The bag has some nonsense about Indiana Jones on it. I can't seem to understand what Indiana Jones and Mint Crisp M&Ms have to do with each other. I mean I understood why Shrek junk food is green (Cheetos, Snickers). But I can't seem to figure out this marketing tie-in.

The Mint Crisp M&Ms come in three colors, dark green, light green, and white. The are different icons on the candy, some sort of reference to the movie. Maybe there is some sort of party game I just understand where the masks and skulls matter.

The candies themselves taste great. They taste like a mini Thin Mint cookie! The colors all taste the same though.

Inside the candy is a little core center of cookie of some type. From the ingredients list, it looks like the center is made of rice, like the crispy cereal. There is just a tiny crunch when you bite them.

These are well worth the effort to track them down. Grab them before the movie promotion is over and they disappear.

For TVs that use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna, they will need a digital TV tuner. We engineers refer to it as an ATSC tuner, but most will simply call it a HDTV or DTV tuner. If you have cable or satellite TV, you won't need this.

For a while, I've wondered what these inexpensive tuners would be like. When I saw my first tuner years ago, it was around $500 and had terrible performance. This weekend, I stopped by radio Shack this weekend and picked up a Digital Stream DTX9900 DTV tuner. The box cost $60. BTW, the government is offering $40 off coupons to people to help defer the cost.

The tuner itself is fairly small and light.

The tuner takes the input from your antenna and converts to either video and audio on RCA jacks or a channel 3/4 RF signal. Very straightforward and simple. For me, I used the RF signal since it was the simplest cabling.

We have a very cute TV in the kitchen that Michele that uses rabbit ears. She doesn't want a new digital TV, she wants me to simply make it better. So, it gets the DTV tuner.

I hooked things up in about 5 minutes and got good signals right away. The picture looked good. We are in a class A contour so we get great reception. The key is a good antenna. I use a traditional UHF loop antenna and it seems to pick things up well. If you are a distance away, you are probably going to need a yagi style antenna.

I was pleased to see a fairly good user interface. The Info button brought up data about the channel, show, and even reception strength.

The picture was good, but on some channels with poor reception, the picture broke up. With analog channels, the picture would get snowy and the audio start to fuzz with poor reception. With digital channels, you get the cliff effect, where the picture pixelates and in some cases freezes or drops altogether.

One of the benefits of digital television is that broadcasters are sending data along with the picture, such as seeing what's coming up next on the channel.

Here's a short video of using the tuner.

Overall, the tuner is impressive. I think the average person will be able to use it and get better pictures than they have now. Some people will have problems if they are in areas with poor UHF reception, but that's an antenna problem.

ABC - Always Be Charging

Whether it's you laptop, your Nintendo DS, or your mobile phone, you should take every opportunity to keep it fully charged.

As you might imagine we have a lot electronics at Cruft Manor to keep charged. I have tried many ways to keep the charging under control. I've built mini-charging stations for the girl's Nintendo devices. I tried to keep the the phone chargers straight and organized. But in the end, all became a tangle of wires.

I finally bit the bullet and invested in Chargepod from Callpod. And I choose the word invested carefully, the Chargepod is not cheap. Starting at $50, the Chargepod is a bit of a luxury item. You do not 'need' it as much as 'desire' it.

The Chargepod replaces all your chargers with a unified system. A single power supply plugs into the wall and feeds the hub. The hub splits the power to up to six different devices. You need an adapter from the hub to each different device. As you can see above, I have it charging 4 different mobile phones and a bluetooth headset.

The setup works great. Gone are the tangles. Every device has it's place. It all works smoothly. And it fits on the small table Michele bought for our phones to sleep on.

Callpod just released a new adapter for the iPhone that avoids the need for the USB cable.

The core issue is the need to purchase the adapter cables. With different connectors on devices, the number of different connectors for charging is huge. Callpod charges $10 a pop for adapter cables. That adds up quick. You can find some better deals on Amazon or eBay, but it's still expensive any way you buy it.

The only other thing is the glow. Electronics manufacturers are enamored with blue LEDs these days and find reason to stick them in everything. The Chargepod does not avoid this fate. The blue LED light up whenever a adapter is plugged in, meaning it's on all the time, filling our dining room at night with a low blue glow. I don;t think this is really necessary. Almost all devices tell you when they are being charged. We really don't need all these LED lights that don't tell me anything.

Overall, I'm happy with the Chargepod. It's a well made item that delivers on it's promise, but the price is too high for it's benefit, making it a welcome luxury, not an essential.

This is an email that I sent out to my co-workers about interesting things:

Besides the usual array of monitors, MPEG compressors, proxy viewing, and 'breakthrough' products, here are a few things I saw.

Clustermedia Labs - Voice recognition of people and events in video footage by analyzing voiceprints

GameCaster - A setup that allows recording of video inside videogames by the use of traditional camera hand controls

Bug TV - Class-R - Ingest of multiple video streams via Final Cut Pro

Bluray/DVD Duplicators - There was a literal army of these robotic duplicators on the floor. Anyone know how to choose?

Telestream - Episode Engine Pro - can do transcoding of JPEG 2000 files in a distributed environment at 7-8 times real time

Studio Network Solutions - Postmap - Snoops and indexes varied file systems to find files and search via various attributes. Similar to Mega/Cobweb...

Digital Rapids - CarbonHD does realtime ingest of JPEG 2000 HD files. Actually a DDR, but the files are ready for immedaite access. Stream Z HD platform coming for faster JPEG 2000 transcoding.

Nano-spindt - High Frame Rate FED Monitor - runs at 240 frames per second - amazing look

NHK Ultra HDTV - In the back of the Central Hall, the NHK booth is showing new demos of their Ultra HD system. A must see.

Overall, the post side of the house has tons going on and the South hall is packed. The more traditional areas like lighting, jibs, transmitters are calmer and not so packed.

Really, who can turn down this kind of offer? Some say it's unhealthy.

I looked up the nutritional information a Weinerschnitzel Chili Dog

Each one is 290 calories, making 5 of them 1,450 calories of deliciousness. Not bad...

In comparison, a In 'n Out Double Double (670 cal), fries (400 cal), and soda (198 cal) is 1,268 calories.

At Carl's Jr, a Six Dollar Burger, fries and soda is 1,830 calories.

As long as I didn't eat much the rest of the day, I'd be fine.

Brad and Cyril were brave enough to challenge the offer. Brad set the date for Monday lunch.

We arrived at noon and proudly order 5 chili dogs.

This is the 5 chili dog table. We made those not brave enough sit at another table.

Brad was the first finisher, eating in style.

Here Cyril thinks, "This might not have been the best idea."

With this last bite, I finished the fifth chili dog.

We all had no trouble with the meal. The chili dogs were pretty good. Later in the afternoon, I still felt a bit full. I didn't eat dinner.

I recommend you give it a try.

The process starts with making rice krispy treats with marshmallows.

Patience is key when melting the marshmallows.

We pressed out the rice krispie/marshmallow mixture onto a tray with parchment paper, until it was about a half inch thick. Next Mira laid Gummi Worms in a row as the centers of the rolls.

The edge is rolled up to make a tube and we used a knife to cut the roll loose from the rest of the mix. I placed the rolls on another sheet of parchment paper to cool.

I sliced the rolls into bite sized pieces and we rolled the edge in fruit by the foot. Surprisingly easy to get everything to stick together.

Soon we had a pretty good production line going to make all the sushi.

Mira shows off the completed plates of mock sushi. The whole process took about 45 minutes. Good times.

You can read a little more at Cnet & Valleywag.

Today, Mira was sitting in the living room and booted it up. She said, "Dad, the screens messed up."

Yup, the screen is messed up. The LCD screen is cracked and there's no reasonable fix for this.

Five years is a long time for a laptop. I covered it with stickers and took it many places. The touchpad buttons broke 20 days after the warranty expired and the battery only lasts 30 minutes these days. But, even after five years, it still was good for surfing the net or watching a DVD in the house.

What to do next? MacBook Air with Vista on it? ;)

Introduce Yourself - People are at SXSW because they want to meet people and see new things. Strangely, many of the blogger types that go are introverted types that are a bit shy. Do yourself a favor and say "Hello, I'm So-and-so" to that person you are sitting next to. (Don't say So-and-so, use your name...) I guarantee that they will be happy to talk to you.

ABC - Always Be Charging - If you bring a laptop, you need to be charging it every single chance you get. No battery lasts long enough. Try to sit near an outlet in the session rooms. Share power outlets with others.

Kick - Kick is back! Saturday morning is a large kickball game. Good fun and you will have a chance to meet all kinds of new people.

Personal cards - Make up business cards with your name, email, and website info on them to hand out. Bring your regular business cards if you want, but what people really want is a card that ties you to your online persona so they can find you after SxSW.

Session Info - When you arrive on Friday go to the Convention Center and pick up your badge. They will give you a large canvas bag of swag. You don't want to haul this around, so you need to figure a way to drop this off at your hotel before a long night of partying. In the bag are two crucial items. First is the program which has detailed session descriptions. Second is a small pocket card with the session schedule on it. You want these to be in your daily walk around bag, not in your hotel room.

Shiner Bock - Shiner Bock is a local Texas beer that you find everywhere. Often referred to as simply 'Shiner'.

Fray Cafe - Go to the Fray Cafe on Sunday night. Fray is people telling truthful stories about their life. It's one of the best things about SxSW. Baratunde is the new host and is generally hilarious. Get there early for a good seat, otherwise you will be standing for the whole thing.

Stay Warm - It can get cold and rain in Austin this time of year. Bring a good jacket or coat just in case.

Sharpeners - There are no pencil sharpeners at SXSW. People think writing on a pad of paper with a wooden pencil is a bit strange.

The Backchannel - Be aware that there is a backchannel of real-time IRC discussion going on. Probably on irc.freenode.net, probably on #sxsw. The trick is to not make the backchannel into the front channel for you. It can distract you from listening to the speaker/session that you paid to see...

Twitter - Be in the Twitter loop with your new friends. You'll always know where the party is that way...

Secure connections - Wifi traffic is in the clear and people are sniffing packets all the time. Arrange for secure email, FTP, and if possible, secure browsing while at SXSW. It's unlikely that a malicious hacker is gunna do bad things, but it's best to be prepared.

Street Signs - For some reason, downtown Austin has few street signs. Get a map and study it before venturing out.

Food - Eat food. Austin has a great bar scene. You will be drinking. Don't drink on an empty stomach. It also would be a good idea to keep a couple energy bars in your bag during sessions.

Texas BBQ - IMHO, Texas BBQ pales in comparison to BBQ in other areas like Kansas City and Carolina. That chopped beef sandwich stuff just doesn't cut it, but people will want to eat it for lunch. That said, Stubbs makes a great brisket.

Say Hello to Me - I would love to meet Loyal Cruft Readers. There doesn't appear to be Break Bread with Brad this year, but I will be bringing a few cigars to share with people. Email me or IM at pusateri AT gmail.com and I promise to respond.

Any questions?

At those prices, I decided to do a little advertising. I think I spent $3.24 for 8100 pixels.

So if you go to The Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage you'll see my ad on the left side. It will be interesting to track the stats of how many people arrive this way.

Get your now, the pixels are going fast!

Personally, I can't stand that taste of any of them, but Matt drinks them like water...

I had some time this weekend, so it was time to make gunpowder.

Obviously, making gunpowder is inherently dangerous, so I was carefully in my preparation and protection.

Carbon is readily available as charcoal. Sulfur is easily found at the gardening store. Saltpeter is a little tougher to find. I'm not saying it's hard, but it's not something you can find at any local store. I had mine leftover from making corned beef.

The sulfur came as small pellets, meant for spreading in your garden.

After about 5 minutes of grinding, the sulfur was as powdery as I was going to get it by hand.

The charcoal briquettes were a bit tougher to crush. I had to apply some real force to get these into grinding size. This made a bit of a mess.

But in the end, I had the charcoal ground into a powder as well.

The saltpeter was already ground fine for food usage. The exact recipe for gunpowder varies from purpose to purpose. My recipe was:

• 1 part carbon
• 1 part sulfur
• 4 parts saltpeter

As I researched this, it was interesting to learn that saltpeter is the oxidizer for the reaction, meaning that gunpowder does not need air to burn. That means you can fire a gun in outer space! The molecules of saltpeter contain plenty of their own oxygen atoms.

To grind the components together, I wore gloves, long sleeve shirt, face and eye protection. I sure many people have been hurt making gunpowder. I can't imagine what it took to make it hundreds of years ago.

After grinding for a bit, the gunpowder took on it's characteristic grey appearance. Things were looking good so far.

For the initial test, I built a small test pan out of aluminum foil. I had also picked up green fuse to give me plenty of time to get to a safe distance.

Here is a video that shows what happened with my various tests.

Sure enough, my gunpowder worked.

In the Mini Rocket test, I used an old mini rocket that normally used an insertable motor. I filled it with gunpowder and attached a fuse. As you saw, it went nowhere, but did burn nicely.

I really wanted the gunpowder to work as a propellant, so I made rocket out of a old prescription (Rx) bottle. I placed that on the launcher and again, it went nowhere. You can hear the satisfying whoosh of the exhaust, but it just went nowhere.

The flames burned out the bottom of the bottle.

For the last attempt, I put all the remaining gunpowder into a second Rx Rocket and hoped for the best. As you saw, it made a satisfying whoosh and lots of smoke, but went nowhere. The lauching pad was completely destroyed.

I really need a nozzle to focus the exhaust. ;)

In one aspect, the experiment was a success. I did make gunpowder from scratch. This was not hard, but it would be hard to make it in large quantities. However, my attempts to use the gunpowder to launch a rocket, as is often seen in fireworks, was a failure. The combination of lacking a proper rocket body and a proper nozzle to direct the exhaust proved to be a serious flaw. I could simply get a bunch of model rocketry gear, but what's the fun in that? It's much more fun to try to launch plastic prescription bottles.

The biggest mistake I made ws using my wife's mortar and pestle to make gunpowder. She was upset and now refuses to allow the mortar and pestle back into the kitchen. They are now sitting on my workbench in the garage. I have to buy a new mortar and pestle. In the future, I must avoid angering the wife.

Warning: I won't tell you not to try this at home. If you are not an adult, do NOT even think about trying this. If you do duplicate this, please be careful. Gunpowder is dangerous stuff and you need to be very careful to avoid getting hurt. Wear protective clothing and eyewear at all times. And don't use your wife's kitchen gear in your experiment.