Mostly Harmless

This kicks butt.

click for a bigger picture

I just got my IRTrans (from Germany!) so now my desktop Mac has an infrared transmitter/receiver. The Mac version comes with a license for the iRed virtual remote control software — which let me crank out a quickie virtual TiVo remote, and a remote TiVo remote. The “remote remote” on one computer controls the virtual remote on the other computer… umm, remotely. The virtual remote actually controls a real TiVo connected to the desktop Mac via a Formac Studio TVR video encoder.

Here’s the fun part: iChat treats the video encoder as a regular camera so I can do a (wireless) one-way video chat from that Mac to my Powerbook. I control the TiVo with the remote remote which sends AppleScript commands to the other Mac, which sends IR codes to the TiVo. The video coming back is at about 26 frames per second which is good enough to let me scan through shows at 18x normal speed without missing too many frames.

It works alarmingly well.

The lag time on sending remote commands from the second machine is still only a fraction of a second. The quality of the video and sound isn’t terribly great, but it’s pretty decent. The video looks better in Tiger but they cut the frame rate to 15 fps. I suppose they only expect to be using iChat for video conferencing and not for broadcasting TV around the house — where a higher frame rate would be desirable. I’ll experiment with other streaming video solutions at some point in the future but using iChat works very nicely with virtually no setup.

Update, 04-30-05: I tried this today with QuickTime Streaming Server and the lag is horrendous. iChat kicks its ass but there aren’t any visible parameter settings in iChat other than a bandwidth throttle. Time to go diggin’.

(Not an auto-updating graphic… but that’s a good idea. That’s probably why it’s a widget.)

Yesterday I learned the importance of specifying “Minneapolis, MN” instead of just “Minneapolis.” Because you end up seeing the weather for Minneapolis, NC. There’s also a Minneapolis, KS.

It is currently 72° and sunny in Metropolis. IL.

One of my fave new shows is “It Takes a Thief” on The Discovery Channel.

They drive through a neighborhood, select a promising target, and convince the victims homeowners to let them break in and rob their house. Once the producers have set up a bunch of cameras a “reformed” thief proceeds to break in and trash ransack the house while the victims homeowners watch, in absolute horror, from the comfort of a van parked across the street.

It’s awesome.

It never takes the thief more than a minute or two to get into the house and he generally spends only 10 minutes trashing looting the place. The amount of destruction is impressive. Almost everything that was on a shelf or in a drawer ends up on the floor — except for the valuable stuff, which he hauls off in their own suitcases (which he packs up in their own car if he finds the keys).

This week he not only stole the homeowners’ van but he took their dog too, because it was so friendly.

Like I said. Awesome.

After all of this the homeowners get their stuff back, more or less in one piece, and get a bitchin’ security system installed. A couple of weeks later the thieves come back, unannounced, to try to break in again. Usually someone will leave a window or door unlocked… so the thieves are waiting inside the house when the owners come back, at which point they receive a stern warning from the crooks to actually use all of the security measures next time.

Good stuff — with many useful security tips. It’s, like, educational, or something.

Less good, and less educational is “Impossible Heists” on CourtTV. I’ve decided it’s lame and won’t link to it. They appear to have chosen the teams based on their complete inability to work with other people for more than 20 seconds without having some sort of argument. If you’re planning some manner of extravagant jewelry heist it might be useful to you.