A point of view from the Silicon Valley
What? Oh, that’s me playing foosball at work.
The Discovery channel filmed us a few months back during a friendly game of foosball.
The show itself was pretty good; they covered the history of search, which was mostly about Google and Yahoo. I haven’t been able to find a link to the video anywhere online yet. Let me know if you come across it. 
And if you don’t already know, that’s me in the black and gray shirt, on the far right.
Now that hulu is finally open to the public, and they surprisingly have a large selection of SNL skits to watch, I can start linking to some of my favorite all-time skits.
I give you Census Taker.
Christopher Walken rules.
Update: I forgot to include the embedded video the first time.
So I got a new domain name – http://www.nathanjohns.net. I’ve decided I’d like to use a more powerful blogging platform than blogger, and it seems wordpress is pretty much the way to go. I guess I just have to decide if I’m willing to put up with paying for hosting and staying up-to-date with software updates and whatnot.
Two of my favorite things are music and technology, so naturally when I come across a product or website which combines the two in a new and useful way, I’m interested. There have been quite a few good sites recently; here’s a quick summary of the ones I like.
1. Pandora
You go to http://www.pandora.com and enter a band or song that you like. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to figure out similar artists and streams those songs for you to listen to. You then train Pandora by giving those songs a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. After a while, it’s pretty amazing how well it gets at recommending music you like. It all works through a web browser, no downloads necessary. Here’s my profile page.
2. Last.fm
Last.fm has lots of great features; if you enable the scrobbler, it will track what you listen to on itunes and windows media player, and import that into your profile online. Then, it shows your friends what you’ve been listening too. And they just recently opened up on-demand streaming of any song up to 3 times a day. I like last.fm, even if I feel a bit overwhelmed by the site. There are so many things to click on and so many links, but that’s ok. It makes me feel like I still have lots to discover on the site, so it keeps me interested. If you choose not to download the last.fm client, you can still use the browser to stream songs.
3. Seeqpod
Seeqpod.com is basically a music file search engine. You search for songs or artists, and it returns locations on the web, and lets you stream that file through the browser. It’s great; I’m constantly using it to get a quick listen of a song or artist, especially when I’m with friends and we’re talking music.
4. Amie Street
At Amie Street, you can purchase songs based on how popular they are. The newer a song, the cheaper it is. As it gains popularity and purchases, it climbs in price. A pretty cool idea, it’s starting to gain some following and getting more artists.
5. Songbird
Songbird is a web browser which has been modified to play music, and make it much easier to locate and download music files on web pages. When it finds mp3s on a web page, for example, it will provide download links in a special section below the browser. Songbird is a great idea, something I’ll be using more and more. It’s also open source.
Feel free to mention one of your favorite music services in the comments.
I was elated when I purchased a 42″ plasma HDTV just under two years ago. We had just moved into our first house(condo), and Melissa agreed to let me get the tv when we moved in. So after a fair amount of research on options in the HDTV arena at the time, I’d narrowed it down to the Panasonic plasma and the Samsung plasma. Unfortunately the Panasonic was sold out and on backorder everywhere, so I went with the Samsung; specifically, the model was the Samsung HP-R4252, the 42″ 720p plasma.
Next, I stopped by the local Comcast office and picked up the digital HD receiver with DVR. After an activation call to Comcast and a few tweaks to the settings, I was in HD heaven. And we’ve been very happy with the picture – until it broke a few weeks ago.
I was watching football(one of the college bowl games I think) a couple days before the new year, when all of the sudden a 3 to 4 inch wide rectangle, which I highlighted with red border in the above picture, just went black. I tried changing the source of the picture, tried turning the tv off and on, but nothing was working. After some searching around on the web, I’ve concluded that a plasma cell went out – I think. At any rate, it’s going to cost more to fix the tv than it would to buy a new one. So that’s a bummer.
The tv is out of warranty – I didn’t purchase an extended warranty or service protection plan. I’ll be sure to get one of those next time. I called Samsung for support; they referred me to a local authorized Samsung repair center, TV unlimited in Sunnyvale. I’d need to bring the tv in to them, and it would be $150 upfront just to diagnose the problem. No thanks.
So now we’re stuck with a tv that shows all of a standard definition picture, but only about 85% of a high definition picture. If you’re interested, it’s officially for sale. I’ll make you a really good offer. We have begun to look around for a replacement, but haven’t quite decided on which one yet. I’d like to get it before the super bowl; there are some very good sales going on for tv’s right now before the big game.
My takeaway: get an extended warranty, especially for relatively new technology.
Did you know…
In 1950, the average home size in the US was 950 sq. feet.
In 2007, the average home size in the US was 2400 sq. feet.
I was curious to see what the population was then and is now:
1950: 150,520,798
2008: 303,327,905 at the time of the blog post being written – you can see the population clock at the U.S. Census Bureau website.
It’s funny that we’ve more than doubled in population over 58 years, yet the average home size has more than doubled in sq. feet.
Melissa and I joined some friends for a one week trip to Kauai, Hawaii. We got back last week, late Thursday night…then woke up Friday with the flu. I guess I’m not that surprised. We’re both fully recovered though, so back to work we go.
We went to Poipu beach -
We played golf…
…we went hiking…
…and we went diving! Right off those rocks.
Everyone had a blast. For more Kauai photos, check them out here.
We got a couple cloudy, windy days, but for the most part it was sunny and beautiful. A few quick notes:
Apparently, Tiger is a frequent patron, so at least I can say I’ve played on a course which he has played. No, I’m not going to tell you my score.I can’t wait to go back!
NJ
I played some Guitar Hero II over the Christmas break and now I’m completely hooked. When I got back home, I immediately called up a friend who I knew already had Guitar Hero and was interested in selling it. We struck a deal and a couple hours later we were rockin’ in our living room.
If you’ve played the game at all, you’ll be impressed with this video of an 8-year-old beating a song on expert(expert is the hardest level of difficulty on the game):
The Chevy Volt was on campus this week and we got to check it out up close, and talk to a couple of the engineers that worked on the car.
It seems really cool. Some of it’s features that separate it from other electric/hybrid cars:
I believe it’s on schedule to hit production in 2010, with a target price of around $30,000. I was really impressed with the appearance of the car, too. And I got a free t-shirt.