Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Hey this is pretty deep!

So a new month and a new post on this blog(yay).
I still can't seem to want to update this more regularly, though it's not that I don't want to. But I might think of something to post and start up the computer, go to the internet and instead of making a blog post I procrastinate about it...
Anyways, the main topic of this blog is this vid I just finished watching on youtube:

(it's from some professor whose name I don't remember right now in the library of congress, but I hope you'd(whoever is reading this) watch the video even though it's almost one hour)
which made me think, "well that makes sense, how come I didn't see it before".
But then I remembered I'm not part of the youtube "comunity"...

Anyways it makes me wonder how the future of the internet, us and of our interactions will be 10 or 20 years from now. It's really... idk.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

FTA satellite reciever


I decided that after spending about 3+ days trying to set this piece of shit up and at the end not being able to watch more that 3 channels because the satellites don't seem to want to show themselves so that I may "lock into them", that I'll make a post about how easy everything else about setting it up is. Locking to the satellite is frustratingly stupid and I don't want to have to move a dish to lock into a satellite ever again.

First up, the receiver:
just like any other satellite receiver. A box that you connect to the cable coming from the dish antenna to and the TV to watch whatever programming from whichever satellite you want to get said programming.
You can find updates for the software of the receiver in many sites but the one I thought were more useful(or maybe the only ones that were on the top of a google search) were: http://ftafuture.org/ & http://currentbins.com/

Second, the dish antenna:
there are 2 types of antenna, those used to recieve C-band and those used to recieve Ku-band.(frequency and other technical stuff)
The HUGE dishes that were more widely used some years ago(10+ years?)are used to recieve C-band signals. These use lower frequency and fare better on bad weather.
The smaller dishes that very common nowadays receive Ku-band. These are easier to move, but since they use higher frequencies that the C-band dishes they don't fare as well on harsh climate.(apparently it's more related to the frequency used and not he size of the dish)
Also, apparently after the 2 year contract with dish and directtv the dish antenna is yours so if you were a subscriber for more than 2 years you could use that antenna to receive FTA programming if you happen to decide to drop out of their services.

Third, the Satellite:
I found plenty of info on the satellites used for receiving programming but the only one that I could find in practice were the DishNetwork ones which don't transmit any FTA programming (other than ion, some channel telling you that using FTA receivers is bad, nasa and some channels that apparently tell the subscriber that he'll be able to watch the WFC championship on payperview next weekend... oh and religious channels) anyways here are the most useful sites that I could find for finding whatever satellite you'd want to ... find :
http://www.lyngsat.com/ (the most important site for anything FTA aparently)
http://www.satbeams.com/footprints/ (helps you find which satellites are beaming their info to your region)
http://www.dishpointer.com/ (extremely useful for finding the direction and elevation of the satellites)

On a side note, I found that you could use google earth and the dishpointer site to find the direction of the satellite in google earth, and I thought it was pretty neat so... just saying.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Year presents

I've found myself getting lots of shoes this year. Not that I've gone on a shopping spree, but more like, for some reason, some of my relatives seem to have decided that I needed shoes(I don't think I do) and decided to get me some. So far I've gotten 3 pair of leather shoes and a pair of cushioned sandals.
They're pretty nice and comfortable so I guess it's ok but I don't want this to get like last year's perfume(or cologne, IDK) presents of which I still have like 5 or 6 left. I wonder what It'll be next year... belts?

I've had some pretty cool dreams lately but I seem to forget what they were about about an hour after I wake up, which sucks because they were pretty awesome, or at least I think they were, but I can't be sure because I don't remember them...

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Well...(3)

Got a haircut, watched FAF4, did stuff, interacted with things, etc.

On a slightly unrelated note;
keeping a blog updated seems to be much harder than expected.
I have a new found respect for bloggers... nah.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Well...(2)

It looks like I'm late to take courses on this one other university, so now I either take the course on summer or delay my graduation for another 6 months...
Damn all the courses that have calculus 2 as a prerequisite, I despise you all!

Also, the netgear router that my family was using stopped working and my sister got a new one.(not netgear though, maybe it's for the best)