Lighting is pretty important. As Sui fell asleep for the umpteenth time on the couch, struggling to stay awake against a dim standing light (), it was time to renovate the lighting in my condo. I also tried poking her awake and got slapped.
Like almost everybody else, I switched my incandescent bulbs for energy-saving CFL’s, courtesy of multiple government subsidies, a few years back. Sure, there was a difference in lighting, but I didn’t think much of it till now; some rudimentary research showed that stores still sold high wattage bulbs, used in higher-end lamps, at a performance level unattainable by current CFL’s. Also, there were supposedly added benefits to using halogens and full-spectrum lighting as well, and that fluorescent flicker people complain about is probably keeping me irritable.
I always figured sports would be the bastion of cable – it’s the one video category people will still willingly spend money towards, whether to just get cable for ESPN or a new HD television set to view the action in full 1080i glory.
Turns out, though, that the current NBA playoffs (with games broadcast between ABC, TNT, and ESPN) are already freely streamed online:
ESPN 360
TNT TV
Sure, it makes a poor replacement of an evening on the couch or in the bar with friends, but for those who stay in the office as late as I do (or don’t feel like paying $50+ a month for three channels), it does its job of halting productivity admirably.
When we last left off, I was busy prying open my new Mac Mini to get at its deliciously compact innards with a screwdriver and putty knife. Opening up and messing with the internals of the Mini is much more annoying than it should be, but I was able to shove two new sticks of RAM and a new hard drive in the machine with minimal warranty-voiding destruction.
With it finally sitting attractively underneath the TV, I spent some time upgrading it into an actual useful media box befit of the pedigree looming overhead. It’s still a work-in-progress, but the requirements for a living room media center running OSX are a bit different from the workstation/gaming PC setups I’m used to:
Through my television’s tenure, it has done little else beyond displaying PS3 and XBox 360 games in glorious high definition. I tried cable at one point, but canceled it from inactivity; it’s not that I don’t want to watch cable and shows, but the few which are interesting aren’t worth the $50 or so a month.
Then internet video came along, and all anybody needed to access content – for free! – was something with a web browser and video output. Unfortunately, not many machines have both a decent web browser and outputs to a TV, and it turns out the simplest solution is to just hook up a fully-featured desktop ().
A week ago, en route to our respective workplaces, Sui and I noticed a poster ad for Gunnar Optiks on the BART. Being an optometry student and optican (and thus being familiar to pretty much all the noteworthy lens and frame manufacturers; they like to indoctrinate early), I was surprised that she had not heard of these guys.
One workday Google search later, we found what they were offering: fashionable, Oakley-style glasses, catered to heavy computer and television users, designed to reduce eye strain over work/play marathons ().