http://mickwest.com Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:57:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Just downloaded the iPhone wordpress app. Seems to work quite well. Is my computer now redundant? I think not, but it's nice for blogging on the run. http://mickwest.com/2008/07/22/blogging-from-iphone/ [Update again - This is probably fixed in the new update.  So the real fix is now to connect your PS3 to the internet before you start playing - it will then download and install the patch] I'd played GTA for a few hours, all seemed well. I then upgraded ... http://mickwest.com/2008/05/02/gta-iv-ps3-loading-hang-crash-fix/ Books I've read since Feb 4th 2008, with a ranking out of five of how much I enjoyed reading them. 1984 by George Orwell. (4/5) Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (4/5) Sabriel by Garth Nix (4/5) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (4/5) A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, by Marina Lewycka ... http://mickwest.com/2008/03/26/books-i-have-read-on-the-kindle/ So, my latest project is to actually wire the condo, to get around the slow and unreliable wireless connection and allow faster streaming to the XBox360 and PS3. The last wiring I did (for this same purpose) was in the Oregon house, where I laid Cat5e cables via the roof ... http://mickwest.com/2008/03/24/homepna-ethernet-over-catv-coax/ It works great! My wife and I both like to read. I recently got a Kindle, and Holly just had to have one too. One downside of e-books is that you can't share a book with a friend. However, if two people can share one Amazon account (at ... http://mickwest.com/2008/03/22/sharing-two-kindles-how-does-it-work/ I love Amazon's Kindle. I've had mine for about month now, and I've read four books on it so far: 1984 by George Orwell. (314 pages) Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (350 pages) Sabriel by Garth Nix (496 pages) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (983 pages) As a replacement for the paper versions ... http://mickwest.com/2008/03/12/embracing-the-kindle/ Very easy to do, you just need to install two free programs: 1) DVD43: http://www.dvd43.com (Reboot after installing) 2) Handbrake: http://handbrake.fr/ - More specifically, install the Windows GUI version. Then: 3) Insert DVD, cancel any auto-play 4) Run Handbrake, under Source, browse to the VIDEO_TS folder on your DVD drive 5) Under Destination, browse to ... http://mickwest.com/2008/02/28/copy-dvds-onto-iphone-windows/ Just got back from Mammoth Mountain, where we had a great three days of Skiing. I liked the skis I rented so much that I actually bought a pair. Now I feel like I'm a real skier! Holly made this excellent video: And here are some photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mickword/2008MammothWithZT http://mickwest.com/2008/02/19/ski-mammoth-video/ I must have read this book a thousand times when I was young.  Finally someone scanned it, and stuck it in an online museum: http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php http://mickwest.com/2008/02/01/the-usborne-book-of-the-future/ I'd been using wireless networking at home, and generally this worked fairly well. But a couple of things were problematic. Firstly it would occasionally go out for a few minutes at random (which I ascribed to the neighbor's wireless phone). Secondly it was rather slow using Media ... http://mickwest.com/2007/11/26/wiring-the-house-with-for-cat5e-gigabit-ethernet/