yet another bug that has now been reported to the tech team awaiting others to share their same pain. If you've had a series fail to record on your HR20 because of the (2003) error, please call customer support to report it so they can fix it quick by having more data points.

Even though DirecTV has claimed it's fixed the IKD bug, they have yet to "fix" their orientation toward how the problems are affecting their users. I spent 35 minutes on the phone this sunny afternoon trying to get to someone at DirecTV who would acknowledge that their product is failing to deliver what it's promised to do (record the shows I ask it to record).

The orientation of the first- and second-tier customer support reps seems to be to do what they can to get you to reset your DVR and assume all will be solved. I finally had to ask for a supervisor after spending 10 minutes with "Loretta" telling me that my problem was "fixed" with the reset and there was no problem whatsoever with the fact the HR20 had failed to record shows for me last week. She tried several times to ship a new unit to me to "fix" the problem which shows just how ignorant she is as to why folks use a DVR:

I have a DVR to reliably record shows for later playback at my leisure.

I don't have a DVR to help someone develop their technology. I didn't pay several hundred dollars to lease this HR20 so I could spend at least an hour a month on the phone with tech support to help squash bugs.

Here's an idea for the execs at DirecTV: look at your user account database and identify the people like me who call in for tech support only after already diagnosing and capturing in explicit detail what the bugs are. Give us free DirecTV service in exchange for us agreeing to be your beta testers with regular bug reporting and feedback looping. When you've got a true GM candidate after testing with us (and all the others who don't know how to beta test well but are along for the ride), you can begin charging us for the product.

As a longtime subscriber, I remember as recently as one year ago when I was a huge DirecTV fan and sang the company's praises. The HR20 ownership experience has done nothing but erode my goodwill toward them. And I'm sick of the phone-tree hell they force me to go through each time I want to help them debug their software.

BTW... the "fast access PIN" thru tech support is 1537 for the next five days. Call 1-800-695-9251 to get straight to the level-two support folks. If Loretta answers, hang up and queue up with someone else.

nine lessons on surviving winter travel to boston

This weekend was a real lesson for me regarding air travel in the wintertime and how I might do better in my next booking. At least, as long as I'm flying United Airlines, my carrier of choice.

I was supposed to arrive back to San Francisco on Sunday at 2:30pm on a direct flight from Boston. Instead, I arrived a few hours ago, at 2:30pm Monday on a delayed connecting flight from Boston by way of LAX. Yes, I was 24 hours late, but I'm a lot wiser for it. Here's what I learned:

Lesson One: Book the earliest nonstop flight you can
Instead of taking flight 171 (6:25a) or even flight 173 (8:00a) nonstop flight from Boston to SFO, I chose flight 177, the 11:04a departure which left ample room for "weather-relatd equipment problems" to delay my getting out of Boston's Logan airport even though the sky was clear and sunny in Boston.

Lesson Two: Subscribe to United's EasyUpdate flight notification system
I've signed up to receive text messages to my phone with any/all updates on delays and gate changes and upgrades! :-) and United seems to get these text messages out even before updating the web-based Flight Status tool. Starting at 6:09a on Sunday, I started getting updates that my flight departure was delayed which allowed me to hang out at the hotel longer instead of getting the bad news upon arrival at the airport.

Lesson Three: When the electronic check-in kiosk asks if you'd like to change flights, think long and hard before saying no.
When I arrived at Logan airport and used the kiosk to check in, knowing I was still two hours early for my flight that'd been delayed three hours already, I thought it a little odd when the machine asked if I wanted to change flights. Silly me, I put faith in "the system" that flight 177 would make it out of Boston some time that day. Those who chose to reschedule likely made it out on a later "regularly scheduled flight" while I got bumped to the next day.

Lesson Four: When the gate agent starts sharing how he's horse-trading to get equipment assigned to your flight, it's time to rebook.
Once the agent informed us the original equipment never made it out of Chicago (snow) and the replacement plane was stuck in Dulles (snow and sleet) so a third plane due in from LA was to be ours, resulting in a now 5:45pm departure, I should have taken it as a sign to rebook. Our agent was Mr. Merry Sunshine at 5pm as his shift ended and he strolled through the terminal at the end of a long day. The new crew coming in waited until 5:30pm, as we passengers were queued up to start boarding to cancel the flight because the crew was now "illegal" (had worked too many hours to staff our flight cross-country).

Lesson Five: The moment you see the flight is canceled, RUN, don't walk, to the ticket counter by the curb.
Sure, there's a customer service desk or two inside the terminal (once you've passed through security), but your odds of getting to an agent are much better if you just go back out to the agents by the curb and queue up. I got funny looks from all the folks queued up to deal with the inside-the-terminal-yet-very-haggard-looking agent. When they joined me out by the curb, I got a bunch of "lucky bastard" head nods as they went to the waaay back of the queue having been booted out to where I was.

Lesson Six: If you're in line at the ticket counter, don't bother to call the airline hoping to jump the line.
Every single person around me that was able (after multiple tries) to get a customer service agent on the phone was told the exact same thing: stay in line, the agent in the same physical space as you will be able to help you better. Makes sense if you think about it: with a big weather event, you've got lots of people in lots of airports flooding the phone-based customer service resources.

Lesson Seven: Chill.
Adopt a Zen attitude about the whole situation, no matter how nasty it's been to your plans, and do not jump aboard the "you don't know the day I've had" bitch bus. I do know how your day has been. I've been watching you complain to everyone sitting around you and a series of someones on your cell phone all day long. Take it quietly and respectfully like a man (or woman). No matter how much you want to believe the airline had it in for you from the start, I'll bet they were doing everything they could to get you home and only gave up when the last reasonable possibility was exhausted.

Lesson Eight: Be nice to the airline agents.
You know everyone else has been extracting pounds of flesh from them all day long as we've been stuck in the terminal with each other. Be the compassionate one.

The exact words of a purple-faced guy at the ticket counter next to me. "I've been stuck in this airport all day and I want to get home NOW! You better get ME home now! I want on the next flight out of here or so help me..." My agent and I exchanged a shocked look, and this is what I said to her "I can only begin to imagine the day you've had. Can you help me get to San Francisco?" As suspected, there was nothing available leaving that night, but she put me on the next flight not routing through a snowy section of the country (thru LAX) and on which she could confirm seats and she even tossed in a complimentary upgrade. Which leads me to the final lesson:

Lesson Nine: A seat in hand is better than two standbys.
No matter how tempting it is to try to get on a flight that'll arrive 30 minutes earlier than the one you've got a confirmed seat on, don't do it. I almost let a fellow traveler convince me to wait for the 8am nonstop flight out of Boston that was scheduled to land two hours before my two-leg trip through LAX. Thankfully I did not. I kept my aisle seats in Economy Plus as I watched all the snow coming down in Boston and covering up everything. Given how much time it took as my on-time departure plane was deiced on the tarmac, I wasn't too surprised when the several-hour-delayed Boston folks arrived at SFO the same time I made it from LAX.

Fingers crossed there are no weather impacts when I get back on a plane next Tuesday to Stockholm.

marriott ibahn(tm) billing trickery

If you're thinking of using Marriott Hotel's iBAHN High-Speed Internet Access, make sure you read the fine print when signing up for the service.

When you first log in, you're informed that you'll be charged for access for each day of your stay. If you'd like to get access for anything less than the duration of your stay, you have to contact the front desk to get the billing work-around.

While I needed access for my whole stay this time, I wasn't bothered by the "convenience." However, I think they could make the notice a whole lot more conspicuous than they do for those who don't bother to read the fine print.

I wonder how many folks call for a bill adjustment at the end of their stay due to this?

a vision of the new democracy?

At Beyond Broadcast 2007, Henry Jenkins shared this funny Ask a Ninja clip wherein the ninja explains the difficult concepts behind net neutrality using pop culture references and makes the concept quite accessible.

Keeping in mind the ideals of a progressive popular culture (participatory, active, open-ended, transparent and transformative), this quick hit, peer-distributed messaging is quite compelling as fodder for a new participatory democracy.

Is this how campaigning and issues will be discussed in a new participatory democracy? It wouldn't be so bad. Perhaps we should ask a ninja.

UPDATE: And here, courtesy boingboing is yet another cool Net Neutrality video.

compromise culture? notes from beyond broadcast 2007

Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, opened up the Beyond Broadcast conference here at MIT with a quick spin through the implications and possibilities of participatory culture and democracy.

One of Jenkins's slides including this compelling quote from Robert Fritz:

"If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect from what you truly want, and all that is left is to compromise."

As John Maloney has helped remind me recently: we've got to keep the values of the group, the "what the group truly wants," in mind first and use that value to find the technology or let the group itself find the right tools only after that'll support those values.

This values-first thinking is counter to the way I see most groups attacking the communication challenge to grow bigger than the geography they're bound by.

Typically, the communications tools and platforms that are widely available are those that have scaled up enough (and therefore have generally been watered down enough) to pander to a critical mass. The platform/tool creators, in their quest to build a platform that'll be as useful as possible to as many people as possible, necessarily bake in compromises during the development process.

It seems then that the users are forced to compromise at the get-go and the barrier is way high to keep the users as a group from really achieving what they truly want.

Does a group even realize the kind of trade-off they're making when they pick a tool to digitize their work under the auspices of "greater reach" than the people in the room at the time? I think they don't, and that's got to change.

more directv hr20 dvr bugs

Overnight on February 10, my DirecTV HR20 HD DVR got yet another software upgrade. This marks the tenth upgrade since I purchased the unit last Fall, and this latest upgrade, to version 0x12a, seems to have fixed some bugs while introducing still others.

What's been fixed?

• It's been a couple weeks since I've dealt with the "Instant Keep or Delete" (IKD) bug
  
• I haven't had any black screens of death necessitating a hard resets to free the system up
• the remote has been working without fail

What's still buggy?

• The disk space bar in My Playlist still doesn't reflect anywhere close to reality, and I think shows are getting deleted earlier than they otherwise should. Comparing unwatched to watched shows in My Playlist, the proportion is nowhere near what the indicator shows. While I can't prove it to DirecTV's tech folks, I think there's still hard drive space taken up by all those IKD shows I could never watch. Not a big deal? When these inaccessible shows are reducing the amount of space I have for shows I can access, that's a big deal. It's like telling me the DVR has a 200 hours of capacity but only letting me use 120 hours of it. Yes, this is a bug.
  

What's new?

• Any show I've set to record as a series (each episode each week is recorded automatically) shows up as expected in My Playlist, BUT, when I go to watch an episode, it starts playing at the one minute mark of the show. It records the whole show, mind you, but I have to rewind to get to the beginning.
  

I'm coming up on six months owning the HR20, and I still have the feeling the development team released this thing too early. Kudos to them for continuing to squash bugs, but I'm still less than satisfied with my overall experience as an owner.

I had a standard definition TiVo DVR for five years and never once had a technical issue with it. An unfair comparison between the two? No. It's my real-world comparison of what it's like to time-shift television programming across two different DVRs. As a consumer, I don't care how much more difficult it is to manage HD signals than SD signals. As a consumer, I want to be able to select the shows I want recorded, find them in the playlist after they've recorded and play them when I want, starting at the beginning of the show.

Hopefully the tech team has this same expectation in mind as they continue their two-steps-forward-one-step-back lurching toward a solid product. Keep the IKD bug at bay, and I'll be patient.

fresh eggs everyday? yum

This morning's Mercury News had a column about urban chicken farming, and when Mel first mentioned it (she got to that section of the paper first), I quickly dismissed the idea and then back to reading about why my beloved Sharks have been unable to score a goal for over two games in a row now.

When I finally got to the Business section myself, suddenly the idea of raising a couple chickens in our backyard was really appealing. Thanks to our participating in a CSA back in Virginia, we'd had the pleasure of tasting fresh eggs, and believe me, once you have fresh eggs, you can only tolerate the styrofoam-packaged things they sell at the supermarket by the dozen (or gross by the gross, if you're shopping at Costco).

Besides the tempting oddity of having a couple cute cluckers inhabiting the back 40, raising our own egg-makers would be yet another green thing we, as a family, can do. As a bonus, the local zoning laws allow us to keep as many as three chickens here at the house.

A couple hours research on the web has led me to the following decent resources (a lot of not-so-useful stuff is out there):

• Backyard Chickens
• The Country Chicken
• The City Chicken

But, I think I struck gold when I discovered Omlet's eglu chicken coop.

High tech meets high design meets urban living. It's all I can do not to order one today.

Instead, I've ordered Barbara Kilarski's Keep Chickens to study up a bit more before diving in with living, eating, scratching, pooping egg-makers in the backyard.

I've got preliminary buy in from Melanie (with certain agreements to do other outside chores as a condition). I'll keep you posted on my progress.

fan control on a macbook pro running hot

Like many folks who use a MacBook Pro, the tops of my thighs have been scorched several times due to how frickin' hot the thing gets.

I used to have a 12" PowerBook (RIP) before this, and it got hot, too, but I swear I could fry eggs on the MBP. I'm rather careful to keep the airflow as robust as possible around the MBP, but it doesn't really seem to help to have it on a glass tabletop versus on my denim-clad lap. Either way, it's a furnace.

In search of something, anything, that might help cool down the MacBookPro, I came across the smcFanControl app that allows you to manually program the MBP's two fans to run at a higher active speed than they normally would.

As a bonus, it's got a built in thermometer to show you how hot the core is running. (should I be worried that my core readings have been as warm as 185 degrees F? if not, why not?)

So as not to void the warranty, you can't set the fans to run any slower than the factory default setting, but you can set them to run as high as 6000 rpm.

I've got my minimum fan speed currently set to 3500 rpm, and that seems to be doing the trick of keeping the core reading at right around 120 degrees F (room temp is 73 as I type).

I've installed smcFanControl on my Mac Mini as well, given the fact it's stored in the entertainment cabinet alongside those two furnaces otherwise known as the DirecTV HR20 HD DVR and the Harman Kardon AVR245.

In all, I'm very pleased with this handy little fan control app for the Mac.

how to enable 5.1 sound output from a Mac Mini

As blogged ten days ago, I've been having troubles getting my new Harman Kardon AVR245 seamlessly integrated into my entertainment system.

My challenges included not being able to get a true digital output from my Mac Mini due to the optical cable (S/PDIF) plug incompatibility, not getting the Mac Mini to actually stream 6 channels of sound through the digital output nor being able to use the AVR 245's integrated HDMI switcher.

After a couple hours trouble-shooting today, I've got the system up and running with 5.1 outputs and integrated switching between the Mac Mini's HDMI out and the DirecTV HR20 HDMI out.

Here's what it took:

• Mac Mini digital output: the jack for Headphones/Audio out/Optical out on the back of the Mini is designed to accommodate a mini-headphone plug. If you think you can buy a standard S/PDIF optical cable to hook your Mini to your receiver, think again. You have to buy a separate adapter that'll convert the TOS plug to a minijack-compatible plug. Of course, Apple has a Belkin optical cable kit that has the adapter and will set you back $30 (and takes 5-7 weeks to ship as of this writing), but if you've already got an optical cable, why buy a whole new optical kit? You can hop over to Amazon and spend $1.65 (plus shipping) to buy a perfectly good TOSlink to optical mini adapter. Takes a couple days to get to you, but good luck finding the adapters stocked in a local electronics store (like Fry's). I checked several places and found I'd need to buy a whole "kit" just like the Apple online store is pushing. Adapter in hand, the Mac Mini now has an optical connection to the AVR 245.
• Mac Mini streaming 5.1 sound: I thought once I'd bridged the Mac Mini to the AVR 245 with an optical cable, I'd automagically get 5.1 sound from the DVDs I play on the Mac. Nope. It took a little digging but I found out how to coax 5.1 sound out of the Mini's DVD player (thanks to Dave's recent post on This Much I Know and related Apple Help docs). The default stream is a two channel stream from the Mini. To turn on 5.1 audio in Apple's DVD player, Choose DVD Player > Preferences, and then click Disc Setup. At the bottom of that window, change the Audio output setting to "digital out" and (very important) check the box next to "Disable Dolby dynamic range compression." Voila! Your DVD's 5.1 sound is now streaming out of your Mac Mini. This change to preferences applies to the MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac, as well if you're using any of them as your DVD player for your TV.
• Integrated HDMI switching via the AVR 245: I'd previously thought that the AVR 245 was hard-wired to match an optical coax and an optical TOSlink to each of the two HDMI inputs. After digging a little deeper into the hundred page User Guide for the receiver, I discovered that I could override these default settings and match each of the HDMI video inputs to one the two optical sound inputs. Why does this make me happy? I can now get rid of the analog push-button HDMI switcher I'd been using to toggle video feeds to our HD TV from the HR20 DVR to the Mac Mini. I can now sit comfortably on the couch and use the Harman Kardon's remote to switch back and forth at the push of a button.
  

Next stop: 7.1 sound, but that'll mean adding more components to my A/V stack, and I've grown fond of the clean four-piece look we've got going now (HD TV, Mac Mini, AVR and HR20 HD DVR).

harman kardon avr245 review

So, I've had my Harman Kardon AVR 245 7.1 Channel Audio/Video Receiver hooked up for just shy of two weeks now, and my ears haven't stopped smiling since they heard the first sounds it pushed through my speakers.

Last year, I picked up the Harman Kardon HKTS 14 6-Piece Loudspeaker System and have been quite pleased with the sound they produce. Oh, what a difference a receiver makes.

Now, this isn't to say the Yamaha HTR-5140 it replaced was bad. However, it is to say that the HK AVR245 is very, very good.

The last time I remember being so conscious of a sound upgrade was when I replaced the standard-issue head unit in my Honda Accord with an Alpine head unit. After picking up my car from the install shop, I sat in the parking lot a good 20 minutes with my mouth agape marveling at the quality of sound.

Flash forward a decade, and the Harman Kardon is having a similar effect on me. I know it doesn't make much sense, but the quiet pieces of songs are actually quieter, and that's what makes the difference in the listening experience. I didn't notice, until hooking up the AVR245, how much noise had been coming through the system to pollute the music I was listening to.

I can get into the technical mumbo-jumbo in a future post, but for now, here are the highlights:

• This is one hefty piece of equipment: all 30 pounds of it. And it's worth every ounce.
• The front of the receiver is beautifully designed with a simple interface: one big wheel to control the volume and a slim line of buttons in a row. Functional simplicity, and the lights are all cool blue.
• There's not an inch of the back of the receiver that's not set up for an input or an output of some kind. I'm almost embarassed at how few cords I have running through the system (for now). I'm confident that'll change over time.
• The included EZset calibration tool is too cool. It's a mic that you put where you plan to do the majority of your listening from, and the receiver calibrates the output level of all speakers to deliver perfect sound to exactly that point of the room (whether you live in a cavern or a padded cell). Sweet.
• Lots of room for upgrades to the system, including the Bridge for my iPod and adding an additional two speakers to upgrade to 7.1 sound.
• The receiver does a great job of outputting Dolby II sound from an analog input.
• Amazon has it for a great price (compared to Best Buy or Fry's), and you can get it for the same price at the link above.
• All the speaker knobs on the back of the receiver are color-coded to match the wires included with the HKTS 14 system. No more crossed wires.
  

The minor complaints that I've uncovered so far:

• There's built-in HDMI switcher for video only, and the AVR245 processes the sound through hard-wired default inputs, one a digital optical, the other a digital co-axial. This is fine if your two pieces of HDMI equipment output via the same media. Unfortunately for me, my HR20 HD DVR and my Mac Mini both have digital optical outs only, so I can't use the built-in HDMI switcher (no sound) and am stuck using the manual HDMI switcher. see Feb 10 post (above) for the good news update!
• The remote for the AVR245 has over 70 buttons, and some of them are multi-function buttons. I use a grand total of 7 buttons. 90% too many buttons for my tastes.
• There's still so much to learn about the receiver, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of possible uses.

Until I do learn more, I'll just keep enjoying these sounds that are comparable to the high-def images coming out of the TV. nice.

studying swedish for my trip

I'm excited to be going to Stockholm for a meeting at the beginning of March. I'm nervous that I won't know the language (other than what I've picked up at IKEA).

Finding resources on the web that provide "useful phrases" is very hit or miss. So glad to see franksyard uploaded lots of video so I can study the Swedish Chef in action!

is 9C really the best seat on your flight?

When booking a flight I'm not one to leave airplane seat selection to chance. Maybe it's the long legs. Or the overwhelming urge to actually be able to see my laptop's screen while working in that sleek cubicle in the sky.

I've found a cool little site where you can find the best seats on an upcoming flight by using the Seat Scorecard.

The site promises that "[their] airplane comfort guides consider factors such as seat width, seat pitch, seat plan, seat configuration, and legroom to determine overall seating comfort. [They] have reviewed the seat maps / seating charts of all featured plans and also consider feedback of frequent travelers on major American and International airlines."

After poking around looking at airplanes I spent most of my 50k miles flying on last year, it seems their reviews are pretty darn accurate.