Another spiffy geeky appliance - IPTV!

[Sigma Designs and Celrun] say their respective products can stream compressed high-definition video wirelessly over an extended range. Non-line-of-sight applications are said to be possible, thanks to “Intelligent Array Radio” (IAR) technology.

The SMP8634 shipped about a year ago, billed as the first SoC for HD-DVD players and set-top boxes to integrate hardware media decoders for “all major formats,” including H.264, WMV9/VC1, and MPEG-2. In addition to Linux, the chip is available with Windows CE support.

Check this out…pretty spiffy

The Nuvation design measures just 3.25 x 1.7 x 1.8 inches (79 x 43 x 47mm), yet it incorporates a full 300MHz ARM9 processor capable of running Linux or another embedded OS, according to the company. Compared to DSP-only cameras, this lets customers tune resolutions and data rates as required, fuse codecs, or run image analysis applications such as motion detection on the camera itself — consistent with security industry trends toward higher-quality “intelligent” cameras, the company says.

Source: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7019659766.html

I’ve owned a Macbook for about a month now and still find myself being impressed by the magnetic power connector. Features like this are what make great product exceptional.

Howdy everyone. :) Due to the demand on the PS3 forums I am making some install videos of Yellow Dog Linux. Sorry about the slightly shaky footage, since I was installing and holding the camera at the same time.
They are a bunch of short videos instead of one long one since the process is taking a while and a lot of people wanted updates as it was happening.

I will be updating this with more videos, as well as YDL running on the PS3. I will also see if I can show it streaming videos from a Windows Vista PC.

Part 01
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October and November this year are going to be expensive, expensive, expensive. :)

Wiiiiii. :)

Luckily I was able to take care of both my Wii and PS3 pre-order this week. Now I will be able to avoid the insane PS3 shortages at launch, and more importantly, I will not loose an arm to the angry soccer mothers looking to get “The new Nintendo, console thingie” for their little Billies and Stephanies.

The months of September to November have been and will continue to be amazing for console gaming. Final Fantasy 12, Okami, Persona 3 (Devil Summoner), Zelda Twilight Princess, Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi 2, as well as two new console launches.

Microsoft: As part of our standard and ongoing process of analyzing repair data, we recently noticed a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it’s a higher rate than we are satisfied with. We’ve made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, 2006, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs.

So for the unlucky like me, we are now in luck. :) Microsoft has done what it should have done from the start. Refund checks will be in the mail in 5 to 8 weeks. For those who have not had issues. I highly recommend you call Microsoft and purchase a 2 year service contract. It is like $50. They do not advertise it anywhere as far as I can tell, so call up and ask for one, and if you are lucky, your console will still be under the starting warranty, so you can extend it.

Its been a cold long year for Linux, gaming, and me. Well, maybe not cold, but my mouse is pretty frosty in regard to fraggin’ action. Having been a big fan of Quake2 and 3 I was locked and loaded when I picked up a X2 w/ GeForce 7800 PCI Express system, about a year ago. I was ready to get some hot action brewing between myself and Quake 4 and Doom 3. I loaded up faithful Gentoo Linux and my games only to discover choppy video with crackling sound or no sound and amazingly smooth video.

Being a little stubborn I declared that Windows was never going on my glowing box just so I could gib up some time. So I hacked long and searched hard, but eventually lacking in determination and will, I surrendered and let my weeping Force de Ge lounge around like an old dog surviving another long dry day. That was until XGL and compiz dazzled my existence, but thats another post.

Today I got a good surprise. When getting OpenGL, GLX, and such re-setup something software snapped into place and not only did I get working what I was shooting for, Second Life (which is really interesting), but also all of my other games then worked with acceleration and perfect sound. Not much time to frag, but at least now Cory can no longer snicker at the thought of the poor tool who can not convince his Linux box to play with him.

I guess I could blame myself for this, for trusting that Microsoft would actually release a reliable piece of hardware. During the first three months of the Xbox 360 release, when all the problems were cropping up and people were getting their replacement units quickly from Microsoft, I guess I felt kinda lucky that I did not have any issues, and that I had a unit which was running flawlessly. But today I learnt that I would have been better off having a problem then. Then I would have actually got my issue taken care of in a reasonable manner and mabey got a unit that was not from the first batch of trash.

While a friend was over last night I decided to toss in Fight Night Round 3 and start up a game, but as soon as the game loaded my sound system started screaming and the video went out of synch then locked up. About 4 seconds later the screen went black and I got three lovely red LED’s on the front of my Xbox 360.

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So, while I was watching Rippee last night his power went out I was able to get this photo showing how amazingly bright his Treo actually is.
I thought it was going to burn a hole through his ceiling.

The lights came back on right as the beams from his Treo started to fade, and that got me wondering how such a device could be charged on a simple household outlet alone. Just as that thought entered my head he pocketed his device and headed out. I decided to follow him to see if it could possible do anything else other than just light up the sky. What I found out was horrifying.

I recently bought two Seagate 320gb hard drives that are PRT. PRT stands for Perpendicular Recording Technology. If you’re wondering wtf it is, then please visit this link.

My friend sent me this link. I thought this was amazingly awesome yet amazingly stupid so I check Digg.com and of course it was there on the front page. Its funny how sometimes you just have a hunch for a source. lol I hope not to many people are stupid enough to build this, but if they are….. well I think you get where I’m going.

Oh my! That would rock!

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Perhaps no more of those cheapass, el crappo dellz servers!

Since my main Windows box is dead, I had to make my other box a dual boot with Ubuntu Dapper and Windows XP Pro.

The stats of my other box is (to let Cory forever endlessly drool about):

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX - Retail

Motherboard: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Memory: CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINX2048-3200C2PRO - Retail

Video card: BFG Tech BFGR78256GTCOD2 Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card bundled with Call of Duty 2 - Retail

Power supply: ENERMAX Noisetaker EG495P-VE SFMA ATX 485W Power Supply - Retail

DVD-RW: PLEXTOR 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Beige IDE Model PX-716A/SW - Retail

Case: Antec Super LANBOY Case - Retail

DROOL DROOL!!!! =)

In a step toward linking a person’s thoughts to machines, Japanese automaker Honda said it has developed a technology that uses brain signals to control a robot’s very simple moves.

Cool stuff. Soon we will be able to answer our cell phones by thinking about it. `(8(|)
link

Upgrading our memory is a matter of improving our recording and retrieving abilities.

(A) Camera components could be made tiny enough to fit in a contact lens.
(B) A high-precision microphone could fit in your ear.
(C) The data could be downloaded to a searchable handheld gadget.

In 2021 You’ll Enjoy Total Recall
Software will allow you to easily carry years’ worth of searchable memories—in your pocket

Humans naturally have the power to remember almost two bits of information per second, or a few hundred megabytes over a lifetime. Compared with a DVD movie, which holds up to 17 gigabytes, that’s nothing. Worse, you might easily recall the 40-year-old dialogue from Hogan’s Heroes yet forget your mom’s birthday. Or memorize reams of sports stats while spacing out on work you completed just last week.

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