Fun with Lilo

Just Call Me Dr. Picasso

"Scribble" is an iPhone app that allows you to doodle. I am very proud of this drawing which took me about 20 seconds to make:

You can also doodle on pictures in your photo gallery. Here is what Milo would look like with some fancy facial hair, a top hat and spectacles.

Christmas is Coming!

Now we can add "Christmas" to the list of things that make Lilo tired, along with:

- Walks

- Running on the stairs

- Getting lost while chasing a deer

- Clowns

Emailing Texts Saves Money

I don't have a text plan because I don't really text people. But I do send emails. And now I might "text" people.

I sort of knew about this already but never bothered to do anything about it, but now Rachel has a text plan. If you email phone_number@carrier_info, it will show up as a text on that person's phone. If they reply to that, it will show up as an email on your phone or computer. So I can "text" without paying for a text plan, as long as I know the person's carrier and what needs to come after the @.

One downside is that in order to receive free "texts", the sender must consciously text to your email address instead of your phone number. So all you texters out there, add my gmail address to my contact info in your phone and send any messages to that.

Wintry Fun

The first sizable snow of the season inspired Lilo to pop Rachel with
a large stick.

Exercise, meet Technology

I downloaded the free RunKeeper app for the iPhone because the Buffalo Bills lost another game they should have won. I wonder if that makes sense to anyone.

What this app does is track your location while you do any sort of activity (walk, run, cycle) and compile statistics which get uploaded to the runkeeper website. I tried it out for the first time today on my walk with Lilo. Here's what you see when you go to the website:

Pretty cool. The blue line on the bottom tracks the speed and the green line is elevation. And that is the exact route we took. It may be silly, but I am much more motivated to exercise when I can come home and look at my stats.

Apparently a 2.44 mile walk makes Lilo tired:

Beat that, Milo!

I think I've finally perfected the wooden fortress that is Milo's
automatic feeder. There's no way he can steal food from it now, right?

See that look on his face? That's frustration.

Green Lakes State Park

Happy Halloween!

Tivo: Teacher, Mother...Secret Lover!

When we got DirecTv back in 2004, it came with a Tivo. This was our first taste of DVR-life, and we've never looked back. I think sports and the debates are the only things I've watched live in the past few years, except for when I happen to be sitting there when Rachel watches tv. And even with live tv, we can still pause to go to the bathroom. So DVRs are on the list of things I would hate to live without, along with high-speed internet and food.

Then we moved to NY and started having trouble with our dish. Snow and rain would mess up the picture. We'd wake up and discover some shows had not recorded properly. So we decided when we moved next, we'd switch to cable: no signal problems, no unsightly dish on the roof, no missed recordings. The only downside is: no more Tivo!

I had seen Time Warner's DVR in action before, so I knew it was going to be a step down from Tivo, but now that I've actually lived with a non-Tivo DVR, I can honestly say it is a BIG step. Here a few of my gripes about Time Warner's DVR (I don't know if these are specific to Time Warner or common among all non-Tivos):

1. There is no option to bundle multiple episodes of one show in a single folder. We've got all Season 2 episodes of Mad Men recorded for when we finish Season 1 on Netflix, and every time we scroll through our recordings, there are a dozen Mad Men in the way. With Tivo, that would be one Mad Men folder.
2. Sometimes the end of shows are cut off. This is fine, Tivo did this too occasionally. It mostly has to do with the signal it's getting. But with Tivo, you could set a season pass to end a minute later. With this DVR, it doesn't seem to be possible to edit season passes of shows to stop recording a few minutes later. You can do it all you want with single recordings, but once you choose to record all episodes  "First Run only on this channel", your special time selections are overwritten.
3. You can't arrange season passes in a hierarchy, where if there is a conflict, higher priority shows get recorded over lower priority shows. This isn't too much of a problem for me, because we don't record enough for it to be an issue, but it should still be available.
4. This DVR has two tuners, so it can record two channels at the same time. But when recording two shows in a row on the same channel, even if there is nothing else being recorded, it only uses one tuner. And there is a 5-10 second gap between when recording the first show stops and recording the next show begins. If this gap is during commercials, fine, but with the networks' wonky scheduling, sometimes it's right at the end of the show.
5. When fast-forwarding through commercials, Tivo rewinds a bit when you stop, depending on how fast you were going.  The faster you fast-forward, the farther back it jumps. Our DVR doesn't do this, but I've gotten used to it's own quirks and have come to deal with it. At times, I've even made it through commercials much faster than I could with Tivo.
6. With Tivo, you can search for shows to record by typing in the name of the show. It then shows you the show in an alphabetized list that you can scroll through. You can also search by actor, genre, and other categories. With this DVR, you can only search by typing in the first letter. Then you have to scroll through all the shows that start with that letter. So if you're looking for reruns of Dynasty, have fun scrolling.

So why the long post? I just learned that Tivo has partnered with Netflix so that people can now watch Netflix's library of downloadable movies on their Tivo! We're not really taking advantage of that aspect of our Netflix subscription because it's a chore to hook up the laptop to the tv, reboot it in Windows, etc... But if we had a Tivo and all you had to do was press a button? AWESOME. Not to mention that the internet connectivity that enables the Netflix partnership also enables you to set recordings from the internet. Maybe even from the iPhone!

Walking the dog

Lilo waits for me to stop taking pictures so we can keep walking.

I Love You Dr. iPhone, PhD

This first post is dedicated to my new iPhone for inspiring me to
start this blog.

And it's posted entirely unnecessarily from the iPhone!