The Janovic Family

You may not know who Les Paul is but if you like music you have heard his influence.
When I was a kid I played the guitar and the first real guitar I had was a Gibson Les Paul. My dad bought it for me because “It’s a good quality guitar that you will have for years and years”. At the time I didn’t realize that Les Paul was an actual person I thought it was just a brand name. As I started playing more seriously I quickly came to realize that he was in fact a person and a very talented, creative, and ingenious one at that.

A musician that was constantly tinkering with things I soon came to realize he was a man after my own heart. The Chicago Tribune had a nice piece on him that does a good job of chronicling his life. You can read it by clicking here.

As far as that first guitar goes I still have it. It unfortunately became unplayable after an accident at a band practice many years ago. I have never been able to get rid of it however because I always think one day I will get if fixed.

This summer when Ryan asked for a guitar for his graduation I let him pick out the guitar he wanted and as you may have guessed he picked a Les Paul as well.

My old Les Paul

Ryan's Les Paul

My friends over at Near the Atmosphere tell me they are now on Twitter.  If you are into that kind of thing feel free to check them out at their Twitter page

Is it me? I was under the impression that a commercial was made so to sell you something.  I have seen 3 commercials now by Microsoft and I still not sure what I’m supposed to buy.  I’m talking about the ones with Jerry Sienfield and Bill Gates.  If you haven’t seen them they are all over the internet so go ahead and search for them.  Don’t get me wrong I got a small chuckle from one of them but really I don’t get it.  If you’re not telling me to buy something what is the point.  Maybe I’m missing the point maybe I’m supposed to by all Microsoft products.  I’m sure they are supposed to be a response to the Apple ad campaign but at least the apple ads are trying to sell you an Apple computer.  I get that.  Could this just be a response to that campaign becuase they have plenty of spare cash and can? 

What do you think?  Leave a comment below if you have an opinion.

If you are like me and think that computers should be a tool to help you in your life then you will start to understand why I’m really starting to love Evernote.

Computers are really good at storing data and information.  The problem is searcing and accessing that.  Say I have todo list at home in a word doc but yet I’m at work how many hoops do I have to jump through to get that inforamtion.  There a bunch of ways to do it none of them are easy.  This is where Evernote comes in.  I would call it a program but it’s also a website and so much more.

Instead of me going on about it I found a great write up on it at LifeHacker.com complete with screen shots and some neet ideas.
LifeHacker Link

I’m really intrested in ways people use it so if you use it leave a comment.  If you hate it tell me why too.

If you are reading this that means the wordpress app for the iPhone works. If that’s true then I just might be updating this site a little more often. But don’t hold you’re breathe.

So I have been having one of those weeks.  Anyway I never cared about cell phones before but last year I did buy an iPhone.  To be honest since I spend over 2 hours a day on the train I have to admit that I really love this phone.  I have three great devices in one.  I have been following the news of the new iPhone for a while and decided I wasn’t going to upgrade.  My original plan was to upgrade and give Ryan my old iPhone but after talking to AT&T and realizing that they were going to rape me to add a new line to my current plan (that’s a another posting that I will get into later).  I had decided I wasn’t going to upgrade my phone.  And after loading the 2.0 software and downloading a bunch of apps I was as happy with the phone as I had ever been.

So on Friday July 11th I get home from work and decided to clean my pool.  While cleaning my pool Josie a.k.a the red torpedo decided she wanted to go for a swim.

That would have been fine provided I was wearing my swim trunks or she could get out of the pool by herself.  Unfortunately neither of those things were true.  So I jumped in to get her out of the pool forgetting that my phone was in my pocket.  Once I got out of the pool and got into the house and started taking off all my wet clothes I realized that my phone was in my pocket.  I had a moment of panic and realized that the screen went white and that was the last time that phone ever did anything.  When I realized what had happened I was a little sad.

The next morning when I really realized what that meant I was really angry.  So not only did I loose my phone and I had to buy the new one (that in itself wasn’t that bad) but I realized it was now Saturday the 12th the day after the 3G iPhone launched and there was no way I was going to be able to replace it for a while when it hit me.  I feel like I have lost a hand or something and to be honest I still can’t tell if I would rather have the phone or the dog right now.  Don’t get me wrong I love the dog but I spend more time with that phone then I do the dog.  Anyway  I’m sure everything will work out and I guess I’m glad the dog is still here.

The Problem

So let me get you caught up. After a recent trip to St. Louis to visit The Sheahan family they hooked us on the TV show Lost.  So we left there with Season 1 and Season 2 on DVD.  We get back and watch those and then we get Season 3 on DVD.  So now we have a problem.  Season 4 has already started but isn’t completed.  Of course we could start watching Season 4 now but that we would miss about 8 episodes and if you have ever watched the show you would now that you would be totally confused as to what is going on.  So living in the digital age I goto ABC.COM and I can get caught up by watching the missing shows on the internet.  Well that’s great for me but part of the fun is watching the show with my family.  And I will be honest with you the idea of all four of us sitting in my office watching TV on the monitor really didn’t seem like a good idea to me. 

The Solution

So being a guy that loves technology I decided there has to be a better way for us to view.  Here’s what I came up with.   I connected my MacBook Pro to a Vizio 37” flat screen TV using a DVI to HDMI cable.  By doing that I was able to use the Vizio as a second monitor.  Then I just launch the web browser and pulled up the site.  Choose the HD streaming option and change the screen to full screen.  Also I used a wireless Logitech mouse for the times I had to click on a button after viewing a commercial.

The Result

Overall I have to say that viewing the actual episode was fine.  I really didn’t notice any stuttering in playback.  I was impressed with the watching the show experience.  As far as navigating I couldn’t do that from the couch I had to get closer to the TV to see what was on the screen.  This could just be because of the monitor resolution I was using and.  Another issue that I had an issue with is once I was done is I couldn’t figure out how to quit out of the ABC viewer when I was finished without quitting out of all the browser.  Again this might be because of my monitor setting and I might not have seen the whole window or I may have just been user error.

The Question

Now that I have tried this I really think I can take this a step further.  I would like to have the ability to surf the internet from my couch using my TV as a monitor.  I have thought about building a Media PC for a few years.  And I have hooked up computers to my stereo so I can listen to my MP3 library on a good speakers.  Now I will say this about a year ago a switched from Windows to Mac so if I have to buy any new hardware I would prefer to buy a mac.  If anybody has some ideas on how to do a nice setup in my living room please leave a comment.  One more thing my TV that I would like to do this on is a Mitsubishi 57” rear projection TV.  It does display up to 1080i but I do not have any HDMI inputs on the TV.  The best I have is composite video.  

Don’t worry not every post will be technical.  I was just impressed at the viewing experience and wanted to share.  If you have any questions or want me to get any deeper into explanations but don’t want to post a comment you can always E-mail me at mike@janovicfamily.com