Decisions: TiVo vs. Dish vs. ?

I wanna get my parents a DVR system. Can someone recommend or caution me against anything? Last choice:

http://www.tivo.com/2.1.2.asp

Desired features (in order of importance):
– DVR
– DVD-recording
– PiP

Software: Presently using

Stuff I use:
Chat: DeadAIM and Trillian Professional 3
Development: VS.NET 2003
Music: Winamp 5
Word: MS Office XP 2003
E-Mail: MS Outlook 2003
Text: TextPad
Graphics: Photoshop CS
Task Manager: Process Explorer

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Web-App: Collaborative Research

An app that would allow people to upload/modify articles wiki-style so that multiple people can create a research article that would be useful for all so that it would be really really really cool yeah!

Link: Translit.ru

http://www.translit.ru !!!

snusmoomrik Атас! Именно то что надо. Багадобрю!

Web-app: tenant management

A system that would allow:
– room mates to keep track of resources
– communication between tenants, supers, owners, etc.
– creation of communities to facilitate common resource sharing (WiFi between apartments to save $, allocation of the roof for parties, etc. etc. etc.)

Diary: musem – Ashes and Snow

Saw ashes and snow – definitely worth a look even if it is fairly small. Pier 53 in Manhattan.

Sat. night… what am I doing behind the comp?!?!?

Question: Memory and Neuroscience

Q: From fMRI and other such analyses, are different modes (visual, audio, etc.) stored using the same mechanism?

Experiment: Memory 2 – visual vs. pronounciation

Tried to memorize gradually longer sequences. Revelations:
1. I have “pronounciation” memory!!! i.e. I can remember a sequence if I pronounce it (much like poetry), but if I simply look and try to remember, I can not!
2. My audio memory starts faultering on 5 double digits

This is an app for TARGET:

Experiment: Memory 1

Damn, today is blogging madness… I think it’s going to be time soon to explain why I am posting all of this crap on here so that you, my faithful readers (most likely qty: 2) will not think of me as a pretentious prick.

Purpose of the experiment: establish state of memory, devise a way to track memory state.

Musings: method of analysis and understading…

School is supposed to teach us how to think. Well, they failed – I can’t think. My thinking is a heuristic random process in dire need of sorting out (of course sometimes this is indeed an advantage – in poetry for instance… though if I don’t excercise this aspect of my thinking, it seems to disappear and then… faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak – can’t write poetry, can’t think straight – who’d want me?

Back on track – how do learn things.