Some shots of businesses that have a questionable grasp of English.

Link, via mental_floss. Thanks, Jnova!

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. (Kids to young to know what Beta is, please read here.)

With the last nail in the coffin of HD DVD laid by Warner and Toshiba withdrawing support for HD DVD, let's take a trip back 20 years (or further) to see what the landscape was for home video.

Enter, Total Rewind, the virtual museum of vintage VCR's.

P.S. I have a slightly used Toshiba A-35 HD-DVD player for sale to the luckiest bidder.

Link. Thanks, Al!

Ever since I gave Comcast the boot and FiOS the welcome, I've not been using the Miglia TV MiniHD receiver since FiOS doesn't use QAM modulation. The USB receiver does however tune ATSC if you have a good antenna and some nearby transmitters. The included antenna is mostly a joke unless you live very close to the transmitter. I needed something better– so I immediately think of DIY. I found a site that included some instructions on how to build a decent UHF antenna based on the design of ones available for purchase. It's really very simple, I didn't follow the directions, instead choosing to replicate what I saw in finished example of someone who made one.

The reception is quite good, scarily so in fact for something that cost me nothing. I can say it works because the digital signal basically either comes in clearly or not at all (no snowy picture!) The base of the antenna is a USPS Priority Mail box covered with aluminum foil, screws, washers and copper Romex leading to a matching 75 ohm transformer.

Link to how-to. Link to reference photo.

From Mario and Luigi.

I've just installed a great set of audio plug-ins on my system and must say they work terrifically. Called blockfish, spitfish and floorfish from digitaldishphones.com, they will compress, de-ess and expand/gate you audio. And to sweeten the deal, they're extremely easy to use with easy minimal interfaces that make sense. I used it successfully to sweeten a voice recording I did this evening. Give it a try, the price is right.

Comes in Apple AU Units or VST flavors.

Link.

UDPATE 12/9/07: Doesn't seem to work on Intel Macs, maybe a universal version is on the way?

After reading that Apple now requires one to use a credit or debit card to buy an iPhone (to limit unlockers), Slashdot reminds us that Apple is not obligated to accept your hard earned cash, contrary to what you (and myself!) might think.

According to the U.S. Treasury FAQ:

There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.

Dang! That surprises me. Think you're getting back at a business by paying a bill with all pennies? They don't have to accept it!

Link. Via Slashdot.

This weekend, Bre Pettis of MAKE: Weekend Project showed how to make a foxhole radio. This project was very approachable since it didn't require any specialized electronics, hard to find diodes, chips, resistors, latches, etc etc. It used simple wires, thumbtacks, safety pin, pencil, etc.

So what you see is my attempt at making one (click for a larger view). At first, it didn't work. I was using my headphones to listen in but heard nothing. I then switched to a very old telephone operator-style headset that was more sensitive. I could hear a static noise as I rubbed the wires on the end of the plug.

I then decided to amp things up a bit and use the M-Audio Microtrak to amplify and record the sound. It was working– I could hear radio static, which is what I would expect if it wasn't tuned to a station.

Jim suggested that I try reorienting the antenna (which is about 30 ft long). I took everything outside and tied it off to the top of a tree. I put the headphones and and huzzah! I could hear music, Christian music to be exact. I was also lucky enough to hear the station ID. Listen to a clip of the recording here in MP3 format.

The station ID said the transmitter is located in South Carolina, that's a bit away from Delaware. I decided to Google the station and I found them here along with all of the transmitter specs. They're using a freakin' huge curtain antenna that can cover the US AND South America. They also seem to change up the frequency during the day depending on the program. During the time that I heard it, it was broadcasting on 11.960Mhz.

This got me thinking. The coil of wire around the tube was wound 120 times, as per the instructions. Does a single turn equal .1 MHz? Changing the number of turns is supposed to change the tunning.

Make one, it's easy and fun– keeps your mind sharp.

Does the new Chevy truck bear a resemblance to anything you may have seen (fictitious or not) in the past? National Lampoon's Vacation Family Truckster, perhaps?

Click for a larger image. Okay, maybe just the headlights, but come on!

Found a clever animated video (not official) for the song Minimum Wage by They Might be Giants.

Link.

If you use phpMyAdmin to administer a MySQL database on your server, be warned that you need to keep it up to date. Security vulnerabilities are discovered all the time so you can't rely on an obscure pathname to it to keep you safe. Below is an examtple of the paths that I've noticed are searched for. These came from my Apache log.

"GET /admin/phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/sysadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/sqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/db/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/web/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/pMA/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/myadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/webadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/sqlweb/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/websql/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/webdb/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/mysqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/mysql-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpmyadmin2/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/php-my-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.2-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /db/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /web/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /PMA/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /myadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /webadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /sqlweb/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /websql/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /webdb/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /mysqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /mysql-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpmyadmin2/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /php-my-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.0/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.0-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.2-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404
"GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0" 404