what I’m up to on NYE…..

Originally uploaded by ethankap.

Amy and I are backstage working at the Flaming Lips show at USC on NYE. It is probably the most fun we’ve had on NYE since we met. We already met Wayne, which is probably a highlight in my 27 year life….

YouTube - Basshunter - DotA, NL Sub: I… have … no… words. A song about WoW? Rock.

Noah’s 2007 Somewhat Likely Predictions at Okdork.com:
“8- Diggtarded. The 500 17 year olds who control the site off there MAC laptops with tons of stickers will move on to another site. They will learn about women, start showering and spend less time digging.” This is a list I actually agree with 100%. I’m getting quite tired of the 17 year olds on Digg who are now home-paging any picture of Angelina Jolie. Diggsturbation?

Smart Mobs: Showing the whole clip: I think the more interesting thing is that it wasn’t so much an issue that MSM wouldn’t show the clip, it is that they felt they didn’t need to because it would show up on Community Content sites like YouTube. There is an ingrained assumption now from MSM that the holes in their coverage (deliberate or not) will be filled by the commons, and vs. fight it, they let it happen and then recompile at a later date when the mass acceptance of said content reaches saturation. Mark my words: the camera phone video will be on CNN/FoxNews in a type of “Look what the Internets have wrought” cautionary story next week, complete with the nudge-nudge/wink-wink of “and we’re cool and hip enough to find it” from the reporters.

Loader manual: this is quite beautiful. And lovely.

MOD Films - remixable films and tools for film reuse: awesome in theory, but has anyone actually worked on a collaborative film? And not hated everyone else you worked with? Thought so.

OK, so here’s the story. My wife and I have been without cable or sat television since I cancelled Charter cable when we moved out of our place in Pasadena in July. Just recently, during mid-season break (damn), we got DirecTV (a post in and of itself). However, we have a lot of catching up to do.

It seems that the show of the season, over Lost, etc is Heroes. It captures all the geek-gasm’s that exist in this planet in one hour long format. Fantastic. FANTASTIC. The inner geek in Amy has even been exposed when she visibly gasped during one scene (the first “flight” in Vegas).

Side Note: Nothing in this world is as heart-warming as your wife giggling like a little girl at a Japanese man named Hiro and then saying, “That was so awesome… lets watch Serenity again!”

OK, she didn’t want to watch Serenity again, but she does like the movie.

Back to this evening: last night we watched three episodes on NBC’s site, and it was OK, save for the commercials. Tonight I decided: we are watching on our plasma. As regular readers know, I have a MacMini in the living room usually hooked to a touch-screen for the lighting and home automation system. Tonight I hooked the DVI output to the HDMI input on our receiver, and downloaded three episodes of Heroes.

A few cables, a hookup to the receiver for audio and pressing Menu on the Apple Remote and that nice “zing” noise ushered in Front Row. I went to Videos, Shared Videos and selected Amy’s account (its nice that since we have two accounts on the iMac, that both iTunes libraries show up as independent computers). I selected Heroes, pressed play and hoped for the best.

Fantastic.

It looks about the same quality as the SD feed from DirecTV, except maybe a bit softer. However, it worked flawlessly, sounded great and even Dolby 5.1 was supported. We managed to watch three episodes on the plasma, and forgot we were even pumping data out of the small box on the subwoofer. Considering that this computer was pulling data from an iMac upstairs after relaying through two other Airports, this was impressive. The level of transparency the whole process had was inspiring to me, someone who has long longed for the ability to have seamless experiences with my devices.

The ultimate test was playing an AVI rip of Inconvenient Truth w/ the AC3 track. Flawless. HD version of a Sigur Ros video? Flawless. Beyond flawless actually.

Microsoft might have a head-start with the Media Center PC’s. They might have an X-Box 360 with HD download. However, if the iTV is what I think it can (and will) be… Apple won by the shear fact that I don’t even have to think about why.

The beauty of the most flawless technological products and innovation is determined by the degree to which the technology, product and innovation are subjugated beneath the sheer joy of experience.