(You can skip the prologue if you’re not interested in the customer service story!)

For Christmas 2008 I received an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid TV tuner from my wife. Getting it set up properly was a nightmare, but I finally did it. Tech support wasn’t a help, and my own computer geekiness and a little extra free time over Christmas break was all I had to rely on. Turns out that it might have just been a defective tuner.

So when I recently moved and found more problems tuning channels, I had enough. I contact EyeTV’s support for a possible RMA (despite being out of warranty) and referenced the original support ticket I had created over a year and a half ago. I braced myself for a long fight….and got a huge surprise.

They sent me a cordial apology and a promise to replace my tuner. Just like that! Talk about stellar customer service.

 
If that weren’t good enough…here’s what I think about the tuner:

It tunes channels well. With QAM support since 2008, you can pull in free HD signals over just about any cable connection, or free HD channels from over-the-air sources. If you’ve got ultra-cheap basic analog cable still, it will pull that in too. Perhaps where it most shines is the integration with the EyeTV software.

EyeTV since version 3 has been awesome. It’s simple to pause, rewind, record, convert, and burn TV shows and movies. You can also grab an app and extend support to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Get yourself the free comskipper plugin and it will automatically remove commercials from your recordings. Download cyTV and you can stream your live TV to another computer on your network, or even across the web! (Think of it as a poor man’s slingbox)

I won’t run through all the features, but retailing at $80, EyeTV 3 is a tremendous value-add to buying the EyeTV Hybrid. Consider the great customer service mentioned above, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!

I set up a new blog today over at eustaceclarence.com to provide easy updates on my first kid, and it got me thinking: thankfully, the personal blogging craze has largely died.

To wit: of the 5 links in my blogroll as of the time of this writing, the last updates were written:

1. October 31, 2007
2. March 29, 2010 (Previous before that was Jan 2, 2009)
3. September 27, 2009
4. July 22, 2009
5. …and one blog is no longer available on the internet

All of these blogs were written by guys involved with technology at a higher-than-average level: they could all probably tell you what AJAX is, and why IE6 is the bane of all that is internet. Yet, like 99.9% of people who started blogging in the last 5 years, none of them blog anymore.

Why? Because no one has time to write (much less write well), and for those that do…nobody cares. The only posts on this blog than anyone reads are the ones written on how to fix annoying computer problems, not the ones about my thoughts on the latest political whatnot. The only personal blog I read anymore is my sister-in-law’s, because she puts up great pictures of her kids all the time. (Ideally, Eustace will get similar treatment from me).

What it really boils down to though is that no one has enough time for all of that. Myspace died when everyone realized that the cacaphony of colors, spam, ads, and random musings available there was an utter waste of time. Twitter’s in vogue, but I’m pretty sure most people use it for a month or two before they realize that, too, is a completely ridiculous way to waste every spare minute of peace and quiet you might stumble upon during your day. I’m moving on.

I think Facebook is the big thing with the best chance, but I’m hearing a lot of people who are sick of it and despise the time they waste on it (me included)–it’s an addiction though, like a crackberry, and will likely last a few years before the next big thing comes along. It’s darn handy for planning class reunions or the like, but for doing anything else worthwhile? Not so much.

Sooner or later we’ll all melt down from the stress and insanity that comes from being plugged into too many people, too many streams of info, and too many responsibilities 24/7. As for me, I’m just hoping that a move back to the Dakotas/Minnesota might bring a few more years of sanity…

For an actually well-thought perspective on this over-saturation phenomena, you could read the paper I wrote on it for a class I took (Like Butter Spread Over Too Much Bread: Multiphrenia in America 10 pages, .pdf)…or you could just ADHD your way back to your Twitter feed and forget I mentioned it (though, kudos for lasting this long if you made it to the end of my post!)

Compression

• Compression typically looks for patterns and stores references to them. So, imagine you’re storing the following text which is 151 characters long:
  

  He went to the store.  She bought a car.  He went to the bank.  She bought a plane.  He bought a turtle.

• To compress that, you might replace repeating patterns with a number. Our new text can be stored with references and a “key”, and now it’s 135 characters long:
  

  \1 store. Sh\2 car. \1 bank. Sh\2 plane. H\2 turtle.[1=He went to the, 2=e bought a]

• When uncompressing the data, you replace the numbers with those patterns again:
  

  He went to the store. She bought a car. He went to thebank. She bought a plane. He bought a turtle.

• Every time a repeating chunk of data shows up, you just store a reference to the original definition, which is shorter and thus saves space. (In this case, it saves you a total of 16 characters, or 10%.) Compression is actually a bit more mathematically complex than this, but that’s the basic concept. What’s important to know is that the more repeated strings you find, the more savings you get.

Lossy Compression

• .jpg files use something called “lossy” compression, which means that in order to find more repeated strings it will smooth out some of the data. (For music, .mp3 files also use “lossy” compression)
• Imagine the string 123456123456123456124456 If you used our old method, you’d only save 2 characters, or 8%:
  \1\1\1124456[1=123456]

• If you could afford to change one number in the last set (4>3) you would then have the same pattern repeated four times, making compression more efficient (6 characters, 25%). However, you would lose 4% of the data (1 character out of 24.)
  

  \1\1\1\1[1=123456]

• As you can see, the more data you’re willing to lose, the more you can artificially create repeating patterns, and the more space you can save.

How much compression to use?

• When you’re saving a .jpg, you set the compression level to tell the computer how much of the file you’re willing to “lose” in order to get smaller file sizes. The lower the number, the more data you lose. If you look at highly-compressed .jpg images you’ll see blotchy places called “compression artifacts” that are the result of the computer changing data in the file to make it match patterns better.
• For most web design, I typically set compression at 79 or 80. For smaller thumbnails where compression artifacts are less visible, I’ll often drop down to 75 to save more space. Any higher than 80 and your images get really big really fast for little quality difference. Any lower than 75 and images start to look really bad.
• Important: Recompressing images might amplify the effect. Let’s say you compress an image at 80, and lose 20% of the data in the file. If you open the image again, make a small change, and recompress it again at 80, you might lose up to 20% again, leaving you with 64% of your original file. Ouch! When editing images, you should always start from an uncompressed, high-resolution image file if at all possible.

Other file formats

• Sometimes, different types of compression save more space with less quality loss.
  • JPEG: best for images with lots of complexity and colors. Usually photos are best compressed as .jpg files.
  • PNG 8: images with text, straight lines, and few different colors. Graphic design elements are often best compressed as PNG 8 files.
  • GIF: similar to PNG 8, except not as efficient in most cases. Usually, unless .png files are not supported, you should save images as PNG 8 instead of .gif
  • There are other image formats, but these are the most common. .gif files support simple transparencies, and PNG 8 and PNG 32 can handle more complex transparencies.

How to do in Fireworks

• In Fireworks, use the “Optimize” panel to set the compression TYPE and Settings (screenshot). For .jpg files, usually all you want to adjust is the “Quality” setting: again, for web you will usually set it at around 75 for thumbnails and 79 for other site images.
• When you have this set, use the File > Export command. This will save the file with your selected compression setting AND it will use minimal metadata, which can also bloat the size of your files. If you use “Save As…” it will save all your meta data and might mess up your compression settings.

Using 4-Up

• Also in Fireworks, click the 4-Up button near the top of your editor. This will show you how the image will actually look once it’s been exported.
• Click on each box and set different compression settings in each one. This was you can compare what each setting would look like as well as what the final image size will be. You can often make a better decision based on this. (screenshot)

It might seem like an oxymoron, but it’s not! I’ve been hosting this site and a client’s websites at webhostingbuzz.com since 2005, and I’ve got to say I’m glad I stumbled upon their site 4 years ago.

I like a number of things about WHB, but at the top of the list are reasonable pricing, great uptime, and a ton of features. With cPanel and about every other services option out there, how can you go wrong?

If you’re only looking for a wordpress host, or interested in a VPS or even a dedicated server, I recommend you check out webhostingbuzz!

I recently did a lot of googling about how to use my ATI Radeon HD 3300 integrated graphics card at the same time as my nVidia 8600 GTS discrete graphics card at the same time. The problem is, my motherboard (the BioStar TA790GX 128M) supports integrated + discrete card usage…only with ATI cards. I don’t have an ATI graphics card, and didn’t want to buy one.

This hasn’t been a problem from my two-monitor setup because the 8600GTS easily powers two monitors, but I recently ordered an upgraded monitor (24″ Dell S2409W), and I didn’t want to have to ditch my old 17″ LCD. Lots of googling, and the result is all the same: the TA790GX turns off the onboard graphics card automatically if an nVidia card is detected.

Well, my motherboard does support crossfire with 2 PCI-express slots, so I got to wondering. What if I put my graphics card not in the primary slot, but in the secondary slot? Sure, it will only run at x8 speed, but it’s already PCI-express 2.0, and the lower bandwidth is not likely to hurt my middle-of-the-road graphics card anyways.

Swap it out. Boot it up. Windows 7 recognizes TWO graphics cards from different manufacturers, automatically installs the drivers for the ATI card, and asks to reboot. Reboot.

Viola! It’s done! Hybrid graphics on an ATI motherboard with an nVidia graphics card! Hope someone finds this to be helpful.

Note: apparently, Vista will not work with this. XP may, but I’m not sure. Windows 7 definitely does. I tell you, I’m loving Windows 7!

I’m trying to find out what the performance specs on Sam’s Club Member’s Mark batteries is–the best I’ve got so far is some hearsay from a forum post about them being made by Duracell.

BUT, in my search I found a post discussing rechargables vs. alkalines, claiming that 1 AA could save you up to $500. The post is interesting, but bears some observations.

1. Energizers might cost you $1/each in the grocery store, but a 48 pack of AA batteries is $10 at Sam’s (confirmed by me today) — that’s about $0.21/battery, and means your max savings is down to about $100/battery
2. At $3 vs. $0.21, you’re not saving any money until you recharge the 15th time: saving $100 is only going to happen if you actually recharge that single AA battery 500 times.
3. Rechargeable batteries eventually lose capacity. I’m going to assume that they’re relatively useless after three years of use. (Just look at your cellphone battery) You COULD go on using them, and you might, but they’re not going to last long enough to be worth your while.
4. What are you going to do while your batteries are recharging? You’re still going to end up sticking alkalines in your devices every once in a while to tide you over, whether that be for 1/2 hour or 14 hours, depending on your charger–so, your savings will be less than indicated.

OK, so what does that look like then?

1. Remote control:
   • Average time to change batteries? Maybe twice a year.
   • Time to savings: 7 years
   • Capacity of rechargable batteries after 7 years (if they even work after 7 years)? 0
   • Savings: $0
2. Battery-hogging Wireless Mouse (2xAA):
   • Average time to change batteries? Once a week
   • Time to savings: 4 months
   • Useful battery life: 3 years (150 actual charge cycles)
   • Savings (life of 1 set of 2 rechargeables): $57
3. Clock (1xAA):
   • Average time to change batteries? Maybe once a year.
   • Time to savings: 14 years
   • Capacity of rechargable batteries after 7 years? 0
   • Savings: $-1.53
4. Wii Controller (2xAA):
   • Average replacement? (@25 hrs of gameplay = between 3 – 30 days)
   • Time to savings: 42 – 196 days
   • Useful battery life: 3 years (between 36 – 365 charges)
   • Savings: $15 – $150

Bottom line: some things are worth using rechargeables for. Some things aren’t. $500 in savings per battery is a bit sensationalistic though–it’s more likely you’ll see $50-100 in savings over 3-5 years per battery if you use them consistently and vigorously: and that assumes that the rechargeables last as long as the Alkalines do, which may or may not be true depending on usage.

It’s also interesting to note that some things (like Wii Controllers) may be worth using both for. Let’s say you have kids who play 24/7 with two controllers, but you have two controllers for the parents or friends to use, which get used maybe 4 hours a week. It’s going to take you 2 years of use to justify buying rechargeables for the mostly-unused controllers, assuming they get consistent weekly usage. If they’re not going to get that kind of use for more than 2 years, use alkalines for the rarely-used devices, and stick rechargeables in the others.

Thanks to the Always Frugal lady though for bringing it up again! Even at dirt-cheap $10 for 48 AA’s at Sam’s, I probably should invest in a rechargeable system for two Wii controllers. Just don’t go counting $100-500 in savings per battery as you pick up rechargeables for every electronic device in your household!