Author Archives: Jason Patz

About Jason Patz

You can find out more about me at my blog www.jasonpatz.com. Stuff I've made. Stuff I like.

Best Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe

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Feeling hot hot hot?  Well, then it’s time for homemade ice cream.  I’ve given you some of the very best homemade ice cream recipes I know of already – Vanilla, Oreo Mint, Peanut Butter Cup, and Peach.  You can get a printable version of all four here.  We worked on them until each was the tastiest we’d ever had.  The only complaint we got was that there was no chocolate recipe.  As you can see below, that situation has been rectified.

This recipe was easy to finalize since we had already tested different chocolate combos for the best brownies in the world.  All we had to do was modify the winner to pack that flavor into ice cream.  Just like the brownies, the challenge of chocolate ice cream is making it really chocolaty.  It is easy to turn the white cream brown but getting a strong flavor to match that dark color requires several kinds of concentrated chocolate and a little espresso. Both Melanie and I agree that it is the best chocolate ice cream we’ve ever eaten.

I think this ice cream could be a real winner with chocolate Oreos broken up in it.  If it didn’t melt so fast, it might be nice to add some cinnamon chocolate pudding right at the end of the mixing.  Of course duplicating Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk is never a bad idea.  You’d just need to mix in white and dark chocolate fudge pieces, pecans, walnuts, and chocolate-covered almonds.

Maximum Chocolate Ice Cream (Printable PDF version)
Makes about 5 cups

1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso
1-1/2 teaspoons boiling water
2 oz Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa
1-1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 cups heavy cream

1.  Freeze freezer bowl according to manufacturer’s instructions (probably overnight).
2.  Bring water to a boil in a medium bowl.  Stir in espresso powder dissolving completely.
3.  Stir in chocolate chips dissolving completely.
4.  Heat milk until hot but not boiling then add to chocolate mixture.
5.  Stir in cocoa powder dissolving completely.
6.  Cool mixture in fridge until very cold.
7.  Add sugar and mix on low speed for about two minutes until all sugar is dissolved.
8.  Add cream and mix about one minute until evenly incorporated.
9. Pour immediately into ice cream maker and operate according to manufacturer’s instructions until ice cream is thick and frozen (probably 30 minutes).
10. Eat immediately for soft serve.  Transfer to container and place in freezer for about two hours for firmer ice cream.

After you give it a try, let us know how you like it.  If you send me a picture of you enjoying your batch of ice cream (in a G-rated way), I’ll be sure to append it to this post.  Let me know if you want me to include your name or not.

How to Make a Hardcover Book

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After seeing our recovered Bibles, one of my nieces wanted to make a hardcover book that she would be able to write and draw in.  The process was basically the same but it was actually a little quicker to do.

Next time I would make two changes:
1.  Use a very thick and stiff utility knife to trim textblock or not trim those pages at all.
2.  Woven the reinforcing ribbon into the thread that stitched the loose pages into signatures for an even stronger connection between the pages and the ribbon.

Here is an annotated slideshow of the steps:

What to do When Your Crucial SSD Suddenly Stops Working and Disappears

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***  This article relates to my specific SSD (Crucial 256 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2).  If you are looking for general information on SSD’s, how to set them up, and why they are great, go to this article.  ***

Well today I had a real pants-pooper scare.  Fired up the computer and it jumped to life as it now does with the new SSD.  Login.  Something funny is happening.  I’m not able to start any programs or even bring up the Task Manager to see what is running.  Force the computer to shut down by holding down the power button.  Start up again.  Computer hangs when Windows is supposed to load.  Pop in Windows 7 CD to see if there is a quick fix it can do.  Can’t do anything.  Check BIOS.  Doesn’t even show the SSD exists.  Uh-oh…

It appears I had a cascading Lemony Snicket series of events.  I think it was some random weird thing that caused Windows to hang (it seems to happen once in a blue moon), I forced it to shut down when I couldn’t get anything to respond, and my particular SSD’s particular version of its driver was susceptible to failure due to sudden power loss.

Needless to say, all of this happened exactly 6 days after my 30-day money-back guarantee expired.  I thought I was going to be without a computer for several weeks as I battled to get a replacement drive for this new brick. What would happen to the partial data still on the old drive I’d have to return but couldn’t access to save and then completely erase?

Luckily I had access to an old laptop that can still function as a web browser so I was able to go to the manufacturer’s website and find a solution.  Here is the convoluted process I had to follow.  Maybe it will help you too.

Read and follow this article to allow your SSD to be seen by your system again.  It tells you to disconnect your SSD from your motherboard but leave the power attached.  Then you go through a series of power ups, rest for 20 minutes, power down, etc.  I’m absolutely serious about this.  I’d never seen anything like it.  For extra insurance I made sure as I was starting up to go into the BIOS and let it sit there rather than some random screen.  It was weird and time consuming but it worked!  Now my computer could see my SSD again.  In fact, no damage appeared to be done and all my files were still accessible.  Boy am I glad that the Windows 7 disk didn’t work before or I would have lost about a week’s worth of work by reverting to my last backup.

Back up all files and create a new system image.  I did all this and changed my auto backup to happen daily now instead of weekly.  I really never want to lose a day’s worth of work but a week’s worth is unacceptable.  I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this before.  If you don’t know how to do this stuff, Windows 7 will walk you through it.  Just click on the start button in the lower left and type “backup” then select “Backup and Restore” and follow the prompts.  You can create a system image here too.  It will be an option on the left-hand side of the Backup and Restore window.

Check to see if the SSD is physically damaged with chkdsk.  I’m certainly not an expert on this but a quick way that seems to be accurate is to run the command chkdsk.  To do this you click the start button, type cmd and press ctrl+shift+enter to get to the command line in administrator mode, and finally type chkdsk (assuming your SSD is your primary drive, if not, you’ll have to specify the drive before running chkdsk – more info here).  When you press enter you see a laundry list of details about the particular drive including how many bad sectors it has.  Mine had 0 so yea!

Check to see the newest version of the drivers.  Follow the link to an official forum thread that details all of the driver updates.  BONUS:  They provide instructions in the first message on how to subscribe to this thread so you are always in the know if new drivers become available.

Check to see which version of the drivers is installed on your SSD.  This might be a little confusing because the link takes you to instructions for a particular program.  Just skip to the part entitled “Validating the Current Firmware Revision” and follow only those instructions.  That is the only part we care about right now.  I have a brand new drive (purchased April 2012) and my drivers were out of date so chances are yours are too.

Update drivers.  So it seems that all of my problems stemmed from drivers that couldn’t handle sudden power loss very well (although the drive has done just fine when we’ve lost power before).  At the time of this writing version 000F is the newest and supposedly fixes this problem along with two others.  If you follow the link above it does a good job detailing the steps you will need to take.  Simply select your type of drive from the drop down menu and then pick either the automatic or manual install.  Read and follow the instructions that go with your preferred installation method.  NOTE:  I could not get the auto installer to work (I think because I use 64-bit Win 7) so I had to do it manually.  I opted to create a bootable USB flash drive with the driver update software on it as detailed in the instructions and it worked flawlessly.

Enjoy functional computer.  Change shorts (The scare is over?).  Hopefully my system is fully operational once again.  So far so good…

***  For more information on SSD’s, see this article.  ***

Why You Need a Solid State Hard Drive

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***  UPDATE 6/7/12 – See how I corrected a fairly major problem with my particular SSD in this article. ***

I recently upgraded my computer because it was beyond showing its age and was getting to the point that it couldn’t even complete certain tasks anymore.  The component I was looking forward to most was the new hard drive.  Isn’t a hard drive just a hard drive?  Don’t you always get so much more space than you’ll ever use?  Why care about that so much?

TL;DR:  I bought an SSD.  It sped up my computer a lot.  I think everyone would love one and should buy one.

For years I’ve dreamt of the day when really fast hard drives would be commonplace.  Sure, having a multi-core CPU and a killer video card are great, but think about what you wait on most of the time:  stuff loading, saving, and copying.  I imagine a time when the computer truly is just an appliance like TV.  You push a button and it is on and ready to go.  This requires some type of ultra-fast storage.  Enter the solid state drive.

You can think of a solid state drive (SSD) like a USB flash/thumb drive with much higher capacity and a much faster transfer rate.  There are no moving parts.  They are silent (obviously).  Theoretically, they will last longer and are more rugged than standard hard drives.  They use less power and, most importantly for me, they are much much faster.  Although this article at Tom’s Hardware is getting a little long in the tooth, I think it gives a pretty good idea of the typical hard drive vs solid state hard drive speed.  In particular the video on this page gives a good impression of the differences.

Why doesn’t every computer ship with an SSD?  The only reason I can come up with is cost.  When I purchased mine, it cost me about $280 for 256GB.  Ouch!  It was by far the most expensive component of my upgrade.  When I went back to check on the shipment of my order the next day, the price had dropped $50.  A few days after that when a friend asked what I ordered and I went to grab the URL, the price had dropped by $80.  At the time of this writing, the price is back up to $250 so I guess there was a temporary price war with someone.  You can check the current price by clicking here.

You can see that I decided to buy this component from Amazon.  I preferred their return policy on SSD’s over NewEgg’s.  Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t offer a price matching guarantee, but overall I’m happy purchasing the drive through them.

IDIOSYNCRASIES
SSD’s do have a few unusual things that should be taken in to account:
1.  You should never sleep or hibernate an SSD.  In certain cases with certain drives in certain configurations, this can mess them up.  I haven’t read anything about the percentages here, but I gather that it is a small number but large enough to pay attention to.  Besides, SSD’s use so little power when idle, there is much less need to sleep them so why take the risk.

2.  You must never defrag an SSD.  I noticed when I installed Win 7 on my SSD, it automatically turned off defragging on this drive.  Apparently, defragging an SSD can cause it to become non-functional and at the very least puts unnecessary wear on it.  It wouldn’t speed up the operation of it anyway.  Don’t worry, you can reclaim the unused space by…

3.  Do use TRIM.  This is a process that goes in and reclaims the unused space on your SSD once a file is deleted.  If you are running Windows 7, when you install your SSD, it should automatically detect what kind of drive it is and start running TRIM on it.  You can check to see if TRIM is running by doing the following:  1. Open Command Prompt with Administrative privileges (“Run as administrator” when you right-click the command prompt icon is one way)  2. Enter the following command “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify”  3.  If the result is ’0′ TRIM is enabled.  I didn’t have to do anything special.  Win 7 detected the SSD and, when I checked, it was running TRIM.  If you don’t run some sort of reclamation software like this, the performance of the drive will degrade the more you use it.  If you don’t run software like this I imagine you’d have to eventually reformat the drive to get it back to a useful speed.  Why not run TRIM though?  It only operates when your computer is idle and it maintains its performance.

4.  Do set your mode to AHCI (or RAID if you are setting up a RAID array) before you install Windows on it.  I ended up having to install Win 7 twice because the first time I didn’t do this properly.  Win 7 still worked but I wasn’t getting all the speed out of the drive that I could.  I honestly don’t know the details, but AHCI works with SSD’s better.  You can see how to set it up in this video (at the 12:00 minute mark) and by following the instructions that came with your motherboard.  NOTE:  I set the BIOS to AHCI for the SSD, but I missed the step to load the AHCI driver before installing Win 7.  Basically, when you insert the CD and start the installation process, you will get to a point where it asks you which drive to install Win 7 on.  Notice down in the lower left-hand corner the button labeled “load driver.”  Now is the time to load the ACHI driver – before Win 7 is installed.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
Yes, an SSD is a noticeable speed increase.  It isn’t the instant-on for everything that I was hoping for but it is so much faster than a standard hard drive.  Google Chrome loads about a nanosecond after you click on the icon.  Other programs take a little longer.  Windows 7 takes about one minute to be operational from the moment you press the start button (about half the time is the BIOS POST’ing and about half is Win 7 loading from the SSD).  It took about ten minutes to install Win 7 on this drive instead of the suggested 30 minutes for a normal hard drive.

Since SSD’s are silent, I notice the fans in my computer much more now.  What I always used to assume was the sound of the hard drive as a program loaded I now know is the CPU heatsink fan spinning up.

The SSD I have has not made me think of my computer as an appliance just yet, but it has reduced my wait times to almost nothing.  If I had it to do over, I would purchase the exact same SSD and be very happy that I did.  I cannot imagine a situation where a computer user would NOT appreciate the performance boost of an SSD.

Please note that most SSD’s are sized to fit in laptops (2.5” bay) instead of desktops (3.5” bay).  I thought I already had an adapter bracket or that I’d be able to buy one locally.  I was wrong.  Don’t fret.  Every SSD I looked at had a version with a bracket and one without.  Just remember to order the one you need or plan to order the bracket separately as I had to do.  Some of these stand-alone brackets even allow you the option of stacking two SSD’s in a single hard drive bay.  If only I had the money for two SSD’s so I could put them in a RAID array…  There is always something better and faster.

A Better Way to Bag Leaves

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Do you have a worn out or useless garbage can?  Now you can breathe life back into it!

You’re thinking “Why have an article about leaf collection in the spring, Jason?”  Well, if you lived in Florida you’d understand.  See, the trees around here don’t drop their leaves when it is cool and the grass is dead.  They wait until things start to heat up, the bugs come out, and the grass is starting to get nice and thick to maximize enjoyment.

Normally, I try to wait until all of the live oaks have dropped all of their oak yak (blossoms) for the year (usually by Easter).  This year they have just been trickling down and  I couldn’t wait any longer or the grass would have gotten too long and the process would have been too painful so last weekend Melanie helped me get our yard nice and leaf free.  Full disclosure:  The magnolia in the front yard has already dropped over 100 more leaves in the two days since the raking occurred.

I have this old wheeled garbage can that long ago got hit by a car and lost its wheels.  It was very difficult to stand upright but I saved it because putting leaving in a can is much easier than leaves in a bag.  The bottom was getting so thin that it had holes in some places.  At some point I saw a handyman special where an old garbage can like this was turned into a useful garbage bag holder.  The beauty of this system is that the bag does not get vacuum-sealed in the bottom of the can, the can “grows” with whatever size bag you want to use, and the bag does not have to be stretched to fit over the lip of the can.  I now share that transformation with you.

Step One – Cut the Bottom off the Can
I used a regular old handsaw designed to cut wood.  I could have made the cut straighter but it still works great.

Step Two – Turn the Can so the top sits on the Ground and Insert a Bag
This inverted taper will make lifting the can off the full bag easy and it makes the whole apparatus more stable. Notice how much easier the bag goes over the small end of the can.

Step Three – Fill Bag with Yard Debris
The sidewalls of the can allow you to compact the debris with your foot or hands without stretching and weakening the bag.  The bag is allowed to expand out the bottom (the old top) of the can allowing for many sizes of bag to be used.  Plus, I got to say “debris.”

Step Four – Tie the Top of the Bag Closed 
I like to try and leave as much of the top open as possible to try and let some sort of biodegrading take place.  Jacksonville doesn’t allow us to just pile our leaves at the curb for collection so either you buy bags or have metric tons of garbage cans that are used just once or twice a year.

Step Five – Lift Can off of Bag and Repeat Ad Nauseam

The Affair by Lee Child

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Well friends, it is time for another patented Patz quick book review.  As you know by now, I love listening to audio books in the car and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books are consistently my favorites.  You can read a review of another in the series as well as a link to all the books in order here.

The Affair is a good book.  It might even be the best of the Reacher series.  Melanie and I both really liked the setting and the plot.  As usual, there were not an overwhelming number of characters and each was distinct and fairly believable.  The pacing was excellent.  It was a nice change to go back in time to a point when Reacher was still in the Army.

Unfortunately, this book has at least three extended sex scenes.  I guess Child had to make up for so little kissy touchy in the previous book.  I have absolutely nothing against sex, but I don’t need or want it described to me in a book – especially one primarily about action and solving mysteries.  It just seems like such a sharp turn in the story whenever it happens.  It would be easy enough to suggest what was happening and quickly move on.  We just fast forwarded through them.  I guess that is the biggest benefit of listening to the audiobook instead of reading it.

Overall, both Melanie and I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it to anyone looking for a quick action mystery read.

Best Android Apps 2012

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As I mentioned before in my iPhone 4S apps article, we’ve upgraded to smartphones finally.  Here are the best apps I’ve found for Android.  Preference is given to free over paid apps.  What I’ve looked for are things that improve the experience of the phone and make it a more useful tool.  I’ve run these apps on a Galaxy Nexus so they work with Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).  I’ll be the first to admit that they have not been tested extensively by me, but this should be a great starting point for anyone that is new to Android smartphones.

TweetDeck for social media management.  I’ve always liked TweetDeck on the desktop so I’m giving it a whirl on the phone.  It makes me sad that it still doesn’t incorporate Google +.  I picked it over the native Twitter app because it also works with Facebook.  I think I prefer it over the desktop experience since scrolling is so fast and easy.

SeekDroid for tracking and securing a lost or stolen Android phone.  It costs $2.99 so I almost went with the completely free Prey but in the end I went with one that a few sites liked.  You can have your phone play an alarm if you lose it.  You can also track it if it is stolen and even lock and wipe it remotely.   Also, the app’s James Bond icon makes me happy.

Tiny Flashlight + LED is a free app that turns both your camera flash and your display into a flashlight.  The best part is the widget that turns the light on or off without having to go through a series of menus.  Just push the button just like a regular flashlight.  What puts this one over the top for me is that you can also change the color of the light, have it flash Morse Code, and strobe in various warning patterns and colors.

Red Laser scans a wide variety of barcodes and product codes to identify items.  The app will then do cost comparisons from other vendors both online and nearby.  If food is scanned it will provide the nutrition label.  From my few tests it has worked very quickly and accurately.

Astrid is a free top-rated to-do list.  I’m not sure I’m going to use it but it seems to be the best of the bunch.  It is easy to set up tasks.  I love that it has a little stopwatch to time tasks which is great for freelance work that is billed by the hour.  For $1.50 I decided to try Astrid Locale which is supposed to make your to-do lists location sensitive.  This would be great if it worked, but I’ve read complaints of spotty accuracy.  Time will tell.  Basically you can set an alert to say “buy milk” when you arrive at the grocery store.  I’ve got it set to go into vibrate mode whenever I’m at church.  The thing that bugs me is that I had to buy another app to make it work!  Maybe I just missed it in the lingo or didn’t read carefully enough but it wasn’t clear to me that I also needed to buy the app Locale to make it work.  What is worse is that Locale doesn’t have the greatest reviews and is $5.00!  I’ve noticed that Locale has changed my wallpaper once already.  I hope this isn’t more of a hassle than it is worth…

DropBox is the standard way to quickly and easily share large files with many people or just use it to back up documents to the cloud.  If you have a DropBox account (free), it makes sense to have an app to be able to access it on your phone.  The app is simple, straightforward, formatted just like the desktop program, and works well for everything I’ve tried.

My Tracks is a Google product that creates paths overlaid on Google Maps utilizing the GPS receiver in your phone.  You can save the tracks, edit, and annotate them.  It seems to work fine.  I’m hopeful that this will be nice software to have when I go hiking and want to share my route with others.  Google reminds you that your GPSr really drains the battery on your phone.  They mentioned that it will reduce most phones to a five-hour operating window.  If you don’t need to see the map as you record your path, they recommend switching over to airplane mode to extend the battery life.  You will still be able to record your path but it will be overlaid on a grey background instead of the map until you turn your other antennas back on.

Shazam is a song identification app.  Simply hold your phone near the music you are listening to and it will attempt to identify it as well as provide the lyrics.  I was only able to stump it with one relatively well-known chiptune song.  Sadly, it didn’t recognize any of my singing or humming.  I wanted to try SoundHound but any link I clicked on for it in the Google Apps store was dead.

iTriage helps you determine what you might need to do or which doctor you might need to see based on symptoms you tell it.  It then gives you a list of the nearest places to get that treatment.  It was really a toss up for me between this app and WebMD.  Both look good but the little info video for iTriage is funnier and it has many more reviews than WebMD.  I know they aren’t the best reasons to make a decision but it doesn’t look like you can go wrong with either one.

Google Chrome web browser is my favorite for desktop browsing.  It is a cool idea that the tabs you have open on your desktop will be open on your phone.  Basically it sounds like the syncing that occurs with Gmail but in browser form.  It is supposed to be faster than the built-in ICS browser on my phone.  Unfortunately, it is still in beta and according to the reviews is prone to crash.  I’ll keep my eyes on this one, but I’m not installing it for now.

While it isn’t the most practical app, Sky Map is probably the app that I was looking forward to the most.  With Sky Map you simply point your phone at the sky and it tells you what celestial bodies you are looking at.  You can also put in the name of an object and it will direct you to it.  I have found it to be roughly accurate.  In other words, things didn’t line up exactly where I hoped they would, but it was obvious what was supposed to be what.  Some of the reviews lead me to believe it is either a bug with the Nexus or the ICS implementation.  So maybe it will work even better on your phone.  Go get it.  It is free, simple to use, and I really love it.

Geocaching was a must have app for me.  Melanie and I love geocaching.  If you don’t know about this game check it out at www.geocaching.com.  It makes spur-of-the-moment caching a breeze.  Just turn on the app, see if something is hidden nearby, find it, and log it directly from the program.  I recommend going in to the settings and changing it to show only caches that you haven’t found because it doesn’t have icons to make those distinction on the map (On the website version smilies show caches you’ve found and boxes show caches you haven’t).

Movies by Flixter is the full name of what everyone refers to as Flixter.  It is a simple fast app to see movies, theatres, and show times but the real power is that it is tied in to the Rotten Tomatoes rating system making it a pretty complete movie selection app.  Very useful.

Pandora’s app for Android is probably not as practical as their desktop software.  This app can consume a huge amount of data unless you are on a wi-fi network so beware.  It runs smoothly and works well though.  Just in case you haven’t heard of Pandora, it is personalized radio over the internet.  You enter an artist or genre of music and a station is created around it.  You don’t have control of exact songs that are played but they are pretty good about sticking with the theme you set and you can certainly hear a much wider variety of music than you’d ever find on the radio.

WordPress is a decent little app if you have a blog on WordPress.com or use their software to host your own WordPress site.  You can see your stats or post stuff to your blog.

Yelp is a great tool not only for reading reviews of restaurants, but for finding local shops that are difficult to find online otherwise.  For example, my barber is listed in Yelp but a Google search will not turn it up.  The website is really fantastic for tracking down local independent places to eat.  I’m not completely convinced the Android app is quite as good as the website, but it is certainly easier to navigate when using a phone.

Dictionary.com may even work a little bit better than the website.  Fast and easy to use.  Plus, with text-to-speech you can make it say “fart.”

Google Translate is pretty neat and I think it will become a very good product in a short while.  Using the already excellent speech recognition software built in to ICS you can simply speak a word or phrase and translate it into one of about 50 languages which will be written and spoken.  It seems to do a very good job translating English to other languages, but not quite as good of a job going the other way.  I tried a little French, Spanish, and Chinese with limited success.  Of course, it could be operator error.  I did get an F in French one quarter.  On the bright side, I can confirm that it does an excellent job translating “fart” into Chinese and back to English.

Hanping Chinese Dictionary works very well from my limited ability to test it.  It got all the Chinese words I still remember.

Wikipedia Because many arguments can be quickly settled with a trip to the website, why not get there quicker and easier with the app?

ESPN ScoreCenter is one free convenient place to get all of the scores from all of the games and a little bit of news.  You can customize one page to follow the specific teams you like. Yahoo! Sportacular appears to be a worthy competitor.

GateGuru may takeoff as a one-stop app to get you through airports easily.  I like it because it provides a list of places to eat and shop and a map of the airport.  It is obviously set up to rely on crowdsourcing for ratings, wait times in security lines, etc.  This will work well if the user base grows.  As of now it seems that some of this info is woefully out of date, but I’ll keep it for the terminal maps if nothing else.

Google Goggles is not quite ready for primetime but is such a neat concept and it does work more than half of the time so it makes the list.  Basically it turns your camera into a Google search option.  Take a picture of a logo and it will take you to the company website.  Take a picture of a famous piece of art and it will identify it (I tried it on two movie posters and made sure to leave out the text and it got them both).  Translate foreign signs.  Scan barcodes.  They want to get it to the point where it can identify a plant by its leaves.  That would be really neat!  Similar to this is Layar where you hold up your camera and it overlays info about what you are looking at.  Seems like it would be great for sightseeing.  Supposedly too much unorganized info where it works and it only works well in the biggest cities so I didn’t try it.

Light Flow Lite – LED Light Control does just what it says.  If you have a phone with a notification light, this may be something you like.  It allows you to change the color of the notification light but it also allows you to organize how all of your notifications are handled.  I got it mostly to be able to play with the color of the notification light.

UltraChron Stopwatch Lite  is a voice-controlled stopwatch and countdown timer.  It has the option to countdown to zero by voice alert followed by an alarm.  It has editable laps.  It continues working and the alarm will still go off even if your phone goes to sleep.  Basic, simple to use, helpful.  The only issue is that it is rather ugly.

Let me know other great apps I should try.

How I Kicked Cable TV and cut the Cord in 2012: Part Two – The Plan

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As  I detailed in this post, we had been thinking of ditching cable TV for a while and finally reached the tipping point about a week ago.

We have both had cable TV almost our entire lives and had the ability to time-shift programs for at least six years using Tivo.  Don’t get me wrong, we love Tivo and would still have the service if we intended to keep cable TV.  I can’t remember the last time we watched a show live or even looked at a TV guide and it has been wonderful.  We just told Tivo the shows we liked and watched whatever it had recorded the previous day.  We even chose to delay watching football games about 45 minutes just to be able to fast forward though the commercials.

When it came time to find a cable alternative we knew we wanted the time-shifting ability.  Now there are so many shows and movies available on demand for a flat monthly fee we thought that just maybe we didn’t need to worry about a DVR anymore.

Our Goals
1.  Watch TV within a day of broadcast
2.  Watch movies within a year of broadcast
3.  Have access to all of our favorite shows
4.  Be able to time shift anything we are watching

This would be incredibly simple if Hulu Plus had deals with all of the TV content providers.  You’d need a relatively high-speed internet connection. Then you’d just use hardware to stream media from your computer to your TV.  Content would come from Hulu Plus for current TV and movies would come from Netflix.  In fact, for many people this solution would be great right now.  They could cut their cable bill significantly and receive all the same TV plus a lot more movies.  For other folks with very basic cable, they would be able to receive many times more high quality content than they currently get for about the same cost.

The killer for us is that we apparently don’t like the same shows that most Americans do.  So to get the programs we look forward to the most we are going to have to do some extra work.

Below is a chart comparing our existing system to what we are in the process of assembling right now.  Once we’ve had some time to test it out, I’ll report back with what works and what doesn’t.

This system is going to have some drawbacks for us:
1.  We are going to be paying about the same amount.  Yes, we will get A LOT more stuff to watch but that isn’t a priority.  We already have more to watch than we ever do.
2.  We are going to have to put up with commercials on Hulu Plus.
3.  We may not have access to all the shows we want to watch.
4.  Live sports may be a real problem.

If you are interested in the options we looked into before deciding to try this plan, please read this post.  Check back later to see how this system worked out.  Better yet, subscribe to this blog through your favorite social media site so you’ll know exactly when we update.

How I Kicked Cable TV and cut the Cord in 2012: Part One – The Options

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I will be doing at least three posts on this subject.  Check back for future entries where I’ll update you after I’ve had time to install and test various components of my solution.  You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, or have posts emailed to you.

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About a month ago I got my final warning from Comcast that all-digital TV would soon be here (4/3/12) and I needed to make preparations.  For most people this would not be a big deal but we still have an old CRT TV that we inherited from my parents when they upgraded.  Because the TV isn’t digital we would have to get a converter box.  Hassle.  Our Tivo would only be able to use one of its tuners.  Problem.  Add in the additional cost of cable and Tivo’s monthly fee and we reached the tipping point.

I did some research on the current cable TV alternatives.  You can see my thoughts on each below or just  jump to this article to see my actual plan if you have a really short attention span.

Be forewarned, my exact solution may not be the best for you.  You will have to have a high speed internet connection.  If you can stream movies to your computer, your connection should work fine.  Also, you may have to live without live sports.  This is the deal breaker for many people.  I don’t watch a lot of sports so I may be ok, but the ones I follow I want to be able to see.  I’ve watch live legal football games on my computer before so I’m hopeful this will pan out.

Current Cable TV Alternatives
Hardware
Roku  is a box about the size of a deck of cards that you attach to your TV.  It is designed with one purpose in mind:  streaming content from your computer/internet connection to your TV.  It is supposed to be a plug and play simple solution.  It uses a remote so the experience should be more like watching TV rather than pulling up videos on a computer.
Pro’s  Small, cheap, no monthly fee, simple to use, fast (some devices like this are supposed to lag pretty badly), wide variety of content (Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc),  wireless and Ethernet connection options, works with digital and analog TV’s.
Con’s  Does not support Flash-based media like YouTube natively (There are work arounds though).  You must have a high speed internet connection for this device to work properly.  By default, you don’t have complete access to media on your computer.  That means if you have videos saved on your hard drive that you want to watch on your TV or you want to watch a show from a website that hasn’t partnered with Roku, there isn’t a built-in solution.  I understand the need to prevent people from illegally watching movies that they have torrented however a lot of legal content is left out in the cold too like YouTube and broadcast channels like PBS.  There are supposed to be several legal workarounds for this problem but they aren’t obvious because Roku (the company) doesn’t support them in any way.
My thoughts:  The lead-painted plaster and brick walls of my house pose an almost impenetrable barrier to wireless signals so having an Ethernet connection is critical.  The ability to connect to analog TV’s is also critical for me.  Unfortunately, only the top-end Roku has an Ethernet port so that meant a choice between a Roku 2 XS or a Roku 1 XDS.  The XS is newer, faster, and comes with a better remote which works off Bluetooth so you don’t need line-of-sight like the XDS’s IR remote.  Until fairly recently (9/2011), the XS did not work with PlayOn (detailed below).  Apparently this problem has been sorted out so now both the XDS and XS work with PlayOn.  Here is a pretty good review of the Roku 2 XS.  http://reviewhorizon.com/2011/07/roku-2-xs-review/

Blu-ray Player or Game Console  Many have the ability to stream online media or content from your computer like a Roku player.  I didn’t even consider these because we are hoping to skip Blu-ray entirely and just stream HD content whenever we upgrade the TV.  We don’t play enough games to justify a game console.  A Roku player is cheaper and less obtrusive than any of these solutions so that is what I focused on.

Redbox is one you shouldn’t forget.  They offer old-fashioned DVD’s from vending machines.  They are consistently the cheapest pay-per-title place.
Pro’s Cheap, good selection, excellent choice when multiple rentals are to be made at once.
Con’s Inconvenient, can be more expensive than other choices once gas to and from the vending machine is factored in.
My Thoughts:  It amazes me how many people do NOT use their computer to find and reserve their movies before they go to the kiosks.  Go to the website, make sure the movie you want is there, reserve it, and then when you show up at the physical location all you have to do is swipe your credit card and all your movies vend.  I’ve also heard that an online streaming option like Netflix is in the works.

Ceton is a company that makes computers and computer components specifically targeted at viewing media on your TV.
Pro’s  Looks like an all-inclusive solution, could be a decent price for what you get.
Con’s  May be too much of a techy experience rather than a casual TV experience.
My Thoughts:  At half the price, I’ll try a Roku player first.

Simple TV is basically a DVR for over-the-air digital channels.  It has the capability for season pass recording like Tivo (a critical component of a DVR in my opinion).
Pro’s  Expensive for features offered, simple to use, season pass recording, streams content wirelessly to any device in range (iPad, computer, etc)
Con’s Season pass is $5/mo subscription, limited to locally broadcast stations, single tuner (but multiple units can be ganged together to for multiple tuners), no hard drive included for recording (but is easy to install via USB), not available until “Spring 2012.”
My Thoughts:  Antenna digital is supposed to provide the best picture quality so with this setup your channels are free and you get a high quality image.  This might be a solution once the price starts dropping.  I can’t see paying $150 for a single tuner item that only gets over-the-air channels, requires a $5/mo subscription for what I think is a critical season pass feature, and requires that I provide a hard drive to record it on.  At $25-50 this item begins to make sense.  Then you could gang two together and really have a nice solution for local channel recording.

Axio TV appears to be a combination of a Roku player and a Simple TV with some Tivo thrown in.  It can DVR over-the-air channels as well as subscribing to streaming media a la carte.  Curiously it has two different websites here and here.
Pro’s  Compiles many features in one box?
Con’s  Expensive.  It won’t be available until “Summer 2012.”
My Thoughts:  I’ll admit I don’t really understand this product.  I buy a box for $200 then I pay $15/mo in a subscription fee then I have to pay for the content I want to watch on it.  That sounds like Tivo’s strategy which I’m trying to get away from.  It also sounds like Roku’s strategy but the Roku box is half that price and I don’t have to pay a monthly subscription fee.  Of course with Roku there is no built-in option for live TV.  Axio TV isn’t available now so there really is no point pursuing this one further until it is.

Google TV looks very exciting to me, but just isn’t ready for prime time yet.  As Google is good at doing, they appear to have put an umbrella over all kinds of media and made it searchable for easy access.  Google TV incorporates live TV, on demand TV, movies, pictures posted by you/family/friends, YouTube, web surfing via Chrome all with the ability to utilize picture-in-picture.  It is even designed to allow creators to write apps for it.
Pro’s  Every type of media you could want available on your TV.  No monthly fee.
Con’s  Slow to change channels, seems to require cable TV to have access to channel guide, may not be able to do season pass recording, current iterations of hardware are prone to crashing, a few (many?) media outlets (like Hulu) are blocking Google TV from accessing content.
My Thoughts:  This thing seems like it is still in beta testing.  Not an option for me.  The biggest problems with this system are the hardware, which Google doesn’t supply, and the deals they don’t have in place with some providers to allow content to be shown on the system.  These are both challenges that can be overcome and with some time, maybe they will be.  There are currently two hardware choices: Sony NSZ-GT1 Wi-Fi-Enabled 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player Featuring Google TV for ~$200 or Logitech Revue for ~$160.  Apparently some TV’s have or will have hardware to access Google TV built-in.

Apple TV is very similar to Roku.
Pro’s  Well-made equipment, low price.
Con’s  Slower and supposedly slightly harder to use than Roku, limited sources for video (supports Netflix and iTunes and not much more), only works with HD TV’s.
My Thoughts:  Unless you already have a lot of Apple hardware in your house, I don’t see a reason to pick this over Roku.  Even then I think it is still hard to pick Apple TV over Roku.  Maybe I’m missing some sort of Mac-only feature that would make this a winner, but until Apple has a lot more content options, I don’t see the point of this one.

Boxee  is designed to bring the internet to your TV.  It appears to have a very nice interface.  Many people really like this system.
Pro’s  Low cost way to bring the internet to your TV, can watch live over-the-air TV with a dongle.
Con’s  Much less focus on TV and movies than other choices or at least a smaller selection at this time. Cannot DVR anything from the live TV dongle.
My Thoughts:  There are a dedicated group of fans for Boxee so it must be doing some things right.  I’ve read some comments that suggest the hardware it currently runs on is not the greatest but the software is great.  Not being able to record live over-the-air TV is a huge miss.  If they get that straightened out this could be a good cable alternative.  If you are not in the market for a solution right now, I’d keep an eye on these guys.  A future product from them could be a real winner.

Software
Hulu Plus  This monthly subscription service provides access to many current broadcast and cable TV shows.
Pro’s  Access to most TV shows the day after broadcast, ability to watch shows on multiple platforms with one account (iPad, Roku’ed TV, smartphone, etc.).
Con’s  Monthly fee, not all channels or shows are supported (CBS and PBS are two big gaps), you still have to watch ads even though you are paying a fee.
My Thoughts:  Hulu is different from Hulu Plus.  Hulu is free but is blocked from all portable devices (and the Roku).  Hulu Plus is supposed to have a much wider variety of programming and with a more extensive backlog.  I would gladly subscribe to this service along with Netflix and be done.  Unfortunately, many of our favorite shows are on PBS and CBS so we’ll need some other service(s) to fill the gaps.

Netflix  is another monthly subscription service.  While primarily known as a movie viewing service, Netflix provides access to many TV shows (including TV shows from HBO) once they are about year old.  I’ve read that about the time a TV show is packaged for DVD release, it is available on Netflix.  Movies are released a little after they are available on DVD.  I’ve read that it is about the same time they are available on Redbox.
Pro’s  Large selection of movies and TV shows.
Con’s  Monthly fee, both movies and TV shows available are not current
My Thoughts:  The Roku is supposed to have been designed specifically to stream Netflix so the two should work very well together.  The amount of content that Netflix has is very impressive for the low monthly payment.

PlayOn turns most (all?) audio and video media viewable on your computer into a selectable channel on a Roku player.  This is supposed to include media saved to the computer’s hard drive as well as content streamed from the internet.
Pro’s  Fills the content gap between Netflix and Hulu Plus.
Con’s  Supposedly a little finicky to work with.  The PlayOn website even says  something like “Try it.  If it doesn’t work, then it probably won’t no matter what settings or configuration changes you make.”  It is not supported by Roku.  It has a monthly fee.
My Thoughts:  I’ve seen many reviews for the Roku that include comments about PlayOn.  Most say that it is a great way to get the additional stations and shows that cannot be found otherwise.  It has also been mentioned that Roku does not like PlayOn and offers no support for them.  I’m going to try one of the free services that supposedly does the same thing as PlayOn first.

Plex supposedly works like PlayOn but it is free.
Pro’s  Fills the content gap between Netflix and Hulu Plus.
Con’s  Supposedly easy to install, but can also be a little finicky.
My Thoughts:  This is what I plan to try first.  Here is a video review of it in action.  It is available for the Roku but, seeing that it was just released at the beginning of this month, I expect that it may not work 100% correctly.

Vudu is a movie streaming service like Netflix.
Pro’s  No monthly fee, movies guaranteed to be available the same day they come out on DVD.
Con’s  Pay per download, not available on Roku (as of now), owned by Walmart.
My Thoughts:  Since it isn’t available on Roku I won’t be using it.  I’m never as concerned about seeing movies right when they are released so using Netflix and Amazon On Demand should easily meet my desires.

Amazon Prime  is a multi-use service.  You get access to cheaper and faster shipping of goods bought through Amazon.com, the ability to share digital books, and all-you-can-stand-to-watch movies and TV.
Pro’s  If you are already a Prime member “free” videos are a nice feature.
Con’s  The most limited selection of content of any of the choices listed here.  Must buy an annual subscription instead of monthly.  Easy to confuse free Prime content with pay-as-you-go Amazon Instant Video when browsing media on Amazon.com.
My Thoughts:  I’d be an opposite customer for them.  Most people get Prime for great shipping options and watch free video as a perk.  I’d get it if they had an excellent video selection and the shipping would be icing on the cake.

Amazon Instant Video  is the only service we’ve actually used on this list yet.  It works with our Tivo and so far the performance has been flawless.  We have only downloaded movies and TV shows so I don’t know how well the streaming service works yet.
Pro’s  Many movies and TV shows available about the same time they are available on DVD.  Trusted internet company for financial transactions.  Good customer service.  Run deals offering free and 99 cent movies/content from time to time.
Con’s  Pay-as-you go can get quite expensive with this service – especially if you are using it to watch a TV series.
My Thoughts:  A good back up for when you absolutely “must” see that movie right now and Redbox + gas is more expensive or you just feel lazy and don’t want to leave the house.

Other Software
The following is a list of other software that you may find helpful.  I’ll only look into these options if I don’t get what I want from the software listed above.

Roksbox creates a Roku channel for accessing stuff on a local computer

Chaneru creates a Roku channel for accessing stuff on a local computer

roConnect creates a Roku channel for accessing stuff on a local computer

Gabby creates a Roku channel for accessing stuff on a local computer

NokNok creates a Roku channel for accessing stuff on a local computer?
Notes: Links at the bottom of the site don’t work.  Links at the top do.  Not available yet?

Tversity allows you to stream stuff to the Roku player?

If all of these options have your head reeling, just wait for the next article which will focus on my specific plan.

Making a Photo Look Old

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Most of the work I do with photos involves enhancing the natural appearance of the image.  This is stuff like cropping, adjusting color, removing blemishes, changing eye color, and the like.

In this case I got to make more of a dramatic effect.  A group of friends had gathered for a party and we wanted to get the birthday girl a memento so we all posed for an old timey old west photo.  As long as we bought copies of the official print we were allowed to snap as many extra digital images we wanted.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to try my hand at old-i-fying an image.

Here is what I did to get from start to finish:
1.  Crop the image so most of the “cowboys” couldn’t be seen wearing running shoes.
2.  Sharpen the image and remove some motion blur.  Some folks were moving and some were more out of focus than Melanie and I.
3.  Add in wood walls on the two sides of the image.  This set is not meant to accommodate so many people so you could see the outdoors scene and the pirate ship scene as well.  Obviously these things needed to be covered up.  I should have darkened the wall with a gradient from the back corner.  That would have more firmly placed it in the photo.
4.  Add a white border to the image.
5.  Darken the edge of the image to simulate wear.
6.  Use the noise filter.
7.  Adjust the hue and saturation to remove the original color and add in the sepia-ish/old picture tone.
8.  Adjust the brightness of the image selectively to simulate vignetting and an uneven exposure.
9.  Simulate scratches with a fine white brush (saw this tip online and it really helps sell the effect).
10.  Add more noise to the image and selectively remove it with the magic wand.  This was another tip I saw online.  It is amazing how effectively it simulates the deterioration of an old print.  If had thought of it at the time, I would have selectively applied this layer too.  That way I could have left the effect more strong so that parts of the image would have actually appeared to have flaked off rather than just faded.
11.  Add a tinted grain via that filter.  I probably should have also added Gaussian blur to the grain  to make it a little larger and smoother but didn’t think of that at the time.
12.  Apply a Gaussian blur to the edge of the image so that it softly transitions into the white border.