A little bit of spare time?

Well, if you have some spare time check out the AresTV channel over at youtube. Pretty cool stuff, past/present/future, of the Ares program.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AresTV

Spare time? Me?
Okay, some here and there but I try pretty hard to fill it with meaningless tasks. The last couple of nights I have been fighting with my TV. Turns out if you use an hdmi audio-video cable to connect directly from your PC to the TV there is usually overscan.

Overscan? "What is that?", you say. Basically the TV interprets the signal over sent over the cable and scales it in a manner it thinks is best to match the LCD screen. Well, problem is that this match is usually not perfect and requires you to have to adjust the size and position. Easy ehhh. No, not really. With HDMI the TV expects the device sending the signal to have it in the correct 720P, 1080i, or 1080P format so the tv doesn't give you adjustment options in the on-screen menu. Basically you have to go back to the computer and develop a whacky resolution to compensate for how the TV is scaling the image. Sounds easy enough, but throw in Hexidecimal translation and registry editing and it quickly becomes a big waste of time.

It is nice to have audio and video delivered in one cable, but I wonder if this custom resolution mess is worth it over the standard vga cable (which of course works as soon as you plug it in). The sound quality is way better and it is in one cable, that is what HDMI has going for it.

Okay computer rant off. Nobody really cares about it anyways.

This week has been pretty mellow, but I still feel a bit wiped out by it. No riding. Tomorrow is a trail work day. I would rather be riding, but someone's gotta maintain the trails so I will probably head out in the morning to help out the local SORBA club.

We did manage to score some crusty couches for the house. Craigslist still rules, but it is much lower traffic here in Huntsville. It is catching on. So for a couple of hundred bucks we picked up a set of nice looking couches.

Well, nice looking from a distance. They are a bit crusty and will require a cleaning. The kids were stoked when David and I hauled them into the apartment. They spent about 30 minutes bouncing on them. They will fit the bill and the price was right. Should go well in the upstairs living room.

That's all for me. Hope everyone is doing okay. Drop me an e-mail if you get a chance.