December is already flying by, seems like Thanksgiving was yesterday.
This weekend main household accomplishment was mowing front yard, which had a haze of crabgrass shoots in the front growing to 18 inches high. The actual St Augustine was only about 4 inches high. It had not been mowed since two weeks before the election. Since I only got started around 6pm on Saturday, and it took some minutes to get prepared, including cleaning my full face respirator (which fogged up fast so I didn't use it) I did all the actual mowing after sunset. Actual mowing was done between 6:20 and 7:20. Ambient temperature was around 70 during this time. Thanks to security lights, there was no problem with light, though I did have to think things in advance more than usual (which I should do more than usual). If this had been summer, I might not have gotten started until past 7:30. Front lawn mowing is important because it defines the appearance my house has in the neighborhood, which needs all the help it can get, and recently I had fallen behind with everyone else's lawn having been mowed in the past 3 weeks.
The main accomplishment inside Lyndhurst was sealing lower gap of the A/C. I used the grey poly foam provided by manufacturer for sealing. (Actually, when installed into a wall, the manufacturer doesn't say anything about sealing the bottom, only the top and sides. But they provide two foam pieces in case you are installing into a window.) I cut off two small pieces of foam for the gaps on either side I noticed last weekend. I was undecided on whether it would be good to supplement the foam with the clear sealing tape I also got. I worried about what kind of condensation, etc., might occur on the inside of the tape, and then cause mold on the foam. So I didn't do the tape for now. The foam by itself might be best. There is a tiny crack in the solid sealing done by the contractor on one side which could get some caulk, but it doesn't seem to be the source of actual air leakage.
I was unable to fit the A/C bezel onto the A/C. I need to pound the A/C frame with a rubber mallett to get it back into shape first. I also need to get some machine screws, possibly 4-40, to hold on the bezel since I don't know where the originals are. In fact, i thought I already bought one set of replacements back in April or so, and I couldn't find those either.
Before finding it wouldn't fit, I spent about half an hour meticulously cleaning the A/C bezel which had gotten quite a bit of bug grime from sitting in the open building for 6 months on the floor. I used vacuum, cloth, and Q tips. Some live bugs had gotten behind the filter. After failing to fit to the actual unit, I put the bezel on a box so as not to be sitting on the floor again.
I decided to power up and program the A/C anyway, since it works fine w/o the bezel. I first programmed it for 12noon - 12 midnight operation at 84 degrees, and Energy Saver (otherwise fan runs all the time). But before long, it started running, despite the cold day and the heater being set at 1.0. So I turned the A/C thermostat up to 90 degrees, and turned the heater down to 0.9. It didn't run anymore.
But the real plan is to use a digital thermostat for the heater so it doesn't run above 70 degrees. Currently it is hard to adjust the heater so that it stays that cool, even at setting "1" the heater maintains a temperature of 78, and I fear that if I did set it much lower, it might not heat enough below 70. I spent almost two hours searching for the digital thermostat which I bought a year ago. I looked in the 3 storage containers already inside Lyndhurst, and noted their contents in a new Inventory list on my kitchen Mac. I looked in the 3rd bedroom, requiring me to move stuff out of the way just to get into the bedroom. That was the main source of the small amount of stuff I took out to Lyndhurst this weekend, the other was the box for the Immersion Edition of Dark Side of the Moon with all discs removed, but full of kitsch, which I kept tripping on in the master bedroom. I looked through all the stuff on the bed and most of the stuff on the floor and was getting very frustrated thinking maybe it had been thrown out by accident, or was in my rental storage unit.
Speaking of Dark Side of the Moon, I listened to both 4 channel and 5 channel uncompressed BluRay versions in the kitchen during the weekend, for the first time. Both are very nicely done, though the 4 channel version shows the limitation of my surround speakers more obviously--they lack HF response. I also watched two Discrete Mathematics classes from The Teaching Company, and watched random Chomsky and Vidal videos on the kitchen TV coming from YouTube through my Mac and the adapters I describe below. I watched a new Anime movie I bought last week. I downloaded Phoenix Slides for the kitchen Mac and tried it out. I had to do multiple google searches to figure out how to let the new Mac let me run something downloaded from the internet (instead of being purchased from the Apple Store). I made a post to my political blog about Apple and closed systems. I uploaded a private label music CD of ancient keyboard performances to the ztunes directory of my iTunes collection. I hadn't uploaded any new CD's for about a year because I kept procrastinating on installing a new external harddrive for my old Mac. For this privately made CD I had to fill in all the information.
Finally, I began thinking about what this thermostat actually looks like. It has a thick orange 8 foot cord attached to the box. Wait, I had been seeing a thick orange cord on the chair in the third bedroom. Well there it was. Thinking is always better than random digging. That final discovery was made after midnight Sunday night. So I'll set up the thermostat this week or weekend.
In other news, Saturday was my sister's birthday, so my brother-in-law called on Friday night and we talked for 2 hours, starting with his latest fave 3D TV (he happened to have a few extras for sale), touching on his recent negative results in the polarity test I scored a few months ago, and ending up with arguing about physics, frustratingly, he seems to have views very much at odds with special and general relativity and quantum physics, and yet, smart as he is, he doesn't see the conflicts, perhaps to his continuous invocation of Wittgenstein. I had to beg off several times to get the phone call to end by 2am. I called my sister on Saturday and we talked for just over an hour, mostly about her new car and new issues with her eyes. On Sunday I also forwarded some questions regarding relativity to another friend so I can get these things sorted out.
I had a very good movie date with my lady friend on Sunday afternoon, watching the 4th installment of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the USA. She brought her own coffee (and forgot to take mug with her) and didn't want anything else but I provided some peanuts which she soaked in lemon juice...I've decided that kills the flavor for me. We also talked by phone on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.
I washed bathtowels on a very full cycle and then washed cleaning cloths on the full sterilize cycle which takes 3 hours. I ran the dishwasher on Saturday morning and Monday morning using timer mode. I opened the box of new New Balance shoes and wore them for the first time on Monday.
I tasted Estrella Damm Inedit, an expensive Spanish ale. It was very rich tasting, almost like food, which it is intended to go with (but I just drank small glasses all night). Unfortunately, I spilled the last bit from a wineglass, and then had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning the table, remote controls, and other stuff.
I did some more video tests with a downloaded test pattern showing that the Mac DisplayPort through Composite adapter interlace output seems to have some jitter in the first few dozen scan lines, on both Sony CRT and Samsung LCD displays. It does actually appear to have the full 525 lines of horizontal resolution anyway, but the jittering effect in the top lines makes the picture seem soft.
This jittering went away entirely when I connected the composite output directly to my DVDO, either in 480i otuput or 480p output settings. That would suggest it is caused by interaction of composite adapter and the input of my Sony DVDR-HX900. I was disappointed to learn that I cannot input any resolution higher than 480p into my outdated DVDO unit, so to get higher resolutions than 480p out of my Mac I will need to do something with HDMI. Fortunately, my Gefen HDMI gizmo arrived on Monday morning needing a signature and I signed for it, hopefully that will resolve issues between DisplayPort and my HDMI switch so I can get 1080i. I also unwrapped and inspected a BlackMagic Extreme video interface, which I plan to try out, but did not yet get around to hooking it up. I re-secured the 5-way HDMI switch I have in the kitchen with duct tape.
Then I played back some videos on the Sony that I had previously recorded using the S-Video output of my previous mac Powerbook. Those videos had no jitter in the top lines whatsoever. So the jitter thing is new. My guess is that it is indeed some kind of blanket copy restriction applied to the Mac DisplayPort when outputing 480i. Or it could be happening within the DisplayPort->Component adapter I am using, except the adapter doesn't do that when playing into the DVDO. It does not appear to be Macrovision per se, but something like that making the sync unstable into recording devices--that's a common strategy. The DVDO is insensitive to this just as a display device would be, but the DVDO also does not have any analog 480i output, so its output cannot be recorded either. The Sony DVDR-HX900 is sensitive to unstable sync by design, to allow copy protection schemes to work. My opinion is that none of this should be happening unless I were playing copy protected media on the Mac, such as a DVD. But it is a typical strategy to make all duplication impossible even if some of it would be legal as fair use.
I tried setting up new connection for Lavry AD10 to Behringer 2496 DEQ for the output of the L-1000T in my audio system. This would give me even better quality FM through my whole house Sonos system. But after trying to set up the Toslink cable, it turned out to be the wrong kind and needs to be returned to Radio Shack.
Just as it was getting dark on Sunday night, and my friend had left, I pulled a dozen large weeds that had been growing on the north side of Lyndhurst. I put a large trashcan liner from the garage into a trashcan inside Oakhurst. I almost forgot to put that can back into Oakhurst before it started raining. I watered the potted plants near the front door.
And yet, as usual, I write this because I sometimes felt I was doing little more than goofing off the whole time.
Last week I did a lot too. I paid my property tax downtown (and found I need to pay school tax separately, before January 31, at the Judson office). I called and had plumbers come out for the Angie's list inspection, which was worth what I paid, but not much more. I brought pants, jacket, and shirt to my taylor for minor fixes. The pants had needed fixing for 2 months (I've been wearing a slightly worn-out spare in the meantime) the shirt had needed fixing for about 2 years, and the leather jacket had needed shortening for 3 years. On Friday we had 30th anniversary symposium of the Department where I work, where I also finished putting together the draft version of computer code I'm working on for a collaborator.
This weekend main household accomplishment was mowing front yard, which had a haze of crabgrass shoots in the front growing to 18 inches high. The actual St Augustine was only about 4 inches high. It had not been mowed since two weeks before the election. Since I only got started around 6pm on Saturday, and it took some minutes to get prepared, including cleaning my full face respirator (which fogged up fast so I didn't use it) I did all the actual mowing after sunset. Actual mowing was done between 6:20 and 7:20. Ambient temperature was around 70 during this time. Thanks to security lights, there was no problem with light, though I did have to think things in advance more than usual (which I should do more than usual). If this had been summer, I might not have gotten started until past 7:30. Front lawn mowing is important because it defines the appearance my house has in the neighborhood, which needs all the help it can get, and recently I had fallen behind with everyone else's lawn having been mowed in the past 3 weeks.
The main accomplishment inside Lyndhurst was sealing lower gap of the A/C. I used the grey poly foam provided by manufacturer for sealing. (Actually, when installed into a wall, the manufacturer doesn't say anything about sealing the bottom, only the top and sides. But they provide two foam pieces in case you are installing into a window.) I cut off two small pieces of foam for the gaps on either side I noticed last weekend. I was undecided on whether it would be good to supplement the foam with the clear sealing tape I also got. I worried about what kind of condensation, etc., might occur on the inside of the tape, and then cause mold on the foam. So I didn't do the tape for now. The foam by itself might be best. There is a tiny crack in the solid sealing done by the contractor on one side which could get some caulk, but it doesn't seem to be the source of actual air leakage.
I was unable to fit the A/C bezel onto the A/C. I need to pound the A/C frame with a rubber mallett to get it back into shape first. I also need to get some machine screws, possibly 4-40, to hold on the bezel since I don't know where the originals are. In fact, i thought I already bought one set of replacements back in April or so, and I couldn't find those either.
Before finding it wouldn't fit, I spent about half an hour meticulously cleaning the A/C bezel which had gotten quite a bit of bug grime from sitting in the open building for 6 months on the floor. I used vacuum, cloth, and Q tips. Some live bugs had gotten behind the filter. After failing to fit to the actual unit, I put the bezel on a box so as not to be sitting on the floor again.
I decided to power up and program the A/C anyway, since it works fine w/o the bezel. I first programmed it for 12noon - 12 midnight operation at 84 degrees, and Energy Saver (otherwise fan runs all the time). But before long, it started running, despite the cold day and the heater being set at 1.0. So I turned the A/C thermostat up to 90 degrees, and turned the heater down to 0.9. It didn't run anymore.
But the real plan is to use a digital thermostat for the heater so it doesn't run above 70 degrees. Currently it is hard to adjust the heater so that it stays that cool, even at setting "1" the heater maintains a temperature of 78, and I fear that if I did set it much lower, it might not heat enough below 70. I spent almost two hours searching for the digital thermostat which I bought a year ago. I looked in the 3 storage containers already inside Lyndhurst, and noted their contents in a new Inventory list on my kitchen Mac. I looked in the 3rd bedroom, requiring me to move stuff out of the way just to get into the bedroom. That was the main source of the small amount of stuff I took out to Lyndhurst this weekend, the other was the box for the Immersion Edition of Dark Side of the Moon with all discs removed, but full of kitsch, which I kept tripping on in the master bedroom. I looked through all the stuff on the bed and most of the stuff on the floor and was getting very frustrated thinking maybe it had been thrown out by accident, or was in my rental storage unit.
Speaking of Dark Side of the Moon, I listened to both 4 channel and 5 channel uncompressed BluRay versions in the kitchen during the weekend, for the first time. Both are very nicely done, though the 4 channel version shows the limitation of my surround speakers more obviously--they lack HF response. I also watched two Discrete Mathematics classes from The Teaching Company, and watched random Chomsky and Vidal videos on the kitchen TV coming from YouTube through my Mac and the adapters I describe below. I watched a new Anime movie I bought last week. I downloaded Phoenix Slides for the kitchen Mac and tried it out. I had to do multiple google searches to figure out how to let the new Mac let me run something downloaded from the internet (instead of being purchased from the Apple Store). I made a post to my political blog about Apple and closed systems. I uploaded a private label music CD of ancient keyboard performances to the ztunes directory of my iTunes collection. I hadn't uploaded any new CD's for about a year because I kept procrastinating on installing a new external harddrive for my old Mac. For this privately made CD I had to fill in all the information.
Finally, I began thinking about what this thermostat actually looks like. It has a thick orange 8 foot cord attached to the box. Wait, I had been seeing a thick orange cord on the chair in the third bedroom. Well there it was. Thinking is always better than random digging. That final discovery was made after midnight Sunday night. So I'll set up the thermostat this week or weekend.
In other news, Saturday was my sister's birthday, so my brother-in-law called on Friday night and we talked for 2 hours, starting with his latest fave 3D TV (he happened to have a few extras for sale), touching on his recent negative results in the polarity test I scored a few months ago, and ending up with arguing about physics, frustratingly, he seems to have views very much at odds with special and general relativity and quantum physics, and yet, smart as he is, he doesn't see the conflicts, perhaps to his continuous invocation of Wittgenstein. I had to beg off several times to get the phone call to end by 2am. I called my sister on Saturday and we talked for just over an hour, mostly about her new car and new issues with her eyes. On Sunday I also forwarded some questions regarding relativity to another friend so I can get these things sorted out.
I had a very good movie date with my lady friend on Sunday afternoon, watching the 4th installment of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the USA. She brought her own coffee (and forgot to take mug with her) and didn't want anything else but I provided some peanuts which she soaked in lemon juice...I've decided that kills the flavor for me. We also talked by phone on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.
I washed bathtowels on a very full cycle and then washed cleaning cloths on the full sterilize cycle which takes 3 hours. I ran the dishwasher on Saturday morning and Monday morning using timer mode. I opened the box of new New Balance shoes and wore them for the first time on Monday.
I tasted Estrella Damm Inedit, an expensive Spanish ale. It was very rich tasting, almost like food, which it is intended to go with (but I just drank small glasses all night). Unfortunately, I spilled the last bit from a wineglass, and then had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning the table, remote controls, and other stuff.
I did some more video tests with a downloaded test pattern showing that the Mac DisplayPort through Composite adapter interlace output seems to have some jitter in the first few dozen scan lines, on both Sony CRT and Samsung LCD displays. It does actually appear to have the full 525 lines of horizontal resolution anyway, but the jittering effect in the top lines makes the picture seem soft.
This jittering went away entirely when I connected the composite output directly to my DVDO, either in 480i otuput or 480p output settings. That would suggest it is caused by interaction of composite adapter and the input of my Sony DVDR-HX900. I was disappointed to learn that I cannot input any resolution higher than 480p into my outdated DVDO unit, so to get higher resolutions than 480p out of my Mac I will need to do something with HDMI. Fortunately, my Gefen HDMI gizmo arrived on Monday morning needing a signature and I signed for it, hopefully that will resolve issues between DisplayPort and my HDMI switch so I can get 1080i. I also unwrapped and inspected a BlackMagic Extreme video interface, which I plan to try out, but did not yet get around to hooking it up. I re-secured the 5-way HDMI switch I have in the kitchen with duct tape.
Then I played back some videos on the Sony that I had previously recorded using the S-Video output of my previous mac Powerbook. Those videos had no jitter in the top lines whatsoever. So the jitter thing is new. My guess is that it is indeed some kind of blanket copy restriction applied to the Mac DisplayPort when outputing 480i. Or it could be happening within the DisplayPort->Component adapter I am using, except the adapter doesn't do that when playing into the DVDO. It does not appear to be Macrovision per se, but something like that making the sync unstable into recording devices--that's a common strategy. The DVDO is insensitive to this just as a display device would be, but the DVDO also does not have any analog 480i output, so its output cannot be recorded either. The Sony DVDR-HX900 is sensitive to unstable sync by design, to allow copy protection schemes to work. My opinion is that none of this should be happening unless I were playing copy protected media on the Mac, such as a DVD. But it is a typical strategy to make all duplication impossible even if some of it would be legal as fair use.
I tried setting up new connection for Lavry AD10 to Behringer 2496 DEQ for the output of the L-1000T in my audio system. This would give me even better quality FM through my whole house Sonos system. But after trying to set up the Toslink cable, it turned out to be the wrong kind and needs to be returned to Radio Shack.
Just as it was getting dark on Sunday night, and my friend had left, I pulled a dozen large weeds that had been growing on the north side of Lyndhurst. I put a large trashcan liner from the garage into a trashcan inside Oakhurst. I almost forgot to put that can back into Oakhurst before it started raining. I watered the potted plants near the front door.
And yet, as usual, I write this because I sometimes felt I was doing little more than goofing off the whole time.
Last week I did a lot too. I paid my property tax downtown (and found I need to pay school tax separately, before January 31, at the Judson office). I called and had plumbers come out for the Angie's list inspection, which was worth what I paid, but not much more. I brought pants, jacket, and shirt to my taylor for minor fixes. The pants had needed fixing for 2 months (I've been wearing a slightly worn-out spare in the meantime) the shirt had needed fixing for about 2 years, and the leather jacket had needed shortening for 3 years. On Friday we had 30th anniversary symposium of the Department where I work, where I also finished putting together the draft version of computer code I'm working on for a collaborator.
