A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Running HDMI over cat5

03 January 2008

[eHomeUpgrade Honeywell Introduces HDMI to Cat5 Converter](http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/4514/honeywell_introduces_hdmi “eHomeUpgrade Honeywell Introduces HDMI to Cat5 Converter”) – maybe the wireless HDMI stuff people are talking about will render this useless, but with 5 miles of cat5e in my house I am always looking for ways to use it up.

What's on your Kindle?

02 January 2008

Love the Kindle. Love love love the integration with Amazon.com and the wireless downloading.

Mine is stuffed with classics – they are generally cheap on Amazon. I am reading Siddhartha at the moment, with some Proust, de Maupassant, Tolstoy, Wilde lined up. I am also using it for textbooks – I have a differential equations text with me, WAY better than carrying it around. I’ve only used a fraction of the storage capacity so far.

What others are carrying:

* Scott Loftesness: Amazon Kindle - Update * Brad Feld

Recent software of note

02 January 2008

* Remember the Googley Milk – major hole on iphone is lack of a todo list. this is my current favorite replacement. Nice PC UI. * Flot javascript graphing library. or there is what looks to be a server-side google alternative. Now I am embarrassed I have never put a graph on my site. * Price Advance. don’t know how well it works but seems worthy of a trial * Crossloop. Remote screen control plus a peer to peer service to help others. I like the business model thinking. * Resize any window. Sad that I even understand why I need this. * Single file defrag. I bet I will need this someday * Senuti iPod backup * Ebay Desktop. Kind of nice tho late and really why is this an app and not just a better website? * Mac disk usage utilities

Recent materials stuff that intrigued me

01 January 2008

* The Quest for a New Class of Superconductors – exploration of materials for higher temp superconductivity – basically trying to find materials that conduct without involving phonons * Silicon nanowire battery with much greater energy density. One example of how messing with the nanostructure of materials can have remarkable impacts * Materials with no thermal expansion * Nanorods as measurement devices – measuring cell ph * extra strong metallic foams – another instance of how messing with nano structure can have remarkable macro effects * Turning diamonds into conducters * High performance carbon nanotube fibers.

Christmas gift awesomeness

27 December 2007

* The “Kindle”:amazon is awesome. The awesomeness is due to the wireless delivery of books. And the fact that I can browse Amazon at my PC and direct books to my Kindle with one click. (Similarly, the Unbox/Tivo integration is awesome for the same reason – Amazon is silently building a great asset here). The book selection is soooo much broader than that for the Sony Reader. * Call of Duty 4 is awesome. the ranking/challenge system keeps you engaged. Haven’t cracked the UT box yet, so entranced with COD4 – must get to 5-star general. * Stupid little RC helicopters that we got are fun. Available from lots of vendors. Pretty uncontrollable, watch out lamps!

Everything else is awesome too! I will blog it all in the fullness of time.

Replace my X10 crud

23 December 2007

I still have a few old crufty X10 devices I control at Halloween time. I am seeing a lot of Zigbee and Zwave products and think I need to move on for next Halloween. Just a couple examples:

* [eHomeUpgrade New XBee Wall Router Makes it Easy to Deploy and Extend ZigBee Networks](http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/4500/new_xbee_wall “eHomeUpgrade New XBee Wall Router Makes it Easy to Deploy and Extend ZigBee Networks”) * USB Zwave