M.W. Tremblay

This is so stupid, I just have to post it.

Free speech is a wonderful thing.

Tags: america, atheist, craziness, god, idiots, religion

Here’s something random.

My friend Johann has requested that I post this odd little thing….

QR Code Generator

Don’t know what it is? Neither do I…

Tags: barcode, johann is odd, wtf

The iPhone thus far.

So far this thing has been great. The app selection is terrific, I’ve been able to find an app for anything I’ve needed. In fact, I’m writting this post from my iPhone.

The touch keyboard isn’t quite perfect, it’s great in the widescreen mode but not quite as comfortable when it’s in the portrait mode, and sadly not all apps have the widescreen feature.

It’s pretty much as advertised though, safari works great and the spelling correction is rather intelligent, which is good because it’s really easy to mistype something.

I won’t babble much more about it, most people already know all about this phone by now. Maybe I’ll post later about certain apps I’ve been using and the ones I like best…..

Tags: apple, awesome, iphone

The iphone rules

It made this post possible.

More later.

Tags: iphone apple awesome

iTunes is now DRM free.

All I can say is…

WOOOOOOT!

Major win for the anti-DRM crusade, and on top of it, all of the songs are also in higher quality AAC format.

I guess once the RIAA realized they were losing more money than they made trying to fight little kids downloading music in court they gave up.

Take that bastards!

Tags: aac, apple, downloading, drm, fuck you riaa, itunes, Music, riaa, ultimate win, woot

Apple TV: New toy I got for Christmas

Yeah, it’s a neat little box, though out of the box it’s a bit limiting. Streaming music and video from iTunes is pretty cool, but it doesn’t really do much else. You have that, interfacing with the iTunes store, and YouTube. And you have to do it all according to Apples rules. Which, frankly, sucks. But, luckily Boxee exists, so I’ve been playing with that.

Unfortunately my network setup is far from normal, using Verizon Wireless Broadband for my internet limits a lot of what I can do, and how I can set up my network. I’ve been able to play with the interface, and play with the online content streaming, but not with the networked media sharing. (Yes, my network is THAT odd, when I move, this will be resolved). 

An odd thing though, is people who are ripping their DVDs to stream them to their Apple TVs or other Boxee devices, I’ve been messing with it too, but it takes forever to rip and encode the video. In the time it takes me to do that I might as well just watch it on DVD anyway, it’s kind of a silly idea. The real cool thing about Boxee though is the online streaming, getting YouTube, Hulu, and any of the above on your TV is great, the local music and video streaming just seems secondary.

When I move I’ll have two or three room mates, and we’ll be using my TV set up in the living room I’m sure, so it will be fun to have all of our music and video shared so we can all enjoy it in the living room. For now though, it’s just a toy I’ll be playing with.

And an update on the whole “Future of Media” theme that I’ve had going on…

Well, I’ve been loving Amazon downloads, and more recently the iTunes Plus downloads (lossless audio, no DRM), I’ve been doing that a lot lately, and buying vinyl, it’s been working well for me.

As far as video….well, the only really good options are…just buying DVDs, or streaming from sites like Hulu. There are no DRM free video download services that I know of (that are legal at least), and newer DVDs are even coming with DRM on the disc. These companies are going nuts with this.

The future of video? It might be streaming.

Tags: apple tv, audio, boxee, dvd, media, Music, streaming, video

Recent Vinyl Scores

I’ve recently begun collecting vinyl records, the king of all formats. The nature of the media gives the music a more “organic” sounding effect, and the bigger artwork is great. It’s really the only format I would fight to keep, CDs can be (and are being) replaced by digital downloads (as I’ve posted about before), if bands and record labels offered lossless audio downloads and cover art, and a PDF booklet, I’d give CDs the finger. With vinyl though, it’s something special, I don’t really understand why, but it is. It seems to make more sense to me to distribute albums digitally, but sell vinyl for the collectors, it’s something you can display, and they sound awesome.

So…what have I bought lately?

Skinny Puppy - Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse

Skinny Puppy - Cleanse Fold And Manipulate

Skinny Puppy - Testure (12″ Single)

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Ratt - Invasion Of Your Privacy

Tags: Music, nine inch nails, ratt, skinny puppy, vinyl

You sir, are a nerd.

I’m afraid I am, as I just scored another Sega Saturn and I’m damned excited about it. When I was little I had a Genesis, and I think it’s sort of tied me to the company a bit, since now I am for some reason compelled to collect any Sega stuff I find, and recently I’ve been all about finding games in boxed condition. I had a Saturn before, but it broke a while ago so I had no way to play my old games.

A friend of mine mentioned that they had one at our local ultra-nerdy video game shop, Game Pad, and we went straight there. Now I have a Saturn with one controller, but sadly no A/V cable. Luckily eBay exists! So, I have a new cable coming my way.

In some fit of strange celebration I decided to break out the whole collection…and god damn it…I’m a nerd.

Connected to my 32″ HDTV right now is a Master System II, a Genesis II+SegaCD(and sometimes a 32X), and a Saturn (awaiting the A/V cable obviously). I’ve been alternating between Shinobi, Ys, and Streets of Rage and damn is it fun! So, now I’m trying to build up my collection of games for all of these systems, the only thing is…I’m a collector…which means that I have to find them complete with box or I don’t want it. You’ll understand when your older.

My bank account is currently in danger right now since, as luck would have it, SMS and Genesis games are quite easy to find boxed on eBay.

Should I photograph the current collection?

Tags: boxed, ebay, genesis, master system, nerd, saturn, sega

This is a test post

Just testing the blogging capabilities of the Flock web browser, I stumbled across it today, seems okay but the themes are pretty ugly IMO.

Check it out.

Tags: browser, flock, test, web

I can not juggle, and I’ve been spending to much time at the Verizon Store lately.

So last night at work being tired and grumpy, I dropped my cell phone in the damned toilet. Yes, I did, like a text message addicted pre-teen girl I gave my phone an un-expected shit bath. You see in the stalls at work they put rolls of toilet paper in the dual holders, and then for some fucking reason stack more rolls on top of this. I guess two rolls of toilet paper isn’t enough? So, like an idiot I try to juggle all of these things around and there goes my phone, splash! Blah.

At work I use my phone to check Facebook and MySpace since it is blocked at work, and I like trying to find any escape out of this horrible place, I love the internet.

So, back to the Verizon store I go, but this time I have to make my mom come with me since I’m locked into her contract until late next year because I got a phone upgrade (yeah, they give you fucking upgrades, but in order to upgrade you’re locked in for another two years). The phone was fried, and they swapped it out for an identical model (original enV) except for the battery…I have an orange phone, because for some reason I like orange, I have an orange car too. They didn’t have any orange batteries in stock so…I have a silver battery…fine. I’m not too concerned about appearances so this is fine, if I really bugs me I can get an orange battery off of eBay for about $10 (yeah fuck you Verizon and your $40 batteries).

Don’t get me wrong, I do like their service, I wish it was more flexible, I wish they used sim cards and fully GSM phones, and didn’t lock the hell out of their phones, and I wish that this 2 year contract bullshit didn’t exist. But it works for me, if it wasn’t for their 3G coverage I wouldn’t have broadband where I live. But, cell phones aren’t water proof, and I’m still an idiot.

Oh, and note to any one to happens to read this, if you have MyVerizon enabled on your plan you can get an application called Backup Assistant on your phone for free (you have to pay for it otherwise). It’s in Get-It-Now under the Business Apps section. It backs up your contacts on Verizons servers under your MyVerizon account, so if you lose or damage your phone your contacts aren’t lost. I won’t be without this again! Time to send out the obligatory “Lost my phone need numbers!!!” post on Facebook…

In the meantime I shall ponder about what happened to the old analog phone companies that used to do this same thing with their customers, who were eventually regulated to death and transformed into the analog phone service we know today. Now that the Government is ceasing analog broadcasts through the air, will they kill the analog phone too and go all cellular? Most of us already use a cell phone as our primary phone…so why not? Eh, we will see, I can’t talk about this much without sounding overly Socialist.