We’re in furniture renewal mode these days. A new sofa and love seat were delivered this afternoon. Since they clash with our current living room furnishings, we’ve also purchased a new TV stand and end tables.

This means that it was time to clear some items out of the basement to make room for our old sofa. Mostly, I dumped three chairs that I had acquired from Target a year ago.  My goal at the time was to populate the room with enough chairs to enjoy killer games of Amplitude, but my largely anti-social nature kept such gatherings from ever happening.

Those chairs are on their way out, having been sold to a co-worker.  But I still craved a gaming chair.  My desk chair is not comfortable enough for long periods of time, and I’ve never been a fan of gaming from a couch (no idea why).  So it was time to find some new furniture.  I looked around at several local stores and did research online before ultimately purchasing the horrifically named X-Rocker Pedestal Wireless chair.  

Recliners are just too big, and typical game rockers are just too low.  This one looked like it would hit my Goldilocks sweet spot.  I didn’t really care about the wireless sound, but the swivel action, the recline, and the arms were all enticing features.  And Wal-Mart had a ton of them.

Got it home, busted it out, and had it put together in just a few minutes.  Taking it for a test drive with an episode of Doctor Who and a game of Viking proved it to be a very comfortable seat for my 209lb 5′8″ mass.  The only thing I didn’t like was that my head actually rested too far back, driving my line of sight to the top of my projector screen instead of holding it to the middle.  Backing off on the recline or getting a pillow will easily fix that.

The sound was something I had prepared to dismiss out of hand, but I actually do enjoy having it on.  A nice feature of the Xbox 360 is that it will simultaneously output digital and analog audio, so I was able to pump digital to my surround system while outputting analog to the chair, giving me a nice bit of added sound detail right in my earholes.

Now all I need to do is figure out how I can attach my Ace Combat flight stick to the chair arms, though for the sake of authenticity, I guess I should be figuring out how to mount the joystick between my legs.  I don’t think I could get used to that lack of symmetry.

I recently received some winter riding gear from Nashbar with the hopes of putting it to use on the 22nd (anyone interested in a November ride through the PA grand canyon?).  Bib pants, a base layer shirt, and a warm cycling jacket were the order of the day.

But also in the package were three sample packets of Excedrin Back & Body.  The included insert shows two women riding a tandem bike with the words “Keep pain off your horizon” floating just over the front tire.

While I’m all for free pharmaceuticals, I have to admit that I laughed over the fact that back pain is so prevalent in Nashbar’s clientele that they (and Excedrin) feel that their customer base has a high likelihood of purchasing back pain medicine.

I can’t think of a time that I’ve had back pain after riding my recumbents.  I must be doing this cycling thing wrong.

I have no animosity toward upright bikes, but I do think it’s funny that they sent a recumbent guy back pain pills.

Rob @ RBR must be getting tired of me whining about my Speedmachine.  He yesterday handed me the info of a guy in Missouri who is looking to purchase a Speedmachine.

So why would I think of selling it after endeavoring to purchase it and having my wife kick in a big chunk of change as a father’s day gift?  The thing is shaky at slow speeds.  I mentioned that in the pros/cons list in a post back when I was trying to decide between it and the Grasshopper.  It’s fantastic at higher speeds, but I don’t always get an opportunity to go riding for 30 miles at a stretch.  Sometimes, it has to be rides on the bike path with plenty of stop/go traffic.

I’ve been taking test rides on a variety of bikes at RBR, many of which feel much more stable at low speed than the Speedmachine.  Every successful ride makes me think that the Speedmachine was perhaps a bad purchase.  But then I look at it and think, “God damn that bike looks badass.”

So, my options are: sell it for enough money that I can get a different bike; actually ride the thing more so I get used to it - I’ve had almost no riding time this summer; convert the Speedmachine to under seat steering and see if that helps.

I think I’d rather try options 2 and 3.  I know I shouldn’t like a bike because of its looks more than its function, but that’s exactly where I am with the Speedmachine.  Plus, I don’t think I’ve given it enough of a chance.  I’m going to try to get it out for some rides next week since I won’t be spending time at the shop (RBR is closed next week).  Maybe I’ll feel differently after that.

Speedmachine! Yes, the HP Velotechnik Speedmachine is now mine. My darling wife matched my funds as an early Father’s Day gift so that I could ride it in the upcoming RBR rally.

Of course, I can’t just buy the stock bike. Oh no. I’m replacing the seat cushion, putting on racks (rear and center), adding fenders, slapping on bottle cages, installing a kickstand, rolling new tires, and maybe placing a head rest.

Excuse the language, but this is gonna be fuckin’ sweet!

A long time ago, in a household far far away, I attempted to make Brandy’s computing life easier by setting her up with a wireless laptop and installing a Netgear wireless print server.

This ended up not working well because the wireless print server was a bit of a turd and supported only the bare minimum print functions of our Epson CX3810 multi-function printer.  The ink status was inaccessible as were the scanning functions.  And then we had a dog chew through the power supply cord, killing the print server.

Fast forward a year and a half… Brandy now has a new wireless laptop that she uses every night to print stuff for school.  The old print server still has no power and was practically useless even when it did work, so the printer is now shared from my primary PC.  This requires booting up the PC each time she wants to print.  While this works, she still has no access to printer status and is unable to scan anything.  What to do?

BUY MORE STUFF!  After doing some research, I came across the IOGEAR USB Net ShareStation which allows you to share up to four USB devices via ethernet.  It’s an amazingly small device (2″ square) that has an RJ-45 jack on one side and a USB port on the other.  Plug it in, boot it up, connect your device, and install the software.  That’s about it.

There’s a web interface on the ShareStation that allows you to manage the connected devices, update firmware, et cetera, but there’s not much reason to be in there as connections between client machines and the ShareStation are initiated from software installed at the clients.

Speaking of clients, there is one downside to going this route: only one client at a time can be connected to a particular device.  That is, if Brandy is connected to the printer, she has it locked for her use.  If I want to use the printer at the same time, I’m out of luck (though I can send her a message through the ShareStation requesting that she disconnect).  This would be painful in a frat house, but works well enough when only two people are computing.

The upside is that all functions of the printer work through this device.  Printing, scanning, status, and maintenance all work flawlessly over the network.  This is a huge improvement over the Netgear server.

Ironically, I’m using the Netgear server now (purchased a 3rd party power supply) to connect both my primary PC and the ShareStation to the LAN.  We just moved my computer out to the living room into a corner with no RJ-45 jacks, but the Netgear server also acts as a wireless bridge with its 4 port switch.  It has the distinct pleasure of having to shuttle data to and from the ShareStation.  I hope it’s not jealous.

I realize there’s nothing sexy about printing over a network, but I’m really impressed with how well the ShareStation works.  Figured somebody out there might benefit from the info.

I’ve been selling a ton of crap lately with the goal of adding another bike to the family (because it’s just not enough to add another family member).

Speaking of selling, if anybody wants a Cobalt Flux for $150, let me know.

I’m down to choosing between two bikes, both from HP Velotechnik. They are the Grasshopper and the Speedmachine:

Grasshopper

Speedmachine

I’ve taken them both for test drives, and they are comparably priced (the Grasshopper is a bit more). It’s always tough to choose between two options, but here to help me are my friends, the +/- lists!!

Grasshopper

+ Awesome shade of green
+ Low to the ground
+ Able to do some gear shifting while stopped
+ Folds in half for transport ease
+ Easy to control at low speeds
+ Mesh seat
+ Great for rail trails
- None of my gear matches the color
- Dual 406 tires means lower top speed
- Knees come too close to handles (probably adjustable)
- Price after tax, racks, and shipping probably just under $3K

The Speedmachine

+ Silver matches my riding gear
+ Low to the ground
+ Good top speed
+ $500 less than Grasshopper
+ Dead sexy
+ 599 rear tire
+ Higher gear inch range
+ Great long distance bike (perfect for MS 150)
- Might not be fun on trails
- Tough to start on hills
- Shaky at low speeds
- Needs a rack and a kickstand
- Can’t mount it to the Draftmaster rack
- Needs fatter tires

I’m torn. The Speedmachine would be an excellent road bike for long rides and touring, but the Grasshopper would be the better bike for rail trails and my lunch rides. With the fatter tires, the Speedmachine should be trail capable. I’ve seen people riding Bacchettas at the Lower trail, so it can be done.

My first ride of the season happened during lunch today.  It was only about 7 miles, but it was nice to get back out on the trike after the long winter spent playing Rock Band.

Amazingly, my legs didn’t die - no cramping, very little discomfort.  I guess doing squats and lunges twice a week really helped.

I need to stop at RBR on my way home tonight to pick up that new piece for the bike rack.  I’ll finally be able to carry the trike on the back of the Element instead of hoisting it on top.

When my Rock Band drums broke, I placed an order with WalMart.com for new ones since they were a mere $54.  Shortly after that, Brandy told me to just go buy a set in the store so I could get back to rocking.  I did so.

And then I sent my broken drums back to EA.

Earlier this week, the EA replacements and the WalMart order arrived on the same day, giving me three sets of drum kits for Rock Band.  That’s some major overkill right there.

I’m actually going to keep two sets and return one (unless somebody reading this wants a cheap set of 360 drums), but the important part is that I’m back in action.  And tonight, Brandy will join me in a drum duel.

I guarantee this will be the first and last time she plays drums with me.

I have no doubt that the DiNovo Mini is brilliant with a PC. As soon as it arrived at my office, I had it up and running in XP without any more effort than plugging in the Bluetooth receiver. Mouse control, character entry, menu use, et cetera were all great.

Unfortunately, I bought this for my PS3.

I primarily wanted the DiNovo Mini for PS3 browser use. Browsing with a virtual keyboard is intensely annoying, so a keyboard is the only option for extended use. As a character entry and mouse control device, the Mini works great with the PS3. There are button mappings for the cross and circle buttons, allowing for basic selection and cancellation controls.

Where the Mini fails, however, is that it does not seem to have anything mapped to the triangle [new info - see Update below], square, and Start controls. Triangle is used to access menus all over the PS3 interface, including the PS3 browser menu. Want to access your bookmarks with the Mini? What you’ll need to do is grab a PS3 controller to do it. Want to type in a URL? Pick up a PS3 controller, press Start, and then pick up the Mini and do your typing.

Outside of the browser, the Mini also fails as a Blu-Ray playback controller. To access menus during playback, one must use the square button. Again, not on the Mini so grab a controller to pull up that menu. Want to skip to the next chapter? The controls on the Mini do forward and reverse seek only when used with a PS3. Grab a controller and use L1/R2.

There are so many occasions when you’re reaching for a controller that it makes the Mini near useless. For $150, I expected a lot more from a device that has a PS3 mode. I would have been better off buying a cheap little controller mounted keypad.

I think the keyboard itself is fantastic. Great form factor, loved the lighting schemes, and it controls a PC like a champ. But if your intended use is as an input for a PS3, do not buy it unless you’re okay juggling both a controller and the Mini.

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter on my mirror of this entry on LiveJournal left a tip that the right mouse button is often used to emulate triangle button functionality. Using that info, I went back to the Mini and figured out how to do right mouse button - hold down the Function key and press the OK button. This does, indeed, act as a triangle button trigger. This will give you access to the menus in the browser and the overlay menu during Blu-Ray playback. Using these menus, you can get to the functions that would otherwise be more easily access using square and Start, but at least they are accessible. The Mini isn’t nearly so bad now.

I held off purchasing the PS3 for a long time because it didn’t have a library that appealed to me. Two things changed my mind and compelled me to jump in: HD-DVD went away; Remote Play promised to give my PSP new life. Since I wanted to start watching HD movies, the PS3 was the natural choice as a player, but I got some other benefits as well. Here’s how to maximize your use of the PS3 for stuff other than games.

1. Replace the hard drive - It’s commonly known by now that the PS3 hard drive is not quite as locked down as the 360 drives, which is interesting since the 360 drives are portable and the PS3 drive is inserted into the system. For just over $100, you can plug a 2.5″ 250GB SATA150 drive into the PS3, format it, and be up and running in mere minutes. Might as well do it right away to save you the minor hassle of backing up and restoring files (plug in USB HD, copy, put in new hard drive, copy back).

2. Get an external drive enclosure for the drive you took out of the PS3 - These can be had for $10-15 and will provide you with an external drive for extra data or PS3 backups.

3. Have a media server? Get TVersity - You can certainly use Windows Media Sharing, Media Center, et cetera to stream content to your PS3, but TVersity handles on the fly transcoding for a wide range of formats while being smart enough to not transcode natively PS3 supported formats and also allows streaming of pod/vodcasts. Want to catch up with the 1Up Show? Zero Punctuation? SModcast? Pull it up in the PS3’s XMB via TVersity and have at it. Pair up TVersity with uXM and uSirius to stream audio from XM and Sirius radio to your PS3. It works great, though you won’t get current song/artist info. Of course, TVersity isn’t the only option. There are lots of other DLNA compatible servers out there that will work just as well.

4. Take everything off screen - If you have a PSP, adding a PS3 to your life can be a rather liberating experience. Recent firmware revisions for both devices introduced Remote Play - essentially, remote desktop for the PS3. Any of your streamed media can be played wirelessly on the PSP through the PS3. The limitations are that you can’t play Blu-Ray discs or most games through Remote Play (PixelJunk Monsters and Lair both work), but you can play your stored or streamed audio/video and play PS1 games via RP, both downloaded and off the disc!

5. Use RP way remotely - Access to the PS3 XMB also means access to the Playstation Network Store. When new demos, trailers, and other content arrives, you can pull out your PSP from any spot with open wifi, connect to your PS3 at home, pull up the Store, and queue up all your downloads. Later on, you can log back in and do any installs of demos you might have grabbed so that you can get right to playing when you arrive home. The PS3 now has a form of wake-on-LAN so that it does not have to be left on to allow for this remote functionality.

6. Let your PSP control your PS3 jukebox - Later this month, PS3 firmware update 2.20 will add an “Audio Output Device” option for Remote Play, allowing you to specify that all audio should be played via the PS3 instead of being piped to the PSP. This will allow you to play all your music from your home theater speaker system without having to turn on your display (a major bonus for those of us on projectors who are sensitive to bulb life).

7. Install another OS, stream your games to it - Yep, if you want, you can go about installing Yellow Dog Linux and set up the PS3 to dual boot. Why would you want to do this? Geek factor, mostly, but once you have Linux up and running you can also install StreamMyGame to “play” your PC games on your PS3. I have not tried this yet, so I can’t speak to how well it actually works, but it’s an interesting idea. And yes, since you’re in Linux, you can use your mouse and keyboard as inputs.

That pretty much covers what I’m doing with my PS3 when I’m not playing games or watching Blu-Ray. The upside in my life is that I’m a lot more in contact with all of my media. The downside is that I haven’t finished a book in a month.