Author: chuma

So apparently Apple made this thing called AppleTV. I was reading about it over at stevenf’s site. So, for $299 you get a thing with a pithy 40GB of disk to play videos and music on your home TV or theatre. So… you can pay that much or you can get an xbox, run XBMC, and keep $150… OK OK so the Apple thing is wireless and has HDMI. But still, 40GB does not seem like a lot of space. And XBMC is damn easy to use.

Well, I recently decided to move off of my Pepper Pad 2 onto the Pad 3 that my wife is no longer using. Problem is, there’s a few things that I really like about the older model that I’ll miss.

The screen size, for one. 800×600 has become 800×480. It’s amazing the difference 120 pixels makes. I’ve been running the pp3 in full-screen browsing mode and making a lot of use of the switch-tab keyboard shortcuts. I just wish that there was some kind of visual feedback that told me the title of the tab when I switch to it, and that there was a keypad shortcut to view the bookmarks for the tab.

The screen quality is another thing. The PP2’s screen seems to have a higher (colour temperature)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Temperature] than the new model. Also the brightness settings on the Pad 3 are like staring into the sun: I always keep it on the lowest setting.

Well, the computers have spoken, so I guess I’d better write something here.

The Canadian federal budget came down yesterday, and it appears that political parties can be bought after all. I’m looking at you, Bloc Quebècois. When one party is so single-minded and can be bought for a price — while ignoring the lack of any real action on environmental policy, long-term transportation strategies, and the First Nations — the federal system fails miserably.

The budget throws tax cuts at the middle class (myself included) essentially to distract them from the lack of attention to the above three national crises. It’s a classic distraction worthy of a magic act. It makes me fucking sick.

I’m still practicing my Xs though.

A few of my more recent posts have been getting more attention than the others and seem to have struck a chord with some fellow ‘net denziens.

I am not alone in my hatred of iTunes. I’m still not using it and am happy. However my wife just got a brand-new MacBook and it seems that she’ll be forced back into using it. Is there no simple drag-and-drop alternative for OS X? She’s been using Anapod Explorer happily, and I guess I’ll get her to use their CopyGear software to get her music library started so iTunes doesn’t delete everything when it detects her iPod. I’ve been happily using gtkpod for months now too.

I’m also not the only one getting damn dead-air phone calls from (416) 364-1111. People all across Canada have been getting annoyed. Some people are indicating that this is Rogers marketing to their customers – if so, they’re doing a shitty job at it.

I just felt the need to file a workorder timecard with the subject line “respect my authoritah”

I just dialed my pharmacist and I was connected to someone in Mexico. ??? Thanks, Vonage!

UPDATE Jun 2007: There’s a page about this number at whocalled.us with 80 comments. A comment there written by “GL” sums up the situation – I can’t link directly to the comment so here it is:

[this] number is associated to a leg of VOIP termination provided by more than one wholesale VOIP providers. Given how the terminating networks are overlaid and at times spliced together, it’s nearly impossible to be sure who actually holds the DiD and the info wouldn’t be very helpful if you had it, in terms of tracking the actual caller, unless you have subpoena powers. It might be a TDM circuit billing identifier. I’ve seen it previously with a Vonage outbound call, others have reported it with Skype. I ran the search today because it appeared in my call log as the ‘caller id’ on a VOIP test call between a Covad line and a Vonage line. The only thing you can be really sure of – if you see this number 416 364 1111, the caller is using a commercial VOIP service to access the PSTN.

Long story short: if this come up on your Caller ID, there’s no telling who it is – though a bunch of shady characters do seem to be coming out of it.

End update.

Loyal readers might remember that I built myself a telezapper to eliminate phone calls from unwanted people and companies.

Back in November, I got my first weird call from this phone number: 416-364-1111. It was your typical “dead air” caller which means telemarketer. See, they use computers to pre-dial numbers from their database, and then when someone picks up they’ll connect that line to the next available phone rep’s line. But sometimes the computer gets ahead of the people and you might end up waiting 10 or more seconds before being connected. That’s what these jerks seem to be up to, but all the time. I’ve never gotten a real person on the other end. So I added them to my ‘zapper list but they just keep calling – they’ve called four times this month alone. Now I’m posting this and hopefully other peopple will find this page and maybe tell me who these jerks are.

I’m not a gambling man. I like to get something for my money. So I would probably never plan a trip to Las Vegas. But, if I ever found myself there, I know that I would have to go to The Pinball Hall of Fame. Over 150 pinball machines, lovingly restored by collectors, (almost) all for a quarter a play? And all the money goes to charity? I’d like up for that kind of fun.

And they have a Terminator 2table, which I probably put a hundred bucks into when I was in grades 9-11.