Okay. Have I been living under a rock or something? I just bought my family a Tivo for Christmas and I can safely say my TV watching days will never be the same.

I decided to get the Tivo early because Best Buy (who offers it at the same price as everyone else) is offering a 10% discount (coupon I got in the mail good for this weekend) on all DVRs plus a $20 gift card. That came out to be $41. Being that the unit costs $200 with a $100 mail-in rebate the total was somewhere around $79 (+membership). And they allow you to return the unit 30 days after Christmas if unsatisfied. Figured I should grab the deal now rather than wait until nearing Christmas.

Anyhow, this thing is great. I'm planning on ordering either one or two 300GB DVR hard drives to upgrade the unit. The only thing I'm trying to decide is if I should return it and get a DirecTV version instead (I am currently using basic cable). I was worried that I wouldn't be able to connect the DirecTivo up to my broadband connection, however a friend just told me that DirectTV may be offering the HMO feature sometime in Q1 2005.

update: (2004-12-14) I decided to order DirecTV with Tivo. In the end I'll be saving a lot more money and have 3 times the amount of channels. I may not watch enough TV to justify that many channels, but the cheaper price won me over. Also I am purchasing my second Tivo unit from weaKnees.com. Their service was great and they responded to my emails cordially.

As promised I released another Farcry video. This is a "beginner's guide to upgrading Farcry" (from a previous version). The short video shows how simple and quick upgrading Farcry can be.

A special thanks to all the people who helped me test the video before release.

---- On a side note: I have been asked by one individual if I could make the Videos viewable for Mac OS X users. The video codec currently used is not supported by MacOS X's Media Player 9.

I have made a second version of the last two videos using an older video codec, however the video quality is noticably different (at least to me. Some say its not too bad). If you are interested in a copy let me know and I'll set you up with one. I may put copies of them on the website as well, but it will require some CF editing (time I don't have at the moment :).

I've had so many great responses from people about the Farcry video tutorials. I even saw a post about the tutorials on Blog in Black. Thanks for all the great emails.

Believe it or not these do take a lot more work and time than I make them seem. I've already started work on two new ones. Unfortunately I've developed a cough that I just can't seem to shake :). So as soon as I am well enough I promise to get some more videos up soon (trust me, you wouldn't want to hear my voice today :) ).

I want to get some of the beginner guides out of the way first, however I already have some advanced tutorials in mind. There seems to be a lot of requests for help on dynamic menus and custom types. Although custom types are covered somewhat in the Farcry documentation in the "How-To" section I'd still like to cover a couple things (as well as some undocumented features about extending types). As for making a tutorial about dynamic menus... I'm thinking about making a section for for that. Perhaps a few tutorials about making dynamic menus since there are so many ways for different situations (and different menu layout). Because I have been doing a lot of work with Web Standards lately I may even ask people like Ben Bishop for assistance and ideas.

You wont likely see any advanced tutorials out before the new year, but hopefully a few beginners guides. In the meantime if anyone has any suggestions for a video tutorial that you feel will benefit the masses go ahead and give me an email or reply a comment here. Also if anyone would like to be on a list of testers for future videos let me know. If I make more detailed videos than what already exists I should probably have videos tested for errors first :).

I released two Farcry video tutorials aimed at beginners. There have been so many new-comers to Farcry that complain about the non-existence of beginner guides.

Although these video tutorials are no perfect all-in-one solution, they are definitely a step in the right direction.

If people find them useful it is likely I will make more (still aimed at beginners). I would have no problem making advanced tutorials; however I'd prefer to get some beginner guides out of the way first to help the new-comers.

This morning I got up excited ready to download Mozilla's official release of Firefox 1.0. I quickly learned that was not to be the case. Mozilla.org was completely unuseable. You'd think it was Slashdotted. Oh wait, it was :).

In case you're like me and can't wait for Mozilla's website to come back up, here is a link to one of their FTP resources.

Enjoy :)

Last night I met the New York Times Best Selling author Robert Kurson author of the the 2004 non-fiction book Shadow Divers. I bought the book online a couple weeks ago and just finished it Monday.

I felt it was such an adventurous novel that I wanted to find out more. Clicking on his website I quickly learned that he was coming to Connecticut in a few days (last night) for a book signing at R.J. Julia book store.

He gave a 45 min summary of his book (what a story teller!) and followed up with questions and answers (I got 3 questions in myself).

Because I am such a terrible father and husband I dragged my wife and 5-month-old child along who had fun upstairs in the children's section the whole time. When I finally got my chance to get my book signed my wife had come back downstairs to meet me. Robert (who is very polite in person I might add) made googlie noises to Hannah who smiled back and added a wink (okay, I made the wink part up :).

Overall I was pleased with my first book signing event and am anxious to meet more of my favorite authors in the future (I try to read about 8-10 books a year).

This was Robert Kurson's first novel. He comes from a background of writing for magazines and other publications. Due to the great success of this book I'd expect more great books from him in the future.

For those of you curious I asked him last night if he is working on a new book. His answer basically entailed that he is currently looking for a good story to work on.

Also he told me that there is a movie deal in the works. Fox 2000 Pictures has picked up the deal. Here's the best part. The screenwriter chosen for the movie is none other than William Broyles. He is well-known for screenwriting successful movies like Cast Away, Apollo 13, and The Polar Express. The current "guess date" for the motion picture is sometime in 2006 (according to Kurson).

There is no producer or director attached to the project yet. You can read more about the movie at sites like The Z Review or search for more info on Google.

So here we are again. Another presidential debate and I had my fresh bag of popcorn.

I'll keep this one short tonight. Wow, president Bush suprised me this evening. He was much more energetic this time. At one point he flew off his chair and lunged at Kerry's response.

John Kerry made sure to remind president Bush tonight that yesterday the Duelfer report showed that Iraq hasn't had weapons of mass destruction since 1991. He also brought up the fact that when Bush came into office there was a $5.6 trillion surplus where now we have a $2.6 trillion deficit. Kerry promised he would give a tax cut to people making less than $200,000 a year.

Bush countered with saying that Kerry was "just not credible when talking about being fiscally responsible. And that was about it. He didn't respond to the comment made on the Duelfer report. He did, however, respond about the deficit by saying it was already on the decline when he came into office and said that he had prior information that it would continue to decline.

Both men spoke a little about Healthcare and ended with topics about abortion. When asked how each man would reply to someone who came to them asking not to have their tax money support abortion, Kerry replied by saying that even though his personal religion forbids abortion he could not justify stopping abortions by enforcing his religion on others. Bush repied by saying flat out that he would not let tax payer's money support abortion.

Both men clearly have different positions on different topics. I still believe this is going to be a close race in the end. My one comment on tonight's debate would be "If you back president Bush into a corner be prepared to see him jump off his chair in an excited response." I can't wait for the next debate. Until then, I’ll keep the popcorn popping.

New version 1.09 (CF_Search_NextPrevious)

I have made a revision to the ColdFusion custom tag CF_Search_NextPrevious. In most cases anyone using v1.03 or newer can just overwrite their old version with this one. However I do suggest looking at the "Upgrade" documentation (a couple minor changes may effect a few people. More details are provided in the documentation).

I'd like to mention a couple changes breifly. I removed the unnecessary <table> tags to allow developers to support a tableless presentation. Also this is the first version to support Farcry.

Thanks to all the beta testers that made this revision possible over the past month and a half.

Once again I was prepared to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and get ready for another [vice] presidential debate. What I was not prepared for was Dick Cheney and John Edwards sparring it out tonight. I'm glad I had the popcorn on hand :)

The issues were pretty much the same as last week’s debate between Bush and Kerry. Although I personally feel that Edwards did a better job under the pressure, Cheney seemed to be more at ease tonight and stayed his course.

John Edwards started out with both fists flying tonight. At first Cheney didn’t react too much to these fighting words, but when he was ready he threw a few of his own blows. Because Cheney usually has a laid-back disposition I was taken aback with some of his forceful reactions. I found their back-and-forth bickering hilarious and couldn’t help myself but to burst out loud laughing at times during their fierce wrestling match.

From what reactions I've seen so far most people seem to agree that Cheney did a better job overall tonight.

I'm on the fence on deciding who did better tonight. John Edwards was more passionate about his views for the country's future where Cheney's relaxed mood was evident while he kept his views consistent to leave the country’s direction on the same track it’s been on lately (with only minor changes to things like healthcare). Cheney’s matured experience clearly showed in his demeanor where Edwards seemed to blush with embarrassment when confronted about changing the question's topic (an easy mistake, but the reaction could have been better).

Overall these are trivial things to pick on at best, so my personal views weren't changed about who I plan to vote for (which I’ll keep to myself for the time being).

I am probably a little biased towards my personal views but I do keep an open mind when watching these debates. Both sides consistently bring up important topics which I feel strongly about. At this point I can safely say that this will be a close race. I am eager to watch the remaining debates and see where the candidates take us next. Until then, I’ll keep the popcorn popping.