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Zune 30 Pandemic

Olaf — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:03:19 +0000

Oh, good grief! I awoke this morning to find my Zune in a less than pleasing way. I was concerned that the number of times I’ve dropped the device had finally caught up with me and I was paying the ultimate price. However, I decided to check out what was being said online about this problem – perhaps it’s something Microsoft can service. What do I find? A pandemic of global proportions effecting only Zune 30 users. It sounds like it’s related to a date bug in the device, but it has yet to be answered by Microsoft. Some have hope that normal operation will resume tomorrow, when the date resolves firmly to day 1 of 365. I’m not holding my breath. The timing couldn’t be worse as we’re heading off for a short vacation tomorrow. If neither mine nor my wife’s Zune won’t work, I’ll be sorely disappointed.

I had thought this might be a good excuse to buy an upgrade to the newer generation Zune 80 or 120, but I’d have to find my place all over again in the current audiobook I’m listening to (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”). Arrrrgh!

Search around on the net and you’ll find no shortage of complaints and Microsoft bashing surrounding this recent development. It’s a sad day, and ironic one too. I had just poked fun at a friend recently who bought an iPod without thinking of the alternative. To be fair, however, had she bought a current model Zune, she’d be unaffected by the problem.

*UPDATE* Microsoft has released a statement regarding the Zune 30 bug that hit all of us this morning. They’re essentially telling everyone to wait until tomorrow morning to turn on the Zune. As of 7:00am for Eastern timezone folks, your Zune will magically begin working again; almost ass mysteriously as it stopped.

Though it’s not in their official release, the problem is most likely due to a bug in its ability to handle a leap year, which 2008 qualified. The idea being that a leap year has around 366 days instead of the usualy 365. As of January 1st, Greenwich Meantime, the device will be back on 1 of 365 – and working. It’s a logical solution, but a very unfortunate goof for the Zune hardware team. Maybe we’ll get a coupon toward the purchase of a new generation Zune in the mail for our trouble (ahem…are you listening, Zune team)!

Zune 3.0 Coming

Olaf — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:45:26 +0000

Mmmm…Zune 3.0. I’ve just read Jason Dunn’s (of ThoughtMedia.com) report on a recent Microsoft meeting discussing the Zune 3.0 release. I am completely sold on the Zune platform and am greatly encouraged by the up-and-coming release. Perhaps the greatest boon of them all is that the Zune team will be including us Zune 30 owners in their next, big update. That means we can use the new software and get updated firmware for new functionality. Dunn writes, “this 3.0 release is underwhelming compared to the 2.0 release. Sexy new hardware excites people more than software and services do,” but I must disagree. While the visual changes are not as drastic as those we saw moving from the original product to 2.0, Zune 3.0 breathes new life into the mobile media device market. On the hardware side, Zune 3.0 does not include any new hardware with the exception of the much-anticipated Zune 120. However, it does include a firmware update which includes wireless Marketplace access, channels (a la Pandora), and buy from FM (where supported, you’ll be able to buy a song off the radio – presumably through the Marketplace). The wireless Internet access is a big win in and of itself. People complained about the lack of this ability since the Zune’s inception and now it’s here. Quit your bitchin’ and start praising the Zune team for delivering! Do I need to remind you that Zune 30 owners get this functionality too?!? We’re also going to see specific audio book support – another hot topic from days past. That means Audible.com support is here (and Overdrive – who is that?). From the examples Dunn delivered, I saw a really cool feature here that allows enabled audio books to display pictures from the book as it is read. I can see a real use here for books I get for Balthazar on the Zune.

The software sees improvements as well. There are some updated looks, an updated social system, and an improved search system among others. Channels in the Zune (software and hardware) look really great. I am a big fan of the Pandora project, so a Zune-similar feature is eagerly sought. The channels are updated automatically and based upon your ratings of music. It’s based on genres, which if yours are anything like mine, will need some cleaning to get narrowed down to a meaningful set. A new social feature allows you to find people in the Marketplace that listen to music like you. As Dunn comments, you can do this yourself now, but it takes quite a bit of time and clicking.

The one point that Dunn brings up as a downer to this feature-rich upgrade is that most of these concepts are designed around the use of a Zune Pass. For $15 per month, the Zune Pass allows you to download all the music you want for up to three people. They still haven’t worked out the issue of assigning different user profiles to this pass. Our pass is in my wife’s name, so I logon with her account to get subscription music. This will effect the way channels work (that is, averaging the music preferences between all users of the Zune Pass instead of offering an individual’s experience), but I know they’ll work this out in time. For now, I’ve learned to deal with the way the pass works and I can accept it. I doubt very seriously the Zune Pass will extend to such services as Audible (it doesn’t currently extend to the MarketPlace video services), so I’d have to look at another subscription price there. I’ve used Audible’s services before, and I did enjoy them very much. I’m a big fan of audio books, so I will likely pony-up at least a basic subscription.

The one thing I don’t know yet is when I can expect this update. Despite Dunn’s lack-luster summary of the 3.0 update, I am very much looking forward to it!

Impoverished Nations Get Zune

Olaf — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:34:29 +0000

Woot has now offered the Zune through its one day, one item online shopping innovation for a third time at unprecedented prices. Each time, the unit has dropped in price considerably. Today, I see that the device is available for a mere $104.99 including shipping. There is absolutely no reason why those of you without a personal digital audio player shouldn’t go and pick one up now. That is, of course, unless woot runs out of the offer. Better hurry!

Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

…and if you’re reading this a day late, you can see what you missed at the woot forums.

DiY PC: Antec Nine Hundred (Case)

Olaf — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:00:15 +0000

I’m in the process of building out a new custom PC for the house – the first one in quite a while now. Contrary to what you might think, as a technology guy I’m usually a little late for getting things up-to-date around the house. As such, I’m replacing an old Intellistation dual-proc Pentium 3 XEON. It sounds phat, but trust me, it’s showing its age.

I tried once to just hit this project with one blow-out purchase and be done. Just as I was ready to do it, something else came up that took priority over discretionary money. As such, I’m going the incremental route and starting with the components that are least likely to change over a short period of time.

This post begins my adventure in building out what should be a great rig.

The case decision has always been a hard one for me. I have a memorable scar on my right thumb where I was attacked by a sub-$50 tower case back in 1996. I was attempting to push out metal break-outs in the case’s rear slots with my thumb. It was difficult at first, but when the razor-sharp edges of the slot sliced off a third of my thumb’s width, it slid in easily. Er – that wasn’t the intention, however. Some-odd stitches later (three through the thumbnail – ouch!), I was ready to get back to work on the case. I used a Clark’s head screwdriver and some pliers to finish off those slots. As fun as the ER visit was to break up my day, I was not entertained by the next case-catastrophe. I wanted to test out the case power and front L.E.D.’s before I began installing components. Holding firmly to the exposed metal from the case’s chassis, I pushed the large power button on the front bezel. Oh vengeful gods! 110 volts coarse through me, there’s a loud crack, and smoke boils up from behind the bezel. Unshaken (actually I was literally shaken, but still determined), I unplugged the power supply and reset the breaker that had tripped. When I investigated the power switch and back-side of the bezel, I found that it had welded itself onto the case. Having the equipment (a hammer and screwdriver), I gingerly broke the weld (gingerly, for an ogre). Turns out, the case’s sharp edges had struck again. During shipment – possibly before – the switch leads had been sliced and exposed. Unbelievably, I replaced the switch and went on.

With the exception of some minor cuts (again from the chassis edges), I experienced no further catastrophes with that case. It wasn’t until I had done some fancy coupling of two power supplies with one switch and electrified the entire case while the system was on that I finally ditched it. Good times.

What this painful experience taught me was that I would no longer spare any expense when it came to cases. Disregarding the beautiful custom cases out there, I seek out full tower cases with lots of room for hard drives, bays, and plenty of cooling options. As you might guess, I also check the status of the chassis edges – deburred or folded are the terms I believe they’re using now. I also look at cases that generally don’t include power supplies (PSU). Included PSU’s are probably cheaply made and may have suffered damage within the case during shipment or installation.

This brings me to my case of choice, the Antec Nine Hundred. It reminds me of the Spartan 300, but has nothing to do with that. My first choice was actually a Gigabyte (3D Aurora 570) tower, but it didn’t go on super sale when the Nine Hundred did. I chased the deal for a little while on the net where it bounced around from site to site at $89.99. I missed the deal on ZipZoomFly where shipping is generally free and got it at Outpost (Fry’s) – there I had to pay shipping and tax, but it was a far better deal than $130+ you see it elsewhere.

As I build out the actual system, I’ll be sure and add my feelings on this case. Until then, here are the spec’s directly from Antec’s site:

Unique Top mounted 200mm TriCool exhaust fan to cool the hottest system
Perforated front bezel for maximum air intake
Two front loaded HDD cages for up to 6 hard disk drives
The HDD cages act as air ducts to take air in more efficiently. Optional middle 120mm fan bracket to cool the hottest graphic cards or CPU
Two 120mm TriCool blue LED front fans to cool hard disk drives
Window side panel comes with an optional 120mm fan mount for maximum VGA cooling
Top mounted I/O ports for easy access
Top tray for your MP3 player, digital camera, etc.
Power supply mounts at the bottom of the case (power supply not included)
Advanced cooling system:
- 1 top 200mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control
- 1 rear 120mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control
- 2 front 120mm special black TriCool blue LED fans with 3-speed switch control to cool HDDs
- 1 side (optional) 120mm fan to cool graphic cards
- 1 middle (optional) 120mm fan to cool CPU or graphic cards
9 Drive Bays:
- External 3 x 5.25″; Internal 6 x 3.5″ for HDD, or
- External 6 x 5.25″; Internal 3x 3.5″ for HDD, or
- External 9 x 5.25″
Motherboard: Fits micro and standard ATX
7 Expansion Slots
Top I/O
Power & reset button with blue LED
2 x USB 2.0
1 x IEEE 1394
Audio In and Out
Case Weight Net: 18.52 lbs, Gross: 24.36 lbs
Case Dimensions: 19.4″ H x 18.4″ D x 8.1″ W

$105.78 through outpost.com (Tax & Shipping incl.)

Philips DVP5960

Olaf — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:30:15 +0000

I just bought a new DVD player to replace our perfectly working existing version. But this one is so much cooler! It has a USB port on the front, which most people gloss over at the mere mention of interrelations between household electronics and computer technology. However, I see the potential here. With a USB input, you could plug in a pen drive or an external hard drive loaded with MP3′s and video files to be displayed on your TV. In my rather unorthodox case, the computer monitor is actually larger than the family TV. Not that my computer monitor is that impressive, it’s just that the TV in the living room is quite inferior. At any rate, I have a collection of videos – err…they’re home videos – that have been encoded with DivX. They’re much smaller than what a DVD can hold and encoding to MPEG DVD’s would take forever. Instead, I can simply load up the pen drive (they’re running 8GB’s now) with a few movies – two hour flicks run about 1.5GB each – and pop it into the front of my new Philips DVP5960 to have instant access to the movies contained within. An intuitive file browser pops up with filenames for anything I could play with the player.

I’ve only just started using it tonight, though I did discover a problem rather quickly. I’m having an audio sync issue. It may be related to the audio channel embedded within the DivX format, but for some reason my simple stereo out setup isn’t sounding correct. There’s even some lip sync setting within the DVD setup menu, but it doesn’t seem to correct my problem. There’s also a fair amount of echo in the audio channel – not so much that it’s impossible to listen to, just so much that everything sounds dramatic. Any hints on this little problem would be greatly appreciated!

Too Zune to Tell

Olaf — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 03:55:29 +0000

I got a Zune for Christmas – a wonderful gift, really. I really wanted to get into the iPod/Zen/etc. scene, but I wasn’t that interested in the whole iTunes thing. I also want video to be a comfortable size and 4:3 aspect ratio. The Zune has that, and is still pocket size and relatively inexpensive. The device does exactly what it’s supposed to do, so no one can really complain about features and capabilities. They all play MP3′s, many play AAC’s, many play WMA’s…whatever. I chose a Microsoft product because I know they have to put a lot on this to compete in the iPod space. The Zune Marketplace is also pretty hip for local/unknown bands. They seem to have put a lot into the Marketplace right up front, which is a good deliverable. I’m anxious to see how it grows before investing in the subscription just yet. If they can help me justify the price by providing things like audio books, movies, TV shows, and other little tidbits beyond just DRM’d audio, I will probably bite. The only real want I have for the Zune is software type of stuff. It would be nice to have usable wireless for synchronization and/or Marketplace downloading, but it’s not a requirement at this point. The software could be a little more robust. I’m used to MediaMonkey, so I have the desire for more ID3 tagging glory and I like MediaMonkey’s Amazon.com tagging. Zune does a good job of this through the MediaPlayer API’s, but it lacks in real innovation. The whole Zune hardware and software modus operandi seems to be around intuitive interaction and simplicity. That’s a good thing, I just wish there was an advanced button hidden somewhere to give me the technical stuff I like for certain functions. Another software nicety would be to link EQ settings to wherever you set them. That is, add the ability to EQ a song specifically and memorize that setting. Regardless of the wish or want, the Zune is said to be very software upgradeable. I’m holding out final judgment to see how some of the first “service packs” go for the device. I expect to see some new functionality coming out for the device within the first quarter or so – whether by Microsoft or others. I won’t be putting Linux on the device just yet, but seeing what people can do leaves me hope. Oh – and there is no built-in FM transmitter in case there’s still some confusion around that. There’s an FM tuner, but the transmitter is supplied by a third-party and probably sucks unless you get it hard-wired into your car. I bought a cheap one ($50!), though I didn’t realize I was going to have to spend in excess of this to get the functionality I desire. Where I live, the stations seem to come and go throughout town and I can’t lock onto a single station and expect it work for more than a couple of minutes while driving. It takes on too much interference too, and I hate that. I realize I could probably make it work most of the time, but the random interruption of static or another radio station will drive me insane. I’m resorting to a hard-wired FM transmitter for the car, which I already own but don’t have installed in the Mazda3.

When I’ve gotten more use out of this device, complete with car integration, I will write again on my more broken-in device and its associated software.

Acoustical Drum Design Principles

Olaf — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:18:22 +0000

Amy and I were talking recently about me getting into drum construction. We’ve talked about it before, but I’m not exactly sure how to get started. After a conversation Sunday, my mind began working on some concepts to get me started. What I’ve come up with is a desire to redesign the drum (traditional styles including animal skin heads and rope tuning). I have some designs in my head, but nothing concrete yet. What I need is some sort of scientific approach to qualifying the designs. Drums have been around for eons, but what innovations have they seen? So I’m looking around for information about acoustical design principles as it relates to drums. I’m learning about the specifics of concepts like resonance, reflection, and harmonics so far. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of public information (i.e. the Internet) around this stuff. What I’d really like is some sort of software that would allow me to stage 3-D designs through which I can test a range of sounds. I want to learn more about the particular characteristics of materials as well. Which woods sound the best to me? What animal has the best skin for which sounds? The obvious conclusion anyone would make is that I just need to experiment. Problem is, I’m not made of time and money. Any audio physics majors out there?

Monster House, A Review

Olaf — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 12:40:44 +0000

We took Balthazar to see “Monster House” this past weekend. He really enjoys watching movies, so when there’s something appropriate on for his attention span, we love to take him. This time was a little different. He’s been watching the previews on TV and specifically requested “Monster House.” We were so impressed that he made his own little choice that we decided we’d take him on Sunday. Many of you have seen the previews and heard the reviews stating “…the biggest surprise of the summer.” That statement, as it turns out, is more to the point than any review could have been. The movie’s story has the feeling of Tim Burton while some of the imagery shares a common feeling with “Silence of the Lambs.” Keep in mind that it’s still rated PG. Understandably, we have a little more respect for what “Parental Guidance” actually means now. “Monster House,” while very good in its own right, was a bit much for a 3-year-old. Amy and I kept looking over at eachother and silently asking whether we should pull him from the theater. It didn’t help that the film’s audio was up a notch or two too high. They make use of jump-scare tactic quite a bit, so loud audio just becomes annoying. Above Balthazar’s head, the story was very creepy as well. We picked up on that pretty quickly, though I doubt anyone under 8 or 9 would have fully grasped it. Another issue in the film was the photorealism of certain scenes. Humans and animals were cartoonish, but had an eerie effect of realism that only shows itself in our dreams…the bad ones. The character voices were fantastic. I thought everyone did really good job of *being* their character. They also added in really great mannerisms for each of the characters. Many of the scenes of the house – mostly in the house – were very creepy. There’s a segment when they first enter the house when everything is dark and lit only by a flashlight. You are fully expecting something very adult-oriented to happen at any second. I noticed again last night in the previews that they seemingly only show the humorous scenes from the movie. If I ever get a digital copy of the movie, I may have to put together a more appropriate trailer for parents to make a good PG decision.

Oh, and when asked at the end of the movie if Balthazar liked the movie – he loved it! Freak kid.

W00t W00t!

Olaf — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 15:35:00 +0000

At one time, there was only one crack of choice. Today, woot.com products replace the tired old, used goods of yesteryear that were once purchased from the old flame, eBay. eBay still has a place – I still need to sell my woot.com warez to unsaavy individuals, but now woot.com takes first place in online shopping addictions. It’s cool that they have really great bargains on stuff I like (technophile), but they also keep the advertising appealing. Their writer(s) deserves bonus kudos. This morning, I see they’re selling the much acclaimed Rockford Fosgate Omnifi bundle. It’s been done before – only a few days back in fact. I’m so glad they’ve put it back up. My birthday present came late, but I’m patient. Thanks to Gordon and Dean for the birthday cash that helped me with my purchase.

I’m talking with my friend Sean, who bought one as well. I’m all jittery with anticipation. Now I just have to wait for shipment.

SeanW says:

but the car unit syncs with your PC at night via wireless

Olaf says:

Is that scheduled or something?

SeanW says:

yeah, i think so

SeanW says:

you have software on your computer

SeanW says:

i’m assuming it tries to connect to the wireless

Olaf says:

I’m guessing that the car will have all the crap it can hold and I’ll never get to hear the good stuff.

Olaf says:

20GB woes.

SeanW says:

yeah, i’m thinking the same. Hoping to get a TON of audiobooks too.

Olaf says:

Oh yeah! Good idea.

SeanW says:

one thing I like though – as you are listening, if you start something that isn’t id3 tagged right, or you want to delete it, or anything… you can mark it. Then when you sync, the mark will come over and remind you to do whatever it is you wanted to do

Huygen’s Update

Olaf — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:23:13 +0000

Despite recent exposure to a “communications glitch,” I am continually impressed by what we’re seeing from this latest celestial achievment. Getting images, let alone audio, from Titan is just awesome! Generically speaking, it’s just some rocks on dirt in a orangish environment. Could be mistaken for Mars under poor lighting conditions. However, seeing images from another planet (dirt, or whatever) is just unreal. There’s also some audio of the winds from Titan. That’s truly something else. I’d like to hear some ambience from Mars too, but I guess we don’t have the microphone option on our robotic friends on the red planet. Maybe next time they’ll let me go with some audio/video gear to record what the people want to see. I’ll put in my request now.

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