ESPN360 and the iPhone

Notice I didn't say ESPN360 on the iPhone - for that you'll have to look elsewhere. But for someone like me, whose Comcast internet means no ESPN360 access, I just found out my iPhone was the key to unlocking the online sports streaming service.

Since ESPN has obstinately decided to use the cable TV model on the web - charge the providers, not the customers - those of us who get our Internet through a non-participating ISP (and for all I dislike about Comcast, I can't blame them for not buying into this horrible precedent of an online business model) can't access the Worldwide Leader's online live video.

The iPhone is no help on the go - as far as I know, there's no way to watch the video on the device. But navigate to espn360.com using AT&T's 3G (or Edge, I imagine) service and ESPN sees you as qualified. If you have a free myESPN account (or if you sign up) you can then click "Remote Access" to set your username as someone who can use the service. Then at home using a non-360 ISP, log in to ESPN and start watching.

nice touch, Apple

On iTunes AppStore today, all links work except one: when I try to see "All Free Apps" I get an error message saying the store is unavailable.

Looks like somebody wants their commission.

These month-long blogging breaks are no good, I suppose. This blog, at least, would get far more short posts from me throughout the day if I had easy access to an internet-accessible device as I was wandering about the city. Unfortunately, most of the quick ideas I have go floating off before I get to a point where I could type them in and tether them to this page.

This might change soon. At least, my access to such a device might change soon, and then my theory about increased posting would be put to the test. I'm thinking about picking up an iPhone. I still can't decide if it's actually worth it to pay AT&T the $ required each month, but I'm thinking the ability to watch movies on my commute (I have a pre-video iPod, so I was planning on upgrading that eventually regardless) combined with the GPS and instant internet access might be worth it. There's no question I'll be instantly addicted.

The problem comes in trying to figure out the best plan. Normally for the iPhone there's not much choice, but we might have a chance to pick up an original iPhone for cheap for Kirsten, so we could have one old and one new iPhone on a family plan. AT&T doesn't have much help on its website for people looking to roll an iPhone into a family plan without iPhones, much less for two different generations. Hopefully it wouldn't be too bad - I'm already paying way too much for my plan, but I'm off contract so it's an easy time to move.

they finally started to get something right

Lately, I've been watching most of my TV via the computer. The Internet is the poor man's Tivo (I miss having a DVR). Everything's out there, if you know how to look, but it's not always easy.

If the show I'm looking for is up on a network site, I generally head there first. But too often, I've had trouble streaming or got stuck in a loop of advertising, or the player just wasn't very good. I have my display hooked up to my TV, but on at least one network site, for a while it kicked me out of full screen mode every time it pulled up an ad in between segments. No good. So I often headed to BitTorrent, where I could find shows for downloading. That, however, takes time (along with the usual objection from the copyright holder).

But I've been plesantly surprised by Hulu, the new site from NBC and Fox for TV online. It's easy to find full episodes or clips of shows, the player seems to work well and I haven't had any streaming problems (yet). And since most of the US shows I'm looking for are on either NBC or Fox (or a site under their corporate umbrellas) I'm quite happy.

Especially when I figured out they've been putting up old shows as well. How can you beat episodes of the A-Team? I've never even seen Fantasy Island but I might watch one, just so I know what all the references are about. The episode lists are spotty, but I'm working on the (possibly fatal) assumption that content will be added as the site grows and the full-episode lists will grow to fill in the gaps.

And if you're the sort of person that has Gerald McRaney withdrawals, there's even 50-something episodes of Major Dad available.


(and by the way, I can't believe it's been a month since I posted last. That's no way to hang on to either of my readers....)

dreams

Occasionally I have dreams in which a simple task is frustratingly impossible to do. I try to run, and find I can barely push off the ground, as if my body were mired in molasses (I tried to think of a better high-viscosity liquid to use as metaphor, but molasses still works best, although I'm not sure how many people have actually personally dealt with molasses these days). I'm in a car and try to stop, but the brake pedal feels like a sponge, and the car's deceleration is much too slow to avoid an obstacle. I try to look at something, but find I can't force my eyelids to stay open.

Last night, I had a dream with a new variation on the theme. I was writing a story and trying to find some information on Google, but I either kept misspelling the term or my connection was stalled. I kept trying over and over, but couldn't get the result I wanted.

I'm not sure if I should be disturbed by this new development in my dream world.

damn

Unexpectedly, my external hard drive quit on me the other day (I suppose it never happens expectedly, but I've certainly had more warning of an impending drive failure). One minute, it was cranking along, saving a few episodes of the BBC version of "Blue Planet". Then, after a restart (not a crash, I just decided to shut down and restart the computer) all of a sudden I'm getting messages about the drive not being readable, and for a while the computer wouldn't even see it plugged into the Firewire port.

I ran Diskwarrior, which gave me bad news - it couldn't repair the drive due to serious drive error. It found all the files which had been on the drive, but when I tried to backup what I wanted to save, all I got where copy errors due to a bad disk.

This was a 150 GB Firewire drive, where I'd been keeping all my media files. I'm not too worried about losing some TV episodes I've already watched and all our wedding photos are backed up.

But it was where I was keeping all my music. I can recreated a lot of it from our two iPods, but I'll lose a decent part of the library. Most of our photos are on the laptop's drive, but there were a few photos I had on the now-defunct drive. Also a few other random folders of stuff I wanted to keep but didn't use often, so kept on there to save disk space.

Our personal photos are on the laptop drive, so we've got them, and I've got another, smaller, external hard drive I backup most of our important documents. I didn't have enough storage space to back up the drive which failed; I got it to be a backup. I've suffered through three major hard drive crashes in the past five or six years. None of them are pleasant.

This spring the drive in our laptop failed. Luckily I managed to salvage it enough to back up what I wanted before sending it off to Apple for a replacement. I think last week our extended warranty ended, and the laptop is acting up again (or is it my imagination?) enough to make me worried for my data.

Time for a new drive. I don't want to keep an army of drive to backup my backups (and I don't want to pay for them, either) but every time a drive fails it reminds me what a pain in the ass it is.