JeffJournal

I brought some speakers back from my trip to Louisville a few weekends ago.

I can now listen to my oggs in much better quality than the little speakers in my laptop. Amusingly enough, the audio from the modem also goes across the speakers. So I get to hear that in much better quality as well -- I think I can almost hear the 1's and 0's...

I saw The Bourne Identity today. I think the best way to sum it up is "good but not great". As usual, Hollywood took some liberties with the story. Indeed, there were at least 1 (possibly 2) sequels to the book, and interestingly enough, the movie didn't really seem to leave itself open for a sequel. But it was enjoyable, and I've always like Matt Damon -- he's a good actor.

All in all, I give it 10 minutes.

I saw Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones with Tracy when I was in Louisville. Although I generally liked Episode I, I liked AOTC even better. Lots of action, very good tie-ins to the rest of the story line (i.e., you can see why some things happened in episodes 4, 5, and 6), etc. I give AOTC 20 minutes.

I'm still waiting for a few other movies this summer:

• MIB II
  
• K-19: The Widowmaker
  
• ...? I know there's some others, but I can't think of them right now...

We finally released a public web site for my organization today. Want to know about who I work for in the Army?

My specific organization is "Tactical Automation Support", or "TAS" (there's a tan tab for it), but the whole IFS base organization is here at Ft. Huachuca.

Enjoy. :-)

Watch this space.

A new season of Witchblade started Sunday, with a bonus episode on Monday. Very cool stuff. They're changing a whole lot of stuff, so it should be quite interesting.

My perception of watch TV has changed with my Tivo. I now no longer ensure to get to the TV right as a show starts. I can literally watch it anytime. There are two major advantages with a Tivo in this respect:

• The ability to pause live TV (which is surprisingly useful), and zip back-and-forth through a program that you're currently watching (including live TV). Of course, you can't zip forward beyond "now" -- Tivo is a recorder, after all -- but I think you get my point.

• The ability to watch one recorded thing while another is being recorded. This is actually more significant than it sounds. So if I previously taped show A, and am currently recording show B, I can still watch show A. For example, if I wanted to record a whole bunch of shows on a given weeknight from 8-11pm, I could start watching around 8:30-9pm, and watch all the shows commercial-free.

Essentially, if I want to watch something, I can watch it whenever I want. That can be right when it's on TV, 1 minute after it starts, 2 days after it finished, or whenever. Hence, it allows me to choose to watch TV when I want to, not when the TV says its on. This is different from a VCR because although a VCR allows you to watch a show while it is being recorded, a Tivo allows you to watch at time X while it is actually recording at time Y. Think about it -- it's quite handy.

All in all, my approach to watching TV has become more much relaxed, because I can watch anything anytime.

It's all about OSCAR:

• An article was recently published in LinuxJournal about OSCAR.

• The IU CS department decided to advertise this article (with my name attached to it) on its home page.

• We're getting closer closer closer to version 1.3 stable...