Jag-offs
Posted on | October 12, 2008 at 7:39 pm | 2 Comments
Another Broncos vs Jaguars game, another loss. The last three Broncos games I’ve attended were all loses against Jacksonville. I swear this must be my fault somehow, though I think the offense and defense had something to do with it. It was very cold and a bit wet, and N & I were all the way up in the top row against the back wall at Invesco. At least that shielded us against the wind somewhat.
*Sigh* Next year: No Jacksonville!
Latre.
Posted from my iPhone.
Basic and Retro Definitions
Posted on | October 11, 2008 at 9:57 am | 2 Comments
Tonight I’m going to watch a BD.
Do you know what I’m referring to?
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you most likely know. But if you just stumbled here and weren’t totally familiar with home theater and new technologies, you’d probably be confused by that statement.
“BD” is apparently the accepted abbreviation for “Blu-ray Disc”, the High Definition media format that is replacing DVD as the hard storage/viewing medium for home theater movies and TV shows. Earlier this year, it won the HD format war against the other HiDef disc standard, HD-DVD.
I believe that one of the reasons the DVD format succeeded is that it’s easy to refer to. Not everyone knew exactly what “DVD” stood for when the format first came out. Most people still probably don’t know what it stands for. Heck, the people behind the format aren’t even sure what it stands for. It started out as “Digital Visual Disc” or “Digital Versatile Disc”, but then sort of morphed into “Digital Video Disc”, which is what most consumers would probably say it stands for if you pressed them. Which means that a “DVD-Video” disc is a Digital Video Disc Video Disc and a “DVD-Audio” disc is a “Digital Video Disc Audio Disc”, but we won’t go there. Whoops, already did.
But it doesn’t matter just what “DVD” stands for. What matters is that everyone knows what it means, and it rolls off the tongue pretty easily. It’s even easier to say than “VHS” or “videotape”, the format it replaced.
I don’t believe this will ever really happen with “BD”. For one thing, I think Blu-ray’s time in the sun is going to be pretty short compared to DVDs and whatever comes next (digital downloads, most likely). It won’t hit anywhere near the market penetration DVD has, and will probably co-exist with DVD for quite some time to come. So there won’t be a real big need for people to refer to Blu-ray discs at all.
And then there’s the fact that “BD” is just sort of awkward to say. I think that generally when people want to refer to an individual Blu-ray disc these days, they just call it a “Blu-ray” and leave off the “disc”. (”Did you get the awesome new Blu-ray of Iron Man that hangs up your PS3?”) This is likely acceptable to the general public, and the people involved in the conversation usually know what is being referred to. It even has less syllables than “DVD”. I don’t like it though. It does not convey the proper information. “Blu-ray” is a format, “Blu-ray Disc” is an object.
I feel that the abbreviation should actually be “BRD” (”Blu-ray Disc”). That’s the same number of syllables as “DVD” and it conveys all the necessary info. I think it has a little better chance of connecting with Joe and Sarah Consumer than “BD” because it sounds more like “DVD”. I don’t think it will catch on though. It just doesn’t sound as good as “DVD”. The “B” and the “R” just don’t roll off the tongue together very well. And most people are still going to wonder exactly what it is.
But in all likelihood, most people will just refer to Blu-ray Discs as DVDs, even after there aren’t any more DVDs. (Will retailers like DVD Empire start calling themselves BD Empire?) The term “DVD” is very ingrained into our popular culture, and like other such terms, it will be used to refer to a generic video storage medium long after it no longer applies. So that should be my greater concern. But it’s not.
Latre.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Wipeout HD (PS3), where I got my first PS3 trophies (4 so far) at last. Also did some online Wipeout play. And Heavenly Sword (PS3), where I finally got through the penultimate stage, “Heaven and Hell”. I got out my old beanbag chair and am using that to play videogames from the floor, closer to the TV. It seems to help.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Stuck on the ultimate stage of Heavenly Sword, “Redemption”. That sucker’s hard.
Bloom’s Day
Posted on | October 10, 2008 at 8:02 am | Comments Off
It had to happen sooner or later. Musical legend Brian Eno has decided to ride the iPhone gravy train. Along with Peter Chilvers, Eno has developed an application for the iPhone/iPod Touch that turns it into a an ambient music generator. It’s called Bloom, and it’s pretty cool. You just touch the screen and a musical tone plays and a colored circle appears. Touch the screen again and another tone/circle appears. The tones repeat in a loop and older tones eventually die out, to be replaced by the newer tones. That’s it. You get different tones depending on where you tap. It would be nice if the volume of the tone depended on how hard you tapped, but the iPhone screen doesn’t work that way. There’s also a mode where you can just let it sit and it will generate its own tones.
It’s a hypnotic, addictive, simple little app. I find it very relaxing to just sit there and tap on the screen and see what it comes up with. The visuals, though nothing special, enhance the experience. I think the one thing you have to be careful of is using it without headphones around people who may not share your tolerance for random ambient music. The downside is that it’s $3.99, which is a little pricey for this kind of iPhone app. $1 or $2 would probably be better. I don’t know how much use I’ll get out of it, but at this point I don’t really regret paying the $4. Y’know, it’s strange to me that I’m now complaining about paying $4 for an app for my smartphone, when most of the apps I bought for the Palm PDA were in the $20 – $30 range. Granted, most of the Palm apps do more, but when there are comparable iPhone apps, the iPhone ones are always cheaper. I never used to balk at paying that much. The iPhone and the app store have really changed the model for how we buy software for our mobile devices.
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 47°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Samantha” (Madness)
- “Always in Tears” (Vinyl Devotion)
- “Flower” (Liz Phair)
- “I’m A Terrible Person” (Rooney)
- “In A Funny Way” (Mercury Rev)
- “Ocean Spray” (Manic Street Preachers)
- “Money For Love” (Pidgin)
- “Just Like You” (Poster Children)
Blud On The Tracks
Posted on | October 9, 2008 at 7:17 am | 10 Comments
It’s a List O’ Links Day! But first: I knew it had to happen sooner or later. I got this e-mail from NetFlix today:
Dear Greatest Customer Ever,
As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we’re going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for monthly access to Blu-ray movies.
The additional charge for monthly Blu-ray access will be automatically added to your next billing statement on or after November 5th, 2008 and will be referenced in your Membership Terms and Details. If you wish to continue getting Blu-ray movies for $1 a month more, you don’t need to do anything. If not, you can remove Blu-ray access anytime by visiting Your Account at the Netflix website.
If you have questions about this change or need any assistance, please call us anytime at 1-888-638-3549.
-The Netflix Team
As if I can afford, in this current economic climate, to spend $1 more on movie rentals a month! The hubris! Harumph, I’m on the cheapest plan and I usually don’t watch movies fast enough to get my money’s worth as it is.
What about the people who mostly watch DVDs but only rent the occasional Blu-ray? You’re paying the additional money for Blu-ray access, not per disc. So those people are screwed.
What’s next? Are gas stations going to start charging more for premium fuel??
In other news, all undecided or McCain voters should read this week’s Rolling Stone cover story about the “Maverick”. I realize it’s a hatchet job by an admittedly liberal-biased periodical, but if even half of what it says is true, this man is not at all fit to run the country. Scary stuff.
In really funny news, the U.S. National Debt Clock has run out of digits! Get it – the National Debt is now too big to display there in its entirety! They had to use the dollar sign slot for the extra digit. Ha ha! Isn’t that humorous?!?
Two more reasons why it must be fun to live in Dubai. Why wasn’t I born a rich oil sheik?
Finally, an explanation of why I’m not a very good video game player: It’s genetic! Was that TMI? (Yes, I know that The Daily Show mentioned this in a recent episode, but I wrote this before I saw that.)
Question: Why isn’t the iPhone Developer SDK available for Windows?
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Direct mail election ads. I got about a thousand of them yesterday.
Scaling Back
Posted on | October 8, 2008 at 7:11 am | 9 Comments
The current financial crisis has hit everyone pretty hard in the wallet, or will soon. It has caused me to attempt to save money in many different ways:
- Only donating to charities that pay dividends.
- Having maid clean house once a week instead of once a day.
- Only listening to the left channel of stereo recordings in order to conserve electricity.
- Growing my own celery and cilantro.
- Re-using facial tissue and toilet paper.
- Driving the Ferrari to work only once per week.
- Canceled my subscription to the Adult Blu-ray Disc Of The Month Club.
- If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
- Switching from Fat Tire to Old Milwaukee; Trading in my Carbon Credits for Barley Bucks.
- No longer using dishwasher, since the dust bowl conditions outside can be used to sandblast the dishes clean.
- Only buying Powerball tickets when the jackpot is over $30 million.
- Paying bills every other month instead of every month.
- Selling my beloved John Tesh and Yanni CD collections on eBay.
- Putting off that kidney transplant until 2010.
- Switching to the iPhone data plan that only allows 10 text messages/100 web page loads per month for $1/month, rather than the existing 200/unlimited plan for $20/month.
- Voting for Ron Paul in the Presidential election.
- Goodbye Crunchwrap Supreme, Hello Bean Burrito!
- Selling my sister’s kids for medical experiments, since I have no kids of my own.
- Set up a line of credit with “Bruno” in the alley.
- Got rid of my DSL and went back to dialup Internet access.
- Got rid of my DSL and went back to dialup Internet access.
- Got rid of my DSL and went back to dialup Internet access.
- Got rid of my DSL and went back to dialup Internet access.
- Damn, hasn’t this thing posted yet?
What steps are you taking to weather the global economic storm?
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “googly moogly the lungs”.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Wipeout HD (PS3)
Save Me, White Text!
Posted on | October 7, 2008 at 7:25 am | 10 Comments
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but as I get older I find it increasingly hard to hear certain things, like dialog. This is especially evident when I’m in a large space with a lot of people and I’m trying to concentrate on what one person near me is saying. If I’m at a restaurant with N for example, I sometimes have a hard time hearing what she’s saying from the other side of the table, even if the restaurant isn’t that noisy or crowded. I’ll have to keep asking her to repeat herself, which understandably annoys her. I’m not sure if the problem is with my ears or with my brain, but I’m sure it has something to do with age. Although I rated pretty good in my last hearing test, from what I recall.
This also extends to watching TV. The center channel is already set louder than the other ones, but I’ll still have to turn up the system volume as a whole sometimes to hear the dialog. But then the music and effects channels are too loud. This is even more of a problem of course when people are speaking fast or with an accent. I’ve been availing myself of the closed captioning option on the DVR and the subtitle track on DVDs more and more lately. When we were at the B&B last weekend, N and I watched a DVD there that neither of us could really hear very well, even though we had the volume cranked to the absolute max. But the TV was pretty small and not close enough to the viewing area. We turned the subtitles on for the last half of the movie and that helped a lot. We were finally able to figure out what was going on.
One of the TV shows I regularly watch is The Shield – it’s the only cop show I watch, though it’s far from a traditional one. The dialog is very fast and is filled with slang and odd names. I’ve found that it’s much easier for me to figure out what’s going on when I watch with the CC on. As a bonus, I get to see how some of the character names are spelled, which is sometimes surprising. Sometimes even the spelling of the slang is odd, and doesn’t necessarily help in determining what it means. I wasn’t actually sure I was going to watch the show for this final season, as I was not invested in it from the beginning and only started watching a few seasons ago. Plus I always had trouble figuring out exactly what was going on. The plot is usually filled with double and triple crosses. But now the CC has enhanced my viewing experience so much that I’m really getting drawn into it and I’m anxious to see how the series ends.
British shows are another good use of CC. I remember watching the original Office that way, and it helped a lot. Those British accents are hard to penetrate sometimes. The Doctor Who revival is another one where I occasionally have to turn on the CC to figure out what’s going on. But that show has a major problem with sound design, if you ask me. The music is way too overbearing most of the time, drowning out the dialog. The music is good and appropriate and movie-symphonic, but it’s just too damn loud.
One of the shows I’ve been watching lately on BBC America is Primeval, which is an SF show about a group of scientist adventurers having to deal with prehistoric (and “posthistroic”) creatures invading London due to portals to other times opening up in random parts of the city. The lead character has a Scottish (?) accent, which makes it even harder to figure out what he’s saying. I watched the first episode or two without CC and then was somewhat surprised to find that when I switched over, I had gotten the names of one of the main characters totally wrong. I’m not sure what I thought her name was, but I sure didn’t hear it as “Claudia”. I was initially unsure about this show from the first episode, but it started getting interesting pretty fast. There have been two series (i.e. seasons) of it so far in the UK (the third is currently in production) and BBC America is showing both of them one right after the other. Of course, since this is British TV, the seasons are short (6 episodes in the first, 7 in the second). At first, I thought it was going to be a “monster of the week” show, but then the overall character and story arcs started up and made it lot more interesting than that. It really hooked me when the show underwent a drastic status quo change with a plot twist at the end of the first season/beginning of the second. Usually when that sort of thing happens in an SF show, they fix things and revert back to the old setup pretty quickly, but it’s looking at this point, a few episodes into the second series, like it’s a permanent change. Pretty ballsy. Reminds me of the middle of the third season of Babylon 5, when things went totally off the wire. I think you tend to find that kind of thing more in British TV shows, where the seasons are shorter and more focused and they’re not afraid to take chances with more dramatic show-altering storylines. Each season is like a separate mini-series. And I know I was recently complaining about time travel tropes, but at least in this show time travel is built into the concept, so there’s no getting around it.
Okay, I got a little off track there from my original topic. (What was the question again, Ms Moderator?) Oh yeah… Hearing bad, closed captioning good, subtitles good. Is it all downhill from here? And I was sorta wondering if other people have this issue as well. Do you avail yourself of the CC and subtitle options, even though you don’t consider yourself hearing impaired?
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 43°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Transmission” (Fretblanket)
- “Lost and Found” (Echo & the Bunnymen)
- “Down on Terminal Street” (Be Bop Deluxe)
- “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Lick the Tins)
- “We Got To Leave” (Caesars)
- “The Flag” (Barenaked Ladies)
- “In The Tower” (Yes)
Pet Peeve of the Day: The “DTVanswers.com” crawls at the bottom of the TV screen on our local NBC channel. I swear, last night’s Heroes had the thing up for 5 minutes at least, with the same two phrases repeated over and over again. That’s not the kind of captioning I like!
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Wipeout HD (PS3)
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