Year: 2005

DirecTV TIVO 30 second skip gone?

*Update 11/21/2005* OK, I don’t know what is different today but trying to apply the TIVO 30 second skip hack works just fine now. I must have attempted to apply it a half dozen times on Saturday and now, *presto*, it works like a charm. I guess it was a false alarm.

I still mean what I say below about making the ads more enticing…
*End Update*

Hey, has anybody else noticed that the 30 second skip is no longer working for DirecTV’s TIVO? I use it all the time to jump past the less imaginative commercials. Now I find that it just suddenly stopped working. As near as I can figure, it seems like it disappeared sometime between November 17 and November 19. 🙁

I don’t see anything about this on the DirecTV site but I’ve sent them an email to ask them to confirm that this is so.

I’m not sure why we have to have this constant battle between advertisers and viewers. Surely it’s obvious that the reason folks don’t watch most TV commercials is that they are dreck.
The existence of TV programs dedicated to airing amusing or well done ads proves that folks are willing to watch them if they are entertaining.

The solution lies not in forcing folks to watch terrible ads, but rather to produce ads that folks are willing to watch. I personally will rewind and watch an ad if it looks like it was interesting or clever. And I will quickly skip past one that is not. It ain’t rocket science to figure out the solution here.

And given the ability of TIVO (and I’m sure other DVR / PVR solutions) to discern what exactly it is that you are viewing (this was highlighted in the Janet Jackson boob debacle) it certainly is not a stretch to believe that advertisers can find out what kinds of ads we are willing to watch and tailor their content to meet our tastes…

Dual Monitors

A while ago I decided to add a second monitor to my system. It was MUCH easier than I thought. I couldn’t use the video adapter built into my motherboard for this, but I *could* pick up a card that had two outputs (in this case a digital and an analog) and then direct each output to a separate monitor. Extending the desktop in XP is trivial.

Then I decided I wanted one of the monitors to read like a sheet of paper. But it wasn’t one of your “new fandangled” ones that can sense its orientation so I picked up a wonderful piece of software called Pivot Pro that allows me to rotate my screen(s) as I see fit. I have has no real issues with it except that PowerPoint presentations insist on displaying on my secondary monitor (the rotated one) and for some reason they insist on ignoring my Pivot Pro settings.

I suspect there is a way to force PowerPoint to behave, but honestly, it’s not that big a deal for me.

Here’s what it looks like:
1040

Changes, Changes

You may have noticed that I’ve made a few changes around here.

I’ve upgraded to the latest and greatest version of WordPress (this blogging software) and I’ve also upgraded to the newest version of the Gallery photo software.

These two can now talk to each other now and you’ll find the photos are integrated much more nicely into the overall web site.

WordPress now manages accounts for both of these platforms. So if you already have an account on this system you now need to login from the side panel next to the blog rather than in the photo gallery. See “Login” under “Housekeeping” to the right. If you don’t have an account, please go ahead and register and you can see all of the pictures rather than just the ones open to the public.

If you have any problems, please let me know.

The pictures showing up at the top of the sidebar (to the right) are, in order, a random picture from any of the albums and the highlight picture for the most recently created album.