Maybe some of you remember that I started writing in English sometime ago, as the number of friends that live abroad and that were interested on reading this was growing (go figure). So it’s time to say something in English, even though my ability to speak it is getting more and more rusty over time…Well, things here have been busy, I’ve made some stupid shopping lately as well. I’ve bought this TV Micro from Miglia, which would allow me to watch TV on my Macbook. As I travel from time to time, it’d would be cool to watch the news, even in black and white, as the thing doesn’t support Brazilian color TV standard (PAL-M), which is, in fact, a mix of NTSC and European PAL. Big deal, maybe 2 lines of code would make it work, but the guys are not that interested in a market like Brazil, with just a small bunch of mac users. But it bothered me to find out the thing needs an antenna! Heck, why on earth would you want a usb stick, really small, advertised as a portable solution to watch TV on the go, if the thing needs an external antenna to tune into anything? Damn, they sent it by mistake, but, nevertheless, I paid for it, and now I’m selling it. If anyone gives US$90, I’ll send it anywhere in the world (without the original box, cause it’s kinda big). As Brazil adopted the Japanese standard for digital TV (ISDB), it seems I won’t have to bother with Miglia’s TVMini, an USB Digital TV receiver for Mac that’s compatible with European standard (DVB) – an ATSC (American) version is also available, but no Japanese. Anyway, who knows if Brazilian system will be fully compatible with the Japanese, as they are packing it with lots of Brazilian additions. Well, it seems that PAL-M wasn’t bad enough to show us not to go alone in the world of technology.
My Macbook Pro is kinda noisy lately, and the thing is I need it daily. I rely on it for my work, and there’s no service center here in my town. As I don’t have any other intel mac around, it will be kinda hard to have a backup that’s ready for use. But the machine, other than its flaws (noisy, hot, and a strange kernel panic that seems related to bluetooth, but may be a bad app), is superb. Fast, does its job in a great way. And it runs windows at amazing speeds, though switching back and forth is kinda slow, perhaps because I only have 1gb of RAM. We’re using it to produce this podcast (sorry, it’s in Portuguese) called Abobrinhas Digitais, and the machine is proving really fast and reliable for that sort of work, though audio drivers are still weird – I use MobilePre from M-Audio and, believe me, weird things do happen when you turn the phantom power off and on again… and I’ve got a kernel panic once when plugging it while the mac was sleeping. Oh, well… At least now I can use my Law CD’s on the Mac.
I got a new car (a FIAT Siena, economic thing… and it runs on alcohol – ethanol, which is allegedly environment-safe), and lots of new installments with it (they say a Brazilian is born with debts, and they are not kidding…).
Yesterday we cooked some taco. And that was likely the most exciting thing I’ve done lately. Maybe I need to change lots of stuff, cause when cooking gets exciting, either something burned or got on fire or you need a new life…
