Roberto Machorro

XACT Replay - XTR8CK

Roberto Machorro — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:45:46 +0000

After a while of having the XACT Visor (read my review about it), I was ready for something more. Since I liked the Visor’s quality, I went back to XACT’s website and took a look. I found the Replay (XTR8CK) and when I saw the features and the price I was happy as can be. I bought a package at Costco that for $119.00 got you the radio with the home and car kit.
The major deal about the Replay is that you can pause, rewind and forward (once you have something in memory) a live broadcast. Kind of like a TiVo / DVR. This is great when you are listening to a cool song and want to hear it again, or when you get interrupted in the middle of a show and don’t want to miss a thing. And since the title/artist of a song/show are stored, you can actually pick from a menu the last 45 mins worth of programming. On the downside (and this applies to live programming with a TiVo as well), when you flip a channel, you loose the recorded stuff.
A feature that isn’t mentioned much - but I thought it was also pretty awesome - was that you can store the name of your favourite artists, songs or sports team. When one of those favourites come on (or a game is about to start), then you are notified about it and have the option to change channel and listen to it. You can store up to 20 songs/artists and 1 favourite sports team (if they increase this number to 2 NFL, 2 college football, 2 MLB and 2 NBA we are rockin’!).
The screen is clean and clear, it has a blue back-light LCD display that you can adjust brightness and contrast to. It’s big enough to hold the current channel number, name, artist/song, category, time, band and signal strength. All without crowding the area.
I found it pretty interesting that you can view the signal strength of the satellite and terrestrial reception. Usually if you are at less than 30% for both, you are out of coverage.
There are 30 slots for memory presets, divided into 3 bands. But I found that I rarely use that, since it’s easier to enter the channel number directly or search by broadcast category.
On the downside (and this may not affect everybody), the buttons are a bit small. My clunky fat fingers have issues with the buttons on the actual device, but the remote saves the day, it’s so well done and comfortable that I use it all the time, in the car, office and home.
Since I got the home kit, I have to throw in that the desk stand is very stylish and actually looks nice on a desk with the radio. So far I’m happy with the purchase and it’ll probably stay that way until the Stiletto comes out.

What’s in a Mickey D burger?

Roberto Machorro — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:50:45 +0000

Maybe I’ve been spoiled and I have no longer eaten fast food in a long time. Just home cooking and sit down when out for me. And yesterday I decided to get frugal and go to McDonald’s. One (menu) number one later I’m in pain. Stomach pain. That stuff just dropped like bowling ball in my stomach. By the way, before I hear the calls for sissy, let me tell you that I can down some pork chops, eggs, bacon, french toast and beans for breakfast without a sweat. Then I started feeling lethargic. What’s in that stuff?! It’s just food right? right!?

Diego is back, Mom flying back home…

Roberto Machorro — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:36:28 +0000

My son Diego spent his summer in Mexico with my parents, that’s close to two months! He missed us for a few minutes here and there, but for the most part he was having so much fun he considered “staying there, because maybe he forgot how to get back home”. Funny little guy. Since he is still too little to fly by himself, my mom made two trips (pick him up and drop him off). Both where kind of quick, specially the last leg (three days ). So I just came back from dropping her off at the airport. I love my parents, they are great .

XACT Visor and Sirius Satellite Radio

Roberto Machorro — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 17:46:47 +0000

On father’s day my wife and kids gave me a XACT Visor, which is a plug and play for Sirius. I’m loving every minute of that thing! I listen to it on my close to 90 mins. work commute (both ways) and while at work. For a long time I had compared Sirius and XM, in my opinion XM has the best devices for the best price, but Sirius has the best programming as far as music material, news & talk shows (can’t beat having Bubba The Love Sponge, Playboy Radio and Howard Stern!). Plus for the serious side, there’s two NPR (National Public Radio) exclusive channels, E! and the Discovery Channel. Their comedy channels are great and I can’t get enough of Court TV and Radio Classics (Twilight Zone, etc). The Visor costs about $49.99 and then you have to pay a monthly fee of $14.95 (includes tax) a month, plus a one time sign-up fee of $12.00. There’s several payment plans and options. For now, I’m on monthly but will probably switch to the two year plan. On an average weekday, I listen to it about 14 hours a day (I’ve got kits for the office, home and car) OK, I’ll stop now, before I start sounding like an Ad for Sirius… Go get one!

Markaboo and social bookmarking

Roberto Machorro — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:08:57 +0000

Everything is now about the community when it comes to the Internet. And for a long time del.icio.us was bringing together the world of bookmarks. However, I never thought that it looked that good (yes, UI matters), I also wasn’t able to actually store some other stuff I wanted to bookmark (like code snippets - think post it here). I also tried Yahoo Bookmarks, I’ll spare you the pain of that disaster. So now I’m using Markaboo and I’m very happy, it’s missing some stuff (like multi-level tag browsing and notifications when someone comments on a link) but it’s none critical enough that now I have all my junk in there and use it on a daily basis.

Back to WordPress…

Roberto Machorro — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:19:01 +0000

So I may be blaming unfinished software for my own procrastination. But in the end, I wasn’t blogging anymore. I missed TrackBacks and Typo just didn’t have them. So I gave MoveableType a go, the install was easy, but customizations where not. It’s mostly because MT is so vast. I just want to keep it simple and do my own thing… As a final move I went back to WordPress, and it’s looking up. The import was a piece of cake and they have done a good job in the AJAXification of the application. I’m liking the move so far! You’ll be seeing more of me now (hopefully!)

Officially 31

Roberto Machorro — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:10:03 +0000

Well, it’s now one week after my birthday. So I guess I’m officially 31! You see, when I turned 30 it was hohum whatever, but 31 is the first moment when it strikes me that this skin is getting old. 20’s are long gone and not coming back and now teenagers I refer to as kids.I can’t stay up as late anymore. Am I wiser? Yes. Am I more experienced? Yes. More mature? My wife doesn’t think so. World keeps turning and I still got plenty to show it.

ActiveState to Spin Out

Roberto Machorro — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 10:36:00 +0000

So looks like ActiveState is going back to being its own company again! They issued a press release yesterday on the deal. In my opinion this is good and bad. Good because ActiveState has proven that they are a profitable venture (while benefiting the community with their patches and free kits, esp. the Perl port on Windows). Bad because now Pender Financial is going to want to strap the nitro on and squeeze nickels and dimes out of the customers to get their ROI. We’ll see what happens…

Sleeping Habits

Roberto Machorro — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 04:34:00 +0000

In a life with kids you find yourself deprived of many things, including sleep. I’m sure many will know what I’m talking about. So last night, I actually slept eight hours (8.5 to be exact). Considering that a rare event, I thought I’d be well rested and a bit more energetic. Turns out I’m actually even more tired than usual and sleepy. I probably need some catching up to do. In any event, it’s coffee time.

Enhancing the Yahoo! Music Engine

Roberto Machorro — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 04:21:00 +0000

I’ve been a mostly happy Yahoo! Music Engine registered customer for about 4 months now. For about $7 I get unlimited access to a limited amount of music (don’t get the wrong message, they have about 90% of what I’m looking for). Anyway, that’s a great deal. I’m finally legal with my music! And I don’t have to fish around for it and download it at audio quality that’s at the hands of someone else.

Anyway, all is happiness except that for the most part their music client kind of stinks. It’s pretty much like iTunes and Napster. And just as big and clunky. However they do allow for people to hack around with it, by providing skins (and docs on making your own), plugins and an SDK.

With that, people have produced some are pretty cool stuff, like the Yahoo DJ. Most recently, they now have a podcast search engine and allow you to organize them while you listen.