Whatever Strikes My Fancy

Transcoding for Portable Media Center used to be a chore

I ran across a nifty little USB stick yesterday, and the more I think about it, the more I want one.  I've had all sorts of troubles transcoding DVDs and video recorded from my TV tuner into something that is PMC-compatible.  If I wanted to go straight from the raw source, no problem.  However, the editing software I use to strip out commercials seem to output the video into a slightly incompatible flavor of MPEG2.  Up until now, I haven't found anything that could do the trick.  Enter Instant Video To-Go.

This tiny little USB stick is no larger than a 1st gen iPod Shuffle, yet it contains a hardware encoder for H.264.  It can outperform most software encoders by a factor of six, and it's selling for about $70.  I can't wait to try it out.

First Time Eating Double-Stuf Oreos

Last night, the twins ate Oreos for the first time.

When I gave one to Ruby, the top half came off easily, and she handed it to me, as if she knew that part wasn't meant to be eaten. She then stared at and fingered the white filling with curiosity, not entirely sure that it was food. I scraped off a small piece of the filling, and placed it in her mouth. It only took a second for her to realize that it was food, and it was GOOD! She then proceeded to hold the cookie vertically and to scrape off the frosting with her front teeth.

Rose, meanwhile, was nibbling at the edge of the whole cookie. She felt that this was an interesting dessert, but not too good. I unscrewed the top half and put it on her tray. She then attempted to take a bite of the bottom half with the filling on it and finally got a taste of the inner goodness. She then began to greedily wolf down the rest of the cookie.

All told, the twins each ate two whole cookies.

Oink, Moo and Cluck!

This Saturday morning, we slept in a little. For us, that means that we weren't downstairs and ready to eat until way past 8AM. When we looked at the list on the fridge for what to eat on Saturday (French Toast, Eggs or Pancakes), we realized that we were missing a key ingredient ... eggs. We were either out of other day's breakfasts as well, or they just didn't look appetizing. Usually, that means that I head to Dunkin Donuts, but I just wasn't in the mood for something sweet today. Besides, I didn't want to get the kids too hopped up on sugar.

Since Jenn has been clipping coupons, we had a coupon sheet for Mrs. Winners, a southern breakfast and chicken fast food joint. They had coupons for steak biscuits and chicken biscuits. I also knew that they had Pork Chop biscuits, yum! Sounds like we could make a buffet out of it. So I drove over there with Rebekah and picked up two of each kind of biscuit. By quartering them, everyone had as much as they wanted of each meat type. This breakfast turned out to be a real winner!

Change your sunglasses at the touch of a button

It's a great idea ... use a watch battery to power sunglasses that can change color and tint at will in less than a second. It sure beats the old photochromic lenses that make you look like a grandparent, and force you to pause before entering or leaving a building so that your glasses can adjust.