I’ve finally been introduced to the madness that is HDTV. I guess I’ve been “HD-ready” for a while now — the 50-something inch projection TV downstairs supposedly supports 720p and 1080i, while the 37 inch LCD I have in my office area supports up to 1080p — but I haven’t had much high-def content. Sure, I could play Counter-Strike at 1900×1080, but that was about it.

This weekend, however, I bought a combined ATSC/NTSC tuner card for my PC. By the time I got it setup, there was about two minutes left in the football game that was on — and that two minutes completely sold me. I’m not really sure why (I should have expected it, being digital), but, more than anything, I was impressed by the fact that there was nothing lost in the “TV”->PC conversion. Because, well, there isn’t any.

Now I’m obsessed with finding shows that are available in HD. In fact, for the first time, I’m considering upgrading to digital cable to get more HD channels. Even the rabbit ears precariously balancing on top of my lap aren’t deterring me.

Tomorrow my wife is being induced, and, theoretically, our third child will be born. A girl (or so we’ve been told).

When a coworker called a few days ago to let us know that his wife would be induced later that evening, one my teammates inquired as to the proper response in such a situation.

“Is ‘Good luck!’ acceptable?” he wondered. “How does that come across? There’d be nothing quite like saying, ‘Hope she doesn’t die!‘”

If you’re wanting to install Exaile on your Gentoo box AND have it play MP3s (and perhaps this goes for all multimedia applications), you’ll want to enable the mad USE flag.

Oh, and so far I’d recommend Exaile if you’re looking for a player that doesn’t come with a lot of baggage — like Gnome/KDE libraries. It’s fitting into my XFCE4 desktop very nicely and has all of the features you’d (or at least, I’d) expect from a player.

www.iphonegay.com Coming Soon!

(No, that’s not my domain.)

The compulsory 4th of July post: hope everyone’s having a great holiday.

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the hottest thing in the Linux world was XGL and Compiz. Together, they brought things into our desktop world the likes of which we’d never seen before. They were the messiahs, coming to lead us into the promised land named desktop dominance.

Support for the revolution mounted quickly, as the open source community threw it’s entire weight into the cogwheel. Unfortunately, this movement, like so many others, was beset with internal strife.

It began with doctrine, as it so often does. The members of the AIGLX tribe argued that the underpinnings of XGL did not hold true to open source philosophies, and denied their siblings heritage and legitimacy. To make matters worse, others, such as nVidians, claimed to have the same answers, yet needed neither XGL or AIGLX.

Meanwhile, Compiz was growing organically, particularly an underground movement following one known as Quinnstorm. This faction soon became frustrated with the mainstream’s inability to accept their fanaticism and decided to secede. Soon Beryl was born.

With all the dissension, newcomers were understandably confused. Should they use Compiz with XGL? Compiz with AIGLX? Beryl with just the nVidia drivers?

But perhaps that’s all at an end. After weeks of deliberation, it appears that the Beryl and Compiz camps have decided to once again unite under the name Compiz Fusion.

You can find out more at http://www.opencompositing.org/.

Joshua (my nearly 2-year old son) just kicked the CRAP out of one of the introductory level opponents in Wii Sports Boxing. I wish I’d taken a video of it, but — unfortunately — my camera happens to be dead. I’m sure I’ll get another chance, though, since he just knocked down another guy. He’s such a boy.

I was introduced to these by a coworker, and while I haven’t tried them myself, he uses them on a daily basis to power his wireless mouse. They are batteries which are recharged using a USB port. Sure, they might not be up to USB specification-snuff (rules are meant to be broken, no?), but they’re cool nonetheless. And in my never-ending quest to carry a single power cord for all of my various gadgets, this is a huge leap forward.

If you’re using the RoundCube webmail project and haven’t been following it’s progress very closely (so you’re like me), they released Release Candidate Number 1 last month. It claims to have fixed the annoying session timeout issues, and, while I haven’t tested that exactly over the past few days that I’ve had it installed, there seem to be improvements just about everywhere. In particular, downloading attachments no longer feels like pulling teeth.

Oh, and if you’re not using the RoundCube webmail project, maybe you should be.