Wel­come To my Ex­peri­men­tal Web-Log
    -Henry Burgess

Chicken Shit!  I just took delivery of 6 cubic yards of chicken and sawdust compost.   I had then deliver about half of it to the top of our hill and the rest in the driveway.  Then I discovered that the street runoff was going through the pile at the top of the hill (I had the driver dump it as close to the top as possible) so I quickly moved about one cubic yard of it off the road.   The street runoff was washing chicken stuff (rust brown) down into the storm drain which leads to the creek where there are Salmon (don't get me starter on salmon!).

22.5 degrees!  I had to repair the molding last night in the bathroom that the Spanish exchange student will be using.  We have rounded corners on the drywall so the molding goes along the wall, makes a 45 degree turn around the curved part of the wall and then another 45 degree turn to the other wall.   So to make this work you have to cut 22.5 degree angles in the molding.  To top it off, this is all happening in a few inches:  22.5 degrees then a run of 5/8 inch then 22.5 degrees then a run of 1 inch or so, then cap off the end with 45 degree cut and a 3/8 inch end cut 45 degrees.  Oh, you can't nail this, so you have to glue and so I made a jig to hold the little pieces together while the glue sets and then I used liquid nails to hold it in place.  Whew!  No picture because Cindy has the digital camera at horticulture school today.

I had a bug in Windows Update last night that mysteriously went away today.  Quality software!

Rear-end: Oh, it's turning out to be a banner day.  I got rear-ended on the way to the supermarket.  The other driver got sited for driving too fast for the conditions so it will be their insurance that pays, even so it will eat up my time with estimates and that kind of thing.  Then on the way home I noticed the engine running a bit rough and the temperature gauge a bit high and going higher, I suppose this is the start of something really fun...

We are now awaiting the arrival of the Spaniard who will be staying with us as part of the exchange student program.    On the HTPC front I have tried PrYPb output from the HiPix card routed through the Sony 555ES and that worked fine, but the VGA loop through function sends RGB so I will haev to give up on VGA loop or get a transcoder.  See Key Systems.

Daniel made it back from Spain and went straight to the Bon Jovi concert.

Had my first go at driving the Pioneer 710 with the video card today.  Made some progress but can't get higher resolutions to work.  I especially want 1080i to look good.  I have concluded it's time for an ISF tune-up of the Elete it never had one. 

I put the DTC-200 HDTV card back in my HTPC computer and wonder, of wonders. The WinTV250 card is now working as well.  Which is a testimony to the device driver guys.  BUT, the sad thing is that nothing is compatible, least of all the UI.   Having the HDTV stuff back up just makes it hard to watch standard definition stuff, though the network feeds of regular TV passed on over the air as HDTV looks better than the analog cable TV because the local cable provider (Comcast) is not sending very good analog signals.

Whoopee!  I just got e-mail from Daniel in Spain.  Good to know he is alive and happy.

Well, the NTSC chip in my Gainward video card is crap and it may be that no reasonable one exists.   It wants to shrink the image by putting black on all sides.  My Replay does a fine job, I wonder what chip is in it?   On the bright side I found a application to download video from the Replay to a PC and that works nicely (but required Java, yuk).

I got a really sick feeling last night on the way to dinner.  On one corner were the pro-war people and on another the anti-war people.  The pro-war people we holding signs saying support our troops and waving flags while the anti-war people had few or no flags.  I feel it is at least as patriotic to be against the war.  What has happened to our country?   The end to aggression that we fought for in WWII  and codified in world treaties is all lost in the revenge-politics and foreign policy of this unelected government.

What time is it anyway?   Well we survived daylight savings time changeover as well as launching Daniel on his way to Spain.  He arrived safely and had an uneventful trip.  As always these days are tinged with sadness over the War.  We pray for a swift conclusion and for as few deaths as possible.   We now live in a country that starts wars in foreign lands and arrests people and holds them without legal counsel.  Only history can tell who was worse.

I ran out an got a Pioneer A05 DVD writer today.  I cut a short DVD of the only video files I had laying around just to see if the DVD would play in my Toshiba DVD player.  As expected, it did.  I was able to create a simple menu which worked as well.   By using the WinTV card to encode video from the S-Video output of my Hi-8 deck I can convert all those old 8mm family movies to DVD over time.  Next I have to take the plunge and connect the video card directly to the hi=def TV, a bit scary as the TV said not to so that kind of thing.  I have a copy of the Power Strip program which will let me set the video card to produce the correct signal.  I'll keep my fingers crossed!

It's one day until Daniel heads to Europe for a week with his foreign exchange family, it's making me nervous given the G.D. war!

With the weather report saying we would thundershowers with ice pellets, I decided to go for an early dog run with Flora while the skies were blue and the air crisp.  Alas, for an otherwise smart puppy she can't stop charging other dogs even with the nasty pinch collar around her neck.

As our son Daniel's trip to Spain draws closer we are getting more nervous about letting him go.  I was fortunate to get word last night from a Microsoft employee in Spain that reassured me of the relative safety and was kind enough to give me his cell phone number so Daniel has another contact in Spain!

Today I shall test my painting skills and the new method for getting straight lines.  I will tape where we want a straight edge transition between green wall and white ceiling.  Then I will paint whit on the edge of the tape so that any seeping of paint under the tape will be white, once that dries I will paint the green over the white.   We'll will see how it works!