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Spurred, in part, by a dying Tivo Series 2 and in part by the obsolescence* of a small 2-inch TV Jena had been using as part of her morning rituals, we at the Edwards' household are in the midst of a Media Center creation, or rather coalescence project.
While I didn't quite plan it this way, the first part of the media center is now in place, a 37-inch Samsung LCD. Samsung is a great choice for LCD's as they have great reviews and are generally innovators in their TV production. I briefly flirted with the idea of the LED but the smallest was 40-inches and for this particular room and space we needed it to be no larger than 37-inch. As it turns out, I was able to talk myself out of the more expensive 37-inch model primarily because I really do not like the Auto Motion Plus 120Hz™ feature that is supposed to smooth transitions between frames but ends up making everything look like it is shot on a hand-held HD video camera. Also the higher-end model achieved at least part of its 100,000:1 contrast ratio by shining up the screen surface, which in our house, like in the store, resulted in significantly more glare being produced. In this case, going to the store to see the products in action** also saved me money as I got this TV for just under $800 rather than the $1200 I was ready to spend.
NEXT UP: HD Antenna Selection
* The little LCD TV served us well for over 10 years, but the idea of getting a digital signal converter for it made me throw up in my mouth a little. So I installed a 22-inch LCD upstairs for her and connected the set to a hidden HD antenna with Scott's help.
** I also brought my MacBook Pro and and a Mini Display Port to HDMI Adapter.
It was hard to take the latest blaspheme hurled in the Beatles direction with American Idol contestants, by and large, butchering Beatles songs for two straight weeks. Sure there were some standouts such as Brooke White's rendition of Let It Be, Carly Smithson's version of Come Together, A Day In the Life and Across the Universe by Michael Johns, and Yesterday by Syesha Mercado but nearly all the other performances were bizarre? What do all those songs have in common? They are good. Hello? Why pick the crappiest Beatles songs to sing? If I Fell, Michelle, I Should Have Know Better, Day Tripper, The Long and Winding Road, She's a Woman, Back in The U.S.S.R., and Eight Days a Week are all terrible.
I've Just Seen A Face (Chikezie) and You Can't Do That (Amanda Overmyer) are two possible exceptions, as I thought they took poor songs and at least made them interesting.
Almost without variance the judges and the call-in voters like performances more if they like the songs being sung. That is why there are cover bands. That is also why, according to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written. The song remains popular today with more than 3000 recorded cover versions.
As I sit in the office today listening to the songs I have heard thousands of time before, I am reminded of how good the Beatles were and how good their music still is. Here are a few achievements, feats, and fact from various Wikipedia entries on the Beatles and their music:
More from Wikipedia:
List of All Beatles Songs including composer, initial performers etc.
Some may remember the photos I took at my friends Brent & Annette's wedding cake. They are among my most popular photos with this one having 82 views yesterday, 528 views this week, and 156,585 views in total. 564 people call it a favorite! The cake has appeared in several magazines and online stories and now the makers of the cake, Gateaux, Inc. will be appearing on the Food Network Challenge this Sunday at 7pm. They are competing with 4 other cake makers to make the best Dr. Seuss themed cake. Nerds, set your TiVos!
DO NOT watch this 4 minute recap of the first 4 seasons of The Wire unless you are ABOSULTEY POSITIVE you aren't going to watch the full seasons - serious spoilers are in effect.
[via: Fimoculous]
I watched the first two episodes of the new season of The Wire and it was great as always. It is good in ways that are overt and in many ways that are more subtle. The parallels between characters struggling with things in their lives are often shown sequentially. Cuts from one scene to the next underscore many of these similarities without being in your face about it. It is simply brilliant. One of the best things about the show is how they are not afraid to add new elements and change up major aspects of the show. This year for example they have added a newspaper/media angle. In the past they have had a large union storyline, a story involving schools and kids, and they continue to emphasize the political aspects of the story in addition to the street crime and police/detective bits. This continual evolution of the show is one of the main reasons why it could last for years. That is why it is particularly disappointing that they have said this is the final season.
Besides it ending too early, there is one more gripe I have with the shoe: it's name. It should clearly be called The Game. There are references to playing the game or being in the game constantly by all types of characters. It is a much more broad name that can be used by gang members, cops, politicians, and the like. I have tried to tell myself that "the wire" can refer to more than the surveillance that is being done, like these people are living on the edge (of a wire), so to speak, but that is more than a little weak.
The last episode of Clark and Michael will be posted today (expect delays in loading) which makes me sad. It won't be too long until all the best video content will be online and independently produced, but we're not there yet. But when shows like Arrested Development cannot stay on the air and we must rely on the weak-minded, short-sighted TV executives and advertisers to choose our programs for us, there is bound to be those who take matters into their own hands. Clark and Michael have been doing just that for 10 minutes a week and it has been great. It is amazing to see what two kids and some cameramen can produce. Why can't the networks figure this out?
Catch up with the entire series while you wait for the last to become available.
Two new series on VH1 really have gone a long way in justifying my decision several years ago to drop cable. As if Rock of Love: Bret Michaels in which women compete for the affections of the former (current?) front man of Poison wasn't bad enough there is also the incredible (in a bad way) series, Scott Baio is 45 ...and Single, aimed, I am sure, at all the women of my era who have loved Baio since he was in charge as Charles. When will Nicole Eggertget her own reality show?
Last night I watched the last episode of the TV series, The OC and afterward, felt is was time for a more personal diary-like post here on Alt Text; a post where I get to provide a bit of a window into my soul, however embarrassing that may be. It has been a while and that isn't good.
Yesterday, I was quite surprised to hear that the series was ending. Not only that, but the series finale was on that night. Now, I haven't watched The OC in a while - at least two or three seasons - but I will admit that it made its way into, an albeit guilty, region of my heart. Yes, despite being the type of cheesy, teen drama that I so often ridiculed I couldn't stop myself from caring about these (mostly) rich Orange County residents, many with very few redeeming qualities. I could try to play it cool now and say that I like the show for the hot girls and great soundtrack* , but the truth is, it was more than that. Mind you not much more, but in almost every episode I saw, there were moments of honesty and emotion that seemed so very contradictory to the backdrop and to the personalities of the characters.
Like so much of seasons' past, however, the finale had many gag worthy moments, actually many more than the average episode. This is due in part because the show, more even than it usually did, mocks itself mercilessly. The writers and creators of The OC know what it is. They know they aren't creating art. That is part of the reason they ended the show after 5 seasons (undoubtedly another part is ratings drops though I haven't checked into that). They understand that the show is cheesy and, for most viewers over 18 (a vast majority) a guilty pleasure.
In this, the final episode, the ridiculous builds upon the plain stupid toward the crescendo ending that isn't. Part of the plot supposed the viewer feel sorry for this wealthy family because their mansion on the ocean is deemed unsalvageable after an earthquake. They even cut to each family member's face as this news is delivered, creating the ultimate in cheese. Other plot points, try to draw out drama from whether a serial adultery and marry-er decides to marry her second 60 year old, husband, or the guy who player Hercules in that UPN show of the same name. Clichés and inside jokes fly out of the character's mouths for about 40 more minutes until they they settle into a series of flash-forwards to see what becomes of our heroes and heroines. All of this is quite predictable and rather boring until, in classic OC style (if not somewhat predictable as well), in the last scene the troubled kid from the wrong side of the tracks (who is now all growed up) is leaving his job site and sees a kid who was just like himself when The OC began. He knows where he is and he asks him if he needs help. This moment, too, is high on sappiness, but, with the music in the background and the history I have with this show, I can't help but feel good about it and even though I gave up watching years ago, I couldn't help but mourn a little for the loss of The OC. Just knowing it was there has been a comfort to me I guess. Ugh.
There are many sites showcasing the music of The OC, like this official site, an unofficial site that breaks the songs down by episode, and also a comprehensive Wikipedia entry of the songs featured on the OC.
You can buy her box on ebay, too. Keith Oberman made mention of this on air. Awesome. I love the internets.
I don't really like Bill Maher. I think he is smug, pompous, mean-spirited and generally unfunny. It may seem odd then, to have two posts quoting him in such short order, but occasionally he cuts right to the bone of an issue. Here is one such case:
The U.S. is also ranked as follows:
29th in life expectancy
48th in infant mortality
77th in overall health*
53rd in freedom of the press
55th in literacy
27th in population below the poverty line
12th in people lacking functional literacy skills (20% of all adults)
Of industrialized nations nearly all have universal health care and none doubt evolution
We are no longer inventing as we once were, and now we will be losing out on the breakthroughs of stem cell research because some people think it is is like cloning or abortion. (see our ranking in literacy)
We owe China 1 trillion dollars and we are even in debt to Mexico.
Great nations do not torture people and hold them without trial.
We are #1 in something however, cocaine consumption.
While I am on the topic of blind patriotism, I have to take a moment to admonish GM for their "This is our country" ads. They wouldn't be so bad if they didn't try to use the the 9/11 and Katrina tragedies as means to sell trucks. Note: the 3rd most "American made" car is the Toyota Camry.
* "According to the World Health Organization the United States ranks 77th in the world in terms of the impact of our spending on the health of our people. Why is the American health care system is so inefficient? How is it that we succeed in spending more than twice the money other industrialized countries spend on health care per capita and yet rank below them on overall health care statistics?" [Connecticut Green Party]
Let me start by saying that I was impressed with the way the LOST season 3 premier started out and, for the most part, how it went from there. I have yet to check out any LOST sites or speculate much with friends so despite my new theory on "the others" being pretty basic and even obvious from the show, it is still mine, so far. If you have time-shifted your LOST watching and haven't seen the new episode yet you probably shouldn't read any further. For speculation and spoilers, continue reading.
Continue reading "Lost Theory"Some people may think that LOST is just a hit show on ABC. Those people don't know about the huge amounts of fans that debate its theories - yes there are LOST theories. LOST is actually something of a phenomenon. Just take a look at the number of sites out there - there are over 40 million results in Google for "LOST ABC". There are several very thorough sites like LostPedia and, …and found. LostPedia has over 6,000 total pages in its database. There have been a total of 12,214,121 page views, and 48,231 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 8.02 average edits per page and 253.24 views per edit.
There is a great timeline presented at LostPedia and an outstanding extension to the timeline here.
Major new sources have got into the act, furthering the theory frenzy and speculation. Here is one of the best (according to some) but certainly one of the most elaborate.
In addition to the TV series, there has been a real concerted effort by the shows producers to fan the flames of these fans (or fanatics). There is a real novel: Bad Twin, written by fictional Gary Troup, one of the passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 (the flight that crashed in LOST. It is even read on the show by one of the characters and fans believe there are clues hidden in its pages.
Not only that, but there are websites set up for companies in the series, such as the Hanso Foundation and Oceanic Airlines, each with plenty of intrigue and speculation of clues contained within them – seriously, view the source of the Oceanic site and really explore and interact with the Hanso site – there was some real time put into those.
4, 8, 15, 16 ,23 or 42 – this is the ever-present sequence of numbers from the show totaling 108 - this post was made today because LOST Season 3 will begin in exactly 108 days just one day after the October 3rd release of Season 2 to DVD.
If I am a liitle late to the party on this you can blame a lot of people but you can only blame Mark for me actually participating.
Four jobs I've had
Four movies I can watch over and over
Four places I've lived
Four TV shows I love
Four places I've vacationed
Four of my favorite dishes (soooo many things!)
Four sites I visit daily (I am assuming mail.google.com doesn’t count)
Four places I would rather be right now
Four bloggers I am tagging
Looks like TiVo is rolling out new features at quite a clip. Some have reported that they now have support for podcasts ad I have seen local weather and traffic and other features in conjunction with Yahoo! There would also seem to be sharing of photos with Yahoo! (Flickr integration coming soon?) Maybe this Yahoo!/TiVo partnership is going to be more worthwhile than first speculated...interesting.
More features being rolled out:
- Browse movie information/buy tickets from Fandango.
- Discover new music on Live365.
- Overlap priority (for those shows that begin or end at strange times)
- Movies on demand with Netflix (ok so this one is still wishful thinking)
TiVo is still a ways ahead of the competitors in features. Hopefully they can stay that way and somehow make a profit.
* If you ever corner me in a bar or such place have me tell you the story about Bob Sagat that Paul Provenza told the entire theater at SXSW 2005 after the preview screening.
I must admit that the new design of Alt Text is a bit limiting to me, especially, when considering the way I want to post. I am trying to figure out some ways to get around it, but right now Alt Text just isn't set up for the type of linking to interesting things that I have been doing lately. Of course, I knew this while I was designing and implementing the new design but I thought that I would just expand on a link here and there and turn them into real (single) posts (rather than in bunches). Then a strange thing happened. I wanted to post more often than once per day, introducing yet another drawback of this design...it is harder to browse backwards through entries, as well. I am going to make it easier on the archive pages and so on, but I need to figure out a more global solution, and soon.
Here are some posts I have been holding back on because I wanted to have at least 3-5 for aesthetics:
I vacillate when it comes to loving and loathing cars. In many respects I ridicule our system of transit and find little point in owning expensive automobiles that perform like racecars, however there is still something about certain cars that stir something in me. It happened the first time I saw the new VW Passat (which they have since "updated" to be less cool looking), the Audi TT and now has been repeated with this car, the Bugatti EB 16-4 Veyron [source: VW Vortex].
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