-
Review: Amazon Echo
[19 Jan 2015, 7:38 AM - Minor Edits]
-
Economics of Water Conservation
Last week I received my latest City of San Diego water bill; we're billed every 2 months. Our bill has a base fee for water, base fee for sewer, a few other fixed costs and then the actual cost of water that, of course, varies based on usage. The problem that I immediately noticed is that water for Tier 1 was $3.9183 per HCF (1 HCF = 748 gallons). We used 6 HCF for a total cost of $23.51 in variable costs; the fixed costs total over $100. Just for reference, the average usage in my area is 13 HCF, so we're doing pretty well in conserving.
-
Attempting to perfect TV viewing system
As I've written about in the past, I've gone to great lengths to record and play TV shows (I don't torrent and I get my shows over the air). My system up until now has relied on El Gato's EyeTV 3 software running on my Mac Mini combined with a few scripts and now a command line program I wrote called EyeTVExporter to drive ffmpeg. The whole system has worked well, but one problem with EyeTV is that I have to screen share to the Mac Mini to add or modify schedules. Also, this process is far too complex to maintain in the long run. Also, I don't currently have faith that EyeTV will continue to be updated; for instance the latest issue I have with it is that the Export routines (either in the app or via AppleScript) convert all the audio to stereo instead of preserving the AC3 5.1 audio that is recorded on many shows and exists in the MPEG2 file that EyeTV internally stores. When I've tried to just export to MPEG2 with the cut marks which mark the commercials, it has garbled some of the video.
-
New Car Decision
A few weeks ago I went to the San Diego International Auto Show with my father and my son to kick some tires and see if anything wowed me. We looked at the "green area" and there wasn't much exciting there. To keep my son entertained, we went to Camp Jeep, rode in a Jeep Renegade on their indoor course and my soon climbed a rock wall. Unfortunately (for my car looking), this was the highlight of the trip.