Each year the CBC ends their Stanley Cup coverage with a video montage of the entire playoffs. Here’s 2009’s version. Let’s just say the song choice this year was a lot better than last year’s Sweetest Love Hangover by Diana Ross!!
http://www.petrieweb.net/video/tyler_vbs.flv
Here is a clip of Tyler performing at Vacation Bible School today. It was the final concert that all the various classes had been practising for.
We finally got the final word, and as suspected he will be a boy. Now we have only have 4 months to agree on a name. I’m not sure if that is enough time.
We’ve had a new family move in next door. They are actually squatters really! It’s hilarious that mom setup housekeeping on the back of a hummingbird on a wind chime.
Ok, everyone will be getting tired of all these updates on the baby, but some of this is very cool . . . or very weird. I leave it up to you to decide. Here is the latest “photos”. Actually it is a 4D movie from the last ultra sound. The resolution is not quite as good as we saw in the first scan a few weeks ago. This was taken with a different machine, at a different facility. Still you get the idea. Oh and the sex? Well he’s ( yes he!) is only 13 weeks here so it is not 100% positive, we’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks. Petrie’s just can’t produce girls!
http://www.petrieweb.net/video/Baby3d.flvAnyone who watched TV in Canada in the 1970’s will recognize this:
While the famous “exploding pizza” logo has been updated over the years, it is without question the symbol of public broadcasting in Canada.
So much to my surprise what did I find in the store today. Has funding for the CBC come down to this? Gift Cards? No it’s Apple’s new iTunes Gift card. Obviously its a take on the click wheel found on most of the classic iPods. But wow, did they not research that there could be similar designs out there?
Now I know most people outside of Canada have never heard of the CBC, and I’m not even sure that is a trademark outside of Canada. But with the “mother corporation” needing over $100 million in more funding, perhaps she should get the litigation underway now!
Tyler found the perfect new name for Leah. No one can seem to get the old name right except for me, so my parents decided on the name Foxy!!
I received a phone call from Mom yesterday. They found a dog they fell in love with and want to take her home, but the shelter wants to make sure she gets along with Rufus and Tyler. So, today we all went down to the shelter to meet Leah (I don’t know if they are keeping the name). Everyone got along so here she is…
Updated the HTPC today. I had been using the onboard graphics solution which had component out to my HDTV. When I first built the computer I had always intended to add a discrete graphics card. At one time I had an NVIDA card that also had component HD out, but I found that the onboard graphics actually had better saturation and contrast.
So that worked fine, until last year when Netflix updated their DRM for instant viewing, and I was unable to watch instant movies on the HTPC without a HDCP compliant video card. At the time most HDCP cards were well over $100, so while it sucked to only be able to watch instant movies on my laptop, I decided to wait for awhile to see if any cards came down in price. (Ok I was told by Tracie to wait for a while to see if cards came down in price!)
Fast forward to now and I finally got around to check out what HDCP compliant cards are out there. To my surprise I found the choice out there now to be almost overwhelming! I have always liked ASUS, in fact the motherboard in the HTPC is an ASUS M2NPV-VM, and as I said its integrated graphics outperformed that old NVIDIA card. Also as a Canuck I have always been biased to the ATI cards, even though they are owned by AMD now. I have always felt that when it comes to games NVIDIA usually has the edge, but for TV, video and HD applications, ATI is where its at.
I picked up the ASUS EAH4550 card from NewEgg.com. It is a low profile, HDCP compliant card based on the ATI HD 4550. It has VGA, DVI and HDMI out, and all for about $45 after rebate! My HTPC is such a hack right now, that I’m always leery about changing anything on it because that usually means that something else will break. I’m still running XP on that machine, because Vista just can’t get all the components working together. Well I installed the card, attached the HDMI cable to the TV and booted her back up.
Everything worked the first time! I was so disappointed! 
There was one small hiccup. After installing the drivers I noticed that any audio for video went through HDMI cable instead of the audio out to home theater amp. After disabling the HDMI audio, everything worked as it should. The picture quality is amazing, and the contrast and detail over the component video is like night and day. Why did I wait so long to do this?! Oh that’s right Tracie!
But the best part is Netflix on demand works again. And now that they are adding more and more HD content, the card will be able to handle all that onboard, without offloading that the CPU.
While its not a gaming card, I hope to try a few out to see how it handles them. Nothing better that killing a few Nazis on the big screen!
Well we got to meet the newest member of the family today. We had our first ultra-sound, and here are some the results.
Just amazing the 3d technology. You can actually see him move in 3d in real time! So far everything seems to be fine. He is much further along then we thought. He is currently 11 weeks and 3 days old, 4.5 centimeters long and his due date is October 11.