Category: Weblog

Since August when the Hybrids in the Carpool Lane rules went into effect, People have been asking if I gotten my stickers yet.
Well, I slapped them on the Prius last Friday and blissfully cruised in the Carpool Lane all the way home down the 134. It was a great feeling to bypass all that traffic and get home 15 minutes sooner. Driving in the fast lane makes all the difference on my Burbank <-> South Pasadena commute.
I had read that people had complained about the size and shape of the stickers, so I was anxious to see what the big deal was when I got my stickers.

I recently read an article about MPEG-2 in the New York TImes (should not need registration). I sent the author, David Pogue, a note trying to help explain things. He seemd to appreciate it, so I thought I would share it with you all.

Mr. Pogue,
I read your article on MPEG-2 and can empathize with your travails. I
am a professional television engineer and have been dealing with video
format issues for quite a while.
MPEG-2 is not a format that will be gaining in the marketplace, it is on
the decline. MPEG-2 is one of the older video formats in use today. It
was developed in the mid-1990s as a revolutionary new way to digitize
video. The idea was that you could roughly predict the next frame of
video in a sequence. If you could get the sender and the receiver to
predict the same next frame, you have the sender send to the receiver
only the ACTUAL CHANGE from the prediction. This would save a lot of
bandwidth. There had been a older version called MPEG 1, but it didn’t
work so well at the high bitrates that broadcasters use.
The concept worked, the broadcasters said hooray, and began implementing
MPEG 2 systems in professional broadcast, transmission systems like
DirecTV, and DVDs. There were limitations to the format, but since it
was only intended for well-financed professionals to use, no one worried.
The main drawback was all this prediction stuff. It’s fine for playing
back video at normal speed, but it gets quite mind-bending to think
about playing it in reverse or editing it. Trust me in saying it is a
Hard Thing To Do.
To solve this editing problem, an alternate method (sometimes called
DCT) for encoding was used. The method used did not use prediction,
thereby solving some of the problems. It did create new ones though.
To get the same image quality you needed a higher bandwidth. It’s all
about the tradeoffs.
To compare, a DVD uses MPEG-2 at 4-6 Mb/s and a MiniDV player uses a
form of DCT at 25 Mb/s.
(By the way, DCT stands for Discrete Cosine Transform with means little
to anyone without an engineering or math degree. It’s pretty much like
a JPEG image with the lower the resolution, the blockier the picture.)
Then the dot-boom happened with the desire for video over the internet
started driving money into the problem. Lots of money. This money
poured into next-generation forms of encoding and you get the family of
Windows Media, MPEG-4, H.264, etc. All more advanced video encoding
methods that work well as long as you have plenty of processing power to
do the math. Microsoft and Apple are pushing these technologies because
they have the computing power to utilize them and get the benefits of
low bandwidth and high picture quality.
Fast forward to today and you see manufacturers trying get into the home
video market as inexpensively as possible. The MPEG 2 chips are old
(therefore inexpensive) and they utilize less bandwidth than the
comparable DCT type encoding and they don’t require computing power
since the encoding/decoding is done on a chip, not in CPU. Put this
together and you have and inexpensive video camera that make
hard-to-edit video.
The trouble with converting MPEG-2 to another format lies in the fact
that MPEG-2 requires a license to legally use the codec. Imagine that
you are a software maker and you want to be able to convert MPEG-2 to
another format as a feature. To do this, you need to pay the MPEG LA
for a license to do this. Usually it’s a per copy license and believe
me, that adds up. The license cost is the reason you see MPEG-2 as an
additional costs and often why you need special, separate software to
play DVDs on a computer if the MPEG-2 codec is not included with the
native media player software.
There you go, a long unsolicited reply to your article. I hope it
shines a bit of light on the topic.
-Michael

Just an image to show you how incredibly l33t I am.
When I was flying home from IBC, I had a chance to play World of Warcraft at 35,000 feet.

It is important to stop and smell the roses.
Sometimes, you will find that the rose has no smell.
This does not change the value of stopping,
for it is the stopping which is important, not the smelling.

I’m at 30,000 feet, typing on my laptop. Thanks to the Connexion service, this Lufthansa flight home has wifi and broadband internet.
Currently I’m talking to by buddy Brian over Google Talk. I’m in the air over Greenland and he’s in Santa Barbara, California. The quality is as good as a phone call.
A year or so ago, I was on a flight with Mira, my youngest daughter. She was upset that she couldn’t get on the web with the laptop. I tried to explain that when flying there was no internet access. I guess the airlines heard her complaints.
“The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” – William Gibson quote

Dear Europe,
I really am an enjoying my time here in Europe. I love Paris and Amsterdam, so much fun to be had.
There are two issues I really need you to focus on:
1) Lack of Air Conditioning – Look, I know it’s an old part of the world, but that’s no excuse for air conditioning to be missing. Restaurants should be air conditioned, especially Argentine steak houses. Convention centers should be air conditioned to avoid me passing out while doing business. Clubs hosting parties should be air conditioned to avoid people clustering at windows to gasp for cool fresh air. Can you give me an ETA on when I should plan to stop sweating everywhere I go?
2) Robbie Williams – Tonight I endured not one, not two, but THREE karaoke versions of Robbie Williams songs. As one of the three Americans in the room, we were the only ones that not only didn’t know the words by heart, didn’t even know who this guy was. Evidently he’s a big singer from England, but honestly, his music is fairly amatuerish compared to that from other current Brit Bands. Please explain Robbie Williams and why he is beloved…
Regards,
-Michael

I’m in Paris, France this week for work. We are having an internal conference before a big broadcasting convention in Amsterdam later this week.
Of course, our hosts are showing us a great time with good food and an amazing tour of the Eiffel Tower.

I turned on my computer at home this morning to check email. I’ve been falling behind these days in replies.
“whir”
“click”
“whir”
“click”
The computer won’t boot. It was working fine 8 hours ago.
Most likely the hard drive is failing.
It’s going to be a long Friday.

I enjoy good gyro meat in sandwiches or in a greek salad. There’s a good place near the office (with a surly owner) that makes pretty good stuff. For those that don’t know, gyro meat is cooked on a vertical skewer and cooked with radiated heat. As the meat browns, the outer meat is sliced off and served.
One day, my co-worker Yoshi mentioned that Alton Brown of Good Eats had discussed making gyros. I love Alton Brown and if he said it could be done, then I could do it. Yoshi mentioned that his plan kinda sucked because it wasn’t cooked by the traditional method of a rotisserie. At that point I decided to build my own gyro cooker.

Continue reading “How to make a gyro cooker”

I upgraded to Movable Type 3.2 last night. It seems pretty snazzy at first glance, but I haven’t delved into the cool new features yet. So if you see any issues while wandering about here, please let me know.
After about 10 minutes into the upgrade, my mom was IMing me that my comments weren’t working. I think I’ll start renting her out as a service delivery monitor.