President George H. W. Bush was the first President to address the American student body back in 1991 (see George H.W. Bush’s 1991 Speech to Schools). He emphasized staying in school and most importantly saying no to drugs.

President Obama spoke on the importance of education. How even in the face of adversity a student should not let their education suffer. He gave various examples of students who persevered and have succeed when forces were against them (see A Message of Hope and Responsibility for America’s Students).

I felt his most important point was that each student’s success in life, school or whatever was their own responsibility. Personally I feel that our society has been coaching our youth that nothing is ever one’s fault. This is why we have the most litigious society in the world. We want to blame everyone else for our misfortunes instead of doing something about it. Look at those who purchased home’s they cannot afford. They want to blame the bank that gave them the loan, because the bank should have known better. I would ask, shouldn’t the home buyer know better?

I would ask the President to make this event an annual one. Whether it is televised, prerecorded or just a letter I don’t think it matters. Just addressing the children of our country will let them know that they are important in our country’s future. Maybe by doing this, we will begin to see citizens who are more active in our country’s politics.

I feel this quite strongly so I went ahead and wrote the President. If you feel as strongly as I do, I would suggest you do the same (White House’s Contact Us page).

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Mr. President,
I would like to thank you for your speech on September 8th, 2009 to our American student body. I felt your message was quite inspirational and something that many of our youth of today needed to hear.
I actually believe that our country has been teaching too many of our citizens that nothing is ever our fault (this may be why we are so litigious). I thought it was superb that your message to let the students know that they are responsible for their success.
I also feel that this address may bring about a change in our country that is needed. Maybe with this message, we will have a citizenry that is more aware of their country and their government. Maybe we will have more involvement from those who heard your message and are now interested in what the government is doing to prepare the country for them.
I would ask one thing, keep doing it. I think that just like your State of the Union address, this address should be an annual one. I of course would keep politics out of the speech as you have done this time, but I feel that it is important that our children be reminded that they are important to our nation’s well being. Nothing can bring that home more than having the President of the United States address one and give them what you expect from them.
I truly believe that if you were to do this, we will see a more politically active citizenry than we have ever had before. That can only improve our country and our future.

Other Links:
President Barack Obama Makes Historic Speech to America’s Students @ Ed.gov

The movie is based on the story of the same name written by Neil Gaiman. It is the tale of a little girl who moves into a new home with her parents. Her parents don’t pay her much attention as they are workaholics who work from home. She discovers that her new home is the entrance to a different world where her ‘Other’ parents dote her with non-stop attention. She later realizes that things aren’t always what they seem.
If you have read the book, don’t worry the movie is different enough to be entertaining, but not so much that it is a completely different story.

What makes the movie spectacular is how its made. Stop-motion animation (according to Wikipedia) is ‘an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own’ (think of Rudolf, the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman). So the entire movie (characters, set and all) is made up of miniatures that are moved one bit at a time to make the movie. This means that one simple scene usually takes weeks to shoot because in order to get one second of the movie done, the animators must move and take pictures of the scene 24 times. The movie has an added complexity because it was also shot in 3-D. In order for them to do this, they had to build special hardware to hold the cameras in place.

If you purchase the DVD, I would highly recommend that you watch ‘the Making of Coraline’ feature after the movie. This feature will give you an appreciation of the movie, and when you watch it again (as I know you will) you will see how fantastic it really is. Especially when you learn that nothing was computer generated.

I have seen many stop-motion movies in my day, but I have to say that Coraline is the best I have seen to date. I would highly recommend it to all.

What I particularly like about the show is that the characters are multidimensional, for example; Daniel Desario which one can call the leader of the Freaks is the tough guy but one sees the softer side of him as the show progresses.

Another aspect of the show I like is the way it deals with issues that are important to teenagers going through that time, everything from sex to peer pressure is covered. Unfortunately, I don’t think many teens watched the show when it originally aired so the message may have been lost but with the DVD release the series turns out to be a great way for families to discuss these issues without it being a lecture.

The show I feel, was made better by the cast. Lindsay Weir is played by Linda Cardellini who recently played a major character in the now canceled show ER. John Francis Daley who plays Sam does an excellent job at being the naive brother to Lindsay (you can see him now as the intelligent psychiatrist on Bones). And of course there is Ken (portrayed by Seth Rogen) who you can’t miss if you go to the theater these days.

Freaks and Geeks was another one of those shows canceled by the network prematurely because of the impatient nature of the executives. I believe that if they would have let the show continue, it would have been another one of those great shows of all time. If you haven’t seen the show, I would highly recommended it.

Oh and if you have kids in their early teens it is a must see.

The pen comes in two different sizes 1GB or 2GB. Along with the pen, the package contains 1 100 sheet college-ruled notebook, charging cradle, headset, and a case. The notebook includes three ‘training’ pages where one quickly learns how to use the pen.

I have been using it for the last seven months and must say it is the easiest tool I have used. It does what it says it does and does it well.
I guess one can say that the pen is on the thicker side, but I have found that once you use it for a while it is not a problem. Actually according to some pen manufacturers, thicker pens are better for you because it minimizes writing stress.

So how does it do it you might be asking yourself. Simple, the pen requires that you use special paper (called Dot Paper) which has microdots in the background. This allows the built-in infrared camera to record every stroke of the pen. I can say from experience that this technology is remarkably accurate, the pen seems to record even the tiniest wiggle of the pen.
The paper comes in various forms, there are spiral-bound notebooks, journals (lined and blank), and notepads for starters. When I received the pen, I thought the price of the paper was going to be expensive, but it is not. The prices are pretty much similar to those of other high end paper products.

In order to get the most of the pen, one has to use a computer. Livescribe Desktop comes for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Like the pen, the software is easy to use. One of the best features of the software is it’s handwriting recognition. When searching for a specific word or phrase, the software is able to find it even when I don’t write it down too well (which is somewhat often). The desktop software does not do translation (taking your chicken scratch and turning it into text), but there are software packages out there that work with it that can do this.

This alone makes this a worthwhile tool, but it does more. The pen is also able to record audio. It can do this while you write or not. The included headset also has microphones so that when plugged into the pen one can record audio in 3D (easier to determine who said what in a meeting). It does this while keeping track of what one is writing while it records the audio. When you synchronize your pen to the computer all the writing and audio is transferred to it. The software displays the writing that has audio associated with it in green so you can tell where the recorded audio starts and ends. One of the niftiest features is where you can actually playback audio on the pen itself. To initiate playback, one just has to touch the notes that you were writing while it was recording the audio.
It also has the ability to create movies of what you write where it will play it back on your pen (why one would do this I don’t know, but it is neat).
There are also additional features that are just prototypes at the moment (the ability to translate a written word to another language), but do seem promising.

If you just look at what the pen currently can do, this is one tool that no student or business professional can do without. It has made my life better at home and at work.

I liked the characters as they were portrayed particularly because they were almost identically like the book. I also liked that the magic was not the focal point of the story, just like in the book. The final battle scene was a bit of a let down for me, I pictured it more dramatic but I do have to say that Mr. Chris Columbus did work very hard to ensure the movie did not stray from the book. The one thing that I wished they had done was selected younger actors to play the characters. I can’t see how those involved did not think that the other books would not be made into film. If they would have chosen actors that were three to four years younger they would be able to grow with the movies and look the part better.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by Chris Columbus was a very good adaptation of the book and I must commend Mr. Columbus for keeping his artistic license in check and translating the feeling of the book to his film without altering the story. I would highly recommend this movie.

Some of these books have had a mind altering effect on me others just made me think. I know there will be more books to add to the list, but here I list the top ten in no particular order.

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
I was introduced to this book by my 8th grade teacher (I think.. I know it was a teacher, but am fuzzy about the grade). He was very much into this book and used it throughout the year to teach us everything from grammar to how to write using the Futhorc runes. The book introduced me to the world of fantasy. I was unable to put it down the first time I read it.

The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Of course, once you read the Hobbit you must read the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. I truly enjoyed this book (although it is a series of books, you can find it in one physical book so I am counting it as one). The first time I read it, I was somewhat confused by the many references to historical (for the story) events. This is one of the very few books that I have read more than once.

Z For Zacharia by Robert C. O’Brien
This book was the first book I read which I just picked up off the shelf without knowing what it was about. The synopsis on the back intrigued me enough that I had to read it. I did not want the story to end when I got to the last page. I found the book in the Young Adult’s section of the Queens, NY library I was a frequent patron of, I spent many months in that section looking for and reading many good books.

Pet’s Cementary by Stephen King
This book introduced me to Stephen King. To date he is my favorite author. The story had me riveted, and I have to admit it scared me a little. When I was almost finished with the book, it was late at night and I was alone in the living room. The description of the living room was so similar to where I sat that I had to stop and check the house to ensure that nothing undead was in there with me trying to finish me off. Since then I have read almost everything that has come from Mr. Stephen King and quite a few of his books have left an imprint on me.

Birthright – The Book Of Man by Mike Resnick
This book, I recently read and was one of those I could not put down. The book could actually be called a collection of short stories, because each chapter is it’s own story with different characters. All the stories are linked to each other by the time line that goes throughout the book. If you enjoy reading science fiction or just like thinking about the future of mankind, I would highly recommend this book.

Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus
If technology interests you in any way, this is a great book. It tells the story of the start of the Hacker Underground. This is not a work of fiction, but more of a dramatized account of factual events. This book allows you to see how we have come to where we are. Many of the technologies we have today are due to some of the events that are described in this book.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
This story introduced me to John Irving. It is the story of a man who recounts his friendship with a small boy named Owen Meany. The events that take place are used by the narrator to explain why his faith is what it is. Although the story does feel like it can get preachy, it actually does not. It is such a good story that I recommend it often to those that I meet that haven’t read it.

Thurston House by Danielle Steele
One summer, my mother had us stay with our grandmother. She had several books in the house and I began to go through them. I read Amityville Horror, Jaws, a couple of books on the mafia, and some others that I can’t remember. Each time I went to the shelf, I would see the Thurston House by Danielle Steele book. I would move it aside and pick something else to read. At the time, I only knew of Danielle Steele as a writer of “women’s novels”. I thought that the book would be some sappy love story that I would not enjoy. A few weeks into our stay, I had read every book in the house except for this one. After a while I couldn’t hold off any longer and I picked the book up. To my utter suprise, I was captivated by the book. It is a great story about a family and what their lives are like through generations. I couldn’t put the book down. At night, (after my grandmother turned off the lights) I would read using the light streaming in through the window from the street light. This book taught me never to judge a book by it’s cover (or author for that matter).

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
If history books were written more like Bill Bryson’s book, we would have way more people interested in history today. This book takes a subject that is considered boring to most and makes it unbelievably interesting. The title does not mislead either, the book covers everything from the universe to our founding fathers. What is so great about this book is that it takes historical facts and makes them more interesting by recounting events or things about the people involved that makes them more human. It literally makes you relate to history. I would highly recommend this book to all, especially those with children.

On Writing by Stephen King
The only reason I picked up this book was because it was written by Stephen King. I am glad that I did though. I was always interested in writing, but thought that the only way one can write stories and novels is by going to school and dedicating themselves to this. After reading this book, I realized that writing can be done by anyone. It may not be good writing, but if one keeps practicing it does get better. So I guess I must thank Mr. King for not only encouraging my love of reading, but encouraging me to write. If you have thought about writing anything and thought that it would be too difficult, read this book and I think you’ll realize (as I did) that anyone can do this (perhaps not as good as Mr. King, but it is possible).

As I came to the end of my list, I thought of other books that have had a lasting impression on me: The Stand by Stephen King, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card are just a few. I know that there will be more to come as well. I have decided to review each book I read from now on. Maybe something I read will inspire someone else to pick up a book and expand their world.

The first time we were featured it was for switching over to the Macintosh platform. Previously we were using Windows Terminals with Citrix Terminal Servers on the backend. We then decided to switch to a platform that would support our growth and after an extensive fact gathering project, we presented our findings to our CEO and he selected the Mac OS X 10.x platform.

Since then we have grown four fold and have continued using the Macintosh platform as our standard. This latest feature focused more on how we use the Macs and why we have stayed with the platform over the years.

It is funny to see how much the quality of these pieces has evolved. If you look at the original video they made, you can’t help but notice that the latest video is a Hollywood motion picture by comparison.

An hour later, after AAA came and retrieved my keys for me (we should have valet parked, after tipping the AAA guy it cost just as much), we went to get inside. Now I always take advantage of online tickets whenever possible, so I presented my printouts that had the three tickets for us and one of them would not read. The ticket taker kept trying to scan the tickets in and it just wouldn’t. Mind you the scanner had a keypad where she could have just typed the barcode number in, but she sent me to the main office so we could get another ticket. We went to the main office and upon our return to the front of the line, we were finally inside the exhibit hall.

This place is HUGE. You read all about how it’s 4.8 hectares but you don’t realize how big that is until your in the space. There were cars as far as the eyes could see. We did some rough calculations and came up with about 1100 cars.

With so many vehicles, we had many cars to look at and check out. The boys decided to look for the most fuel efficient vehicle at the show as well as the least expensive. They found the most fuel efficient to be the Honda Prius with 48 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 45mpg on the highway (it was also the only one that had better mileage in the city than the highway). The most inexpensive vehicle (based on the posted sticker price) was the 2009 Hyundai Accent which was tagged at $9,999.99. It had good mileage (what we considered average after what we saw) 26mpg on city and 35mpg on highway. For it’s price it did not appear like a cheap vehicle, but it did feel a bit cramped (at least for me).

Anyway, we also saw the 2009 Dodge Challenger, the new Nissan Cube (which the people manning the booth informed us was inspired by the Apple iPod), and the new Hummer H3 Truck. After looking at all these vehicles, the boys found it interesting that the more expensive the vehicle was the less miles per gallon it was rated at. As a matter of fact, we even saw some vehicles that had a ‘Gas Guzzler Tax’ added to the price.

While we were there, we also had lunch at the BCEC food court. They had a good variety of food, but it was very expensive. We had bought three bottles of flavored water and the bill came to $12.00. Which caused Justice to exclaim ‘Each bottle is $4.00!?!’, after doing the calculations a couple of times in his head just to make sure he had it right.

We did see some interesting vehicles, like a huge monster truck whose tires were taller than Carlitos and Justice. There were also some cool tricked out vehicles with entertainment centers in the trunk. After seeing a vehicle with huge speakers and LCD display in the trunk, Carlitos wondered if one had to have two vehicles so you can go grocery shopping. We were disappointed however that we only saw one concept car. The car was the Saab Air 9X. It was cool with it’s digital dashboard (it was comprised of several computer displays which provided information and video feeds from the various cameras (two were the side view mirrors) the vehicle had.

We took well over 600 pictures as each of us was equipped with our own camera. Here are a couple of the ones I think are the best ones I shot ( NEIAS 2008 Pictures ). [The boys will post their best shots on their site shortly and I'll update this story with them when they do.]

We can’t wait till next year’s show and hope that there are more crazy concept cars in the show.

I read a couple of articles these past couple of weeks on how to add applications to your AppleTV and it got my interest piqued.
Actually, what really started me thinking was the release of the Watch It Now feature on Netflix for Macintosh Users. I thought wouldn’t it be great if I could play these movies right on my 40 inch TV versus my computer.
So I got to work.
I had read before that the only way one can hack the AppleTV was to take the hard drive out, and to be honest that may have been one of the biggest deterrents that kept me from hacking it. But lo and behold, the first link I get when I do a google search for ‘hack AppleTV’ was AppleTV Hacks‘ ‘Hack the AppleTV without opening the case‘ so things looked promising. Upon further research I found the concept of the ‘patchstick’.
The patchstick is basically a USB flash drive that has been configured to boot the AppleTV and run scripts that automatically add features to the device. The best patchstick project I found was one from Google Code’s website, ATV-bootloader. It is concise and pretty easy to follow. It allows you to create the patchstick to install the stuff you want, most others are already configured to install specific packages. For those faint of heart, there is also the atvusb-creator, this project has a Mac OS X application that does all the hard work for you. You insert your usb flash drive and run the software and in a couple of minutes you have a ready to go patchstick. I decided to go this route and created my patchstick. It worked the first time. I was now able to SSH and FTP to my AppleTV and boy was I estatic!.

As you recall, I started this primarily to try and get Netflix’s Watch It Now running on the AppleTV, so the next step was to install a browser and SilverLight 2.0. So I found instructions on how to install Firefox and get it running on the AppleTV ( Firefox – AwkwardTV ), first thing I notice is that one needs a keyboard and mouse for Firefox to be useful. I looked for alternatives and stumbled upon Brandon Holland’s Couch Surfer, a Safari webkit based browser made specifically for the AppleTV. The software was easy to install (especially now that my AppleTV was hacked! ). Next was installing Silverlight, luckily easy to follow instructions were on the Firefox page of the AwkwardTV wiki. I performed the install and went to Netflix‘s Watch It Now section to see if all this work was going to amount to anything. It was. The viewer showed up and it was easy to select movies and they played. The video was at times choppy ( we watched ‘Shut Up and Sing‘ ), but it was watchable. I don’t know if the choppiness was due to bandwidth or the AppleTV ( I suspect both ).

I then began looking for what else can I do with this thing, and I found Boxee, Jaman, and Sapphire amoung many other interesting applications that can be installed on the AppleTV. During my search, I stumbled upon Apple Core’s ATVFlash, a commercial AppleTV patchstick that brings many of the most interesting applications to the device simply and easily. After reading thorough the forums, I decided to go ahead and use this tool as they bring many of the tools I want to use. I followed the simple instructions and after a couple of minutes (with a system restore in the middle of all of it [my fault]) my unit was patched and running Couch Surfer (now managed by ATVFlash) and Boxee with the promise of other great tools in the works.

ATVFlash’s benefit (it is a commercial product so you want there to be a reason to use it) is that the developer keeps the software up to date. They have also built in many scripts that will update the software already installed on the AppleTV without having to patch it each time a new release is out. They also work with other vendors (such as Boxee and Jaman) to get those tools updated and working on the unit (especially after an Apple Update). The current version (3.4.2) is fully compatible with AppleTV’s 2.3 software version. It contains many of the cool tools mentioned above, plus enough codecs to run virtually any video file out there.

Now that my AppleTV is hacked, I start thinking what’s next… I think I am going to enable bluetooth support and get a bluetooth wireless keyboard so I can install Firefox and other cool applications. I will keep you up to date with what I find and encounter.

This is sooo cool!  Thanks to all those great developers that took time out of their lives to get these tools together. As you can see, adding additional functionality to your AppleTV is not as scary as it used to be, and depending how much you want to invest (whether in time and effort or cash) doing this is anywhere from free to a few bucks. If you patch your unit or find a cool application that you think one can’t live without, please let me know.

Happy Hacking!

FactCheck.org is a website that is dedicated to extracting the truth out of what politicians say so that voters have all the accurate data necessary to make an informed decision in the voting booth.

For example, during the last presidential debate, Senator McCain said that Senator Obama had voted 94 times to raise taxes or against tax cuts. A brief visit to FactCheck.org and one learns that Senator Obama’s votes actually attempted to raise taxes on upper-income taxpayers but keep taxes the same or lower them for middle- or lower-income Americans.

Senator Obama indicated that Senator McCain has voted 23 times against alternative fuels. FactCheck.org indicates that this is misleading, they found that 11 of those votes were for reducing or eliminating tax incentives or subsidies while the rest were against the mandatory use of alternative energy.

These two examples show that what politicians say can be at times misleading (not that I had to tell you all this), but it is good to have someone out there like FactCheck.org that is peeling away the falsehoods and half-truths so we can clearly see the truth.

Check out FactCheck.org and make an informed voting decision.