Steve and Erica dot com

Couch to 5K

Steve — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:12:10 +0000

This is an intriguing fitness program. I’ve never been into running much, but boy do I need to get in shape. I like that there are podcasts that take you through the program–you just start up the podcast and a voice tells you when to switch from jogging to walking, and in between, music plays that has a tempo appropriate to the pace you should be setting. Seems like it simplifies the whole thing; just do what the voice tells you and you’ll stay on track.

Couch to 5K

Earthquake!

Steve — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:59:26 +0000

5.4 Magnitude Quake in SoCal

We’re too far north of the epicenter to have experienced anything other than a brief rolling thrill ride. Nonetheless, I think I’m going to stop at Target on the way home from work and pick up a few “in case The Big One ever hits” items.

Another test

Steve — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:04:45 +0000

With a picture.

Testing

Steve — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:01:07 +0000

Testing with the WordPress iPhone app.

Baby Nathan is here!

Steve — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:50:20 +0000

Nathan Michael Hahn was born at 6:25 pm on April 24, 2008, weighing in at 8 lbs., 1 oz.

Entering the home stretch

Steve — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:25:21 +0000

Just about 35 weeks along now and everything’s still going very well. I’m getting a kick out of watching him move and squirm and kick–although it isn’t as much fun for my wife, especially when he keeps her awake.

Only 2 weeks until we hit the 37 week mark, after which he could come at any time and no longer be considered premature. No reason to suspect he won’t go the full 40, but even the 5 weeks until then will go by in the blink of an eye. My wife has left work as of last Friday, and is very much enjoying being able to take life at a slower pace and focus on getting ready for our new arrival.

Here’s the video from our 29-week ultrasound. It may not be easy to spot, but at one point the doc was examining the umbilical cord and he suddenly grabbed it and moved it away.

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Update at 29 weeks

Steve — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:30:51 +0000

The update is that there’s not much to update; everything’s going perfectly, which is a blessing! We have gotten a start on the nursery:

Our next ultrasound is next week, so there should be another video to post sometime after that.

Apple TV “Take 2″ update now available

Steve — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:14:02 +0000

Four weeks after Apple announced it at Macworld, it’s finally on my Apple TV at home. There was some initial excitement from breathless HD geeks that the new update enables 1080p output… even though the hardware isn’t capable of it. Turns out that the iTunes Store’s HD content is and will always be 720p, it’s just that the Apple TV is now able to upconvert it to 1080p.

I rented “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (leave me alone, it’s a good movie) to see how well renting HD movies from the iTunes Store works. Once I clicked the “rent in HD” button the movie immediately began downloading, and inside of 2 minutes I was able to start watching it. This is in line with Apple’s claim that on a 6 megabit connection like mine HD downloads will be ready to play in, well, 2 minutes or less. I didn’t have 2 hours to sit through the whole film so it remains to be seen whether my viewing would have caught up to the download and stalled out, but that doesn’t seem likely.

Overall iTunes movie rentals on the Apple TV are far superior to the Amazon Unbox service that we’ve been using on our TiVo HD. The former is nearly instant gratification (decide to rent a movie and be watching it less than 5 minutes later) and is technically HD (although does not look as good as an HD broadcast or an HD DVD or Blu-Ray disc), while the latter would take upwards of an hour until it was ready to start watching and had approximately the picture quality of a good VHS recording.

One thing I’m glad to see is the fact that the Apple TV now shows up in iTunes as an AirTunes client, meaning that from within iTunes I could stream audio to both the Apple TV in the living room and the AirPort Express in the bedroom. Voila, instant whole-house (ahem, apartment) audio distribution. One thing that’s missing though is the ability to control AirTunes distribution from within the Apple TV interface–I’d love to be able to start some music or a podcast on the Apple TV and have it simultaneously play in the bedroom via the AirPort Express, without having to go to the computer and set it up in iTunes. A guy can dream, can’t he?

Merry Christmas

Steve — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 08:15:58 +0000

Unto us a Child is born.

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Google releases iPhone Web app

Steve — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 08:44:21 +0000

Pretty slick. Just visit google.com on your iPhone or iPod touch. For users of Google Apps for Your Domain, hit google.com/m/a/yourdomain.com (in case it really needs to be said, replace yourdomain.com with… well, with your domain).

Macworld: Google releases iPhone Web app