Marc's Public Blog

lots of cars...

The F458 Spyder on display:

That said, the 430 Spyder Scuderia doesn't look bad either:

And a classic:

All in all, nice car p0rn :)

This works pretty well and gives a good experience, a much better one than all the flash solutions I've seen.

So life was good, right? Well, not really. Amazon just started slowly converting their video collection to add DRM, which in turn breaks the XBMC plugin and forces the use of flash and a pretty crappy experience (in comparison) through a browser.

I'm not expecting much out of it, but this is the Email I sent their customer service:

Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

I am writing you about the DRM you have been adding to your amazon prime library.
I know I am not using a supported way to play your videos and do not need you to tell me what the supported ways are since I am aware of them.

I am contacting you in the hope that you will forward this request to someone in charge of decisions for which formats you stream your videos in and whether or not DRM will get applied to cripple your entire collection, making it useless to me and others who do not use flash to play the videos.

I use XBMC on my HTPC since I like the freedom of controlling my own experience and the flexibility of programming it and having it do just what I need on the hardware that makes sense to me (which includes playback on devices that do not have flash capability).
I'm sure you are already aware of this project:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=108124&page=41

For comparison, all HTPC players I've seen that use flash offer a pretty bad experience. Since flash was never designed for proper integration on computers controlled by a simple remote.

You also know that flash is a soon to be dead technology, it's already abandoned by Appple, and even Adobe gave up on it, mostly killing its future.
By converting your content to DRM, you are putting your content out of reach for us, just to appease some of your content providers with their pretend world that somehow it is protecting their content.

Since you are big, and they should listen to you, not the other way around, please convey to them that:

Thank you for reading.

This unfortunately happened because not to many people eat foie gras (probably many don't even know what it is), were given a one side story on how horrible foie gras was, so they didn't care if it went away. This totally ignores that:

Quite frankly, if those people would put their energy into raising standards for animal farms and humane handling, even if they're going to be killed in the end, that would be effort better spent, and supported by virtually everyone (it will likely also raise the price of meat, but so be it).

So, in about a month, a bunch of farms that make foie gras will be closed and people layed off for no good reason but a few activists' wet dreams. In the meantime, California is having multiple foie gras dinners while it's still legal.

Jennifer and I had a nice 5 course all foie gras dinners, and are planning to have another one or two before it's too late.

It was a great dinner, sooo much foie gras :)

the beamer electric car was quite nice inside

this was a converted M3 with stick shift. A bit hackish, but fast

the new Tesla sedan

We also had vendors showing us their earth friendly farming:

The driver up was "interesting" to say the least. We drove Jennifer's Toyota and I got to Jackson in record time considering the pouring rain. Said rain turned to snow soon after jackson, and we were left with a long drive in the snow, and that snow was quite slippery, making for some 'interesting driving'.

caltrans plowing was 'minimal' as you can see.

somehow with flimsy chains and skillful driving, we made it up

We got there a bit late due to both conditions and the fact that Carson Spur was actually closed for over an hour for snow clearly, but by ten, I had one of the first chairs up to the wall with 2ft of fresh dry powder, so it wasn't too bad :)

Jennifer learned to get under the rope :)

Did I mention powder on the wall? :)

That evening, we spent a nice evening in a place I got for us:

And the next morning, we were joined by Arturo, and spent most of the day on the backside:

Arturo just had to ride chair 3...

Backside had plenty of pow for us

I got down this :)

A bit of a line at 4, but didn't last long

This friday/saturday was a great two days in Kirkwood: great snow and few crowds.

This museum became more famous since Shawn, the president and super nice guy who gave me a ride back to the airport gates for my flight after the museum closed, organized for Cactus 1549 to be trucked back to Charlotte, its ultimate destination to be on display in his museum.
The plane is actually a lot more damaged than what it got from the landing since it has to be pulled out of the water in ways that were a bit crude (it was also hit by some boats that were there to rescue the passengers):

Here are a few pictures of the temporary display:

And a few pictures of the rest of the musem:

that's an interesting missile

they had an interesting video showing how the harrier balances and can be controlled in a hover

things used to suck before glass cockpits :)

those are many fuses to keep track of :)

blowing rock (in the town named after it)

Taking blue mountain road, I went to see local Grandfather Mountain, and its few exhibits:

they are known for their suspension bridge

fun road to get up and down, too bad I had a crappy rental car

I then went back on the road for a few more views:

so, where shall we eat?

our 'war' room :)

The office was nice, with a Nascar theme:

Aaron arranged a "Shooting at Shane's" outing for our group. We definitely got to play with local toys that are plain illegal in California.

so was the 50 cal

do you have a problem with prodimage-team?

he looks so nice in real life :)

if there is a war, they're ready

time for blowing up some cheap soda

water melon got it :)

soda bottles were fun too :)

the owner's son sure has some nice toys :)

the machine gun was water cooled, so vapour came out when it was too hot

that ammo is $10 a round

the machine gun kind of shredded that safe

Aaron then invited us at his place for a magnesium VW engine bonfire, which sure made for a nice bright fire:

magnesium just started burning

It was a great trip, thanks to the hospitality of our coworkers.

we weren't the first one with the idea to come that day :)

pow

there was a bit of a line when the wall was opening

getting down cornice

Then, they had an avalanche on the back side, and shut down all the lifts while all their staff went there to make sure no one was burried (no one was). That was a 2H wait unfortunately.

Jennifer is not expert at getting under ropes :)

All in all, despite lifts being shut down for a while, it was a fun day :)