Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

It’s time to finally start thinking about HDTV. I’ve got a space that’s 48.75″ wide max, so a 46-50″ screen is what I’m looking for (I think the ideal width would be 45″, leaving almost 2″ on space on a side). Seems like the new 1080p plasma screens are all 49.9″ wide, though, so they’re out, unfortunately. Ah, if only I’d been paying more attention earlier on. It’s funny but we had to pick a fireplace and frame it in really early in the project.

Anyway, there are 50″ plasmas in 1360×768 that would fit, and the new anti-reflective coatings seem promising. And, of course, 1080p LCDs are available at 46″ and at 50″, and there are several that would fit. I’ve heard that the 1080 vs 720 thing isn’t as big a deal as people sometimes say. At least not below 50″.

I should also mention that we’re going to be in a very bright room with lots of windows, so glare-resistance will be critical. So, a 720p plasma? 1080p LCD?

Your feedback is requested. Let me know what you think!

UPDATE: In the comments, Andrej suggests that LCD still holds the edge over plasma in bright rooms, even with the fancy new anti-glare coatings the plasma people are putting out. He suggests going over to Magnolia to see for myself. Now, I’m all for firsthand experience, but given that all these places mis-adjust their sets so badly, is it really possible to get a real sample of what you’re in for? I don’t have time to research how to adjust all the various sets and then go into Magnolia and “fix” their sets for them!

Still, I’m not a huge sports fan, and the new Samsung LCDs claim an 8ms response time. That seems pretty fast to me.

We picked up a Sonos system a few months back to audition it for our new home as a “whole house” audio system. I put that in quotes because we’ve wired for the whole house, but will only buy hardware for select rooms. The system is a series of distributed controllers that can read mp3 files from windows filesystems on the network. Great, I thought. I’ll plug a drive into my Airport Extreme base station and it’ll act like a NAS and I won’t need a dedicated server. Brilliant!

Unfortunately, Sonos has a little bug: it can’t connect to the Airport disk. My Mac can. My Windows XP box can. What’s wrong with Sonos? I called their tech support people and was told that they couldn’t connect to the Airport disk because of (I kid you not) a problem with Apple’s USB connector! I asked to talk to the next tier of support and was told that Apple messed up the Samba protocol. I asked why my XP box could connect, then, and they said they didn’t know.

I finally got a more-reasonable sounding answer on the forums: the Airport Extreme doesn’t properly support Samba user-level authentication and the Sonos doesn’t properly support unauthenticated/user-level authenticated access. Great. So much for that plan. By the time I finally discovered all this, the return period on both items had expired, so I’m stuck for now. I’ll probably have a server in the new house anyway, if only to serve iTunes content to the TV.

UPDATE: Thomas Meyer at Sonos wrote to tell me that they’d released new software to improve compatibility with airport extreme. I haven’t tested it, as I’m now serving my music from a dedicated Leopard server (which also serves for Time Machine backups).

NY Times: The Time to Leave Iraq is Now:

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

[via Economist’s View]

[via FSJ]

How did Apple leave tasks out of iPhone? Is this something waiting for Leopard? I don’t know, but 37 Signals has something for now, Ta-Da Lists for iPhone!

Now if only they supported categories and priorities ordering, we’d be in business for GTD. I need my GTD!

Drywall begins
Originally uploaded by mdm.

The drywallers have made their start on the ceilings. They’re about 1/3 done with the ceilings now.