The Working File

So after two people from team Boxee graced my comboxes in this post, I felt compelled to give it another shot. I bought a new 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro USB stick, ran the Patchstick creator, plugged it into the back of my Apple TV, and it worked. Further, I am glad that I had a chance to see the video that Dave linked to in his comment, because after you boot up the ATV, the patchstick runs, scrolling a lot of text that just ends, without any message that says, in effect, “You are finished.” Because I saw his video, I knew that the process had ended properly, so I removed the USB, and rebooted the ATV again.
Now I’m trying to figure out whether I will be able to adjust any settings either in the Boxee software or on the ATV to make internet sources such as Hulu run smoothly. Right now, they run with a very choppy video, and sometimes they just freeze.
It appears that this is partly due to the underpowered nature of the ATV, and due to the fact that Hulu is not designed to deliver content to anything but a regular computer screen. Some people have reported success by lowering the video output from 1080p to 720 or even lower. I’ll check the forums for more tips. Plus, as I’ve noted, Boxee is still in alpha and an update might help this issue.

I found this article fascinating:

Most Americans trust the judgment of the public more than political leaders, view the federal government as a special interest group and believe that big business and big government work together against the interests of investors and consumers. Only seven percent 7% share the opposite view and can be considered part of the Political Class.
On many issues, there is a bigger gap between the Political Class and Mainstream Americans than between Mainstream Republicans and Mainstream Democrats.

via Rasmussen Reports™: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere.
There’s more, and the focus is how the Political Class had a very different, and much lower, opinion of the April1 5 Tea Parties than did the rest of the country. What i found interesting, however, was this concept of the Political Class as defined by Rasmussen, and the data that defines it.
I would very much like to get more detail. For example, the article states that “most Americans” believe the three statements listed above, but does not define the size of that majority. Is it a bare 51%, or significantly higher. In addition, it gives no information on how many people believe some combination of only one, or two of the three propositions, and which ones are most believed and which are least.
Further, I’m quite surprised at how low the support for the negative side of those three propositions is. That group seems to be dominant politically, which is why I suppose it is reasonable to call them the Political Class: depsite low numbers, they dominate and rule the rest of us through politics.
Couldn’t we stop that?

On Sunday I spent a few hours trying to install Boxee on my Apple TV. Among other uses, Boxee allows you to watch various streaming web content providers through your Apple TV (ATV) on your television. The experience was very disappointing. To install Boxee on an ATV, you create a bootable USB drive using a program created by the Boxee community.
The problem is that USB drives are not designed for this purpose, and some of them just don’t work. What’s worse, manufacturers alter their specs, so a USB stick that worked for one user might not work for another. There seems to be little that Boxee can do about this for now. The result is that the installation software reports that it successfully created a USB stick that you should be able to plug into your ATV, called a patchstick. Then when you turn it off and back on, it should boot using the software on the drive which will allow you to complete the installation. The problem is that until you put the patchstick into the ATV, unplug it and plug it back in (there is no other way to reboot the ATV), then wait for it to reboot, there is no way t determine if the patchstick creator actually worked.
My first attempt failed when the USB creator software hung. After making an adjustment, it reported that it was successful, but when I put the stick in the ATV it had no effect, and the ATV booted back up as if there were no patchstick. I then read various entries in the Boxee forums. That was when I learned about the USB drive issues, and also discovered some options to try different DMG files, different USB formatting options, and other variables. While there, I also read that some people had success using an iPod shuffle as a patch stick.
With this information, I ended up trying all of the above variations on both the original USB drive I tried (a Kingston 1GB model) as well as on the shuffle. None of them worked. Overall, I wasted 3-4 hours.
That evening I tweeted “created ~ 17 #boxee patchsticks for #appletv today, all supposedly successful but none actually work when put into atv; boxee = pointless”
This morning I was very pleased to see a reply from Tom Sella, a member of Team Boxee. He tried to be helpful, but Twitter is really not a useful medium for tech support. Still, we went back and forth a few times, and I appreciated his input. I felt a bit bad about my original tweet. I meant it not as a criticism but as a basic expression of frustration, but I can see how it would appear differently to him.
As far as I can tell, my only option is to keep trying new USB sticks until one of them works. Since I don’t have any more hanging around(not counting one I’m unwilling to reformat and lose all of its info) I’m unwilling to keep buying them randomly until one works. If I’m in a store that has some on display cheap, I might give it another go, but otherwise not so much. One last note, I understand the USB creator software that makes the patchsticks might be made by the Boxee community and not by Boxee itself (at least that’s what one of tsella’s tweets indicates, but at some point they need to take ownership of it, and I think a key feature should be that the software should recgnize whether a particular USB stick can work or not. If the software reports that it was successful, then it should actually be successful, and the patch stick should work. Reporting that the creator was successful, only to find after several reboots that it did not work (due to a USB issue) does not make for a positive user experience.

Stopped by the NYC teaparty on the way home. The crowd was forced into tight labyrinthine cattle pen on the sidewalk next to City Hall Park. This made it impossible to attend on the periphery, hoping to make a quick exit. If you wanted in, you had to commit for the duration, as there was only one way out.
Sidewalk across the street became just as crowded, and eventually was also impassable. The setup made it very very hard to estimate crowd size. I won’t even try.
Crowds seemed mostly upbeat. Saw one group of three people with audio-video equipment interviewing one older gentleman in unusual costume at length. Suspect they were baiting him and hoping to make him look ridiculous, but I couldn’t hover close enough to be certain.

I haven’t watched ER in years, but I watched regularly for the first several seasons. I’m only about 20 minutes into the finale, but I’m liking it. It is clearly evoking the original pilot, and they played a special version of their original opening credits. I had no idea how much I missed the show, as it was, until I saw this and especially the Benton fist pump.

There is a saying that “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” In this week’s episode of the Unit, no plan — for battle or for a wedding — survives contact with your allies.

As usual, there are 3 story lines:
(1) Jonas, Bob, and Mack go after Leon Drake, the man behind the assassination of the Vice President, and the chlorine attack;
(2) Col. Ryan, Red Cap and Whiplash assassinate a man in Paris, with the dubious blessing of the French government; and
(3) Molly, Tiffy and Kim help Joss plan her wedding with Charles (whowas missing from this episode — something I didn’t notice until writing this up).
Read more…

It’s been widely reported today that President Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod as a gift. There is no word, however, whether it came with the special case:

I’m a bit less scandalized than Andrew McCarthy at the following actions of the Obama/Eric Holder Justice Department:

The Washington Post reports this morning that Holder has overruled OLC’s objective, well-reasoned, constitutionally-rooted opinion that the controversial D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional. OLC’s conclusion, if accepted by the Attorney General, as is customary, would likely have doomed passage of the measure, which is strongly favored by President Obama and Democrats.

via Politicized Justice Department – Andy McCarthy – The Corner on National Review Online.
It’s wrong, yes, but it is also how I fully expect politics and government to work. But this also it makes it clear that the over-the-top reaction to some standard firings of US attorneys by the Bush Justice Department, that led to Congressional hearings and massive media wailings, was nothing more than unprincipled advocacy.

Who do you know, and who can you trust. These issue intersect in three stories this episode. In the primary action story, the team, minus Grey and Red Cap (marking the second episode in a row in which she does not appear), attempts to extricate the leader of a revolution is an unidentified country that appears to be somewhere in Latin America. The man has a longstanding relationship with Jonas. Also, he has been shot, and needs surgery, which complicates the extraction. Jonas spends much of the episode mentoring and guiding the man’s son, Teo, who was 11 the last time they met but is now a young adult.

In the second story, Grey meets again with Joss, and reveals the truth about his identity and his work.
In the third story, Col. Ryan seduces and coaxes Susan Gillum to start drinking so he can get information from her concerning the activities and whereabouts of her husband, who is suspected of being involved in the domestic attacks on the Unit, including the chlorine attack last week.
Read more…