Hello Maquino!

Afternoon Tech-Geek Project

2011-09-13T15:01:00.002-04:00

It's like Christmas today! A package arrived for me a couple hours ago, and it's a video decoder card for a mini-PC that I put together to be a very small foot-print, media PC for the living room.

The little PC I started out with is a Zotac ZBOX ID36BR3D (barebone configuration) and kitted it out with 4 GB RAM, a 500 GB / 7200 RPM hard drive. I got it a couple months ago, and it's a pretty neat little machine that's about the size of netbook with a 10-inch screen. The cool thing is that it's got a Blu-ray player for its disc drive and plays Blu-ray discs quite well.

The thing that I found that was a problem was that running any video that it has to decode (like MKV format) would chug when played back at full HD. And the Netflix Silverlight player would also be unwatchable when playing back streaming HD content.

So, I ordered a mini-PCI express video decoder card to fix the play back issues ... and I just received it today! Going to spend a couple hours right now to set it up ... I'm hoping that it does the job (fingers crossed).

I'll keep you posted on how today's tech-geek project goes!

New Business Cards Ready

2011-09-13T14:19:00.000-04:00

To get ready for a meet up this evening, I've had to scramble to get some business cards made so that I would be ready to make some new contacts. Today's meet-up kind of snuck up on me, as I've had a lot of other things going on recently.

I didn't really have time to come up with a design and get cards printed up at some printing service (on-line or otherwise), so I opted to print my own cards up today.

Since the event tonight is a mix of technologists and creative types (from the book publishing world), I wanted to come up with a pretty non-standard business card design that would provide necessary information but that would also provide an example of my creative abilities.

I think I came up with a pretty good one (given the time frame that I had to work with!) ... it's basically just a block of text that looks like it could have been pulled off of a sheet of typewriter written creative fiction. I made the key information (my name, e-mail, phone number and what I do) stand out in different colour text.

Hopefully, the folks I give it to will find it interesting enough to stand out from all the other business cards that they get!

Attending "Code Meets Print" tonight

2011-09-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

I'm excited about attending my first "Code Meets Print" Toronto (aka CMPTO) meet up. It's a meeting of people interested in the fast growing intersection of book publishing and technology. Some of the ideas for apps I want to build falls into this area of things, so I'm hoping that I'll get a lot out of it.

But, it has been a little while since I've really been out to an event that gives me the opportunity to do some quality networking ... so today I've had to scramble to get a few things ready (like business cards) for some possible networking. I think I'm ready to make some interesting new contacts tonight!