This page looks plain and unstyled because you're using a non-standard compliant browser. To see it in its best form, please upgrade to a browser that supports web standards. It's free and painless.

Paul's Time Sink

«Previous 
| Main | Albums |

A9 search engine

Paul Westbrook | 15 September, 2004 12:36

A9Amazon has launched a new search engine. It looks like it is using Google for web and images searches, IMDb.com for movie searches, GuruNet for reference searches, and Amazon for book searches. A9 uses Amazon.com account to save a search history and saved bookmarks.

I am sure that Amazon will be using the search history as a way to suggest products from their store.

General :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Firefox

Paul Westbrook | 15 September, 2004 07:39

Get Firefox! The Firefox team has come out with their Preview Release of Firefox 1.0. I have been using it for a couple of days, and it looks like a great browser. Here are some of the features that I like that weren't in the previous version:

  1. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in your bookmarks
  2. Status message is displayed when a pop-up is blocked
  3. Displays the domain associated with a ssl certificate, for secure sites
  4. Displays the address bar with a different color when viewing a secure site
When I upgraded, some of my extensions stopped working, but they should be coming out with updated versions soon. The only improvement that I would like to see happen is to be able to configure Firefox to use the Mac OS X Keychain

You can download firefox here.

Computer :: Comment (2) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

New Mac OS X RSS Reader

Paul Westbrook | 14 September, 2004 20:50

NewsFireI have just started using NewsFire, a new Mac OS X RSS aggregator. It is a slick looking application, that really uses Mac OS X's Aqua look at feel. The author also has written Acquisition.

I had been using Shrook, but it seems like it doesn't work that well if it is not able to connect to shrook.com. The one feature that I would love to see in NewsFire is the ability to mark articles.

Computer :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Viewsonic WMA100

Paul Westbrook | 11 September, 2004 14:12

WMA100Viewsonic is coming out with a pretty cool wireless media adapter. The WMA100 is a 802.11 component that will play audio and video onto a TV, in addition it will also display photos. Some of the features differentiate it from the other devices are:

  • Playing MPEG-1,2,4 video files
  • Playing MP3, un-DRM’d AAC, WMA files
  • JPEG, GIF, and PNG photos
  • Scales video and pictures to the TVs native resoultion
  • DVI, composite-video, component-video, S-Video and VGA video outputs
  • analog and coaxial SPDIF audio outputs with Dolby 5.1 pass through
It looks like this will cost $299 and be available during the fourth quarter of this year.

Electronics :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

OMWAVE media PC

Paul Westbrook | 11 September, 2004 13:45

OMWAVE EH1Engadget has a post on OMWAVE's EH1 media PC. This is a A/V component looking PC, running Windows XP, that with their OMtheater software will:

  • Play Audio CDs and MP# files
  • Play DVD and DivX video files
  • Download music and videos to it's hard drive
  • Display digital photos
  • Watch, record and pause TV
  • Update the program guide data (available in France)
  • Burn CDs and DVDs
  • Contains web browser and email client
  • Runs all Windows software, including games
It looks like these go for between 1,090.00€ and 1,990.00€


Electronics :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

New Car

Paul Westbrook | 11 September, 2004 12:52

In a previous post, I mentioned that we were looking into getting a new minivan. We ended up getting an Odyssey. We got one with Navigation. We also had an after-market DVD system installed, and they did a great job with it. We are still planning on installing XM Radio and a CD changer. We will be installing an Alpine CD Changer and use the Blitzsafe HON/ALP DMX V.1D converter to allow the XM Radio to be connected to the head unit through line-in. The only thing to do now is to figure out where on the dash to install the XM radio interface, where it will not look bad.

Cars :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Potential disaster adverted

Paul Westbrook | 11 September, 2004 12:31

Washing Machine Valve Shut-Off KitYesterday, I got a call from my father-in-law. He said that the alarm on our washing machine was going off. This is the alarm on the Washing Machine Valve Shut-Off Kit. It appears that our washing machine had leaked some water onto the floor. This device potentiallly saved us from some major damage. When the kit senses water, it cuts off water supply to the washing machine. (The reason that we bought this is becuase our old washing machine leaked and caused about $2000 of damage).

Gadgets :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Denon DVD-1910

Paul Westbrook | 10 September, 2004 13:34

Denon DVD-1910Home Theater Blog has a review of the Denon DVD-1910. This is a DVD player that has a lot of high end features:

  • HDCP compliant DVI output
  • Faroudja FLI2301 DCDI deinterlacer
  • 3:2 pull down detection
  • HDCD playback
  • 480p, 720p and 1080i up scaling
All of this is available for a retail price tag of $269

Electronics :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

New addition to our family

Paul Westbrook | 09 September, 2004 16:02

My wife gave birth to our daughter yesterday. Kaya Mae was born at 2:39 on 9/8. She is a healthy 9lbs 6oz and 20.5" long.

Family :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Outlet with nightlight

Paul Westbrook | 04 September, 2004 19:07

4238 Smarthome has a pretty cool outlet that has a built-in nightlight. I am thinking of buying two of these, one for our son's room, and one for his bathroom vanity.



Gadgets :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Building Linux PVR for $635

Paul Westbrook | 04 September, 2004 18:37

/. has a post that links to instructions on creating a Linux based PVR running MythTV. The screen shots for MythTV look great. If I didn't have our TiVos, I would thinking about building one.

Electronics :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Munin server stat graphing tool

Paul Westbrook | 02 September, 2004 20:37

My friend Todd (blog) pointed me to a cool piece of software. Munin is a piece of software that wll show information about a computer in a graphical format. One of the interesting things that I like about this is that the software is broken into two pieces. A node that gathers information on a machine, and a server that connects to different nodes, and graphs this information. So I have one machine running the server, while it is gathering this statistical information from all of my servers.


 (More)

Computer :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Site monitoring

Paul Westbrook | 01 September, 2004 21:04

Yesterday, I noticed that one of my TiVo boxes were not successfully making calls on my Vonage phone line, so I decided to switch the phone cable to the jack that has our second phone line (the one with the DSL). I then went to work. I got a call from my wife stating that our Vonage phone line was not working. When I looked into it, I noticed that our dsl was down.

I was able to fix the problem, just by switching the phone cable back to the Vonage phone line (I could have also just added a DSL filter). But this made me want to find a way to at least be notified when our dsl is down.
 (More)

General :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (1)
Powered by LifeType
Design by Book of Styles