Happy Darwin Day - Logic, Reason, and Science!

Darwin Day is the birthday anniversary of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.  This year is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.  Darwin was the first to propose the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection.  Darwin was a pioneer of his time, here are some of his major accomplishments:

• His theory of evolution by natural selection is now the unifying theory of the life sciences.  It explains where all living things came from and how they became adapted to their particular environments.
• He helped pave the way for a new branch of science called evolutionary biology.
• He was the first scientist to propose the mechanism by which the process of evolution takes place (i.e. transmutation of species).
• He was the first to propose the theory of evolution, which illustrated that humans evolved from apes.  The popular image below shows the theory of evolution.

All of these reasons are why Darwin is referred to as the father of evolutionary biology.  Without Darwin's intelligence, wisdom and passion for science where would we be today?
Happy birthday Darwin!

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change” - Charles Darwin

Slingbox Solo Setup

I bought a Slingbox Solo yesterday so I can watch Canadian Olympic Coverage in the US.  More importantly I bought it so I can watch the Team Canada hockey games that are not televised in the US.  A Slingbox is a device that allows you to remotely view a cable, satellite or PVR program from an Internet-enabled computer with a  broadband Internet connection.  I plan to have the Slingbox located in Canada and stream it to my house in the US.

I went though the setup of the Slingbox last night and it wasn't exactly straight forward.  I wouldn't recommend it for the light-hearted.  It doesn't come with an instruction manual, which seems pretty typical for tech devices today.  I wasn't really too concerned with this since I don't usually use manuals, unless I absolutely need them.  After some tweaks and playing around with port forwarding settings on my firewall I was able to get it working.

My setup went as follows.  

1) Plug the ethernet cable into the Slingbox and the other end into one of the open ports on my Actiontec MI424WR router (yes the Verizon FIOS POS)

2) Plug the audio/video cables (component, composite or s-video) into the IN audio/video ports of the Slingbox, plug the other end of the cables into the OUT ports of your digital receiver.

3) Plug the AC adapter barrel into the Slingbox and the other end into an AC sources.

4) Wait for the Slingbox to fire-up.  Once it boots-up the 2 lights on the front of the front of the Slingbox should be solid red.

5) Once this is complete, your router should assign it an IP via DHCP.  You can verify this by logging into your router and noting the IP that was assigned.

6) Also make sure to enable UPnP on your router so the Slingbox can be easily discovered.

7) Setup port forwarding on your router, so that your Slingbox can use port 5001, using TCP.  5001 is the Slingbox default, but you can configure the Slingbox to use whatever port you would like.

8) Once I verified that my port forwarding worked I downloaded and installed the SlingPlayer software.  Note: I found that the Mac version of the software seems to be a lot different then the Windows version.

9) Once you install the software it will look for your Slingbox on the network.  If all goes well it should detect your it and run you through a setup wizard that will ensure the Slingbox TCP port is open and setup your remote control.
10) Once the setup wizard is complete.... voila!  You should be able to view whatever is being streamed from your receiver.

Snowmageddon in DC - NASA Satellite Image

Here is a satellite image of the snow storm that dumped 2 - 3 feet (61cm - 92cm) of snow on the DC region.  Obama dubbed it "Snowmageddon".  I have also heard Snotorious B.I.G., Snowpocalypse.  I am sure there are many more.  Notice how New York state and beyond looks much clearer.  How ironic, since the DC area rarely receives such large amounts of snow.  I have also heard that back home in Ottawa they are having really nice weather and you can see the grass in some parts.  That is not the case here.  I think it will be a week until we see the pavement.  It looks like the snow has followed me down here! :)

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