Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Within a few pages of reading this one I started recommending it to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. Our image of Jesus is shaped from just brief moments at the beginning of his life and the end. This book provides a humorous back story for the 30 something years we don't know about. Told from the perspective of Joshua's childhood pal Levi bar Alphaeus, also known as Biff, we hear of how Biff and Joshua stumble through adolescence and into their adulthood. The humor here runs the gamut from subtle wink to raunchy blue, and I loved it. It isn't very often that I literally laugh out loud when reading, but I enjoyed several such moments while reading this one. Highly recommend!
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Review: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Review: Time Travelers Never Die
Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Michael Shelbourne mysteriously disappears from his home, sending his son Adrian on a quest to find him. What he discovers is that his father, a reknown physicist, has managed to create a time travel device packaged much like an iPod. Adrian and his friend Dave embark on a quest to discover where in time his father has disappeared to, and why he hasn't returned.
Overall I enjoyed this book, and I would likely have enjoyed it more if I were a history buff. There are all sorts of references to historical events and people that I'm hesitant to admit I know very little about. One thing that frustrated me is that there are points in the story where the solution to a plot point or question are painfully obvious, yet the characters trudge on, completely oblivious to what should be right in front of their face. It would be one thing if these were men thrust into a completely unexpected situation outside of their normal pursuits, but these are a college professor and son of a physics genius. This is a minor quibble though.
The sci-fi element of this story is pretty light, so I would recommend this to historical fiction fans who like to dabble in sci-fi before I would recommend it to science fiction fans with a penchant for history.
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Review: Full Dark, No Stars
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
King is known for striving for high page count, so it is always nice to come across a selection of his short (by King standards) stories. As explained in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, these are stories that ask what would a real person do in this situation. There is very little of the supernatural here.
1922
The longest and possibly most difficult to get through of the stories. A study in how the torment of guilt can ruin your life.
Big Driver
This one reminded me of the exploitation film "I spit on your grave". If you were mildly famous and something tragic happened to you, what would you do?
Fair Extension
I think this is my favorite from this book. A man doomed by cancer meets a salesman who can give him an extension on his life at the price of 15% of his salary for the remainder of his years. Oh, and he has to pick someone else to be saddled with the burden of bad luck that is being lifted from his own shoulders.
A Good Marriage
What would you do if, after decades of marriage, you discovered your spouse was hiding a terrible, terrible secret? Would you be able to live with it? Would you be able to live with yourself?
The paperback edition I read also included an additional short story.
Under the Weather
It's hard not to spoil this one as it is so short, but I did like it. Would you be able to say goodbye to the one you love?
Overall, I think this is an excellent collection of short stories. Many are going to feel familiar, but King's storytelling style keeps them interesting. Also, these are told without the usual gotchas and twists. I'd recommend to anyone who is a fan of King's work, or just looking to see how dark the human soul can be.
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Night Sky Photography
I am not a photographer, but I can certainly appreciate a great photo. I'm also not an astronomer, but I enjoy looking up at the stars. Ever since moving out to the country we've had some great views of the night sky. Planets shine brightly and on a clear night you can see the faint glow of the milky way. I'd really like to be able to capture some of these views, but I'm not willing to spend thousands of dollars on a camera (at least not right now). I'd love to have a high quality telescope too, but that is a pretty low priority right now. So I've been trying to figure out if the things we have around the house might allow me to take a passable picture of the night sky.
I did a little reading to see what I would need, and it turns out you can get a respectable picture with some simple equipment. What I had on hand was my smart phone with camera (Moto DROID v1) and my son's toy telescope (Gallileo 600x50mm refractor). The functions on the Droid's camera are pretty limited. For a night image, the most critical feature is the ability to set the exposure time, followed by setting the focus to infinit. The Droid does allow setting the focus to infiniti, but there are only three exposure settings: 0, +1, and +2. We had a clear night and a bright moon, so I tried to get a shot.
Not what I was hoping for. I mean, sure, you can tell there is some light out there, and it is vaguely crescent shaped, but you can't really say whether it is the moon or a flashlight.
Tonight was another clear night so I decided to try taking a picture through the telescope. I got the telescope setup on the tripod and aimed at the moon, which was again very bright and clear. I had a devil of a time trying to get the phones camera lined up with the eye piece, and absolutely no luck getting anything in focus.
I was pretty frustrated with the results. Then I had the thought to try the Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX web cam sitting on top of my monitor. It has a very low resolution (1.3MP interpolated) vs. my Droid (5MP). I found it was quite a bit easier to align with the eye piece of the telescope and I was able to get the image mostly focused.
I was surprised and very happy with the way this one turned out. The software for the camera allows for automatically adjusting the exposure and gain, but I found I got the best image when I turned that feature off and set the exposure and gain to their lowest setting. There is a bit of ghosting here based on how the camera takes a photo.
I have yet to try this with our point-and-shoot digital camera. I think I'll have to try that next.
UPDATE: I tried my hand at using our point and shoot, both unaided and through the telescope.
DLNA
I've mentioned before that we converted our DVD library so that we could stream it over our home network. One drawback of that setup was that my main development machine had to be online to host the videos. In addition, when anyone in the house wanted to stream that content, it put a small load on my machine. I really wanted to offload those demands. I looked at the various options on the market, and settled on the Western Digital My Book Live (2TB). The WD My Book Live is a single drive NAS that is DLNA certified. We had recently purchased a Samsung SmartTV (UN55D6000) which is also DLNA certified, so I was looking forward to streaming directly from the drive to the TV with no other components in the mix.
I installed the WD My Book Live on our network and set about copying over our music, movies, and pictures to the drive. We have quite a collection, so this was a multi-hour job. When the copy completed, I switched on the Samsung TV and it immediately found the My Book on our network. It streamed our home movies, music, and pictures perfectly, but each time I tried to stream one of our movies the set would stall on the Loading screen for about a minute before giving the message "Not Supported File Format". Even more frustrating, rather than returning to the table of contents, the set immediately attempted to stream the next file in the directory, which hung the machine for another minute until it responded to the request to exit.
I searched to see if this were a known issue, and which product was the culprit. I found that each product has their own slight issues that, combined, resulted in many users complaining about the same problem. It seems that Samsung's DLNA client makes use of the DLNA server in an unusual way, although still keeping within the letter of the DLNA spec. The WD My Book Live uses the Twonky Media Server to stream content. The version of the server on the device (5.1.9) did not respond appropriately to these requests, which resulted in a failure to stream the video. Other DLNA clients, such as my PS3, stream those same videos just fine from the WD MBL.
My first thought was to figure out what file format our home movies used and transcode our movie library to that format. That is a pretty daunting task considering the size of our library though, and if it sacrificed picture quality I wasn't interested. Fortunately, I found that other users with this same issue had found a solution. It seems that Twonky recognized the issue with Samsung sets and corrected it in the latest version of their software (6.0.34). Western Digital doesn't have any plans to release an official firmware with this version of Twonky, but that didn't stop folks from finding a way to do it on their own. This forum posts describes the steps for upgrading from the stock version of Twonky to the latest revision:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-305396/upgrading-twonky
The Western Digital My Book Live is apparently powered by a PowerPC CPU and runs an embedded version of Linux. After modifying the config file for the machine, it is possible to get a terminal prompt and update the Twonky software. In addition to correcting the streaming issue with Samsung sets, it also includes the ability to display album cover art. Using this new version of Twonky is unsupported, and you have to pay a $20 license fee for the upgrade. I'll gladly pay that fee for working software, although I am disappointed that Western Digital doesn't plan to release this as an official upgrade.
How to Make Your DVD Collection Streamable
If your family is like ours, you probably have a fairly sizable collection of DVDs. You have kids movies, feature films, television show collections, and potentially even home videos. Before Netflix made movie streaming mainstream, you probably thought nothing of keeping a media shelf full of DVD cases and occasionally popping one in your DVD player. It is so much easier now, though, to search for content through that Netflix interface. Wouldn't it be great if all of those DVDs you have around the house were as easy to access as your Netflix content?
Well, with a little time, a PC, and a home network, you can. There are a number of steps involved, though, so I've put together this guide on how to make your DVD collection available on your home network.
DISCLAIMER: This is a guide is intended for use with content that you *own* and have the *right* to use. Distributing copies of copyrighted feature films is against the law. Everybody behave and do good, mmkay?
Ok, with that out of the way, let's talk about the major steps in making your DVD collection available over your home network. First, there are a couple of things you are going to need:
- A Computer with a DVD drive. This guide assumes a Windows machine.
- A home network, wireless or wired
- A gaming console (PS3, Xbox360, Wii) or Home Theater PC (HTPC)
There are three major steps in going from the content on your disc to streaming to your TV, and one optional step.
- Rip the DVD content to your PC
- Transcode the content to a streaming friendly format
- (Optional)"Tag" the file with additional information
- Publish the content on your home network
Step 1 - DVD Rip
The first step is to get the content of the disc and onto your PC (otherwise known as ripping) where you can work with it. For this I recommend DVDFab. DVDFab is actually a swiss army knife when it comes to DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, but we're only interested in one feature: HD Decrypter. If you find the software suite useful, I encourage you to buy a copy, as the suite of tools is really quite nice.
When you open DVDFab you will be presented with a list of options along the left. We are interested in the DVD Copy option at the top. We then get additional options. When ripping a DVD, you can select to copy all of the contents of the disc, which includes the special features, menus, alternative languages, and other content on the disc. Alternatively, you can choose to copy just the main movie feature. Your selection will depend on the content you are ripping, but for most feature films your best option will be Main Movie. On the right hand pane of the window use the source field to select the DVD that you would like to copy from. In the Target field select the folder to copy the content to. DVD content is large, and you will want to have plenty of room on your hard drive. If your PC has two hard drives, I recommend creating a folder on the second drive for storing the DVD rips. In the "Volume Label" field name the content you are ripping. DVDFab will use the name from the source DVD label, but you are free to use whatever you like. The software will create a new folder in the target folder with this name. Finally, for best quality, dropdown the DVD size selector to choose DVD 9. This will retain a perfect bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than performing compression. We're done here, so click the next button.
This next screen displays the tracks found on the disc and which one will be copied. DVDFab is very good about detecting which track is the feature film on the disc. However, if you are ripping a disc that contains episodes of a television show, you may find that you need to fiddle with some of the options. For now, I'll assume that DVDFab correctly selected the main track. Go ahead and click Start to get the rip going. This is a long process, and the time it takes to rip the disc will depend on the length of the content, the speed of your DVD drive, processor, and hard drive. Usually you can expect an hour of content to take about 10 minutes to rip, but this will vary.
Step 2 - Transcode to H.264
Transcoding is the process of converting from one video file format (or codec) to another. I like the Handbrake software for this step. Handbrake comes with a number of profiles that allow you to tailor the transcoding process to the device you intend to display your content on. For the purpose of this guide I'm going to assume you want to display the content on a high definition television from a gaming console, such as a PlayStation3. Select the High Profile option, as this will give you a good copy of the content for streaming without too much compression. From the menu bar, click the Video Source button and choose Video Folder. Now browse to the folder created by DVDFab when it ripped the disc. You may notice that the folder you selected now has several sub-folders: Main Movie->
Step 3 - Tagging (Optional)
While this step is not required to get your content streaming on your home network, you may find it helpful. Tagging allows you to supply additional information about the video file, such as the actors who perform, the director, date it was published, and cover art. I use a free app called MetaX to do this tagging. It isn't the easiest app to use, but the price is right and it has the features I need. First, open the video file you would like to apply tags to. You'll see it added to the list on the right. Next, select that item from the list. Now, on the left side, enter the name of the video in the search box and click Search. The app will pull up data from several tag databases that match the search term. Clicking search results will populate the fields in the main section of the app. If you don't find what you are looking for you can manually enter the details for your file. Once complete, click the check box next to each box that you would like associated with the file, or click the check mark button in the toolbar to toggle all checks. Finally, click the Apply button (shaped like an arrowhead) to apply these tags to the file. You can add several files to your queue and tag them all at once.
Step 4 - Publish
The final step to making your content available is to publish it on your local network. If you are running Windows 7, the built-in Windows Media Server software can do this for you. I've found the security settings required to get Windows Media Server to work properly to be very frustrating, so I use PlayOn. The PlayOn service runs on your PC and makes content available to your other network devices, such as other PCs, game consoles, and mobile devices. While you need to pay for a license for much of the content, the My Media (beta) feature is free to use without a full license. Again, the PlayOn software is great, and I encourage you to purchase a copy, but if you are looking to stream on the cheap, the free version will get you there. The My Media feature of PlayOn requires that you also install the VLC Media Player, which is a fantastic piece of free software for playing movies.
From the PlayOn control panel you need to configure the software to find your local files. Pull up the PlayOn settings window and go to the MyMedia tab. You need to check the box to enable the My Media feature (beta). You can then add folders to PlayOn that will be made available to your networked devices.
Start Streaming!
Now your content is published, go watch it! If you have a PlayStation3, your PlayOn server will appear as an option in the Video section of the cross bar interface. If you use a Wii you will need to open the Internet Browser and browse to the address of the server on your network. The same works for the Xbox360 or a laptop. You will be presented with a menu that allows you to select content. If you use an iPod Touch, iPhone, or Android device there are PlayOn apps.
The PlayOn interface for streaming is a little quirky, and it can be frustrating to try scrubbing to a specific point in a video. The DLNA support on the PlayStation3 is fantastic, and is a great way for viewing your streamed content.
What is a Fair Tax Rate?
As our representatives in Washington attempt to agree on a budget, one of the topics of discussion is how much tax we should pay. Specifically, should the wealthiest Americans continue to receive the tax cut put in place by President Bush?
Before anyone answers that question, I think it is important to go through the thought experiment of determining what a 'fair' tax would be. Let's say you were suddenly granted the power to decide the rate at which income tax is paid. We'll stick with income tax to focus the discussion, but there are a number of other sources of tax, including social security, medicare/medicaid, and payroll tax to name a few. First, let's look at the spectrum of income in the US. Income is typically divided into quintiles, which is dividing the spectrum into five pieces, each with equal population. The Census Bureau published the mean income for each quintile for the year 2009:
Bottom Quintile: $11,552
Second Quintile: $29,257
Third Quintile: $49,534
Fourth Quintile: $78,694
Top Quintile: $170,844
Within each quintile you will find folks who make more than the mean, and folks who make less than the mean, but the idea is that an equal number of households are making somewhere around this amount. Another thing to keep in mind is that for the year 2009, the threshold for poverty was annual income of less than $11,161 (I covered this in more detail in an earlier post).
So given that $11,161 is the minimum necessary to live, what level of taxation is fair?
One common school of thought is to impose flat tax amount, where each citizen pays the same. After all, we all are equal citizens, so we should all pay the same for that privilege. In 2009 the US government received $1.21 trillion in income tax. We'll ignore the fact that the US ran a $400 billion deficit this year, and assume that this amount of tax was sufficient for a balanced budget (along with those other tax receipts we are ignoring for the moment). The IRS received 236 million returns that year, so we'll use that as our population count. So if we divided the tax receipts ($1.21T) by our population (236M) we get $5,127.12 from every household.
Our top quintile would love that. After all, it is easily afforded, and likely much less than they pay now. Our bottom quintile is in real trouble though. They had less than $400 to spare, and are now several thousand dollars below the poverty line. As a percentage of income, the lowest quintile is paying 44.38%, while the top quintile pays just 3%.
That isn't the only school of thought though. There is also the concept of paying a flat percentage rate. So what percentage rate would we need to use across all of those households in order to get back to our $1.21T in revenues? First, we divide our population by five to get the number of households in each quintile (47.2M). Then, we multiple each quintiles mean income by the population for that quintile to determine the total income from the quintile:
Bottom Quintile: $0.545 trillion
Second Quintile: $1.380 trillion
Third Quintile: $2.338 trillion
Fourth Quintile: $3.714 trillion
Top Quintile: $8.063 trillion
Total Income: $16.042 trillion
Our revenue ($1.21T) is 7.54% of that $16T in income our households earned. If every household, regardless of income, paid that rate, the same amount of revenue would be generated. Now, of course, the math here isn't perfect because we have households earning more and less than our mean household income for each quintile, but it helps us understand how this works. Taking a look at our bottom quintile, this tax would cost them $871, which still puts them into poverty. Is that fair?
Again, not the only method for assigning tax rates. We could also apply a different tax rate to folks in each quintile. Let's say the bottom quintile pays no tax, the next quintile pays a small rate, and so on with the highest quintile paying the highest rate. This is close to how our federal income taxes are assessed now. The thinking is that those in the lowest tax bracket are least able to pay, and so they are taxed the least. Those in the upper tax bracket are most able to pay, and so are taxed the most. But how should those rates be assigned? It's a sticky matter, and this is the basis for the arguments going around about whether or not the wealthiest Americans should continue to receive a tax cut.
There is one issue that causes our current method to break down: extreme income disparity. Let's say that there are ten folks in a room, and they represent all of the income for the US. Let's also say the income breaks down something like this:
1: $5,000
2: $15,000
3: $25,000
4: $35,000
5: $40,000
6: $60,000
7: $70,000
8: $90,000
9: $150,000
10: $4,000,000
Whoa, I wanna be #10! I feel really bad for #9 though. If we assign our tax rate by quintile, #9 and #10 get taxed at the same rate. #9 and #10 represent 92% of the total income, and so it should be assumed that they should also be responsible for at least 92% of the taxes paid, if not more. Poor #9 is going to get saddled with a pretty hefty tax rate because he lives in the same quintile as #10, even though the income levels are extremely disparate. This is an extreme example. However, income disparity is real, and the trend has been for more disparity, not less. This means that in our room of ten people, we will have more folks at either extreme. What happens when 5 are earning poverty income, while 5 are earning six-figures?