Sergei Mutovkin’s Rumbling Mumbling

Today my Sony Playstation 3 told me that an updated is available. The funny part, not a single RSS feed I’m tracking is reporting anything and Firmware itself did not inform me of any new features. A bit of Googling and it appeared that it is just a bug-fix release.

Where is my updated for Blu-Ray Profile 2.0? Where is my improved DivX support? What about other MP4 formats? Just joking - so far PS3 was one of the most impressive purchases I’ve ever made. And delivered more features then I could have ever wished. Slideshow in 1080p alone justifies the cost of the system (in Portrait mode with Face Detection and majestic panning). Thank you Sony, but keep updating it - I love fresh stuff

Wow, what a snowstorm and it is still not over.

Time after time I was cleaning my driveway, just to get it all freshly covered just a couple of hours later. I like the snow, but what would happen when all of it will decide to melt later next week? I’ve seen earlier this year in nearby Kleinburg.

After that I’m horrified of what to expect after THAT MUCH snow. It was so bad that GTA on Saturday had almost 800 car accidents and that’s considering that most people stayed at home! It is still a blizzard outside, with all the snow slowing down by 3am tomorrow. For now prepare for another Bushism - early March time switching ahead that will steal one hour from my sleep for the next little while and will waste a little bit more of my electricity since I’m waking up quite early and will have to light up my house instead of enjoying spring sunshine.

For now a few of the pictures I’ve taken earlier in the day (with more to come tomorrow ).

Snow outside

Backyard door and my BBQ all covered

Backyard through the mosquito net

The full set of pictures will be uploaded to my Flickr account.

Sun was recently very active in making smart choices in selecting open source project to hire developers from or open-source companies to buy (MySQL, Innotek’s VirtualBox) and finally adding the best scripting language to its toolbox - Python. Hiring to prominent Python developers will hopefully make Python a first choice scripting language for different Sun supported products. It seems we will not have to wait for too long to get descent Python support in Sun’s amazing Netbeans IDE and who knows may be one day we can get support for the best web framework - Django.

One amazing piece of hardware, just put 6 SATA connectors on it and it is a perfect Linux server. Just 4 Watts (plus 3×10W for HDDs) instead of 100+ will make my hydro bill go down quite a bit.

Month after month I was checking Dell’s Canadian online store to see if Ubuntu pre-loaded laptops and desktops are available, but as everything here, ultra-conservative canadian Dell office refused to offer any cheaper and safer computing solution, instead forcing people proven expensive, proprietary and virus-laden Microsoft Windows systems. But…

The wait is over!

Now you can order Ubuntu 7.10 based laptops and desktops for approximately $50 cheaper then their Windows pre-loaded brothers and sisters. My favorite is M1330 which is the first slick laptop from Dell.

Get yourself a Dell!

Good buy consumer friendly but technically challenged (only 30Gb on two layers) HD-DVD. Toshiba is has discontinued its High Definition disk format! Good to know that HD-DVD only movies will be soon available in Blu-Ray on my PlayStation 3.

I think this is one of the greatest news of 2008: Nokia is buying Trolltech! Not only will it let Qt through some previously closed corporate doors, but also will introduce Qt and Qtopia to many more people on many more devices. Finally people will not be afraid that toolkit may belly-up one day.

What’s more I’m hoping that the next Internet Tablet OS will be based around QTopia 4.x which is much more appropriate then XServer + GTK.

Way to go for my favourite C++ GUI Toolkit and amazing Jambi. Now I wish Trolltech will acquire Riverbank Computing and make Python’s PyQt API bindings official and bundled by default. May be I’m dreaming….

My home phone number starting today it has changed. I don’t want to publish it right here on publicly accessible blog, but if you e-mail me, I will immediately let you know.

So what did happen? Since 2004 I was a happy customer of FCI Broadband (Futureway Communications) a GTA’s local communications company. Last June I’ve got a happy letter from Rogers telling me that FCI Broadband is no more, they have bought it. But they claimed that I shall not worry - nothing is changing. Though I knew that “nothing is changing” is not for long, Rogers, like any other monopoly closes competing businesses fast, so that they do not compete with their main offerings. Fast forward to January 15th, 2008 and I got a letter from Rogers this time telling me that I have to switch to their “uber-cool” Rogers Home Phone (basically VoIP phone over cable) and I have to do it within next month or my phone is no more. I knew that this was the time to say “Good Bye” to Rogers. Now I have a VoIP phone from Netfone.ca. All features, free unlimited local calling, etc all for 9.95 + GST (no PST as they are in BC) (and you can transfer your existing phone number if it is in the area of their land-line switch - mine was not).

Voice quality seems to be fine, but now I have flexibility to call from anywhere, where there is a free WiFi using my Nokia N800 and its build-in SIP phone (I’ve tried and it works like charm).

Abandon monopolistic Bell and Rogers, switch to VoIP, there are a few choices in Canada.
http://www.netfone.ca/ (they are my current VoIP provider)
http://www.unlimitel.ca/ (they have an ugly website, but I’ve read they are quite good)
http://www.vbuzzer.com/ (very cheap and very popular in GTA)
http://www.gizmoproject.com/ (international, biggest Skype competitor, but Skype does not offer SkypeIn in Canada, otherwise they would have been my choice)
http://www.primustel.ca/ (a friend of mine is there, like it a lot, but it costs twice as Netfone.ca)

You can also order VoIP from Bell or Rogers, but then you will have to pay same old $40+ CDN + Taxes)

Btw, netfone.ca for GTA is routed through https://www.voipportal.ca/ so it might be the same quality as other providers that use this network.

One more thing.

Right now you can get a FREE 416 VoIP number for Life from http://www.freephoneline.ca only about 300 out of 5000 numbers are left. I’ve got mine, they have a Java based Soft Phone and you need to use computer to call, but hey it is FREE!

It seem that the final blow to HD-DVD is almost here, according to Financial Times it might come as a result of Paramount leaving HD-DVD only camp like the Warner Home Videos just did.

… Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, is understood to have a clause in its contract with the HD-DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.

It is a bit sad that the war ends in such a way without concessions from the Blu-Ray camp like removing everybody hated region locking. I really thought that this was the thing of the past, apparently not. I also wanted somewhat more relaxed rights to copy movies (transcode on my own) for use in portable gadgets like my Nokia N800 without getting a DVD and putting it into DivX or MPEG 4 AVC/H.264. In addition to that I want SONY to relax license fees from the media producers like Ritek and CMC, so that they can drive of the blank media somewhat down.

Good bye HD-DVD, I did not think it would be over so soon.

Great news came just as I was thinking going home (from work).

The news is that Warner has joined Blu-Ray exclusive club. All of sudden my grief about not being able to buy HD-DVD player during the boxing day is gone. HD-DVD is dead, long live Blu-Ray. Now 70% of all movies will be released in Blu-Ray format exclusively. This will eventually lead to the HD-DVD camp studios to abandon that exclusive camp and join Blu-Ray group since nobody will have players for their HD-DVD stuff, except a few hundred thousand early adopters.Too bad so many folks spent their hard earned $$ on HD-DVD equipment…

Get PS3 for $369 from Dell while you still can! What a great device it is…