First, let's note what my hardware setup is. I have a MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008). Its video output is a Mini DisplayPort. But as mentioned below, this solution works (with some changes) with any modern Mac.

My TV is a Samsung 61" rear projector. That doesn't really matter; what's important is that it has a HDMI/DVI video input, and a set of stereo audio jacks that are assigned specifically for use with that particular HDMI port. In the picture of my TV's connection panel below, those ports are numbered 4 and 5, respectively.

OK, so here's what I did:

Video connections:

Planning on doing presentations from my MacBook, I had previously bought the pricy ($29) Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter, so I used that. I had also bought the Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter (also $29), which would work as an alternative using a VGA cable if your TV has a VGA input (sometimes labelled PC In, as in the picture above).

I wanted to keep the video signal all digital, so I bought a DVI to HDMI adapter from Monoprice.com. Then I used a cheap male-to-male HDMI cable that I also got at Monoprice to make the connection to the TV. So the hookup is:

MacBook > Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter > DVI male to HDMI female adapter > HDMI cable > TV.

Some alternatives: if I were to do this from scratch today, I would use something from Monoprice that wasn't available when I bought the Apple adapters, namely a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. Then all I would need would be the HDMI cable. If I had an older MacBook Pro with a DVI port, I could get by with just the DVI to HDMI adapter and the HDMI cable.

Audio connection:

The HDMI standard says that an HDMI cable can carry both video and audio. However, the MacBook's external video output only does video, so you need to deal with audio separately. I used another cable from Monoprice, the 3.5mm Stereo Male to 2 RCA Male Cable. I plugged the stereo RCA jacks into the TV, and the stereo plug on the other end of the cable into the MacBook's headphone port.

Update: A wise commenter points out that modern Mac headphone jacks are also optical digital audio jacks, which put out full surround sound. That doesn't help you much with Hulu, which is currently only stereo, but I expect them to upgrade that in the future. Then I'd buy a mini-Toslink to Toslink cable from Monoprice for about $3, and switch the whole setup to run through my home theater receiver. This works great today if you want to use any current Mac as your home theater PC to play DVDs as well as do streaming video; for example, it would work well with a Mac Mini.

Watching Hulu:

I switched the Samsung TV to its HDMI/DVI input, and turned on its internal speakers (normally the sound comes from my home theater receiver). The MacBook immediately recognized the TV as an external display. I left the MacBook in display mirrored mode. I fired up Hulu Desktop for Mac, pressed Command-F on the MacBook to put Hulu Desktop into Fullscreen mode, and I was up and running. I was able to relax back on the couch and use the little Apple Remote to navigate to the shows I wanted to watch. Both the video and audio quality were quite acceptable. The MacBook was getting the Hulu stream via 802.11n WiFi, but 802.11g (or wired Ethernet, of course) should work just fine.

In the future, I may connect the HDMI and audio outputs of the MacBook to the home theater receiver, so the sound comes through the far better home theater speakers, rather than the ones built in to the TV. But for now, the current setup works pretty darned well.

Back in 2006, I pointed to two other video versions of the song, one by a Danish band called Hurra Torpedo, and one by three people just driving.

But the version I saw today is just inspired. It uses the actual video, then puts new lyrics over it, literally describing the action. Simply hysterical. Check it out.

Now, the woman had only minor injuries. Sadly, the rangers killed the bear, which I guess is SOP when bears attack people. But I was struck by this sentence of the article:

Michael Seraphin of the state Division of Wildlife says the bear was later euthanized after Swendsen identified it.

What, did they do a bear lineup? I'm imagining the scene:

"Now, Ms. Swendsen, don't worry. The bears cannot see you. Are you ready?"

"Y..yes."

"OK, Murray, bring 'em in."

"Bear number 1, lean forward and say 'Oh, bother.'"

"Bear number 3, turn to your right, hold up your paws, and say 'Grrrrr.'"

"Bear number 5, turn to the left and say 'Pic-i-nic Basket.'"

"Anything, Ms. Swendsen?"

"I'm sure it was Bear number 3. He looks mean."

"Thank you, ma'am. Murray, let the rest of them go."

This article from Audioholics, Trading Amplifier Quality for Features: A New Trend with A/V Receivers?, raises some interesting ideas, and I like it a lot. It posits that manufacturers have been skimping on basic audio quality as they race to add features (while maintaining price points) that consumers want, such as video switching, more audio codec handling, or multi-zone audio (that means that your receiver can pump out different audio to two or more places in your home). So over time, the sound quality of these receivers have been getting, if not worse, then less good.

The author makes a compelling argument, yet I think that because he sees new gear all the time, he may be missing the point in the real world of audio consumers. Most of us don't purchase new gear every year. I'm more into this home theater stuff than most of my friends, yet I still upgrade my stuff fairly infrequently. I bought a Denon AVR-3300 receiver in 2000, and I just replaced it with the Denon AVR-1909 in the fall of 2008. I switched receivers at the same time I replaced my television, but I've kept the same speakers, satellite box, and DVD player.

The 1909 has a ton of features that the 3300 lacks, including the main reason I bought it, HDMI switching. No surprise there; HDMI hadn't yet been invented when the 3300 was produced. Here's three key facts: eight years later, the 1909 was $250 cheaper than what I paid for the 3300; the 1909 has less rated power per channel than the 3300; and the 1909 sounds a heck of a lot better. That's my subjective opinion, of course, but it was also immediately noticeable to Dori, who pays lots less attention to this sort of thing than I do.

One of its new features is that the 1909 has the ability to adjust its sound to the shape of our living room, using a microphone that is placed at the different listening positions during setup. I didn't turn up the bass setting between units, but the new one gives my subwoofer more of a workout than the old. A couple of nights ago, an earthquake in a movie I was watching created so much bass that Dori called from the bedroom asking if we had had a real quake. I think that the bass information is cleaner and more gets sent to the subwoofer. Similarly, I've noticed more and different things in soundtracks and music than before.

So the Audioholics article may indeed be correct, that over time, manufacturers have been reducing the amplifier quality in their receivers to trim costs. But my theory is that this reduction is swamped by how much better the rest of the receiver's electronics have gotten, given eight years of technology improvement. What do you think, audio lovers?

My blurb for the book:

“There are many books out there that teach CSS, but most of them are not meant for absolute beginners. This book is. If you’ve never used CSS before, ths book will get you up and running fast. We don’t pretend (or even try; the book is only 150 pages) to teach you everything you need to know about CSS. Instead, we show you how to create a clean, standards-compliant Web site using CSS from start to finish.”

The example site that we create in the book is called Alpaca Repo, purporting to be a service site for banks with customers who don’t make payments on their alpacas. “When they don’t pay, we’ll tow ‘em away!”

Our promise to you: No alpacas were harmed in the making of this book.

• Slumdog Millionaire: 8
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: 4
• The Dark Knight: 2
• Milk: 2

For those who are unfamiliar with me doing this, you can find previous year's Oscarblogging at:

• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008

Updates will be (mostly) placed at the end, so scroll down.

By request: as with previous years, I've got a live chat group going. If you've got AIM (or .Mac, or anything similar) join us at: backupbrainchat. Instructions:

For Mac OS X:

• Logon to any iChat account (AIM, Me.com, or .Mac)
• Select File > Go to Chat
• In the Go to Chat dialog, fill in backupbrainchat for the chat name and click Go

For Windows:

• If you don't already have it, go to AOL.com and download AIM, and do what's necessary to get a screenname (AIM is free and you don't need to have an AOL account to use it)
• Launch AIM
• Choose People > Send Chat Invitation…
• Invite doriasmith to join you in the room backupbrainchat—you'll be transferred into the room instantaneously.

I've heard tons about the "changes" that the Oscar would have this year, and all I asked for was one thing: Hugh Jackman would wear an actual tuxedo. No "suit," no "cravat," no tie. Okay, I'm happy. He looks great, and I'm glad to hear him sing.

Anne Hathaway as Nixon? There's casting I wouldn't have expected. But they both look and sound great. The cheesy props even worked in a cheesy sort of way.

A nice tribute to previous Best Supporting Actress winners. I'm curious as to how they'll do the multiple presenter format. And… it seems to work. It's nice to see each of the presenters talk about one of the performances—it seems to be more personal that way. And the winner is: Penélope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Nate Silver picked Taraji P. Henson (for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) as the winner in this category, so he's already 0 for 1. But at least he was right about the 2008 election.

I wouldn't have expected to see Tina Fey as a presenter, but she looks great. Nice to see people who can actually write giving the writing awards—it's a good choice. And the Oscar goes to Dustin Lance Black for Milk. Hey, it's one I've seen! I'm generally not happy about political rants as part of an acceptance speech, but hey, what do you expect when a political movie wins?

And the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay goes to Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire.

Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston are giving the award for Best Animated Film. Is this one really a question? Next year, though, it may be a real fight between Up and Coraline. This year, though, as expected, it goes to WALL-E. The Best Animated Short Film goes to La Maison en Petits Cubes. Okay, props to anyone who says "Domo arigato Mr Roboto" as part of their speech—rotfl!

If you're just reading the bottom, you may not have noticed that I posted instructions up above on how to join us in the live chat. See you there?

I'm not a SJP fan in general, but she looks lovely. I am a Daniel Craig fan, and he looks, well, like Daniel Craig. Works for me. The Best Art Direction award goes to The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, the Best Costume Design award goes to Michael O'Conner for The Duchess, and Best Makeup award is for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Natalie Portman looks amazing. Ben Stiller looks like Joaquin Phoenix. She gives the Best Cinematography award to Anthony Dod Mantle for Slumdog Millionaire. Stiller just wanders around.

Jessica Biel is wearing satin curtins, so far as I can tell, and she's recapping the Sci/Tech awards. Ed Catmull, we're sorry you didn't get your moment in the spotlight! Trivia bit: Jerry Lewis has a patent for the video assist.

Seth Rogen, James Franco, and a DP whose name I can't spell give the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film to Spielzeugland (Toyland). I may not be able to spell it, but he's being a good sport, and it's good to see someone from behind the camera in front of one. I am surprised that out of the three, Rogen's the only one wearing a tux.

The chat group informs me that the DP is Janusz Kaminski.

I'm a huge fan of the old Hollywood movie musicals, and it's great to see a tribute to them that includes some live singing and dancing by stars. Jackman is as talented as I'd always heard he was, and Beyoncé brings it. Baz Luhrmann choreographed it? Okay, I'll let him live. Previously, he was on my shit list for Moulin Rouge!, aka "ADD: The Musical."

Now it's the mini-montage for best supporting actors, and the group of five previous winners to give the award. That's some star power there. I was just told that, although the award is still being introduced, Wikipedia already says that Heath Ledger has won it for The Dark Knight. Hey, it turns out that WP was right!

Bill Maher comes out to give the documentary awards, griping about how his documentary, Religulous, wasn't nominated. Shut up. Finally, the Best Documentary Feature award goes to Man on Wire and the Best Documentary Short Film goes to Smile Pinki.

Will Smith comes out to talk about action movies, following a montage of what Tom referred to as "Shit blowed up real good." There are only three nominees for best visual effects, and the award goes to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, it's the one where nothing blew up. The Best Sound Editing award goes to The Dark Knight. Okay, they blew up plenty of stuff there. And finally, the Best Sound Mixing award goes to Slumdog Millionaire. Spoke (wrote?) too soon; the Best Film Editing award goes to Chris Dickens for Slumdog Millionaire.

Eddie Murphy comes out to give the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award to Jerry Lewis. Interesting choice; I suspect they may get some flack for it. Lewis looks like he's in pain, and he doesn't talk for long. I suspect that it's a "hey, you're about to kick it; here's one before you go" award.

Okay, here's the bit of the show that caused some ruckus: the music medley. Instead of having a presentation for each movie or for each piece, they're all bunched into one. Zac Efron and Alicia Keyes give the Best Original Score award to A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire and the Best Original Song award to Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire. I have to say that, overall, I'm okay with the single performance, as the best song nominees are traditionally the point where everyone takes a bathroom break. Still, I would have liked to have seen Peter Gabriel instead of John Legend, but it was his choice not to participate.

We're getting towards the end, and now it's the Best Foreign Language Film award, which goes to Departures from (Japan). Liam, you really should have worn a bowtie.

Queen Latifah comes out, looking stunning as always, to do the "dearly departed" montage. Ending with Paul Newman got to me, as I knew it would. Overall, though, I don't like the format they used this year: with all the different screens, you can't get watch all of them. Yes, it lets them get away with showing everything they want to in a much shorter time frame, but it gyps us, the viewers. And for those who were wondering: Heath Ledger died on Jan 22 2008 and was in last year's montage.

Reese Witherspoon comes out, looking like crap. She looks like sh's trying to emulate Gwyneth Paltrow's crappy goth chick look from several years ago, and does and even worse job pulling it off. The Best Director award goes, unsurprisingly, to Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire who comes on doing a wonderful Tigger bit onstage.

Wow—that's some real star power for the best actress presentation (although Shirley MacLaine should know better than to wear pants). Okay, this is what I meant about how this format is more personal: all of these actresses (both nominees and presenters) look like they're present in the moment, paying real attention to what's happening. It must mean the world to Anne Hathaway, for instance, to be introduced by MacLaine. And who could top Meryl Streep in star power? Sophia Loren is one of the very few. I just love this.

As predicted, the Best Actress Oscar goes to Kate Winslet for The Reader. She gave a very gracious speech, and looked just beautiful.

And now the best actor montage and presentation, with another very impressive group of stars. The winner: Sean Penn for Milk in an upset. It's another loss for Nate Silver's predictions.

The best picture bit is an interesting idea: showing a montage of each film, mixed in with other award-winning films with a similar theme. I'm not sure it entirely works, and Steven Spielberg ends up giving the award to Slumdog Millionaire as everyone expected.

Quick take: it went 26 minutes over. The new format was good, and occasionally great. There were bits that didn't work for me (the multiple screens with different scenes being shown, for instance; I wanted to watch all of them). The ending with clips from upcoming movies: an excellent idea.

Thanks to all who read this, and to those in the chat room.

I think that it will succeed, become a big business segment for them, and will be the first of a new line.

With the introduction of the Kindle 2, I think it's time to do my dance in the end zone. The new device is improved (better screen, better ergonomics, improved battery life), and it even has a new feature (PDF support) that I think will expand its use for some.

As I predicted, most people simply don't care about DRM, as long as it is not so restrictive that it prevents them from doing what they want with the content. And the Kindle's DRM allows most people to do what they want - read the books on their own Kindles. The Kindle isn't for everyone, but most people I know who bought one love it. These folks tend to travel a lot, and the ability to carry around a library is priceless to them. I spoke to a woman at my gym who was using hers while on the treadmill, and she raved about it (it was like talking to a Mac user!).

OK, so now is it time for me to buy a Kindle 2? Well, no. But that's only because I've already acquired an alternative that works well for me: Lexcycle's Stanza on my iPhone. Before I got the iPhone a few months ago, I didn't think that I would ever read novels on a phone. But Stanza is so good that I'm a convert. I've probably read a dozen books with Stanza now, and I really like being able to start reading a book on the phone, shift to reading it with the desktop version on the MacBook, then finish the book back on the phone. I love love love always having good reading material in my pocket.

Stanza already reads books in (DRM-free) Kindle format. And Amazon made comments today about making Kindle books available for the iPhone, perhaps later this year. A partnership between Lexcycle and Amazon isn't too hard to imagine. I can wait to see what happens.

I see that we haven't posted here in more than a month. Previously, we've always managed to post at least one item a week, ever since we started this blog in November of 1999, back in the Dawn of Bloggy Time.

Bad bloggers; no biscuit.

There's no special reason for the hiatus; we've been working on a book (this one's on CSS), but that's nothing new. And there was the holidays, followed by Macworld Expo. Maybe I've had a little less to rant about, since the election turned out the way I wanted it to. Soon, I'll get to rail about how the Obama Administration is screwing up, I'm sure. If only that guy would stop hiring people who are so clearly competent. After the past eight years, it's really disconcerting.

No doubt regular blogging will resume here soon. In the meantime, we invite you to follow us on Twitter (come to think of it, Twitter may be a reason for the less blogging):

Tom on Twitter

Dori on Twitter

That is all.

OK, it isn't. Since the last time I posted, I've picked up a few more apps (All right, a lot more apps). Besides OmniFocus and Grocery IQ, others that have gained prime location on the first screen include The New York Times app; CheckPlease, a tip calculator; and Livestrong, which I'm using to track daily weight, not calories, because I'm not on that kind of diet.

I also got Pandora; a nice app that allows me to trade files between the phone and the desktop called Files lite; the great Amazon app; and a surprising favorite, Lexcycle's Stanza e-book reader. I never thought that I would read books on a handheld device, but Stanza is sweet. I've already read a couple of books with it, and downloaded a bunch more. It's cool knowing that as long as I have my phone with me, I'll have something to read when I'm stuck waiting at places. There's a bunch of free ebooks available, and I bought some more from Baen's Webscription site.

1. Last week, Tom and I both purchased iPhones
2. This week, Apple announced that iPhone developers can now give away promo codes to their apps

Coincidence? Maybe… or maybe not. But either way, feel free to send those promo codes on.

Well, here's what it came down to:

Or in other words, $45/month × 24 months ($1080) is what it takes to get me to move to a phone that I'm otherwise currently finding very frustrating.

Will I ever get used to this keyboard? Or having to manually refresh an app when I want it to update? Or to only being able to use one app at a time?

If you switched from a non-iPhone to an iPhone, tell me how it worked for you in the comments.

Updates:

• According to the manufacturer, this handsfree mic works with the iPhone 3G.
• While Google's Mobile Maps page says that Street View isn't available for the iPhone, it appears that that feature shipped with the 2.2 update.

Besides their exclusive with the iPhone, AT&T has 3G coverage here, and our old carrier, T-Mobile, does not. So that was a factor, too.

So far, I'm loving the iPhone. I'm running OmniFocus for it, which syncs nicely with my desktop and notebook Macs. E-mail on the phone is nice enough that I actually use it. And I like a grocery shopping app called GroceryIQ.

On our Thanksgiving trip down to Southern California, the iPhones saved us a bunch of time, because we used the Maps app to scout ahead of us for traffic jams. We routed around two different jams, and probably saved a few hours of being stuck in traffic.

All in all, a good purchase.

The promise of the Smart Grid is that it can make electricity generation and distribution more efficient and reliable, and can even help the consumer use electricity more intelligently. And like the Internet, decentralization means that the electric grid would become more robust to natural disaster and external attack. The grid could also better integrate more generation capacity from many different, smaller sources, including wind and photovoltaic. Sounds like a project worth doing.

15" MacBook Pro

• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 6MB shared L2 cache
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive; 5400 rpm
• NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor w/512MB GDDR3 memory
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

A little bit of shopping around, and I discover that most of the sources to get it have nearly-identical prices, with one exception:

Wondering now where that last price came from? That's how much it costs, combined, when you buy the MacBook Pro and an Apple Developer Select membership. And any operating systems Apple ships in the next twelve months are automatically included.

So, my question is:

Why does anyone—developer or not—ever buy a professional-level Mac (i.e., Mac Pro and MacBook Pro machines selling for $2500 and up) from Apple retail?

[Of course, if you want to spend a whole lot less and get an almost-as-good Mac, the place to buy is Apple's Refurb and Closeout store.]