andrewzuercher.com

today i was catching up on tweets and it dawned on me that in the same way that larry david created a complete series about the unwritten rules of our social system, some pretty obvious ones exist and are violated on a regular basis in the twitterverse as well.

before you read into this, i loathe the title of “social media expert” and by no means am trying to interject myself as some judge bearing down the gauntlet for twitter. i’m just saying what pretty much most people accept as a well known set of etiquette. @bahzuercher

rule #1: thou shalt not repeat the same tweet over and over again

pretty obvious here – don’t keep on saying the same EXACT tweet over and over and over and over again (even if you space it out 4 days apart).

rule #2: i’ll try to create new content and not just retweet o.p.p.

if all your messages begin with RT: then here’s a hint: you’re annoying

rule #3: I will not use twitter to create contests

that’s not what its for. i could go on here, but really if i have to then i’m not going to reach you anyway

rule #4: i promise not to tell people how to use twitter

ah shit. maybe there is an exception here? nope. i really cant believe i’m writing this blog post. sigh.

rule #5: I will not use twit extenders or carry a message across multiple posts

its really annoying – get your point in a blog or let a conversation carry out, but dont fit your essay into a set of 140 char sections

rule #6: i wont give 15 second updates

is there really anything soooo important that we have to listen to you ramble on every 15 seconds? you know where you rate on an boring scale of 1 to john kerry? (in case you need to be told, you are john kerry)

rule #7: thou shalt not post about how many followers thyn just got

right in line with rule #3. i can appreciate trying to get an audience but don’t go talking about it like its some huge achievement. lame.

rule #8: thou shall use exclamation points (bang) sparingly

nothing more annoying than people ending all sentences with exclamation points! its super annoying! stop it! SAME THING WITH YELLING.

rule #9: i recognize that private twitter accounts make me look estupido

if its on the net then consider it public and dont post anything that you dont want someone else to see. this is kind of a fundamental concept for using the internets.

rule #10: thou shalt not use thyn account to test an integration

gulp. Well I suppose if you delete your test posts afterwards that helps. How hard is it to just setup another account to test with?

hi, i’ve launched my new blog site http://andrewzuercher.com to include posts that are specific to me, and left http://blog.zuerchtech.com to include posts that are company specific and not of a personal nature.

cheers

problem definition

if some of you don’t know, i’ve just about had it with my satellite provider with their excessive charges and coupling of media with transport. i don’t like it that i don’t really own the content – if i abandon the satellite provider then all my recorded items on my DVR are no longer accessible, and unless i upgrade to their proprietary hardware then i cant access the stuff throughout my house.

there has got to be a better way of distributing my media in the house

apple tv

about 2 years ago i bought the apple tv and really liked it, but the interface kind of sucked and there weren’t a heck of a lot of items on there and HD was not an option. well, recently (about january) i upgraded the software and apple has done a really nice job of making a bunch of movies available, easy to order from my apple tv, and supporting HD format now. the one thing i was missing was a media server to run itunes centrally on. i have a mix of apple tvs that are on a 100MB wired and 802.11n wifi network and streaming is slick.

always looking for a value, i’ve purchased used (like new) additional apple tvs instead of paying the high value for a new console. they dont come with a remote or with power cables, but those are cheap to pick up as well. apple just announced a 160GB internal drive for the apple tvs, but i think that really is for those that are running just one apple tv w/o an itunes media server. if you have an itunes media server, then you can stream from that instead which is a better solution, leading into the next secttion……

imac itunes media server

when my laptop went kaput, i got a new imac with 1TB hard drive. thats a ton of storage – i’m currently at about 300GB used so far (and moving now). now with a mac in the mix, i’ve got a pretty good place to run itunes centrally and have dubbed it my new media server. the 24″ display is pretty big, so the couch i have in front of it sets it up as an additional place to watch videos if i want (along with some pretty good speakers to boot).

protect that content

i would hate to have a drive fail on my imac and lose all this awesomeness that i have setup, so i bought a WD 2TB external hard drive to protect my content. for what its worth, i’ve made the hd available via sharing so that i can mount it from my laptop and use it for backing up my laptop via the network to use for time machine on my laptop as well.

the wd hardrive i got supports firewire 800 (had to install the wd driver that came on the cd) which is really fast, much faster than usb2. the hard drive has 2 internal drives and you can setup RAID mirroring so that if it fails then you can just slap a new wd hd in and it will rebuild, running at risk until you do that (of course, this will cut your total capacity in half). striping against the 2 internal drives in the unit is standard which is a nice RAID entry level for the storage device. for now i dont need that much space (and mirroring my backup drive seems a bit excessive), so i just use it as a 2tb backup w/o RAID using time machine which is pretty sweet. if i use up the other 700GB of my primary drive then I’ll transfer my library to my external drive and use mirroring. note that a standard definition movie is about 1GB and a HD movie is about 3GB: i have a bit of time to think about this one….

laziness and terminal emulation

running up and down the stairs to get on my imac to enter in remote codes, and do other stuff with itunes on the machine was getting to be a pain. apple has a solution out there if you want to pay for it, but i looked to use a free solution for terminal emulation instead. i installed vine3 (vnc server) on my imac and run chicken of the vnc as a vnc client on my laptop. this works pretty well and is the right price – free.

ripping DVDs

you can pay for a converter/ripping application out there if you want, but i’ve decided to install handbrake and rip with their targeted profile of apple tv. its not super fast to rip, but the mp4 files it generates work perfectly on my apple tv.

using airtunes

you can setup your endpoints to be airtunes speakers which allows you to have central house audio. apple tv supports this (which is cool because i will shortly have 2 other rooms running apple tv in addition to my home theater and living room). whatever i play on my imac gets played on those other units as well.

to bring my personal stereo (just speakers, no display) into the mix, i’ve got an airtunes express coming in the mail which will allow me to have my personal stereo act as another speaker in the central house audio. the new unit runs on 802.11n which is nice since my wireless router supports it.

so now i will have the following:

• kitchen personal stereo (airtunes speaker)
• living room (airtunes speaker and apple tv)
• master bedroom (airtunes speaker and apple tv)
• home theater (airtunes speaker and apple tv)
• guest room (airtunes speaker and apple tv)
• imac basement (airtunes speaker and itunes display)

apple remote

one of the best iphone applications out there for me is the apple remote. i can control my apple tvs independently and the central house audio, all through a pretty interface that makes the existing white apple remote that comes with my hw seem weak.

boxee

i was initially interested in boxee because it would allow me to get media for free and play it on my apple tv. well, hulu and boxee had a fight in february of this year and so now the integration plays hulu through the browser. i’m not realy happy about the resolution or the quality of the apple tv integration – it seems to wipe out my synching of the apple tv whenever i run it as well. bottom line – free comes with a price when it comes to boxee, so i doubt if i’ll ever use it. but hey i tried.

wrap up

so here is the bottom line, i hate the concept of having to put stupid dvds into a hardware device – it seems about as good as VHS was to me 28 years ago when microwaves first came out. i haven’t really been too keen on paying a chunk to get central house audio by implementing a hw scenario that was presented to me when i first moved into my house, the softer side over an IP network just seems like the right direction to go. now every room in the house gets to benefit from my music and video inventory and play in unison if i so desire.

cheers

what a blast

last saturday i headed on over to talladegha for the Dale Jarrett Racing Adventure. i got to drive 6 laps around talladegha in a nascar racing car as fast as i wanted (with an instructor sitting next to me). yes there were other cars on the track at the same time. anyway, i’m going to do it again because i think that i learned a lot between the laps. well that and it was frigging awesome and a huge rush. in case you are interested, i’ve put the footage of the dashboard up on my website for you to download and watch djra.mp4 (143MB ~ 12 mins)