I had a Monday full of stuff to do already when I got a call this morning that one of my inventory deliveries had arrived at my postbox via freight.

So a whole bunch of stuff didn’t get done, but half the shipment got reprocessed for dispatch and was sent out again.

As I was dealing with that I plugged away at jailbreaking the Apple TV. After a great deal of expected failure, it finally took, and I was able to get XBMC and other stuff on it.

XBMC behaves as expected, no terrible issues in getting it to see and use local LAN UPnP sources, audio configurable and so forth. So I added it to the a/v stack.

The first issue (which is pretty weak sauce) is that the native resolution of the old projector is 1024×768. The unit supports that natively, excellent news. But in playing back non-iTunes media XBMC just tosses the video stream out at the display resolution. Happily, it also provides an extensive set of config options to allow you to reformat the video to match the aspect ratio.

So, I figured I was basically done, finally. I figured, what the hell, take a look at whatever spring training games were on MLB.tv. I had configured the service in three separate ways during setup and had thought that was overkill.

So, I try the Apple TV native version of the service. The selected game begins to play and then quits, displaying a message to the effect that the game can’t be displayed because it requires HDCP compliant hardware.

Fuck. And also, fuck that. The projector was manufactured prior to HDCP even existing. I tried a few other tricks, including AirPlay video mirroring from the iPhone, but the demon lobbyist asshole motherfuckers of HDCP, the very scurrilous spawn of murder and evil themselves, had got there before me.

So, no, I’m not done yet. Don’t expect me to write about here, because you can be damn sure that while I believe in freedom of speech, I don’t live in a country where I feel that I can practice it.

Longtime pals will understand why I find this Daily Mail story so amusing.

China Miéville on London for the NYT mag. Beautiful. Via MeFi.

You know, while there was a large farm returning to forest on the fence line of the house I grew up in, and legends of a barn of caged cats and a pack of wild dogs under the control of the old lady that owned the former farm, I cannot say I ever once just ran into some sad-sack alkie living in those woods.

What the hell does that tell me?

My own off the cuff interpretation, predjudicial as it is, is that Indiana is simply a much more violent place than Washington, and that persons like the homeless guy living in the woods near my house at the moment were just murdered, specifically to protect property values.

This is surely incorrect, uncharitable as it is. People in Washington are no less tribal and violent than those in Indiana, despite Indiana’s long heritage of legally sanctioned state violence against minorities. Washington has a heritage that includes Indian wars, Indian massacres, Chinese expulsions, and, of course, Japanese internment camps. I must disabuse myself of the notion that I have escaped the culture of violence of my childhood.

The old PowerBook is no better than the Mini at HD. Jailbreaking an ATV seems like the way to go.

A is for action, T is for Time. V is for vision and the four minds crack.

It has been one heck of a long wait!

http://scott-lynch.livejournal.com/269876.html

No, really. Big Bird kicks Osiris’ ass to save some little kid’s soul. At the Met in NYC. Like, at the Temple of Sekhmet. With Snuffleumphagus.

Now, mmmmaybe Osiris is being stood in for here by James Mason, and lacks green skin and all, but still. Any Big Bird bedominated reborn king can only betoken the fundamental truth of Osiris Claus.

My ankle seems nearly better. At the moment I am planning on starting to run again next week.

Viv bought me an ankle brace, something like a foot girdle, yesterday and it has felt great all day today.

On my dog walk today I ran into a homeless guy I have seen around on and off since November. He smells of formaldehyde but seems harmless, kind of sweet, and horribly, terminally lost. He seems to be moving to to the underbrush of a greensward in the neighborhood.

He told me it has been a very cold winter for him and that he was excited about this new toy he’d just bought, a small plastic model of an airplane.