Thus Endeth HD-DVD

Posted on 22 Feb 2008 by jeff

An ad from Tiger Direct — I guess if you are looking for an upconverting DVD player, this isn’t too bad a choice if you also have a few HD-DVDs.

Blu-Ray was a big win for Sony, considering their other strikeouts (memory stick, BetaMax, mini-disc).

Grumbling about Amazon MP3

Posted on 14 Feb 2008 by jeff

I think that Amazon MP3 is a great service, but the pricing is _so_ wrong. I considered downloading the latest Sheryl Crow disk, but it is priced only $1 less than the actual CD. I don’t understand economically how that is a win for me — I lose the album art and I have to preserve the bits myself instead of having a CD as backup (after it is ripped into my music player). I believe that if the pricing were closer to 50% of the CD purchase price, this would be a huge win for the consumer and the music industry. It’s a no-brainer to justify $5 for a download.

6 Years A-Blogging

Posted on 9 Feb 2008 by jeff

I just realized that I’ve been blogging now for 6 years. The first post to my web site (then k2.com) was in February 2002. Hard to imagine that I’ve been doing this for that long. I know that I wasn’t one of the first bloggers out there — Wikipedia suggests that the term itself was coined in 1997. But 6 years is a pretty long time to be doing anything on the Internet. So perhaps that’s a sufficient enough accomplishment.

Sort of like writing multiple blog posts the same day.

Walking While Working

Posted on 2 Feb 2008 by jeff

I have joined the ranks of the “work walkers” — I now have a treadmill in my office. The walking while working movement was started by Dr. James Levine of the Mayo clinic. His basic premise is that NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) is more important that regular excercise. One way to trigger NEAT is to walk while you work. More info is also at http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2005-rst/2836.html.

So I acquired a treadmill and built up a desk for myself so that I can walk while working on my computer. With the number of meetings that I have every day, the number of hours I actually spend doing this will vary, but at least I won’t be sitting on my rear end while I’m in my office. FWIW, I am actualy an exercise fiend these days — I work out 5 days a week, including both cardio and weight training. (Today, for example, I did a one hour indoor cycling class.) But I think this will be fun and I’m looking forward to the other benefits of this activity, including better focus and concentration.

This picture is what my office looks like with the treadmill. It’s hard to see the treadmill in this photo because it’s directly behind my desk chair. I built the desk around the treadmill and you can see my computers off to the side.