The Fort-Knight Dispatch

The X10 control unit and thermostat were installed late last night. After debugging the wiring for an hour the current temp finally showed up on the backlit goodness of the thermostat. Next step is picking a good library for bidirectional X10 commands. Know any good ones?

Thanksgiving is good for getting some turkey and second helpings of pecan pie. It’s also a great time to spend countless hours goofing and a paling around with your cousins. Thomas and Jackie in a typical configuration (Jackie smiling for the camera and Thomas just being Thomas)

.….I’ve been living with voice recognition technology now for one week . I’ve chosen to use my Motorola bluetooth headset as my microphone. this has proven to be very interesting in the.I can be across the room and continue to talk to the PC, all my words magically and randomly sometimes appear on the monitor.it would be nice if xp had better integrated voice command options than it does . Currently I average about 86 percent accuracy with this setup. Overall, it is interesting awkward and frustrating but in the end I hope to have very basic but robust, wireless voice control.This post was generated using this method.I think I will stick to just typing for now.

Just got by new thermostat and controller. It’s X10 controllable. I’m a geek what can I say. To quote Azreal from Kevin Smith’s Dogma: “No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater than central air”, now controllable from anywhere in the world!

I just got my Media Center Extender for XBOX!!! Only problem is Alienware has not been able to get me my upgrade to Media Center 2005 (required..). So I have to wait a little while longer for Alienware and Microsoft to get the collective acts together. What is this “Extender” well.. it basically lets me use my XBOX to play video, tv, images, music files from my Media Center. Actually the software on the PC allows for up to 5 simultanious connections depending on the power of your PC. It also lets you run any application designed for Media Center to run on the XBOX…. so my custom home automation and weather/news applications should run just fine!

Pierce Brosnan, Selma Hayek and Woody Harrelson star in this theif and cops chaser that left me confused about what kind of a movie they were trying to make. First off, this is a beautiful looking film. Selma Hayek hanging around the beach is what I remember most from this film.. Watch it and tell me it wasn’t intentional although not quite over the top. The film is supposed to be a drama with Brosnan and Hayek playing the recently retired master theives to Harrelson’s always-one-step-behind FBI agent. What ensues is a great cops and robbers story with some of the most awkward comedy thrown in…. the bits between Brosnan and Harrelson are funny but way out place with the rest of the film. A bit more editing would have done wonders with this one. Note: As a geek and technologist the technical/computer realism issues with this one put it on the top 20 “Bad” technology films. Watch it and tell me if YOU’D trust a wifi link to be available like Brosnan’s character does… Overall it’s a fun popcorn flick with plenty of eye candy with good performances overall.

The beat goes on… This pic is from my annual visit to my cardiologist at the University of Chicago Children’s Pediatric Cardiology clinic. I am the patient here, not my son as one might guess. My checkup every year is to monitor my aorta since I born with a congenital heart defect called a coartation of the aorta which also came with a bicuspid aortic valve. It was corrected when I was a child at the wonderful University of Kentucky (which happens to be my birthplace).

Growing up a corrected heart defect wasn’t strange in the least. I was given a clean bill of health. The only problem I would run into was when I would change doctors or be sent to an emergency clinic for some reason. Often the nurse or doctor would listen to my um.. unique heartbeat and begin to.. panic. Most doctors have never heard the sound of a corrected coarctation with bicuspid regugitation… he he he. That’s always a fun one to explain..

Required Reading for anyone: Dr. Seuss’ Origianl storybook.

It’s only the middle of November and I haven’t even eaten turkey and mashed potatos until the point of exhaustion yet. Nonetheless, here I am playing my Christmas playlist on my pc. It’s been going strong for forty minutes and I felt I had to justify this innocent pleasure. What can I say, I need a little Christmas, right this very minute. It probably is just a bit of undigested pototo or it could be that I watched the “How the Grinch Stole Christmas (The Jim Carrey version). Good movie? yeh, but not great. Made me miss the Chuck Jones animated version with Boris Karloff. What a teamup! Anyway no disrespect to Ron Howard and crew, I did enjoy the movie it did get me into the Christmas mood so for that, a job well done. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it say, in July. Watch the 2000 version, then watch the origianl, it’s liking getting two pieces of pumpkin pie instead of one.

Favorite Scene: The triumphant scene on the top of Mount Krumpet was well done and much needed.

I love this film. It’s on my top 10 list. It is a magical blend of 30’s and 40’s pulp/art deco/sci-fi/noir with the best giant robot action ever. Doesn’t sound interesting? If nothing so far interests you remotely, then don’t watch the film. That’s not to say that if you give it a chance you won’t be entertained. Gwenth Paltrow and Jude Law (not to mention Anjelina Jolie) turn in wonderful performances. They are all watchable (especially Jolie, trust me, she steals the show in her small but crucial role). I really can’t say enough about this film but I will limit this post. If you want a peak inside my technicolor/art deco styled dreams, look no further.