Carmel California visit

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Originally uploaded by LangFamily

For me, one of the more interesting places in California is Carmel-by-the-sea. Originally an artist colony, Carmel is a quiet town on Monterrey Bay that is a fantastic vacation destination. There are a series of ordinances that prevent extensive redevelopment, and maintain the feeling of Carmel as a reclusive retreat. That, and the rather high property values, manage to keep the town exclusive to a more refined segment of the population (politically correct?).

I had the chance to visit Penny and Allen when they rented a summer house there earlier in the year, and this is a picture of us on the beach.

Granpa's bird feeder

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Originally uploaded by LangFamily

P and N really seem to enjoy learning about nature things, which must be something that they get from their mother. I don't remember finding nature that interesting until later in life.

Here they are learning how to fill the bird feeder at Grandpa Lang's house. I think they look at it similar to fishing - here is how to build a bait trap for the birds. At least that is how Nicholas explained it to me.

The Culture: T minus two days

John has been blogging about his upcoming trip to China. Even though it is a business trip, I bet he will have a great time. Read more about China and 'sleeve fish' at The Culture: T minus two days.

What to do in the Summer?

After a lot of conversation, introspection, inspection, etc. we as a family have decided on something. We want to enjoy our summer. And that is going to include some vacationing.

I know that sounds almost ridiculous, especially since our kids are so young, but the point is that we are ready to branch out and get adventurous. We have been to the Carribbean, been to Florida, and have even bumped around closer to home a bit. But we have not travelled in one of these:



Now I know it may sound strange, but camping is not actually off-limits for me. Sure, I get harrassed by bugs on all of these trips. And I don't get enough sleep. And I am usually more tired when we get back from a camping trip than when we left.

But it may be a different experience for us now that we have 3 small children, who are very interested in exploring the world. And, while we have tented with them, and hoteled with them, we have not "trailored" with them (shout out to Melissa).

So, here we go. We started looking at tent trailers like this:



Basically a box on wheels, with a hard top and bottom, and tent material around the outside. Inexpensive and light. Unfortunately, no bathroom or shower. Really just a place to sleep, or keep out of the rain. And of course, tent material on the outside.

So, we took a look at Hybrids, also called Expandables, that look like this:



(Trailer may not be exactly as shown, Happy Family not included.)

And this time, while there is a full bathroom in some of these, and real beds (for really short people), there is still that tent material around the bunks. In fact, they fold up for travel, and fold out for camping. So, we are still not where we want to be.

Then we found this:



Wow. Rock Star trailer. It is a 2007 Starcraft StarStream 19RB. I think we might have a winner. Loaded out, and looks good too.

To satisfy our primary requirement, I think we can take the StarStream here:



And we can take it to sporting events, too. I hope the kids learn to like tailgating.

Tell us what you think.

Free Personal Video Recorder (PVR)

Unless you have been under a rock lately, you know what a PVR is. For those whose eyes are just adjusting to the sunlight, a PVR is similar to a VCR, except it uses a PC, is digital, and can do a lot more.

There are a number of software options to do this:

1) Microsoft Windows Media Center PC. You have to buy a specialized PC, all the setup work is done for you, and you are bound to Microsoft for fixes and updates.

2) Tivo. Not available in Canada, and requires a monthly subscription.

3) Myth TV. Free. Linux-based. Open Source. The subject of this post.

There are a few downfalls to MythTV, not the least of which is the fact that it is very difficult to install, especially if you have not used Linux before. So, let me go on record as saying, if you have ever wanted to learn Linux, THIS is the best excuse to.

And you are going to want to visit these sites:

Myth TV. Main site.
Myth TV Wiki. Official hints and docs. VERY HELPFUL.
KnoppMyth site..

What is KnoppMyth? Well, if you want to spend a lot of time customizing and building your system by hand, you can go the traditional route and install an implementation of Linux, then install MythTV. Or, you can use the precompiled installation called KnoppMyth, which is a pre-installed MythTV built into Knoppix.

I have tried both ways, and the KnoppMyth way is by far the fastest method to get up and running. You can watch a video of the installation by Kevin Rose and the folks at Revision3 here.

What do you get with Myth?

* Basic 'live-tv' functionality. Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind "live" TV.

* Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings.

* Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording machines and multiple playback machines on the same network, completely transparent to the user.

* Compresses video in software using rtjpeg (from Nuppelvideo) or mpeg4 (from libavcodec). Full support for Hardware MPEG-2 encoder cards (Hauppauge PVR-250 / PVR-350). Preliminary support for DVB cards and the new pcHDTV tuner card.

* Support for the (very nice looking) hardware MPEG-2 decoder and TV out present on the Hauppauge PVR-350.

* Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping

* Grabs program information using xmltv.

* A fully themeable menu to tie it all together.

Some screens:

EPG

Photo Gallery


Video Player


Weather


Also, because it is themeable, if you don't like the layout of these screens, you can create your own. If you get stuck installing this, and believe me, you will, just try Googling Mythtv and your problem. There is a lot of independant work being done and it is spread across a number of different forums on the 'Net. Good Luck!

New Mac Blog

Finally started my long awaited Mac Blog: Mac Mania

Everyone should play hockey

Another disappointing loss in Hamilton, this time a 6-0 shutout. Not as bad as the previous week (we all lost count after about 7 or 8 goals).

I play on 2 teams, an oldtimers team in Hamilton and an oldtimers team in Oakville, both organized through Russell Hockey. While it is not contact hockey, it can be very competitive. The rules are very similar to shinny rules, with some minor exceptions. For example, there is a fixed length for each shift and the teams change lines on a timer instead of making substitutions during play.

As I am sure you already know, the most popular sport in Canada is hockey. Even more important, the most important television show other than the news, is Hockey Night in Canada. The reasons for hockey's prominence in Canadian culture are many, but let's just say for purposes of brevity that it is an activity that gets thousands of Canadians exercising during the cold winter months.

More about the league I play in is here.

Baby and Mommy are doing fine

Baby and Mommy are doing fine
Originally uploaded by LangFamily.

One of the rare public appearances for the dynamic duo.

The holidays have been a bit of a blur, and now we are back on track. Baby Grace has had a bit of a difficult time at here first Christmas, as she caught a cold from her brothers and has been struggling to keep it together through all of the visits and excitement.

A Star is Born!

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Originally uploaded by LangFamily.

Unidentified karaoke singer steals show.

The 80's are not dead, as evidenced by the impromptu performance of an unidetified karaoke singer, who decided to regale a mixed audience of Christmas partiers with his own personal lounge-lizard rendition of "Wild Boys" (Duran Duran), and other assorted holiday favourites. Sources suggest that several agencies have attempted to contact the singer, but he is holding out until he has assessed the job market for hockey players and superheroes.

Military History Wiki update

A brief update on Military History Wiki is available here.

Military History Wiki was a project that I started a couple of years back to provide an online repository for articles and information related to Military History. I had a lot of help from a number of friends, and especially from my brother-in-law John, who also shares the excitement. The site used software available under free license from Mediawiki, and was set up to run in a similar fashion to Wikipedia. I personally funded the hosting costs for the site, and also donated a significant amount of personal time to site promotion and updating.

After a while, several astute authors and historians noticed that there were many articles of relevance already posted on Wikipedia, and they started to cross-post or copy the Wikipedia articles to the MHW site. While this managed to expand the number of articles rather quickly, it also diluted the amount of original material. This is not necessarily a bad thing - in fact, MHW was picked up at Armchair General Magazine, and several other online sites including Military Spot, and Society for Military History.

Over the past year the contributors at Wikipedia have finally gotten their act together, and you can read about what has transpired as well as any new Military History Wiki information, here.