Fantasy Congress: Accountability Metrics Meet Sports Statistics

I've wondered why no one has done this as well, but Fantasy Congress is amazing. (via The Escapist article on Fantasy Congress)

The Quest for Surround Sound

I was looking into "cheap" surround sound systems and was amazed at the disparity of choices and overall stagnation of the scene. There are a few $50-$70 systems, but they include use a DVD player as "receiver" and have no other form of input. These were altogether useless for me because I was looking for something to connect to my Xbox 360.

I was walking past my poor dead desktop for the millionth time and started thinking about my desktop speakers. I have a decent digital quadrophonic (4.1) set of speakers from Boston Acoustics that have followed me for years as my primary set of desktop speakers. I haven't made use of them with my laptops because they refuse analog signals and only respond to digital signals. I started wondering if I could use them with my Xbox 360...

My first stop was Radio Shack, because I forgot for a few minutes that we live in the era when Radio Shack was just another uninformed consumer grinder. Then I turned to the internet. The Xbox 360 has an optical surround output, which is named Toslink (after Toshiba). The speakers have a coax surround input, which is named SPDIF (after Sony and Phillips). Come to find out, thanks to Wikipedia, that the signals are the exact same for both Toslink and SPDIF with the only difference being between cabling types, one of which uses extremely expensive, short-distance-only cabling (Toslink) and the other using the same forms of cabling man has used for decades in audio (SPDIF). It was then just a simple matter to get an optical to coax converter from Amazon and voila I have surround sound now on my 360 for just $20 and a 6 or 7 year old speaker set.

Okay, for my technical ...

Technology Tidbits, Useless Skills and a Gaggle of Footnotes

First of all, Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) has a few small improvements that are already nice things for me. The big thing is I was running an older copy of Beryl and the Compiz Fusion bundled with Gutsy is noticeably improved in a few areas. Chief among them is it works like a charm in suspend/hibernate. [1] Also, fullscreen windows are remembered correctly [2] and the bars don't overlap the window as often.

Second of all, I'm still not sure I'm entirely sure what I'm doing, but I broke down and bought an HD-DVD drive for my nice 720p+Xbox 360 setup. At BestBuy I got the drive's worth of free movies to go with it. So I watched Transformers tonight [3] and I got Batman Begins waiting [4], both free at checkout. I got a raincheck from them for my free copy of Heroes Season 1 [5], as they had just ran out when I got there [6]. I've got a rebate for 5 more discs out of a more strict selection that I'll mail shortly. [7] King Kong (Peter Jackson's recent remake) came in the box with the player and I look forward to watching that for the first time. Now I just need a surround sound receiver and I'll be all set.

So the past couple of days I've been thinking of some of my currently "useless" skills.

I can swirl a professional looking ice cream cone from soft-serve machines. Possibly one of the most important things I learned in a summer and a half of theme park food service, and not that tough to learn nor that useful other than as a fun parlor trick [8] with those ice cream machines that every buffet ...

Odd Coincidences: The Beautiful Month of Ocotber

I'm curious if there is some memo I missed from the secretive cabal that controls the English language [1] just recently because I'm certainly worried for the present state of college education, at least at the University of Louisville. Two different organizations, both presumably using my tuition dollars to do so, recently, have plastered campus proclaiming activities in "Ocotber". One of the organizations even pays full-time salaries for a couple of employees out of my tuition who supposedly should be double-checking this sort of thing with some of their salaried time... Of course, I'm just an Engineer far be it for me to criticize the English usage of what was presumably some random English major on the other side of campus...

Amazon MP3 Download Service

The Amazon MP3 Download service is awesome. Not quite Magnatune awesome, but still awesome. Way better than that fruit thing.

The Ballmer Peak

I've mentioned this before because I've experienced it personally and seen it in others, but this comic on the Ballmer Peak is the first attempt I've seen to name it. I do have extraordinary moments of programming clarity in that weird twilight between "buzzed" and "drunk". It's also the only point where I have any sort of Geometry Wars skills at all (all of my achievements in the game having arrived when I was drunk).