Steve Holden's Blog

Thoughts & Tips For November 2018

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Very Sad News

The majority of this post was written before I learned that my wonderful mother - Marlies Holden - passed away unexpectedly yesterday (10-31-2018).  I am currently at the airport leaving for Sacramento.  Please pray for me, my family, and all those hurting right now.

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Health Update

Again ... the Pilates physical therapy courses I have been taking have been making a big difference in my overall physical health.  My core is stronger and it has been almost 5 months since my major back pain incident -- basically everything is going better than expected (no pain, no real negative effects).  I am slowly getting back to running, but trying to keep that limited by doing intervals of running for 1 minute and then walking for 30 seconds (repeat 28x times).

Technology

I just ordered the new Kindle Paperwhite and I'm looking forward to the upgrade.  I really like reading on my Kindle vice phone or iPad.  

Thankful For

My work related trips in September were good and productive. I really enjoyed the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio; and highly recommend going if you have 4-6 hours:

And the trip to Omaha, NE was great because the weather was very enjoyable (these are pictures from an afternoon run):

My last David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) class for FY2018 went well.  And the concert with Maggie Rogers and Mallrat was awesome:

Future

We have some tentative plans to go to the mountains the weekend of Veterans Day, and then a trip to Palm Springs area just before Thanksgiving.  The week of Thanksgiving should be fun as we always host Thanksgiving dinner, and the family and some close friends play a friendly game of touch football before eating.  And then we can also start decorating for Christmas.

Tips

I watched on the plane back from Omaha, NE a very interesting documentary called "Neat." Basically it is well done history of bourbon in the United States.  It really captured my attention, and I think I going to be deep diving on the topic of bourbon for a while.

If you are using Google Chrome, then I highly recommend checking out the extension Clipboard History 2.  It keeps a running log (as long as you want) of items you have cut-n-pasted.  I find it really useful to cut down re-typing links or other material when writing.  It also is a handy history of what you have been working on.  If you cut-n-paste passwords though, you might want to look at the settings around clearing the history after a certain number of items, and maybe not do a cloud sync of your clips.  I haven't looked into the security of the data protection in the tool.  Better safe than sorry.

Quote I'm Thinking About

“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” – Ralph Charell

Some Recommendations For Headphones

I am pretty happy with my Sennheiser HD202 headphones that I use at work, my Sony MDR-XD-200 that I use at home, and my travel  audio-technica Quiet-Point ATA-ANC7.  

I picked each one specific to issues I was trying to resolve where I use headphones.  The HD202 cover my ears very comfortably, but aren't so noise reducing that if someone knocked on my office door I would still hear them.  The MDR-XD-200 were 50% off, have excel sound quality, and are something you can wear for hours without much fatigue which is great for movies and audio editing.  The Quiet Points were cheaper than the Bose that I had before the were stolen, and fold up pretty well in thier protected case for travel.

Even though I'm content, I find it very interesting to get other folks opinions, suggestions, recommendations, etc. on headphones.

A recent This Week In Google (TWIG) [#234] recommended the following after discussing the recent ad during the Super Bowl for Beats:

• @kevinmarks: Sennheiser 280 Pro (~$90)
• +leolaporate: AKG K240 MK II Studio Headphones (~$115)
• +jeffjarvis: Beats Studio (~$280)
• Alex/John:  ATH-M50 (~$150)
• The Wirecutter: Bose QuietComfort (~$299)

Leo also mentioned that Headroom was a good site with more info.  And the Home Theater Geeks podcast have several very detailed podcasts in their library about headphones.  If you want to get very technical on headphones (and even some ear buds) these podcasts are highly recommended.

So ... do you have a favorite headphone? And why?

 

Battle For The Living Room - Round 1 Roku

Over the last couple of months I've been trying to decide what the best device was to purchase that would allow the family to access the "most" digital content in our living room.

Some things that mattered:

• Access to Internet content: NetFlix, Amazon, Hulu, Pandora, podcasts, etc
• Streaming media from the local network
• Ability to play media from local storage
• Reasonable up front cost, upgradeable, viable roadmap, track record of improvements
• Technical features: easy GUI, upgradable, Ethernet, WiFi, and HDMI

The choices were pretty competitive in many ways -- Apple TV (new & old), Roku, Google TV, Western Digital WD TV, Game Players (Xbox, Wii, PS3), Boxee Box, etc with each having many good points but also a number of issues that just couldn't be over come.

My decision was to go with the Roku XDS Streaming Player 1080p that is currently on sale at Amazon for $99.  It seems to be the one that hits most of the requirements with the only big issue right now is that it does not seem to play well in the Apple ecosystem with video, but you can reportedly stream audio from existing iTunes collections to the device.

After I get the device up and running (it should arrive in a couple of days) I'll send out an updated review.  If you have done a similar analysis, I'd love to hear what decision you have made.  If you have any suggestions or hints on how to better use a Roku device, I'd like to hear that also.

 

Wild Idea Gets Some Traction: 'Personal Movie Place'

A while back on one of my runs I had this 'wild' idea that centered around a geographical social networking site that linked movie buffs to each other by enabling them to come together and watch movies that they were very passionate about in a high-end but personal cinema environment.

One of the high-level use cases was:

Sandra goes online to mypersonalmovieplace.com and signs up to "host" her favorite movie "Blade Runner" on Friday night at 8 p.m.  Other fans of "Blade Runner" in her area would be notified and then they could reserve their spots in the 10-20 seat mini-theater.  Once some minimum is met, the room is reserved, and confirmations are sent out.

This movie establishment could have 10-20 of these mini theaters in standard footprint.  The scheduling and collaboration software would be the core glue to bring it all together.  I by no means think something like this is easy to do, the legal issues are probably enough to make most people go crazy.  But when I talk to folks about it, I always get a generally favorable response.

Well ... this idea has some traction no thanks to me.  Mark Cuban and his excellent team at Landmark Theatres is doing something similar at their $20 million multiplex in West LA near Beverly Hills.

They call their rooms - Living Rooms - where a few dozen people can watch a movie in their own personal screen room with access to bar, food, concierge services, and other treats.  The tickets per seat are $11.  There are also plans for slightly bigger rooms like for 60 people that would rent out for $1500 a show.

There is no indication that you can order up the movie of your choice, but I'm sure that is something that would be doable.

The source of the information for Mark Cuban's effort was from an article in the Union-Tribune published on July 22, 2007.

If you like this idea, please feel free to use it (it is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License).  You do have to compete with the likes of Mark Cuban.  Good luck with that.

Podcast Recommendation - Interview With New Media Author Philip Meza

Chris Gondek over at the Invisible Hand Podcast had a great interview with Philip Meza the author of the book "Coming Attractions: Hollywood, High Tech, and the Future of Entertainment" that is definitely worth a listen.

The one great thing in the podcast was that Chris let Philip outline some key recommendations that companies and organizations should be doing to excel in this new media world.

Rare Event - Music Video Recommendation

I really enjoyed this muisc video from Regina Spektor on YouTube.com.

Dan Klass Video On YouTube

Dan Klass @ The Bitterest Pill Podcast has a 'video pilot' posted to YouTube.

Eventful Demands Gets Wil Wheaton To Boston

I did a podcast interview with the CEO of Eventful Demands at eTech 2006 this past March, and at the time I was wondering what kind of impact the service would make for both fans and artists.  It maded an impact on Wil Wheaton ... he is doing a Boston event because of the demand.  Very cool!

Mini-Link Fest - New Media Focus?!?

I made a recent dent in reading through my RSS feeds, and I have the following items to check up on when I'm working through @Internet, and I thought I'd share them:

• Digg.com - "Al Pacino Podcast"
• Lockergnome - Picasa Easter Egg & Outlook Google Maps Plug-in
• Share OPML
• Bootable Movies
• Build Your Own Fortress Home
• Samsung's HL-S5679W LED-backlit 1080p DLP HDTV
• Eric Mack on how to embed a movie in a blog post
• TypePad supports Skypecast
• CBS Innertube
• UMPC devices are starting to hit the U.S. market
• Alan Cox (Red Hat) discusses computer security (IT Conversations podcast)
• Add a second monitor and get 30% better productivity?
• Open Street Maps in San Diego
• XML is a foundation for MindManager

Sounds, Effects, Etc. for Audio and Video Production

If you are looking for sounds to put into a podcast or into a video production, then here are some pointers to some that I recently found:

• Free Sound Project
• Find Sounds
• Creative Commons