Life is a State of Mind

More gorgeous weather got us off to a good start today. Erci started writing a paper while I went to the Fortune District (Soka Gakkai) discussion meeting on “What is Kosen Rufu and how can we achieve it in our lifetimes?” that Mike and Steve lead us in. I particularly liked a passage Steve had selected from the SGI website about separating people from their victimhood so they could find happiness being a key to stopping violence. I am trying to find the passage, because it was so very good.

Then we headed out to Gadino Vineyards where dance teachers from The Ballroom Studio taught some basic Salsa and we did the Gadino wine tasting. We liked their “Sunset” blended white wine, that had characteristics of a light Gewurztraminer and their Cabernet Sauvignon and bought a few bottles of each. The drive out and back was gorgeous; it had just rained, and the mountains were shrouded in a blue mist.

On our way back from little Washington, Virginia, we stopped at Blue Ridge Seafood for some lobster, snow crab legs, and gator tail. Very informal and very good eats.

For those of you using Google Calendars and Mac OS X Desktops with iCal, you can finally keep them in sync without any 3rd party software. Google supports CalDav format now. Instructions are on the Google Calendar CalDAV support page.

I have mostly been relying on my Palm Tungsten C and Palm Desktop (v4.2.1) for Mac software to handle my personal calendar, but Palm Desktop has been unsupported for a long time now and is really showing it’s age. People at work have been sending me meeting.ics files (from Outlook I think) that can be opened in iCal on my Mac OS X laptop/desktop, but I had to manually transfer (cut & paste) those to my Palm Desktop software in the past. I may finally switch to iCal now that I can see all the google calendar events and sync my Tungsten C to iCal via Mark/Space’s Missing Sync for Palm OS ($39.95).

Hat tip to John Gruber for pointing out the new CalDav support in Google Calendar, and huge thanks to Google for making multiple calendars so easy to use and share. This now makes five google applications I use all the time: search, maps, calendar, blogger, and analytics. I’d dump blogger except for the local Soka Gakkai calendar and my old Dive Blog which has not been converted to WordPress yet; but Google’s other applications simply work. Very, very sweet.

A co-worker saw a license plate frame that said: “My next license plate will be made by Bush and Cheney.” Now isn’t that a pleasant thought? Happy Monday!

My latest favorite music fascination is Rodrigo Y Gabriela, metal/rock inspired flamenco and classical guitar influence original music by two guitar virtuosos. I am a little sad that I do not think it will be practical to see them live, but want to share the information that they will be touring this area of the East Coast of the United States soon!

Rodrigo Y Gabriela are playing The National in Richmond, Virginia on Friday, August 8th at 9:00pm. Tickets are $25 each; and a good show is pretty much guaranteed. The following day, August 9th, they will be playing the V Festival in Baltimore. That festival is more money for each ticket ($99 and up I think), but you get to see the Foo Fighters and many other bands as well.

In case you have not figured out how awesome they are, this is from their website:

If you are interested, but not local, check out the list of Rodrigo Y Gabriela Tour Dates to see what location and date will work for you.

This is just too freaking funny to be missed:

Tax Cuts Help Porn Industry

It brings a whole new meaning to the words “Economic Stimulus Package” doesn’t it?
Ruins my plan to invest it all in European companies and the Obama campaign, but it’s still kind of fun to imagine the heads of the Christianists exploding as they find out.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

I’ve been very happy with our AppleTV since I got the thing hooked up over a year ago. I like it mostly for viewing internet content on the big screen, though we have rented a movie or two and dumped some dance videos and photo slide shows from the computer into the AppleTV for big-screen shared viewing. When Apple updated the software to “Take 2″ it made direct movie renting and YouTube viewing possible, and that added a lot of value to our AppleTV. It did not open the AppleTV to adding my own software nor third party software, and that has been a letdown. As good as Apple’s software is, I want to play with a few ideas they apparently have not figured out as possible yet.

One of the small annoyances has been in ability to surf the web directly for more flash content. So I reviewed some AppleTV hacker sites:

• iClarified’s article on installing SSH with a Take 2 Patchstick; this is the key first step. You’ll need:
  • A USB flash drive, of at least 128MB capacity
  • A Mac running OS X 10.4 or newer, that has both a powered USB slot and a connected optical drive
  • Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 install CDs (note, the older PowerPC based 10.4.3 DVD will NOT work); or an installed 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 intel based Mac.
  • Some understanding of ssh commands, scp commands, and Apple DMG files.
• awkwardTV (web site with various hacks, ideas, plugins for AppleTV)
• AppleTV Hacks (web site with forums, news, and tips about the AppleTV)
• AppleTV Bootloader (still figuring out all the stuff here)
• iClarified’s other AppleTV tutorials (very useful stuff)

Anyway; I was able to build my own USB patchstick using the instructions on the iClarified website (I have an AppleTV with v2.0.2 and several Macs running 10.5.3) that got my AppleTV rebooted with all my existing content, v2.0.2 and ssh access. With ssh access I was able to scp Couch Surfer into the AppleTV, and add a couple of browser plugins (Flash Player and QuickTime Player) and the CoreAudioKit.framework; and now my AppleTV can surf the web and play flash and quicktime movies from inside the browser. It makes Blood Ties from Lifetime Network available for free; though so far the viewing is a bit blocky and slow.

Yes, I can easily watch this from any computer using existing web browsers; but the point is to get more content on the big screen so we can watch from the couch and comfy chair. Yes, the videos are also available as iTunes rentals and as DVDs; but this is a new series to us and we want to watch a few episodes for free before we decide if it is worth buying or renting for cash.

This effort is also about having my device open to new software as I want to add it. I suspect I will not stop with just a simple browser; but will find new ways to use the AppleTV now that I have ssh access.

If you are a Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Fray, Firefly, Serenity, and soon Dollhouse), you probably already know about Can’t Stop the Serenity, let this just be a reminder to you that it’s this weekend in many places.

Closest to me is Arlington, Virginia at the Cinema ‘n Drafthouse. Tonight at 9:30 and tomorrow at 4:30. Sadly I cannot attend as I will be hosting a La Belle event, but if you can you should go. The funds raised go to Equality Now (Joss’s favorite charity). It’s a lot of fun. If you are not a Buffy or Firefly fan already, I strongly urge you to drop everything, run out and buy the DVD boxed sets and catch up with the rest of the world. Best television series ever. Mine is an evil laugh!

Latest Cheney Tape May Contain Evidence Of His Whereabouts

Just spreading good cheer!