Stuff that I have an opinion about, and care to share.
It took me a while to finally decide to jump into the high quality content pool and get an HDTV display. It’s a big one (50″), supports CableCard, HDMI inputs, and it goes all the way up to 1080P. High def programs look fantastic on it. DVDs look pretty good. Standard TV? Not so good, I’m afraid. It eats up a good chunk of the wall, but wow is it cool.
If you want more information on this monster, you can find it here: KDSR50XBR1
I had the opportunity to drive a 2001 Porsche 911 today. Actually my boss all but forced me to go drive it, as she knows that I?ve been waiting to get a sports car one of these days. First off I have to comment that there were two noticeable flaws in the car for me: the steering wheel hits my knees with the seat pushed all the way back; the other is a really heavy clutch.
That said, I?m still shaking from the drive. It?s been a good long while since I?ve driven a car that can move that fast, maneuver so deliberately, and stop so assuredly. It does feel like it rides on rails, even if that ride is a bit tight and tough. And when the car is driven right, when ?you drive it like you stole it? the car rewards you by leaving everything in the rear view mirror right quick. Shifts, though heavy, come fast and deliberate. Power builds very quickly and linearly. It?s not the same kick I?ve gotten from my old twin turbo 300zx, but when you hammer the gas this car moves.
At the end of the drive which happened all too quickly I was practically giddy from the experience. A guy on the highway sped away from me and with next to no effort I stuck right to him, well past the century mark on the dial. It?s been a long time since I could do that and I still have the stupid grin on my face because of it. Man, I need a sports car again.
I took a part of this afternoon to go see Batman Begins and I walked away from it pretty impressed. It could have fallen apart just like the many other iterations of Batman have, but it held it all together through the whole picture. It felt, dare I say it, believable, which you could never have said about the first set of movies.
The soundtrack is great also, with Hans Zimmer doing his best to convey the dark tone of the new picture. So great, in fact, that I went straight over to Amazon.com and ordered the soundtrack. But, I am a soundtrack nut, so that’s what I get.
If you are looking for a good film to watch on a weekend (or weekday, for that matter) you can’t go wrong with this one. Recommended.
Yes, I knew this 3rd (or 6th) installment of Star Wars would be rough. I’m a fan of the previous SW movies, so I knew what I was in for. The effects were fantastic, and the battles were epic. Its good to finally know how everything fell into place and how the empire began.
But good lord, could the dialog the actors had to read be any worse? Hayden should have changed his name to wooden, Natalie turned up the sap and turned down the drama, and Ewan & Sam just phoned it in. I was thankful for the long silences later in the movie because the rhetoric was just weak.
In the final analysis, I decided that this was a pain that I had to make it through, if for no other reason than to see Yoda put out the smackdown one last time. I’m sad that it cost me $10, though.
Maybe I set myself up to fall on this one, but I was expecting much more from the LOST season finale than I received. Yes, the crazy French woman is back. And the baby is stolen and returned. Rocker dude finds the heroin from the drug plane. And of course the rescue raft sinks.
But the biggest bummers are the hatch is now open but all we see is a ladder, and the creature on the island is a puff of black smoke and clanking sounds. What gives with that? We have to wait all season long for these bits of knowledge? And could ABC please pack a few more commercials into the episode? Most of that 2 hours was spent skipping through the latest car ads, insurance pitches, and movie promos. Sad indeed.
At least I was entertained by the “teacher bits”. Too bad that happened so early in the episode that no laughs came after that. A big thanks goes out to Mark and his super HDTV theater room for the finale’s screening goodness. At least I got to see 720p widescreen in all its splendor.
What can I say about this monitor? It rocks, it is certainly the best looking and brightest LCD display I’ve ever used. It handles games very well (with its fast <8ms response time) and eats so much less power than a CRT. It takes up much less desk space, is easier to move around, and looks cooler as well. I’m positively smitten with it.
I won’t waste time giving you all the specs (you can find them here if you want them) but its 1280x1024x72hz goodness, super sharp, great contrast, and stare at the sun bright. Yes, its about $600, but 19″ monitor goodness currently (as of this post) doesn’t get any better than this. Go out and pick one up… and I’m not just saying that because I’m an employee.
I saw The Aviator recently and I walked away impressed. I was pretty confident in its accuracy thanks to a recent interview of the director, Martin Scorsese, and I wasn’t disappointed. What I was afraid of was Leonardo DiCaprio and his seemingly impossible task to act like a real person. He surprised me with a good, one would almost say moving, performance as a prolific and later delusional Hughes. Kate Blanchett does a fantastically good job as Katharine Hepburn and Kate Beckinsale does as well as Eva Gardner. They both help move the story along while remaining true to their characters and being easy on the eyes.
It’s an accurate portrail of Hughes’ life and a good movie matinee for rainy days. I call it highly recommended.
A funny thing happened to me this week. Actually, something funny always seems to happen to me, it just isn’t usually ha-ha kind of funny. I discovered the wealth of TV shows archived and presented for my (and your) viewing enjoyment on the internet.
And it’s not just any old internet. This is the super secret world of back room P2P file sharing, growing up and making it more tolerable for the masses. Using a combination of BitTorrent technology with the P2P search engine of the moment, ISOHunt, and a suitable download client on Windows, called Azureus, I have found that you can download just about any episode of any popular (and some not-so-popular) television shows. Seeing as how I currently have more time than common sense, I have installed all of this P2P-ware on one of my PCs and tried it.
I started off with an easy one: CSI. I found that virtually every show this season is online. Next I went looking for something I haven’t seen: Desparate Housewives. Not only did I find all the episodes, but some nice folks have bundled up the first 6 shows into a single archive. Whats better still is that most of these programs are HDTV transfers, so on my 21″ monitor I’m watching full screen goodness, not the SD (standard definition) postage stamp size video with horrible artifacts.
All of this learning has taught me a few things:
All of this TV, all in HDTV, all without commercials. It is truly amazing and as the bandwidth to the home continues to go up I don’t see how the TV market will survive in its current form. Lets hope they wake up and make the right moves for the consumer before they get Napser-ized like the record companies did.
I am in the process of assembling a completely new PC for a friend of mine and I just received the best part: a new BenQ 951 19″ LCD monitor. At 1280×1024 resolution it has a 700:1 contrast ratio and appears brighter than my laptop display. Digital photos, text, and web pages look great on it. I haven’t tried yet, but I’ll bet image editing works well too.
The only thing I know it won’t do well is play games, thanks to a slow 20ms response time. However, if you don’t play games this could well be the best 19″ display on the market today. And at only $419.00 its a steal. Go out and get one today… I know I would if I needed one.
After about 12 hours of grinding away, my server finally finished its scan of all my music and made itself ready for streaming. For about 5 hours yesterday I had everything working great, searching and streaming songs, playlists, and the like. Great, this is just what I was looking for.
Then I noticed that my laptop couldn’t go to any web sites. And my router appeared to be dead. Hmm, that’s not right.
I discovered that at least twice an hour, for some reason, my router, a Linksys, goes all wonky and stops responding to anyone but the server and Roku client. No one can be pinged, tracerouted, or communicated to. Cycling power on the router brings it back to life, or I can sit around for 5 minutes or so until it clears itself.
It is truly baffling why this happens, but the music still runs. I suppose more diagnosis is in order, but I find that UPnP is neither truly universal nor plug-and-play. Figures.