Technology
"I beta tested every operating system.
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em.
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'.
It does all my work without me even askin'."
-Weird Al Yankovich, "All About the Pentiums"
Being on leave has taught me that while I love our kids a lot, really I want to mess with technology for at least a few hours a week. 40+ is an awful lot, so work sometimes still feels like burning out, but being completely without is reasonably rough.
Sharon and I got new iPhones a few weeks ago when our contract with Verizon expired. It's the kind of gadget-y extravagance I feel bad about, but not enough to not do it. We also have an HDHomeRun, so it seemed reasonable to try to figure out how to use VLC to transcode the video from the HDHomeRun in real time, enabling us to watch TV on our iPhones. That part was easy. Then I wrote a script to automatically tune the HDHomeRun based on HTTP GET requests as well as restart the VLC transcoding. Then I made a simple webpage listing all the ClearQAM channels we can tune with the HDHomeRun, with links to this script to start the streaming.
Now Sharon and I can watch Live TV from anywhere in our house on our iPhones, and it took about two hours. It was actually so simple to do I am surprised that there's not already "an app for that." We're one step closer to one of my technological fantasies: being able to display the Super Bowl on every TV, handled device, and computer at the same time on Super Bowl Sunday during our annual Super Bowl party. Everybody needs a dream, right?
It's the little things that make me smile. Only two more weeks of leave left, though.
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em.
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'.
It does all my work without me even askin'."
-Weird Al Yankovich, "All About the Pentiums"
Being on leave has taught me that while I love our kids a lot, really I want to mess with technology for at least a few hours a week. 40+ is an awful lot, so work sometimes still feels like burning out, but being completely without is reasonably rough.
Sharon and I got new iPhones a few weeks ago when our contract with Verizon expired. It's the kind of gadget-y extravagance I feel bad about, but not enough to not do it. We also have an HDHomeRun, so it seemed reasonable to try to figure out how to use VLC to transcode the video from the HDHomeRun in real time, enabling us to watch TV on our iPhones. That part was easy. Then I wrote a script to automatically tune the HDHomeRun based on HTTP GET requests as well as restart the VLC transcoding. Then I made a simple webpage listing all the ClearQAM channels we can tune with the HDHomeRun, with links to this script to start the streaming.
Now Sharon and I can watch Live TV from anywhere in our house on our iPhones, and it took about two hours. It was actually so simple to do I am surprised that there's not already "an app for that." We're one step closer to one of my technological fantasies: being able to display the Super Bowl on every TV, handled device, and computer at the same time on Super Bowl Sunday during our annual Super Bowl party. Everybody needs a dream, right?
It's the little things that make me smile. Only two more weeks of leave left, though.
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