Eric Faller

31Dec/06

Homemade Wii component cables

I still haven't been able to get real Wii component cables in order to display in progressive scan (Nintendo seems to be thumbing their nose at their most loyal fans with the Wii), so I found a guide online for making your own homebrew cables. It works, but the main problem is that you have to destroy your composite A/V cable to do it.

Messy Wires

Wiring like this is the moral equivalent of goto statements and spaghetti code. My E.E. professors would be ashamed..

Wii Back

Paperclips to the rescue! Obviously not a long-term solution, but it works.

Wii 480p

Yay for finally being able to select 480p! I just noticed in this picture that my camera has no IR filter, so you can see all the LEDs in the Wii 'sensor bar.' I am surprised that it has 4 on each side..

Filed under: Electronics, Games, General Comments

26Dec/06

Lenin statue in Seattle

I got lost in Fremont on my way home from lunch today and was stuck at an intersection next to this statue for a while:

Lenin Statue

Public domain image courtesy of Wikipedia

I was thinking to myself, "Weird, that statue really looks like good ol' Vladimir Ilyich." When I got home I checked it out on Wikipedia and apparently it is! Seattle people sure are weird.

That reminds me of a funny scene in The Good Shepherd that I meant to mention yesterday but forgot. At one point the CIA spy is meeting with a KGB agent and a big scary looking bodyguard comes up to them and whispers something ominous-sounding in Russian, which if I recall correctly was something like "Я хочу купить сувенири для мои дочки" (apologies for my horrible Russian), which roughly means "I want to go buy some souvenirs for my daughters." You could tell which people in the audience knew Russian because we cracked up immediately. It was so unexpected and funny..

Filed under: General, Random Comments

19Dec/06

Power!

Power LED

I came home from work today and my power came on. Wooo!! I thought it might get fixed tonight, because earlier in the day I noticed that they had some of the streetlights on my street working again and were making their way up towards me.

So I was out of power for a total of 5 days and 5 nights, which was longer than I have ever seen for a power outage. I have a flight to Denver tomorrow morning, so it's nice that it's on so that I can do a laundry and get all ready to go without freezing to death in the dark (again).

When I turned on my computer, the first email I got was "You have a new bill from Puget Sound Energy!" Weird coincidence? Hrmm...

Filed under: General, Random Comments

17Dec/06

Angel of Death gets some holiday spirit

At work I have a leftover Halloween decoration in my office:

Angel of Death box

I haven't thrown it away because I love how corny it is. "Pre-assembled, ready to scare!" and "Straight from the grave.." It's a no-name Made-in-China decoration that is obviously not made by a big company (i.e. "ScareCorp Inc. Angel of Death GXR 2006 Edition"). There's no company name or contact info at all, so they don't have to include any 'instructions' which are really just lists of warnings to avoid lawsuits ("Do not eat Angel of Death", "Do not set Angel of Death on fire").

Reactions from co-workers range from people who find the humor in it ("That's funny", "Hillarious"), to people who don't get it at all ("You're deranged", "That's sick").

This week, in the spirit of the times, I dressed it up with a hollyhat and some jingle bells:

Christmas Angel of Death

Filed under: General, Humor Comments

16Dec/06

Windy

On Thursday night Seattle had the worst windstorm in recorded history, and millions of people are out of power for "days" (including me).

Supposedly about half of the customers have had their power reconnected as of Saturday afternoon, but my neighborhood is still out. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not fixed until Monday or later.

Yesterday I hung out with friends who were also stranded without power, but today my hot water was all gone so I had to come in to work to take a shower and get internet access.

Smashed car

Trees and fences are down all over the place. A car across from me in the parking lot got smashed.

Redmond Traffic

Finally, an answer to the question, "Redmond rush-hour traffic: could it possibly be any worse?" Answer: "Yes, the power to all the streetlights could always go out."

Car Battery Light

Cooking dinner by the light of a car battery at Dave's house.

Filesystem Corruption

Ah, the joys of filesystem corruption

Filed under: General, Random Comments

12Dec/06

Weird places to split an encyclopedia

I'm sure they do it just by page count, but some of these make me wonder if the editors weren't having a little fun:

Menage Ottowa

Say it real fast, it sounds like 'ménage-à-trois'

Chicago Death

Well, they do have the highest per-capita murder rate..

Decorative Edison

"Ooh, what lovely little Edisons you have around the tree"

Education Evolution

We could use a little more of this..

Excretion Geometry

Cylinders, perhaps?

Pre-Columbian Saint

I don't think they had those...

United Zoroastrianism

The avowed enemies of the Zoroastrian Alliance, I'm sure

Filed under: General, Random Comments

10Dec/06

Dead bulb

My projector's bulb died this week after 600 hours, when it was rated for 2000 hours. Grr! Nobody seems to have them in stock right now, and I'm not going to pay Sony the full retail price for a new one ($350!?), so it looks like I'll be stuck for a couple of weeks unable to play Wii or watch Netflix movies. Oh well.. It's a good thing I just canceled my cable TV.

The actual bulb looks pretty weird - here's a pic:

Dead Projector Bulb

Filed under: Electronics, General Comments

9Dec/06

Shameless plugs

Recently I've been a "guest writer" on Jensen Harris' popular Office UI Blog (popular in the HCI and MVP communities, at least ).

If you're curious about what I work on all day, check out my posts:

They're pretty targeted to 3rd-party ISVs that leverage Office 2007 as a platform, so if you aren't one of those then the articles probably won't make much sense (and will probably sound like complete gibberish if you aren't a programmer).

There probably won't be any new posts on that blog for a while (due to the holidays), but in a few weeks there should be more.

I also just finished up writing an article on RibbonX for MSDN Magazine, so if you're a subscriber make sure to check out the upcoming issues! Once it's published I'll grab a copy and get a pic up here.

Filed under: General, Programming Comments

5Dec/06

No Tuner Available

No Tuner

The only TV shows I regularly watch are on Comedy Central, and you can get them all free on YouTube anyway, so I had no reason to keep paying Comcast the obscene rates they charge for TV service (which included an extra $10-$15 per month each for digital service, HD service, an HD cable box, and an HD DVR just to get Firewire Media Center connectivity).

When I called to cancel my account, the Comcast reps refused to accept my "I don't watch TV" and "I just don't want it" explanations. Every time I tried to get them to cancel it they came back with "Oh, well here I'll give you a 6 month discount" or "I'll just switch you to a less expensive plan."

The call was bizarre - it was almost as if they truly didn't believe that it was possible for somebody to not want cable TV. I suspect that they get lots of calls from people who threaten to cancel until they can get some discount, so they just give away the discounts and nobody ever actually cancels. I also noticed that it's impossible to cancel service through their web site, but it's only a few clicks to add new channels. The huge list of fake "FAQs" like "How can I add more channels?" and "Why is Comcast Digital Voice better than traditional voice service?" doesn't even include a single reference to removing channels, services or canceling your account.

I gave up and called back later with a different strategy:

"Hi, I'd like to stop my cable service, my TV broke"

"Hold on one sec .. OK your account is canceled"

"Wow, that's it?"

"Yep, just drop off your box at the Comcast store"

So if you ever need to cancel your cable, just pretend that your TV broke