Kill your (cable) TV

December 11, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

The Pelkey media center: A Dell Inspiron 8130 laptop married to a 46-inch Sharp LC-46SB54U, run via 802.11g wireless and Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse.

I bet the cable-TV people weren’t happy to read this in The New York Times, where today it’s the most e-mailed story on the site.

But as usual, the press is a day late and a dollar short as regards the inexorable march of cheapskate technology. My man Charles Pelkey canceled his landline and cable TV six weeks ago — he and the family rely on cell phones and computer-delivered video from Hulu, Freeonlineepisodes.net, Netflix and elsewhere.

Like me, Charles is something of a hoarder, so he didn’t need to buy a Mini like the pioneers profiled in the NYT. He simply hooked up a 4-year-old Dell laptop to the tube via analog RGB cable and instantly saved himself something like $90 per month.

I had tried a variant of this some months back, using Herself’s MacBook and a set of composite video/audio cables, but the results were disappointing, as in heavy wine consumption, much profanity and very little watchable TV. So the other day I invested in a Mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter and a DVI-to-HDMI cable and hey presto! Instant streaming video on the 42-inch Toshiba. Audio comes from the headphone jack via a splitter plugged into red-and-white audio cables attached to the Sony home theater. A simple 3.5mm PC audio cable run straight to the TV works, too.

Like Charles, I’m not hurting for hardware, so our investment is minimal. Buying a new Mac for work will let me dedicate my 3-year-old MacBook to streaming video, so we won’t have to be booting Herself’s ’puter up and shutting it down all the time, connecting and disconnecting cables, so she can manage her various social-media obligations. I would prefer to use one of my retired G3s, either the 500MHz PowerBook or 800MHz iBook, but their video cards ain’t got the stuff.

And we can probably do without the nifty wireless mouse, too. Our living room is so tiny that it’s no trouble to walk the four paces from couch to computer for switching video sources. Besides, I’m a great fat bastard and need the exercise.

What has nine fingers and no new iMac?

December 2, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Got outdoors yesterday for my first ride since dislocating my communications system (the middle digit on my left hand), and while it felt good to be cycling outdoors for a change, it also felt kinda creepy and weird.

The reconfigured Voodoo was just fine. But I haven’t had to rehab’ a damaged body part since my last broken collarbone in 1994 or thereabouts, and I had forgotten how tentative it always makes me. I kept lifting the damaged paw off the bars for every little bump, which is not always such a hot idea. But I lasted an hour without incident and was glad to have taken the plunge.

Especially when I awakened to 18 degrees, which is pretty much where the thermometer has been pegged all day. Got to get ’em while you can in December. And the splint came off today, so I may be riding inside for a while anyway, even when and if the sun shines.

Meanwhile, for everyone who called me a sissy for not immediately leaping on the chance to buy a new Mac, scope this out — seems the 27-inch iMac did an end run around quality control.

I read some of the comments and a few of these poor sods are on their third bum iMac. The things apparently are showing up with shattered screens, flickering screens, bootup issues, wireless keyboards and mice that won’t hold a Bluetooth connection, or just plain DOA. And the problems apparently are not confined to the 27-incher — there are a few 21.5-inchers in there as well.

Is it hardware? Software? A combination of the two? Or the fact that at least some of these iMacs are shipping in anonymous brown boxes that don’t tell the purchasers — or the delivery people — anything about there being pricey computers inside?

So, pffffbbbbllllllhhh to you and yours, wiseguys. I think I’ll wait until Cupertino chases the Chinese cooties out of this lot before I lay another truckload of Dead President Trading Cards on the Black Turtleneck Mob.

I’d rather push my Toyota than . . .

November 28, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Twenty-six years old and it still starts — if one knows which demons to invoke.

It must be International Try to Start Your Piece of Shit Truck Day.

I needed to haul the Voodoo down to Old Town for transformation into a flat-bar bike with thumbshifter (courtesy of Paul’s Thumbies) so I can get back to riding the road sometime soon (I hope). Toward that end, I was trying to fire up the White Tornado, my neglected and carbureted 1983 Toyota 4WD longbed pickup, ’cause it’s easier to slide a bike into its 6-foot bed one-handed than it is to park one on the Subaru Forester’s roof rack.

The 2005 Subie, on the other hand, is easier to start. Twist the key and off you go. The Toyota … not so much, especially if it’s been nestled up to the curb for a few weeks of wintry weather.

As I was cranking away, stomping rhythmically on the accelerator while mumbling various incantations and imprecations, I heard some other vehicle trying to harmonize with mine. Down the block, with its hood up, sat a Ford 100 Custom Cab of indeterminate age, its owner, like me, betting against the ravages of time, neglect and weather.

I eventually got my beater going, so I guess I win. But his has a better paint job, and collector’s plates, too, so it looks much niftier sitting immobile against the curb.

Have you blackened your Friday?

November 27, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Oh, the tangled web we weave when spending cuts we first perceive.

Not us. Herself is downstairs working and I’m upstairs goofing off, enjoying the fracas from a distance. My idea of a good time is not playing Australian rules football with a bunch of bargain-hunters in a Best Buy at four o’clock in the morning.

Mind you, I like to shop. It’s often more fun and less disappointing than actually buying something. But I usually root around online for quite a while, checking specs and weighing options, before marching down to some local shop to lay hands on the product and finally slap down the plastic. Or not.

Here’s a case in point. I have authorization from Herself to buy a new Mac, but haven’t done so. How come?

Well, it’s that natural contrariness rearing its ugly head again. The Black Turtleneck Mob in Cupertino isn’t selling exactly what I want to buy, which is an affordable, accessible consumer tower model like my old G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac, simple to fix and/or upgrade, but sporting modern hardware and software.

There’s the Mac Pro, but at $2,499 I’d hardly call it affordable, especially since it ships with a measly 3 GB of RAM and no Airport Express card. You want to double the first and add the last, tack on another $200.

OK, how about those nifty iMacs? Not sure I’d like working full time on a glossy screen. My 13.3-inch MacBook has one, and it can be irksome to see my ugly mug staring back at me as I cook up another bouillabaisse of bullshit for fun and profit. Plus all its ports are in the ass-end of the thing. WTF?

New MacBook? Got an old one, thanks, from 2006 and in a manly black (I dislike pasty white computers). MacBook Pro? No separate audio in/out ports on the new 13-incher, which seems to offer the most bang per buck, and no user-removable batteries on any of ’em. Plus I already have more laptops than Cheney’s closet does skeletons. As daily drivers go, they and the multiplicity of cables to peripherals required eat up a lot of desktop space, which irks the cats, who like to use my desk as a springboard to the window for reasons known only to themselves.

Mini? Another Mac I can’t crack, and it seems underpowered, if nicely priced.

And then there’s that voice, only one of many in my head, but among the most insistent, which keeps whispering, “You work in a subset of journalism, a craft with all the future of a Conestoga repairman in Manhattan.”

So instead of greening up my Black Friday with a new Mac, I’ve gotten myself a tad more computing horsepower by hooking up the MacBook to my 22-inch ViewSonic. The G4 tower now serves mostly as storage space, three drives’ worth, accessible wirelessly through my DSL modem-router combo. But I’ll also use it to scan and color cartoons, since it has an ancient yet serviceable version of Photoshop (another $500 goes unspent).

This probably won’t fly come July, if I’m still helping VeloNews.com push pixels during Le Tour. But it ain’t July.

• Late update: Reading the Gaslight‘s latest coverage of the first official shopping day of the holiday season (suck it, you out-of-Focus fucktards), it’s sad to note that while the G found it worthwhile to report from big boxes on Powers and Academy boulevards, in Woodland Park and in Castle Rock, they didn’t bother to send anyone downtown — which is about a mile away from Gaslight HQ. Maybe they’re afraid of ice falling from the USOC HQ, but I can’t see this lot being scared of a head injury, considering where they keep their brains. And they wonder why both the newspaper and downtown are struggling.

Giant steps

November 23, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

OK, I’m a week into my disfigurement (disfingerment?) and I can see it’s gonna be a long healing process, just like the time I dislocated the thumb — which, ironically, shares a hand with the splinted middle finger and met its fate a long stone’s throw from where the birdie bit the dust, on a technical bit of trail near Lazy Land in Palmer Park.

My choice of stationary-trainer tunes has come in for some light criticism, so I’m turning to you, my small, deeply disturbed following, for your advice on a soundtrack for an extended Tour de Living Room. I did 70 minutes on the Giant Tempo yesterday and will probably be ramping that up to two hours, so I need a shitload of music and it can’t all be redneck rock, though I have some Charlie Daniels in reserve for emergencies.

Meanwhile, the wizards at VeloNews.com are still stomping bugs at the new digs. Seems IE6 doesn’t like the new site’s calendar and we have a significant number of prehistoric readers who insist on logging on via abacus, smoke signal or log drum. Christ, what’s next? “Optimized for Mosaic?”