Ramblings of a Martian

Yesterday, I was driven to a sudden urge to watch the South Park movie. So, I asked the Twitters, "Is there a website that will search netflix/hulu/amazon all at once to tell you if/where you can stream a movie/show?". My CEO retweeted it to his fifty quintillion followers, and the replies piled in. Ok, I only got 16 responses, but that's more than most of my questions get.

Best answer:
schwarzer: @tithonium If you build it... They might sue you.

Not helpful at all:
rschroed: @tithonium @randfish you can do that from TiVo.

Is this spam?
movieheed: @tithonium hope you can found here http://movieheed.com/ im follow you #thanks

Clicker.com:
tanuki_green: @tithonium @vixy It would seem that Clicker.com does this, though, since I just found it, I can't vouch for how well it does this.
thederek: @tithonium @randfish clicker.com
samirb: @tithonium try clicker.
firesign3000: @spunquee @tithonium @Septimus1812 @coyotetoo clickr.com does tv shows
citadelgrad: @tithonium clicker.tv
jrpurdon: @tithonium clicker.tv (sorry if this answer is late, just getting around to my overnight tweets).

CanIStream.IT:
nathancarnes: @tithonium @randfish canistream.it
phpJoel: @tithonium @randfish canistream.it is one that i've heard of
tomdebello: Try canistream.it - website seems solid, haven't tested the mobile apps @tithonium @randfish
Septimus1812: @spunquee @coyotetoo canistream.it can do that (and there's an iPhone app). They don't do tv shows yet.

iOS app, not a website:
jamielow: @tithonium fanhattan.com (iOS app)

Others:
eatros: “@tithonium: Is there a website that will search netflix/hulu/amazon all at once to tell you if you can stream - Yidio.com
HeyBigE: gowatchit.com @randfish @tithonium
And a DM mentioning zinc.tv

SO, I went and tried them all.

Yidio: I was looking for search, and theirs sucks. Browse may've been okay, but I was instantly turned off.

GoWatchIt: Decent enough interface for movies, very clear as to who has it and what it costs. Plus you can have them notify you when something becomes available on a new service. No TV shows, but it's a start.

CanIStream.IT: Took me a moment to decipher the iconography, but once I did I think I like the interface. I had to run some tests to make sure I understood it, as well.. the 'streaming' indicators seem to specifically mean "free with existing membership", since a non-prime-free amazon instant video was marked as unavailable streaming but available rental.

Clicker.tv: The interface is a lot noisier and more cluttered than canistream.it, but it's instantly clear what it's telling you.

Zinc.tv: tiny fonts for the information I'm looking for, lead the eye away. Also, they think the latest episode of The Daily Show is from February. Unimpressed.

SO, to sum up: I think canistream.it wins on simplicity of interface, once you learn the interface, and clicker.tv wins on instant usability. Personally, I'll probably use the former more, and fall back to the latter when it fails me.

Someone, somewhere, must have a formula into which I can plug the following values:

* Radius of the planet
* Rotational Inclination of the planet to its orbit
* Major and Minor orbital radii, or average and eccentricity
* Longitude of a point on the planet
* A known Zero-time point for solar noon
* The known zero-point in the orbital path at the known zero-time point
* An arbitrary time to calculate for, in units since/until the zero point


And get back

* Current altitude of sun in the sky

I'm probably missing an input or two. Anyway, I want to be able to compute, with a reasonable degree of accuracy (eg, "looks right" as opposed to "can set clocks or navigte by it"), where the sun is in the sky for any point on the surface of any planet. In particular earth and mars, as I want to be able to 'accurately' change something to reflect current dawn/day/twilight/night illumination for, say seattle or lomonosov crater, without resorting to doing based on the hour of the day, which is horribly inaccurate from one end of the year to the other.

If I wanted a simple easy-to-install easy-to-use wiki, to host on my own server, that lets people sign up for new accounts, requires email confirmation before they can post/edit, supports recursive bulleted lists, and tracks edit history... what would you suggest?

edit: to be clear, I'm looking for something simple and light-weight. I just want to post my notes for the con-management software and let other people add to them, and for what I was thinking I think a wiki's probably the easiest way to do it. But I don't want to actually put any effort into installing and configuring it. I want to drop a file on disk and go.

If anybody happens to see Gravenstein Apples in their grocery store, particularly ones that look deformed and bulbous, let me know. They're not officially in season at the moment, but a boy can hope.

The front page of my website needs to be redesigned. Perhaps the entire site, even the entire structure of the site, needs to be redesigned. Most of it is 10 years old or more.

$20 to the winning concept.
$50 to the winning concept submitted as ready-to-post html.

Yes, I'm a cheap bastard.

3U, 12 bays, 400W redundant PS, $963
 vs
5U, 24 bays, 1050W redundant PS, $1,593 (or 1650W, for $192 more)

So, I've been pondering getting a new camera for quite a long while now. My antique Powershot S100 is less than the paragon of convenience and speed. And, since I was just thinking that I need to take a photo of me playing Zuma on the 50" plasma and wondering where my camera is, I started thinking of it again. So, I figured I'd toss the question out to y'all.

I'm looking for something small. Something I can carry in a jeans pocket if necessary, a shirt pocket, etc.

I'm looking for at LEAST 5MP.

I'm looking for as much optical zoom as possible. I don't care about digital zoom, it sucks and I'll never use it. If it comes with digital zoom, I would prefer to be able to disable it entirely. At minimum, it needs to have a NON-seamless transition between optical and digital (The S100 will stop when you hit the end of optical, pause, then start into digital zoom. so I can zoom all the way and avoid going into digital. The Sony with the touchscreen has the ability to disable digital zoom altogether).

I'm looking for something with either a dock you can just drop the camera into OR a wireless connection (obviously wifi is preferable, but I've only heard of one camera with it. bluetooth is acceptable, but would be painfully slow). The current inconvenience of having to pull the memory card and plug it into the computer is a real pain in the ass and means I tend to go much longer between unloading pictures. Optimal would be a dock that charges the batteries and connects to the mac, so I can just leave it in there when I'm not using it, and pick it up as I head out the door.

I'm looking for something fast. A lot of the pictures I'd like to take are sudden or short-term things. A funny license plate, while at a stop light, for example. I need something I can whip out, click, click, done. The S100 takes a good 3 seconds to turn on, when its feeling cooperative, and will frequently take a good 10-15 seconds to realize I want it to take the picture after I hit the button. This is increasing as the poor thing ages.

I would prefer the ability to use a memory format I already own. CF is perfect, esp if it can use a 1GB microdrive. Memorystick is acceptable, SD is acceptable. I just don't want to add any more memory-that-only-one-device-can-use laying around.


So, I know there are a lot of units out there that fit into what I'm looking for. I've particularly had my eye on the Sony cybershot DSC-W50/70/100 or the DSC-N1 with the touchscreen. Anybody have comments on those, or suggestions for others I should be sure to look at?

First, you've likely noticed that these showed up on my livejournal. If you didn't (and you read my LJ), something's wrong with my new posting code. Comments there are disabled, but it links to the real site where comments can be posted. It was agreed this was a better solution than a separate RSS channel.

Second, I've gotten a couple responses to the car computer thing (which I appreciate, guys!) and thought I'd explain what I want a little more. I want a general computer. I want it to play MP3s thru my stereo, I want it to talk to a GPS receiver and tell me where I am and where I'm going, I want (eventally, when the service becomes affordable to me) to access the internet and check traffic maps and movie listings and livejournal (frex). I could get the first two in dedicated systems, but the car is one place I'm in favor of consolidating functionality into as few devices as possible. It needss a large enough screen to be used while driving, it needs a keyboard, and I'd like it to have a touch screen.

No, there are in-dash monitors and dvd players with neat pop-out screens, and some are touchscreen, but I don't know how well they could be tied into a computer (I suspect not at all). It needs to draw power from the car, and put itself into hybernate after the car shuts off (but only after checking for my local wireless net and syncing to base). It needs to come on /quick/ when I start the car. It needs to run Linux. It needs a big hard drive and 802.11b. It needs to tie into the car's onboard sensors to give the car's status. It needs to not void my waranty.

There are probably other things I want from it that I can't think of right now.


http://www.martian.cx/Words/Life/Ramblings/blog.cgi?entry=275