Month: March 2019

Spreading culture

I’m struggling a little with how to expose my kids to a broader range of interesting movies. I’ve given up on most TV; though I can usually get the younger one to watch Scooby-Doo, I don’t think I’ll ever get either one to sit through the original Star Trek. But movies seem like they’re so much a part of our cultural lexicon that I feel like I’m doing my kids a disservice if I don’t broaden their horizons at least a little beyond Disney and superhero movies.

But where to start? I haven’t watched films in the theatre for years, and I’m a little afraid to go too far back in time because most of the films I can think of will likely lead smack into a discussion about American racism.

Take the 1956 movie Around the World in 80 Days. I wouldn’t normally have thought of it, as I haven’t seen the movie, but the Victor Young soundtrack was in a pile of records given to me by a family member and it seems to fit the bill—big, epic adventure movie, no adult themes, iconic moments (the balloon scene!). But then, it’s a film that goes around the world, and I shudder to think how the different cultures visited are depicted. I guess there’s no substitute for seeing the film myself and making my own conclusions…

In clover

If you had told me five years ago that almost every lunch out I ate while at the office would be vegetarian, I would have asked you where you left your marbles.

It’s no secret that I love food. For many years at the office that translated to food runs for lunch that ended at delicious but fattening destinations. Among the stops in the rotation: chicken parm subs from the local pizzeria, loaded Bravo Italian sandwiches (prosciutto, sopressata, roasted peppers, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil and basil) from La Cascia’s, Indian takeaway from the surprisingly good stand in the mall, and lots of H-Mart Spicy Pork.

Then I stumbled on Clover. I wasn’t thrilled by the concept of a totally vegetarian menu, but some of the other aspects—no freezers ever, 100% fresh locally sourced produce, seasonal fast-service menu—had me intrigued. And then I tried their falafel (aka the famous chickpea fritter sandwich), with a side of rosemary fries. And I was completely hooked.

At this point I’ve had every sandwich on the ever changing menu, even the BBQ Seitan (not a favorite), the Pushpir (spectacular), the secret-menu Mayor Menino BLT (with soy “bacon” and garlic mayo, which became an obsession for months), etc. Now I look in advance of my week to figure out which days I don’t have noontime meetings so I can go get my Clover fix.

I’ve gotten slightly more adventurous about cooking vegetables at home as a result of all this Clover. Not crazy, because most of the family are reluctant vegetable explorers, but I’m now trying things I never dared before—cauliflower, broccoli variations, random beans, ramps—and finding real winners. Useful when one lives across from a farm.

Reharmonizing

After many years of service, our trusty Harmony One remote bit the dust a few weeks ago. It turns out that the remote, while rugged, does not like being dropped on a hardwood floor—the touchscreen, while still intact and functional, no longer illuminated correctly. Sigh.

We had owned the Harmony One for quite a few years. I never blogged about it, meaning we acquired it sometime in 2008-2009 when my first blog slowdown hit. It replaced a Sony RM-AV3000 Universal Remote which was powerful but in every way impractical and unwieldy. The Harmony One was, by comparison, luxuriously easy to use. Harmony remotes differentiate between devices – directly driving components of your system by emulating their remote commands – and activities, like “watch TV” or “play games.” With activities, the remote sends a sequence of commands to the components required to do an activity, like “turn on TV,” “turn on Marantz receiver,” “turn on FIOS box,” “set TV to HDMI-1,” “set Marantz receiver to Cable,” and then the hard buttons on the remote are set to handle the most common tasks for the activity—for instance, the volume controls might go to your AV receiver while the channel commands go to your cable box.

The Harmony One was light years ahead of the Sony in usability, but it still had problems. One was programming it—you connected the remote to a Mac (or PC) with a USB A to B cable and then ran a Java application (!) on the device to assign devices and change settings on the remote or activity. Another issue, a daily challenge, was the remote technology. It’s an infrared (IR) remote, like most of the ones you’ve used, meaning it requires a “line of sight” to the device being controlled for the commands to work. Often that meant that one of the kids (or other family members) would inadvertently wave the remote away from the TV or receiver, resulting in cries that the TV wasn’t working and requiring my intervention.

I did some research and learned that the state of the art has moved along pretty far from the Harmony One. After comparing options, we bought a Harmony Companion. It’s light years ahead, though not without its challenges.

The Companion is really two devices, a universal remote without a display screen and a remote hub that sits near your devices. The universal remote communicates with the hub over radio frequency (RF) rather than IR, so you no longer have to have line of sight—you can pretty much aim the remote anywhere you like. The hub sends IR signals to your components, and it even comes with an attachable “IR Blaster” that you can position near components that are outside your cabinet (like your TV) to repeat the signal.

But that’s not the cool part. The best part of the setup is that the remote is fully programmable via an iOS (or Android…) app—and the app also serves as a remote that’s in some ways even more powerful than the physical remote, since it also allows direct access to the device remote commands in addition to the activities you set up. The app is pretty cool; when you set it up, it scans your local network for a hub, and if it finds it and the hub is already configured, it downloads the configuration to your device and you’re ready to go. Lisa getting full access to the remote 30 seconds after I told her which app to download was pretty magical.

So far the only pain point has been setup. I created an activity for watching Apple TV but, probably due to the way I used the wizard, it set the physical remote buttons to control our 55″ TV instead. I had to go through and reassign every button on the activity this morning, but it’s working now.

I’m also slightly irked that the Harmony Hub isn’t a HomeKit device. I suspect this is because Logitech views itself as a HomeKit competitor for controlling the entire home. There’s a workaround using an open source kit called Homebridge that I might check out.

Home theater technology has come a long way. But it’s noteworthy that most of the advances in controlling physical devices are due to investments in mobile computing rather than physical devices.