3rd time's the charm, maybe

I had to enter this review at yellowpages.com three times (wrt Taco Cabana, 1255 NE Loop 410, San Antonio).

Worst T.C. Experience. Long line, then other clerk had to be called for alcohol. I was told wait would be too long for steak fajita so I ordered chicken fajita tacos instead. 15 minutes after ordering, I was told no more chicken fajita, would I be OK with shredded chicken. 4 minutes later the shredded chicken was more like sauce with a few strands of chicken and only one small piece of actual chicken in two tacos. I had long wait in this store last year when no one else present. A friend says they do table delivery so as to hire fewer cooks. Other stores in S.A. have been better.

I went to YP to enter a review, and I conveniently saw they had a box for me to enter a review, so I started typing.  After review added, I clicked to publish.  Only then it asked for identity.  I wasn't sure if I had a YP identity but I do have Facebook identity, so I chose that.  Facebook asked me to log in.  I typed in the wrong password (I recall I had to change it this year, and I don't use Facebook much).  So then I came to an error page,  Refresh page only showed the same error page.

So I started all over, doing the Google search, seeing the YellowPages.com link near the top, searching for Taco Cabana's in San Antonio, etc.  Finally I entered the review in all over again.  But just before I was done checking it, a friend called.  She graciously agreed to call back in 5 minutes.  I finished the review and clicked publish again, and this time it took me to a page saying I already had a YP identity, would I like to merge that with my Facebook identity?  I clicked yes, but once again, that lead to a lost review and no way of getting back to the review page.

I only knew the review was lost because I did the restaurant search all over again, and sure enough my review wasn't there.  So I entered it a third time, clicked publish, and this time it did immediately appear on top of the reviews on the review page, which was being shown.

I could have cut the review into my Mac, which I finally did remember to do the third time, when everything worked.  I've had these hassles so many times wherever you are allowed/required to write text into a dialog box, it gets tossed at some later stage.  But I'm concentrating on my content, trying to get that right, not perusing the rulebook of coping with web interfaces.

But how about this: when you click publish you stay on the publication page, with the text editor open and everything.  Pop up boxes in new windows or tabs lead you through the identification process.  No matter what happens there, unless you have to restart the browser, you can go back to your original writing.

OR, force you to navigate the identification process upfront, before you've wasted 15 minutes writing a review which got lost in cyberspace…

By the time I had the review posted it had been more like 10 minutes and my friend still hadn't called back.  So I waited another 3 minutes and called back.  Perhaps I shouldn't have made her wait at all, but she was very happy to hear I had posted the review, she was there too and had originally suggested I contact Taco Cabana about our awful experience.  I read the review to her and she would have added something about the food being too salty.  Then we talked lovingly for 45 minutes about such things as a program she was watching about Otters in Monterrey California being saved, how little she said she had gotten done that day, and how much alcohol I was drinking (not much, btw, half glass of beer in the afternoon and half glass of wine started just then).

Smartphones are NOT the best home controllers

More and more home automation systems are pushing smartphones as home controllers.  This has absolutely no appeal for me.

Dedicated home controllers are more convenient because you do not first have to open and/or authenticate your smartphone.  Though I have only the minimum swipe-to-open on my Android phone (and it's actually a pain, not just any swipe will do, I often have to swipe 2 or 3 times, and sometimes more, to get it to actually open).  Then, you have to scroll to your home control application, and open it.  Finally you may have to navigate to get to the particular room or device you actually want to control.

And I should also mention, though perhaps it's just me, that before any of that you actually have to find your smartphone.  And sometimes that is a considerable challenge.

Dedicated home controllers, by contrast, are usually best just left in a convenient spot to control the things you want to control in that room.  Therefore the controls are localized to the room, and always available in the right place, ready to go, with often as little as one button push to start some action.

I was very saddened to find out that Sonos had discontinued making any handheld controllers.  It was the cool color LCD screened Sonos remote that brought me to choose Sonos in the first place.  Thankfully I picked up a nice controller on eBay.

OS Upgrades are really Downgrades

When a computer OS creator comes out with a new version, you can be absolutely certain it is even more complex than the previous one.  You can also be fairly certain that running on the same hardware it is going to be slower (though, often end-of-life updates for the older version also add in that slowness, so the brand new version may be slightly faster than a fully updated old version).  And, most important to me, a person who likes to do things in my own ways, OS upgrades nearly always create a system which is less transparent.  The curtains behind which the inner wizard resides get heavier and heavier to the point where mere mortals cannot pull them back any more.  And we can be fairly sure that was the whole point, as far as the OS creator is concerned.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this, and I'm sick of it.

Slow Motion

As a viewer of erotic films, slow motion is one of my favorite features.  When it comes to anything erotic or fantastic, the ability to slow down and examine or savor each frame instant feels godlike…and that's the feeling you want.

As time has gone on, the technology to deliver slow motion video has improved immensely; now it is no longer to design complex video tape head geometries or motions to achieve it.  (An aside: the beta video recording system seems particularly superior to vhs in being able to be changed in direction and run in reverse at any speed even normal speed.  I thought this derived from the head design.  I always hoped beta would triumph for that reason alone.)

But as it has become technically rather trivial to have slow motion, almost equally it has become clumsy, hard to find, limited, or unavailable.  I wonder if design of video viewing programs isn't being directed by uncompromising antiporns or some other kind of spoil sports.

I have long felt that the ultimate super beta machine, the Sony 900, had the best remote control for slow motion, with direction buttons flanking the pause button.  At the time it seemed so amazing to have slow motion forwards and backwards, and the 1/5 speed was quite a nice compromise single speed.  (One of the Pioneer Laserdisk machines may have done it one better with a bunch of speeds conveniently selectable on the remote).  Then came the cool looking jog shuttle wheel systems…but guess what.  You now had to hold the control just so to shuttle at a slower speed.  Believe me this becomes very inconvenient for one-handed operation.  Those antiporns were just beginning to exert their will.

Now we have picture viewers on computer screens where similarly you can get slow motion at any conceivable speed, so long as you are willing to hold your hand just so (or sometimes two).  So now I'd have to hire somebody to keep the slow motion going.

Slow motion is one of the reasons that stand alone video devices like vcrs and the later hard drive (sometimes with dvd recorder) devices are superior to computer systems.  And it's ironic, because hard drive recorders, like my new wonderful Pioneer DVR-LX70, is really just a computer with a dvd drive.

But it seems that the czars who design computer operating systems, and especially Steve Jobs, had a strong anti-hedonic streak.  None of the Mac facilities are nice for being a lazy godlike viewer of it all.  They all seem to be tailored into making you into a nerd, a curator, or gasp a creator of new work.  Passive one-handed (or half-handed) browsing, viewing, scanning, and slowing?  Forget it!  And tablets further this direction.  A laptop is superior for viewing erotic pictures precisely because it holds up it's own screen at an adjustable angle.  Normally you hold a tablet, that's using up a whole hand, which could be useful for doing something else.  Now I would have realized this immediately, and never bothered to make as useless a machine as a tablet.  (I also hate that tablets lack real keyboards, and seem them as inherently closed systems, intended to make you a slave, dependent on the masters to do the real programming.  But that's another matter.)

Now the Pioneer does my old Sony RDR-HX900 (passable in the UI department, I had nothing but complaints about it's clunky user interface until I realized I had the end of the line in such devices…Sony no longer imports an untethered consumer video recording device to the USA, selling a whole household of Blu Ray recorders in other countries only) a bit better.  The slow motion keys the Pioneer can be engaged immediately from play (instead of pausing first) and don't have to be held down for an uncertain amount of time to engage the slow motion (because otherwise you could simply be using the same keys to signify frame advance).  Plus, the Pioneer has 4 slow motion speeds and even does regular speed--in reverse.  (WHY was that so impossible to do, even with DVD drives turning many times as fast as necessary?  I smell antihedonic conspiracy again.)

The disappearing DVR

One of the most popular categories of electronic equipment has been recording devices, audio and video.  As time has gone on, these recording devices have been disappearing.  I believe that most of this disappearance is driven by content aggregators (record companies, movie companies) and not actually consumer disinterest.  Much of this is out in the open, for example, the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act and the people who lobbied for it.  But once there are laws like DMCA, electronics companies that used to push the letter of the law in selling copying devices, now shrank back into selling only in non-US markets, professional devices, etc.  And given that many of the "standards" used in AV are proprietary, no manufacturer wants to offend the standards-owners.  Etc.  There is more than just fear of law enforcement here.  There is fear of and cooperation among different companies.

The great example of this is Sony, the electronics AND media mogul.  They were among the first to push video recording with Beta (and Super Beta and ED Beta) video recorders, starting in the 1970's.  Now they don't sell any consumer video recorders in US markets.  They do make a reportedly excellent line of  Blu Ray recorders, such as the BDZ-EX200, but none of them are sold in the USA.  Sony wants the movie studios (and they own lots of movie studios too) to use Blu Ray, so they want to make movie companies feel their properties aren't going to get copied.  Of course it's not only illegal to copy a Blu Ray movie on a Blu Ray recorder, it's technically impossible.  You are locked out of copying protected data by all digital copying devices.  But that doesn't seem to be enough for the studios and the standards owners who cater to them.  They seem to want you not to think about copying anything.

You won't find many Blu Ray recorders in the USA actually.  The least expensive one I know of is the JVC SR-HD1250, which now sells for about $1000.  This is, of course, a "professional" model.  JVC makes two other models which sell for $2500 and $3500.  Panasonic makes a line of consumer recorders, but as with Sony they are not available in the USA or compatible with US standards.

Funny because it wasn't that long ago that many companies made DVD recorders.  Of course DVD is not a standard owned by a single giant media company.  It's not exactly an open standard, but it's far more open that a strictly proprietary standard like Blu Ray.  Sony quit selling DVD recorders in the USA first, ending with their great RDR-HX900 in the USA.  I bought one of those in 2005, and when it started to have problems in 2010 I first looked to Sony for a replacement.  Then I looked to anyone for a replacement.  Finally I decided I had a limited edition classic and I should just keep fixing it forever.  It wasn't long after Sony stopped selling these units that they stopped selling the unique DVD drive it uses, which seems to go bad in a few years.  And if you've been inside one of these units trying to fix it, you strongly get the feeling the whole thing was specifically engineered to be difficult to repair.

Of course, Sony wants you to believe that DVD is old shit, and you should move on to Blu Ray, so perhaps it was understandable that Sony would stop selling DVD recorders first.  But other manufacturers gradually followed, and now there is only one company (Funai) selling a standalone DVD recorder in the USA (under the Magnavox brand name, which they now own).  That unit is available in three hard drive capacities, with the largest being the MDR537H/F7.  It is an 8th generation DVD recorder from Magnavox and people fear it may be the last.  It is very reasonably priced and I'm buying one right now.

Built-in Malware Protection is Best

Interesting scrape with Flashback malware last night. Safari browser on mac locked up, asking me to install new (bogus) video player version. Restarted Safari and it came right back up again, still not letting me use any other windows. Used my other mac to get more info--quickly identifying problem as Flashback. I went through detailed removal instructions at CNET (from 2012) and there was nothing to be found--could be new variant. Then I did a lot more browsing and found out that Mac's now have 3 levels of built-in malware protection (started in 10.6.7).

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22603815#22603815

Unless you have Java enabled (JavaScript is different and safe), or give permission to something that just pops up (never do that unless absolutely sure), or run questionable programs (e.g. pirated or BitTorrent) you are pretty safe. I ran software update (which invisibly runs Malware Removal Tool), and an hour later the malware was gone.

Built-in malware protection is definitely the way to go. 3rd party "virus" protectors on PC's are incredible resource hogs IME, and money hogs too since they require annual subscription fee. And those companies have inherent conflict of interest wrt dissemination of new malware (which makes my suspicious mind wonder who their friends are) to make you keep renewing. Apple does not have that conflict of interest (at least on a supported system). Years ago on PC's I tried two of the most well know virus protectors and felt they were worse than malware. Harder to remove also.

Another good idea is to have a second computer.

Having Dropouts in your Media Interface ?

People like me trying to build whole house digital entertainment systems become very familiar with the dropouts that may occur when you have any HDMI connection other than the most basic (media player to TV with 6' cable).  You'll begin to see problems when you have HDMI switches, HDMI active splitters (don't even bother with passive splitters),  ethernet HDMI extenders, longer than 15 foot cables, and so on.  I've seen hundreds of pages of complaints and occasional successful solutions at premier AV websites.  These dropouts may occur constantly, or irregularly.  For me, they've always been irregular, and recently have been 1 or so dropouts per hour, sometimes rising above 10 per hour.  I think I now have the situation better under control (I now see about one or so dropouts in a whole day hours could go by without getting one, but then I could get several in one hour) and may get even better as I perfect my system further.

Here's a pretty good introduction to HDMI problems and the most basic ways of fixing them.

BTW, the whole reason for the complexity that makes HDMI dropout prone is copy prevention systems like HDCP and their endless need for timely handshaking to be absolutely positively sure nothing is being copied.  That was the primary engineering requirement for HDMI.  The second goal seems to have been the requirement that users must buy expensive computerized switching and distribution gadgets when analog video only required simple mechanical switches.  Industry likes that for two reasons.  It discourages people from doing exactly what I am doing, and instead have the satellite or cable company provide the multi-room capabilities for you (which limits your AV network to their sources, and forces you to pay them for your multi-room capability).  Make users into sheeple, in other words.  And the second is that for those users who refuse to be sheeple, make them pay through the nose to do the least little extra thing.  I have spent several thousand dollars on HDMI switching and distributing equipment and cables over the last 8 years that I've been using HDMI.  Much of that was problematic and had to be replaced with even more expensive stuff.

I recently replaced my old 4 way active splitter (from 4 years ago, and it was getting flakey, with dropouts and noise persisting sometimes for a minute or more) and my Oppo HMDI switch (which seemed fine, but was less than easy to use) with a very nice professional grade 4x4 hdmi matrix switch.  Matrix switching is and incredibly nice feature, I now would not want to live without it, and I love this switch (at least functionally).  And I recently set up two new ethernet-based HDMI extenders in addition to the one I set up last year.  Sadly my two OWlink HDMI extenders have died, they were the least dropout prone of any extenders I have used and they spoiled me.

Unfortunately this did not, at first, make the increasing dropouts situation go away at first.  But I improved the situation greatly when I switched currently unused outputs (displays) to inactive inputs.  Notably the situation improved when I did this for the living room, not currently being used.  The living room is still running on old unshielded Cat6 while every other room that needs an extender is using my latest Cat6a Shielded connections (at least mostly).  So having that connected to the same source as other rooms seems to lead to dropouts.  I need to bring up that extension to my new standard, and make all cables as short as possible.  I've recently ordered a whole bunch of new ethernet and HDMI cables for that purpose.

Here's a company that makes a variety of interesting products to fix HDMI connections.

Update: My dropouts have almost entirely disappeared since I replaced a 25 foot tangle of Cat6 STP with a short 3 foot piece of my new standard, Cat6a STP (same as used in the attic).  I did have to make the HDMI cable slightly longer, from 3 feet to 5 feet, so this required the purchase of two new cables (5 foot HDMI and 3 foot Cat6a STP) which I just received recently.  I also ditched the audio inserter that inserts digital audio (from coax) into a DVI interface to produce an HDMI signal...that's a troublesome process (both digital streams must remain in sync) and the adapter itself is not professional grade and had frequent problems.  The ultimate solution to analog-video-to-hdmi would be a brand new DVDO (to replace my 10 year old unit) but I haven't sprung for it yet.  Unlike my older model, the new one takes care of the audio insertion internally and has a true HDMI output rather than DVI.  The analog-to-HDMI lets me watch my harddrive recorder and SVHS machine on the whole house network, it's actually one of the things I use most.