Rajat Arya

• Watching ‘ambience electro’ dance videos on YouTube. ‘DDLJ’ is on in the background. Beat that for a Friday night. #
• Making many calls – must reconnect/catch up/be social. #

• @rlabarca Honestly I’d watch that. Someone dealing with literal shit week after week would make a lot of us feel better about our jobs. #
• @delconte wait a minute, there is a Philly place in the Seattle area now? The Philadelphia Cheesesteak closed cause the owner got shot. #

• Taxes are done! Completely! Took all of 3m after getting the remaining SSN. #
• @adrouart It was a weird thing to hear Dolly Parton’s voice – I somehow was convinced she had died. I want the Fred Durst cover next. #
• Trying Flash 10 for the first time. Lets see if there are less memory leaks. #
• Thanks @dylang signed up for youmail.com. Lets see how well it holds up. Right now m.youmail.com seems down, but the website churns on. #

• Big day. Another one tomorrow. My relationship with the gym will flourish. Our courtship can no longer be hindered. #
• SSN in hand, now we are cooking with gas! Finally can electronically submit our 2007 Federal taxes. Go govt coming through in the clutch. #

• @ascetics hehe, it has come for you as well. Soon you will be irritable and cranky without it. The cocoa beans always win. #
• Rands in Repose: Nails corporate culture, great for both mgmt and IC:http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/10/12/the_culture_chart.html #
• @hoomanradfar example of how the virtual economy fails. There is no way for me to buy you a sandwich from my desk and have it materialize. #

Problem Description: Crappy interface for playing .avi files with .srt files for subtitles on Media Center PC.  This interface is what I predominantly use My Media Center PC for these days – simply to play movies sitting on my home network, with subtitles.  Since Windows Media Player itself can’t handle .srt files for subtitles, I am using a VLC Player plugin on Media Center to play these movies.

Proposed Solution: Install boxee on my Apple TV and have it discover my networked movies/music.

I got boxee Alpha installed on my Apple TV this morning and the little Apple TV has been reborn.  After getting onto the Alpha earlier this week I followed the instructions on the Google Code project for atvusb-creator and got a USB pen drive formatted and installed with the additional XMBC and boxee applications.  After watching “how-to video: boxee on Apple TV” I realized that the installation process wouldn’t be too tough, and put it on my list for the weekend. 

Sunday morning: I dug up an old 512Mb USB Flash drive and, after reading the Google Code project notes, got started on my Mac Book Pro.  The patchstick created I rebooted my Apple TV with the patchstick and watched the Linux boot kick up.  Then it hung.  After groaning I went to the bug list for the Google Code project and found out that SanDisk 512Mb USB Flash drives have been reported not to work.  Found another USB Flash drive (1Gb Verbatim one this time).  Went through the process again, and this time the patchstick loaded completely and installed boxee and XMBC.

First I needed to tune boxee to display correctly on my DLP television (which was painless and obvious with a great settings interface for manipulating the display properties) and then the full interface was accessible to me.  The interface is beautiful.  In no time I had it discover by shared movies on my local network and my shared music.  My .avi movie files with .srt subtitles played without a hitch, and the interface is perfect for watching movies.  Later I’ll walk my wife through it and see if it passes the wife test.

Solution Analysis: boxee is clearly in alpha, but I’m already hooked to it (crashes and all).  Hopefully once it becomes more stable I can officially retire my Media Center PC (which is on its last legs) and just use boxee for my movie / music playback.  Kudos to the boxee team and thanks for creating such a polished alpha.  I can’t wait to see what the team puts into this product next.

• Boxee setup videos look appealing, lets see if I can get it working this weekend. Yay weekend project. Besides finally filing my taxes. #
• At the blood lab waiting for my turn. Oh and I haven’t eaten anything since last night so I am grumpy. #
• People are hitting each other with hammers while wearing a hard hat at the office. Things have degenerated rapidly. Amazing. I smile. #
• When 15 minutes of fame becomes 15 seconds, the accusations become more ridiculous. For example: http://preview.tinyurl.com/3pr8as #

Reread from September 2008 – October 2008.

I read this back in March 2003 (see here) – but didn’t really remember the story.  So I thought I would reread it.  On a reread it was a decent story, nothing overwhelming and not quite as good as Palahniuk or Robbins, but good nonetheless.

If you like Palahniuk or Robbins then check this out, otherwise it can be skipped.

Read more about it or buy it from here.

• Google Reader down to a handful of posts that need more time to read. Yay, vacation officially over now. Oh yeah and hi5 docs read fully. #

• Babies on red-eye flights. Can I start a petition to have all babies on red-eye flights seated by themselves? Other thoughts ideas on this #