Insomnic Dreams

So now all over the air (OTA) TV broadcasts are in a digital format and you’re wondering what you need to do to watch your stories. Well… to be honest there isn’t much you need to do. It isn’t nearly as complicated as it might all sound.

First of all, if you have cable or dish services you don’t need to do anything at all. Everything will move along the same as always.

The only thing that changes is the OTA reception. In order to get digital OTA you need to have 2 things:

1. An antenna
2. A TV that can translate the HD signal

Lets take care of part of that first issue right off the bat – if you already have an antenna that can receive UHF then you are done. There is no such thing as an HD antenna. All antenna’s work the same – the only difference between antennas is their reception range – which was always true anyways. The HD antenna thing is just a marketing spin to help sell antennas.

If you don’t already have an antenna and you want to receive OTA HD then you’ll probably want to pick one up. A site to check before purchasing is AntennaWeb. They are a non-profit site that helps you find what channels are in your area and what style of antenna might work best for you. Click on the “Choose an Antenna” button and enter your street address and zip code (the rest is up to you but it really needs those two things). Once it gives you your channel listings mark the “Show Digital Stations Only” option to see what HD broadcasts you can expect. The color codes match with standardized antenna ratings to match different distance levels and reception requirements. You can also click on the “View Street Level Map” to see which direction those channels are broadcast to help with orienting your antenna (if necessary).

When it comes time to buy an antenna, I recommend Antennas Direct. They have many models to choose from and a very helpful guide to help you choose what will work for you. Their ratings and information also match well with Antenna Web so you can use them together pretty easily.

Now you need a TV to watch those beautiful HD broadcasts on… or maybe not. If your TV is already HD  compliant (check your manual) then you are all set. If your TV says “HD Ready” then it can show high resolution video but it can’t decode the transmission – you’ll need a tuner. If you are planning on using a Tivo then your tuner is in there – otherwise you’ll need to purchase a tuner.

Now what about if you aren’t ready to buy a new TV and just want to use your old TV with the new DTV signal? No problem. The government is here to help (don’t hear that too often when it comes to technology). What you need is a converter box which will translate the digital broadcast signal into an analog signal.  Luckily you get two $40 coupons to help with that purchase. To get your coupon go to the coupon request site at DTV2009.gov and fill out the information. You’ll get your coupons in the mail in about a week. Once you get the coupon, you can check DTV2009 for a local retailer and compatible models but I found the easiest way is by using Amazon. They have a special page dedicated to the redemption and I was able to pick up one of the top Consumer Reports rated models called the Zinwell ZAT-970A for the low price of zero dollars thanks to the coupon and the free shipping. Once you receive the box you’ll hook the OTA antenna cable to the box and then a cable from the box to your TV and you’ll be all set.

Hopefully this has cleared up some of the HD confusion and not just added to it. If you need more information though, the DTV2009 and AntennaWeb sites are excellent resources without any marketing spin or you post in the comments and I’ll try to help you out. I did get OTA working at my home with mixed TVs and I’m very happy to not be paying a bill for excellent quality broadcast TV (nothing like getting 16:9 widescreen with 5.1 surround on Big Bang Theory).

If you want to become a Gmail ninja all you have to do is head over to the new Gmail tip page and they’ll run you through how to become an advanced Gmail ninja!  As you master each set of tips you gain a new belt color until you reach ninja master!

Good luck grasshopper!

Facebook has rolled out a new feature this weekend called Facebook Username. This allows you to have your Facebook profile be a name you choose (and is available) instead of a string of numbers.

For example, my Facebook profile page is now http://facebook.com/insomnic and fits nicely on a business card or page listing (easier to remember too).

Of course, depending on how you set up your privacy and your goals you may end up having your Facebook profile show up before your LinkedIn or personal website so be sure to check your Facebook privacy settings to be sure the right pages show up in search results.

Also, there is an interesting timeline of how this service offering will play out written by Anil Dash. Give it a look for a humourus look at how these types of changes sometimes play out.

So go grab your custom username now before it’s gone. Be sure to remember that if it’s too complicated it’ll be hard for people to remember and if you have creative spellings of common words people will misspell it. Good luck!

gHacks has presented a McAfee document detailing some of the worst search terms which will result in malware. This document is worth checking out to be sure you don’t perform these searches without some protection. Some of these safe sounding searches can really get you in trouble:

• lyrics
• myspace
• screensavers
• twilight

Check out the gHacks article for a complete list and a run down of why these terms are so targeted.

I recently purchased a Kindle 2 and I am very, very happy with the product. I know discussions of the Kindle can spark some debates so I’m going to avoid all of those by stating “I like it but if you don’t that’s fine too”. So lets skip along happily now and discuss what I wanted to discuss with you which is specifically about reading manga on the Kindle. Yup… you can read japanese comic books on the Kindle very easily. You can also load your own images for viewing as well using the same process.

So how do we accomplish this amazing feat? Actually, very easily. The program to use is called Mangle.

Mangle does an awesome job of converting images to be optimized for the Kindle display and processed to work correctly with the navigation system of the device.

See for yourself. The following image was converted using Mangle and loaded onto my Kindle 2. The left side image is the original, the middle one is the converted, and the right side image is displaying on the Kindle 2. Click on the thumbnails to see the original sizes.

So as you can see it looks pretty darn good. You can see a couple other examples at the Mangle website.

Mangle runs as a stand alone executable so you can run it directly with no installation necessary. It’s a very basic layout so it’s very easy to use. You pick either a set of images or a directory of images, click the gear icon to get it started, tell it where to put the converted images and then it converts them for you. That’s it!

Once it’s converted, you will plug in your Kindle and create a folder on it called “pictures”. Put the new book you created (the folder with all the images) into the Pictures directory and you are all set. It should show up in your book list using the name of the folder as the title.  If you don’t see it, press Alt+Z to refresh the listing.

You can also use Mangle to convert pictures into a photo album or convert pictures to use as custom screen savers.

Yes… custom screen saver. It requires hacking the Kindle a bit but is very easy and can be reversed. Go to the Kindle 2 Screen Saver Hack wiki page at MobileRead and it will walk you through using it. The image you see above is one of my custom screen saver images.

This program works on Windows and Linux and is free to use. Feel free to post any questions and I’ll be happy to help out.

UPDATE: The Kindle 2.3 update breaks the screen saver hack. The updated version can be found at JYA’s site.

UPDATE 2: The Kindle 2.3 update has some new image viewer options. For some it has caused issues and for others it has not. If you have any issues, the new PDF support has worked pretty well for manga. IrfanView does a good job of converting the Mangle converted images to PDF (process: thumbnail viewer->select all->print to PDF using CuteWriter).

UPDATE 3: After speaking with Amazon customer service and tech support it seems the “developers” have decided that any use of the built in image viewer is considered a hack and therefore note support. After bothering them over and over about it though I was told an image viewer would be developed in a future release. I’m assuming that it will be part of the new active content  that is coming to the Kindle (think “App Store”) and the recent release of the Kindle KDK (Kindle Development Kit). This could easily mean a dedicated comic book reader as well.

Many people ask me about BitTorrent and to be honest, it’s not easy to explain. I’m going to try here but I’m going to do it with lots of help.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol based around a distributed sharing system and optimized for large files.

While completely accurate that description isn’t really useful in getting started with BitTorrent.

If you’ve ever used file sharing programs before like Napster, Kazaa or Limewire … BitTorrent is nothing like those. To explain how BitTorrent is different I’m going to get some help because as simple as it is to use, the initial understanding on how to use it is can be confusing.

I’m going to send you to a bit of learning before we move on to a couple other topics. First, Lifehacker has two guides to getting started with BitTorrent; a beginner’s guide and an intermediate guide. You can skip the intermediate guide for now but definitely bookmark it for future reference. The other excellent guide is The Big Book of BitTorrent by Aibek. That is a free PDF book about 28 pages long… that’s more of a reference tool but will answer pretty much all of your quesitons. Start with the Lifehacker beginner’s guide…

Once you’ve looked through those items you’ll notice that you’ll need a program and some websites. The program handles the downloading and the websites are where you find the torrents.

If you didn’t read the guide here are the quick and dirty basics (but you may or may not understand them just from this little bit):

BitTorrent uses torrent files to connect your BitTorrent program with other people sharing the exact same file. So a torrent file for the movie Elephant’s Dream is like a bookmark or ticket that connects you to all the other people downloading/uploading the movie. People who have the entire file are called seeders and people who are still downloading the file are called leechers or peers. You will be connected to multiple people who have the same file and you will download pieces of the file from different people and others will download pieces from you. So you download the Elephant’s Dream torrent file and open it with your BitTorrent program which connects you to others to share the actual movie file of Elephant’s Dream.

So back to what you need… a program and some torrent sites. If you are on Windows I recommend uTorrent (it’s actually µTorrent using the metric presentation for “micro”) and for OS X and Linux I recommend Transmission. The uTorrent guides are very good as well for help in using BitTorrent even if you aren’t using uTorrent. Each program has a different interface but all BitTorrent applications work in a similar fashion so once you are familiar with one you can use pretty much any of them and it’s just a matter of extra features.

So you have the program and now you need to start sharing. This is where a good set of BitTorrent websites comes in handy. For beginners, I recommend The Pirate Bay and Mininova. Those sites should provide you with pretty much all the items you may be looking to download. Demonoid is also a popular location but requires membership and sometimes they aren’t open to new members – but you can get an invite if you ask around. The Pirate Bay is probably the most open and busy torrent tracker (the backend service that directs your torrent “ticket” or “bookmark”) so you’ll find lots of content there. Mininova also has a lot of content and is a bit more manageable in regards to browsing particular catagories.

A note on piracy… there are lots of laws and rules about piracy and some of them apply differently depending on your situation and the content. There are loopholes and so forth but put simply: if you didn’t pay for it, and you should have, then you are stealing. That being said, BitTorrent is not digital piracy… BitTorrent is just a system for transfering large files.

One last note… BitTorrent is a LOT safer than other file sharing services but you can still get infected if you download and install the wrong thing. Be sure to check through torrent site comments and run antivirus utilities just to be safe.

So that should provide you will all the information you need to get started with your file sharing. Don’t let the amount of information be too daunting … it really is easy to use.

Good luck and happy torrenting!

I mentioned the ARC Awards previously and how they are a great place to go to pick up some suggestions for anime to watch.

Well, they just recently released the 2008 Anime Reactor Community Awards.

Here is a quick rundown on some of the winners:

• Best Overall, Best Story, Best Sci-Fi: Kaiba
• Best Romance, Best Drama, Best Slice-of-Life: Clannad
• Best Adventure/Fantasy: Ookami to Koushinryou (Spice and Wolf)

There are some others listed at the site as well as Jury picks – so go check a few of them out if you are interested.

I will say that Kaiba is completely original in its story telling and animation style – so original it may be a bit awkward for some people. If you are confused while watching it – just keep watching, it works itself out.

Also, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook you may have seen me mention an anime that was really excellent – that one would be Clannad and its second season Clannad ~After Story~. I highly recommend it as a drama/romance/comedy/fantasy/slice-of-life style story.

If you have any recommendations or comments about the ARC Award winners, shout ‘em out in the comments!

Hotmail (also used under the name MSN and Live) used to be the leader in web based email. Then Yahoo and Gmail came online and pretty much wiped Hotmail off the map. Unfortunately, it can be a real pain to switch providers but luckily Hotmail has now made that easier. They offer POP now.

No… not cola or soda. POP is a function of web mail that allows you to access your email from another place besides that company’s web interface. So what does this mean for Hotmail users? Well it means you can switch to Gmail with ease because you can still get your Hotmail emails after you switch! It makes the transition much easier.

If you are interested in switching then head over to the How-To Geek for detailed steps to swap your Hotmail/MSN/Live account for a Gmail account. Once you have setup your email then it’s time to go through some of the other Gmail switching tools like contact and email import. Check Lifehacker’s article about the Gmail switching tools for more details.

Why switch to Gmail? My main reason is that their spam filtering is top notch and there’s just something about the different options and tie-ins with other Google services that it has become extremely useful. A good example is a function they just added to allow Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, and Yelp to be previews in the email itself. Check out the Official Gmail Blog post about this update for more details. Look through some of their other posts to see some of the other recent updates and features.

The other feature I like but is hard to grasp for some new users of Gmail are the function of labels instead of folders to organize your email. Labels show up as links on the left of the Gmail interface similar to how folders would show but they work differently. Instead of moving an email to a specific folder, it can be assigned a label – kind of like applying the folder to the email instead of the email to the folder. The advantage of this is that an email can have multiple labels without having to be duplicated in order to be in multiple folders. Lets go over an example.

Pretend I run an anime viewing club (whee!) and I order Cowboy Bebop The Movie for an upcoming viewing. I get an email confirmation from Amazon about my order. I apply the label “Orders” and the label “Anime Club”.  Now I can find that email if I click on Orders or if I click on Anime Club. If I used folders it would only appear in one or the other. Add the power of Google search and I can do a quick search to show me all my emails that are labelled both Orders and Anime Club and I can see all my anime club orders!

That’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as organizing is concerned and luckily the Gmail help is very good at working you through all of these options. Another good place to check for getting the most out of Gmail is Lifehacker’s directory of Gmail tips, tricks and hacks.

Sorry about all the text of this post (the links have lots of screenshots though). To make up for it here’s a couple videos to watch that may brighten your day just a bit:

Cute (awwwww factor 11):

Kinda Dirty Funny:

UPDATE: Gmail has now also added an “Undo Send” function that allows you to recall a message within seconds of sending. A very useful function for those accidental sends.

Ars Technica has an article explaining why the megapixel ceiling has effectively been reached at 12MP. The basics are that the megapixel rating is only part of what determines the quality of a digital camera’s photo ability. There are many other factors to consider and now that the megapixel ratings are so high such as lense quality, zoom factors, image stabilization, GPS tagging and a host of other useful functions. There is a lot of good information in the article to help you understand more about digital cameras (especially if you are looking to purchase in the near future).

The other interesting camera related information is about a type of photo processing called Exposure Fusion. Digital Photography School has an article all about this photography process that combines different exposure levels into one photograph (similar to HDR).

Exposure fusion combines different exposures of the same image together so that bright areas don’t look washed out and detail areas look crisp with good contrast. Look through the article for more details about how this type of process could make for some nice looking pictures and also a program that can help you do this type of process automatically.

Yes.. it’s another installment from the Common Craft guys. This time, it’s about saving and borrowing money. It isn’t very geeky but they do such a good job as “explainers” that I can’t help sharing.

Saving Money in Plain English

Borrowing Money in Plain English