Olympic Streaming with Silverlight is Amazing!

9 08 2008
Local cable company to Vista Media Center

Local cable company to Vista Media Center

Live streaming Silverlight footage from NBCOlympics.com

Live streaming Silverlight footage from NBCOlympics.com

I was checking out what events were on right after the opening ceremonies and couldn’t help but notice the difference in quality between the live Silverlight feeds vs my local cable to TV tuner/Vista Media Center combo. As you can see above, even though the sizes aren’t exactly the same, the Silverlight stream was definately way more sharp and vibrant compared to the Media Center’s.

To me that’s just amazing that we can have live streaming footage from China on my 200KB/s downstream that’s of higher quality than a local cable connection.





My quest to become a roboticist

2 08 2008

Ever since I was a kid I have always been interested in building stuff with whether it be with Legos, wooden blocks, bikes, or whatever else I could afford at the time. Going through high school I turned to building websites and learning how to program. In college I started out as a comp sci major but even though I ended up switching my major to an International Studies degree my passions for technology has never been greater.

I’ll admit it. I’m a closet geek and a serial hobbyist. My latest ventures have lead me to the Boe-Bot from Parallax. Since I work primarily with Microsoft technologies I thought it was awesome that they have a development framework called the Microsoft Robotics Studio. So last week I ordered the Boe-Bot kit after debating between this and the Lego Mindstorm NXT kit. The reasoning behind this? I thought I could learn more about how these things work since the Boe-Bot looks like it has more of its guts exposed and I’ve never worked with anything like this before.

So I got the package 2 days ago and joyfully sliced the package open like a kid at Christmas time. Looked at the manual’s cover and sighed…

Approximately 2 hours to assemble…

Introductory project hours to completion: 40 hours….

Difficulty level: 5 out of 10….

Looks like this might be another project that I may never get to finish. Damn you needs for instant gratification!!! =\





22″ HP Touchsmart @ Costco

26 07 2008

Just spotted the HP 22″ Touchsmart @ a local Costco for $1449.99. Looks pretty sweet with an Intel Core2duo T5850, 64-bit Vista Home Premium, 4GB RAM, 500GB, dvdrw, tv tuner and nvidia gforce 9300.

Could this be the beginning of Microsoft’s vision of a Microsoft Surface in every home?

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