I almost missed it since it came out on the weekend but Jay Leno wrote an article for the times regarding the US interpretation of Top Gear. Here it is in full. Read it for your own interpretation of where this is all going. NBC will either make complete crap or they’ll decide to take Leno’s advice.

Like everyone in Britain I have long been a huge fan of the television show Top Gear, although we get it only sporadically here in America. You can find it on BBC America and occasionally it pops up at odd times on other cable channels. There have been rumours circulating that the show would eventually come to America. I hoped it would come with Jeremy Clarkson and the gang, but NBC seems to have bought the show and I got a call one day asking if I would be interested in being a part of it.

I do my show full time, and these programmes take a great amount of time to make, so right away I had my concerns about fitting it in. The general rule of television is that it takes an hour for every minute that you see on screen. My other fear is that the show will not be made by car people.

So someone calls me from the network and is clearly not a car person. He says: “You like cars, right?” I say yes. “Like, all kinds of cars?” Well, yes. I like all kinds of cars. Why? “Well, the network has bought the TV show . . . um . . . High Gear? Top Gear? Top Gear! Top Gear, yes. We know you like to build cars.”

I ask: what’s the plan for the show? “Well, like, one week you build a car that flies and the next week you make a car that goes under water.” So I said: you know you can’t build these things in a week.

In my mind I can just see Jeremy lambasting Americans for what they did to his show. So I think: I’ve got to run away from this as quickly as I can. So I tell him that, as much as I like the show, I try not to make my hobby my job.

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Tags: clarkson,leno,top gear
Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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I love iron cookware. There’s just something manly about iron, especially after being blackened and smoothed from frequent use. Over the weekend I picked up two more pieces of iron cookware, a 12 inch and 15 1/2 inch skillet if you must know. I believe the 15 incher weighs at least 12 pounds and is probably closer to 15 pounds. The main reason I’ve decided to do this is the difficulty in caring for and maintaining the other non-stick pans that we have. All our other cookware is now warping and the non-stick surfaces are all scratched to hell and back. This could be because we’re using low quality cookware, as our large open french skillet is still just fine. Our electric griddle is also failing, which is why I decided to go with the 15 inch iron skillet. Even if you have a terrible electric range like ours you can still control temperature pretty well with iron.

There just something manly about a black 15 inch skillet that weighs more than your 8 month old child.

Tags: cooking,iron cookware
Categories: BJ
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Sophia has joined the Army. As you can see she has her boots already, the uniform is in the mail.

Tags: Heather,politics,Sophia
Categories: Heather, Sophia
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In an effort to get Sophia potty trained, BJ and I will offer Sophia to go potty at various times. On Monday we had success!! Sophia went peepee in the potty! BJ and I were so excited and proud of her. I am sure those of you reading this that don’t have kids won’t think much of this, but those of you who do have children (potty trained kids at that!) will join BJ and I in our triumph.

Sophia knows her name but has been unable to say anything but “Pia”. She finally said her full name, correct pronunciation and everything! However, BJ and I are so used to calling her “Pia” and have come to rather enjoy it. No reason for her to be simply Sophia all the time!

Sophia continues to hug me and say “love you”. She did it to Phoebe this week and began doing it to her toys and random kitchen appliances. BJ had still not been graced with this sentiment until the very end of this week. He was so happy when he finally got her love.

Sophia, Phoebe, and I enjoy a morning at the Wiggly Play Center. Sophia played hard core for 2 hours and both kids passed out in the car on the way home. Sophia didn’t have much of a nap once we got home for such an active morning that she had. Proof of that became evident later that afternoon. She did something I thought she could and would never do: Sophia fell asleep on the couch amidst the noise of the dishwasher, Phoebe yelling and crying, and BJ and I talking. We dared not to move her and kept on with life as usual. She slept for almost 2 1/2 hours when we decided we should wake her at 6pm!

I received even more confirmation that my little Phoebe is one cute kid. While at the Play Center, a little girl who looked about 5 or 6, approached me out of nowhere and rubbed Phoebe’s head and said “You have such a cute baby!” I thanked her and she walked off.

Phoebe, still having no teeth, got to enjoy new foods—string cheese, tomatoes, and goldfish (but only the tails). She also discovered cow’s milk out of one of Sophia’s sippy cups. Once I discovered what she had she was not pleased with me that I took it away.

Phoebe is progressing even more with her mobility. She can now transfer from one piece of furniture to another that is very close by, she can track along the couch, and has created her own version of crawling. She is up on both hands and one knee, then on the bottom of her foot on the other leg. She has really started to enjoy taking steps and lets us help her whenever we can.

Sophia gets an even bigger girl bed this week. Just a twin sized mattress on the floor, really, but she doesn’t know the difference and likes her new “princess bed”. Phoebe gets the large crib and is out of that little pack n’ play. She seems to like the change too.

The weather is really warming up and we have spent some afternoons in the backyard. I think Sophia is just glad she can wear her floppy summer hat, and I like that she can start wearing all the cute summer outfits I have accumulated!

We end the week with both girls getting sick again with colds. Argh! Will this never end?!

Tags: family,kids,Phoebe,Sophia,weekly update
Categories: Heather, Weekly Family Update
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The custom permalink structure had broken the rss feeds based on their links for a little while… at least in IE6. All should be fixed now.

Tags: atchleyfam,naasen,site maintenance
Categories: BJ
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Still struggling with this darn cold I go to the doctor to get drugs. Phoebe goes the next day and seems to be getting over an ear infection. While there the nurse discovers Sophia has a fever so she gets checked in as well. Turns out she also has sores in her mouth–yay for random viruses! By the end of the week the girls are well, but I still have remnants of snot in my sinuses and am just about ready to shove a vacuum hose up my nose!

Sophia struggles with the letters S, P, F, and R. Needless to say her name has been difficult for her to say. I occasionally find myself making fun of her and her struggles with speech and learning to talk. She says “ham” like “haim”. So I said back to her the other day “Cory Haim?” And with perfect pronunciation she comes back with “Cory Haim!” BJ laughs and I join in. What more could I do?

My constant battle with Sophia at her Granny and Grandad’s house is getting into the litter box, cat food, cat water, and the toilet. All very nasty and all she could potentially get sick from. Two weeks ago she was found sitting in the cat box tossing out poop and kitty litter. My sister Jennifer found her and I think almost had a stroke. She was found this week once again in the cat box. My dad asked what her fascination could possibly be–my theory–it’s just like a small sandbox. Now this week she was found eating dry cat food. Her response? “Yum!” Will she ever learn?

We have often said Sophia has probably had her picture taken far too much. While taking a picture of her this week, with no help from me, she smiles real big and says “Cheese!”

The Atchley’s are all off this week for Spring Break. We spend Friday cleaning out our garage to make room for more furniture to come from BJ’s grandpa’s house in Oklahoma. We spend Saturday cleaning out the Atchley’s garage for the same purpose. Sophia at least got to dye Easter eggs. Not very successfully I must admit. She enjoyed dropping them in too hard or on top of another one so we ended up with quite a few cracked eggs. We didn’t mind since this is her first time and she enjoyed herself regardless.

The Atchley’s joined us at church for Easter Sunday. BJ and I were excited thinking we had other people to be able to entertain Sophia and we could actually enjoy the talks. Nope. She was only entertained by Mike and Catey for about 15 minutes before she was all over us and wouldn’t leave us alone.

I make a delicious Easter dinner and have the Atchley’s over to enjoy it with us. Sophia has her egg hunt after dinner and is very excited to find eggs in the yard. We only do plastic eggs and I put jellybeans inside. Once all the eggs are gathered we bring them inside to inspect the ‘loot’. I am busy in the kitchen so Catey helps Sophia to eat quite a bit of candy in the meantime.

We have been working on counting to 10 with Sophia for several weeks now. On Sunday while she was walking down the pew to us she walked by and counted everyone. It was only to five since that’s all there was, but she did it correctly and without prompting from us so BJ and I were really excited. We are enjoying the progress.

We started having Sophia say “sorry” to Phoebe when she hits her or makes her cry. She picked up on it right away and I have been able to get her to apologize to her sister several times, but now she uses sorry for so many things. She says it if she bumps herself, or drops something, or any little thing she might see as an oops. As sweet as that is we are trying to focus her back on really only saying it if she hurts someone. She can be so sweet.

Tags: family,Heather,kids,Phoebe,Sophia,weekly update
Categories: Heather, Weekly Family Update
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Sorry for the lack of updates or snippets today. There were some pretty bad hosting problems over the last few days. I’m also under the gun at work so I won’t have much time to think of anything that isn’t code. I’ll see if i can make sure Heather gets the weekly update done though.

Tags: dreamhost,hosting,poop,work
Categories: BJ, BJ's Life
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My Host was having some issues today so I couldn’t update during my lunch break, so I’ll take the time to do so before I leave the office today. Tim has this amazing need to converge all data into a single, easily readable format (note that the definition of easily readable becomes immediately suspect when talking to a fellow software developer). If he could hire an automaton to take down his every activity and thought and plaster it on his site he’d be the first to sign up. Inevitably he’d then invite me and I would be the second. Friend Feed is blocked at work so I couldn’t mess with it today, but I finally decided to start using Google reader as a feed aggregator (actually I set it all up last night). The side benefit being that I can keep track of updates to my list of favored sites.

I’ve added the rss feed to the sidebar, and a link to the little dynamic site that google makes.

This has helped distract me from the weird political pastor/politician insanity that seems to be spreading. As long as we can roll religion, race, politics, and government largess into a single beautiful soundbyte, then we’re still in the US.

Tags: friend feed,google reader,obama,tim
Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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In the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray battle for hi-def disc based media dominance, one of the underlying issues was the new DRM implemented on both formats. One of the reasons I was a proponent of HD-DVD while is still existed, was because of the mandatory managed copy, and the less obtrusive DRM. Both formats implement AACS encryption, but Blu-ray, in addition to AACS, has another optional layer of protection in the form of a customized virtual machine that handles further plaback limitations. By encapsulating another level of encryption beneath a virtual machine as BD+ does, it makes the business of cracking such a scheme much more difficult.

Anyway, Slysoft’s AnyDVD HD has done it.

In the absence of mandatory managed copy, or the absence of a proper implementation that would allow a server based disc-less movie browsing and playback, this is huge news for the do-it yourself home theater PC crowd. This means that for the foreseeable future you will be able to rip Blu-Rays to your hard drive and stream them over your home network.

The only drawback is that it is not open-source. Proper litigation could limit the spread of the software. We won’t have a major media coup on the level of DeCSS. Slysoft has been doing this for years though and we’re probably reasonably safe from them just up and disappearing one day.

You can read the Slysoft press release after the jump.


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Tags: blu ray,encryption,hacking,hd-dvd,htpc
Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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I’m going to reprint the text of the speech in it’s entirety. I believe his methodology to correct the issues he addresses in the speech to be wrong but his sentiment is spot on. Here’s the speech in it’s entirety as found at the huffingtonpost.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
“A More Perfect Union”
Constitution Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

The rest after the jump:


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Tags: election,obama,politics,rhetoric
Categories: BJ, Philosophy etc
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